Mapping It Out: DIY-Style

Since I'm not ready to reveal our entire invitation suite just yet, I thought I'd share a little bit about one of the elements we're including: the map! Since our guests will need to drive to the church for the ceremony and then to the reception venue afterwards, I figured a map & directions card would probably be helpful. I wanted to design our map because, like I said before, I want our invitations be our own custom work and I'm stubborn. :) I'm still new to Adobe Illustrator, but it has been so helpful for all of our design needs (and it keeps me relatively busy during these slow days of unemployment!) Google has been my bff when it comes to learning all these techniques. What would I do without you, Goog?

I found an easy-to-follow tutorial for designing a map here. If you like, you can follow my rendition of "DIY maps using Illustrator" below...


Making this map was a pretty simple concept: use a googlemap image as a base map and trace over the freeways and streets with brushes. You gotta follow a few steps to get to that point, though.

*click on any of the images below to enlarge*

Step 1: Create the brushes for your roads
You're going to need brushes to trace over your google map. I wanted mine to resemble roads, so I created brushes similar to those in the tutorial I linked above.

Click on the line tool and draw a simple line:

Change the line settings to make it thicker:

Now, draw a second line going right down the middle of your first line. Change the settings for this second line to make it white and thinner.

Here's my freeway design!

Now, it's time to use this "freeway design" to create a brush. Select your design:

Scroll on up to the brush drop-down menu and select "New Brush."

Check "New Art Brush"

Give your art brush a name (I named mine "Freeway") and edit any other properties for the brush as you see fit (I left the properties as-is). Click OK.

And your new brush shows up in your brush drop down menu!


You can follow the same steps to create another brush for streets. You'll see what I mean if you keep reading...

Step 2: Trace
Copy and paste a googlemap image into your Illustrator file. I did this by taking a screenshot of googlemaps, saving the screenshot as a .jpeg, and importing/pasting it into my Illustrator file. (I had to use two screenshot images and line them up to cover all of our desired area.)

Click on your brush tool, make sure you select the "Freeway" brush from your brush drop-down menu, and start tracing those freeways.

Keep tracing! Illustrator has some pre-made map symbols that you can use for intersection points, as seen on the image below. Or, you can design your own by following the steps for creating a new brush.

Continue by tracing the streets. As I mentioned earlier, you can create a new art brush to represent streets. It's easy, just follow Step 1 of these instructions, but change the line settings (for example, make the middle white line much thicker to give the illusion of thinner edges for the streets.)

Once you finish tracing all of your freeways and roads, go ahead and delete the googlemaps base map. You're left with a fresh new map ready to edit to your liking (adding images, labels, deleting parts of the street lines to make smooth intersections, etc). The final editing was actually the most time-consuming part for me, but the results were lookin' good.


There you have it. It may take some time and patience, but it's easy to design your own map...the tools are out there! This is def a project you can finish within the Adobe Illustrator trial period, if you want to go that route. I can't wait to show you the final version once we get these invites printed!

What do you think? Is this DIY-worthy, or something you'd rather outsource? (and if you have any questions, feel free to drop me a comment!)

There's No Turning Back

Well, folks, this is it. The design for our wedding invitations is nearing completion and it's almost time to get down and dirty with El Gocco again. There's no turning back now. I've spent the past month or so deciding on our invitation layout with Mr. Tortolito and then tweaking the design and wording using Adobe Illustrator. I'll admit it... I've taken my sweet arse time with this project, but now I'm starting to feel the pressure of getting these out within the next month.

While I don't have much actual product to share just yet, I've got plenty of inspiration!


Mr. Tortolito and I want to keep our invitation suite clean and easy for our guests to handle. Our main inspiration came from the ever-popular booklet designed by Mrs. Lime on Weddingbee:

{Source}

How great are these invites?!

After spending several days sorting through magazines and online sources, this was all the inspiration we needed for a solid starting point. Our goal now is to create a booklet-style invitation suite with a softer, more romantic feel. Think cursive fonts and papel picado.

I picked up a Fiskars border punch from Michaels to help achieve the papel picado look:

{Source}

We're also thinking about incorporating some of the elements from our Save the Dates to keep our stationery theme alive....but you're gonna have to wait to see how the final product turns out before I share any more details of the look! ;)

I don't know about you, but I get super nervous taking on all these craft projects. Crafting and being artsy is not intuitive to me. But, I'm stubborn. And I'll make it happen, even if it costs way more time than any money we could potentially be saving. Besides, it's such a rewarding feeling to create your own wedding masterpieces, no?

Do DIY projects make you nervous? Or is it just me...

