Weddingbee Blog

Springtime in Chicago, as I’ve mentioned before, tends to be gray and wintry. Snow, slush, boots, and thick coats are on display well into the season. By the time our April wedding date rolls around, I know I’ll be ready for bright tulips and unabashed sunshine! That’s part of the reason we chose our new color scheme of pink, orange, and yellow.

I’ve been flipping through the beautiful inspiration boards at Snippet and Ink, looking for something that can help define our new wedding theme. Something with our fresh, citrus-y colors. Something that says, “Pow!” The following boards came with descriptions that match the mood we hope to achieve at our wedding.

Bold and fun:

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In four hours, we leave for New Zealand for our honeymoon. In the meantime, I thought I might leave you a couple of pictures from our beautiful, harmonious wedding. These are from friends (not pro pics) but they make me giggle with glee, nonetheless.

The day began clear and blue but clouded up by noon. With howling winds and chilling temps, we trudged into the field for outdoor pictures anyway. Thanks b-maids and groomsmen!
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A Roomba sale came up on Gilt Groupe while I was in New York, and admittedly, while I was in the shopping mecca of the country… I did some online shopping. I actually found a better deal on the Roomba on HSN, so I headed over there to buy my own robotic maid.

The Roomba is pretty neat. You can program it to run up to 7 times a week, and it cleans your floor in 45 minute increments, and then parks itself back in its charger when it’s finished. I had a hard time believing this hocus pocus would actually work, but Mrs. Lemon, mistress of gadgets, has had one for quite some time and has always said hers worked splendidly. I wouldn’t ordinarily order an extravagant SECOND vacuum, but our house is impossible to keep clean. Our skylights open, which means that when we have them open, dirt rains from the sky. Sure, we could close the skylights. But we don’t. So there. We keep all our windows and doors open at all times, because we don’t have air conditioning, and it’s just a dusty horrid mess around here.

It came in a couple weeks ago and I was hesitant to try it out right then and there, as Mr. Pengy had decided, since we were expecting company that weekend and all, that he wanted to turn our house into a disaster zone and slightly upgrade our shelving system from our cheapy wire racks, to slightly less cheap… wire racks. Hmm. So the house looked like this, not exactly robot vacuum friendly:

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We don’t do fancy. We can try, but it usually doesn’t work. We go in for Egyptian cotton sheets and emerge with a polyester blend, the one that was twenty dollars cheaper. We splurge on the expensive wine but the bottle goes unfinished and rancid in the fridge. We decide to “grow up” our frat-house of a home, with paint and adult things like curtains and wall sconces, and we end up with a homemade bar and trim that goes untouched-up. Our vacations are to Disney World or in Rhode Island. Our big nights out involve nachos and splitting the bill. We don’t do fancy.

Our lives could probably stand to have a bit more polish, a bit more pretension, a shiny finish and clean edges, but instead we (make that I) let the dishes pile up and spend Sunday afternoons in our pajamas watching the Food Network. That’s us.

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Oh my gosh, I recently had the best weekend ever!! I took a trip from Austin to Dallas to put together our save the dates with my bridesmaids. It started out a little rocky due to the inclement weather Texas was having.

Source

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Gently suspended from her monogrammed hanger, there she was… my party dress. A delicious creation made by the one and only Melissa Sweet hanging out in the window, just waiting to be put on and twirl the night away.

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From my first post about wanting to design my wedding gown using my grandmothers’ and mother’s gowns, you know that foreboding music was playing. If you know me and my I Love Lucy tendencies for getting involved in humdingers, you’ll know that nothing ever goes without a hitch in my planning processes.

The first hitch was that my paternal grandmewether couldn’t find her dress. After her wedding she preserved it and decades later, my Aunt wore it for her wedding. After my Aunt wore it, we sort of lost track of it, and my Aunt thinks it was lent out again, but never returned.

Hmmm… now I was down 1 dress, which also means we were also lacking quite a bit of material on which we had been counting. I couldn’t afford much more material due to the cost of having the dress designed and sewn by hand. My friendor/designer suggested a good workaround for this setback and assured me we could scour thrift stores to find other dresses with useable material.

The second hitch was that my maternal grandmewether had never preserved, or for that matter cleaned, her dress after the wedding. The hem was filthy and there was a rust stain, as well as what could have been a motor oil stain. Hmmmm . . . the only workaround here was to either not use those portions, thereby cutting into our fabric supply again, or have the dress dry cleaned and hope it didn’t fall apart (which was not only risky, but also costly).

