the scrapbook

For a few years now I've been keeping a scrapbook, segmented into sections according to flowers, dresses, odds & ends, etc. I love to flip through the pages of cakes and gowns and bowties and flowers from all manner of magazines and sources to compile weddings in my mind for people. Elizabeth Dye, http://elizabethdye.blogspot.com/ , is my current fascination.The scrapbook is also full of notes for places I have seen that would be beautiful venues, best songs, notes about colors and food, notes about literature and perfect poems and details. I have collected a lot of variation, but everything in the book is also of my own style. I have a delight in the unexpected touch: a monogrammed heart embroidered secretly on the bride's dress (thanks Aunt Gretchen), wellington boots on the bridesmaids, Swedish ticking for the table linen, the hundreds of cloth buttons on a vintage gown re-covered in various shades and prints of pink. Sometimes the perfect gown (for, say, my younger sister's one-day wedding) has the neckline from this dress and the stitching from that with the waistline of this one. Or the shoes from some red-carpet look would match beautifully with the lace gown and peonies from page 34 of my scrapbook. I don't quite think I qualify as obsessive - it's only every once and a while that I add new things, take out old ones that no longer suit my fancy, and ponder over lace and buttonholes. But I do enjoy it.