Weddingbee Blog

When I teach art to my students, I emphasize that there’s no such thing as a mistake. You can always turn it into something. If you do that a few more times on your piece, it’ll look like you did it on purpose. It’s a happy accident.

Well, I had a happy accident the other day. Over the weekend, Mr. Lace and I, after determining we needed to kick wedding planning into high gear, decided to take a look at tuxes. By the time we finished all our previous engagements and were ready to go it was 5. I decided to call ahead and check the closing times on two of the tux shops we were going to visit. The first one closed at 5 (of course). With my fingers crossed, I called the second shop. They were open until 9. We got there, sat down with the sales rep, looked through the tuxes and were out of there in 20 minutes. We ran a couple of other errands and then decided we should stop for dinner before heading back to Mr. L’s place.

We threw out a couple of places, went back and forth and finally decided on Panera Bread. It was the healthiest option in the area and we had just started our wedding diets and didn’t want to break them so quickly. While parking, I saw a wee little bookstore.

I had vintage books on my wedding decor list and had yet to find an inexpensive spot to purchase them. I made note of it in my head and we went to Panera for dinner. After dinner, it was raining, so we in a bit of a rush to get to the car since we didn’t bring an umbrella. But, I noticed that the bookstore was still lit and people were coming in and out. I wanted to go check it out, but Mr. L is NOT a book guy. He’s a blog, magazine, Google Reader kind of guy. I knew he’d be totally bored. I hesitated, but for some reason asked him, “Do you think we can quickly stop in that bookstore?”

It’s called the One Dollar Bookstore. You can imagine why I wanted to go in. A dollar?! I thought that there would be a very slim chance that they’d have vintage books here, but decided to give it a try anyway. I walked up and down the rows of disheveled books looking for anything that looked old. Well, old, but not too old and dirty that I wouldn’t want to touch it. Up and down, right and left. I told Mr. L what I was looking for and he joined me in the search. We didn’t find much, but we did find a few, and at one dollar each! Better yet, if you buy five, you get one free. So even if you don’t need vintage books, they have all kinds of books that you might find to be a good read for $1.

So, this was my happy accident. I accidentally stumbled up on this store and found exactly what I needed at a budget friendly price. I bought a handful of books for under $10. Out of that handful, there are TWO that are my favorite - a red one that Mr. L handed me titled Girl of His Dreams. I didn’t care that it was red and it has nothing to do with my wedding colors. The second one titled… well, you can see for yourself below. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the second one—it would be the vintage book for our ring bearer to hold as he walked down the aisle.

Tonight, I pulled out the book and began adding my own little touch to it for my nephew, our ring bearer, to hold. What do you think?

Did you stumble across a happy accident in your wedding planning? Amidst all the things that could go wrong, did something surprisingly go your way?