I've been pretty busy the last few days, researching DIY wedding stuff. I'm not getting married, I don't even know anyone getting married. I was looking for some patterns for making flowers and stumbled upon Martha Stewart's wedding site. She has a lot of fantastic templates for making your own flowers out of paper or fabric, I was pleased. Then I stumbled upon some other sites that were selling some items made out of paper flowers for weddings and I was flabbergasted! The one that is ingrained upon my brain is a backdrop for taking photos. It is a thin log/branch type of thing with several lines of fishing line with paper flowers flowing down, very pretty. Just white flowers, with a couple of yellow ones thrown in and a couple of lines of green leaves. I thought "Hey, that's pretty cute! I could make that!" Then I saw how much they were selling it for. $1,600. For approximately $40 in supplies. I cannot get over that number. I looked up some other sites that sell wedding items, bouquets, boutonnieres, corsages, hair flowers, all manner of things, made out of card stock, construction paper and tissue paper, with prices out of this world. The producers of products are taking advantage of people that want to make their weddings a special day. It's revolting. I wish brides and grooms could see what's going on here and make better decisions! One producer, makes invites, he was selling 25 invites an 25 RSVP cards, the price tag for those was $600. And guess what? No envelopes. You had to "contact the seller" to make arrangements for those. I feel so sick to my stomach over the whole thing. Another seller was manipulating consumers to pay out the nose for religion specific items. My favorites are the listings at Etsy, storenvy, luulla and the like that offer "consultations." That's what I want to do with my life, people. I want to consult with prospective brides and grooms, listen to what they have to say, tell them they're all wrong and tell them that it's totally IN to use products from the businesses that I have my greasy little hands in. Totally.
I guess I'm totally out of the loop. When the hubby and I got married almost 22 years ago in England I bought a dress for $180, hubby and two of his friends rented tuxes with long tails an top hats and we got married at the city hall. We had a hell of a party afterwards, that's kind of what we did back then :) There weren't a lot of options for a reception so we shut own one of the small bars at the enlisted club and recruited one of my bartender friends that worked there to work it, and we started out with 4 bottles of champagne. Oh, and we had one of those sterno heated thingies, bbq meatballs and wienies. It was a blast, there were only about 12 of us, some drifted in and out. The champagne number climbed to about 6 cases, we did a money dance and made about $500. Those guys rocked. I never had a wedding cake either. I did have a couple of flowers. I was a hippy, so I had a light blue and ecru hair thing, the circle, I can't remember what it's called. Halo? Anyway, it was so stinking cute. I think I had a small bouquet and I had 2 corsages made up and 3 boutonnieres for the dudes. It was a great ceremony, everybody in the room was in tears, even the person doing the ceremony and all of hubby's hard core military dudes! I looked kick ass in that dress, but there was a little too much cleavage...in all of the pictures peeps took of us at the table signing the big book all you can see is this giant buttt crack of cleavage. I honestly think that the tone of the wedding sets the tone of the marriage. If you spend every last penny on a ridiculous wedding, making your parents take out a second mortgage, all of that stress is going to get to you. If you have a nice quiet wedding the focus is on the family, where it should be. I have a lot of bizarre theories like that, but we'lll get to that later.
So I'm thinking I'll get into the wedding flower business if the disability thhing doesnn''t work out. I was also thinking about getting registered at the Universal Life Church online, I think it's somewhere around $35 dollas to get registered to be able to perform marriages. Well, I just went looking for it and found another one, free, but you have to purchase the identification documents to show to officials when you do the marriage license and stuff. It's at American Marriage Ministries, theamm.org . Totally awesome. I'd love to be able to perform services for people considered "alternative" or different. I think I could turn this into a real business, if my body holds up. That's my only concern. I'm so freaking tired and in pain all the time. I'm not doing badly right now, so if we can keep the medication at what it is right now we may be able to do this. I'm going to go try to mess around with some flowers now, see what works and doesn't. I'll do bouquets first, that's what the bride is going to key onto. What I am the least enthused about is centerpieces. I'll have to think about that. If I can crochet baskets and starch them and just put some of my handmade flowers in there we're golden. If I have to track down $80 vases for 20 tables and fill them with flowers my head will explode. There are just soooooo many things that people use in weddings now. It used to be so simple, I guess it just got out of hand when businesses figured out exactly how much money they could make out of a bride. It makes me sad AND angry. All that money, up in smoke. Literally. Seriously, what do you have left? Some pictures in a book and a stained gown that cost you $3,000? I don't think so. Ok, off to work. After one more post :)
I guess I'm totally out of the loop. When the hubby and I got married almost 22 years ago in England I bought a dress for $180, hubby and two of his friends rented tuxes with long tails an top hats and we got married at the city hall. We had a hell of a party afterwards, that's kind of what we did back then :) There weren't a lot of options for a reception so we shut own one of the small bars at the enlisted club and recruited one of my bartender friends that worked there to work it, and we started out with 4 bottles of champagne. Oh, and we had one of those sterno heated thingies, bbq meatballs and wienies. It was a blast, there were only about 12 of us, some drifted in and out. The champagne number climbed to about 6 cases, we did a money dance and made about $500. Those guys rocked. I never had a wedding cake either. I did have a couple of flowers. I was a hippy, so I had a light blue and ecru hair thing, the circle, I can't remember what it's called. Halo? Anyway, it was so stinking cute. I think I had a small bouquet and I had 2 corsages made up and 3 boutonnieres for the dudes. It was a great ceremony, everybody in the room was in tears, even the person doing the ceremony and all of hubby's hard core military dudes! I looked kick ass in that dress, but there was a little too much cleavage...in all of the pictures peeps took of us at the table signing the big book all you can see is this giant buttt crack of cleavage. I honestly think that the tone of the wedding sets the tone of the marriage. If you spend every last penny on a ridiculous wedding, making your parents take out a second mortgage, all of that stress is going to get to you. If you have a nice quiet wedding the focus is on the family, where it should be. I have a lot of bizarre theories like that, but we'lll get to that later.
So I'm thinking I'll get into the wedding flower business if the disability thhing doesnn''t work out. I was also thinking about getting registered at the Universal Life Church online, I think it's somewhere around $35 dollas to get registered to be able to perform marriages. Well, I just went looking for it and found another one, free, but you have to purchase the identification documents to show to officials when you do the marriage license and stuff. It's at American Marriage Ministries, theamm.org . Totally awesome. I'd love to be able to perform services for people considered "alternative" or different. I think I could turn this into a real business, if my body holds up. That's my only concern. I'm so freaking tired and in pain all the time. I'm not doing badly right now, so if we can keep the medication at what it is right now we may be able to do this. I'm going to go try to mess around with some flowers now, see what works and doesn't. I'll do bouquets first, that's what the bride is going to key onto. What I am the least enthused about is centerpieces. I'll have to think about that. If I can crochet baskets and starch them and just put some of my handmade flowers in there we're golden. If I have to track down $80 vases for 20 tables and fill them with flowers my head will explode. There are just soooooo many things that people use in weddings now. It used to be so simple, I guess it just got out of hand when businesses figured out exactly how much money they could make out of a bride. It makes me sad AND angry. All that money, up in smoke. Literally. Seriously, what do you have left? Some pictures in a book and a stained gown that cost you $3,000? I don't think so. Ok, off to work. After one more post :)
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