You’re Welcome for the Favors

I take gift giving seriously. I feel that if you’re giving someone a gift, it should matter; it should mean something. It should, at the very least, be worth both the time and money spent pursuing it and whatever amount of excitement the gift receiver is expected to have. How does this work when you’re giving a gift to 250ish people?

Wedding favors are our gift to our guests, and are therefore high up there in level of gift giving importance. And, I would think, given the amount of talking, writing and broadcasting we’ve done about our wedding, we can expect the excitement level to be somewhat high, as wedding favors go. But do economies of scale work with these kind of gift giving standards?

Michigan’s own Better Made Chips, how I love thee. Let me count the flavors…

The short answer is, “no.” I learned this when my first idea was to give each table of guests a different delightful Michigan product. Each table would be themed by that product, and guests could find their seats at the “Better Made Table” or the “American Spoon Table.” Delightful, yes? Innovative? Fun? Totally impossible to manage 35 vendors for one idea? “Yes” to all of the above.

After talking to three possible vendors I realized very quickly that I didn’t want organizing favors to be my fulltime job for the next three months. Oh, and guess what? Ordering eight things from 30 different vendors doesn’t work out to a bulk rate. Besides being impossibly time consuming and ridiculously expensive though, it was a great idea, right?

So we had to pick one. Could there be one vendor of Michigan snack foods delightful, fun and innovative enough to match both my expectations for our favors and my excitement over the first idea?

So many amazing flavors, only one mouth.

If you’re from Lansing, you already know where I’m going with this: Cravings Popcorn, duh. Cravings is something over and above a hometown favorite. People have it delivered to them at work. They have Cravings cater events. With popcorn. It’s kind of like magic masquerading as popcorn. In fact, it shouldn’t really even be called popcorn. Wait – no – all other popcorn should just call itself something else. From Buffalo Cheddar to Apple Cider Cinnamon to (my personal favorite) Dill Pickle, the variety of Cravings Popcorn flavors is almost the best thing about it. But obviously, tasting awesome holds that title.

Chad didn’t even bat an eye when I asked him if my secret popcorn favor idea was possible. I can see how spending every day surrounded by popcorn can make you feel capable of anything.

And then there’s Chad, the owner of Cravings Popcorn, who runs his business with all of the energy and ideas you’ll recall from playing store when you were little. He’s built a business that simply exudes fun. He is also kind enough to be receptive to my harebrained ideas of exactly what we’ll do with the popcorn, which is something guests will just have to show up to find out. Everything about the place is  - exactly as prescribed by my wedding favor standards – absolutely delightful.

As mentioned, we’re not revealing all of the secrets of our wedding favors here, so go ahead and get your expectations right on up there. As anyone who’s had Cravings Popcorn before will tell you, that’s right where they belong.

Boys Gettin’ Spiffy

Is there such thing as a Michigan-made tuxedo? A Michigan-made tuxedo for renting?

Look at these handsome fellows.

We put off our tuxedo search for way too long, because we had a pretty strong inkling it was going to be a tough thing to pull off with our commitment to Michigan in mind. Sure, we could have gone to a locally-owned men’s clothing store like Lansing’s legendary Kositchek’s and had each of our groomsmen drop a $1,000 or so on a brand new tuxedo, but we didn’t really want to test the boundaries of our friendships quite that much.

Plus, we really wanted to find somewhere closer to the Metro Detroit area because that would be more convenient. But every tuxedo store I’ve ever heard of has been in a mall owned by a national conglomerate. Gross.

Here are the the colors our groomsmen will not be wearing.

So instead of researching our options, we made the really wise move of procrastinating. Really, it’s only luck that the guys will have anything to wear at all. Because we put off our research for so long, we still had no idea what we were doing for tuxes when a very nice gentleman named Rick Bourbonais saw the article about us in the Lansing State Journal and wrote to us to tell us about his store, The Brighton Tux Shop. Not only has his store been family owned for more than 30 years, but he works exclusively with a tuxedo warehouse in Livonia that has been Michigan owned and operated since 1944.

Boys sorting out all the boy stuff. I should have put Mike in charge of finding my dress.

Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner. Better yet, when Mike and I showed up on a random Monday with still no idea of what we wanted in mind, Rick was there to walk us through all the options, explain things about tuxes I would never would have even imagined existed, and in under an hour, we had everything figured out and walked out of the store ready to check “tuxedos” right off the list. And it was incredibly reasonably priced.

