Weddingbee Blog

Mr. Taffy and I decided early on that we wanted to make a charitable donation instead of making or purchasing favors. Because there are many charities that are important to us and our families, we decided to choose three charities and have our guests vote during the reception.

We had a hard time deciding on an object to give people for voting purposes (of course, with my luck, I didn’t read Mrs. Lovebug’s post about her favors until we had already found one). We found inspiration in these wooden tokens from the Michigan Beer Fest, which I had been using as a circle guide while making our table numbers.

Mr. Taffy found some plain wooden coins on eBay, and we ordered around 200 of them. I will have to post in the comments on which eBay seller we went through, as Mr. Taffy isn’t here to ask at the moment. It was challenging to find affordable tokens in such a small quantity, so it is worth posting!
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And so begin the Quiche recaps! The task of sorting through & organizing all of our pictures into a coherent (and interesting) sequence of events is DAUNTING. We have the majority of our guests’ pictures, along with our photographers’. Added up, we’re looking at THOUSANDS of pictures. Thousands. Eep!

Let’s go back to a chilly April morning in Chicago. Luckily, Mama and Stepdad Quiche had been in town for a few days to help get everything sorted and packed. Packing was, well, interesting. I was still freaked out about going through customs with all of our decorations, gifts, flowers, and my dress. We divvied up all of the goods and handed them out to bridesmaids and groomsmen. Mama & Petey Quiche also lugged A LOT of stuff for us. Then, very early on Wednesday morning, we headed for O’Hare. Boarding was a breeze & we were on our way!

A flight attendant noticed my dress bag & upgraded us to first class! SCORE!

I think I slept for most of the trip. We ended up on the same flight as our friends from Virginia, so it was great to see them in the middle of the trip! Imagine my excitement, though, when seeing this out of the window:

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Oh, naming conventions. I tried to hide from you, but my honorifics post reminded me I’ll have to deal with you sooner than later. Le sigh.

It’s not as though I want to become Princess Consuela Banana Hammock and Mr. D to become Mr. Bag (but I would be pleased if we both became the Banana-Bags). I am have deep issues with traditional naming conventions. What’s worse is that I’m starting to feel completely alone in this. Even my father said I should change my name! Thankfully, I have at least one friend who has co-hyphenated and others who have kept their birth names. While Mr. D supports me on this issue, he is also trying to see both of our families’ opinions on it, whereas I feel there are really only two opinions that matter in this decision.

If you’re struggling with the idea of a name change (for you or you and your partner), I’ve found a few resources that might help you.
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*I have not been able to stop smiling since Mrs. Bee gave me a Yudu. She basically made my month, or let’s be honest, more like my year! Now if you remember my obsession with my Cricut, Cuttlebug and craft gadgets in general, you can understand my pure joy in knowing that I now have the newest addition to the ProvoCraft family.

It arrived in a MASSIVE box last week and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. Which is probably why I am behind in my blog posts due to Yudu research. I even burned a chicken the first night I found out I was going to be the proud owner of a Yudu. No joke, I ran upstairs to get my computer and look up Yudu demo videos and completely forgot I had a chicken on the stove until I discovered it was charred black. It’s okay, you can laugh at me and shake your head, Mr. Ducky did, as well.

I’ve been drooling over Gocco invitations and DIY goodies in the hive since I first discovered Weddingbee. I was originally hoping that I’d be able to use the Yudu for my wedding invitations that I need to make in the next few weeks.
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As I recently posted, we’ve gone through some centerpiece adjustments and will have lovely branch centerpieces for 8 of our receptions tables. We’re left with 6 or 7 tables (depending on the number of guests) to outfit with “low” arrangements.

Since my original plan was to have a single stem on each of the 15 tables, I had already been budgeting around $9/table for this, or $135 total. Now that 8 of the tables are otherwise taken care of, that $135 can go toward just 7 tables. That gives me around $19/table to play around with.

I still want to use one of these small Crate & Barrel vases on each of those tables for the low arrangements (I mean, I have them, I may as well use them…):

Source: Crate & Barrel

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Several weeks ago, Mr. Bruschetta and I had one of the biggest fights of our relationship. The culprit? Our wedding day transportation. Let me explain a bit more…

Throughout our engagement, the mister and I have shared ideas and talked things out to determine each other’s preferences. Often, one of us feels strongly about something, while the other is more lackadaisical. But we always factor in one another’s feelings — and since our tastes and vision so frequently coincide, decision-making is a breeze, and both of us are usually quite content as we check things off the to-do list.
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Here is our second installment of the bees’ invitations. This post features invites that were DIYed by the bees!  Check out the bees’ professional and semi-DIY invitations here.

