Weddingbee Blog

As a newlywed, everyone asks you, “How does it feel? Do you feel different?” My response is usually, “Not much has changed.” Mr. G and I lived together before marriage. We pay bills in the same manner that we always have. We’re a unit. But when a friend told me a story the other day, my thought process made me realize that maybe I am different.

One of my friend’s coworkers, an ambitious, single woman, is having an affair with a boss at their company. They’d been flirting and carrying on for quite some time, and then a fellow coworker saw them out at a bar one night being more than friendly with one another. Now the whole office knows and talks about it at the watercooler. Oh, and did I forget to mention, the boss is married with small children?

I have never been accepting of the idea of cheating. But, in my younger years, I wasn’t super judgmental about it, either. When a girlfriend of mine was fooling around with a married man in college, I didn’t approve. But, on the other hand, I didn’t necessarily throw a fit and break off our friendship, either. I thought that I shouldn’t be judgmental of her and her relationship. People were often unhappy in their marriages. Maybe my friend and her married companion really were meant to be? It was a stretch, but, at the time, I gave her the benefit of the doubt.

However, now that I am married, I’m on the other side of that fence.
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After nearly a year of growing out my hair, it was time to find a hairdresser and do a trial. I went to PA in May and met up with two local ladies to try things out. One was Momma Sunbeam’s hairdresser, and the other a stylist who worked about 45 minutes away that I found via Craigslist.

I took an inspiration board with me since it’s much easier to explain things in pictures (the bun had been tossed aside, but is back in my folder now!).

*Images from Weddingbee (Hi Mrs. Dumpling!), and Style Me Pretty.*

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I saw this earlier, and thought, ‘WOW…

source

… BEAUTIFUL!’

Maybe it just looks like a bunch of yarn to you, but to me, that looks like soft, supple, delectably cozy wedding-wear to me! So, I did what any bride drunk off the crazy juice does. I spent time thinking about it.

Bad idea. I like it. It’s pretty. Here, this might help you visualize -
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“Yea! Time to party! Woo, hoo!

Oh, wait, what? Pictures, right. Well, okay, we’ll take pictures. But THEN WE’RE GONNA PARTY! Right? Can someone check the schedule? Right. Okay. Good. That’s definitely right.

Here we go. Um, what? Picture list? Yes, I did one. On my laptop. Which is upstairs… ooookay then, we’ll make it up as we go. Let me think. Man, I wish we had booze down here. I need a drink.

Girls first. Smile pretty!

Okay, now the girls with the mister. I think I saw something like this on a blog once. {Note they all have the good sense to look slightly embarrassed.}
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As you can probably tell by my previous posts, planning for me has been a lot of trial and error.

Centerpieces were no exception!  While I have long considered myself a crafty person, I have never crafted any invitations, or thank you notes.  I’ve never tried my hand at favors or cake toppers or veils.  And I have certainly never tried to make a floral centerpiece!  I am a bit embarrassed to show you my first try at centerpiece making, but I think it’s important to see that not everything turns out quite the way you envisioned it.  When I first joined the wedding blog world, everything looked so gorgeous, and I was often disappointed when my projects didn’t turn out like all the pretty pictures I saw.

I knew from the start I didn’t want many cut flowers at the wedding. I wanted to rely more on herbs from our garden, succulents, and different varieties of ferns (including fiddleheads, my favorite). After an early morning trip to the flower mart for ferns and floral foam, I settled in to create my first ever work of floral art!

That is what I came up with. Not completely horrible (I did display it in my house for a week or so) but not at all what I was going for.
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Come swing on by this Sunday night (8/02) at 7 PM to chat with me on BeeTV as we approach the two-month countdown!

I’d love to take suggestions on what you’d like to hear about! DIY tutorials? Young-ish bride stuff? The challenges of getting married in NYC?

Hope to see you there!

Ah, my last post as an unmarried bee. I had to write it today, since we start really early tomorrow (before 7AM!).

I have to say, I (or we) didn’t think we’d make it to this day. The last few months and particularly, this last week, has been filled with more drama and madness than we thought we could survive. And here we are, almost at the finish line.

I can’t tell everyone how much Weddingbee has meant to me through this planning process. Besides a few out-of-state friends and Mr. Joey (mostly in the last 8 weeks), I’ve been largely alone in the planning process. No one understood why I was DIYing so much, and it was hard to find anyone who understood our vision or look for the wedding until I found the hive. It was like having 1000 friends to bounce ideas off of and help with the wedding. For this, I will always be grateful to you all.

And for Mr. Joey, I have a little antidote.

A few times a week when I’m waiting for my bus on 1st and Jackson, I see this elderly couple.
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I won’t mince words: Our invitation design process was aggravating. For this reason, I won’t be sharing the name of the designer we worked with to create and print our letterpress suite. (Feel free, though, to PM me with specific questions; I do think it’s important not to sugarcoat the situation.)

