One wedding + one bride who loves to give gifts = trouble. Over the last year, I’ve had more than half a dozen different favors picked out. Fortunately, I’m an adamant believer in useful favors, so my prospects were limited to food and practical items. My first love was this luggage tag:

Perfect for all of our out-of-town guests, utterly practical and classically beautiful. But, despite my best attempts, I couldn’t find the source of these specific tags, and all the ones I found were either ugly or unbelievably expensive.

Of course, there’s always repackaged candy in all its lovely forms:

I especially love the last image (thanks, Martha). But then I got distracted thinking about flowers and plants, despite being completely impractical for out-of-towners.

Of course, from the get-go, I’d wanted to do letterpressed wood bookmarks. Originally, I wanted to use those as save-the-dates, but then I thought they’d make great favors. That didn’t seem like enough, so I somehow got the crazy idea to do cookies too — bird-shaped sugar cookies, made with a custom cookie cutter, packaged in glassine bags and sealed with cartouches cut from various papers. When the wedding was still six months out, the idea of baking 200+ cookies a week before the wedding didn’t phase me.

Sometime in January, I went into super strict budget mode — both for our financial budget and for my time budget. We couldn’t afford the bookmarks, and I certainly wasn’t going to have time to bake that many cookies, so I dropped the favors altogether, telling myself that the photo booth pictures and bird magnets and welcome bags would qualify as favors. (Which, by the way, I still think they do.)

When I was in Spokane in February, I found these great miniature chocolate bars:

They come in sets of three, in little boxes. Adorable. The chocolate is delicious, and I’ve used “rejoice” on our website, welcome card, etc. to refer to the wedding and all the pre-wedding festivities, like the wine tasting the day before the wedding and the bachelor(ette) parties. It seemed like fate. But I couldn’t quite swallow the price, even with the generous bulk discount.

So now, eight days before the wedding, I’m back to the cookies. As if I didn’t still have programs to print and assemble, playlists to finalize, vendors to coordinate, welcome bags to deliver, a honeymoon to pack for…

Look what the postman brought me today!

Kind of surreal to see your married name in print.

And that’s just the beginning… cupcake flags and table numbers and a little sign too.

Thanks, Jenna!

Anyone who visited Oregon last weekend knows that it has been unbelievably gorgeous here. Low 70s, a little breezy, and so clear that Mt. Hood looks like it’s right on the other side of northeast Portland. Of course, we’re now back to dreary, rainy low 50s, and I don’t have very high hopes of the 73-degree sunny days returning before the 18th. What does it all mean? That I need a pretty umbrella, obviously.

There are ultra-feminine rental umbrellas…

And there are pretty blue umbrellas…

There are giant umbrellas (big enough that my petite matron of honor could LIE DOWN under them)…

And there are delightful patterned umbrellas on websites with broken order forms and non-existent customer service…

But, none of them hold a candle to the perfect umbrella…

My bachelorette party attire arrived today. I know, I’m a total girl — any excuse to get a new outfit — but seriously, you only get to do this once. And you have permission to look ridiculous. How often can you say that?

Miss Bride tee from Inkbox Design Boutique. (The $48 price tag is a bit intimidating, but it’s worth it — the cotton tee is oh-so-soft and the printing is direct to fabric so you never have to worry about cracking.) Pettiskirt from Sterling & Pearls.

Apparently Oregon passed a law this year that you can only have one middle name. Seriously? Who gets paid to sit around and come up with this stuff?

We went to the courthouse, went through the elaborate airport-like security, and are still marriage license-less because I couldn’t figure out what to do with my name. I either have to give up my middle name or maiden last name and thought I was going to get to keep all of it.

I can’t run off and elope in California to keep my names, can I?

…they will be covered in ridiculously pretty Jenna Hein calligraphy. Yay!