Weddingbee Blog

Dear Mr. Gloss,

I don’t have much to say, except that tomorrow I will be your wife and I couldn’t be more excited about it. This day has been a long time coming, but really, our time together has flown by so fast. I can’t believe we’ve been together for almost a decade; it seems like only yesterday you were leaving scribbled love notes under my windshield wipers in high school. (I still have most of them.)
We have always just been… right together. You are one of the only people I can be 100% myself with and I love you for it.
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I spent so long searching for a shower dress I can’t even find some of them to show you anymore! I had to start the search at my favorite store - Anthropologie, where I came across this little number.

(source)

I wasn’t sold, so I saved it in my “favorites” as a backup. I also did several rounds with Gilt Groupe trying to find the perfect dress, but I was never very good at guessing my size! I had ordered this one in cream, but I couldn’t decide if the cut was flattering, even though I loved the thought of a lacy rehearsal dress, given the fact that my wedding dress is lace.
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Pssst, if you missed part 1 - get it here. We left off a week before the wedding.

Four days before our wedding, Mr. Meatball had run out on an errand, and called to ask me to come upstairs to the car and help him with something. I could tell he was crying. Terrified that he had been hurt, I tore upstairs to the street to find him crumpled in the driver’s seat of our car, an emotional wreck. He had just gotten off the phone with his parents, and told them the news about our name change decision.

Suffice it to say, it did not go over well, and I had never seen Mr. M so upset in our seven years together. There’s just something about Mr. M that’s so pure; seeing him hurt or in pain is utterly heartbreaking.

The details are unimportant, but basically his parents saw our decision as doing exactly the opposite of what we had intended it to mean. They felt betrayed. That it was a rejection of the family name. That it was a slap in the face of their history. And Mr. M, who has always enjoyed a very open and supportive relationship with his parents, was devastated both by the severity of their reaction, and the fact that we were now in a crucial position to either go with what they want, or to follow our own compass. Having both been raised by families that encourage innate compass-following, it was a very conflicted feeling for both of us.
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We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming of the Bunny Bridal Countdown to bring you a PSA on makeup.

Because only Mrs. Bunny would interrupt her recaps to talk about makeup, right?

By now you probably know that I’m a proponent of what a good makeup brush can do for DIY makeup.

Specifically, I’m speaking of a nice, round, compact blush brush. I do most of my makeup application with my fingers, I admit. But there’s just no substitute for a good blush brush. They’re designed to glide over the apples of your cheeks and distribute a nice, even coat of powder up toward your temple.

Personally, I use the Mary Kay blush brush, but that’s only because I used to sell Mary Kay and had a couple brush sets left over.
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Yesterday I shared some photos of Leah’s bridal bouquet that I created using big felt posies, grey and white mother of pearl buttons, and some special painted buttons in bright shades of teal and turquoise.

Teal, light pink, and certain shades of blue and green are highly sought-after colors by my clients, and the high demand comes with a high price. To avoid passing the cost on to my customers, sometimes I carefully paint plain buttons to match the customer’s color palette, and when done right, no one can tell the difference. In this video I show you how to save money by painting your own plain, boring buttons to achieve the same effect!

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So, we last left off when I had reached the end of the aisle. I was so happy to have all of our guests there to witness one of the most important days of our lives, but Mr. Powder Puff and I could have literally been in front of a crowd of thousands and I wouldn’t have noticed. All I could see was him.

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Hi hive!

Just a little heads up for you all! There has been a user on the Classifieds listing puppies for sale. We’re continuing to mark them as spam and deleting them, as Weddingbee Classifieds listings should be limited to wedding related items only. If you happen to come across these listings (or any other non-wedding related listings, for that matter), please flag them as spam! Thanks for helping us keep the classifieds spam-free and completely wedding related!

TGIF!

This was, as they say, a real labour of love; one that almost killed us. We thought we’d get it all done in a day, but apparently paper cutting takes a lot longer than that, and it can be a real workout on the arms when you’ve been guillotining for 7 hours straight. We even started discussing the bible and how well the best-selling book Harry Potter had fared in worldwide book sales at about 2AM on Saturday. Anyways, once again, it’s late and my camera doesn’t do well in this sort of light, but I’m eager to post about them as they’re finally complete.
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Recently, Mr. Cupcake had a job interview (side note: please cross your fingers he gets this one!), and the recruiter who helped him get the interview prepped him with some questions beforehand. He told Mr. C to have a few examples in mind of times that he negotiated, in both his former job and his personal life, to get a lower price on a big-ticket item. We were brainstorming together, and he mentioned the wedding. When I really thought about it, though, I realized that we/I did not really do much negotiating — if any — when it came to our wedding.

