Weddingbee Blog

Isn’t it funny how just about the time you forget what your wedding dress looks like, the bridal salon calls and tells you it’s in? That’s right, MY WEDDING DRESS IS IN!!

I don’t think I told you, but when I ordered the dress, the salon had only ever seen her in ivory. I knew I wanted a white white dress, so I ordered it in “All White” and said a little prayer. When the salon called on Friday, the lady told me Paigely looked gorgeous and she had been showing her off to everyone. I quote, “The white is gorgeous! We were nervous because we have never seen it in white, but it isn’t blue at all.” PHEW, because there is really no going back now!

**Mr Frenchie, if for some reason you decided today was the day you were going to start reading Weddingbee, please decide not to read this post**
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Mama and Stepdad Quiche flew to Chicago 4 days before we left for Jamaica to help organize, pack, offer moral support, etc. They wanted to treat Mr. Q and me to dinner, so that Saturday night we headed to The Gage. We decided that we would give Mama Q her “thank you for being such an incredible mom and all that you’ve done for me and us and the wedding and everything else” gift that night. Sharing a love of Tiffany with me, yet never owning anything from the store, I decided to get her a necklace. For the past 2 years, Mama Q has been wearing this pearl necklace that I bought for her. It’s a simple pearl on a champagne colored silk thread from Dogeared. The thought is that you’re supposed to make a wish on your necklace & when it falls apart, your wish comes true (gag!)… however, my clever mother bought a spool of champagne silk thread and changes it as it starts to wear

In keeping with the dainty theme of that necklace, along with throwing in some Chicago love, we settled on the Bean necklace (I am not sure if this necklace has anything to do with the Bean in Millennium Park, but we decided to pretend that it does ).

As soon as Mama Q read the first line of the card, she slapped it down on the table. We are a super emotional family, and the tears seem to fall when we’re happy or sad.

Mr. Quiche then pulled out a flat blue box. Pour moi? Oui! I was so excited - this was completely unexpected.
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Feast your eyes on msBlossom’s feast of candy!

Keep on loading your inspirational wedding pics to the gallery to see them featured here on the blog! Remember, your images must be under 1MB in size, or they won’t load.

One of the things that I HATED about wedding planning was the budget. Who wants to think about money when you can look at pretty pictures?! Well, as it turns out the budget is pretty important. Go figure!

Mr. Powder Puff and I had decided early on that we didn’t want to spend a lot of money on this one day. Yes, it’s important, and yes you only get to do it once, but we would like to buy a house in the near future, and I couldn’t justify spending our house down payment on a party. And honestly, keeping the wedding small was a good thing. I found that keeping the costs down kept me focused on the real reason for the celebration- Mr. Powder Puff and I becoming man and wife! Instead of a huge production, we’ll be having an intimate ceremony with a (hopefully!) fun party afterward.

Ultimately, what kept the price reasonable was getting married in Western Michigan. Everything is so much less expensive there—holla! We also enlisted quite a few friends and family to contribute their services, which helped A LOT. It takes a village!

So here’s the breakdown:

Date: 7/2009
City, State: Spring Lake, Michigan
Budget: $12,000
# of Guests: 120

Wedding Day Costs
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Sister Joey, aka MOH Joey, has been racking her brain for weeks about what to do for my bridal shower. She lives in Italy since her husband is posted there, so she hasn’t been able to help with the wedding stuff. She wanted to do an Around the Clock shower but decided explaining the concept to some of the older guests would be too complicated. I liked the idea of something that revolved around the kitchen, but she wanted to be more creative than that, and wanted others to be creative, too.

So her idea? The ABCs. She assigned each guest a letter and asked that they bring a gift that starts with that letter. This seemed like a great compromise - if people want to be creative, they can, and if they don’t, they are likely to find something on the registry that starts with their assigned letter.

I love it. It’s sort of school-ish, and Mr. Joey is a teacher. She’s hoping to do a food or drink item for each letter of the alphabet, but that may be a lofty goal. She wanted to make real invitations, but finding supplies in her small village was hard.
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I’ve been searching high and low for things I can use to decorate our barn that are 1. beautiful and 2. inexpensive.

With these two criteria in mind, the ubiquitous tissue paper pom has been at the top of my list for a while. Honestly, the idea seemed too easy. I was bound to screw up the DIY aspect of the project. Could it really be as easy as it looked?

My fears were confirmed when I tested my fan-folding technique on another wedding craft. I am an abject failure at fan folds. My folds are never ever even! My poms would be hideous! I shouldn’t even try!

Nonetheless, the necessity to clean out the backseat of my car – and thus, remove the pile of white tissue paper that had been lurking there since I wrapped an impromptu shower gift several months ago – pushed me to see if I could manage a paper pom.

