# 12 Inspiration: Anthropologie

I absolutely love love love Anthropologie. Everything in that store looks like it came from my dream closet- with lovely cotton dresses in quirky prints to decorations that I would make, this store is a severe inspiration caddy of my love.

I checked out a bit of history on A- it is owned by Urban Outfitters which is targeted for younger, more hip crowd in their 20s whereas Anthro is marketed towards the well-read, worldly woman in her 30s-40s with an annual household income of $200,000!! Holy rabbits, I am only 22- in terms of prediction, does that mean when I'm 30-40, my income will be above $200k and my entire house will look like the inside of the store? Seems likely at this point. Even Thomas is spooked how 100% Anthro looks like me. Love Love.

I was at one of the fancy Dallas malls near the hotel and was the happiest rabbit in the world when I found the store. SO HAPPY that in fact, I pulled out my camera and snapped soooo many pictures of the store. Discretely of course since I think it's not allowed and rightfully so!

Chinese Poker with Fat & Fart

wew
wew
crys
wew

crys
wew

FAT!!!!! Wew cheats in Chinese Poker. Just like his dad. Fart off.

#11 Favors: Baby Pine Tree Saplings

I thought it was incredibly cute that Thomas thought of this all by himself

- uproot baby pine tree saplings from our property (we have thousands- literally)
- give them out as favors!

Great, eh? I later learned it was in a Marth Stewart Weddings issue. But, instead of FREE like what we would do, Martha suggests purchasing them at $12 a sapling! That's assuming people will actually use them!

# 10 Centerpieces: Trees/Sticks!

In keeping with the woodsy/whimsical theme, I noticed that manzanita branches are really popular as centerpieces and with florists. Above isn't a manzanita branch which is why I I posted the picture from the knot.com. They are also very expensive- especially for sticks that I have in the backyard!!

I have also considered using actual baby trees/bushes as centerpieces where they would be fairly tall as to not obstruct guests' views and pruned adorably. This option would possibly take longer because I have to actually find the trees at the right size, uproot them, prune and plant them. With the sticks, I don't have to worry so much about the keeping them alive part.

Why consider using my backyard sticks instead of traditional flowers as centerpieces?
- as an environmentalist, I want to limit the amount of cut and imported flowers
- oh, they die and are a serious waste of resources- those poor Mexicans pricking themselves!
- they are FREE
- I can make the centerpieces early on as opposed to week of
- they won't die!
- I'm basically recycling my backyard because I will use the broken off branches

IF I decide not to go the live tree route and opt for the branches as centerpieces, I'll basically have to revamp them. Spray metallic paint(maybe not b/c it's bad for the ozone), hang origami cranes, x-mas lights, or interesting ornaments. Either way, it'll be neat! If I do have time though, I'll have to do the live tree- I much prefer living plants that I can literally replant back or give it to people to plant in addition to my baby pine tree favors!

# 9 Tutorials: Cake Stands!

Wowsers! Sometimes perusing blogs and wedding magazines make my head spin- sometimes I am happy to see other people's ideas, sometimes not because then that'll make me think that I'm copying. However, this is one exception that I am glad to have seen and will not feel guilty about using. Tangarang shows how to make your own cake stands! OMG all it is is just epoxy and thrifty cute plates. Boo Boo Boo! So easy my brain hurts. Oh well, I am happy I ran into it because there are lots of random details I already planned on making.

2. Tree Pedestal Cake Stand
Wow- another no brainer, yet I'm just dumbfounded that I haven't thought of it yet. This would be the most appropriate- I have to figure out if I want the wood look or not- after all, our wedding toppers thus far include a hand-carved wooden gummi rabbit by my boo back in high school. Very sentimental- hopefully he will be able to carve a wooden frog or rat to match me! (I'm the rabbit)

# 8 Pink Floral + Fabric Flower theme

Pink Monochrome Flowers:
<-------- The colors we decided were green, light pink, with brown accents. Bouquets in pink will be gorgeous and very romantic in front of a stunning white wedding gown. I have looked online and in grocery stores- I absolutely love peonies and know they will be crazy expensive but roses from Sam's club or the grocery store are affordable. I plan on mixing grocery store flowers with some exotic stems when I can. Most likely not in the midst of wedding craziness but peonies are the closest Asian flower that my mom loves.

