You don’t have to tell me that everything will be beautiful and the day will end up being lovely. I know that. I’m putting in countless hours each week to assure that. But.

But. My family, like every other family out there, squabbles. We’re not perfect people. We’re a hot-headed bloodline full of heavy opinions and a pathological allergy to listening. We’re always right, just ask us, and for the most part this leads to a strong, unifying bond, solidified in love and  sheer stubbornness.

Sometimes, a phone call home to wail about paper flowers just isn’t worth the trouble of my mother’s well-meaning tendency to problem solve. Sometimes I’m not looking for a solution. Sometimes… I just want to whine.

For that very reason, I’m grateful for my fellow Bride-Friends. There is a handful of a women to whom I can go with any problem, any issue, no matter how big or how small. Most of them live roughly a bajillion miles from me, but, as it turns out, distance means very little when you have so much in common, like a debilitating tendency to marathon-watch trashy TV to cheer yourself up, or a want to just whine over paper flowers, no solutions necessary.

They’re kindred spirits, these women, forging bravely forward in the same, uncharted territory that I suddenly find myself exploring.

Shining brightly in the center of my Bride Friends is Hollie, writer and supergirl responsible for Thrifty in White, a phenomenal budget wedding site that chronicles her adventures as she DIYs her way down the aisle with her husband-to-be, Dustin.

As stolen from the Thrifty in White Facebook Fan Page.

She’s just awesome. She lives in Chicago, but the distance between us makes no difference because, step for step, we just seem to be on the same page of our lives. And do you know how good it feels to have someone who just gets it?

Magical. It’s just magical, especially when your worries and gripes range from Tommy Hilfiger sent me mismatched ties! to The Groom wants a brass band for the wedding?! There is nothing more comforting than hearing that special brand of sympathy from a friend whose retailers, too, don’t understand the importance of matching ties, or who tends to glue herself to her craft projects.

Hollie is all that and more. She’s witty and creative and brilliant, not to mention a sensational wordsmith. She’s down to earth and funny– everything I look for in a bridal blogger.

If you’re not already reading her, I heartily recommend that you commence, at once, in doing so.

51 Days Left until the Big Day!

xo -MM.

This is what happens when my uncles get their hands on people. They’re the manliest he-men I’ve ever met, and I warned James not to try to keep up.

Alas.

He didn’t die, so that’s all that matters.

The fact that he didn’t even have a hangover is grossly unfair, for the record. I take credit because I’m the one who pumped him full of bread and water and Advil when he woke up. Because I had watched him suffer enough the night before.

The Bridal Shower part of The Weekend Wedding Marathon was pleasant and lovely. We played a game wherein I’d tell a little story about each woman in attendance, then the others would guess who it was. Then the woman about whom I told the story… got a prize! Everyone loves prizes, so it worked out nicely.

I got prizes, too, and believe me when I tell you I could not be more excited for all the amazing home-ware gifts we received. I would be lying if I lead you to believe that I didn’t fantasize about once more having a space of my very own– a kitchen, in which I can put all my baking supplies, and store all my pots and pans, and keep all my dishes, and cook all our meals. I want a dining room that I can decorate and then host dinner parties in. I want an actual office, with giant whiteboards on the wall and an over-sized plush chair where I can sit for hours and write my brilliant thoughts.

And research recipes, of course. For the cooking.

Speaking of, the two gifts I am going to brag about are none other than:

Amazing Alice in Wonderland tea cup!

And then my mother added to my already outrageous cookbook collection with none other than: Martha Stewart’s Cooking School!

... So that, when I do get my very own kitchen again, I won't burn it down.

53 days to go!

Which is, you know… nuts… because I can almost count that high…

xo -MM.

Our 4.5 hour-long train ride took 6.5 hours, due to electrical problems {burning} and a ten-year old kid who told the conductor that he was traveling with his mother. It turned out, however, that she had sent him to school that morning and he decided instead to head down to Penn Station and hop aboard a train to Canada. He told the Child Protective Services rep who was randomly sitting behind me {a fabulously sassy lady with gorgeous ebony skin, the only adult on the train who got him to tell the truth} that it was because his teacher had been mean to him. So he didn’t want to go back to school.

Kudos to you, Kid, for having the balls to do something most adults I know couldn’t muster the courage to do. {Yes, I know how tragically this could have ended, but he’s fine now, and on his way back to NYC. But they didn’t discover him until Schenectady and didn’t figure out that he wasn’t being honest until we were at Albany. And in Albany we sat for an extra hour, while the conductors and the CPS rep sorted it all out.}

And then the lake effect snow kicked in, so we drove cautiously home in a white-out blizzard.