Maybe it’s just my personality, but when someone tells me that something costs $X, I don’t really debate it. I don’t try to negotiate the same service/product for a lower price, although I could certainly see negotiating a slightly different service in order to get the price down. But it never really occurred to me to haggle with our vendors to get their prices down. If someone’s prices seemed too high for what their services were, or they quoted too far outside of my budget range, I simply went elsewhere.

Perhaps I have a soft spot for vendors and their pricing since I work in a creative industry, and often work with brides and other people planning special events. I have experienced the other side of things, and I know how disheartening it can sometimes feel when a client wants the same great product but for a fraction of the cost. It can make me feel like my time, talents, and resources are not valued, and that is discouraging. I’m not saying that every vendor experiences that feeling — but I’ve certainly seen that side of things!
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One of the things Mr. Bear Cub absolutely wanted at our wedding was a live band. Mr. BC plays guitar, has many friends that have been signed to labels, and always loved going to the Northwest Folklife festival while in college at UW. For him, our event wouldn’t be the same without a live band, namely a great folk band.

I really don’t know how you’re “supposed” to find a band for a wedding. The odds of finding the right band, at the right price, in the right place seem ridiculously stacked against you. But somehow we found a band that fit us just right. We started looking several months ago on the MySpace music page for bands that fit into the criteria of “Americana”, “bluegrass”, and “folk”. Hopefully with a bit of an Irish flair, and specifically with a mandolin (we’d love to have Nickel Creek play our wedding, but that’s just not going to happen). After several weeks of listening to bands in the Portland area, we discovered a lot of great new artists to listen to at home - but no band to sign for our wedding. We emailed a handful of bands, but few of them wanted to make the drive to the Oregon coast for a Sunday wedding. Boo. If you’re in the Eugene area, go check out this band - I wish we could have booked them!

We were looking for a band similar to Mrs. Cherry Pie’s and Miss Cowboy Boot’s - folksy, bluegrass, chill, and altogether awesome.

Then I followed Mrs. Joey’s sage advice - I listed an ad on Craigslist for a band.
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I’ve been looking for cute and inexpensive ideas for lighting our reception (besides the recycled paper lamps I want to make). I thought that candles could add a great romantic look, so the search began, and this was what I could find:

Good old paper bags! This one is the least expensive option. Wow! It looks so cute!

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Our processional path lead us straight into the living room of the country club where we were able to breathe a collective sigh of relief. We took a few moments to regroup with our best friends (and show off the new bling!).
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My bachelorette party* is tonight!

We’re meeting up for drinks and dinner in Philly — and then a surprise that no one’s revealed yet. Yesterday, Sister Bruschetta (my MOH) surprised me with a few cute options to make my evening attire a bit more “bridal.” (She previously revealed that I’ll also be donning a veil and tiara.) The problem is… now I’m unsure which one to select!

(Please excuse my “concentrating on getting good pictures so I end up looking grumpy” face.)

Looser with fun frills?

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When it came time to plan and write out our ceremony, Mr. D and I were considerably overwhelmed. After all, neither of us had any experience writing a marriage ceremony. After turning to the internet, we then turned to our officiant.

We’d been having a particularly difficult time when it came to wedding rituals. None of the ones we could find really spoke to us as a couple or fit with our ceremony. What if the wind blew out our unity candle? Or if our sand jar was misplaced, broken, or all mixed up during a move? What happens to the water after the water ceremony? What if I spilled wine/chocolate/other food on myself?

Then we started talking about planting ceremonies, which while great, also stumped (tee hee hee) us. We don’t really have anywhere permanent we plan on living for a while; certainly no place to plant a tree. Then we started talking about how much we both loved Austin (where we met) and the Southwest in general. When it hit us: we thought, ‘What if we plant a cactus?’

Sure, a prickly cactus at first glance might not seem the best symbol of a marriage, but if you’ve spent time around them you might see why I find them so impressive.
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Our reception isn’t on a boat, but people might still need some flip flops! Why? Because they’re the remedy for a sore dancer’s feet!

My latest DIY project went by lightning fast. In less than 20 minutes, I had this:

Guess I should back up and tell you how I got there, huh? Well first, I started with a quick design using the uber-user friendly Word. The fonts I used are Fontdinerdotcom Sparkly (free from dafont.com) and Lucida Calligraphy.
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