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Last week, Mr. Latte flew into town (yay!) for his spring break. But the poor sucka was fooled (muhahaha) as there wasn’t a beach or pina colada in sight. Instead, he found himself in the windy and (still) chilly East Coast weather, being dragged from location to location and city to city to get some wedding stuff done. Poor guy.
Our first stop? To visit Jeannie, our florist, and to (finally!) see a mock-up of our centerpieces! You’ve patiently followed along with me (part 1, part 2) and my emotional roller coaster ride through flower-land. And now you shall be rewarded with a sneak peek at the goods. Woohoo!
We are planning to have 16 tables (max!), half of which will feature tall centerpieces and the other half to feature low ones. I’m not a big fan of tall candlesticks, and those big floral arrangements that sit atop long, thin vases scare me (how do they not topple over?!?), so we had very few options to work with. Jeannie suggested using branches, orchids and hanging votives, which turned out beautifully!
The one disadvantage of having a destination wedding is that you don’t have the convenience of having a trial, or even a taste test, at your leisure. We got to Hawaii a week—seven days—before the wedding. That gave me seven days to visit our venue, have a hair trial, and get all those itty-bitty lil’ details in check; all while trying to relax, have fun, and entertain our guests in paradise.
Two days after we got to the rock, I had my hair and makeup trial with May from Beauty by May. If you don’t remember, I was looking for a half up/half down do with dramatic eyes.
Before:
Yikes!
After:
Finally, the last post on our save-the-dates! You’ve seen how we made the envelopes and the save-the-date cards. I told you I’d write about the cost breakdown and lessons learned, so here it is. First up, let’s see how much they cost us, shall we?
——–
$143.60
*Note: The printing company we used had quoted us $.40 per color sheet when I sent them our design. Later we found out that they had quoted us wrong (it should cost more like $.99 per sheet) but they still honored the original quote. We got lucky!
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Mr. Mary Jane and I are a very open-book couple. By that, I mean that we talk about everything, and often. We find it hard to believe that couples make it to the marriage stage without ever having talked about things so important as (for example) religion, finances, and future goals. We both feel that it’s important to have a relationship built on equality and honesty, and we make most decisions (big or small) together. So, with that in mind, why wouldn’t we start discussing marriage as soon as we were feeling the vibe?
Fairly early in to our relationship, we both knew we wanted to be together for good. Marriage is one of the biggest decisions a couple makes in their lives, and we felt it should be made together. By the time we’d been together a year, we were seriously discussing the “whens” and the “hows” of our marriage.
First, we considered our families and friends. We’d each been in a serious relationship before this, and we wanted to be sure that our families had moved on from our exes as completely as we had. We thought about timing. How long was “long enough” to date before engagement? Would people whisper about our “fast” courtship, or would they be overjoyed that we’d finally found “the one” for each other? We looked for warning signs, too: close relatives or friends who may have reservations about our relationship. We found quite the contrary - some folks were blatantly telling us to, “hurry it up already!”
Next, we considered our money and future plans.
Read more…
Featured on Weddingbee
All-Inclusion Invitation Suites
“Make an elegant invitation statement without the fuss. Stylish invitation sets with matching envelopes, reception and response cards included.”
Hey Hive! Remember me? So, I’m still working on wedding recaps, and by working, I mean slacking, big time. Here are a few of my favorite detail shots from the wedding. Jason Angelini did an amazing job capturing everything.
Well, we have officially booked our honeymoon, and I am so excited! As I’ve mentioned before, we have been looking forward to the honeymoon for a while. It will be my first real break after finishing graduate school, and will be the first time that we will have time away and will have nothing to worry about. With that in mind, we really wanted to go somewhere that was beautiful, where we could relax, and still have lots of options if we wanted to go do something.
Well, our criteria brought us to Hanalei Bay Resort on the North Shore of Kauai. We love Kauai because it is so beautiful and is not overly populated or developed. Now what’s the “scoop”? I want to share the awesome deal we found, and hopefully it will help if you are also planning a honeymoon on a budget. But first, I have to share the view from our shower!!
Yes this is the view from the shower alone! Amazing! And don’t worry, it’s not a full exposure window, but you can make it fog, so people can’t see in and think they are getting a show! Ha ha. Anyways, I just thought that it was funny that the shower has such a great view!
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
Somewhere along the way, flower uncertainty had taken hold of me. I’m all over the map here. I’ve seriously considered anemones, but the chances are high that they will not be in season for our Saturday in September. Integrating hypericum berries has stayed on the list, but they’re more of an accent than a feature, and probably will be an accent for the bridesmaids, not for moi. I’ve even gone as far as to contemplate the bouquet stem, as you may remember.
The criteria for my bouquet included the following: that they be white, interesting, unique, and full of texture. Oh yeah, and in season in September, please!
All kidding aside, it’s really important to me that I have strong inspiration photos to take along with me when I meet with our florist in a couple of months. When someone else gets really excited, I quite often will agree with them… only to end up walking away with something that I don’t want. I tend to be too much of a people pleaser, and usually get taken in a completely different direction than the one I had originally wanted to go in. This is how I ended up with bright orange hair upon leaving a salon a few years back. I most definitely don’t want the equivalent of “Raggedy Ann hair” when my wedding bouquet is handed over to me.
