In case you missed my first (and I thought only!) entry in the hair drama journal, click here for some background. Long story short: Mr. B made it clear to me that he does not want my hair fully up, even though I love having an updo. I then bought a dress that led me to believe my hair needs to be up. I thought I could get away with it.
Flash forward to a few days ago: I was messing around with my hair, putting it up in crazy styles, and asking Mr. B what he would do if I walked down the aisle like that. At one point he very seriously said he knew I would not “do that to him” and that he knew I would have my hair “showing in some way.” Cue panic. What?! Why did I think he would be OK with my hair being up?!
Well, now I am back to the drawing board and I need some help. My original compromise style inspiration was this:
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Image via Style Me Pretty / Photography by Chris Bailey Photography / Event design by Keely Thorne Events
I do not plan on showing my dress but I will tell you this—it has a very pretty keyhole back, similar to this:
Nicole is selling a vintage-inspired Mon Cheri wedding gown. She is asking $500 for the size-six gown.
Have a wedding item for sale? Post it with pictures in the Weddingbee Classifieds, and you might see it featured on the blog!
Other great items for sale:
A lot of commenters have asked me about what it was like to plan a wedding while also studying for the bar exam. It’s that time of year again, so I figured I’d address that now.
Studying for the bar exam was, without a doubt, one of the hardest things I have ever done. Maybe THE hardest thing I’ve ever done. It was time-consuming, intellectually challenging, and physically and emotionally exhausting. You know what else is all of those things? Wedding planning. So here are my tips on how to combine the two without going insane.
Choose your date wisely.
The busiest time of studying for the bar exam is the last month before the wedding. The busiest time of wedding planning is the last six to eight weeks before the wedding. Unless you have a lot of help, I would recommend picking a wedding date that’s at least two months after the bar exam. We got married exactly two months and four days after I finished the bar exam, and I’m happy that we had that much time in between the two.
A long time ago, when I had time for Pinterest, I pinned the following photo onto my wedding board with the caption, “Love this look for wedding nails!”
Image via Nature Nails by Tenshi no Hana
When full-nail applique kits started becoming popular, I looked for the lacy look I had pinned and couldn’t get out of my mind. Imagine my excitement when Essie introduced their new line of Sleek Stick Nail Appliques, one of which was aptly titled “Embrace the Lace”!
After all the traditional parts of the wedding reception, it was time to dance! I just wanted to let loose and dance with our friends and family, and be silly, and prove that a big old wedding dress wasn’t going to stop me! Plus, this cutie was ready to get on with the dancing, too.
I asked BM Pow to help me put together a fun dance playlist, since she is on the up and up about contemporary music. For the classic tunes, I left it up to Matt with very few songs on the “no play” list. That list consisted of “Celebration,” “YMCA,” and various line dances. And I didn’t really care if people requested songs. At this point, I had sort of washed my hands of “planning.” I just wanted to dance!
I know this topic of name-changing has been covered numerous times, but I just wanted to add in my two cents since I’m getting married this week.
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Image via One Wed
As a kid, I never liked my name. My first name isn’t common at all here in the US. (It is, however, very common in French-speaking countries…which meant nothing to me since I didn’t live in a French-speaking country.) I remember getting so annoyed as a kid when we’d go on family vacations and I’d never find my name on those touristy tchotchkes (key chains, license plates, picture frames, etc.). I’d give my sister the side eye every time she found her name and was able to buy said tchotchkes (she has a very common American name).
I feel like this post should be titled something like “LOOK AT ME. I HAVE TONS OF PICTURES OF MYSELF AND YOU SHOULD LOOK AT THEM.” I mean, I know it was really helpful for me to look at other people’s engagement photos to know what I wanted and what I didn’t, but I still feel a bit weird posting all of these photos of myself…
That being said, “LOOK AT ME! I HAVE TONS OF PICTURES OF MYSELF (AND SPARKY) AND YOU SHOULD LOOK AT THEM!”
(*cough*) I mean—please take a look at our engagement photos to help you plan your own engagement sessions…
All following photos by Love Song Photo.
We started in the Queen Anne neighborhood in Seattle, in a little park called Parsons Garden.
Pretending like we like each other or something…
From there, we wandered out into the neighborhood.
Heading home from our trip to Honey Lake Plantation, we decided to add a second, unofficial site visit to the day and pulled into an empty parking lot just across from the back of Monticello Opera House, one of the other venues I’d scoped out online.
It’s hard to miss, if you’re looking for it, as it’s smack in the middle of town, catty-corner to the courthouse. Imposing red brick, great wood, and a convenient gazebo in the back would make for quite a doable location for us in that same, tucked-out-of-the-way feeling.
Since we didn’t have an appointment—it really was just a spur of the moment thing—we contented ourselves with the public-access areas: the backyard and what we could see from the sidewalks.
Having checked out their rates online, I knew that the rental fee for the ballroom was nominal compared to some, and on par with the location fees of HLP; and it came with adequate tables and chairs as well. We could bring in our own catering, alcohol, and pretty much everything else.
They’d recently had an event (or were just about to have one), so looking in the big windows out onto the street and sidewalk we could see the space set up with banquet rounds. There was certainly enough space for our little group and then some, and that’s not a bad thing at all.
The gazebo in the back was what I was truly concerned with, as I’d only found one picture of it online and that’s just not enough to base a plan on—at least not if you’re me! The back is almost totally paved, there are old-fashioned street lamps circling the patio, and the gazebo is nice and roomy with more than enough space for 50 chairs, give or take.
A view from the side street—pardon the rain-drops, it was a little drizzly.
The escort cards are coming along nicely. I’ve so far managed to get hold of 55 out of 81 photos. Which is pretty good, I think!
A lot of them were family, so it just meant going through photo albums, but I’ve also managed to score some absolutely hilarious ones of family friends. This is going to be so much fun.
So I’ve done a bit of a “practice run.”
I wanted the photos to look “old,” so if I came across a photo that looked too new, I used Picfull to do a bit of online “Instagram’ing.” God bless the hipsters and the demand for “retro” and “vintage” these days.
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All photos personal
Once the images all looked “aged,” I inserted them in Word (because I’m not a fancy-pants designer) and spaced them out so they would all have a border. I aimed to make them look like a polaroid and made the bottom border a little bigger.
Next, I wrote in the names. I decided to use Courier New as the font for a “typewriter” kind of feel, and printed them out!
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