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Weddingbee Blog
Well I almost did it – finished my recaps before our one year anniversary, that is. Turns out I’m only a couple posts shy but the day is here and I can’t help but stop everything and revel in the joy of it.
Has it really been a whole year since this?
I can hardly believe it.
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One day I texted Mr Pretzel: “We gotta get a Gocco.” He laughed, texted, “what the heck is that?” and I promised to show him that night after dinner. This was the beginning of my obsession with the Gocco. Weddingbee is 100% responsible for my Gocco obsession. Mr P and I had decided to design our invites and I was convinced that we would use a local printer to print them… until I stumbled upon the Gocco. I think that it was initially Mrs Gloss’ invites that caught my eye. I then searched on Gocco and hit the mother lode. (This list is by no means exhaustive but these are the projects that caught my eye.)
All of these fabulous bees using this mysterious Japanese printing machine to make printed items? Count me in. That night I showed Mr P everything I had found on Gocco. I even showed him some Etsy vendors who were selling greeting cards made with Gocco. We agreed to purchase some greeting cards to get an up close look at what this Gocco thing was all about. A couple days later we got some Gocco goodness in the mail.
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As I’ve mentioned before, Mr. Parfait’s last name means bunny in Serbian. I love it and definitely plan to bunnify our wedding!
Over the past few months (okay, years) I’ve developed a little habit: Whenever I see birdie details in someone’s wedding photos, I always imagine bunnies in their place. Well, now it’s the bunnies’ turn, I say! Here are a few of the bunny details I’m considering for our wedding. And if you prefer, feel free to replace the rabbits with horses, butterflies, baby deer, harp seals, or whatever strikes your fancy!
Decor for our guests’ tables:
I got an email back in March from The Knot with a link to an article about registering for gifts. I thought it was still a little early for Mr. Spaniel and me to start registering for gifts (which isn’t to say I wasn’t playing around with online registries at my favorite stores for months already), but The Knot tells me—first thing!—to register early.
What are you waiting for? Registering should be one of the first tasks you tackle when you get engaged. Friends and relatives will be looking to buy gifts for all those pre-wedding and engagement bashes. Take the guesswork out of gift buying by making sure they know what you want. You don’t need to complete your list just yet, but at least have a selection for guests to browse.
Okay! I will! After all, this is one of the fun parts!
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.”
Hold your horses, because I have a whole lot of fabulosity coming your way! While we had a lot of fun posing in the park after the ceremony, we had allotted most of our time for pictures throughout downtown Oak Park. We knew we didn’t have time to head into the city for urban shots there, but Oak Park turned out to be a fabulous alternative.
For those of you who are familiar with Oak Park, we had our limo driver drop us off at the corner of North Boulevard and Harlem Avenue. From there we started walking east, stopping at whatever caught our eyes, and met the driver about an hour later at North Boulevard and Oak Park Avenue.
Straight out of the limo, one of my favorite shots. That needs to be framed and on my wall, pronto!
(photo by FIL Pudding)
Deciding on a wedding party started out as a fairly difficult decision for me, and than became an awfully simple one. Because I had just graduated from college, I had quite a number of close friends that I still held near and dear to my heart. There were my three house mates, J, H, and R who were my partners in crime during school, and were as close to family as I had in school. Than there was “the core”: a group of friends from my program who are like my intellectual soul mates. There was also M; although she’s a friend more recently acquired, we have so much in common that I consider her to be one of the few people that understands where I come from. To round out the group of my closest friends, there is R, a loyal friend whom I have known since high school. All together, that makes 8 people whom I couldn’t imagine excluding.
Well, you might think that eight is not such a ridiculous number.
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Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
With just two days until our legal ceremony, I had the (last minute) great idea of making leis for all 16 of our guests. My love for origami shined when we decided the kind of leis we would be making. It was kind of crazy to fold all of those origami flowers by myself so I asked for help from Bridesmaid K, since we were going to have dinner at her place anyway. So, I packed all my supplies and hoped she would help us. 
{ Bridesmaid K, Groomsman W, Mr. Poodle, and in the far back Groomsman S }
Early in the planning process, my mind was made up about one thing - I was to be a colored-shoe bride (Cheeseburger Mom and Cheeseburger Mom-in-Law actually took this much better than I thought they would!).
While, in general, I would like for our day to be as timeless as possible, give me any excuse to buy a killer pair of purple shoes, and I’m in! And so the search for the perfect shade of purple shoes began.