But, we ARE home. And Mom had a lovely fire roaring in the fireplace for us, and wine and cookies to warm us back up again. So we’re signing off for the weekend while we spend a little time with our family and celebrating our impending marriage.

xo -MM.

Hear me out.

I started out not wanting to get sucked into Wedding World. Everyone looked so happy all the time; it didn’t seem normal. From the outside, it looked like a world of white, where women drank red wine and didn’t spill it on anything, knew the difference between etching and embossing when it came to stationary, and could turn stacks of old cloth into beautifully crafted invitations that released butterflies and a chorus of songbirds when guests opened them.

It was every socially awkward girl’s nightmare. There was no way I was going to be let into that club.

So then, I read everyone. Because I realized that there are as many different types of brides out there as there are brides, and that everyone has a unique story to tell. {And most of those stories are chronicled online, for other brides’ convenience.} The intimidating stigma of The Wedding World melted away, and I started to draw inspiration from — literally — everything.

Which, as you can imagine, was a bit much. I was still unsure of myself as a crafter, but remained resolute in my mission to be a DIY bride. Doubts aside, This Wedding was not going away, no matter how badly I wanted it to.

But lo, look at me now: 58 days away from my wedding and rigging old books to look like they’re spilling swarms of paper butterflies up into the heavens. I think part of the success of my transformation from Handi-crafted into Craft-Demi-Goddess has come with a more focused approach to whose blogs I read.

One of the blogs that has made “the cut” was Pretty Haute Mess, helmed by the lovely and talented Cori Busch.

Wait a second!, you’re yelling at me. Isn’t she a design blogger? You guys are so smart, there’s no fooling you, is there? Yes, Pretty Haute Mess is a design blog, but! — BUT!– Wedding Inspiration stems and blossoms from many a source. The thing about Truly Great Weddings or Awesome Themed Weddings or Personalized, Intimate Weddings… is that it’s hard to plan them while staying inside the neatly-packaged industry standard for What Constitutes a Wedding. If you want your wedding outside the box, you have to root around in more eclectic places. This is why my love is undying for Pretty Haute Mess.

Her site is visually engaging, her content is easy to read — even for designer rookies, like myself. The way I want our wedding to feel, to look, to stimulate our guests’ senses– it is more of a design challenge than a wedding challenge. I want the space to come to life, to feel like something straight from a story. {And, if I could get some of the decorations to translate into Home Decor for our first, house, I think it’d be a great way to string our wedding day along into the rest of our lives through more than just framed photographs. Not that there won’t be a bajillion of those, too.}

But the first step in any design process is to look– REALLY, LOOK– and determine what it is you want to build, how you want your space to feel when you’re all done. Pretty Haute Mess gives that feel– comprehensive final products that have easily-identified components that even a design simpleton like myself can break down, identify and then haphazardly forge ahead to recreate.

Here are a few of my favorites, but I heartily recommend you check out her comprehensive site and shoot her an e-mail with any questions or professional inquiries. She’s a gem, an absolute sweetheart.

{Photo #1: Michelle & Tracy McCormick via Pretty Haute Mess}

{Photo #3: Recreate via Pretty Haute Mess}

{Photo #4: This Next via Pretty Haute Mess}

The moral, of course, being “Get inspiration anywhere you can find it.” Masterpieces aren’t made by coloring inside the lines.
xo -MM.

{Photo Credits}
1. Michelle & Tracy McCormick
2. Mood Board
3. Recreate via Haute Pack
4. This Next via Whimsy

I spent the weekend in Wedding Mode. I felt bad for James, who kept trying to talk to me about extra-wedding things, much to his own detriment.

“Hey, Mal!” He said as he got home from work on Friday, planting a kiss on my forehead. “How was your lunch meeting today?”

{I had had lunch with one of the editors at Marvel, who is amazing. And when I say amazing, I mean that- apart from also being engaged and outraged at how expensive everything is- she and I are on the same page as far as our priorities and values in life, enjoy the same sort of media entertainment and agree that J. Crew is proof that the universe loves us and wants us to be happy. She is smart and funny and ambitious and lovely. I don’t often get too excited over New Acquaintances turning into Really Good Friends, but I’m fairly certain she and I were intended to divinely find one another so we’d both have someone to roll our eyes with. }

I could have told him all this, of course, but instead he got a quick glance as I looked up from the giant dry-erase board to-do list I was staring at, trying to pinpoint what I had forgotten. “Hi, notnowI’minweddingmode.”

