Weddingbee Blog

Mr. Spaniel and I just got back from our first dance lesson. Why dance lessons, you ask? Are we going to rock the reception?

(An aside: aren’t they amazing?)

Well, not exactly. We actually are just learning a simple waltz—no mean feat, given my two left feet! (Nyuck nyuck nyuck.)

Incorporating my family’s wedding traditions has been pretty easy—I’ve been to Jewish and Pakistani weddings, and there are so many aspects of each that are highly visible, but also totally secular.
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So, I took a break from reading other wedding blogs because I’m at the point that I can’t change a lot, and I can’t really add a lot, either. But then these last few days my curiosity got the best of me and I started perusing the blogs. Bad idea. Now I cannot stop thinking of new, must-have projects. I know I am getting down to the wire and I don’t really have all of our current projects finished, but I am still lusting after new things. My latest obsession is barber striped straws.

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I know your probably thinking, ‘Miss Fro Yo, those are straws. What’s going on? How could you be obsessed with something so simplistic?’

I know, but look how amazing they are in photographs:

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We all know about the legendary Post Wedding Chop (PWC). A sizable chunk of ladies grow their locks long before the wedding, and just when they are so sick of hair and can’t stand it anymore, the honeymoon is over and they get to chop it all off! It must be satisfying to finally get rid of it all. Like if Mr. Sprinkle decided to shave his beard (NEVER!) and let me do the shaving. That kind of satisfying.

Anyway… I didn’t really try to grow my hair out (although it did get fairly long and wild towards the end) I did work hard at keeping it one color. Usually I change my hair color or style every two months, but in the year before the wedding I just kept going blonder and blonder, until I hit the platinum shade I really wanted to try out. I absolutely loved being a blonde, but it was terribly hard to keep up. My roots looked horrific at five weeks, and my hair started to get kinda brittle. Many times over the course of our engagement I walked into my salon and discussed dying my hair black instead, or red, or magenta, or something, but I am glad I was able to keep it blonde as long as I did. Clearly, hair is serious business around here.

A few months after the wedding I finally made the big change.

Here is the before:

(photo: Hazelnut Photography)

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This is a hard post to write, because it’s so personal, and because when you’re an engaged couple, there’s so much pressure to be perfect. But Professor Paisley and I are the first to admit we’re not perfect.

This is the story of our wedding-that-almost-wasn’t:

We’ve been having communication/compatibility problems. Basically, if you’ve ever heard of the wonderful book Five Love Languages, we score completely opposite on the love language spectrum according to this book, a book that I think has quite a few things goin’ for it. According to these quizzes here and here, Mr. Paisley is a “Quality Time” and “Acts of Service” person––meaning he feels/shows love through one-on-one time and doing things like cooking/cleaning/taking out the trash, while I’m a “Gifts” and “Touch” person—meaning I feel/show love through little presents, surprises and lots of hugs and kisses. I scored near zero on Acts of Service, and he scored zilch on Gifts. So those are two areas we need to work on for each other, in order for us both to feel better loved, and better appreciated.

And while we acknowledged the things we needed to work on months and months ago, what with both our busy schedules (I earn the dough as a writer/journalist for eight to ten hours per day, plus have an intensive landscape architecture internship, and he is a full-time PhD student AND works the equivalent of a full-time job!) we let a lot of things slip by the wayside.
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Before I reveal the final product, I thought I’d give you some details of our invitations that I really like and enjoyed creating.

You’ve seen the envelope liners. Now for all that other stuff on the envelopes:

I printed the envelopes by hand-feeding them through my little printer. It would destroy five then work perfectly. Though I hand-addressed our Save the Dates, I downloaded a free front from Fontsforpeas and loved it! I used “Pea Ninh” because it offered a simple, not-overly-stiff-and-formal feel. They printed so well (I think) that they look like they were handwritten on there anyway!
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One toast down and another to go…

BIL Swan gave our other toast, and boy was it a toast!

As much as I am sure he does not want me to write this, I didn’t really find out that BIL Swan was one of the most consistent readers of my blog until his toast. I knew that the IL Swans read my blog, but I was pretty shocked to learn that BIL Swan is an avid reader. Et tu, BIL Swan? Really?
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I decorated some baskets! And a wreath, if we’re going to be picky. What does a lazy, sunny Sunday with the girls equal? An arts and crafts bonanza! Well, for most of us, anyways…

Some of us were obviously out later than others (and you know it wasn’t me ‘caues my definition of a late night means staying up past 10 PM).