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I realized a few weeks back (after reading Mrs. Swan’s awesome post about the challenges and perks of being a bride later in life) that I’ve done a lot of focusing on the negative aspects of being a young-ish bride and haven’t really talked about all the wonderful parts about finding your partner at a young age. I guess it’s often more emotionally pressing to write about my gripes and what is bothering me, but I certainly don’t want to downplay all the great perks of being a young-ish bride, because there definitely are a lot!

I now present to you, The Perks:

• Experiencing many firsts together: I wrote about this a little in my post Growing Up TOGETHER, but it’s such a big plus that I think it bears repeating. We get to be there for so many of life’s little firsts that we might have missed if we had found each other later in life! I love that our honeymoon will be Mr. Star’s first time overseas and he’s so proud of the fact that he took me to my first rock concert (Linkin Park, if you’re interested!). We will be able to show our kids pictures of us graduating from college together and they’ll think, ‘Aww, mom and dad had such dorky hair back then.’ You can’t beat that.
• You don’t have to teach an old dog new tricks: Well, that’s kind’ve a funny way to talk about it, but it’s true. If I hadn’t found Mr. Star until later on in life, he might have been stuck in his nighttime jean-wearing, on-top-of-the-comforter sleeping ritual for good. Whew.

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Wedding #2, that is also a FAVE wedding of the year, features soft pinks, creams, and white whites. Details including this lovely invitation printed on a handkerchief and mailboxes are just a few that the bride, Lindsey incorporated in her San Francisco Wedding.

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So, like many things in planning our wedding, our wedding colors have changed several times so far in this process. We’re still a good bit of time out, so it’s not like any firm decisions (like buying bridesmaids’ dresses) have been made. I’ve considered pink & black, then various shades of pink, to purple and green, to pink and purple and blue, as well as a myriad of other options that I can’t even remember.

They say that painters have muses, from which they gather inspiration and ideas for their paintings. This past spring, during the yearly “Martha Stewart Wedding Show” (say what you will about Martha, but she does have some cool ideas) their set was draped with amazing, lush swags of baby’s breath. ‘Hmm,’ I thought. ‘Those look pretty cool.’ Last weekend in CA, we stayed with the Mr.’s cousin at their amazing house in the hills. Everything about their backyard garden was perfect. So perfect, in fact, they have actually hosted a wedding back there. While this wasn’t an option for us (deposits have been paid, people!), I couldn’t get the image of their backyard out of my mind.

When I returned home, I further debated our current color scheme (quickly becoming a pastime of mine). I didn’t know if the bold, jewel tones that we were considering was really the best option. I wanted something simple, elegant, and laid-back. And I wanted it to be fun. Suddenly the image of the backyard in CA flashed into my mind.
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When it comes to getting my way and negotiating, I’m a little less “tough cookie” and a little more “wimpy, mushy cookie”. As an illustration:

Not a tough cookie! (Source)

Like many girls (and many other bees), it’s hard for me to put myself first. I feel terrible when I inconvenience others or have to ask for what I need. So when it comes to negotiating, I’m not exactly your go-to gal!

However, the love of my life taught me a very important lesson. I’ll share my paraphrased version here:
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Today is our 2 year wedding anniversary. I can’t believe it’s been 2 years already!

Marriage used to scare me… and it STILL scares me! In my fickle, free-spirited lifestyle, marriage is the most serious thing I’ve ever committed to. Of course, some things about our marriage aren’t what I had pictured —I don’t cook every night (or cook EVER), our place is a mess most of the time, and we act more like college buddies than anything else. But one thing is for sure—I married my best friend. We are total goofs together and can just talk for hours about ANYTHING.
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Sorry, I’ve been out for a while. I’m in Texas and had both of my wedding showers this past weekend. Shower #1 was hosted by Mr. Moonbeam’s aunts over in Houston on Saturday. There were mimosas, very yummy food, cake, lovely guests and lots of gifts.

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Halp! I need to find a great hair fascinator!

Our engagement shoot is scheduled for October 24th with the mighty Lulu and her loyal assistant, Liang. I will be wearing my Blaire dress:

I think I will leave my hair down but make it into big curls, 1940s style! Now all I need is a perfect hair fascinator. Here are the ones I’ve narrowed it down to:
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