Weddingbee Blog

…Or how laziness will get you a full mane of hair, Pretzel style.

Last week I was feeling a little saucy, so I did something crazy. I wore my hair down.

I even rocked my Pretzel “knot” when he proposed

No joke, you see my hair is almost perpetually in a messy bun (from hence dubbed “Pretzel Knot”) and I wore it down, styled even. It freaked people out. Nobody had realized how long it had gotten, and I admit I hadn’t noticed either. I think it is, perhaps, the longest it has ever been. I proudly announced this fact and Mr Pretzel looked at me and asked, “Really? Are you sure?” I took that as a challenge and dug out all the old photos in my possession. After a humorous walk down memory lane I came to a conclusion. When it comes to hair I am lazy.

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My bridesmaids and I started our dress-search with some dreamy ideas about floor-length, flattering, altogether fabulous gowns. We went to a shop and tried on three hours’ worth of dresses. We pondered our choices for weeks, and I started to feel like we’d never come to a final decision. Just as time was running out, we made a last-minute trip to my bridal shop. We started another round of dress-up (and pass-the-dress), and much to our relief, everyone found The One for them! Which means I can finally show you The Look for my bridesmaids!

The Dresses: I wanted the girls to choose dresses they liked, within the “pink and floor-length” parameters. We ended up with four different styles in five shades of pink. I can totally see each lady’s personality in her dress—my BFFs loved the same strapless ruched dress, but my more outgoing bud chose a brighter hue, while my strawberry-blond bud tried on a million pink dresses before we found a shade that looked perfect against her skin tone and hair. My always-elegant SIL chose the goddess-like, one-shoulder gown in the middle. My future SIL is the youngest, and her dress actually looks the most innocent and sweet. The last dress is sassy and bright, exactly what Mr. P’s tomboyish SIL wanted for a night of dress-up! All of the colors look different in person, but this gives you a general idea:

Fourth dress; All other dresses

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Mr. Spaniel and I love music, and there was all kinds of great stuff we’d planned to incorporate into our ceremony. But it only took a few revisions of our monster programs to realize that our musical selections would overtake our actual ceremony in duration if we didn’t make some cuts! As a result, we’ve dropped from six much-loved and deeply-considered pieces to three.

The wedding party’s processional will all be to the ever-popular Pachelbel’s Canon in D. I know this is a super, super common selection, but there’s a reason for that: it’s so beautiful! True story: I was not the kind of girl who dreamed of my perfect wedding from a young age—I’ve made up everything as we’ve gone along, pretty much—but I knew from the first time I heard this piece at a dance recital when I was four-years-old that this song would be in my wedding. Luckily, Mr. Spaniel likes it, too, since we’ve decided the bridesmaids and groomsmen will walk down together (I’d initially thought they’d walk down with him before the rest of the processional), so it stays!

We’ve chosen slightly less traditional music for my processional and the recessional. And so, without further ado…
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So, are you ready to see how a two-bride proposal came about?

It all started in Canada or maybe even Miami, or New York? See, I travel A LOT for work and that leaves me missing my Stripy counterpart and with a lot of time to fill. Seriously, you have so much more free time when you’re living in a hotel—no cooking/cleaning/errand running/dog walking or the myriad of other activities that take up time at home. This leaves me lots of uninterrupted time for internet browsing, and before wedding blogs took over, I already had a pretty hefty queue of design blogs, gossip websites, and social networks on the roster.

At some point, vintage/antique jewelry sites made it into the mix. At first it felt like a dirty little secret—am I looking for an engagement ring for my girlfriend? for myself? Am I gonna propose? When? How? Whoa, this was serious. Then I stopped freaking out and it just became a part of my routine. Design Sponge? Check. Creature Comforts? Check. Apartment Therapy? Check. Fay Cullen. Check.

Never checked her out? You should. Seriously there is some amazing vintage/estate/antique jewelry out there and I found it to be more affordable, unique, conflict-neutral and all-around awesome then a boring old solitaire. (I have love for ALL things sparkly, but I’ve never been a solitaire girl.)

Seriously. Check it.
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Where: Wine Steals in Cardiff/Solana Beach

When: Thursday, January 21st, at 6:30PM

source

Happy hour goes until 7PM, so make sure to get in before then to get a $4 glass of wine!

If you can, wear red so we can find each other (while showing support for Haiti).  You can find more information on the board thread here! RSVP to this post if you can make it!

We’ll see you on Thursday!

Since last we spoke, I sent off the save the date magnets. Here are the details that we included in them:

This is what was on the magnets, and we needed some sort of backing for them. We shopped around for red cardstock, thinking it would be an easy task. It wasn’t. For some reason Office Depot only carries “re-entry red”, which is the equivalent of neon red. Not what I had in mind.
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When looking through my makeup bag, you’d find all of the latest brands from an exclusive boutique located down the street from me. Maybe you’ve heard of it?

Image courtesy, Target Stores, Inc.

Yes, that’s right — I’m a drugstore beauty bride. I prefer Carmex to MAC gloss; L’Oreal to Lancome. So, you see… when I started pricing day-of makeup services for w-day, I had to get used to the idea of paying *a lot* more than my usual $15 for foundation. I’m pretty frugal when it comes to beauty products, but I know that I want something outstanding for the day of our wedding. Which is why I scheduled a trial with a makeup artist and tried airbrushed makeup this weekend for the first time.
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Notes to self:

Look up the proper way to address Save the Dates BEFORE printing address labels. If you have the gut feeling that you are doing it wrong… you probably are (Oh… it’s Mr. and Mrs. Joe Schmoe? NOT Mr. Joe and Jane Schmoe? ***smashes head against table***)…
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Slalap is selling a fifty-foot-long “Red Roses” aisle runner from Original Runners. It is in perfect condition. She’s asking $125.

