Picturesque Month ~ 05'16

~ Made it on the Dawanda Lovemag mailing list. Thanks to my dear Lu <3
~Thrifty fun on May the 4th.
~ New books! One for me and one for the husband ;) Alright, his was for work.. Mr Ayoade is soooo weird! I love it.

We had a long weekend in May and one of my best friends and I decided to go on a three day bike trip including a day trip to Moryn in Poland. I tried out my new bike seat and had no issues at all! after 225km in three days the only thing that hurt were my legs and my arms. I couldn't really move my right hand from gearshifting so much as we had a bunch of steep roads to climb and go down. But it was really worth it and so cheap since we stayed in Brandenburg at my parents house and at her's the second night.

~We stopped at the polish market right behind the border to take a lunch break. They have so much weird shit there!
~ Homemade ice cream! Trying to get off the sugar and still have my icy treats, so I get frozen fruits at the store, blend them up with a bit of juice and stick 'em in the freezer. It gets super hard, but this way I don't eat too much ;)
~ We still have a bunch of Star Wars Posters lying around at work. Anyone interested?

~ Saw GOOSE live at Privatclub again after ages. I probably saw them about 5-7 times before and they rocked the club as usual. 4/5 Bazooka Points for me getting old and having to wear ear plugs..
~ Just wow! I get to manage the Jazz sales for a bit now and our biggest release this year was Gregory Porter's new album. I got to see him at the Berlin philharmonics and it was awesome! 5/5 Bazooka Points for oh so much soul.
~ The Strumbellas belong on a much bigger stage than the former Magnet Club one's (now Musik & Frieden), not only because they almost didn't fit on the stage with their seven band members, but also because of their awesome sound. 5/5 Bazooka Points for reviving The Decemberists feels.

~ Had to get out my full pastell goth gear for this year's Eurovision and our contestant Jamie-Lee.
~ She did a really goo job performing and did not deserve the 0 points... and you're telling me the Eurovision is not political...
~Summery view from Universal's new terrace where we enjoy a coffee break every afternoon.

~Guess what? I'm part of the Hauptstadt-Mädchen (metropolis girls) now. It's a Berlin blogger community and I can't wait to their events and learning more about blogging <3
~ A blast from the past: My american sister's uncle found pictures from 11 years ago when we visited him in San Fransico during my foreign exchange student year in America. So much fun! I really want to go back there someday.
~ Of course I had to go on a search for the building from the intro scene from Interview with the Vampire. We found a similar looking building and took a bunch of pictures in front of it only to find out  while watching the movie that it wasn't that one at all :P But we still had fun pretending to be vampires.

Our Thrifty & Crafty Wedding ~ Finding "The Dress", Handmade Flower Crowns & All about the Bride(smaids)

                         
Finding the perfect dress for the wedding wasn't too easy as I had a very specific idea in mind and actually found my perfect dress pretty early on, but getting that was not an option. I found this dress on etsy, but it was too risky to order a dress in the states, especially because of shipping, customs and alterations in case it wouldn't fit right.
My inspiration were definitely the Empire style dresses from Jane Austen's movies set in the Regency era like this one. So I looked out for an empire style dress, but the ones I found were all kind of lacking the wow factor (too simple, too much lace, meh). And making it myself would have been too risky as well, as I'm not that good of a seamstress.
 So when I actually went to a bridal store and they said that they would be able to custom tailor any dress I want and tried on a dress with an empire waist I knew I would just have to have them tailor my perfect dress. So, I know it's bad to knock off someone else's design, but since that design was inspired by the excact same design that I wanted, the Regency era style dress and there was no way that I would buy a dress on the other side of the world to ship to Germany, I thought it was ok. And I couldn't have been happier with the way it turned out!

                          
                          
Of course there had to issues with this dress as well. I got super excited when they told me that the dress was done and I could try it on for the first time for possible adjustments. So when I got there with my whole entourage they basically told me, just kidding, there has been a delay, try again next week (why couldn't they tell me this on the phone?)... next week was two weeks before the wedding date. So I was quite nervous coming in the second time with a much smaller entourage, cause no-one was available. And guess what, the dress was finally there. But I knew something was off, when I first saw it, it looked huge! Trying it on I noticed there must have been a big mistake with the measurements, because the dress was at least 5 sizes too big around (but the arm holes were the right measurement). I got noticably super nervous and then angry and asked if they could adjust this within one week. They totally fucked up, but tried to cover it up by telling me I lost too much weight... uh huh... I did lose some weight, but not 5 sizes worth of weight!
So by this time I was in full bridezilla mode and said fuck it, I'm off the diet, which made the dress a bit too small when I tried it on after adjustment a week later. But the week before the wedding was too stressful to eat anyways, so all was fine on the day of the wedding. Too much excitement!

Alright, now to the headgear:

         
Sorry for the crappy cell phone pictures, we made the flower crowns for me and my bridesmaids at a DIY workshop in the Dawanda Snuggery. This workshop came just in time, because I wasn't sure about what I was going to wear for hair decoration. My dear blogger friend Lu made a video tutorial on how to make these crowns. It's in german, but there are tons of other tutorials out there.

We were also unsure about the bridesmaids dresses. I was actually against choosing one dress for all of my ladies and was more looking for a similar style dress in multiple colours, but then we found thie perfect dress in an off white with a gorgeous flower band around the waist that would suit all of my girls. And they were only 25€ at C&A. So we were all set for the big day!

                          






Didn't we look lovely? I'm glad we didn't have any trouble with the bridesmaids dresses and everyone was happy with the choice, but then again, I didn't make them wear anything terrible like this.

More Picture spam:
                          



                         


And now for some sillyness:
Zombieattack!


Silly faces!


                         
                          
Ah, so much fun! I made all of my lovely ladies a photobook of all the planning and crafting fun, our bachelor/bachelorette boattrip, the wedding and a batch of old time fun. It took almost two years to distribute these, but when you grow up it becomes harder to see all of your loved ones on a regular basis, because we are all living our own lives. But that doesn't make them any less special to me.
Here's to my beautiful girls <3