Our Direction

Mr. Crab Cake can testify that I’m very indecisive.  I can pick something out, love it for a few weeks, and the minute I see something better, I’m in new love with it and completely out of love with the other.

When we first started this journey, I had no theme.  Just colors.  But I was having a really hard time pulling everything together.  It really just wasn’t working for me.  I had, at one point, fallen in love with a modern pink and orange floral kind of thing.  But then I decided that our venue didn’t really allow for that kind of theme.  Then I fell in love with peonies.  Head over heels for peonies.  I googled peonies for hours, peony stamps, peony projects, peony fabric, silk peonies, you name it, I looked for it.  I told my florist I had to have peonies.  I bought $160 worth of silk peonies for our centerpieces.  I bought peony stamps and had designed all of our stationary around peonies.  Mr. Crab Cake was trying to deal with the multitude of pink, but I could tell that everytime we had a conversation that involved a color decision, he would say, “just not pink.”  Mr. Crab Cake is not a pink kinda guy.

So one night, I was reading through my favorite blogs, and I came across this post on StyleMePretty.

I thought it was a really cute idea, and innocently showed it to Mr. CC, not knowing that it would change the course of our wedding yet again.

This time, Mr. CC fell head over heels.  He begged and pleaded, but I could put the map paper with the peonies.  It wasn’t working in my head.  But he said, “Please, this whole thing is about you, can I please have this one thing?”

And then I had a revelation.  He was right.  The whole thing was all about me.  It was pink, very, very pink.  And flower-y, and girl-y.  And didn’t reflect his personality, or our personality at all.  So, I agreed to the map cupcake tower, with one stipulation.  I wanted a vintage map.  He was more than happy to oblige.

I decided that I would play down the peonies, and work on the map/compass theme. I struggled some more, and googled lots of things, mostly looking for something to bring everything together.

Then I came across a short poem from Ian Burgham.

And you,

A windrose, a compass

My direction, my description of the world.

And I was golden.  Things really took off from there and I was back on google looking for the perfect vintage compass clipart.  Turns out I didn’t need to go any further than my own hard drive, because I pulled the graphic out of my word processors clip art files and edited it in paint.net (my freebie substitute for illustrator).

And thus was born our vintage map/compass themed wedding.