Fighting Bacne

Luckily, I've never had a real problem with acne. I do have my problem area, though, and for years I've just kinda dealt with it and hoped that it would go away. My problem is the all too common "bacne." While it's not super intense, it still caused me to be self-conscious about my upper back area. What's worse is that I noticed that hard workouts (and thus increased sweating) triggered breakouts. Here I was trying to do something good for my health yet worried about those nasty pimples that might show up on my back the next day. Nobody wants to worry about that, especially not on your wedding day! So, I decided to step up my hygiene game and try out a new body care regimen.


I've been using the Neutrogena Body Clear Body Scrub for several years.
{Source}

While I think it's a great body scrub, the salicylic acid in this alone wasn't strong enough to keep my back zit-free. I finally did some searching on the internet and I came across an article that recommended exfoliating first and then applying a salicylic acid solution to your clean back. After reading that a few months ago, I decided to give it a shot. I headed to Target and picked up the following products:

{St Ives Medicated Apricot Scrub}

{Neutrogena Rapid Clear Treatment Pads}

Now, my back-care regiment consists of the following:
1) exfoliate my back in the shower with medicated apricot scrub for a good minute or two
2) clean and rinse with Neutrogena body scrub
3) after shower and drying, rub a treatment pad all over my back

After following this daily for the past 3 months, I'm happy to report that my bacne has improved almost 100%! I still get a few small zits every now and then, but it's nothing compared to the large and embarrassing blemishes that formerly invaded my upper back. Sure, it requires a couple extra tedious steps of body care, but the payoff was well worth it and I highly recommend this to anyone dealing with annoying bacne. Here's to a bacne-free wedding day!

Is anyone else out there fighting bacne? Do you have any remedies to share?

And Our Team Keeps On Growing

Have you ever met with a vendor and been completely blown away by how funky fresh cool and real they are? ...And on top of that, super talented! That's how I felt when we met with our photographer for the first time. It's kinda like making a new friend, and I love that feeling!

To be honest, we don't have a lot of room in our budget for photography. We couldn't fit in an elaborate photography package, so we decided to search for somebody who could provide the bare minimum: snap pictures of us all day and provide us with a DVD of all the images. I figured that we can decide what to do with our pictures after the wedding, once things calm down. For now, we just wanted to make sure that somebody would be there to capture all the big moments of our wedding day (as well as the small ones that we may not notice or forget!)


I did my fair share of research on Craigslist and Google, all the while becoming discouraged by how so many talented photographers where way out of our budget. It must have been my lucky day when I came across a post on the Weddingbee classifieds from an up and coming photographer advertising her services. I checked out her website (which I loved! I'm all about first impressions), and contacted her. Within a couple of weeks, Mr. Tortolito and I met her and signed on the dotted line. Like I said, I'm big on first impressions and intuition. Even though our photographer, Phoebe, is just branching out into the wedding world we totally trust her with capturing our wedding day memories. And I'm all about supporting up and coming talent! How can I not when she has beautiful photos like these to back her up:

{All photos by Phoebe Joy Photography}

It's so refreshing to meet people who have a passion for what they do and really want the best for their clients. It definitely shows in their personalities, and it's one of the main things that I keep in mind when meeting with wedding vendors. I think we've got a pretty solid group of vendors so far - something that keeps reminding us that this wedding is really happening!

What qualities do you look for when searching for wedding vendors? If you've worked with newcomers to the industry, did you find it easy to trust them to handle big parts of your wedding?

Zapatos!

I've already publicly professed my love for all things girly, but this weekend I took it to a new extreme. Lately, I've had wedding shoes on my mind. I have a dress fitting coming up in a couple months (still waiting for that call!) and my goal was to score a pair of hot heels to take with me on my first fitting. When I mentioned this to Mr. Tortolito a while ago, he made an offer that I simply could not resist: "how about I buy you a nice pair of wedding shoes as your wedding gift?"

And take him up on his offer I did. (jaja, and I think he's regretting it already!)

I planned on jumping on the colored shoes bandwagon because...

...how hot is this!! {Source}

So, I entered Neiman Marcus dead set on finding a pair of deep wine heels to match the darker shade of our color scheme. For the most part, I gawked and asked stupid questions:

"Um, do you guys carry Jimmy Choos?"
Salesman: "No. We carry Manolo Blahniks. It's either/or at any department store."

For real? Is this common knowledge cuz they def didn't teach me this in engineering school.

Anyways, I asked the salesman for recommendations instead. I wanted something kinda sexy, loud yet subtle, and comfortable enough to wear for a wedding. Oh, and size 34.5 (4.5 in US sizes). And thats where we had a problem. Apparently, these designers make size 34.5 shoes, but no one wants to carry them. Probably because 10 year old girls or women with feet the same size as a 10 year old girl don't shop for shoes at Neiman Marcus. Oh wells.