I went through all my craft books, and the Martha Stewart Website, and my on-hand materials. I planned out which paper flowers would go in what arrangements, and took inventory of all my paints, brushes, glues, sparkles, scissors and baker’s twine. I made a long list of all the stuff we have to get done. I harassed our poor artist to get us the invite art, so I can take it to the printer today and have the invitations assembled and out by the end of the week.

I didn’t sleep earlier than 11pm and later than 4am.

I was a wedding-machine.

I realized that I’ve turned into a girl who can’t talk about anything but her wedding. I’d like to think that it’s simply because we moved the date dramatically forward, but I think all brides hit this phase. Happily, mine will only last about 8 weeks– after that, I’ll be married. And really, truly, I am trying to curb it. Mostly, that looks like me just keeping myself from talking when I see people’s eyes start to glass over. {I don’t mind. I’m just as efficient when I sit silently and think feverishly about The Wedding. }

Oh, how I cannot wait to just be married.

I’m also in love with the Country Strong soundtrack. Any girl who’s having a hard time getting herself on track, or who’s having a hard track pulling herself out of a planning rut {I was that girl two weeks ago}… I highly recommend downloading Country Strong by Gwyneth Paltrow. It’s an easy song to learn and a cathartic song to belt out when paper flowers are making you question your worth as a human being.

xo -MM.

The truth is, I needed the break from both blogs. Partially because I finished my first novel! It’s in the editing stages now, which is spectacular {and there will be more about that tomorrow over on Moxie Missives, along with the other fun writing project that ate my life for three weeks}.

Now. I know you’re wondering where the heck I’ve been and what I’ve been up to. Truth be told… I was busy hating my wedding. I didn’t realize how fast time moves in Wedding World, when every day feels like a battle just to keep going forward, to make any progress. I haven’t had a moment to breathe, let alone sleep, with the writing projects. And the wedding, the wedding is always right there, demanding attention. {Usually in my mother’s voice. }

So I put it on time out. Which was good for both of us, I think.

But we’re now 63 days away from my wedding, and it’s time to ask The Wedding if it’s ready to play nice once more. {It is.} I didn’t realize how close we were until yesterday, when it really hit me.

Actually I believe the technical term is “steam rolled.” And I was left there, sort of looking at everything that still has to get done, and I couldn’t help but mutter quietly to myself, “Oh, shit.”

I am going to have to change things up on here a bit, though. I have several thousand paper flowers to make, and a very limited amount of time to make them in. I also have That Other Site to keep track of. This means posting over here on 11Eleven11 is going to change up a little– to Monday/Wednesday/Friday. {This is so I can have weekends to run around like a nutjob with The Groom.}

And, if you’re really hankering for more: I’m now an official contributor over on Broke Ass Bride! I’m really excited about roughing it out in DIY land for the greater benefit of Bridedom, and I hope you’ll follow along with Dana & I & The Rest of the Girls over there as we make it down the aisle, on budget, by any means necessary.

I’m putting the final touches on our wedding invitations this evening, before they’re sent to the printers. Strap yourselves in folks.

I’m gettin’ hitched.

xo -MM.

Hopefully, everything will go well and I’ll keep my Bridezilla moments down to the nice, round figure of 0.

Until the dust settles, though, I’m operating at a stress level of 1,275 on a scale of 1-10.

I did manage to get our Save The Dates out last week, which was a nice accomplishment! Changing the date from something notorious to something a little more obscure was something that made me nervous– I didn’t want people to get confused or forget the real wedding date. We needed our Save The Date to communicate that our date was changing from 11/11/11 to 3/18/2011.

This is what I came up with:

{Top Layer}

{Bottom Layer}

Not too shabby, for in-a-pinch, eh?

I’m taking a small break from blogging for the rest of 2010, but I’ll see you all back here the first Tuesday of 2011.

79 Days to go. Are you holding your breath yet?

xo -MM.

And the list of people to whom I owe e-mail replies is shameful.

Also true to form, I have put off piecing together The Groom’s hand-made Christmas present until the very last minute. This has left me with a heap of stress and too few patience. This has also left me wondering why he didn’t just take me up on that offer of an iPad instead of requesting a hand-made present.

With roughly 48 hours until Christmas, I’m starting to feel the pressure. It didn’t stop me from baking enough cookies to feed an army – the Marvel army, to be exact. James took in 18 containers of cookies with several plates of reinforcements for anyone in the office unfortunate enough to have to work two days before Christmas.