Anyways, here’s what we created in between watching movies like The Sweetest Thing and Pirates of the Caribbean and lazing on the couch/bed.

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Echanday is selling never-worn Badgley Mischka bridal heels. She’s asking $150 for the gorgeous size 7.5 shoes.

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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In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m sort of a DIY-dork. And darn proud of it, too! Part of this title comes from my love of knitting and deep desire to learn to quilt. I’ve wanted to learn how to do this for a while now, but really haven’t had the time or excuse (but who really needs an excuse to learn a new craft??) until now.

Ever since I decided on our favors (more on that later!), the wedding has a taken a very pleasant “down home” feel. I’m really excited about it! I wouldn’t quite call it western, but it is definitely country…

Think “Spread the Love”. Think hints of paisley and crochet. Think… QUILT. Guestbook. That’s right. A quilt guestbook instead of the traditional paper-pen deal. Take squares of different fabric and several fabric pens, and add to that the well-wishings and great advice from loved ones and you have my new favorite (for now!) part of the wedding!

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I realize that I still have some time until I have any wedding showers, but I would love it if someone would buy one of these for me. I would greatly appreciate it.

Flirty Aprons

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Alternatively: The David’s Bridal Rejects

First of all, thank you all so, so much for your kind words in regards to my last post. I cried reading a few of the comments you left; hearing your stories touched my heart. It really makes it easier knowing that I’m not alone in my fears and insecurities. And y’all telling me that I’m beautiful? Shucks guys. We all are!

So like I said, a few weeks ago I finally got the courage to suck it up and go dress shopping. We figured David’s Bridal was as good a place as any to begin looking. I made an appointment and went online to search for dresses that I liked to use a starting point. I was pretty surprised with a few of their newer additions. Call me Debbie Downer, but I wasn’t really expecting to find anything I liked.

I printed out this collage to show my consultant. All photos taken from David’s Bridal website.

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Me: “Dude, wait. Why are the calla lilies so expensive? Can’t we just go with anthuriums?”
Sewing-Mom: “I don’t really like anthuriums.”
Mr. Sew-Aunt: “Me either”
Me: “But we can get them in white. How much different can the be from a calla lily?!”
*Consultant lays some out on the table*

Me: “Oh. I guess they are different. But I still want the anthuriums.”

*Collective sigh*

Well, we met with our florist. Between Mr. Sewing, his aunt, and my mom, there were quite a few opinions to be had by all.
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’Cuz let’s get real here, who doesn’t like a present or two?

I felt a little weird registering for gifts at first. I mean, it’s basically like putting together a wish list for Santa, but on crack. Hey, you know me, buy me stuff! Here’s a whole list of stuff you can buy, organized by function and design! And here’s the site where you can buy the stuff, and I’ve even provided our address, so you can send the stuff directly to us! I made it easy for *you* to give stuff to *us*. As much as I’d like to receive the things we registered for, it just seemed a little gift-grabby to me.

Well, I got over that fast. All thanks to this little gadget:

My shopping face. Second only to the Crave Case Face.

Oh. Em. Gee.
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There is no floof quite like wedding day floof! But before we could get to the dresses, we had some other things to take care of… like taking photos of said floof! I just could not put my camera down once we got to our venue!

Taffettes Susie and Kylie pose for the bride:

Since we got to the venue way early, we decided to take a peek at the reception room upstairs. We ended up setting up the guestbook and favor table, the gift table, and a few other odds and ends.
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Does anyone remember Drew Carrey’s show Whose Line is it Anyway? I seldom watch TV, but it was one of my favorite shows in college. My favorite segment? Props! Go check it out on YouTube.

Props seem to be pretty popular for wedding photos nowadays…

The classic balloon with the guy jumping up in the air like he’s flying and the girl holding him down… the happy couple on bicycles… the shoe shot from the waist down.  For our engagement photos, we didn’t really plan to use any props. We brought a change of clothes and picked two awesome locations for our photos.  I think it turned out pretty well since our backgrounds were interesting enough.

However, ever since our engagement photos, I’ve been thinking about having props for our wedding day photos.

(source)

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