The salesman showed me the one bridal shoe that was in stock in my size. Manolo Blahnik Carolyne in classic white satin:

{Source}

ehhh...I liked them. But. I didn't LOVE them. Don't get me wrong, they are beautiful shoes and fit great. The satin was dyeable, but did I really want to get a pristine white pair of Manolo Blahniks only to dye them? Probably not. So I continued the shoe search at Saks and then Barneys, both of which did not carry size 34.5, but a certain shoe had caught my eye by this point. After learning that no one carried this shoe (or any shoes by this designer) in my size, I was told that I would have more luck visiting his boutique a few miles away: the Christian Louboutin boutique. I didn't even know we had one of these in LA!

So off I went with Mr. Tortolito (who couldn't have been more patient in my pursuit for the perfect wedding shoe) to this mysterious boutique where I found my dream shoes:

{Source}
the Yoyo

I first saw these shoes in a dark maroon color at Barneys. Unfortch, the boutique didn't carry them in that color but they did have them in Bone, as seen above. They still match our color scheme and my clutch perfectly! I LOVE them. They were just what I was looking for and I will so wear them again. Here's the funny part: the boutique did not have them in size 34.5 either. They rarely carry that size at the LA store. boo! I ended up taking home a size 35 pair. They recommended that I take the shoes to a shoe repair store down the street that they normally work with. There, I can get padding installed in the midsole which would not only make them super comfy, it would give me that extra .5 size for a perfect fit. Perfecto! Now if I could only find the perfect wedding gift for Mr. Tortolito. Got any ideas?

Are there any other small-footed brides out there that can relate to my shoe frustrations?

Until Death Do Us Part

As our wedding day draws closer, I find myself having more of those "reality check" moments. You know, the ones where you're in the middle of something completely non wedding related and are hit with the realization that "OMG I'm getting married." Then, I'll usually stop and think about some of the ramifications of getting married and what it really means to me. Not that I've never considered them before, but thinking about it over and over again never gets old ya know? Lately I've been considering the whole thing about the vows and the promises that we will be making to each other. This is actually a topic that hits home a bit. It's one that I find myself having an internal argument over, yet always arriving at the same conclusion.


I know everyone has different wedding vows, so I'm definitely not speaking for everyone when I say this. I'm pretty sure our vows will include the "to have and to hold, sickness and health..." and end with the "until death do us part." That statement right there is pretty huge. This is probably the most serious promise I will be making to somebody. Ever.

Alright, Imma go off on a tangent here and talk about something a little personal to give some context to that statement above. I wasn't exactly raised in a model household. My parents: awesome, awesome parents. They raised four good, happy, smart people and we love them for that. My parent's relationship: awful. If there's anything good that came out of it (besides 4 cool kids) it's that it has taught me what I DON'T want my marriage to be like. And then I think about my grandparent's relationship (those that are still with us) and, well, I can't say much about them either. My mom has way too many stories about the things my grandmother put up with, and I'm afraid that I myself am going to have way too many stories about my own mother as well.

When I get calls from my mom-frustrated, angry, hopeless-I myself feel the same way. The strong, independent, self-sufficient, educated woman inside me screams: "DO something about it. You're healthy, able to work, able to learn and be on your own. Stop complaining, end it, and worry about yourself." And then the traditionalist and stubborn person steps in: "Wait, you got yourself into this mess. YOU made a promise to HIM and HE made a promise to YOU. Deal with it." I think that in the back of my mind and of her mind (although she'd never admit it) this is why she sticks around. And that's probably why my grandmother sticks around, and maybe why another handful of women (or men for that matter) that I can name off the top of my head stick around.

And you know what...if that's really the reason why any married person sticks around, I kinda respect that. I respect that they hold true to that promise they made. What I don't respect is the way that some people handle it.

I'm not in any way implying that anyone should put up with any kind of abuse whether it be physical or emotional. I equally respect any person strong enough to move on and make a better life for themself. Sometimes divorce is the only option. Sometimes we make mistakes. It's OK. I've never been in that type of situation so I can't speak from experience here. All I know is that as I consider the promises that I'm making to Mr. Tortolito and to, more importantly, myself, it's a pretty big deal. Maybe it's just my personality, but I'm not the type of person to back out of something once I seriously get myself into it. That's why preparing for marriage, communicating, planning for the future, and really knowing what I'm getting myself into is so important to me. This might sound bad, but I just can't think of a situation where I would allow myself to break my promise. I can think of a ton of really bad situations of course, but I would consider all other options of handling them before divorce. Obviously, I wouldn't be marrying Mr. Tortolito if I felt like there were any chance he'd ever disrespect me in any way, or alternatively, if there were a chance that I'd ever disrespect him. I wouldn't be marrying him if I didn't know this man, or didn't know him well enough to be 100% sure that we could work out any situation that life threw at us. As a team.

No one knows what life has in store for them. Nobody can say for sure what their life is going to be like in 10 years. But I know my partner and he knows me, and we are prepared to handle good and bad times together. We're in it to win it, folks.

