Off with her head!

So I haven't posted in practically forever. There's been plenty worth sharing, I just never had the motivation to sit down and share it.

Well it's a New Year and with it come new priorities. My goal in 2014 is to take more pictures, document more memories, and stop making excuses. Easy, right?!

Luckily, I'm back with a bang! This past weekend the Ella Dynae team and I pulled off a Valentine's Day photo shoot inspired by Alice in Wonderland. The shoot featured a fabulous tea party and a brand new Queen of Hearts costume.

The costumes are being featured in Party Style Magazine's February/March issue, so I'll hold off including those images (as incredible as they are!). Stay tuned to The Diary of Ella Dynae blog for those images soon!

What I can share is the tablescape that I designed for the tea party scene of the photo shoot! Check out the whimsical fête below!

Photography by Merlin Showalter

For the tea party table, I was feeling an eclectic vibe and wanted to create a cohesive hodgepodge of decadence (a contradiction, I know, but it makes sense in my head). I collected antique bone china teacups of various floral designs, filled old glass bottles with water tinted by food coloring, and used dusty gold lace for the tablecloth.

Photography by Merlin Showalter

In the theme of hodgepodge, I mixed metals by pairing the gold tablecloth with silver serving trays and serveware. I hand made the "drink me." and "eat me." signs by using a chalkboard paint pen on matte scrapbooking paper. Finally, I tied in elements from the costumes to the table by using the same checkerboard fabric from the Queen of Heart's dress for the napkins.

Photography by Merlin Showalter

Some of the teacups I chose to stack, evoking a tea party thrown by the Mad Hatter. I secured them using duct tape (there is seriously nothing that duct tape can't do!) and adorned them with garden variety flowers in the party's color palette. The rest I filled with sweet treats like red velvet cupcakes that I decorated with heart stickers stuck on toothpicks.

Photography by Merlin Showalter

Ok guys. This was seriously the hardest thing in the world not to take apart and eat. I am a sucker for any carb, but then you cover it with sugar? Oh. Dear. Me. Unfortunately, seeing as the donuts sat out for over 48 hours, their edibleness was greatly diminished.

And finally, here was the full finished product:

Photography by Merlin Showalter

In a perfect world, we would have held the photo shoot in an actual garden, but alas, we live in Oregon and are perpetually cursed by rain, wind, and fog in the month of January. Le sigh. So we tried our best to create an English garden atmosphere and I think we faired rather nicely, if I do say so myself! In fact I think the fake topiaries and oversized paper flowers added to the overall cartoonish Wonderland feeling. And props to the hubs for the idea of hanging the clock ;-)

Parties, princesses, and fairies, oh my!

I want to introduce you to someone. Her name is Ella Dynae and she lives in a world of beautiful whimsy and fabulous make-believe, where fairies are real and princesses throw decadent parties just because they can. 

Ella Dynae is the brainchild of my dear friend Richelle who hand crafts each of these custom-made, heirloom-quality costume pieces. She allows little girls everywhere to actually become the fairy princesses that they already know they are and enter into a world of make-believe that is so priceless in the nurturing and cultivating of a child's imagination.

What impresses me the most about Ella Dynae's products are their perfect fit and overall wearability. While visually stunning, they still are extraordinarily comfortable for even daily wear and the materials can withstand a child's play.

It has been such a pleasure being able to watch Richelle carefully execute each design and develop Ella Dynae into what it has become today.

Doesn't it make you wish you were 8 again?

This is why I am so incredibly excited to announce that Richelle and I are joining forces and creating a new Elle Dynae line of customizable party supplies! Why not be able to design a one-of-a-kind soirée around one of these fabulous costumes?

The party packages are coming soon, but in the meantime, here's a sneak peek to what we've been cooking up:

I'm looking forward to sharing the final product, but while you wait, head on over and check out Ella Dynae!

Wedding Post: Staying under budget.

Throwing a wedding is tough. Throwing a wedding for under $10,000? Herculean.  You've got to cut costs without cutting corners.

Here's a rundown of places we saved some dough:

Not hiring a wedding planner. Instead, hubs and I managed the details which in the long run made for a much more personal day. The Knot Book of Wedding Lists became my new bible. We did however, hire a "day of" coordinator, which I highly recommend for any one who is a fan of their sanity.

Buying my dress off the rack. Once you accept the fact that at the end of the day, it is still just a dress that you wear once, then saving money begins to sound a bit more romantic than a trip to a designer boutique. By shopping at a vendor who came through town with designer samples, I was able to get a $1500 gown for less than half the original cost. Win.

