Weddingbee Blog

Back in December, MOH/Little Sister Pudding came to visit me in Vermont. She was here for a whole week, and we spent most of it talking wedding. Little Sister P is the only person in the whole world that has no problem listening to me talk wedding 24/7…perhaps because she is a huge talker and on most days it is me who listens to her rambling stories and nods my head.

Anyway, we took the opportunity of having both of my bridesmaids in the same country and went dress shopping. We invited MIL Pudding to come along, and she, in turn, invited her mother, so this really turned into quite the little party! I had such a wonderful time being surrounded by all of these ladies, and it makes me feel all mushy inside that the women in Mr. P’s family are just as excited to have me become a part of their family as I am to join it!

How adorable is Grandma P? She was the official photographer of the excursion. MIL P and I took some time to explore the wedding dresses - I was trying to show her the basic “feel” of my dress, since she hasn’t seen it (none of the dresses even compared to mine, though).

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Egads! Hello hive! I am so honored to bee here!

I gotta say, 2010 started off swell… and then turned amazing when I got a little New Year’s gift from the ‘bee! I’ll be honest—I have been compulsively, obsessively, pretty terrifyingly checking my Blackberry at every.single.beep hoping it was that little email that said “Weddingbee Application”. I am loving planning my wedding, and the biggest source of inspiration has been all of you, hive—every bee and every bride-to-bee here. I couldn’t wait to see if I would get the chance to share my planning adventure with you!

When the email didn’t come, but I started to see others that had heard back… I got nervy. I did the least patient, most spaztastic thing I could think of:
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It’s taken me a long time to write this post because of the emotional difficulty surrounding our photographer. If you remember, Mr. Guinea Pig and I booked Arthur Remanjon pretty much as soon as we had decided on a date/venue. Sadly, tragedy followed 5 months later when Arthur was killed in a motorcycle accident, which meant Mr. GP and I needed to think about what we wanted to do, evaluate our options, and choose a new path pretty quickly.

In the months since we had booked Arthur, I had learned about the WPJA, WeddingWire, and Weddingbee (yay!), so I had plenty of new places to look for photographers. We made a list, checked it twice (ha) and sent out some feeler emails. After all, we were now 8 months from the wedding, and a lot of photographers are booking like mad at that point so we were worried everyone would be busy.

Happily, Mr. Guinea Pig and I discovered that Amy Deputy was still available and totally willing to shoot our wedding! Amy is an amazing photographer, super sweet, and was really excited to work with us. Also importantly, she was willing to work with our budget which was already set in stone, as we had thought photography was taken care of. When I met with her (Mr. GP was already in CA at this point) I felt like she really appreciated the joy in every single wedding she photographed, and tried to capture those hidden moments just as much as the ’scripted’ ones (like cake cutting, etc.).
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One of my favorite celeb pics is that of Hilary Swank in an evening gown, digging into a burger with an Oscar (for her awesome performance in Boys Don’t Cry) by her side. I love Hilary! I love burgers! And playing dress up? Even better!

Source

When it came time to think about the Hammy after party, I was at a bit of a loss.
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When Sharon and I were at David’s bridal picking up my dress from alterations, we decided to have a little girly-time and play dress-up when they were de-bustling my dress. I tried on a cute little black dress that was a teensy bit short for my tastes, and Sharon grabbed 3 different dresses that she liked. Although she wasn’t really in the mood to play dress up, she tried them on (he he, I can be very persistent and persuasive when I want to be). Here were the contenders for her beach wedding attire…

(source)

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After reading this article on The Knot, this excerpt in particular caught my eye:

One of the simplest, yet probably most useful, things you could do for your guests is to provide a wedding itinerary. After sending out your invitations, mail guests an additional clever, elegant, or interesting communique with a complete rundown of the events leading up to and following your walk down the aisle. In addition, create a wedding web page for an easily referenced one-stop-shop for guests to check up on everything you have planned. In both cases, include key times, locations, who is hosting, what to wear, and so on for each activity. Tell your visitors about any free time they’ll have, and provide suggestions for how to fill it. There may be events you have in mind (such as a brunch the morning after the wedding) that travelers should know about in advance so they can schedule their trips around them.

You may remember that I had already planned to include weekend timelines in our Out of Town Boxes, but the article prompted me to take that idea a bit further.

I took the same information from the OOT Box timeline, made a few design changes (in PowerPoint, of course) and transferred it to a postcard.
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I’d like to take a moment to turn the spotlight over to… my beautiful ring! She and I had a wonderful little glamour shoot the other day. Photographer, I am not… but I did use the tutorial that many a bee before me has…
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I think one of the most special parts of the wedding day (yes yes, every part is special but I mean, um, super special) is the bride getting ready. There is something so serene, magical and blissful about the photos, except under the cover of serenity is that amazing sense of excitement building up—the kind of butterflies you feel when your loved one is about to step off a plane from a long trip away, when you were a kid waiting for your birthday… those kind of nervous, fun jitters.