Today, I’m committing to shrugging off the awfulness I’ve been schlepping around with me. I’m going to let my heart be light, and I’m going to finish The Groom’s gift and life will be wonderful.

From everyone over here, we’re wishing you and yours a safe, happy, peaceful holiday full of love and laughter and hugs.

xo. -MM.

Rarely are they added to her recipes – chicken and dumplings doesn’t receive chocolate well, even in its most bitter of forms. Rather, they’re there for the cook, to help get you through the Cooking For 50 of Your Closest Relatives process. The last direction of each recipe is always, “Wine & Chocolate to ensure cook rises fully to occasion. Add to taste.”

All of this goes to say – life is stressful and The Holidays can be especially awful. It doesn’t matter what you celebrate, celebrating in and of itself can be daunting. For brides-to-be especially, we find ourselves navigating the odd, gray-area of two families that somehow need to fuse into one manageable group of people. Being engaged offers a lot of wonderful-feeling-things. More snuggling. Lots of little forehead kisses. Inside Jokes. Presents. Re-Disovering Date Night. Finding the load of responsibilities by means of Holiday Shopping and Christmas Card Sending and playing Who’s Eating What Meal With Whose Family?… don’t make the list of Things I’m Asking Santa To Bring Me This Year.

Why not? Well. I’m planning a wedding. I’m busy worrying about where I’m going to seat 100 or so guests at the reception. I’m busying trying to find new and creative ways to make teapots defy gravity. I’m busying ushering The Groom into suit shops, praying to Sweet Baby Jesus that he’s wearing the right socks, undershirt and boxer-briefs to get accurate measurements taken.

What we’re getting everyone for Christmas? Hasn’t even blipped my radar.

If you just fell off your chair in shock {because normally my Christmas Shopping is complete by September, or because you, too, just realized that Christmas is only two weeks away and that you have not yet even begun to shop}… read on. The rest of this post is definitely for you.

Books.

Huh? I’ll say it again. Books.

Books make amazing, awesome, personal and meaningful presents. They take people on adventures, and open up for them new worlds. They provide information and insight, wisdom, humor, comfort, relaxation… They give it all. Here’s the kicker. Everyone like’s something, and there are books about everything. So no matter if your father is like mine {a fisherman} or like The Groom’s {into interior decorating}, there’s a book out there for him!

More specifically, I like {this book guide} posted by my dear friend Amy Cao. I like it not because Amy is both dear and darling, but because the books are great all on their own – and because their appeal is fairly broad while still being relevant to the hardest demographic of people to buy for. Namely, that demographic is: My Friends, the young and educated creative professionals who enjoy literary perspectives that are tongue-in-cheek, informative, intelligent, humorous and aesthetically pleasing. It’s a lot to ask of a mere book, and Amy’s list is a phenomenal summation of works that accomplish just this task.

Of course this doesn’t discount a lot of other great titles. Right now I’m currently reading {Where a Dobdob meets a Dikdik} in paperback and {Your So-Called Life: Boys, Body Issues and Other Big-Girl Drama You Thought You Would Have Figured Out By Now} on my kindle, and recommend both for any young and intelligent female who gets a good chuckle out of strong wordsmithing and the ridiculousness of being 20-something and pretending to Have It All Figured Out.

And don’t forget the beauty of Audio Books – for the commuter who has an Auxiliary port in their car and a long drive to and from work each day. The iPod Shuffle is only $50 and comes in a smattering of Fun To Play With colors. That, partnered up with an iTunes gift credit {or, through iTunes, you can buy specific audio books as gifts} or a subscription to Audible.com {which comes with two free books if you use the promotion code: twit2, thanks to Leo LaPorte & This Week in Tech}.

At the end of the day, there’s a book out there for each and every hard-to-shop for person in your life, and there’s an ideal medium for each of them for a reasonable price.

What I wish for you now is a peaceful Holiday season, full of laughter and love and health. And wine. And hugs. And books.

xo -MM.

Then I looked down, and I almost vomited in public. Because you know what I saw? I saw the most terrifying sight. I saw this:

The guys out there are going, “Huh? I don’t… get it… What’s that?” The women out there have fainted, because they know what I knew– THAT IS WHAT AN EMPTY ENGAGEMENT RING SETTING LOOKS LIKE.

ONE THAT IS MISSING ITS DIAMOND.

