Just say “No” to DIY!

Ryan and I have a busy weekend of wedding errands and tasks.  We’ve got only 4 weeks standing between us and the biggest mistake of our lives . . .

. . . wait, what?

Whoops, that was a typo!  🙂  We’ve got four weeks standing between us and our wonderful celebration of commitment, and I now know why brides freak out in the home stretch. So many little tasks to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

Maybe this is why I’ve started making things easier by eliminating some tasks/items that I previously planned to DIY.

First item of business:  My Gown.

My gown fit pretty well when it arrived.  But the shoulder strap needs to be shortened just a bit and I’d like the sides to be taken in so that it fits like a glove. Also it needs a bustle.

Now I’d planned to do these alterations myself.  I cringe at the cost of bridal gown alterations – some brides can pay almost $1000 for them.    But since I’m not used to altering clothes that a) have boning and b) are ruched I’d better have the sides taken in by a professional.  And if I am going to do that, I might as well have them do the strap and the bustle too.  I found a small alterations shop right down the street from me that has glowing reviews on Wedding Wire, so here’s hoping it goes well.  And that it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.  If the quotes make me gasp, I’ll do the bustle myself.

Second item:  The Wedding Cake.

After making my best friend’s wedding cake two summers ago, I knew the amount of work required for a DIY task such as that.  Initially we tasted some cakes and didn’t love them, and the cost – again – made me gasp. So I decided to make our wedding cake.

But last weekend, and again this week, I started testing cakes and flavor combinations.  Crysty’s cake had been easy – she was vegan, so I did vanilla and chocolate vegan cake tiers.  Pretty straightforward.  But for my cake I wanted to have all sorts of flavors – passion fruit fillings and lemon curd fillings and stuff like that.  Wednesday night I made a ton of cakes and icings.  Some worked out, some didn’t.   That didn’t bother me.

But later that night, when I was cleaning up the disaster I left in my cake-baking wake, I realized that I did not want to make my own wedding cake.

What?  I had to stop for a minute and think about it.  But it was true – I didn’t want to be dealing with it three days before the wedding.  It’s a big task that would create a HUGE mess and take a good 6 hours of my time.

It was easy to do that for my best friend, because I didn’t have any other wedding stress.  But for our wedding I realized that I’d have so many other things to worry about in the days leading up to the event, I didn’t need to add this massive task to the list.

It’s a little late in the game to learn this lesson, but better late than never.  Or in this case – better 4 weeks out than the day before.

Where does this leave us?

Today I’ve got my first gown fitting, then Ryan and I head down to the Chesapeake Bay to taste wedding cakes, and then visit two rental houses / places that could potentially accommodate my wedding party and also provide a space for our rehearsal dinner.  This is necessary after yesterday’s notice informing us that the bay front house we’d rented for both of those things is no longer available to us.

Tomorrow I hope to finish sewing up the wedding decor that I did DIY. . . which means I’ll finally have a project to show you next week!  There’s a lot of wedding stuff to share – I just haven’t had time to put it into a blog post.