Weddingbee Blog

Like many a bee before me, I have hit a few bumps in the road in wedding planning. About a month ago we hit a snag that made me feel seriously over wedding planning. While I obviously haven’t called off our wedding, it has taken me this long to get perspective and realize I should share my blunder with the hive.

Let’s rewind to September 2008. Mr. PT and I started one of the most exciting parts of wedding planning—choosing INVITATIONS!! Like Miss Piglet, I had compiled a ton of inspirational wedding invites; unlike Miss Piglet, I knew that I didn’t have the design savvy or the patience to DIY our invites. So I showed Mr. Peep the invites I liked, unsure of where we’d get our invites made. The good news was that we were on the same page as to what we liked design-wise, and we both knew we wanted eco-friendly invites. The bad news was that Mr. Peep really really wanted letterpress invites. I nearly laughed in his face. Letterpress invites were SO NOT in our budget. Once again, out came our Champagne tastes creeping through on our Bud Light budget (isn’t this trend getting annoying??).

Mr. PT was a bit persistent, so I told him I’d humor him by spending a day looking for an affordable letterpress vendor, and then I’d move on to invites that we could actually afford.

I sent out at least a dozen emails to Etsy vendors and professional designers. Most of the responses were exactly what I expected—WAY over budget. Then I got an email from an Etsy designer who seemed open to helping us design invites, as she was just expanding her invitation business, and she had a great deal with a letterpress printer. It seemed too good to be true.
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I am. I’m marrying a music snob. A music snob that doesn’t dance. Mr. Joey is a self-proclaimed music snob who is part of music snob group. That’s what I get for marrying a guy I met at a music museum, I guess.

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Luckily for me, he doesn’t criticize anyone’s taste. He knows what he likes and what he doesn’t. There are definitely band and musical genres I like that he doesn’t, but he never says word and doesn’t complain if Brit Rock is playing (Keane, Travis).

What does this have to do with the wedding?
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I think I can safely say that I am the biggest procrastinator out of all the Bees! Who else changes the color scheme of their wedding with less than 50 days to go before the big event? But I am firmly entrenched in the rainbow sherbet scheme–especially because it is so easy to incorporate aqua and poppy into!
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It is so important to be able to step back and ask for help when we need it. It is what will keep us sane in life and from going on overload. (This is my inner therapist talking; it is a whole different ballgame taking my own advice.) This same concept of asking for help applies to wedding planning. Since I already shared my amazing coordinator with you, I want to fill you in on why I thought it was so important to find someone to help with the big day.

I love event planning. I’ve been doing it for years and Mr. Duckling has as well. Before deciding to become a therapist, I thought seriously about wedding planning. I couldn’t wait to plan my own wedding if for no other reason than that I would get to plan a major event and all its details. However, I knew that without question, I wanted a day of coordinator.
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I am loving these gorgeous invitations and save-the-dates by “Cheer Up Cheerup”. The colors are bright and the designs are modern.

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We often get questions about how we decide on new Weddingbee generations, so I thought I’d go into how it all started.

We first started with the insect generation since I’m a bee.  When we started to think about future generations, we tried to keep these general rules in mind:

• variety of color/design so the characters are easy to differentiate (herbs and leaves for example would be confusing)
• categories where we could have at least 10 characters
• characters that we think users would want to be
• characters that are somewhat wedding related (we finally broke this rule with the most recent generation of baby animals)

With that in mind, generations following the bugs included: flowers, fruits, gemstones, vegetables, candy, birds, desserts, tropical/exotic fruits, beverages, hors d’oeuvres, shoes, makeup, and baby animals.

In the past, we thought Bees selected specific characters because they were cute.  Based on the feedback we received on the shoe and makeup characters, we thought they would be wildly popular.  But Bees that weren’t super into shoes or makeup opted to choose characters from the previous beverage and hors d’oeuvres generations instead.  I absolutely loved the stiletto character and was surprised that it took so long to be snatched up.  But when I thought about it, I’m definitely not fierce enough to be a Miss Stiletto, so I realized that Bees were selecting characters based on how they could identify with them personally.   
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Reader smilinfox is selling 22 shopping bags. They’re gingham print on natural kraft paper. The bags are 16 inches wide, 12 inches deep, and have a 6 inch gusset. They’re the perfect size to hold all kinds of goodies for your guests, especially if you have a country theme at your wedding. She is asking for $11 plus shipping.

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:
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I didn’t think twice about bustles before my first dress fitting. I had no idea that it would be such a difficult decision to make! I went to my first fitting alone without a camera, and that wasn’t a very good idea… I didn’t have anyone to bounce my opinions off of, and didn’t have pictures to show anyone afterward. I ended up going back to the salon a week later so my mom could see the different bustles in person.

During the initial fitting, the first bustle that the seamstress/shop owner tried was the popular French bustle. I have seen these many times, and found them to be quite lovely. I assumed that this was the bustle I would go with—another reason that I didn’t do any research before the fitting. To my surprise, it just didn’t work with my dress style. The underpinning hid a lot of the lace, and the width of the underbustle looked weird against the silhouette of the dress.

