Laced With Love: Every Little Detail

There are so many things to manage when you are planning a wedding. After you've nailed down all the big things like venues and vendors, you have a million little details to take care of.  And if you're like me, you were involved in every little detail whether it mattered or not.  I styled and DIY'ed my own wedding, as many of you are doing.  It meant, I had to search for ideas, find the best deals and craft everything on my own.  But, being a Type A, detail-oriented kinda gal, you can imagine how much FUN I had doing all of this...at first.  Do you know what I'm talking about? I'd be super excited when I was inspired with a new idea, but as I started getting into the thick of the project, I'd want to hurry up and finish it. And of course, you never have one project at a time whilst wedding planning. There are always seventy things going on at once. There were many times where I felt like abandoning projects, but let me encourage you, if you are in the thick of wedding planning, hang in there! It'll all be worth it in the end!

So after I nailed down my vision, a vintage-juxtaposed with modern-simple-school-themed reception (hmm when do I have "too much" theme going on?), I began looking for vintage-y decor and designing my own paper goods.  Everything had a simple, clean look.

So, let me show and explain all of our reception details. Ready?

This was our guest sign in table.  I made these programs on my computer and printed them out on my printer. Fancy, I know.

Instead of a regular guest book, I made an address book box (from a recipe card box) for people to make their own address card. This has come in so handy for the holidays! We have EVERYONE'S complete info now!

This was for our candy bar which was open for the last two hours of the reception. People filled these glassine bags with candy and I printed a little label for them to seal up their bag.

Here are some shots of the tables before dinner service began. The flowers were DIY.  Mr. Lace and I chose which flowers we wanted to use from the Flower Mart and sat down to make a mock up with Mr. Lace's aunt.  These consisted of three mason jars - a small, medium and large - and various white and green flowers. We added votives with tealights too.

I made up little pop quiz cards. Our emcees were awesome and ran a little pop quiz game for our guests. The winners took home the centerpieces.  The table letters went better with our school names than numbers. I spray painted chipboard with chalkboard paint and wrote letters with white paint markers.

I also made these little Fun and Adventure books.  Inside, guests were able to fill out a little suggestion for something to do together in our married lives (where to go for dessert, dinner, vacation, etc.) and to stick their photobooth photos.

Since Mr. Lace and I were at the head table, I made this little sign for us.

Cocktails were going to be upstairs. Here were our escort cards. At first, I didn't want to do escort cards to save myself some time, but because we had three different entree options, each guest had to have something indicating their meal choice.

So, I went from no escort cards to 220 escort cards. You'd think I'd make it easy on myself, but no. I printed each name, cut it on my paper cutter, glued it onto the craft paper, punched a decorative edge on the bottom and stapled a specified ribbon for the three meal choices.  Easy peasy!

A quick sign with directions since I'm a teacher.  Can you read it?

Last, but not least, here are the favor bags I made for the kiddos attending our wedding. Inside, there was an activity book I made, Mad Libs, pencil and box of crayons.

In the end, it was worth all the trouble of finding decor, making signs and crafting all the different details of the reception.  It was actually kind of fun for me even though it took a lot of time and caused me a lot of stress.  For those of you in the midst of crafting and styling your event, hang in there, it'll all be worth it in the end when you get to see the photos of all your hard work! This is NOT to say I didn't abandon projects that I didn't absolutely love.  I definitely wanted to do too many things and had to cut many unnecessary projects out.

What are your time, energy and effort consuming projects that are driving you nuts?

Missed something?

• We go to the happiest place on Earth.
• I get all dolled up.
• Mr. Lace and I get a peep of each other.
• We had awesome music.
• We took photos.
• We get married!
• We write. We fight. We say our vows.
• Big surprise...I cry.
• We are photo crazed. 
• Say cheese!

Laced with Love: The Bridal Party

Hope you all enjoyed your holiday this week! I am stuffed full of prime rib and hot pot...our typical Chinese-American Thanksgiving. It was our first Thanksgiving together as a married couple even though it didn't feel all that different since Mr. Lace has been spending Thanksgiving with my family for the past couple of years anyway. More on holiday adjusting later...

Anyway, here we are -- the bridal party. All photos are courtesy of Hanssie Trainor. 

Mr. Lace's groomsmen are his oldest and dearest friends and family.  His cousin, far left, flew out from Texas to be in the wedding.  I had the chance to befriend Cousin Lace in college while he was stationed there before Mr. Lace and I ever became a couple.  His other four friends are his childhood friends and the group still gathers together regularly to play video games (what else right?). 

My bridesmaids are a mash up from different parts of my life. On the far left, BM V and I met in 5th grade at a church activity at her house. We were instant friends and wrote letters and hung out all through our school years. BM J's big brother and my brother are best friends. We always say that we were predestined to be friends. We met in 6th grade, but didn't become close friends until we were in high school.  BM M was the one who introduced me to Mr. Lace and is one of my dearest friends from college.  She and I lived together for our last two years in college.  MOH C is also a dear friend from college. We met our freshman year and did a lot of nerdy things like puffy paint Easter eggs for all of our friends and tie up all the supermarket bags to conserve space.  BM K also doubles as my sister-in-law!  We got along from the moment my brother brought her home and now that I'm married...we're neighbors!

