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In the time (pre-engagement) spent daydreaming about our wedding while not studying anatomy, biochemistry, and physiology, I imagined where our big day would be. I am from Western Pennsylvania and Mr. Burger is from Eastern Pennsylvania, about 5 hours apart. I knew that the bride’s hometown was traditionally the site of the ceremony and reception, and having been on the groom’s side of things many time with my cousins, I also knew all about being the part of the family doing the traveling. Not that we ever minded making the trip, but it felt strange thinking of all of his family traveling to “my” home for “our” wedding.
Then, when I thought about locations in my hometown, I came up short. I live in a suburb outside of Pittsburgh, and there really aren’t any desirable reception sites nearby. We would most likely have the reception downtown (or dahntahn for my Burgh girls) :), meaning that even my family would have to travel about 45 minutes (in traffic) and most likely spend the night in a hotel.
I also was not very attached to a ceremony site at home either. The church that I grew up attending had recently employed a new priest that no one really connected with; even my parents had begun attending other churches in the area. I thought about the possibility of using the church where my parents were married (and where I was baptized), but since we weren’t actual parishioners, I knew that there would be some red tape.
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Mr. Spaniel seemed to be more surprised every time we talked about the fact that I wanted a Jewish wedding… maybe it took him a few months to pay attention when I talked about it. 
Anyway, he definitely had a WTF moment when we talked about a ketubah (a Jewish marriage contract) a few months back (even though it was at least the third time it’s come up and he was totally okay with it the first two times!), so I decided to do some research into the texts. Certainly we would not be having an orthodox ketubah, because we don’t follow “the laws of Moses and of Israel”, but I like the idea of writing down in a “contract” our expectations of each other and our marriage, and I wouldn’t mind writing our own (in lieu of writing our own vows to be read aloud at the ceremony).
All photos courtesy of the amazing Angelica Glass, unless otherwise noted. Please note that the photos have only been color-corrected and not fully retouched.
Well, hello, again hive. It’s been over a year since we’ve been married and I really don’t have a good excuse for not finishing my recaps. Married life is wonderful and after the wedding, I realized that planning it had encompassed my life for about 18 months. So after the wedding, I dove right into my former life again—seeing friends, dabbling in various hobbies, and spending time with my dear husband. But I am determined to finish my recaps and share the rest of our wedding day with you. I’ve been constructing the story of our day from all over the place, but I will now continue along in a more structured manner. 
Where did we last leave off? Ah yes, we had a photo session at Bryant Park and then we were off to our venue for the ceremony and reception.
The ceremony required the least amount of planning (since our wonderful officiant took the reins and guided us through the entire process). The rehearsal took place an hour before the actual ceremony, which was fine by both Mr. Canary and me because we’d already had our “first look” earlier in the day. We did a quick run-through with Christine at the helm directing us where to go and it took all of 15 minutes. The highlight of having the rehearsal on the day of the wedding was that I really had a chance to soak up all the hard work our florists had put into decorating the space. Instead of a traditional altar, our fabulous florist created an arbor/archway which would be reused during the reception. It was such a beautiful yet simple focal point.
(DOH!!)
Confession: I sent our Save The Dates out way. way. waaaaaay too early. After my recent posting about the design of our pretty STDs, I had several requests to tell the story of the over-eager bride who sent out her Save The Dates close to a year before the wedding.
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Before I get on with the portraits Mr. CB and I took after our First Look, I thought I’d fill you in on my bouquet, my bridesmaids’ bouquets, and the guys’ boutonnieres. After the post on the guys getting ready, I had some requests for close-ups of the bouts and since my bouquet debuts during our portraits, I figured now was the best time for the first flower post!
My bouquet:
After the ceremony we loaded up in our super-sized limo with our wedding party and fabulous photographers to go have some fun. We had allowed about 2 1/2 hours for pictures and chose locations very close to the church and reception, so it was a really laid back and fun time.
My first job as a wife? Making sure Mr. S’s shoelace was tied!
Our first photo stop was Lindberg Park in Oak Park. We had scoped it out the week before the wedding and I loved the garden of prairie grasses with a path winding through it.
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Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
I was feeling so proud of myself for finally posting my flowers. I have been on the project for months now, but somehow posting about it feels like copyrighting the idea or something. 
That was until I opened this issue of Martha Stewart Weddings.
FMIL Pudding bought me a subscription when Mr. P and I first got engaged, and I love getting inspiration from the magazine.
In this issue, however, Martha not only steals my idea (which was inspired by her in the first place, but whatever!), she does it soooo much better than me!