The seamstress then tried an overbustle. It started out simple, but soon had many, many points. It was way too complicated for my taste, and I began to worry. The dress would be bustled for the majority of the time that I would wear it, and I really wanted to be happy with it.

I didn’t get any pictures during the first fitting, but I brought my camera for round two.

Mr. Taffy, do not look any further!!!
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New Orleans is a city full of food, culture, and fun! Being from the area, I’ve seen a good bit of the city. For those of you who would like to vacation in New Orleans one day, I’d like to share my favorites with you in the form of a sample 4-day honeymoon itinerary (to make this wedding related, of course!). Let’s just say that your tummy will be super happy after this trip, but there will be some walking to do!

Day 1 (arrival)

Let’s just assume you get to your hotel for 2PM at check-in time.

2:00PM Check in, nap, and beautify yourself (I have to nap after traveling… just have to!).

5:30PM Kick off your New Orleans trip with flair and have dinner at the infamous Brennan’s Restaurant in the French Quarter. This would be a splurge of a dinner, but I promise you, it’s well worth it!! Be sure to try the Banana’s Foster… they come out and make it right in front of you! Super cool! If you love the food that much, totally purchase their cookbook as your first souvenir. It’s called “Breakfast at Brennan’s (and Dinner too!)”. Or, check out some of their featured recipes here, as well!

Image source
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Mr. P and I don’t really like cake. But what would a vaguely Marie Antoinette-themed wedding be without cake? We love little cake-like things like macarons (that I’ve talked about way too much already), but we want something different. Croquembouche (translation: crunch in the mouth) is basically a cone-shaped pile of profiteroles. Wouldn’t it be so lovely to eat this?

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We thought it over and went back and forth for about ten minutes, and decided the pile would be difficult to cut into and negotiate. We also realized secretly that we’re not that cool or sophisticated (and more traditional than we thought). So, we’re going with cake.
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I am a German girl. Yes, there may be other odd ethnicities mixed in (a little Irish here, a little Dutch there), but the majority of my bloodlines come from Germany. And interestingly enough, so do Mr. Powder Puff’s. So, after we’re married, I will be trading in my strong German maiden name for the mister’s strong German name.

Since we are both German, and proud of our heritage, I thought it would be nice to incorporate some Bavarian traditions into our wedding. Well, after I did a little research, it is safe to say that that WILL NOT be happening. Instead of nice things, like a tea ceremony, the Germans instead have crazy things they do to celebrate the joyous occasion of die standesamtliche trauung (a wedding).

Here are just a few for your consideration.

Hochzeitslader
The Germans like to fancy things up. So instead of a paper invitation, they send their guests a singing telegram!
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Knowing is half the battle, right? I was checking out the KitchenAid hand mixer, and in an Amazon review (I am addicted to Amazon reviews), someone mentioned that if you register for/buy any KitchenAid Cook for the Cure items, you need to enter your product’s information at www.cookforthecure.com in order to generate the donation from KitchenAid to breast cancer research. I also checked it out at Bed Bath and Beyond. Apparently donations aren’t automatic. I always assumed they were, but I suppose they aren’t.

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Please keep it in mind if you’ve received or purchased any Cook for the Cure products. The fight against breast cancer needs all the help it can get!

Last week, Mr. S and I were throwing around more ideas for the groomsmen. We started talking about Chuck Taylors, and how cool they’d look on all of the guys with their tuxes. I continue to see them in more and more weddings, and I love them! I’m even a wee bit obsessed now with the idea.

And look, Converse even makes “our” green. Thanks, Converse! Since the ladies will already be in green shoes, why not have the gents pop as well in some fancy green footwear? To me it’s only logical, but some of the girls aren’t dying to wear green shoes, so I tend to wonder how much the guys will like wearing green shoes as well…

Source: The Feelington Family Blog
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Ah the budget. What can I say, but ARH! We’re working with a very small budget — $15,000 for the wedding AND the honeymoon. An intimate wedding for $10,000? Doable right? What about an intimate wedding with 130 guests for under $10,000? A little crazy? That’s what I thought.

We saved a lot of money on my dress since it’s pretty simple and handmade. In total, it only cost me $265! We’re committing wedding blasphemy and not doing engagement pictures and not really having a professional photographer for the ceremony or the reception. I have a couple friends and friends of friends who are amateur photographers and looking for work to beef up their portfolio. I’m meeting with a few of them next week and hoping that someone will work within our measly budget of $400. We’re really just not picture people.

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All photos below by The Wiebners unless otherwise noted. We purchased a disc of all unedited images from our wedding day, so some post-processing has been done by me for the purpose of sharing the photos with you. Click on any photo to enlarge.

When it was time to put on my dress, I had butterflies. This was the moment that would really make me a bride.
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