Have a wedding item for sale? Post it with pictures in the Weddingbee classifieds and you might see it featured on the blog!

Other great items for sale:

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Lovely, clear colors have a vital effect on our mental happiness.

- Miss Dorothy

Obvious statement of the day: I love pink. It’s endlessly cheerful, pretty, sometimes even a little ridiculous. While I knew I wanted pink to be the main color of the wedding, I also knew I wanted to pair it with something to make it feel a little more unexpected.

I don’t know when I stumbled upon Dorothy Draper’s interiors, but it was love. Serendipitously, she is also a purveyor of pink.

So what about her interiors are so inspiring?
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Or, our unconventional registry that turned conventional….

A while ago I showed you all how I made our own honeymoon registry on our wedding website using PayPal, but I thought I’d touch on the alternate registry we did through Amazon.com as well.

I’ve read a lot of blog posts about the stress of registering. The guilt, the indecision, the overwhelming fear of the registry gun, the pressure from the store representative to put massively expensive items on your registry… the list goes on and on. But for us (er, me, since Mr. Cola didn’t really want to be bothered with this) it was pretty dang easy!

It all started with me sitting on my couch with my laptop, and I thought to myself, ‘Gee, what can I register us for that we’ll actually use? We have a kitchen and home full of stuff already, it’s not the newest stuff, but we already have it!’

So I started adding less conventional registry items we could really use, like Kelty 20-Degree Sleeping Bags, camping head lamps, a pool cue holder, Washington State Cougars Billiard Balls, and a Dual-Zone 18-Bottle Ventilated Wine Cooler.

(pictures taken from the Amazon listings)

But then I started thinking, ‘Well, Mr. C really needs a new suitcase… and oh! I wonder if they have any cool garlic peeling devices… or maybe a cupcake carrier for taking them to work…’
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As time ticks by and the wedding approaches, it’s been fun to see some of my inspirations become realities. In this case, it’s the wedding party’s clothing ensemble.

Remember when I asked you all for advice on which color suit the guys should wear? Well, Mr Trail Mix just couldn’t be convinced on the merits of khaki so we decided to go for charcoal grey instead. He trekked down to Men’s Wearhouse, where he was able to score a pretty good deal for 6 suits that included a “Buy one, get one for $100″ promotion that they frequently offer. We also ended up finding ties from Men’s Wearhouse as well. I have to give credit to Mr TM for the ties because he found them, showed them to me, and then visited multiple stores in order to try and find enough. He ended up having one of their Miami stores ship it up to New York City, where we went and picked them up today.

Although Men’s Wearhouse’s customer service is lacking, their prices are very reasonable and the quality seems to be high. I’m totally taken with the tie, I have to say…

I convinced Mr Trail Mix to model the look for us all.

Side note: Don’t you just love seeing your man in a suit? I always get a kick out of it…

(Personal Photo)

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Don’t laugh. When I spoke at my high school graduation, the main theme of my speech was Harry Potter. OK… laugh. It is just as ridiculous as it sounds. I connected our graduation to the Sorting Ceremony in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone—we were all about to be sorted from a gaggle of 18-year-olds into actual adults, embarking out in the real world for college, jobs, bills…

Yes, feel free to continue laugh and doubt my credibility as a serious wedding blogger. One final piece of context: I did this directly following another speech that detailed the harsh realities of the cold world we were about to enter and likened our future lives to something from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. To say the least, I felt somewhat like an idiot savant…
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Once upon a time, in a land approximately 479 miles away (according to Google Maps) there were two young girls. Let’s call them Rainy (hmm, who could that be?) and Kate. Rainy and Kate met at cheer camp when they were around 14. They knew each other through Rainy’s then boyfriend, let’s call him Toad. Toad was is a manipulative, sociopathic, pathological liar, but that’s beside the point, at least for now. Anyway…

Rainy and Kate had a love/hate friendship, like most girls of that age do. They’d be great friends for a few weeks, then hate each other for a few weeks, then go back to being great friends again. After a little while, Rainy and Toad broke up, and Rainy distanced herself from Toad, Kate, and everyone else in that social circle.

A few years later, Rainy found herself at a new school, which just so happened to be the school that Kate and Toad were now attending. Somewhere in that time, Kate and Toad found themselves in a relationship. Rainy didn’t mind, as she had lost touch with both of them, and never gave it a second thought. Unbeknownst to Rainy (at the time), Kate and Toad had a very tumultuous relationship, never staying together for more than a few weeks at a time.

Around the end of their senior year, Kate and Rainy rekindled their friendship.

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I just realized I have not showed/talked about my e-ring at all, so here it goes!

To be able to understand why I love this ring so much and why it fits my personality so perfectly, you need to know a few things about me:

Well first, Marilyn Monroe’s quote, “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend,” does not apply to this Poodle girl. Don’t get me wrong, I do think they are gorgeous, but ever since I can remember, there are 3 materials/things I do not like to wear.

1. Diamonds
2. Leather
3. Yellow gold

To me, diamonds (especially the big ones) are just like some dresses that I totally love, but know they don’t look good on me because I don’t have the body for them.

Second, I am constantly doing things with my hands, and many many times that involves power tools, sewing machines, baking utensils, dirt, clay… the list goes on and on. So, I only wear comfortable jewelry that I dont have to remove each time I’m doing something (this is how I’ve lost SO MANY rings in the past).

The last time Mr. Poodle visited me down in Chile, we met with my MOH and without planning it, we ended up talking about Ee-rings (because she was working on making one at that time) and I shared my feelings about diamonds with both of them. I have to say that Mr. Poodle was very surprised, but he totally understood why I didn’t like the “classic” diamond e-ring.
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