Weddingbee Blog

The Joeys made it legal yesterday! No, I’m not talking about getting our marriage license (we already did that), I’m talk about getting our building permit! WE HAVE A PERMIT! I can’t tell how relieved I am. I feel like a new woman — seriously.

The permit consumed both our lives for the last 3 months, particularly, all of June. There were a lot of tears, a lot of swear words, plenty of begging and pleading, and now it’s all over and we’ve got it.
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Today in our Real Bee Budgets series, check out the bees’ favors!

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Mrs. Flamingo’s Favors

Favors: Imported Italian Sparkling Water + Donation to Quebec Breast Cancer Association
# of Favors: 96
Total Price: $192
Price per favor: $2

“When it came time to choose our favors, we decided to make a donation to the Quebec Breast Cancer Association. We felt as though our guests might like to leave the wedding with something in their hands, so we purchased Italian imported water. We created little cards and DIY pink ribbons with the mention of the donation in memory of my grandmother and in honor of my mother, who is a survivor.

The guests loved our favors and still talk about them today… some even shed some tears!”
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I love flowers… plain and simple! Since I was little I was always fascinated by flowers. I decided to use roses, gerbera daisies and orchids to spice up the wedding. I wasn’t into roses very much until I worked at Central Market. I saw this beautiful intuition rose and from that point forward I loved that particular kind of rose. I used this all over our wedding and it added a wonderful texture to my bouquet. Roses and gerbera daisies are the most common flowers that people see and they are less expensive than other kinds of flowers such as peonies and orchids. It’s all about how you use the flowers and how they fit into your personality. I added some feathers and beads to my bouquet, which made it a little bit more special than the normal bouquets that I saw. I also added the bead sprays to boutonnieres and hand corsages to make everything fit together.

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There is one aspect of our wedding that is somewhat tough for me to even think about, much less blog about. That is the fact that my dad won’t be there.

Dad with Flat Stanley

My dad passed away in May of 2008. He suffered from a rare autoimmune disorder, known as Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis, or PSC. (So rare, in fact, that when you Google “PSC,” it’s only the fifth thing that pops up.) The layman’s explanation for it is that it causes your liver to function improperly, over time destroying it, bit by bit. My dad was diagnosed with the disease back in 1993. He felt normal at that time. He began to get pretty sick around 1999 or 2000. In January 2002, he had a very successful liver transplant. He bounced back to his old self, even going back to work again for several years.

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Mr. Bruschetta and I attended our church’s Pre-Cana marriage preparation weekend six months ago. At the time, our wedding still seemed so far off. Most of the projects and tasks that are currently in the forefront of my mind (and even posted up on our wall) were merely half-formed ideas. At the time, I was blissfully ignorant (thinking only that everything will fall into place somehow) and completely content.

While I don’t want to downplay the importance of the various talks — on subjects ranging from money to sexuality to religion — married couples shared with us that weekend, I will admit that, for us, one of the most valuable exercises was the icebreaker that kicked off the weekend.

Each person was asked to select his/her future spouse’s most endearing quality. What is that one attribute of your husband- or wife-to-be that, at this exact moment, sums up what you love about him or her? We were informed that this characteristic can and will change frequently — at any given time, there are a number of aspects jockeying for the top spot — and encouraged to continue engaging in this activity after the weekend concluded.

(source)

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To say it has been a rough few days would be an understatement. And everything that has gone on has left me with very little motivation to work on any projects or blog. I have a half-done pomander to show soon, and even a few half-written posts about other projects. Unfortunately, all of these things have fallen out of my view after some bad (partially expected news) fell in my lap instead.

One of my bridesmaids is backing out.

To say the least, this breaks my heart. But I had a feeling it was coming. To make a very long and complicated story short, we have just grown apart. Very, very far apart. We were roommates in college and shortly after Mr. Cloud asked me to marry him, I asked her to be my maid of honor. Not long after that, things started to change. She got “busy”, and I started planning and expecting too much. We had a conversation and decided it would be better for her to be a bridesmaid, so she could still be involved, just with less on her shoulders. This should have been a warning sign. It has now come to light that she not only is tired of hearing about my planning progress, but she no longer wants to be involved. Period. Despite my bitterness about the situation, it was still hard to hear that, and I still cried.
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While browsing around Williams Sonoma this past weekend, I happened upon our first signature drink…. the Cranberry Daiquiri. The description reads “the classic daiquiri gets a citrus twist in the cranberry-orange pairing”… um, what? the cranberry/orange combo is my faaaavorite. Since we hadn’t really thought about what we wanted to serve, and this sounded delicious, we quickly scooped up 15 bottles. My MOH (being the awesome gal she is) was fully prepared to carry these bottles throughout the rest of the mall - how’s that for dedication?
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Mr. Crab Cake and I just returned from our most fabulous honeymoon on PCB. We are well rested, de-stressed, brown, and kinda bored. Ten days at the beach was about 2 too many.