I'm not asking anyone to judge here. I know this is a touchy and very personal topic. But, I'd really love to hear your thoughts on wedding vows and what they mean to you.

Team Claudia y Felipe +1

For most of the wedding planning process, Mr. Tortolito and I have been referring to ourselves as a team. We have been planning this thing essentially on our own. We brainstorm together, make all decisions, create budgets, research vendors, he fixes my mistakes, and we tackle the simple formalities of a wedding as a unit. We have accomplished a lot together and it's been pretty enjoyable for us! I think the tough part is going to be actually implementing all of our ideas and bringing our vision to life. We're really the only ones in "the know" right now, but the day will come where we will have to hand it all off to somebody and trust that our wedding day turns out just like we've been planning. Enter the "+1" in our team...

We have been contemplating the possibility of having a coordinator for a while now. The difficult part, of course, was committing to an additional cost. What it really boiled down to, though, was that we needed somebody to help make the day run smoothly. A lot of it has to do with the logistics: our mass begins at 2:30pm and our rental time for our venue begins at 2pm. That means that Mr. Tortolito and I will not be stepping foot in our venue until our cocktail hour/reception begins (around 5:30pm). We won't be able to help with the set up AT ALL. We can't even count on any family members or friends to help set up since they will be watching us get married! I'd much rather have them enjoy the day anyway, instead of worrying them with any responsibilities. Luckily, our awesome caterer will be helping out a ton with setting up our rentals. Still, we need somebody to handle all of the details that we just physically can't do ourselves: deliver our talavera centerpieces, arrange escort cards, make sure all of our vendors arrive on time and know where to be, get all our bar beverages and alcohol to the bar, set up cocktail hour decorations, handle any unexpected emergencies and be regulatin' for the entirety of the party. Basically, we need the peace of mind that our day will be executed as planned.

I happened upon a post a while back on the Weddingbee classifieds for a wedding coordinator who was new to the business and was offering her services at a real deal. Yesterday, Mr. Tortolito and I finally met with her and sealed the deal (a very, extremely, inconceivably generous deal that has restored my faith in the wedding industry, at that!). We only spent one hour with her and I am already amazed and completely stoked. I really felt like we gained a team member with her. A team member who understands our vision, is capable of executing it, friendly, professional, organized, and just an overall cool person! It feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders knowing that she will be handling all of our little details that we have been putting so much effort on and being our "go-to" person for us and our wedding party. I know already that this is probably the best investment we will make for our wedding day. And that feels goooood.

What are your thoughts on wedding coordinators and trusting them to handle your big day? Did/are you having one? Was it worth it?

Hello, I Love You

I'm a girly-girl in many senses of the word. I love me some hot stilettos, makeup, fashion, fruity bath products... know what I mean ladies? One of my daily "girl" rituals is visiting the Gilt Groupe website for my dose of fashion and beauty eye candy. They've got some super deals on everything from designer gowns to hair products. For the most part, I browse and gawk at their sale items thinking that 70% off that $2,500 Oscar de la Renta dress is such a steal but still something that I would never buy. Sometimes, just sometimes, I'll get lucky and come across an item that I really need and can actually afford. In this case, it was an accessory that I had been on the lookout for.

Say hello to Flor*:


{Source}

I happened across her while browsing through a sale for Santi handbags (I've never heard of them either). She caught my attention and I threw her in my shopping cart immediately. Those Gilt Groupe items gets snatched up like crazy, so I allowed myself the 5-minute hold time to reason over why I needed to purchase her.

-Do I need a purse for the wedding?: How can I make it through the day without one? I need somewhere to stash my chapstick.

-Does it match your dress?: Not only will it look lovely with my dress, it matches our color scheme.

-Will you use it again?: I promise!

This was enough to convince myself. She was mines!

...and I love her.

::excited face::

Please tell me I'm not the only one who gets this giddy when she adds a new accessory to her collection of girly/wedding items...

*why yes, I really did just name my purse. Flor = flower.

Deep Wine & Champagne

Maroon & Ivory. Burgundy & Light Brown. Dark Red & Beige.

Such are what I use to describe our wedding colors when someone asks. Althoooogh, inside my head I'm thinking "...with a hint of gold, orange, blue, brighter reds, etc."

Our talavera centerpieces have a lot going on in terms of color. We'll be adding some more talavera goods to the mix in the future, so the colors will only be getting louder.

I'd much rather describe our color palette in one word: festive. But, for the sake of simplicity and having our bridesmaids and groomsmens wear similar colors, we settled on a more traditional description: Deep Wine & Champagne.



Appropriate for an autumn wedding, easy to mix & match with other colors, simple.

Does anyone else agree that using a mood to describe your color palette is totally acceptable?