A quick side note about what the girls are wearing. I told the girls they could wear whatever shoes they wanted to wear. My only requirement for their jewelry was that it made a statement.  I made the hair flowers and their cute, rewearable dresses were $50 from Anthropologie.  WHAT?! A $50 dress from Anthropologie? Impossible. The dress was originally $198.  I wrote it off and started looking at other dresses, but then it went on sale....to $49.99.  The rest is history. :)

Here are a couple of everyone together in front of this ridiculously tall statue outside the OCPAC.

And a few of me because I'm apparently very vain.

Here's one last set of funny photos.  So, the flowergirls and I were trying to snap a photo. The flowergirls are Mr. Lace's cousins two daughters (our unofficial nieces?).  I found their dresses at Marshalls for $25. I made the hair flowers for the girls.

So, our photog snapped a photo of Ringbearer R standing there feeling a bit left out. R is my nephew.

But he quickly moved from sad to angry for being left out! I also am falling over in this because one of the flower girls leaned too far into me.

We had a lot of fun with our bridal party.  They were awesome. They were there when they were supposed to be there and so incredibly helpful to us. My BM's were also magically there to help me every time I had to go use the restroom. I hope I left you a nice visual image there. :) Till next time!

Missed something?

• We go to the happiest place on Earth.
• I get all dolled up.
• Mr. Lace and I get a peep of each other.
• We had awesome music.
• We took photos.
• We get married!
• We write. We fight. We say our vows.
• Big surprise...I cry.
• We are photo crazed. 

Laced with Love: Photo Crazed

As if we hadn't taken enough photos of ourselves, Mr. Lace and I scheduled in a little sunset portrait time at the suggestion of our photographer. During our engagement session, it was kind of gloomy so we didn't get that romantic flattering sunlight.  Our photog suggested some sunset portraits during our wedding since we had a pocket of time during cocktails.  So, we skipped out on cocktails to take advantage of the setting sun.
Some of my favorite wedding photos came out of this one hour session.

You'll face this challenge later when you make a wedding album. Black and white or color? The one of us kissing or the one of our faces apart?

Missed something?

• We go to the happiest place on Earth.
• I get all dolled up.
• Mr. Lace and I get a peep of each other.
• We had awesome music.
• We took photos.
• We get married!
• We write. We fight. We say our vows.
• Big surprise...I cry.

Laced with Love: The Part that Always Gets Me

It's the part that always gets me at every wedding - recognizing the parents.  More than the bride walking down the aisle, the vows, the first kiss, it's when the newlywed couple thanks their parents for all their love, support and sacrifice that turns on the waterworks for me.  

I am really close to my Mom and lived with her during the years after I moved back to LA and before I got married.  I saw her everyday. We took walks together. We ate dinner together. We fought once in awhile.  But not just during that time that I lived with her after college, but in general. Before being married to Mr. Lace, she was probably the person I was/am closest to in this world.  She has always been there for me (whether I wanted her or not), sacrificed and cared for me.  So, after the engagement excitement wore off and it got closer and closer to our wedding day, I realized that my relationship with my Mom would change dramatically. No longer would I see her everyday, eat with her, talk to her whenever I wanted.  It started hitting me hard and I started to have a lot of weird (for lack of a better word) feeling about getting married, coming under the safety and protection of Mr. Lace and moving to Orange County!  

Because of our close relationships with our moms, Mr. Lace and I wanted to take a small opportunity to recognize our love and gratitude for our parents during our wedding ceremony.  In other weddings I've attended, when I see the bride and groom hugging their parents and everyone crying, I cried too.  I understood the sacrifice and love that parents give to their children.  And, as children, we often don't show enough gratitude or respect for their dedication in caring for us.  I know that there were plenty of times I'd think, "I shouldn't have said that," after a rousing disagreement with my Mom.  But, over the years, we've both gotten better about saying sorry and admitting when we were wrong and trying, but I'm sure I've hurt my parents much more than they've hurt me.  I know that's not the case for everyone and that everyone comes from different home situations.  But, Mr. Lace and I knew we wanted to take a moment to reiterate to our parents how much we love them. We didn't really say much to each other, it was mainly just crying!

It looks like I'm about to smile....

But it's the tight-lipped expression I get right before I cry.

That's me trying to regain my composure.

But by not, I've completely lost it.  And look at all those people snapping photos of me crying!

All images courtesy of Hanssie Trainor

.

So, there it is. The part that always gets me when I attend weddings...and of course, since it was my own, it hit me with a vengeance.  What are you doing to honor or recognize your parents at your wedding?

Missed something?

• We go to the happiest place on Earth.
• I get all dolled up.
• Mr. Lace and I get a peep of each other.
• We had awesome music. 
• We took photos.
• We get married!
• We write. We fight. We say our vows.