When searching, I found three flowers that all come in white and fulfill all of my requirements: ranunculus, hydrangea, and dahlias. Through the magic of Google Images, I plugged ’ranunculus, hydrangea, and dahlia bouquet’ in the search field, and voila! Some great options came my way that were fluffy, white, and unique, using varied combinations of my desired flowers.
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Oh no, I haven’t changed my mind about my dress. I’m still going with the fabulous short number by Liza Rietz. I’ve just asked her if a little change is possible.
I love the dress as is, and would wear it as she designed it, but for some reason, only recently did I realize that me and crew necklines are not a flattering pair. I have wide boobs (yes, I said it), and a crew neckline highlights their wideness. I don’t really know how to explain it better than that. I’m sure a push-up bra would help, but I also know a scoop neck does wonders. So I emailed Liza and asked her if a small scoop neck was at all possible. Thankfully, she said yes, and proposed a change.
This is her original design:
Today’s wiki is all about fonts. Choosing fonts is among one of the first tasks that brides take on when they are choosing their paper goods. There are endless amounts of fonts out there, but where do you go to find them, and which ones are for you?
There are so many great resources out there for elaborate, beautiful, and even, free fonts! Some of the bees’ favorite free font resources include:
What are some of the wedding world’s most popular fonts, and where can you go to get them? What are some great inspirational tips for choosing fonts that look beautiful together? If you’ve got a great resource, or tips for choosing fonts, share them with the hive in the Font wiki:
If you’re unsure how you can contribute to the wiki, take a peek at this wiki article on how to edit a wiki. Check it out and share your expertise! Or, if you’re shy, just leave your tips in the comments, and we can add them to the wiki for you!
… is that there’s a UGA football game on the same day. When Mr. Lab and I picked out our date—before we even got engaged—it was originally a bye weekend. Mr. Lab and I are HUGE college football fans, so I didn’t want my dream of an autumn wedding to conflict with a UGA game. But since picking the date, the university added another game to the schedule.
What’s worse is that it’s a home game in Athens, where a handful of our guests (and we) are living now. I’m hoping people will be okay with missing this game. I’m guessing it’ll be a 12:30 PM kickoff with an easy win (at least on paper), so Dawg fans on our guest list will be able to watch the entire game—if aired on a network in Savannah—before the wedding even begins. I’m looking into getting a TV in the reception area somewhere so people (including me!) can stay up-to-date with other big games that day. I have to find out if they already have cable hookups to do this. I feel like I’ll be like the guys in those Verizon V-Cast commercials who are checking score updates during a wedding and honeymoon. I know Mr. Lab and I both will ask for updates at least a couple times during the reception from people with iPhones!
Are any big events (sporting, or otherwise) clashing with your wedding date?
We’ve just lowered the prices on all of the fun stuff for sale in our Weddingbee Gear shop! We don’t make money off of the gear shop, but we thought it would be fun for all the bees and readers to have a way to display their Weddingbee pride! On top of the new lower prices, in the shop, we’ve got 3 coupon codes to share.
Use these codes when you check out to save money on your gear, and show off your bee pride! The coupon codes expire on Friday, so check out the Weddingbee Gear shop today!
I previously posted about my idea for a cake here. But, my Google Reader is constantly bombarding me with additional inspiration, and obviously I fell in love with another (cake, that is). So naturally, I want to ’marry’ the two…
Previous cake of my dreams:
New cake:
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“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.”
-Ambrose Redmoon
I struggle with forgiveness — of myself, of others, of the world at large. Cloaking myself in hurt or anger is somehow more comforting and safe than moving on. I don’t know why. Who wants to be hurt or angry? It’s not like it feels good. I always feel lost, though, in the moment between the apology and whatever comes next. I think (and will ask), “Are we just supposed to go back to normal? Do I pretend it never happened? How do I act now?”
For me, at least, it has taken great courage to return his peace offerings, be they an actual apology, invitation to watch the sun set, or my favorite bad treat. Gestures of forgiveness are easier for me to give than accept, the former feeling like a position of strength more than the latter. But that’s just me. I’m a work in progress — I like to think of that as one of my charms.
Anyone else find it easier to be the apologizer than the apologizee?
Today’s Weddingbee gallery photo of the day comes to us from lilneko69. Check out her gorgeous red and orange lined aisle!
Load your inspirational wedding pictures to the gallery for your chance to win this week’s prize, a 9-piece makeup set from Maybelline!
I’ve been thinking a lot about how or if our relationship will change after our marriage is official. Our living situation will not change, as we are already cohabitants. Other than the legalities that accompany a marriage license, I wonder what might be different. I think about the vows we will take in less than eight months—to honor one another, to stick together through good times and bad, sickness and health, for richer or poorer. Aside from stating these things in front of our loved ones, I feel that we have already vowed, though not verbally, to do these things for one another. One of the aspects of our relationship that I love, love, love the most is the respect we have for one another. This is something that I had not experienced in other relationships, but came very naturally between the two of us. With our respect for each other, we are able to really listen to one another, and we share a comfort in expressing our hopes/concerns/fears/joys we experience both within our relationship, and also that we experience as individuals.
Though we haven’t been exactly poor at any time, we’ve both struggled with paying our bills through college, and now struggle with the fears of today’s unstable market. Finance is a subject in our daily conversation. We don’t have a joint bank account, and will continue to have the majority of our money in separate accounts after we marry, but we do share expenses now, and if one of us is struggling, the other helps out.
I have a chronic illness.
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