Endless, Zappos, and Amazon were go-to sites for me. My criteria included: as close to “our” deep purple color as possible, satin, height (as I am vertically-challenged and accustomed to wearing some major heels), peep toe, and sturdiness (remember that we are getting married in March in PA - as in it could be snowing or a swamp). Phew! That sounds pretty specific, huh? I actually came up with a lot of options to choose from:
Clockwise from top left:
Nina $70 - Endless, Nina $90 - Zappos
RSVP $74 - Zappos, Giuseppi Zanotti $274 - Endless
Oliveyou’s shoes speak for her.
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.
As Mr. Chick and I celebrated our tenth anniversary last week, I find myself reminiscing on how we met, and the ways we’ve grown together. I thought I would dedicate a post to our story and Mr. Chick’s proposal. What do you say?
Mr. Chick and I met one magical night in 1999. It was muggy and humid down in the courtyard where people were dancing at the Baker Blues party at Rice University, but we didn’t care because we were inside Mr. Chick’s dorm room with the air conditioning turned up high. I had been invited up to Mr. Chick’s room to play a rousing game of Trivia Pursuit, where I quickly realized I only knew answers to the popular culture category. I also noticed that Mr. Chick was very smart and knew answers to more than just the popular culture category. I wondered why all of the furniture in that room was labeled “AEM” and made a mental note to figure out that mystery later. Figure it out I did, as me and Mr. Chick attended a Rice formal dance called Esperanza together two months later.
Since it was a girl-ask-boy dance, I had to think of several crafty ways to get to know Mr. Chick before asking him out. One day, I was walking to class and saw him come out of a building. Excitedly, we walked together to the campus quad. Mr. Chick asked me where I was going, to which I replied, “The library.” Mr. Chick was going past the library, but since I wanted to talk with him some more, I kept walking with him. Mr. Chick then very smoothly pointed out “Um, the library is THAT way.” To this day, this is still a great joke between us.
(Please excuse the horrible quality of the pictures… this is before the digital cameras, y’all!)
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The Hot Cocoas may look sweet, but don’t be fooled: Mr. HC is an MBA, and I a JD, so we are fierce negotiators. And when it came to hashing out the language of the most important contract we’d ever sign — our ketubah — we brought all our haggling skills to the table…
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you how we got to that negotiating table in the first place.
Backing up. Beep. Beep. Beep.
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Before I talk about the bridal shoot that I got to do the afternoon of the wedding I must talk about the flowers. I loved my flowers so much that I wish I could have taken them home with me and had them forever. I knew that I wanted dahlias in rich jewel tones from the beginning. I even had dreams about the flowers. I worked with a NC florist who completely blows my mind. He is brilliant. His name is Jason Clodfelter of The Bitter Pear.
I wanted my bouquet to be rich with colors. I also decided that I wanted each of the bouquets wrapped with the Italian trim that we used on my wedding dress.
(image by the amazing Anna Naphtali Photography)
Congrats to our winners Lillindy, emc, and Christine!
~~~
Have you ordered a copy of the fall/winter edition of Southern Weddings Magazine yet? It hits stores on November 20th (pre-order a copy here), but we’ve got a chance for you to score a copy for free!
Mrs. Bee is featured in the newest issue! Below is a snippet, but you’ll have to check out the entire interview in the magazine! 
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So remember when I needed inspiration for what to make our card holder out of? And then you all inspired me and led me to the one? Well, I took everyone’s advice and did an alchemy request on Etsy. Four people answered my bid and I chose one, Petal Products. So Petal Products doesn’t normally make tree card holders, nor does she make anything tree or wood related, BUT she was sweet, confident, and lived in a heavily wooded area, so I took a chance. Best decision ever.
This was my first alchemy request, so I was nervous and not at all acclimated to the process, but it couldn’t have been easier. So, are you ready to see it?
Here it is, in all its tree stump glory:
Halfway through day 2 of a grueling 3 day company sales summit, I innocently snuck a peek at the e-mail on my phone, only to find one of the best e-mails of my life! I’d been anticipating getting my Weddingbee application results for the past two weeks, how I’d see it in my inbox, my heartbeat would quicken, and I would prepare myself for the worst. But instead, I was bored out of my mind at my meeting, and just opened the e-mail without even thinking about what it could or could not mean.
As soon as I read the magic words, that I would be the next bee, I shouted out a loud “YES!” that everyone in the meeting heard. Whoops! Everybody turned around and gave me a funny look, and then the VP of Sales continued on with her presentation. Luckily we got to take a break shortly after, so I was able to go to the restroom and jump up and down and freak out a little, before composing myself, touching up my lipstick, and having to go give my own presentation.
{Letters Photoshopped by me, images from The Knot, Nordstrom, Men’s Wearhouse, Weddingbee and Craftster}
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