Laced with Love: The Laces on Personal Vows

I don't mean it as a put down, but Mr. Lace is not a writer. It's just not his thing. He's magical when it comes to math, science, engineering and such, but he's never loved writing. You can imagine my surprise when I (half) jokingly suggested having personal vows in our ceremony and he heartily agreed.  The conversation went like this:

Me: You know, I was thinking, we should write personal vows in addition to our traditional vows. It will make our ceremony more personal and we'd get to say what we want to say to each other on our wedding day.
Mr. Lace: You're right. That's a good idea.
Me: (Blinking)  You know you have to write them yourself.
Mr. Lace: Yeah.
Me: And then you have to read them out loud in front of everyone.
Mr. Lace: Yeah.
Me: And you still want to do it?
Mr. Lace: Yeah.
Me: (Thinking) Can I get this in writing?

Seriously, I was so happy that he agreed and made him promise not to back out.  Keep in mind, this conversation happened months before our wedding.  So, for a long time, "write vows" was at the end of our to do list.  The month of the wedding rolled around and suddenly Mr. Lace started chickening out.  But it wasn't just him. I started chickening out too!  Neither of us really enjoys being the center of attention so are our wedding approached, we started considering what writing personal vows would really require of us.  After a long conversation, we decided to still write personal vows. After all, it was already printed in the program and on the day of schedule.

Three weeks before the wedding, I started brainstorming ideas.  What angle? What should I say? Will it sound cliche? What if Mr. Lace and my vows ended up being vastly different in tone and length? What if I went on and on about how wonderful he was and he wrote, "You're cool." As each week passed, I'd ask Mr. Lace if he had started and of course, he hadn't.  It was the week of the wedding and neither of us had nailed down our vows.  Needless to say, I was stressed out. I decided that I'd sit down and write them in one day.  I made sure I didn't have any interruptions or appointments and began writing draft after draft until I felt that it was perfect.  Of course, at the end of that day, I wasn't completely happy with it and had to go back and revise it several times before I nailed down a final draft.

During this process, I thought, if this is hard for me, this is going to be ridiculously hard for Mr. Lace since he doesn't really like writing!  I hounded and pestered him about it.  Two days before the wedding and his vows still weren't done.  Instead, he had gone out to eat dinner with friends, watched several movies and documentaries, but none of his free time was devoted to writing vows!   Naturally, we got into a fight two days before our wedding about how he didn't care because he wasn't putting forth as much time and effort.  I shared my worries about the vows being inconsistent in tone and length.  The whole thing was stressing me out.

The next day, Mr. Lace and I had to prepare for the rehearsal so we met up early to run errands.  As Mr. Lace was getting ready to go out, SIL Lace asked me if I had finished my vows.  When I began telling her about the stress these vows had caused, SIL Lace said that Mr. Lace had stayed up till 4 a.m. working on his. He had taken out all the letters and cards I'd ever written to him and read through each one.

Hive, I felt so terrible.  Why couldn't I just trust that I would love whatever he wrote?  Instead, I'd turned a reflective part of our wedding planning into something stressful.  Mr. Lace came out with his vows and asked if I wanted to read them to make sure they were "okay."  I started crying as I apologized.  He didn't need my approval in his own expression of how he felt.  He told me that it was okay, but after I had calmed down a bit he said, "No, but really.  You always proofread all the writing I need to do.  I want you to read it to see if it sounds okay."  I laughed, but insisted that I didn't want to read it. Instead, we gave our vows to cousin Lace and asked her to read our vows to see what she thought.

It ended up being the most important and heartfelt part of our ceremony.  As soon as Mr. Lace began reading, the tears came streaming down my face.  I was a mess!  By the time it was my turn to read, I not only looked a mess, but sounded one too!

Mr. Lace reading his vows to me. 

I think he said he knows I love him because I share my bacon and churros with him.

I'm a crier. What can I say?

So, as a bride who has been through the vow writing process, here are my tips.

1. Agree on a due date so you don't procrastinate.  Make sure your due date is not the day before the wedding!  Try to finish them a couple weeks before.  If Mr. Lace and I had written these earlier, our week before the wedding would have been stress and fight free!

2. Agree on a general length. That was hard for us to quantify.  Should we write 150 words? 200?  What if one person is more wordy. It'll take them more words to get their point across.  If that words for you, that's great!  It didn't for us. Instead, we gave each other a time limit.  We said our vows would be between 2- 3 minutes long.  

3. If you decide not to share your vows in advance, like Mr. Lace and I, find a trustworthy, well-educated friend or family member that can read over both of your vows for tone and length.  He/she can give suggestions or hints to help.  

4. When you print it out, make sure you make the print large enough to read so that you don't have to squint at your paper or keep your eyes glued on your paper and ignore your spouse-to-be.

Even with all the stress, personal vows were totally worth it for us.  We were able to express our commitment with one another during this very important ceremony in our own words.  Apparently, we got a few guests to cry. We heard that Seattle cousin Lace was bawling through the vows.  People around him thought he was being sarcastic until they looked at him and saw that he really was bawling!

Are you planning on writing your own vows? Has it been an easy or difficult process for you and your fiance?