April is showering us...with offers!

Okay, peeps, we’ve got a LOT of offers to catch you up on, so without any ado whatsoever, let us begin!

DÉCOR

Katie B, our friend and all-around cool chick, has offered to lead a crafting endeavour of enormous proportions. Katie knows how to make these big tissue paper pompoms, and she estimates we need about 50 of them for the big day. Apparently they are quick and easy. I am not yet convinced but I have faith in Katie’s awesomeness! She has also found these cool yarn ball thingies…so many crafts, so little time! Katie, thank you for this awesome idea and putting it into action. I will gather the troops.

Maggie T., long-time friend and colleague, has volunteered her labour. When I read her email, I gave an evil laugh. Yes, Maggagie; I hope you like tissue paper! (Thanks, hun.)

A woman named Heather Bryce offered us the loan of a projector for the big day, and we just may need it! Heather is a Primerica representative and offered us some financial advice, as well. Heather, thanks for the offers!

FASHION

Judy R, mentioned in an earlier offers post for offering to loan us her dress form, has expanded upon her offer and is now ready/able/willing to make the vests for the boys…as well as the dresses for the girls, if we can’t find some! All we have to do is gather fabric. Judy, I can only hope that I have told you many times now how amazed we are by your generous offer and how much we appreciate your help. We haven’t figured out the girls’ dresses/outfits yet, but I’m hopeful it’ll happen soon, and then Judy and I get to take a trip to the fabric store…one of my favourite places on earth!

Christine B has offered us a bridesmaid dress in purple, and an oodle of tealights. We declined the dress as it is not the right size for any of our enviably tiny girls, but we are happy to give the tealights a good home! Thank you, Christine!

And another repeated note of thanks to Kelly from Full Circles, who worked diligently to help me find my dress. Thank you again, Kelly, for helping me think outside the box.

So, I mentioned this dress during the whole ‘dress: accomplished’ time, but I have to be sure to blog about it and blog it good: Vivien of Holloway (http://www.vivienofholloway.com/en/ ) offered me the dress I’d been seriously, seriously considering for my wedding dress. This was literally less than 48 hours after I’d signed the contract for my will-be wedding dress. So we chatted and VoH is gifting me a dress for our engagement photos (that I will wear to either the shower or the rehearsal dinner, as well). Vivien, thank you so very much for this amazing dress. I have always wanted a dress like this, and I am so excited to show it off. Ottawa needs more classy vintage fashion, and if we need to order it from the UK through Vivien to get it—so be it!

Oh, and Laurie…Laurie of Character Salon here in Ottawa on Wellington (1099 Wellington St W Ottawa, ON K1Y 2Y4 - (613) 728-4247) is amazing. She did my hair while my regular hairdresser was down with tendonitis, and has continued to cut my hair because a) my regular gal has had to wildly reduce her hours, and b) Laurie is freaking amazing with my hair. Anyway, our entire offer of hair for the girls fell through (including for my hair), and when I told Laurie the gory details, she jumped in and said she’d save all our butts. Or our heads. Laurie and maybe a couple colleagues will have us in to Character on the big day to get our coifs looking coiffed, and Laurie even gave me a photo of hair we can do for my head that is super cool! Laurie, you’re an angel and I’m so glad we met. Thank you to you and Character for helping us out!

Oh, and so amazing: okay, so the offer of vintage lingerie didn’t end up working out, but sometimes things happen for a reason…and P.S., I love Twitter. We connected via tweets with Lilac Lingerie (http://www.lilaclingerie.ca/ ) and the lovely Emilia there has offered to truss me up like a scrumptious sexy ham for our wedding night. (That sounds odd, but I love where my imagination takes it!) Best part yet: for Bri and my ‘wedding night’ photoshoot, I will have lovely Lilac lingerie to make me look lovely. Phew, good; with a shoot that intimate, I’ll take all the help I can get.

And a big thank you to Kate from Flights of Fancy, who has also offered to do 1940s style makeup on my face for the big day—a look I have never mastered myself but that I covet. She has also offered to paint up my girls, which is so amazing. Kate, you know how much we ‘heart’ you, but you just rock so much. Meeting Kate was one of those unexpected blessings that came with doing this wedding project. We love you!

