But Will Gramma Like It?

My wedding is just days away and I really miss my blog!  I just don't have an ounce of free time!  But I thought I'd take a quick minute to share another of my favorite wedding DIY projects.

I was visiting my Grampa one day.  My Gram passed away in 2008 and left behind a box that said, "Do Not Touch", which, of course we've all touched since then.  I was digging through the box MAD because some dirty rat took her wedding dress out of the box.  I loved it and always thought that if I got married, I'd love to copy it. She and Grampa married in 1955 and the full skirt and sweetheart necklines were popular then.  I love that look.  Plus that dress looked perfect on her and I have her figure so, surely, it'd look perfect on me. 

So I was talking out loud to my late grandmother, telling her how mad I was that her dress was gone when I stumbled upon this:

I may not have my Gram's dress...but I do have some of her wedding pictures and I recognized this instantly.  It was her cake topper!!  But remember how I said that she was married way back in 1955...

....yea.  The thing was pretty nasty.

Ew!  The base was plaster and must've sat right on the cake.  It was all brown and there were clumps that I could scrape off of the bottom - either 57 year old cake crumbs or 57 year old plaster bits.  I couldn't even tell which.  And the lace and flowers had yellowed as well.  Who'd want to eat cake with that on top? 

And yet, I  loved the idea of incorporating something of my grandmother's.  I decided to try and pop the wirework off of the plaster base, spray paint it white,and glue it onto a new base made out of a food-safe item, like a saucer or something. 

But with one twist of the wire....


Oh no!  The base cracked.  I could almost hear my gramma cursing, "Pshah clef, helety poss koodney!" in Polish.  Well, now I had to get creative.  In the meantime, The Conductor and I firmed up our cake choice which included a very teeny tiny cake - way too small for a topper of this height and size.

And yet...it was hers...and I still wanted it in my wedding somehow.  Time went by and I realized I hadn't yet made a ringbearer pillow. 

Crud!  After five months of sewing muslins, the dress, the underlining, the petticoat, and fitting and refitting....the thought of sewing a simple pillow was just too much.  That's when it hit me!!   The doves on Gramma's cake topper are holding rings in their beaks.  Why not convert the cake topper into our ring bearer's presentation piece.  Who says you need a pillow? 

I drilled a hole in a dowel rod and painted it white. 

I took the wirework and soaked the lace and flower parts in a tub of OxyClean.   (That stuff gets the stains out of anything!).  I rested it atop a ceramic elephant to keep the metal on the rings from being exposed to the soaps.

Don't threy look like they're swimming on his back?

Then I attached it to the dowel with wire and covered up all the wire with some ribbons and wha-la:

I just have to tell our ringbearer, Q-boy, to hold it up high like a staff so his Great Gramma in Heaven can see what became of her cake topper.  I hope she likes it. 

In an added burst of coolness, we're working our grandparents into the whole weddiing tradition of...
Something Old - The Conductor will be using his grandfather's cufflinks
Something New - This "new" ring presentation that I made from my maternal Gram's cake topper
Something Borrowed - A pin belonging to The Conductor's Grandmother
Something Blue - A rosery & pouch from my paternal Grandmother

How cool is that?? 

I'm Sick of My Own Wedding

Is that a terrible thing to say?  The Conductor and I are getting married in just 10 - TEN days.  We're both sick of our own wedding. 

By the way, thank you to those who still check up on this blog in my absence.  Amazingly, I got two new followers:

Super mom Rustown Mom of The Canneary Family.  She's got a fig tree!! The only figs I've had are from Newtons.

And the lovely Revi of Revisionary Life.  She's painting all her furniture a shade of white.  For as SICK OF WHITE as I am after five months of making my wedding dress, I do love how relaxing her house is starting to look as she goes neutral. 

Every bit of free time for the past six months has been given up to wedding planning and chasing around and hashing out piddly details.  We never wanted to take the quick way out and elope or just have a civil service.  It just wouldn't be the same.  And yet....we just want to get it over with already! 

I'm sick of having to steal a quick ten minutes here or there in the garden instead of being able to play outside for hours. I"m sick of stepping into my sewing room and thinking it's Wintertime because the whole room is a sea of white fabric.

I think one of those blobs ofwhite is my dress.  There's so much white in that room I can't even tell anymore.

I'm sick of every surface of my house covered in DIY wedding projects. 

I"m sick of the Tumbleweed...aka my petticoat...blowing all over the place.  This is it, piled atop the sewing table and trailing all over the floor and over the chair:

And I'm really sick of everyone asking me, "Are you neeeerrrrvvvvous???"  No.  I'm not.  I've never been this sure of something in a long time.  These same people almost seem confused that, at 10 days and counting, I'm not a crazed out Bridezilla....and they also seem kind of disappointed by that.   Which I find kind of a sad statement in a way. 

But for as much as we're just ready to be Married ...I have been enjoying the process.  Here's some of my favorite things.

First, the Insipiration...
I didn't intend to have a Theme.  As long as everything matched, I'd be OK with that.  But I kept passing this piece of fabric at the store.  It's a printed chiffon from the Sew Sweet line that JoAnn FAbrics had with dots of watermelon, dusty rose, sea green, and lime:

I'd pass it and be so bummed that I had no way to use it.  I"m not crazy enough to be making my bridesmaids their dresses.  We're not having a flower girl.  It's too big a print to scrunch up into hairthings or bouquets.  Oh well....and then it hit me.  I love the colors.  I love polka dots.  Like dots, wedding rings are circles....why not make the fabric my theme?

From there, I chose the watermelon color for the bridesmaids dresses and the dusty rose for their shoes.  Dots of these colors will appear on variouis things all over our wedding.  More details to come...

So there it is....the theme for the wedding of a seamstress inspired by....fabric.  Who'd'a thunk? 

One of my favorite DIYs so far are the boutonnieres.  The Conductor made it clear that he didn't want to "wear a craft project" and he wanted flowers because they symbolize life.  But he's marryng a seamstress...so here's what I did.  I found small round-shaped flowers in watermelon and lime and some white buttons.  I used a dusty pink dot-printed cotton to make some fabric covered buttons to round it out.  Ran wire through the backs/shanks, wound fabric tape all around with a safety pin at the back...

... and these are the finished boutonnieres:

They are so stinkin' cute!!!   They match the inspiration fabric colors....they are a mix of real flowers for The Conductor and artsy-flowers for me...yet they stil look like a manly boutonniere. 

I even used the watermelon flowers to make matching hair clips for the girls:

So there's a teaser for now.  Hopefully I can squeeze in one more post before the wedding.  Thanks for sticking with me Readers!  And now, I must catch the Tumbleweed Petticoat and sew on the last tier.