Getting ready is a time to get prettied up, to put on your best face:

Source (Mrs. Jasmine)

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My fiance, oder “Velobter” auf Deutsch, is German. He was born and raised outside of Frankfurt. Since we are trying to incorporate as much of “us” into the wedding as possible, it only seems natural that we would try to smush in as much German tradition as possible, right?
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Since so, so many people asked me for the template to my “Old School” Disposable Table Camera Sleeves (original post here), I’ve decided to share!

Keep in mind that this will only fit the camera I used; if you have different cameras, just follow along the tutorial from the link above to create your own template. I used Fujifilm QuickSnap 400 Speed Single Use Cameras with Flash, like these.
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New year, new bees! Please join me in welcoming our first bee of 2010—Miss Pencils, coming to us from Washington, DC!

Miss Pencils, Washington DC/Frederick, MD
Age & Occupation: 24, Program Director, Education Non Profit
Fiance’s Age & Occupation: 24, Administrative Assistant, Ocean Conservation Non Profit
Engagement Date: July 26, 2008
Wedding Date: May 2010
Venue: Morningside Inn
About Me: I’m a nerdy Northwestern girl who always knew she was meant to live in the East, harboring a deep love of ice cream, underwear, Diet Coke with a splash of Coca-Cola, pashminas, scrapbooking, stationery, wall calendars and books written for preteens. I think every day should include good thin crust pizza, chocolate, an obscure historical monument, lots of laughter, a dash of wedding planning and, of course, amazing Mr. Pencils! I’m loving the adventure of planning a Maryland wedding and Rocky Mountain reception, and most of all, I just love love!

I know, I know. You still haven’t seen an inspiration board from me. You’ve seen our colors, my dress, my ring, the man’s ring, our dogs, and tons and tons of other details, but still no inspiration board. My bad.

See, the thing is, I love inspiration boards. They’re my favorite part of wedding planning. But when it comes to making my very own inspiration board, things get a little fuzzy. It’s hard to choose a just few pictures to nail down what you want your wedding to look like and, most importantly, feel like. That’s a tall order, wouldn’t you say?

It’s funny, because I’ve made quite a few inspiration boards. I’ve created boards for my other weddings (a whopping 8 of them, to be exact) based on various designers’ Spring 2010 Ready to Wear collections (Makeup Artist/Fashionista here), and they all came out great. But sit me down and tell me to make an inspiration board for our wedding and you’ve got a mess. A big monster mess.

Every time I’ve attempted to make an inspiration board based on our (let’s be real, my) vision for the wedding, I end up with the huge 50 photo montage (no joke) that I can’t seem to trim down. So you know what I did? I limited myself. Gone are the days of scouring every.single.wedding.website.in.existence. looking for pink, purple, grey, and aqua inspiration. Oh no. I limited myself to the color swatches from 100 Layer Cake (they have the best swatches), photos from Snippet and Ink (they have the most hardcore amazing inspiration boards), and a single solitary signage photo that I found from Etsy vendor, The Back Porch Shoppe. Note to self: must.own.that.sign.

So… are you ready for some Marie Antoinette meets Alice in Wonderland goodness?

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Sorry my recaps are taking so long. I asked a friend to help me splice and encode some video footage to accompany my posts but it is taking longer than expected, so I’ve decided to go ahead without them. Now, where did we leave off…?

I wonder if weddings ever go exactly as the bride imagined (I would say bride and groom, but let’s be realistic). I always thought I was a pretty ’laxed bride. I think I pretty much went with the flow for most things when it came to the wedding. That said, I gave my bridal party free reign over their entrance at the reception and this is what they came up with…

Never did I image that “Highway to the Danger Zone” would be the song that started off our reception or that my groomsmen would be introduced with code names…

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Sometimes I get surprised by how little people know about weddings who aren’t actually planning one. I was shocked to learn that some people don’t realize that you should generally avoid wearing a long white gown to a wedding if you’re not the bride, that not everyone understands that you probably shouldn’t bring an uninvited date without permission, or that some people don’t know how to fill out a response card that comes with a wedding invitation!

I suppose some response cards are less than 100% self-explanatory, and our RSVP postcards are not really any exception: they are laid out like this.

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To say that Mr. French Fries and I are “animal people” is a bit of an understatement. To illustrate this point, this was the picture featured on our holiday card this year:

(Shout out to French Fry Dad for taking this picture.
Getting the cat to look at the camera was like nailing Jell-O to the wall.)

Maybe I should explain how we got to the point where the animals in our household outnumber the humans! You see, before I met Mr. FF, I was living the single-girl life with the requisite downtown apartment, complete with a cat.
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