This weeks garden flowers got a little boost from the local flower market, and the yellow-purple-white combination was making me so happy I felt inspired to build a palette on it. Plus, you know, all the WEDDINGWEDDINGWEDDING around today. How about violet wedding dresses?

{palette photos: Flowers, my own. Paper bag with lemon calligraphy, elizabeth anne designs. Cake, maggie austin cake. Cheese flags, the pretty blog. Choward’s candies, bitemeblog. Makeup, unidentified magazine. Purple dress, Dior ad.}

Today on A Practical Wedding – a letter to my wedding & on 100 Layer Cake (!!!!!!!) with some pretty, never before seen wedding shots.

P.S. Hello Bay Area spring!! <3 blossoms.

The dressssss. A few people have asked for more dress detail, so here we are. It is a leeeelte bit of a thorn in my side, but I do love it.

I tried on so many dresses in shops, but I wanted long sleeves to cover my tattoos for the wedding. It seems that it’s impossible to find a long sleeve, short wedding dress. So I bought really gorgeous silk – Italian silk faille for the top, and an Italian duchesse silk satin for the skirt – so gorgeous that I was scared to cut into it.

So, about 3 weeks before the wedding, I went to start the dress – and found that my sewing machine was broken. PANIC. My mom and I finished it in a week at her house, but without a dress form, I had no way to drape the skirt properly.  (You can see the muslin here, with the skirt draped closer to how I wanted.) Luckily I’d patterned the fitted top part already before my machine broke, it’s based off a 1950s dress that was unfortunately too stained to wear. The top has a Y shaped seam on the bust, and ruched elbows. So. Someday I’m going to redo the skirt.

I found that silk and crochet pocket in Paris, in an antique shop – perfect for my glasses, which I wore most of the day. There aren’t many glasses photos – I whipped them off and into my pocket!

These photos are not to be added to blogs, Pinterest, Tumblr, or any other sharing site, please.

Photography: JEREMY HARRIS WEDDINGS (NYC)
Secondary Photography: EMILY FERRO (VT)
Dress: Silk faille & duchesse silk, antique lace and trim.
Make-up: Vivian Sarratt
Bride’s shoes: Frye
Groom’s shoes: Mezlan (thrifted but new!)
Groom’s suit & tie: vintage
Groom’s shirt & socks: J. Crew

(Hey!! Random thing – I was totally looking at a girl on Valencia St today and thinking “she has cute style” & she came up and said she was a Verhext reader! Then I got shy and forgot to ask of she has a blog or twitter – so if Shelia (I think!) is reading, comment! Thank you for reading!!)

& Brides.com (!??!) selected our invites as one of the “The 10 Best Invitations of 2010″

I’ve been updating my web portfolio with projects for work, as well as my LinkedIn profile – feel free to add me as a connection if you’re in the Bay Area.  I want to keep things fresh and make sure I’m documenting all my projects.  A little New Year housecleaning.

I’m still sitting on the Order of the Rising Tide – I have no less than 12 blog posts started but need to actually finish designing the site. Can we have 12362847621 more hours in a day?

& last but not least, I added some new things to my Etsy shop, including this gorgeous 1930s dress. I have SO MUCH MORE to list – maybe I should look into just having a vintage sale  in the Bay Area? Or doing the Alameda Flea? Let me know if you have ideas, because the photographing + editing + listing is just not getting done!

How are all your New Years plans going? I definitely think my “Clean Slate” worked, and I’m tackling more than I’ve had the energy to in ages.

Menu
Veggie Plate
Cheese Plate (including handmade VT brie from a nearby farm!)
Meat Plate
Honeycomb, Blue Cheese and Fresh Fruit Plate
Fig Chutney with Baguette
Cucumber, Cream Cheese and Dill Tea Sandwiches
Prosciutto & Gruyere Pastry Pinwheels
Smoked Turkey Tea Sandwiches with Arugula Mayonaise
Devilled Eggs with radishes, chives & thyme
Pumpkin and Fennel Pastries
Tomato and Tapenade Tartlets
Asiago-Stuffed Dates with Bacon and Smoked Paprika
Mini Zucchini and Goat Cheese Tarts
Hickory-Bacon and Roasted-Corn Gougeres

My aunt and mother worked like mad to bring us this delicious feast, & we lucked out by getting free use of a professional kitchen for the weekend. A lifesaver! General consensus was that the food was pretty incredible, so I’ve included the menu here. It took about 2 days to finish it all.

Cocktails

Bee’s Knees ~ Gin, lemon juice, honey syrup
The Monarch ~ Gin, St. Germain Elderflower, lemon, mint, up
Old- Fashioned ~ Bourbon, bitters, honey syrup, orange

Details

We stamped & embossed brown paper (recycled bags!) with a silverware motif, then wrapped silver (some thrifted, some family) in linen napkins, and tucked them inside. My mama made scalloped linen tablecloths, to fit the picnic tables that stay up at the camp, so we can have fancy picnics from here on out. An old cigar box became a tip jar for the bartender, Angeliska hand wrote the menu cards (I did have little forked sticks to glue them to but that didn’t get finished.)  We thrifted milk glass serving platters and tea tiers, my brother cut the birch stumps for the cake stands. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters sent us Fair Trade Vermont Country Blend as a wedding gift. My brother built a bar with rough planks and tree stumps, we had an antique barrel for garbage, an old 1940s Hires root beer cooler held Vermont Maple Soda &  Boylan Seltzer (it matched our green color.)  The cocktail sign was a mirror found in the thrift shop the day before for $2, with Dresden paper letters glued on. The moss filled milk glass urns went home with a few people, the rest we saved for future holiday parties. We splurged on a few jadeite pieces, wedding gifts to ourselves!

Holly made 5 small cakes, but the 2 chocolate ones melted en route!! My brother didn’t mind and ate them out of a bowl with whipped cream. The survivors made up the wedding cake, inspired by Tasha Tudor – though with marzipan mushrooms instead of meringue – and the cake topper is a Wendy Addison creation. Colin & Annie worked tirelessly through the night to make all those teeny mushrooms!!

Cakes

Almond genoise with rose geranium buttercream
Sour lemon cake with meyer lemon buttercream
Vanilla infused brown butter cake with dulce de leche buttercream

Photography: JEREMY HARRIS WEDDINGS (NYC)
Secondary Photography: Photos 2, 4, 13, 18  by EMILY FERRO (VT)

These photos are not to be added to blogs, Pinterest, Tumblr, or any other sharing site, please.