Grocery/Sam's Club flowers: What I noticed the other day was that their flowers were actually quite gorgeous and reasonably priced! A lot of these stores such as Publix and Winn Dixie have sweet deals such as 3 bouquets for $10 and you can mix and match. The flowers I was really interested were the dusty pink Mexican roses, pink gerber daisies, some carnations, and definitely either the green or pink or white mums. I love peonies but I am a girl of simple tastes with bold impact.





Fabric Flowers:
I haven't seen this idea yet(but I'm sure it's out there): Mixing handsewn fabric flowers with real flowers. Perhaps add some paper flowers too where needed. Fabric flowers will add a nice whimsy and graphic feel when purposefully mixed in with the real ones. I absolutely detest fake silk flowers (I have only seen them modern and tastefully used in Ali's wedding). I think as long as the color scheme stays the same and they purposefully look like whimsical fabric flowers as opposed to trying to pass off as fillers I can pull it off. I added a jewel accent in the middle of the appliqué.

Bouquet Ideas:
As shown above in the first 2 bouquets, I think circular form is absolutely cute and puffy! However, just to challenge myself, I want to try to make a cascading bouquet with fern leaves found on our property. Probably not- round bouquets are not only cute but when I make them the week of the wedding, I need to do something simple and my god, they are incredibly easy to compose.

Cluster of Flowers + rubber band + ribbon = DONE!

# 7 Wedding Cheesecake_Trial 1

Did I mention I wanted to try and take on making and decorating my own wedding cake? Not only cake, but NY styled cheesecake.

I never even CONSIDERED it until I sat down and thought about 1) the price ($800-1,000), 2) the expensive part of the cake was the labor in decorating it, and 3) I actually really wanted to decorate it. So, the hard part for me would be in baking it at the right time and temperature in the right size. The straw that broke the camel's back was when I called a baker to see if she available on my wedding day and she said no. However, I could pick up the cake the day before if I wanted to. Screw that- I'll be paying for an expensive cake that couldn't be decorated on site, aka I'll be doing it myself anyway after paying someone! Negative. Another hard part for me would be trying to find the time to decorate my cake- cheesecake can actually be frozen for weeks so when I need it, all I have to do is make the tiers, add the flower oasis in the middle, stick the flowers in the middle few days before the date, and just construct the whole pre-done piece the day of! Easy peasy! I'll probably make the cake 1-2 weeks prior, freeze it, and do the flower arrangements few days prior with my bridal party (aka bouquets, boutonnières, cake flowers). LOVE it!

LINKS:

3-Tier wedding cheesecake

how stuff works

how to make fondant

TRIAL #1: Philadelphia New York Sour Cream Topped Style Cheesecake

Why: It was a deliciously easy and very basic template for a cheesecake. I used it before and the taste was great but the execution was terrible so this time I opted to not to use such a large recipe, used a blender, and cooked it all the way this time.

Result: Tasted great! I halved the recipe just to see if I could nail it down without wasting expensive cream cheese. I know the sour cream made it taste great. The only thing I thought that could have made it perfect was getting it fluffier in texture.

Above: Without the white frosting on the cheesecake (ew), I was going to have a median filler to 1) make the take look SUPER tall and 2) that would be the easiest way to decorate the cake because I'll be so busy with other elements of the wedding day of.

#6 Order of Importance

Oh rabbits!

I was thinking about how I love to do everything in a project- usually because delegating responsibility means I have to trust the other person to do it right and if they don't, I just suck it up and finish it myself. But I was talking to my boo, telling him how I know I can handle the fun, decorative side of the planning but I didn't quite understand how to make a party fun for the people. So, being Asian and my boo being American, we had to brainstorm about what would be a good time for both of our cultures and families. Hence, my marketing skills have to come in.