I panicked. And I mean like, I totally lost my shit, right there, in the middle of Penn Station Starbucks. Because that ring… That ring is the ring that James saved up for for almost a solid year. It’s the ring that is the single most valuable thing I have ever owned – and I am not just talking monetarily {though, yes, I am talking monetarily, also}. It’s the ring that’s in the photo he used when he asked me to marry him, and the diamond that I have stared at a thousand times because it’s the exact ring I had always dreamed out.

It was the ring that held all my sparkly hopes and dreams, and I was the moron who had lost it IN STARBUCKS.

Or on the train.

Or in the hallway of Penn Station.

I wasn’t sure. All I knew is that it was not on my hand, and the only logical thing I could come up with to solve the problem was cry and sputter and empty out my purse and hope that it had fallen out in there when I was grabbing for a notebook to write down my brilliant ideas.

I called James, who rushed down to Penn Station. I called Jennifer, and through choked sobs begged her to please go scour the floor of our bedroom, and the hallway, and also just to take a peek down both of the cats’ throats and look for ANYTHING shiny. She is a lovely girl, and heartily and hastily agreed to all my pleas.

I tracked down a police officer. They’re much nicer to you if it’s obvious you’re crying. I showed him my empty setting, sitting lifelessly on my left ring finger. “I lost m-my d-diamond…” I said pitifully. He escorted me briskly back down to the track where I had disembarked the train and held the train there in the station while two conductors enthusiastically helped me pull all the benches off all the seats around the area where I sat. He even sounded like he was going to kick James out of the area until I introduced him as my fiance and then cried a lot harder because boy did I feel bad.

It was a harrowing half hour.

And you know what? Let me stop you right there. I know that you’re going to tell me that it wasn’t my fault. {You’re right, it wasn’t.} And you’re going to tell me that it’s just a ring, and that we could always buy another one. {You’re right, it was, and sure… eventually we could have. Maybe.} But James and I…

The ring is James and I. It’s this beautiful thing that sort of just sits in the middle of the rest of our chaos. It’s the proof that he listens to the little things I say, even when I don’t think he’s aware of my voice. It’s what we’d lay in bed and look at when we talked about how we’re going to raise our children, and what kind of house we’re going to buy after we get famous and pay off our debts and the debts of our family. It’s what I’d play with when he was at work and I missed him.

I loved my ring, because I love my future husband. It’s not just a piece of jewelry to me. It means something so much more. I know that all the other stuff is still there, even if the ring is gone. I know they’re not divinely linked. I know that everything would have been fine, and life would have soldiered on, and I’d have figured something out and put on a brave little face and pretended not to be heartbroken. {Until I talked to my mother. I never pretend not to be heartbroken if I’m talking to my mother. Bless her heart.}

And then a miracle happened.

My phone rang, and it was Jennifer. In my haste to answer it, I hung up on her. I called her right back.

Me: DIDYOUFINDITWASITTHEREHAVEYOUFOUNDITISITOK?
Jen: … What shape is it?
Me: PRINCESSCUTSQUARESQUARESQUARESQUARE!!!!!!!!
Jen: Square? Good. I think I have it. It’s big, right?
Me: OHMYGAWDYOUFOUNDTHERINGOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD
Jen: … Yes, Mom says that’s the diamond. I have the diamond.
Me: ;asdhfjklashdfjlkhsdfkjanbsjkdfhasljkdfhlakshjdfasjhfajshkdfajsdfhajkshdf … OK. *click*

And I hung up on her again. I called her back once just to be sure that she was sure that it was, in fact, the diamond. {It was. It was sitting in our room, on top of a stack of Save The Dates that I haven’t had a chance to send out yet because I’ve been slammed with meetings all week.}

I got home and rushed up to our room and cupped it in my hands. It looked big and small and perfect and lonely all at once.

And then I cried some more. Because seriously… I’m the luckiest girl on the face of the planet. Of all the horrible places I could have lost that ring today – getting out of the car, on the train, in Penn Station – there it was, sitting on my Save The Dates, waiting for me to come home and claim it.

*Huge Sigh of Relief*

It will henceforth live in a plastic baggie until it’s re-set and insured {which, don’t even get me started, there was a big miscommunication between The Groom and The Jeweler and all I’ll say is that he’s going to deal with it because we won’t have enough money to pay for it to be re-set and to bail me out of jail}.

And in the meantime, I’ve come up with a creative solution to being ring-less.

I let James choose the button. He thought I was kidding when I told him he could propose with something from a gumball machine and I’d still say yes. I proved today that I’d walk that walk. What can I say? Even when it comes to buttons, the man has great taste.

xo -MM.