Our wedding was spectacular! It was a huge blur, the whole weekend. But everything went perfectly smoothly and I couldn’t have asked for a better day. The Mr. and I were perfectly calm, cool, and collected. Well, after 3PM on Friday anyway, but we’ll get to that later.

We’ve only seen one photo from our photographer, but it is awesome!

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Source

I know what you are thinking, and there is not a baby duckling on its way. However, that was the topic of the week at our couples counseling.

It was an interesting conversation to have, and while we’ve talked about it before, it was a good time to really look at a variety of issues. I thought I’d share some of the conversations that we had.

We started right at the actual birth and labor aspect. Now, because of my psychology degree and lifespan developmental/women’s issues classes, I have seen several videos of births. And honestly, it scares me a little bit each time.
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Today is Thursday. Yes. But it’s a special Thursday because of the holiday weekend. Many of us don’t have to work tomorrow. So, I thought I’d share with you a special recipe. Tonight’s homework? Go home and make it!

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A while back, I posted about our BBQ menu. At the time, Mr. CB and I thought it would be fun to have margaritas as our signature cocktail. We live in New Mexico and in New Mexico you drink margaritas. We wanted to bring a little bit of that up to Colorado with us. The bad news is that our margaritas would cost $7 per drink. Maybe that’s not a lot to a lot of people. It’s not for us when we’re going out to dinner. But when you serve 100 people a margarita each, you end up with $700 in tequila, sour mix, and, well, ice. Say quite a few people want two or more margaritas. We could end up with a bar tab (just for hard liquor) as large as $1500 or more. We just can’t justify spending that amount on one type of drink. No budgeting article or website tells you to expect to spend 15% of your wedding budget on your signature cocktail.
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From A to Z, this month’s flowers are anything but typical. In the third installment of flowers of the month, I can’t wait to unveil some of July’s wonderful blooms.

As always, some of the flowers bloom longer than others because of weather issues. These are just a few of the many flowers that you will see during July and possibly beyond. Here are just a few that might interest you:
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Image 1, Image 2, Image 3

I’d prefer to have everything on our wedding day go in perfect order and on time - I mean, who wouldn’t? But beyond that, even though I’ve been trying to pay close attention to the happenings at all of the wedding receptions I have been to over the past 15 months (since getting engaged), I’m still worried that I’m planning things out in the wrong order. What if the toasts come at the wrong time? Will there still be enough people there when we do the garter and bouquet toss?

On top of my timeline worries, I have my photographer to think about. We’ve only booked her for 7 hours, but we’re hoping to tack an extra hour onto that, giving us 8.
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We so lucked out on the stress-front during our wedding. As in, we had none. The staff at Coyaba thought of everything. All we had to do was meet with them for an hour when we arrived (we turned over our decorations, ceremony layout, and determined the line-up) & that was it until the rehearsal. I think the entire run-through of the big day took about 15 minutes. This was the first time that it really hit me - “Wow, I am getting married”!

Loved my J.Crew seersucker dress. We added little loops to each side at the seam & I used a bright pink grosgrain ribbon as a belt for a little POP of color!

While we waited for everyone to get to the wedding lawn, we all just meandered around together, took pictures, and had Red Stripe.
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Luckily for us, the Dude’s parents offered to pay for our rehearsal dinner! Because they live in Colorado, and because I love planning, we will be doing most of the “planning” for it ourselves. We’ve got all the basics figured out, so now all we have to do is nail down the details.

Our side yard/backyard

We decided, after a brief hesitation, to hold it at our house.
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Reader traceyjlott is selling 6 beach-themed seashell bouquets. She is asking $65 each.

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

Other great items for sale:
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