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Weddingbee Blog
I am making my own wedding dress! I have an idea of what kind of dresses I like, and I’ve narrowed them down to 3:
Number 1: Monique Lhuillier - Nadine
Our rehearsal dinner, to put it mildly, kicked a$$. You may think I’m biased, but that statement was repeated over and over by our guests, not me. For me, the night of the rehearsal dinner was a big blur. Luckily, I have all of these amazing pictures from Ashley Colhouer to remind me what a great time I actually had!
My sister started off the night in typical Quiche family tradition - making everyone cry! She slaved over this amazing scrapbook that documented our engagement and wedding planning process leading up to the big day. We LOVE this book. Plus, it helps that she is like a scrapbooking goddess, so it is very creative & pretty. 
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A few weeks ago I started a pretty simple DIY project. It all began when the Dude and I received a package from his sister, J-dawg. While she was visiting Austin for SXSW, she took a few pictures of us for a photography class she was taking. We just assumed they were for a project and would never see the results. Instead, eight black-and-white glossy photos showed up in our mailbox! I just knew that I had to incorporate them into the wedding somehow.
I decided on six of the photos to use and hit up my local Goodwill for some picture frames on the cheap. Two trips later, and I had these bad boys for under $15 total!
I selected frames in roughly the same size (about 11×7). I didn’t have to worry too much with exact size because of the generous white borders around the pictures. I was going for interesting textures, so that once I hit them with some black spray paint, they would still have some dimension to offer. I even picked out one faux-leather frame!
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I thought that at this point it might be fun to tell you all about our engagement story. Mr. Star did such a great job of making it everything I wanted in a proposal, and he definitely deserves some props!
We had been talking about getting engaged for months. I’m not the kind of lady who really wants to be surprised by that kind of thing, quite frankly. I think it’s terribly romantic when a girl is totally shocked by a proposal, but if Mr. Star had done that to me, I think I would have freaked out! So, needless to say, I knew it was coming at some point.
He can’t keep a secret from me to save his life, and I knew he had bought the ring way back in September of our senior year at college. I had a very busy semester, but still spent a lot of time thinking about where he had hidden that ring in his dorm room and when I was going to get to see it! He was a terrible tease, showing it off to all of our friends and taking his sweet time planning the perfect proposal. On top of that, Fairy bridesmaid and her (now) husband got engaged on Halloween, making it even harder for me to keep waiting! Mr. Star asked both sets of my parents for their blessing and approval of our engagement, and hinted (erroneously!) that the proposal would take place when my little sister was there.
Our one-year dating anniversary rolled around over Thanksgiving weekend and there was such a flurry of activity because of upcoming finals and my show opening a week later that I barely had time to think about it.
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.”
Well, we can check one more thing off the list: Mr. Mary Jane’s suit. Last Friday, I received an email from my mom telling me Macy’s was having a 1 Day Sale. One of the heavily discounted items available? Menswear. Mr. Mary Jane was a very good boy: he agreed to go suit-shopping on a Friday evening.
We were originally unsure if we were going to buy an all new suit for Mr. MJ, or if he’d just get a new jacket to go with a pair of black pants he already owns. Once entering the store (and realizing we’d probably be better off if we’d actually had the pants WITH us), we decided to go all out and get a new matching pants/jacket set.
Mr. Mary Jane didn’t waste too much time deciding: he looked at a few jackets and decided he preferred a wider lapel over the narrower options. He then decided to go with a subtle pinstripe, rather than solid black. We had originally considered dressing Mr. MJ in a charcoal or medium-grey colored suit, but once in the store we both felt like the darker suit would be much more wearable for professional events (like job interviews) in the future.
Here are some photos. (Instead of a blue shirt and tie, picture a white shirt and [probably] green tie.) Those are the shoes he’ll be wearing, as well. They’re Bostonian Duralite Oxfords.
As you know, Auntie S is hosting a bridesmaids’ luncheon honoring my bridesmaids and me. Auntie S has been in my life since I met BM J in 4th grade, so I wanted to get her something special as a thank you.
Auntie S is a very classy and stylish lady, so what better place to find a present for her than Gilt Groupe? (For those of you who don’t know about Gilt Groupe, it is an invite only website for discounts up to 70% on luxury brands).
The other day when I was checking the most recent Gilt Groupe sales, I found this bracelet under Kenneth Jay Lane Jewelry. There were several beautiful pieces, but one particular bracelet stood out to me and screamed, “AUNTIE S!”
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
As I touched on the other day, a large majority of our wedding plans feel to be theoretical right now. Ninety percent of our planning gets done via emails, and I won’t see the final product until a week (!!!) before the wedding day.
Immediately after moving to Chile in October 2008, I started to get withdrawal anxiety over our beautiful wedding venue. How would I know if I still loved it just as much a year from booking it? Would I forget what it looked like when I was there?
Like a good little bridal blogger, I set out to find pictures of Westwind. Specifically, I wanted to find pictures of past weddings at Westwind. Technically I’m supposed to do a visit with our venue at about 2 months before the wedding, but that’s not realistic. I’ll do an in-person visit as soon as I get in town - a week before the wedding.
‘Til then, I’ve been lucky to find several different weddings that have taken place at Westwind. Thanks to the power of pictures, I’m just as enamored with our venue as ever. It feels like a little bite of reality to see our venue all dolled up for weddings.