TRADITIONAL ASIANS like 3 things and 3 things only in a party: (or so it seems)
- the food
- gambling
- karaoke

OPEN-MINDED WHITE PEOPLE (with the exception of a few snooty ones) like these things:
- seeing others have fun

So, if you exclude the nice white people from my boo's side of the family and just focus on the judge mental asian people, the white people will have fun as long as everyone else is having fun.

HENCE: Majong for the fam., quite possibly karaoke(oh LORD). Dancing, music, etc. Who knows, a canoe will be by the lake where we're getting married at so some crazy could actually canoe out in their tux!

#5 Practical Wedding!

So Ali R. e-mailed me a list of wedding planning websites that were interesting:

Weddingbee

Something Old, Something New

Snippet & Ink

Brooklyn Bride

Style Me Pretty

A $10,000 Wedding

Offbeat Bride

A link to A Practical Wedding was posted in a

Snippet & Ink I love it! It has stories of like-minded independent brides who are very creative.

Know who you are and don't be bashful about it. As one of my bridesmaids have said, "I bet you're going to have recycling bins at the wedding" to which I replied, "uhm, yeah."

#4 Photog! Beethoven Awitz

So right when Thomas and I decide on not having a photographer, my friend Irel texts me that she knows an awesome photographer as her friend and sends me his link. I told her straight up- we didn't really want one but if we hired a photog we would pay student rates because that was our original plan anyway(to hire an art student from my art department).

Anyway, I checked out this guy's stuff-I checked out the weddings he did in the Phillipines- GORGEOUS!!

Absolutely professional quality. I let Thomas know what was up and he's like,"clearly you want a photographer and he's good. Let's do it."

Anyway, here's Beethoven for you!

#3 Finally! My E-Mail Save the Date

You probably know how I feel about StDs but my problem with them is that it's printed, postage paid, and most importantly, unnecessary. Alas, here's my upcoming notice that I designed. Oh, did I mention I actually dislike the term "Save the Date?" Who am I saving again?

#2 D-I-Y crazy

I have been doing my research- I will not compromise on a $20,000 wedding, but I am flippin' sure I am not paying that much. $800 for my wedding cheesecake? For me, the hardest and most anal part is the baking. I would love to just decorate which apparently is the most expensive part of the cake. THOUSANDS of $$ for a photographer, $80 for a wedding veil that literally costs $3 to make ($2 for the tulle, $1 for the comb), $1,000+ for a dress-

As Fart would call it,

Blasphemy!!

I already knew I was going to make my own veil, make my own invitations, centerpieces, bouquets, etc. etc. but had considered hiring a baker, photographer, rental company, and caterer. My family doesn't seem to be helping out with the catering side of things so Thomas and I may just do the darn thing ourselves. We don't really even want/need a photographer- I have a lot of art friends who own prettier cameras than I do. If we do, I'll hire a classmate that has a very deep intrinsic understanding of human emotion and pay them bythe hour. I don't need prints or photo touch-ups- I'm a senior graphic design student who has the school at her disposal! So really, no florist, no photog, no baker- Thomas and I are going to rock this wedding project out.

I've always loved challenges.

#1 Save that Date idea & First Blog

Follow My First Thoughts of Wedding Planning on wordpress:

bunniandbarricuda.wordpress.com/

July 6, 9, 11, 16//2008
August 1, 12//2008
Oct 9//2008
Nov 26//2008
May 21//2009

Save That Date thoughts:
Even though I'm nixing the printed STDs, I needed something cute that was somewhat consistent with the invitations I bought last year before I knew I could design. Hence, the e-mail STD is born!

The following image I found on littlesparrowstuff.etsy.com and is super cute- I won't even dare use this design but the font used reminded me that I still love typography and always have since I was little. Yes, I was THAT GIRL who did all the posterboards because she loved to do block lettering. That font is really common and I can't remember the name but it's sparked the idea that my invites can look like ME: quirky, youthful, unique, and still elegant at the same time.

As I'm typing this, I've already sketched out my process.