Purchasing everything else off of Etsy. Instead of paying over $200 for a chapel length veil, I payed $40. Instead of $250 for a bridal belt with cheap rhinestones, I got mine for $140, handmade. 

Win. Win.

Having the ceremony and the reception in the same location. This kept rental fees much lower than they would have been, guests didn't have any extra traveling, and the ever-enjoyable cocktail hour could begin promptly :-)

Using our Costco membership. No really, I'm not kidding. We not only got crazy deals on our invitation suite and printing our wedding photos ($45 for ALL of them!), but we also bought a new printer and ink that we used to print the wedding programs ourselves.

Getting a friend to officiate the wedding. We had a close family friend ordained online for only $30 and in return got a ceremony that was moving and meaningful.

Only using live flowers for bouquets and boutonnieres. For everything else we used bare branches that we spray painted in metallics. I mean if it's going to die the next day anyway, might as well use something that's already dead! Where we did use real flowers, we chose blooms that are grown year round and are voluminous in size (i.e. David Austen roses, baby's breath, hydrangeas, carnations).

Bringing in your own booze and only serving beer and wine. This way we could buy it all wholesale and just pay a minor corking fee. Also, with all that money saved, you can get booze that people actually want to drink and then it won't bother them one bit to do without cocktails.

Use only a small display cake and then serve sheet cake. It tastes the same, no one can tell the difference, and saves a buttload (yes that is an actual form of measurement) of money. Plus, then your guests can actually eat cake right after your cake cutting. Also, by saving said buttload, you can get a cake that...wait for it...tastes good! Use buttercream frosting instead of fondant (cheaper anyway) and splurge on luxury fillings (we used fresh raspberry jelly and Stumptown espresso mousse).

Know when to use the handy iPod. The hubs and I are blessed by an array of absurdly talented musician friends and therefore, we were able to have live music for the ceremony and most of the reception for a minimal cost. However, they are our friends first and foremost, not wedding slaves, and so we wanted to give them a break to sit back, eat, and enjoy themselves. We used Dixieland jazz (the hubs downloaded 40 songs for $10.99 off iTunes) on the iPod for cocktail hour and dinner. People are so loud and distracted at this point anyway, why waste live music on them.

All photos (except the first, you can thank Instagram for that one) courtesy of Kaela.Mey Photography!

Wedding Post: Sweet Stationary Success

Nothing sets the tone of a fabulous fête quite like a beautiful invitation suite. And yet, quality invitations and its family of stationary can cost a pretty penny. Pennies that I just was not willing to spend on what is, at the end of the day, still just paper.

The key for me was to stay on budget, but still make an impact by finding continuity and expressing some personality. I struck gold when I found these Save-the-Date postcards from Alexander & Co. on Pinterest.

 These babies knocked me head over heels with their retro vibe. So much so that they inspired the overall retro, New Years theme for the rest of the wedding. Alexander & Co. was amazing at customizing the artwork to create an Art Deco, concert playbill. It matched both the venue and our personalities and they even changed the dancing couples' hair color to match our own (if only they could make hubs not so white..)! And to make things even sweeter, because they were postcards, the postage was cheaper!

I loved the end product so much that we even printed it as a 8x11 and hung it in our bedroom :-)

Then, on to the actual invitations. We wanted something that would coordinate well with the Save-the-Dates and kept us under budget. So we came up with this...

...which we bought from.....wait for it.....COSTCO! Yup, the same place where you can also buy 2 years worth of toilet paper also makes adorable stationary at that same lovable Costco price. It's technically a partnership with Wedding Paper Divas, but you get to shop as a Costco member.

We also chose to have friends and family RSVP either online or on the phone. Much more cost effective and even the old folks in the fam were able to figure it out. In the end the key is to scrimp, but not sacrifice!

Brunch with the bride.

This past November, bestie blessed me with a bridal shower! The theme was "Brunch with the Bride" and was put together in a palate of ivory, metallics, and blush to complement the fall season. It was a perfect excuse to eat all the carbs!

First of all, aren't the invitations precious! Once again, bestie and I tweaked wedding invitations into shower invites. Much classier and they come with an online template. Plus they were crazy on sale at Michael's! 

We used tons of my mom's old silver to serve on, plus some gems that she found at the Dollar Tree (to which she always reminds me that, "It's only a DOLLAR!". Silly Mom.) Not to mention there were all the donuts and bagels a girl could hope for. Have I mentioned that I haven't met a carbohydrate that I didn't like?