I counted out eight sheets of white paper and began folding. The folds were uneven, as usual, but I decided to let perfection go and see how it turned out before I gave up.

My project ran into a speed bump when I whipped out my scissors to round the folded ends of the paper.
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Reader anhngo is selling her Tea Length Ivory Silk Vintage Inspired Wedding Dress. It is 100% silk, size 2 and she is asking for $180 + shipping OBO.

Have a wedding item for sale? Post it with pictures in the Weddingbee classifieds and you might see it featured on the blog!

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A wedding cake is, generally speaking, a pretty big undertaking. Unless you want to make something like this, you’re going to have to think outside the box a little.

this cake definitely surpasses the box

What’s most important to you - the presentation? the decorations? the flavor? the height? the color? Unless you’re a professional baker (or you’ve got a lot of time on your hands and are willing to take a cake decorating class), you may have to prioritize what you want in a wedding cake, especially if you plan on making it yourself.
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So, I showed you my wedding dress, but kinda left a little window open in case I changed my mind. Well, the inevitable has happened. With less than five months to go, and I can’t stand my dress anymore. This mostly stems from the fact that I tried to purchase a poofy, Lolita-style crinoline to give my dress more of a fifties, party feel–and it ended in disaster.

Here’s the look I was going for.

Source

Here’s the dress with no crinoline (please excuse my messy bedhead):
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If you’re like me, and you just can’t get enough of Dan’s pictures (and let’s be real, who can?!), take a gander at the to-die-for slideshow he put together of our teasers and much more!

After the overwhelming response to his photos yesterday, Dan has announced that he will waive his travel fees for any LA brides who found him through these posts and wish to book him as if he were a local photographer. Woot!
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Mrs. Penguin here!

Money always seems to be a mysterious subject when it comes to weddings. I remember starting to plan, and seeing so many beautiful details all over the web and thinking, ’Well, I can’t afford that.’ With a good amount of digging, researching, planning, and comparing, I found out that there were definitely a lot of things that I THOUGHT were much more expensive than they actually were (and on the contrary, some things that were much more expensive than I thought!).

All bee applicants share their wedding budgets with us, and we hope we’ve done a fair job of representing the entire spectrum of wedding budgets here on Weddingbee!

Today we’re launching a series called Real Bee Budgets. Some bees will be sharing their budgets openly, and other bees have chosen to submit their budgets to us, anonymously. Either way, you’ll be able to see how a wide range of bees, past and present, have spent their wedding budgets. Since wedding budget calculators are generally vague, we hope that this series gives you a better idea how real brides spend real money to produce beautiful and inspiring weddings!

We’re kicking off the series with a recap of the past bees who have graciously shared their budgets with us, and in the next few weeks, you’ll see a wide range of budgets shared, so you can get an idea where money really goes into weddings around the hive!

Mrs. Tulip - Washington DC - total budget: $5,000

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I never thought I’d love a thank you card more… until I saw Etsy seller Rasideas’ “Around the House” thank you notes. The gray is just perfect (all of the walls in our condo are painted gray, and we love it!), and the clean simplicity of these cards fits our style to a T.

And, aren’t they perfect? Because at my bridal shower in July people may kindly be buying us our…

Source for all photos: Etsy

… kitchen utensils…
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I didn’t plan this at first. It was one of those moments that magically fell into place. During college, I worked in the Savvy department of Nordstrom. I was constantly surrounded by my favorite designers–Marc Jacobs, Nanette Lepore, Adriana Goldschmied, Ella Moss–and often, I’d spend much of my paycheck on designer duds.

Theory Galila Dress ($325)

One dress, though, never made it up to the counter with me.

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I’ve been thinking about our timeline lately and how I see the day progressing. This has, in turn, brought up the debate about the Receiving Line.

image

Traditionally, you would greet all your guests as they exit the church after the ceremony. It takes a while, but it’s a great way to thank all your friends and family for being there to celebrate with you and for you to be sure not to miss anyone.

The other common option is to visit all the tables and chat with your guests during dinner. Here’s the thing with that option – this girl likes her food :). And as much as I want to thank all our guests, I also really want to eat. So this is a mediocre option, at best.
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I love receiving mail — especially when it’s something this exciting: My new Panasonic camera (a birthday gift from Mama and Daddy Bruschetta) has arrived!

(source)

Purchasing a reliable point-and-shoot before the wedding was already on my to-do list, and knowing this, Mr. Bruschetta secretly passed along the brand and model specifics to my parents before my birthday a few weeks ago. (In fact, he confessed to logging into Weddingbee and sending a PM to Mrs. Cupcake, who’s raved about her Panasonic, in order to ensure he had the correct information.)
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