Stamp your heart out

When I decide to go for square shaped envelops, I quickly found out that there would be an extra cost to it. Well, who cares for a few more cents if this is the design you want right?
On top of it of course there was a postage fee change which means that half of the stamps on the market require additional stamps to be sent.

With the invitations close to being ready I was finally able to go to the post office today and see how much it would be.

We have about 29 invitations going to France for $1.20 a piece and close to 50 going to the US for $0.83 a piece.
Dang the stupid ribbon the A.C Moore ran out of, I had to buy the bigger size and because of it the US envelops can's fit in the slot and are therefore more expensive... I guess it's one of those little details you need to look into when you make the invitations. It's definitely not something I was thinking about.

Anyway, there is this one stamp I really want to use for France and only a few post office seem to have it left: The $0.75 stamp with the Blue Ridge Mountains. This is where we are so I definitely want to use it. So I need $0.45 more to make up for the total.


For the exact sum, here is one of the best choices

++

Or we pay $0.05 extra per envelop and it's:

For the United States it's an other story. The number of combinations is pretty high.

1) Mt McKinley+Silver coffee pot
+

2)Wedding heart+Florida Panther ($0.01 over)
+

3)Yosemite ($0.01 over)


4) Two wedding hearts ($0.01 over)


5)or two Love All Heart ($0.01 over)


6)or one of each ($0.01 over)


So it's hard to choose, although I feel like option 3: just the Yosemite stamp or option 4 the two wedding heart are the best one. It matches it's not too much and yes it costs 0.01$ more for each envelop, but really I'd rather pay $0.50 more than have a gazillion of stamps on the envelop.

Did the postage fee for your envelop made you look at off combinations of stamps?

All images: USPS.com

Invitation sweatshop

Our living room has turned into a full invitation sweatshop. Ok we might not really sweat but finding a place to put your feet without tripping over a mountain of ribbons, a pile of envelops and invitations is getting pretty hard to do.
This is invitation week baby.
And soon I'll be able to reveal the whole design.

Double the honeymoon

So as I mentionned yesterday, the green-card approval had us rethink or honeymoon plans.

Well there was one tiny issue though: I miss my home country and my family, and I miss them pretty bad. Even though some of them are coming to the wedding it's only a tiny part of my family. Not to mention that one of my grandmothers is not doing too well. So I want to go to France next year, I can't wait much longer. But I don't want to honeymoon in France either.
This might not seem like a big issue in itself, but the thing is I only get 10 paid days off per year, and a trip to France should be at least 2 weeks for us to see everyone. I didn't want our honeymoon to eat up all our vacation capital when France was my priority.

Last week-end, while hiking, Hubby brought up the subject of the honeymoon again. Well we know New-Zealand was out of the way, also with gas prices the way they are, the road trip did not seem like such a good idea anymore. So Hubby mentioned skiing in the Rocky Mountains. I was like great, but since I have the green-card, why not look into foreign country options. And that's when he mentioned British Columbia.
He was ready to go there and have me snick up without a green-card, to which I said no because it's not worth the risk, so I had forgotten about it.
But now, with the GC in hand, thing were completely different. As we walked up the mountain he told me about ski resort of Whistler, one of the best skiing/snowboarding in the world according to him. I liked the idea.
The next day I was looking at the B.C. tourism website, checking out B&B and completely in love with the idea.

Now the one thing is: he still wants to go to Hawaii and I still want to go to France, so we compromised. If things go according to program we would take 1 week off on honeymoon in B.C. at the end of winter, early spring. Maybe have his mom and step-dad meet us at the end of the trip somewhere on the west coast, and then take weeks off later on to go to France where one of my week would be unpaid.
And for Hawaii: we'll have an other "honeymoon" in 2010. Who said you have to honeymoon only once right? That way we can go to Kauai that I'm curious about and spend more time on Lanai too.

So now we need to plan things, decide on the dates and figure out all those little details. I'm very excited.

Images: http://www.verityjaneproductions.com & www.movingtofreedom.com

A road trip honeymoon?

When we got married last year, we didn't have any money to go on honeymoon. Also my little brother was visiting for a few weeks and that mattered more than anything else. We were however very lucky. His family offered us a mini-moon: two nights in a bed and breakfast. It wasn't very far (45mn away) but we didn't care. It was such a nice moment for the two of us. I think it also helped us realize a bit more than we were married after the speedy ceremony.

Now we still wanted to go on a real honeymoon. His parents wanted us to as well and they offered to pay for it. I won't tell you the budget they gave us, but it's very generous.
Our dream was to go to New-Zealand. We are both very much attracted by this country and wanted to go there to hike and discover its beauties. However even with his parents generous offer, the plane tickets only would have eaten a huge portion of the budget. Not to mention the time to fly there. We realized we had to give up on that dream.
There was an other issue: we didn't know when I would get my green card, and without it I could not leave the country.To me a honeymoon should be done in a place you can't go to easily and a foreign country was definitely my top choice, even though I haven't seen more than the South-East of the United States. I was ready to wait as long as necessary to go on a honeymoon, but he was not.