Look at the delicate antique lace and the sparkly potpourri that bestie also gave out as favors! I am also being won over by the beauty and effectiveness of bud vases over full arrangements. More bang for your buck!

 Look at that concentration! Unlike so many horrors of cheesy bridal showers past, bestie planned cute games that totally took advantage of my addiction to celebrity gossip websites.

  
In the end, brunch makes for a happy bride and bridesmaids...not to mention a happy kitty who gets to reap the rewards of leftover gift bags ;-)

Summer Lovin'.

So this last August, the bestie got hitched and let me tell you it was one big, beautiful family affair! The ceremony got the whole bridal party choked up (including my own hubs-to-be who was a groomsman (-: ), the setting was divine, and we danced the night away to live music on the lawn. Just the way a summer garden wedding should be.

Now the pressure was on that day. Not only was the weather bi-polar, taking turns between 100 °F and torrential rain, but I STILL needed to finish my maid-of-honor toast AND I was doing bestie's makeup for the day. Phew. No problem. I got this. 

Photo by Me

Didn't she look like a gem?! (Mostly because she's gorgeous. But I think my makeup skills helped a little). 

And her something borrowed was a pearl bracelet that my momma had given me!

Photo by Heather Espana

As I had mentioned earlier in my post about bestie's bridal shower, the colors of the wedding were grey and yellow. The bridesmaids wore grey Bill Levkoff dresses and yellow wedges and the groomsmen wore yellow ties, grey suspenders and argyle socks. Cute, no?

Photo by Me

Photo by Heather Espana

Now speaking of that bridal shower, a lot of the pieces I put together were able to be reused at the wedding! Like those yellow chevron table runners that were my first sewing project EVER...

Photo by Heather Espana

...totally got rocked at the bridal party table.

And all those Izze bottles we saved...well I painstakingly de-gooed the labels and washed them out while bestie spray painted them white so that they could be reused as bud vases for arrangements of credpedia and Queen Anne's lace. 

Photo by Me

Photo by Heather Espana

Even the cupcake toppers were reused to decorate the dessert table and my adorable galvanized ice bucket found a second life.

Photo by Me

By the end of the day we were exhausted, but all totally filled with love.

I know, I'm such a cheese.

Photo by Me

 ***Please visit photographer Heather Espana's blog for more breathtaking and stunning pictures!

Consider yourself showered.

Last June I threw a bridal shower for the bestie who will be getting married this summer. It was intended to be a fabulous outdoor garden party, complete with adorable yellow chevron place settings and day-drinking. Unfortunately, we live in the climatically unpredictable state of Oregon and apparently late June does not guarantee you garden party friendly weather.

So the soirée was moved inside my in-laws house and even though it wasn't what I had originally envisioned, it was still pretty darn cute. if. I. do. say. so. myself. And there was still day-drinking.

I'm a sucker for all things monogrammed.

See, I told you the yellow chevron was fabulous. I couldn't find any table runners that I liked, so I sewed these myself.

 Goodwill find #1: fantastic serving tray.

Mmmmmm dessert. The scrumptious lemon bars (the bride's favorite) were made by my darling friend Lauren. The macaroons were served in Goodwill find #2. And how precious are the raspberries stuffed with chocolate chips served in gold-rimmed teacups (Goodwill find #3)!

The bar! I really should have made both tiers with pink champagne punch because, let's be honest, everyone loves day-drinking. Hindsight is 20-20.

This was the color inspiration for the whole shindig. The bestie's colors for the wedding are marigold yellow and slate grey, so I thought this would be a fun, Spring twist on things. Bonus: we are going to reuse the empty Izze bottles as bud vases at her wedding reception by spray painting them white and filling them with crespedia. Genius. We know.

Nothing like a little food coloring to spruce up some mason jars!

Guests were asked to bring a recipe for the bride to the shower (the recipe cards were actually refashioned RSVP cards from a wedding invitation template that I used for the bridal shower invitations). They also left advice for the bride on little pink stationary in this fantastic silver catchall. Goodwill find #4.

Serious haul, right?

These "Thank You" book marks we supposed to be at each place setting before the rain put a stop to that. Inspired by the bestie's love of books.

Despite the downpour, looks like a happy bride/bestie to me. Mission accomplished.

Photography courtesy of the wonderfully talented Kaela Lee at Kaela.Mey Photography!