Crane Folding Frenzy

The wedding is drawing near ... ish. We have roughly ~130 days until THE DAY.

We are getting married at the Tracy Aviary in Salt Lake City, it's a gorgeous venue! Originally we were going to get married up in Yellowstone, but the logistics of that were going to be much too difficult to figure out. We're both pretty simple, so we want a simple, little hassle as possible wedding. Full disclosure, I've tried to convince Zach to elope multiple times, but he's said, "no way, never!!!" So instead we're going to have a birdyful wedding! Did that work? No, probably not. Either way, the wedding is coming together in a way that we are happy with.

I read that you should only DIY one big project for your wedding. I decided our project was going to be folding 1,000 paper cranes. Here is an example of people who have done this at the Aviary:

Pretty right? 

I think it is going to be awesome. In Japan, folding cranes is a way for the couple to build their relationship with each other and with their families and friends, "The time and energy put into the thousand hand-folded origami cranes symbolized the patience and trust necessary to sustain a happy marriage. A couple who could weather the long, time intensive folding process together, supporting each other, talking with each other for weeks while taking on a challenging task was proving their ability to maintain a long term, content relationship." You can read more about it here!

My friend at work thinks this a terrible idea and thinks we should just buy the cranes already folded and save ourselves some time. When I tried to explain the cool Japanese part and even that Zach lived in Japan, he responded, "You both live in America now ..." He dislikes this idea so much that he 1) offered to buy them as a wedding gift and 2) hijacked my Twitter account to post this:

Partly, he's right, this is going to be a really long process. A process, as he pointed out, that we could cut short by spending $20 - $45 on Etsy. We're currently at about 50 cranes, so only 950 more to go! Below see a wonderful example of his vs. her tracking methods ... I think he wins :/ Though, I do love to make a good spreadsheet!

Complete with formulas!!!

"Eventually, I'll run out of space on my sticky."

We're having fun and I do think it is "relationship building". The part about working through the process is true, even if we're watching TV while folding, it is still fun to do together. It is also fun to get our family and friends involved. My mom went and bought paper for us and quite a few of our friends have offered to help, it's even a fun talking point for the (good hearted) dissenters ;)