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Weddingbee Blog
Previously:
1. Prelude, 2. Tea Ceremony, 3. Getting Ready, 4. The Kids, 5. Wedding Party, 6. Down the Aisle 7. Ceremony, 8. Group Shots, 9. Couple Shots, 10. Jump Shots 11. House Shots, 12. Cocktails and Dinner, 13. First Dance, 14. Parents’ Dance, 15. Toasts, 16. Cake, 17. Lion Dance
Mr. GT thinks it’s funny that Chinese people eat fruit as dessert, but there’d be noooo funny business if I ever left my family hanging at the end of a meal without it. Since fruit was a must have anyway, we upgraded to a chocolate fountain. 8 dipping items included 5 different fruits, plus pretzels, marshmallows, and Rice Krispies treats. Nommm.
True, out-of-town bags are definitely not a wedding guest essential. In fact, they’re often the first thing to go when a budget’s busting out of its seams.
tote-ally welcome - by Whisked Away on Polyvore.com
But, imagine for a minute that you have a sky-high spending limit. Wouldn’t these be the cutest carryalls for your hospitable goodies? L.L. Bean will be adding new limited edition tote-ettes to the party each month. I’m overwhelmed by the adorableness, and wishing I could find a way to squeeze them into the festivities.
Where are you purchasing your out of town bags? Were they a save or a splurge?
There have been some amazing cakes that have been uploaded to the Weddingbee gallery! If you’ve got a beautiful wedding cake that you’d like to showcase, be sure to upload it to the cake gallery! Check out some of our recent favorites:
Thanks to everyone who helped us make a decision about the after party. We are definitely going with Option 3: A party later in the evening. I think everyone will need a chance to recover after the ceremony and reception.
Now that we have that bit sorted, the next thing we’re thinking about is the guest list for the after party. Obviously, everyone who attended the wedding is invited. What we can’t decide is whether to open up the after party to friends and co-workers who weren’t invited to the day’s earlier festivities. Since we worked at the EMP together several years ago, Mr. Joey and I have a lot of friends in common we only see occasionally who aren’t invited to the wedding. Also, everyone at Mr. Joey’s school knows we’re getting married this summer at the school. The priest announced it during a faculty meeting. So much for secrets! I also have some people from work I’d love to invite.
We wish we could have invited everyone, but it just wasn’t in the budget. Is it weird to invite people to the after party who aren’t invited to the wedding? Would you feel slighted that you weren’t invited to the wedding, or would you be happy to share a few drinks with us later in celebration?
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.”
According to theweddingchannel.com (and many other websites), the recommended cost of an engagement ring is equivalent to two months’ salary. Washington based artist Lee Gainer developed a series of prints called “Two Months’ Salary“, where each print lists a profession (anesthesiologist, farmer, referee, etc.), and then shows images of the engagement rings that people in that profession could afford to purchase if they used up two months worth of their wages.
One of the first items on our wedding checklist was finding a venue. Even though we had about 15 months until the wedding, I was concerned about limited availability the longer we waited. My search began on the web (actually this is how most of my planning began) where we looked for venues in Austin and its surrounding areas. We really wanted to find a place that had indoor and outdoor gathering areas. One of the first venues I fell in love with was the Allen House:
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
*I asked Mr. M to write a post about his ring, since it’s such a personal selection for him, so please give my main man a warm welcome! (cue applause)*
Hello wedding blog world! This is my first time writing, so I think I should let you know a little about myself: I am a man’s man, the manliest of many, and manlier than most men. I drink beer, can bench twice my weight, and like things that make lots of noise when they’re breaking other things.
Hmm… well maybe I’m exaggerating a bit. I do like beer as long as it’s light enough to still be refreshing if I splash it on my face while jogging, I could bench twice my weight if I weighed 25lbs, and while I don’t have a need to break things, stemware of any sort only has a 50-50 chance of survival when washed by my hands.
So, maybe I’m not the most testosterone-y of men, but when it came to the idea of wearing a ring, I have to admit, I got a little freaked out. Sure, I’m down with the concept of the wedding ring 110%. “Check the ring ladies. This conversation has been a delight, but this fella is taken, sold, off the market… I am married… to my wife.” But I have always had a weird thing about jewelry. I think Miss Meatball is her most beautiful without any jewelry (except her engagement ring, that’s crazy sexy!) and I feel weird about wearing jewelry, since I’ve never worn any - not even a watch! My dad, while he loves my mother dearly, never wore a ring either, so there is no childhood precedent for me.
