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There’s a fun Polish wedding tradition that I’ve always known I wanted to incorporate into our wedding, no matter where it took place.
It’s called poprawiny (pronounced po-pra-vee-neh) and basically it’s an after-party that happens the day after the wedding. Originally it was a chance for all the guests to get together and eat all the leftover food (and drink all the leftover booze!) and have an excuse to talk over the events of the previous day and celebrate s’more.
Since we were at a holiday resort in Punta Cana, the food never ended and the liquor was bottomless so the leftovers thing wasn’t really relevant, but we arranged a poprawiny for that evening anyway.
Wisely, however, we left everyone to their own devices for the morning and afternoon… something that I’m sure our late-late-late night partying friends took full advantage of:
We’re having two flower girls and one ring bearer in our wedding, and I’ve come to realize that dressing children for a wedding is no small feat! To tackle the task, I decided to start with the flower girls.
I figured it would be easy to pick out a cute, “twirly” dress for both of our flower girls to wear for the wedding. I say “twirly,” because I know that when I was younger, I based the merits of a dress solely on how far it would poof out when I spun around in a circle. I wanted the girls to wear pink, not white, and I knew that I wanted something a bit different (there I go again, flaunting society’s conventions). I also wanted it to be reasonably priced. So, I had some parameters with which to start my search.
There were perfectly lovely non-white, twirly dresses out there, but nothing really struck a chord with me. I briefly considered these lovely dresses and liked them so much I bookmarked them. They’re available in pink, but they were a bit too traditional for my tastes. Still lovely, though, and someone should definitely snatch them up – they’re only $35!
A few months back, I purchased some blue organza table overlays from another bride on Weddingbee. They were beautiful, but now our tablescape has changed and I’m not going to use them, so I was excited when I saw this post over on You Can’t Take It With You. Thanks to the tutorial and the inspiration, these organza flowers were super easy to make and look really pretty, so I now have a great use for my cast-off overlays. Here’s my watered down version of a tutorial; check out Stacie’s for the full-on instructions.
These were my materials. I picked up the buttons at the flea market on Sunday at $1.50 for 5. They’re all mis-matched, which is fine with me.
’Twas was the night before our wedding. We had just finished dessert with our guests and were heading to our reception site. On the list of things to do: the flowers, seating cards, various decorations, making our signature drink, numbering and moving our tables if need be. A group of guys had set up the tables the day before, but since it wasn’t able to be set up as planned, everyone wanted to get my final approval! This happened more often than I anticipated.
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All-Inclusion Invitation Suites
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As promised, here are the engagement pictures! I’ve decided to divide them up into a couple of posts so it’s not visual overload. A million thanks once again to LULU the magnificent photographer!!
Here we are at House of Pies:
I love the jade bracelet from my mom in the pic above!
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After making it legal, Mr Lightning and I were left to spend a few moments alone. We sat in the empty hotel lounge, slightly speechless, overwhelmed, and more in love than ever before.
Holding hands as husband and wife, we headed back to the restaurant to greet our family and friends. The response we received was truly heartwarming. After months of feeling a little misunderstood by those we held closest, we were finally met with the support and compassion we had craved during our engagement.
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Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
Our journey to the altar officially began on August 21, 2008. That is the day that Mr. Pudding proposed. Of course, we had been chatting about getting married for a while, but we both wanted to have that perfect moment to remember. Our “perfect moment” turned out to be quite spontaneous, but it was nevertheless perfect.
I had been sending Mr. P pictures of the types of ring I liked, but we both wanted him to have the final say. I had some grand visions for the type of ring I wanted… it turns out, I have expensive tastes! I really loved the bezel setting, and had spent too much time checking out the engagement ring advertisements in Martha Stewart. This is what I wanted:
I have to say, our honeymoon was my fourth time to Europe, and Greece was the seventh European country that I’ve visited. But I have never tasted such amazing food before. When my MOH and I visited France several summers back, we lost over five pounds each at the end of three weeks, despite my love of baguettes and chocolate. When I went to Scotland two years ago, I was seriously desperate for some American food after ten days.
So while I was hopeful, I wasn’t exactly expecting to be wowed by the food in Greece. Boy, was I ever wrong! You know the “freshman 15″? Well, I gained the Honeymoon 6. Six pounds is a lot of eating in two weeks!