BUTTONS

As some of you know, I began looking for buttons a few weeks back when I chose my dress and realized I needed buttons to make it perfect. I also have some ideas of other places to incorporate buttons. I put out the word through freecycle, Full Circles, and just generally anywhere I could think of, and we got a number of responses. Allison, Sue, and Anne W. and her daughter Ella, thank you so much for the buttons! (There is also another bag of buttons here that appeared as if from nowhere…so if you’re out there, button donor, and I haven’t thanked you, please let us know so we can do so!

OTHER COOL STUFF

Sheila, who has offered us the loan of her champagne flutes, has extended a second offer to help with any speech writing we may be struggling with. Sheila continues to check in on us (well, me—Jordan) through email, and it’s always wonderful to hear from people who are regular followers of the blog. Thank you, Sheila!

Sue, one of our button fairy godmothers, also gave us a whack of disposable flatware and cutlery. I actually think we may be able to pull off all our needed dishes if this keeps up. Sue, thank you so very, very much! And another thank you to Mel on the trashnothing site, who also gave us a bunch of disposable tableware!

The other day, while I was doing some work sitting at Brian’s store, a woman came in and asked if Brian was the guy getting married. Brian replied that he was, and the woman asked for some paper. Brian gave her some; she sat down, and a few minutes later presented him with two paper cranes. Brian introduced me, and we both thanked her. She told us her name was Helen T and that the cranes are for happiness and long life. We told her we’d be blogging about it, and would have them on our In Spirit table at the wedding, and she seemed thrilled. Well, Helen, so are we: thank you so much for this incredibly sentimental, meaningful addition to our special day.

We also posted a request on freecycle for postage stamps to help us get the invites out, and we got a first response! Thank you to Crystal who mailed us (I love the irony) a handful of stamps. Postage is pricey and every bit helps; hopefully we’ll get a few more additions to this, and then between Crystal’s gift, plus ones donated for save-the-dates by Mo (my maid of honor), we’ll be good to go! Thanks, girls!

We have now also confirmed an offer from James Deane of Blue Blood Custom Tattoos here in Ottawa (http://www.bluebloodcustomtattoos.com/ ). I have such a beautiful engagement ring that I really don’t need another ring on top of it, so we thought, hey let’s get a tattoo together. We’ve chosen a general design from which to work, and James has started to play with it; this offer from Blue Blood is just amazing, but what’s even better is that Blue Blood is a big champion of ‘thinking it through’. Their site talks about health and sanitization, thinking over your decision, and what to look for when choosing a tattoo and studio. I am extremely picky about where I get my work done, so when this offer was first being developed, I did my homework and checked the out; looks like Blue Blood, while new on the Ottawa scene, is really pushing to be known for high-quality, safe and clean work. James, thank you so much for the offer. If we can just narrow down the design so it reflects its nerdy roots (more on this later) while becoming something more personalized, we will have a killer piece of art forever.

And last but not at all least: we have the coolest bachelorette party activity being offered! Corinne from 3Sixty Pole Dancing is offering us a party! (http://www.ottawapoleparties.com/ ) These are the girls that we saw flipping, twisting, and rockin' it out on the poles at the Rouge party, and now I and about a dozen friends will get to learn the first few moves! I am nervous, mostly of falling on my head, but the girls reassured us that that doesn't need to be a worry. Obviously they haven't seen me attempt any sports. I am super excited, though, and a huge thanks goes out to 3Sixty for the amazing offer. Tam and I finally get to realize our dream of being pole dancers, as odd as that sounds.

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That’s all our offers to-date…well, no it’s not. We actually have about four more in the works as we speak, so we’ll have to do another post soon! We are getting down to the 4-month mark, and our heads are spinning with all the little details, but we’re hopeful that between ourselves, our friends/helpers, and our wedding planner Amy, we will bring this all together. As mentioned on facebook and twitter, we’ve exceeded 115 offers now, and are actually now at 122 separate offers. Thank you, every one of you, for the generosity, help, and trades. Everything, from the tiny paper cranes to the biggest, fanciest cake are such important parts of this project. You all have our love!

Stay tuned…I’ll be blogging soon about my nude photoshoot, happening tonight.