diy till the cows come home

I saw my Mum (and puppy!) yesterday and talked wedding. My Mum tends to flip-flop between being mildy interested, and completely disinterested in everything ranging from my entire life, to just the wedding, so it's always a difficult call as to whether she'll be engaged or not.
Anyway, yesterday, this is what she said:
"I'd really like to be involved in your wedding"
I nearly fell of my chair. She said it in a sincere way, not because I'd been rambling on and on about DIY that, and 'we'll be making this'.
Next thing I know, we get home and book in a dress-looking-date next week. No procrastination, she wants to get right down to business.
Ah, ok, Mum. This is what I wanted, to be fair, but it's really, really tough to trust that she's not just going to drop off the planet and be completely nonchalant about it again come next week.
We'll see.


I made a list yesterday of all the DIY projects we've decided to do. And thinking about them, I think we're doing them for mostly the right reasons (eg. because we want to, because no shop could make what we want... and occasionally because to buy/have made what we want would be too expensive to be justified ($1,000 minimum spend on flowers? I think not)).
Here's how it looks, and how it's going so far:

A list of projects we’ve decided to take on:

Invitations, RSVP cards, Info cards - printed, addressed
-> also, envelope inners, return address stamp, tied with twine, ribbon or belly band???

Status: Created in photoshop, need to be printed somehow/somewhere.
Streamer background
-> dyed streamers
-> white lace
->free standing structure

Status: Started! Waiting on dyes to arrive from the UK, need to get more fabric and begin making the structure. This is a high-priority project.
Yay flags
-> approx 50. Calico w/ iron on transfer? Or painted stencil? 

Status: Not happening, yet.
Animal place holders
-> wooden animals? Dates written on in silver?
-> Mouths carved.
-> Names printed and cut from cardstock. 

Status: Given up on plastic animals for now. Need to go to the market and look at their cheap imported-from-China wooden animals. Wondering if people should just take their animals home as favours. When I told Mum about our favours idea, she said: "What, is it like a lolly bag?" and had no idea that favours existed. Ah, how things have changed.
Favors
-> Paper bags
-> Animal stamp, thankyou stamp, name/date stamp?
-> Tea (in air-sealed/plastic bag?)
->Tied with twine. 

Status: Not started
Guestbook
-> several yellow streamers
-> Black fabric pens (do these exist?)

Status: Not started
Programs
-> How/what? Vistaprint? How are they going to be interesting? 

Status: Don't know enough of the day-of schedule yet to make these, and need a brain-wave of how to make them nice.
Flowers
-> Bouquet x 1
-> Centrepieces x 12ish?
-> Real or fake?
-> Flower boxes

Status: Made enquiries about flower boxes. Nothing else yet.
Centerpieces:
-> words, painted.
-> mason jars
->table animal pictures.

Status: Words acquired. Need to be painted. Have a slowly growing collection of mason jars.
Seating chart? (some kind of zoo map...!!!)

Status: Emailed brother who is a wiz with photoshop to see if this will be easy for him to make.

Photobooth
->Props!

Status: Yeah, not yet.
Menus
-> Painted and stuck books. 

Status: Lower priority, have a small collection of cooking books to use, but need to finalise the menu before doing too much with these.
Ring pillow book:
-> Book with centre cut, ribbon, painted or covered.

Status: This isn't a hugely high priority, so, we'll see. We have plenty of op-shop (thrift shop?) books so we can paint and use one of those.

In the meantime, we've booked appointments to meet with 3 celebrants over the next week or two. I found it a really weird experience to be choosing celebrants. You go to a website, right, look at photos of people, and try and decide who you'd like to look at, if they have a website, etc. It's shopping for people. It weirds me out.

We know who we want as our photographers but they said they don't book more than 8 months out, so I'm holding out from hassling them, hoping they hold true to their word and don't book our date before March (8 months before the wedding).