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The day after I finished my dress for our legal ceremony, I went to Michaels for the first time, which was pretty awesome. I got all of the supplies I needed for the project I had in mind to give our guests at our legal ceremony (stay tuned, because that’s my next post).
That same day, Mr. Poodle and I decided to invite his family for dinner at our house for the first time. It was funny because we don’t really have a lot of things in our kitchen. We definitely didn’t have a big enough pot to cook in for the 9 of us, so we had to ask FMIL if we could borrow several things.
Once the family started to arrive, we noticed TONS of gifts! Mr. Poodle’s aunt and uncle decided to give us our wedding presents now, because they know we don’t really have stuff in our kitchen and they didn’t want us to have to wait until the actual wedding.
On most wedding decisions I haven’t been wishy-washy. OK with one exception—bridesmaid dresses. I wanted each girl to pick a dress from Dessy in the color assigned to her. At first I wanted solid dresses. Dessy has a lot of dresses where you can have an accent color and I got seduced by the idea of tying the different colored dresses together with a common accent. So, it became colored dresses with grey accents, then colored dresses with colored accents, then grey dresses with colored accents. Somewhere in there I entertained the idea of black dresses with colored accents.
If I were one of my bridesmaids I would have smacked me.
Date: September 12, 2009
City, State: Finger Lakes Region, New York
Budget: $13,057.63
# of Guests: 156 invited, 120 attended
We originally thought we might be able to do an $8,000 wedding, but after doing a little research and committing to a church wedding, we realized we needed to bump it up. We decided on $13,057.63 by budgeting out each individual piece, rather than the entire wedding as a whole. Since we already knew how much some stuff would cost when we made our budget we came up with a very specific number, instead of a round one.
We saved in a lot of areas, but the biggest savings for us was probably the catering. It was done by a local grocery store (Wegmans). We splurged a bit on the ceremony and paid a lot of fees to the Church and for music. Our parents also contributed around $2,400 and the bride’s sister and BIL paid for the champagne. We kept what they paid for in the budget to portray the real costs of this wedding, even though we ended up paying less due to their contributions.
Wedding Day Costs
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If I’m remembering correctly, we decided on the colors of our wedding first. Why? I’m not sure. Maybe it was because it seemed like an easy thing to cross off the to-do list. It started with a simple concept: his favorite color is green and my favorite color is purple (basically, just like Miss Poodle!). Easy enough, right? Ha. I soon found out that there are about 50 million different shades of purple and green, and I got really caught up in the nitty gritty of the exact shades to fit the vision of our day.
Doing some research (the knot, an unending supply of wedding magazines), I realized that purple was quickly becoming the shade for weddings (as evidenced by the many, many purple bees in the hive!). I felt a little bit unoriginal at first, but then I realized that I had pictured a purple wedding since I was a child (my favorite flowers are lilacs), and I felt better.
A lot of what I was seeing at first was eggplant and apple green, and I thought - this is it! Modern, elegant, not too girly… perfect.
Halo Halo’s engagement pics celebrate a romantic autumn in Seattle.
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.
A week already! Time really does fly when you’re getting married. So fast that I didn’t even get around to writing my “signing off” post. 
(BTW, big congrats to my wedding date twin, MRS. Cloud!)
I have looked forward to my wedding day for not only the past 11 months, but also my entire life. I was definitely that little girl who grew up dreaming of her perfect wedding day. Very few details in my actual planning process differed from what I had always imagined my wedding day would be as a little girl…
That is, with one big exception: the way I feel now that it’s over.
You see, I wasn’t in love with my wedding.
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It’s not hard to find information on buying a diamond—most jewelers will be more than happy to tell you about the four “C”s, and you know your budget better than De Beers does (two months’ salary? Malarkey!).
But an engagement ring is more than just a diamond; it’s a piece of jewelry that most women will wear every day for the rest of their lives (or their marriages; you know, whatever). So the NUMBER ONE piece of advice I would give anyone who is looking to get a ring in the near future? ASK HER WHAT SHE WANTS.
(Ha, you thought I was going to say something about the significance of an engagement ring and the love that it symbolizes or something sappy like that? Bah. You obviously don’t know me very well. The ring means nothing more than how people react to it. It’s not a symbol of anything except the money you spent. So SPEND LESS!)
To save money on the ring, Mr. Spaniel and I tried a few different things. Maybe one of these will work for you!
That picture is of some lovely, autumn bittersweet, but the beautiful aesthetics of bittersweet is not what this post is about. Truthfully, I only included it because A) a post without a picture is like a cupcake without icing and B) it’s the first thing that comes up when you Google “bittersweet.”
In fact, this is a post for all the brides-to-be who have encountered some “bitterness” during their planning process, particularly in their relationships with family and friends.
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