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Mrs. Pineapple’s Invitations

# of Invitations: 74
Total Cost: $171.00 (including stamps and programs)
Cost per Invitation: $2.31

Invitations:

About Us…:

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Kitten wedding photo by The Nichols

Months and months ago when I was in the beginning of the wedding planning process, I came across these table numbers available for download on the Martha Stewart Weddings site. I loved the look of them and always knew I would find a way to incorporate them into our wedding. A few weeks before the big day, I still hadn’t decided how we would mark our tables. On one of my many, many trips to Michaels, I had spotted these light blue Martha Stewart Crafts photo albums. The front and back covers are covered with fabric and the insides have heavy accordion-folded paper. The albums were $9.99 apiece. Armed with my 40% off coupons, I decided these photo albums were the perfect vehicles for Martha’s table numbers.
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Are you moving to a new address around the time of your wedding? It’s probably a good idea to let people know! I always loved the sentiment of receiving a card containing newlyweds’ new contact info.

Mr. Mary Jane and I did things a little out-of-order (as is our style :D): We bought our house in May, but we’re not getting married until September. Still, with family and friends buzzing about our new digs, we decided it’d be a good idea to send them a little something commemorating the move.

I’m a pretty computer-crazed gal, but I think that some things require a little more attention to detail than a Facebook status change. (I also may or may not be suffering from a touch of invitation DIY envy. :)) I decided we should use our new address as an excuse to send out some mail. Snail mail. As in, you put a stamp on it and put it in the mailbox.

Mr. Mary Jane and I love photography, so a photo card was the logical choice. Since this is not a wedding invitation, and we have to send out a lot of them, I decided not to enter into full-on seven-trips-to-Michaels-at-3-a.m.-with-the-paper-cutter DIY-territory. Instead, I turned to Shutterfly to make this simple Change-of-Address card happen. To sweeten the deal, I had a gift card (of course)!

But first, the pictures!
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First of all, thank you so much for all of your suggestions in part one of this series! I listened to all of them, and there were a ton of options for beautiful processional songs. The results of the poll ended up with a tie between Prelude in C and Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. So of course, the only logical choice for me was to not pick either of them… okay, maybe it wasn’t logical, but that is what happened.

My bridesmaid Anna plays the piano, and since we’re having only a pianist for the ceremony, I figured I should get some options from her. She came up with a ton of choices, and I found two songs that I absolutely love!

Remember how I said I didn’t want Canon in D as one of the processional pieces? Well… I changed my mind the second I heard this arrangement:

(source)

Yep, you can call me a hypocrite.
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After Sarah Parrott sent over multiple images for me to sort through and decide which we’d play with on our invitation suite, she started designing our first set of proofs. Not only did I want Mr. CB’s barn to play a part, but I was also intent on bringing back the horse from our save-the-dates. On top of those two homegrown images, the peony (Image 1) and the barn swallow (Image 4) were my faves.

The first round of proofs, which arrived in my inbox in PDF format, looked like this. Use your imagination to envision them on 5″ x 7″ A7 Crane Lettra Letterpress paper with Goccoed ink.

Invitation 1

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It didn’t rain this weekend in south Georgia, but there was another kind of shower: my first bridal shower! Despite the 100+ degree heat, a handful of women braved the elements and made the trek over to my FMIL’s friend’s house. Isn’t it beautiful?

The first thing I noticed when I walked in was the fabulous spread laid out on the dining room table.

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I never really sat down and thought long and hard about WHY I wanted to get married. Prior to tying the knot, we lived together, we loved each other, and we had (and currently have) no real plans to have children in the next few years. There was no TECHNICAL reason why we needed to get married. A dental plan would have been nice, but even since marrying and hooking on to Mr. Peng’s dental plan, I still haven’t gone to the dentist (eew). So, there’s no excuse there, either.

I could say I wanted to get married because I was ready to commit the rest of my life to Mr. Peng. I could say I wanted to get married, because he was the one, and we wanted to stand up and legally commit to each other in front of our friends and family on one glorious day. But that’s not really the truth.

Mr. Peng and I moved in together when I was 23. I was ready to commit to living together, and lived happily in peace for well over a year without so much of a peep of marriage talk, either from me or from him. In college, I always thought I’d get married at 28, if I was lucky and the world worked out in the way I planned it to. It wasn’t as if my secret “magical marriage age” was even close to coming up.

Then they came.
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There is a lot of labor involved in making a bouquet, especially for the bride. The size and shape have to be perfect, the flowers have to be the highest quality you can find, and the construction is very intricate. Then you have to add the usually complex ribbon wrapping to complete the look. I asked my floral designer to photograph the steps it takes to make a bridal bouquet, and I wanted to share them with you. I hope this provides some insight to how much work is really involved in making beautiful personal flowers!

1. Processing flowers: Flowers are ordered from numerous countries around the world and are delivered to the studio in large boxes. They are packed either in 10 stem bunches or if they’re roses, they will be packed 25 to a sleeve. Each flower will have to be stripped of its leaves and thorns, cut and placed immediately in water to hydrate, and then they will be ready to use. Depending on the type and number of flowers you’re working with, processing can take anywhere from an hour to one or two days.

Fabulous photography rocks.

All photos by Angela Herzog Photography

Too much great photography, though? Makes my stomach hurt.

We started with more than a thousand images which I narrowed to 120 of my favorites. After editing, I had 408 really great photos. Really. I love them with all my heart.

Um, but now what? I don’t know what to do next. And trying to figure that out is making me breathe funny and feel hot and overwhelmed.
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