Creating this design was stressful — it took close to 20 very different versions before ours resembled the ideas I had shared with the designer over eight weeks earlier, at the start of our collaboration. (For example, recommending consistency in the number of dots accenting the invitation and reception card and asking our designer to fix the kerning between Mr. Bruschetta’s first, middle and last names on the invitation.)

Once Etsy led me to our awesome calligrapher, and I fell for one of her styles, I knew I’d found the perfect element to weave throughout our wedding. We featured Fran’s gorgeous “Cocktail” lettering throughout our suite — she even dreamed up what I’ll call “Cocktail 2.0″, incorporating some extra swirls and twirls, so our names on the invitation would stand apart slightly from the rest of the script-y words and phrases.

Truly, Fran’s contributions are my absolute favorite part of our invitations. Her lettering practically pops off the page, and coordinates perfectly with the “Cocktail” addresses adorning the envelopes.
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A couple months ago, I was happy to find out that my cousin was getting married. What’s funny is that I had never ever thought she would tie the knot, but admitted she did it for her fiance. Marriage was something very important to him and she knew she’d be with him forever… so why not make it official? I found it to be a very nice gesture on her part.

They decided they wanted a really really really small wedding—25 people, tops. Heck, I wasn’t even invited (which was fine of course ). They were planning a wedding in 6 months, and had a very little budget to make this wedding happen. Well, 2 months ago, I received an email. She asked me if I would be willing to do both her makeup and be the official photog for her wedding. They weren’t paying for a photographer so she thought that I would be a better candidate to take pics than say… uncle Bob.

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With the wedding days away, I’ve had two nights in a row of insomnia. The problem is that it’s not just the wedding on my mind: I’ve got this tricky career move decision I’m mulling over; Mr. Swan has all of a sudden gotten a flurry of interviews (YAY!!!); and work travel keeps flaring up again, even though it was supposed to stop over a month ago (I am technically scheduled to be away for a day—two days before the wedding, but it’s not clear. I am NOT happy).

This isn’t a new pattern for me, though. Whenever there are big life changes around the corner, or if I am in the midst of major change, my mind races and sleep goes out the window. What’s annoying is that this actually makes me extra emotional and more prone to freak out. At the very least I’m eating well and actually exercising, but sleep would be nice.

When wedding stress reaches its highest levels for you, does your body react? How do you deal with it? Are there any other bride insomniacs out there?

Everyone knows about the stereotype of the crazy, controlling bride who dictates what her husband-to-be and best buds can and can’t do for his bachelor party. Apparently, even though our groomsmen know nothing else about wedding planning or traditions, even they know about this stereotype (either that, or they just think I’m nuts, which is also possible).

As it turns out, Mr. Star’s guys have been planning his bachelor party for some time now and Mr. Star told me the other day how humorous he found it that they were all taking such pains to keep any and every detail from my knowledge.
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Etsy, no doubt about it, is a never ending source of beautiful things! I have been researching for signs, but as you know, I don’t want a normal carved or painted one. So, how cool would some of these look attached to wooden signs?

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I think my ideal honeymoon would involve a three week European tour filled with a combination of exploration and relaxation. This, however, is not possible for us at the moment *makes a sad face*. We have neither the available time off, nor the funds.

Despite foregoing our dream trip, I really want to take a smallish vacation after our wedding because:

1. We haven’t been on vacation in over a year
2. After all the events of this year and the stress of the wedding, we need one

I guess we would be open to a trip to Mexico, but I’ve been there, done that, and it’s kind of scary over there right now anyways. So now, I’m trying to come up with some possible locations in the US (or close vicinity) to throw into the suggestion pot (Mr. Beagle is coming up with his own possible travel locations… you could say I’m just cheating by asking for your help ).

So here’s what we have in mind:
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I just received this email from my wedding band designer (no, you did not miss a post, I haven’t told you about it yet).

Hi Miss French Bulldog,

I just wanted to update you on your ring order. Right now I am waiting for the diamonds for you ring to arrive by FedEx, which will be this afternoon. If I can get all of the stones set before 5PM, I will be shipping the ring today. Otherwise it will be tomorrow morning.

Okay, let me know if you have any questions!

Justine

If it goes out today, I will get it tomorrow! But if it goes out in the morning, I won’t get it until Monday! The earier I get it, the earlier I can try it on and forget to take it off, and the earlier I can tell you all about it…

Dear FedEx,
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After watching this film a good thirty times each, we thought it would be a good time to add in some more details about Raj + Carolyn’s rather epic wedding.

We knew in flying to TN what an opportunity we had with the two cultures coming together. On Friday night we shot the rehearsal for an hour or so, and in hearing Raj’s welcome toast, the idea for the whole piece was born. On Saturday, the day started with a Catholic ceremony and then the night transitioned into the garba (which is the dancing you see before the baraat). Sunday was filled with the Hindu ceremony with Carolyn getting ready again, but this time in an entirely different way. The diversity between the two days, yet their similarities was what was so striking to us and was something we wanted to try and convey with this piece.

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