Months went by and we were still waiting for the green-card interview. One day, I remember we were watching a program about other US states and both of us had the same idea at the same time, one of those: "Are you thinking what I'm thinking moment".
Since I couldn't leave the states, well then why not do a Road Trip and get the opportunity to discover some American landscapes we didn't know.
It might not sound like the most romantic idea in the word, but we were both excited at the thought, not to mention I wanted to see the West.
Now an other thing came up. As a way to thank his parents for paying for our honeymoon, my husband wanted to take a trip to Hawaii at the same time.
Now my though was: heck no!
Sure I want to thank them, but visiting your in-laws on a honeymoon is not a honeymoon move I'm in for. Not to mention that we would have to either rent a car for the road trip and then take the plane. An other reason against it? We've been to Hawaii twice and his parents live here and will do so for the rest of their lives. We can go anytime we want, we don't need special occasions. They already invited us once and paid for the plane tickets too. No matter what I did he still wanted to do it.

Well then came June and the green-card interview notice and just one week ago the interview itself where we were approved. This means that I can leave the country. We can go anywhere we want. So were thought about it again...

M.I.A.

I've been slacking on the updates of all the wedding planning. Although I do have good excuses:
Our first anniversary was followed by my birthday and by a long awaited immigration interview.
We passed. I'm approved and should be receiving my Green Card in the coming weeks. So hopefully I'm going to be able to write down what's been going on.
I should be receiving some of the missing paper for the invitations, and we have some meetings to do with the officiant and photographs in the comings weeks and I'm trying to get my husband to go registring since I know his family is expecting us to. Not to mention I have to write down how I found my dress, now all I need is time...

Fall for flowers

I don't want too many flowers at our wedding. For one thing we are on a budget and flowers are expensive. But that's not the only reason. There is also the nature girl here thinking: why would I want a bunch of flowers cut for my wedding and then left to die?
Sure I could bring them to a retirement home afterward and make people happy, but if I can avoid it I'll make us happy. Not to mention we are having a November wedding and only so many flowers will be available. We want local seasonal flowers as much as possible.

Now that said I do want a bouquet and possibly one for my bridesmaids as well.

So I've been looking around for inspiration.
One of the first bouquet I saw was this one:
Found on istockphoto.com, copyright Joey Nelson.
I love the colors, bright coppers, some chocolate and a touch of light green highlighting it all.
I can see mango call lilies, proteas and many more elements whose name is unknown to me.
It is so stunning and so perfect for a fall wedding. Although most of the flowers are unlikely to be local nor seasonal.
I love the color inspiration however and this is definitely something I would like to work from.

Today on weddingbee.com, there was a post about Polyvore/Minted Boards and on one of them I saw this very surprising wheat bouquet.
Photo: Kathy Blanchard Photography from Courtney & Matt wedding in the Knot Real weddings.
I love the simplicity of it. The fact that it's not really flowers. And the chocolate ribbon that would work perfectly with our colors.
I'm considering it either for me or maybe for my bridesmaids, it would look great with their outfit.

Do you want a sophisticated bouquet or do you like a simple one?

Melting pot touches

I am French, as French as it gets since according to the genealogy recherches my Mom's family did it goes back to the 12th century.
As I mentioned previously, I am trying to include some French touches to honor my family and my culture. Well Hubby is too.
My husband is his own melting pot/salad bowl. From his father he is Scotch-Irish and Welsh. From his mother he is Japanese and Portugese, with a touch of Hawaiian culture if not blood since that's where his Japanese and Portugese ancestors have been for the past 100 years.

One of the first things he mentioned was the possibility of him wearing a kilt for the ceremony. He has never worn one in his life, nor shown such a great interest in things related to his heritage, but suddenly he wants one. Well he had been talking about getting a utilikilt for a while but that's about it.
My first though was probably to giggle at the though of him wearing a skirt and how to avoid the temptation of teasing him about it.
However I have to admit that after doing some research on the option, I've come to fall in love with the idea. I know he can pull it off and I would love to see the blend of our various cultures.
I will develop later on the different options we've been looking into for him with more details.
[image source: Scottish-weddings.scotclans.com]

Now on top of the Irish-Scottish-Welsh heritage, we have the participation of his mom. She's offered to bring some Lei, the Hawaiian flower necklace, to put on the groomsmen, they would be made out of Ti leaves and maybe Kukui nuts if I understood correctly instead of flowers. Which would look somewhat like that:

[source: www.paradiseflowers.com]
She is now also offering to bring Macademia nuts as favors for our guests. I'm not sure how they'll manage to bring of that, but hey why not.

Now, however much I love each idea separately, I have no idea how we are going to pull off this mix of styles and cultures without looking like a party of clowns.
So this is going to take some serious thinking, and I hope we can included the various aspects of each culture. Let's say that we will not have a boring wedding...

Do you have any weird cultural elements that you want to or have to included in your wedding? How are you going to blend them together?