Would you like the virtual tour of Westwind, on a wedding day?
One my bestest friends ever sent me an email today asking for advice. I figured, who better to ask than a bunch of ladies (and a guy or two) who think about weddings all day long? Logical, don’t you think? So here is the scenario:
One of my friends up here is trying to write a speech for her friend from high school who she really isn’t that great of friends with anymore, but still got asked to be the maid of honor. She wants to say something along the lines of how this couple has been together for 7 years and it is fantastic to see them taking the next step. But she doesn’t want it to sound like she thinks it was about time that hte ytook this step. Any suggestions?
Hmm, it seems like a little bit of an awkward position if they aren’t really close friends anymore. I am struggling for advice to give her. Read more…
As part of my “must-do list” @$$-kicking week, we’re putting the deposit down on our guest transportation:
A trolley! Our ceremony will take place at a square smack dab in the middle of historic downtown Savannah where it’s hard to find parking and easy to get lost. So we decided it would benefit everyone involved to just park at our reception site…
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We tweeted this earlier this morning, but the pictures are too awesome not to share! Check out this incredibly creative “photobooth” setup, created by the always fabulous Sasha Souza.
UPDATE #2: Someone submitted this post to The Consumerist!
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UPDATE: The owner of Urban Expressions responded to my email shortly after this post went up earlier today. This is what he or she said:
if the customer responds to me with several foul mouthed emails, they get foul mouthed replys right back. i figured if “fucks” and “shits” and “bitches” was her preferred tongue, I’d speak her language.
by the way i sold this company and all rights to its 1.7 million in inventory as of last week. it now operates under a new name, and at a new address as soon as they are done moving..
so you are wasting your time bashing it, but feel free. I have my money in my hand now.. so bash away ok..have a nice day, and have fun being an E-warrior hiding in the depths of the anonymus internet blogs that no one reads..
But Mrs. Martini’s friend only wrote that one email below. Her fiance did write an angry email to Urban Expressions without her knowledge, but that was only in response to the owner’s comments below. I believe that it was not a customer service agent that left those comments, as it appears to be a very small company, but the owner him/herself?!
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Mrs. Martini was supposed to help a friend create her escort cards over a recent weekend, and they had been waiting on a craft punch to arrive in the mail. When the website where the punch was purchased showed that it hadn’t been shipped some time after the order had been placed, Mrs. Martini’s friend wrote them the following email:
I ordered this over a week ago and it still has not been shipped!! Your shipping policy states that most items will be shipped within 48 hours unless otherwise specified - you guys did not specify otherwise! When will this item be shipped out?? I would like some kind of compensation for the delay. Sincerely, *****
Since I answer most of the customer service emails at Weddingbee and get all kinds of emails from users, I can understand that the tone of the email might have irked the person who responded. However, this was the response she received:
All I have to say is WOW.
I don’t know whether the person who sent this email intended for those comments to be included, but I contacted the company to see if they wanted to make a statement, and never heard back.
If this happened to you, would you take any type of action?
Please note that comments are hosted here. This post is in reference to Urban Expressions the craft supply store hosted at eCrater, and not Urban Expressions the handbag store.
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I am over the moon with excitement that we are finally done with the Piglet men’s attire! We nixed khaki suits as an option months ago, and decided on gray for both Mr Piglet and his fellas. With the ladies in yellow, the groomsmen will be donning yellow ties with cute little palm trees (in blue!). I know, I know… it’s spot on for our tropical wedding!
Are we fans of the sock shots? You bet your ass we are!
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When we first got engaged, I thought I knew for sure our colors would be blue and white. I’ve always liked the color blue, and white meant we could sprinkle big poofy hydrangeas everywhere. Then a few months later, we picked our date! We decided on a fall wedding in PA, when the trees will be changing colors, and would be oh-so-beautiful. But blue in the fall? I know for some, blue does mean fall, but for me, when I see fall I see browns, reds, and gold. Unfortunately, Mr. Sunbeam was not into making our guys wear brown, which totally threw off that color scheme for me. Ahhk! Of course, with every new color combination that popped into my head, I got online and requested free swatches from every possible source. Welcome to my swatch pile:
The saddest part?
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Reader trendy_vixen posted this beautiful picture of her DIY veil.
We are currently hosting a Gallery contest in which we are giving away 10, $40 coupon codes for My Publisher PhotoBooks. To enter the contest all you have to do upload your wedding pictures on the gallery and if we feature your picture on the blog, you will receive a PhotoBook! Remember, your images must be under 1MB in size, or they won’t load.
A few weeks ago, I finished our seating charts. We had all the RSVPs in, and I really wanted to get this task out of the way. It took a little while, but I finished it and was actually proud of some of the table assignments I put together.
A week later, there was a change. Our friends broke up, and this meant that we either needed to move someone to another table, or we’d have one less guest at the wedding. Since it was just one minor change, I decided to sit on changing the tables until the broken up couple told me for sure what was going on.
Fast-forward 2 more weeks, and we suddenly had another change. My very first RSVPer can’t make it to the wedding. That’s 2 more spots to account for. Actually, the absence of these 2 people throw off the entire dynamic of the table. Now, I may have to rethink the table.
Looking back, I can’t decided whether I should have waited until the last minute to do the table assignments, or if was a good thing I did them. Hopefully, the changes won’t take us very long to sort out.
Did you find that there were some wedding tasks that were better left to the last minute? What were they?
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