Tuxedos were, hands-down, the easiest, least stressful part of the entire wedding planning process. As we were getting in the car to go home, I was surprised to find that Mike wasn’t half as surprised as I was about this.

“Of course it’s easy,” he said. “We’re guys. If it was any more

complicated than that, we’d never manage to do it.”

I’m sure there’s a deeper lesson in there about why every other aspect of wedding planning is so dreadfully complicated, but I’ll just ignore that for now and keep fretting about what shoes I’m going to wear.

Ta-dah! This is what our guys will be wearing. Classy, right?

 

Accessorizing with Grace

I have difficulty with the concept of moderation. While this creates an array of colorful issues in my life, the one that has been on the forefront of my mind lately is how to neither under- nor over-accessorize for the wedding. On a typical day, I am either walking about the world with no makeup and not a single piece of jewelry, or I look like I’m on my way to a Cyndi Lauper look-alike contest. Neither of these happen on purpose; I just don’t have a very good filter.

But for our wedding day, I feel an intense need to – for the first time ever – look just right. I have no idea how to do this. I’ve looked at jewelry and veils and tiaras enough fill an IKEA-sized Claire’s, but nothing has spoken to me. Everything is either looks too gaudy or unbearably boooooooooring. But then, I remind myself, perhaps nothing has spoken to me because I am a foreigner in the land of proper accessorizing. Maybe several things were speaking to me, but I just didn’t understand the language. Maybe I’m tact-deaf.

[Insert first bridal freakout here.]

 

A tree full of delightful hair pieces and sparkly necklaces. It's the kind of thing that makes you feel lucky to be a girl.

But then, about a week ago, it happened. I was reading a blog post on rd I do, the delightful wedding branding and design division of Rizzi Designs in Lansing. The subject was Old Town‘s Grace Boutique and all the delightful wedding-y items owner Summer Schriner has on display.

And there it was: the perfect hair piece. It was fun and frilly, but delicate and white. It was sparkly and princessy, but it was a headband instead of a tiara. It spoke to me. I had to have it. Unfortunately, Mike and I were about to leave the state for a week. How could I leave it to chance that it would still be there? I wrote a desperate emergency email, and Summer was kind enough to hold it for me. Phew.

 

A fashionista bag with a Michigan-shaped tag? Gimmie!

I was expecting that picking it up today was going to be the highlight of my day, but I didn’t even realize just how delightful it was going to be. Grace is amazing. It was a good thing that I only had the sacred “wedding credit card” on me, or there would have been no hope of me walking out of there with only the headband in tow. Dresses, earrings, shoes, purses…I pretty much wanted one of everything.

I realize that the hair piece is only one part of the accessorizing, and though there is still

My terrible photography skills cannot do these beauties justice. In real life, they are so pretty that you feel compelled to clap your hands when you see them.

plenty of room for me to fall off the good taste bandwagon, my confidence has been restored. I now have the perfect accessory to build the others around, and – even more exciting – I knew it when I saw it. Plus, now I know where to start shopping for earrings.

P.S. I’m not posting a picture of the beauteous headband in question to maintain a veiled sense of secrecy around my wedding attire (pun definitely intended), but it’s easy enough to find on the rd I do blog. Don’t you love it? Aren’t you jealous?

Gettin’ Registered

We were very proud of ourselves when we decided to have an online registry. After determining that this was an absolutely genius way to stick with Michigan stores, we promptly patted ourselves on the backs and checked “registry” off our list.

As it turns out, that was the easy part. Now, at the risk of sounding like I’m complaining about picking out presents for people to buy us, deciding on the stores, visiting them, picking out the gifts and then entering them all into our online registry was no snappy task. However, like all efforts to be more local, where this method may have been lacking in convenience, it will more than make up for in results. We’re super pumped to give our guests a chance to shop as some of these awesome Michigan spots:

So many exciting things! Right in Downtown East Tawas!

The Brew Krew, East Tawas

I have more than one favorite shop in Downtown East Tawas, but the Brew Krew is definitely high on the list. It has incredibly fun and cute kitchen and bath things. Since a whole hunk of our guests will be Tawasian, this will be their shop local option.

 

Meijer, All Over Michigan

In our first post about our registry, I joked about registering at Meijer. But then we came to realize that we did need some sort of large store that offered home goods that was easy to access for most of our guests. When you’re looking for that criteria in Michigan, there is really one, awesome option: Meijer. I love Meijer. I mean, it’s a million reasons in a single store, right?

That's right, I put tuna on our wedding registry. What are you gonna do about it?