There is some truly wonderful food to be had in Greece, even on a budget. We mostly stuck to having pastries or a light breakfast late in the morning, and dinner at a restaurant that our Frommer’s Guide to Greece recommended.
This is part of what we ate the first night we were in Athens.
OK, here goes. I’m officially kicking off my recaps! *Squee*
Whittling down the photos has been a horrifically daunting task. Partly because there are thousands of photos to sort through. Partly because I’m obsessed with every image and detail with the kind of hopelessly googly-eyed love that a mother has for her child. It’s freaking hard to choose between your children!
I figure I’ll do an overview post of each main stop along the way, and then follow up with the relevant detail posts, and move on to the next event, and so on. All aboard, the Magic Carpet ride is about to commence!
But wait! Proper theatre nerd that I am, we cannot begin “the show” without giving props to the rehearsal, right?
The day of the rehearsal was, like all other days leading up to the wedding, a hot hectic mess. After running errands in the morning, MaPo, sister Kim, and I went for mani/pedis before the rehearsal, and my mom and sister Dawn met up with us there. I chose a sheer, shimmery frost for my nails after leaving at home the color I had planned to wear (rosy future by OPI). I shook it off and refused to let the brief disappointment harsh my marital mellow.
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Our wedding took place on September 9, 2009 in Hillsboro, North Dakota at the Traill County Courthouse. There were seven guests: our four parents, two siblings, and one mutual friend. Our original budget, set back in March almost on a whim, was $1000.
This post will break down the costs of each element of the wedding. Then I’ll tell you how close we came to our goal budget, and where we splurged/saved.
Ceremony Site Fees: $50 (original estimate: $0)
If you saw my guestbook trial and thought: ‘Oh girl! You better come up with something better than magic markers,’ then I hope this post doesn’t disappoint you too badly. I’m actually quite proud of how this turned out and can’t wait to see all of our flock (i.e. guests) leafing their thumbprint for an awesome memento. This is going to be a photo-licious, DIY guide to making your very own Guest Tree.
Supplies:
I used these supplies to cut a 15″x19″ piece of paper. I want to fit it into a 16″x20″ frame with a little bit of a mat.
Be sure to check out all the posts in our Relationship Series here!
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Are you a night owl or morning person? What about your SO? How does this affect your relationship?
Miss French Fries - I’m more of a morning person and Mr. FF is more of a night owl. It really only affects us when we’re out on a Saturday night and I’m yawning at the table while everyone else is living it up!
Mrs. Beagle - Mr. Beagle has pretty much the same temperament all the time. I’m not much of a people person in the morning and I can also get pretty cranky if I’m up too late at night—it all depends on my energy level, which varies. Mr. Beagle balances me out in this respect. He’s very understanding if we need to call it an early night because I’m too tired, and he gives me space in the morning until I’m ready to socialize. 
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Emmkae kisses her hubby-to-be under a canopy of leaves in this lovely autumn e-pic.
Keep on loading your inspirational wedding pics to the gallery to see them featured here on the blog! Remember, your images must be under 1MB in size, or they won’t load.
For those of you who live in normal-land (i.e. not New York City), there are probably a plethora of craft stores within an easy drive (or at least one). Here in New York, that is not the case. It is a well-documented phenomena within the NYC crafting set that the store options are few and far between. While it’s true that you can get anything at any time in the city, you pay the price for that advantage. Any crafting item can usually only be found in specialty stores, for which one pays an arm and a leg for. I’d heard that there were no Michaels’ or Jo-Anns’ or Hobby Lobbys in Manhattan, and that is in fact, true. I Googled. Even Target is far away (Harlem?) and is usually a disaster zone.
Which is why, ladies and gentlemen, you can now fully understand my excitement when on a whim, I went to the Michaels homepage and entered my zip code into the store locator, determined to go to Queens or even Jersey for this hallowed mecca of crafting.
Fact: None of my wedding projects will look anything like the ones in this picture. That’s OK, I try
Just like Miss P Chips, I also had an inspirational issue of Martha Stewart Weddings magazine. Mine was the Martha Stewart Weddings - Summer 2009. That issue was so packed with bright color and DIY goodness I had dogeared and worn corners in no time. The biggest inspiration that came from that issue was flowers. I already knew that I wanted to carry dahlias. I kinda figured my girls would, too. That is until I saw the fabric and crepe paper bouquet created by Laurie Cinotto on the pages of MSW.
Source: Martha Stewart Weddings Summer 2009
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