I'm really lucking out in the in-law department and, considering how every wedding magazine & website I've read so far gives tips on how to deal with recalcitrant (even hostile) parents-in-law, I am fully aware of how fortunate I am.
They're being a huge help with the food: they've already marshalled various friends and family members to make salads... and turkeys. Whole turkeys. For cold cuts. And wine -- they're arranging wine. They've also apparently spoken to almost every relative, trying to get a feel for who is going to be able to make it. The tenantive answer is lots.
Lots is great; when we were first thinking about getting married, we realized that the point of having a traditional type of wedding is to bring everyone we love together for a weekend and having a really fun party during which there is a small and beautiful moment in which we get married. John & Gayle not only leapt on board this idea, they appear to have started hauling the yardarm... or some other sailing metaphor.
Gayle even agreed to go on a midnight (ok, 8pm) run to Michael's Crafts on Friday night where, not suprisingly, I realized exactly how much I have yet to decide. Even basic stuff, like what kind of paper & stamps to buy presupposes knowing if the decor is going to be tea-themed, leaf/outdoors themed, pretty hand-made paper themed, if the colours should be cream or white, what accent colours to use... God help me, I DON'T KNOW!
I did, however, buy a guestbook -- a scrapbook, actually -- and I think that has become the 'theme' of the wedding. Having spent $14 on a guestbook, everything must now match it. Really. It is handmade cream-ish paper with leaves in the paper. Very simple and organic and not too frou-frou.
The scrapbook turned into a discussion on decor later in the evening, when we talked about putting rocks and shells into plain clear glass vases instead of robbing a bank to pay for flowers. This is very appealing; I am a rock hound from way WAY back, and it would be nice to have Steve be obliged to help carry rocks up from Secret Beach instead of being all "you picked them up, you carry them" like he usually is. We could also drown -- I mean, 'float' -- some flowers and cedar boughs in vases, and float candles in others. It would be very pretty and very Coastal and very inexpensive. Some of the vases could even be mason jars, which I like very much. Anyway, blah blah blah weddingcakes. I mean fishcakes. Hey, some jars could have starfish in them (in salt water, and released back to the beach after the event) or even fish! Yeah, little feeder fish! For the kids' table!
Oh, wait -- sorry. Welcome to my fixation.
So. On Saturday, after an emergency trip to REI in Bellingham for WCT stuff, we met up with one of Steve's friends before the Illuminaries Lantern Festival at Trout Lake in Vancouver. It was very nice -- ok, it was bloody hillarious, and Steve's friend is a hoot. I was able to return the favour later that evening when I bumped into Karen, who hadn't actually met Steve, even nine & some months later. It's funny, for me at least, that I feel like I've known Steve for so long, and he's so important in my life, and yet there are other people whom I've known for longer, and who are also important -- and they've not met him. I wonder if he feels the same? It just seems so darn improbable that we haven't known each other forever. I keep trying to remember what the 'we' were doing this time last summer, obviously with little success, as there was no 'we'.
Anyhoo, the Lantern Festival was magical as always, bright and colourful and a little disorienting. The walk around the lake was good and bad: on the downside, I couldn't find Karen again; on the upside, I am now considering making paper lanterns to use as decor out on the lawn and in the hall. I even bought a two-setting hot glue gun, on the principal that I can also use it to make bouquets.
Which, if the theme is 'cream-coloured, hand-made paper with outdoors-y tea-leaf motif' really ought to be paper flowers from Chintz & Company.
What? So I'm fixated! It's a WEDDING blog, ok.
Fine, here's a few pictures of Angel, our dog.
She's going to be the ring bearer :-)
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