I had two options: to either not wear a ring, or somehow find one I liked. I’m pretty sure the former option would have resulted in Miss Meatball pulling out a Bosu Exercise Ball and performing a deathly attack while simultaneously working her core muscles. With this thought, I decided I’d better find a ring I liked.
But what to do?
Read more…
Yeah, I did!
I deleted all the formal china off our registry. Why, you ask?
Because we have no use for it.
When we started registering, formal china was a fairly simple decision to make. Easy, simple, classic, black and white. Done. We loved our choice, and moved on to something else.
The more I thought about it, the less I liked the idea of formal china. What do I need formal china for? I don’t entertain people who would even be comfortable eating off my “good china”. We have dinner parties, but they aren’t those kinds of parties.
(source)
I’ve always known I would want a separate dress to wear for the dancing portion of my reception. I don’t want to get my wedding gown trashed after I break it down for one too many songs, LOL. So after dinner, the cutting of the cake, the bouquet toss, and the first couple of dances, I’m going to change into a “bridal cocktail dress”. We’ll also probably hit River Street for the “after party” and I’ll need a short dress to party in. I may add an inexpensive short veil to the ensemble since I’m not too keen on one for my actual wedding gown, but feel like I’ll miss getting to wear one on our wedding day. This way, people will know I’m a bride while we’re out on the town! I had originally planned to buy a dress like this:
While doing a bit of cleaning this past week, I stumbled on my old wedding planning folder. I found some of our vendor contracts, so I thought I’d share them with you! Keep in mind that these are prices from March 2005, but I think showing what was included in our contracts may be helpful.
Mr. Bee and I got married at the Westside Loft, a beautiful 210 person capacity, 9500 square foot loft in midtown Manhattan. It had 4 distinct areas — the room with the fireplace where we held our ceremony, the reception area (a quintessential New York loft space), a cozy lounge area with sofas, and a lovely garden room.
I actually found a picture of our wedding on their website! They must have taken this picture at some point during set-up because that big tree on the right was definitely moved before our wedding started.
Read more…
We just got our invitation for a pre-wedding-non-shower-dinner being thrown for us by a great friend! How no-fuss and old-school-git-’er-dun is this?! After Weddingbee and all the fanciness that is invitations, when’s the last time you saw something like this? I love it!!! It is sooo our friend!
Mr. P grew up in a wuuuunderful “village-town” in Virginia, just outside of Washington DC. It’s unincorporated, quaint, and full of history. As a teenager, he worked in a family friend’s restaurant, an absolutely charming little establishment in an old Victorian street front. Suzi, the proprietor, has since retired to her farm in Leesburg, but her daughter now runs the business.
Read more…
I didn’t have to look far to find my bouquet inspirations.
For her fall 2007 wedding, Sister Bruschetta “assigned” each bridesmaid a color, and multi-flower, monochromatic arrangements distinguished them. As her maid of honor, I carried a hand-tied bouquet (it’s the top one in the picture, below) combining all of the colors. And Sister Bruschetta had her florist add white accents to another multi-colored arrangement (center, below) to create one distinctly bridal bouquet. They looked awesome together, and equally amazing individually!
As I mentioned before, we have been planning this wedding for over 16 months!!
And I have to say that almost every day, I see at least one wedding detail that I think is so fantastic that I must have it. Yet, I decided long ago that while I love details, I would limit what I would do. Maybe this goes against the grain of the fabulous legacy of detailed Weddingbee weddings, but for me, editing details out of our day is keeping me sane, and I think it allows me to practice the ’less is more’, eco-chic mentality that I strive for.
With less than 50 days before the wedding, I am pretty low key about the thing. I was even able to get our wedding invitations out the door with the motto, ’slow and steady wins the race’. Granted, I skipped a lot of invite details, like a beautiful pocketfold, the lovely ribbon tie, hand embossing each envelope (twice in some cases), a handmade map, an ever-so-crafty ’note’ card, etc. You get my point.
While each of these details makes me swoon, I had a friend tell me last week that I was one of the most laid back brides he’d ever seen. While he doesn’t get to see the mess I’ve made of our apartment, it felt great knowing that I’ve kept some sense of self throughout this whole thing.
That said, here are some swoon-worthy details that I have just said no to:
Personalized Napkins. I love personalized napkins and I did notice what a nice touch they were at a few of the weddings I went to this summer.
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