I ended the last post with a bit of a teaser. I didn't really mean to, but then I saw how long the post was getting, and my evil little heart took over.
Anyway, I found a fascinator that the bride and I both loved at Silver Frostings, made by 1beader. It looks like this:
I love the beautiful brooch with the tiny pearls and crystals, and the tiny wisp of feather. The bride has very short hair, so we didn't want something overpowering.
Thing is, while I was looking for the fascinator, I happened to see something else on 1beader's site that brought out all my magpie tendencies. I do love a good sparkly! When Ms. Partly-Cloudy loved it as much as I did, I decided to splurge a bit on this:
The artist calls them 'Blessing Bouquets" because she always adds a tiny little crystal angel to the mix of brooches. Here is a different angle:
photos of 1beader's work from her Etsy page here
Is that not one of the most gorgeous things you have ever seen? I do not believe in spending fortunes on a wedding. Some friends wanted us to watch "Father of the Bride" with them, the Steve Martin incarnation, and it was a sweet movie, but the idea of spending $50,000 on a wedding? I find that ridiculous. I work at a beautiful place that hosts weddings you would not believe, but the minimums for any of those venues are DOUBLE the total cost of what is going to be a very lovely wedding with about 170 guests or so. This bouquet is something beautiful I could do for my girl, so I did it. Someday she can pass it on to her own little girl, or who knows, maybe one day Husband Styro and I will renew our vows, and this time, we will do the long dress and the tuxedo, and a photographer, all things we did not have at our wedding 26 years ago. And then I will carry the pretty bouquet.
Anyway, on with the story. The dress I found has a square neckline, and is a relatively simple affair. I knew I wanted to go fancy with a piece of jewelry to set it off. I've been looking for at least a month, and I saw this on Sally's blog:
That's My Gal Sal in some fun French stripes, and check out that necklace...
Sally's amazing photos by her Husband Mike
I've been reading Sally and chatting with her about life for going on four years now. She's one of my favorite people in the world. Someday, I will go to the Twin Cities and hire her style services. I knew that she had made the necklace she was wearing, and that it had cost her about $30-40, so I took the leap and asked her to borrow it for the wedding. I knew that was the look I wanted, and I loved her choices. She's such a sweetie, she was totally fine with it, with the warning that, "It's held together with jump rings, but they sometimes slip out, and sometimes the brooches turn around backwards on their axes..." Undaunted, I asked her to send it. As soon as it arrived, I pulled it gently out of the box, and unwrapped it...and two of the jump rings dropped off! No biggie. I put them back on, and moved one of them to stabilize the turning on the axes issue, which helped quite a bit. Then a jump ring fell off again and I started to get worried. I knew that if this happened at the wedding, I would be sad.
(I still have a plan for Sal's necklace, which I am not revealing because she reads me, but she will still get it back shortly after the wedding, with love from me!)
So, it was back to 1beader, and with Sal's necklace for inspiration, she made me this:
And now I have blogged more in the last three days than I have in the last three months.
My fingers are tired.
But not too tired to share this: Sally is one of 8 style bloggers in a Hanes contest with a $10,000 prize! Do me a huge favor, and vote for her here!