Zingerman’s

Yes. We did this. There is pasta on our registry. And coffee. And Urfa Red Pepper Flakes. If the benefit of having an online registry is that the options are limitless, why not go to the limit with what we put on it? And if no one wants to buy us a fancy tin of tuna for our wedding, well, I’ll probably just ask for one for Christmas.

dnk2 Metal Arts

How beautiful is this?

Our friends and super talented metal artist Dace makes such cool stuff that we’ve already dedicated an entire post to his stuff. Everything he makes is custom, so anyone who wants to get us one of his pieces (please?) gets to work with him directly to make it happen. If I were to be getting us a wedding present, it would be one of his.

Leon & Lulu’s

We haven’t exactly gotten as far as putting Leon & Lulu’s on our registry yet, but we plan to. This shop in Clawson is full of quirky, fun home goods that really matches our style. We’re really looking forward to going there to do our registry…whenever we get around to that.

JC Penney

Honestly, I'd never paid much attention to JC Penney before they were mentioned in the news recently, but they have some seriously cute stuff!

Didn’t know JC Penny was a Michigan store? Yeah, it’s not. But because so many of our guests are coming from out of state and may want a more traditional wedding registry spot, we decided we had to choose one national retailer. We weren’t sure which one to pick, but after JC Penney’s recent publicity regarding hiring Ellen DeGeneres as a spokesperson, we decided including them on our registry was one small, but meaningful way to show our support.

Anywhere we’re missing?

Picking the Blooming Flowers

It’s flower time. To understand what this means to us as a couple, it’s good to know a few things about Mike and me and our relationship to plants. If there was a reality television show about people who mindlessly mistreat plants (and why wouldn’t there be, if there isn’t one already?), I would be on it. I own several plants, and I continually bring more home. I don’t know what any of their names are. I don’t know how much sunlight they require or how often I should water them. I once saw a Starbucks barista giving a gardener some coffee grounds to fertilize her garden, so now I water my collection of barely alive plants exclusively with with leftover coffee. If we drink all the coffee on any given day, the plants just go hungry.

Summary: I like plants, but really should really not be in charge of them.

Mike’s entire philosophy regarding the flowers for our wedding is somewhere between disinterest and extreme disintrest. Collective summary: we need some serious help in this department.

In keeping with our commitment to Michigan, we at least know a few things. We want locally grown, Michigan flowers, and they should fit into our color palette. We’d also like to do something fun and creative with the flowers that shows off their Michigan-ness. Though the last one might be a little abstract, the first requirement, apparently, is doable. I was speaking with a florist recently (at a bar, mind you, not a flower shop) who listed off about a dozen Michigan flowers that would be in bloom in August. I retained none of the names, and have no idea what they look like. But I’m sure they’ll be fine.

What we’re really looking for is some unique, creative energy with the flowers. Fortunately, in the last year I happen to have met a couple of people who are more than up to the challenge. Here are two of the cool flower geniuses we’re considering:

 

Pot & Box, Ann Arbor

I was working on a story about creatives in Ann Arbor who left their jobs to start their own businesses when I was introduced to Lisa Waud, owner of Pot & Box. Not only was she a delightful person with a delightful story, but visiting her website was honestly the first time in my life that I thought, “Ooo! Flowers are cool!”

Here are some of the lovely magic Lisa does:

I love the use of the non-flowery flowers. I bet that's not their real name.

Something is so charming about the squarish-ness of this, no? And the purpley flower are super.

Our colors are bright and splashy. I like how this arrangement balances the bright colors and the whites and greens.

Carriage House Designs, Howell

I was falling in love with a lot of things in the fall of 2010. There was Mike, yes, but I was also head over heels with the place Mike introduced me to – Downtown Howell. Mike had just moved here when we met, and now we’re both downtown residents who couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. The Carriage House is one of the reasons why. If you’re anywhere near Howell and have even a few minutes to spare, it’s worth it to stop into this amazing store. It sparkles. Everything in the store is just begging to be squealed at with glee. Never have I seen a gift shop with such engaging, wonderful merchandising. When you walk into the store, you just want to burst into applause. It’s that cool.

And they do wedding flowers. Here are just a few of the beautiful arrangements owner Kim Wilson has designed:

It's just "wow" isn't it?

Now that's a boutonniere.

This centerpiece is almost the right colors. We could practically pick it up and put it in our wedding as is. Though, that one is probably dead by now.

 

Any other suggestions? Fun florists we should explore?