Weddingbee Blog

Like many other May brides, I have recently engaged in my hair and makeup trials. Mine took place at the wonderful Belleza Hair and Nail Salon. I’d have to give the trials a solid plus rating; I saw some stuff I liked, the women who will be doing my wedding style are wonderful, and I know exactly what the small changes are that I’ll want for real run.

I walked into my makeup trial with images many have used before me:

Here at Project Wedding

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OK, I’ll admit it: so much of the wedding planning process is a “me me me” thing, that I sometimes can neglect Mr. Buttons a bit! My head is filled with visions of flowers, wedding dresses, bridesmaids’ dresses, and the like…

So, let’s get back to the topic at hand: marriage. And the outward symbol of that marriage that Mr. Buttons will wear on his left hand. I’ll admit; I put ring shopping off for months and months. I am not sure why, because I was more than excited to hound Mr. Buttons to purchase mine (I know, I’m a jerk, right???). Plus, I love to shop… so it should have been no problem for me!

However, I was hung up. Mr. Buttons and I did go to a few jewelry stores to price out their wedding bands. The problem is that Mr. Buttons is a relatively simple guy. He doesn’t want anything too “fancy”, and I agree. But, the plain gold or white gold wedding band was just not doing it for either of us. It is classic… my dad has been wearing one just like it since my parents got married, and it works just fine!

Source

But, with the amazing job that Mr. Buttons did with my ring, I felt like I had to do something a bit more personal or unique.
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The Wedding Bootcamp is back in NYC! Join The Wedding Salon and the experts at Bridal Reflections to learn about the latest trends in Bridal couture! Grazia and Erin from The Wedding Salon have graciously extended FREE invitations to Weddingbee readers!

To score two free tickets, visit The Wedding Salon and use code WBNY4C upon checkout.

At the beginning of this process, I started off with this inspiration board.

Pinks, yellows, and browns. Boots. Jars. Country chic.

So far we’ve stuck pretty close to this color palette. But recently, we’ve subconsciously been drawn to other colors as well. Blues, purples, greens…

So we’ve been adding these in small amounts through fabrics and some signage…
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Originally, we weren’t even considering having a tent. My thought process was that we are having a backyard garden wedding, so we might as well enjoy being outdoors… especially after the work everyone is putting into making the yard look nice!

But the more elements I added to our wedding in my mind, the more I envisioned a tented reception. I began to realize that even though I didn’t notice it in the beginning planning stages, the tent was always there. Even though I don’t consider myself someone who grew up with a wedding vision, I did grow up watching Father of the Bride. Over and over again. So subconsciously, as much as I like weddings that are nontraditional, when I envision a wedding, I envision the Father of the Bride wedding.

Photo Source

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After my last three posts on the making of the Cola invites, it’s time to finally show off the finished product (along with what I imagine our guests’ commentary will be)!

“Ohhh, what a pretty envelope! What could be inside?”

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After the toasts, I quickly headed to the bathroom to pee, and after that is when the fun really began. By this point, everyone was relaxed, full, and ready to have a great time.

My good friend Amanda (the one who did the e.e. cummings reading), had wanted to do a toast for us, but somehow that never got communicated to our coordinator, Rick. Since she didn’t get to give an “official” toast, she gave us a sweet and heartfelt unofficial one afterward.

That’s Amanda on the right, saying very sweet things about the Dude and me. She is one of the few people who knew us both individually before we met; and she’s the reason we met!
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I’d been dreading the “bridal shopping experience”. I know plus sized brides don’t have many options, and I’ve heard all the horror stories of salesladies being mean to us. But I still deserve a nice dress, right? So in a burst of courageousness, I made an appointment at a bridal consignment shop.

They had used dresses that could be purchased off the rack. There’s very little help from the salesladies and you can go through the racks by yourself to see if there’s something you like. I didn’t expect to find “the dress” here, but it seemed like a nice place to start shopping.

They had three dresses in my size, which I expected. So I tried on the first dress. It was a strapless, beaded satin thing. I know I don’t want strapless, but I want to try on *everything* before I decided. So I happily put it on. I was surprised to see that the strapless dress seemed to highlight my face. When I looked in the mirror, I looked “bridal”. I’m not sure if it’s because it was the first dress I put on, or because it looks like the archetypal “bridal” image. Hm. Still pretty set against a strapless, I at least now knew that I could wear a well-altered one, in a pinch.

There were two more dresses, but I don’t remember them much. One had sleeves (not for me!) and the other was too big and fell off, and the shop owner couldn’t figure how to fix it.

Here’s what was so difficult. I was the only bride there by myself, and there were three other girls there with their mothers.
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We recently learned that our wedding coordinator is no longer with our venue. She decided to make a career change, so we were moved to another coordinator at the Atlantic Beach Club named Elaine.

We were a little bummed about this at first because we really liked Jessica, our original coordinator. But after our first meeting with Elaine, we were super excited to work with her. She gave us so many great tips and has been with our venue for over a decade.

It was really refreshing because she gave us real advice. She knows we are on a budget and she was telling us ways to cut back without losing impact. One of her recommendations was to look at Shaw’s for a cake. We were originally looking into Costco, as we love the flavor of their cakes, but I was surprised to get this kind of recommendation from someone in the wedding industry. Typically it seems like all of the recommendations are to other vendor’s colleagues and friends on preferred vendor lists.
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Congratulations to our winner, ms_music!

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Today we have a blingy giveaway from Adorn! Adorn lets you rent high-end jewelry for a big event or day at the fraction of the price of each piece’s true cost. Today they’re giving away a $150 gift certificate to one lucky Weddingbee reader!

From now until April 5th, every piece on Adorn’s website that was $200 or less is now $75, and everything that was $201-$500 is now only $150! Click here for more details on this great sale!

You have 2 opportunities to enter this contest! Simply visit Adorn’s website and tell us which piece you’d choose if you won the gift certificate! For a second chance to win, follow Weddingbee on Twitter and retweet this contest. Then come back here and let us know that you followed/retweeted. You have until Wednesday, March 31 at midnight PST to enter. Good luck!

It was no question we were going to include a monogram somehow into the wedding. I love to monogram things. Towels, bags, etc. I also love when friends get things monogrammed for me (e.g. my overnight bag from the Argyle MOH). I immediately came up with this design to incorporate into everything:

While it seems like I should be incorporating my new last name into the monogram, I preferred the letter “B” so much more. I’ve always loved that letter, so for all obvious reasons, including the fact that BOTH of our names start with a “B”, it only seemed right to use it instead.

And, I even created a derivative look of the monogram for our Save the Dates:
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Maybe you noticed I wasn’t around much last week (or maybe you didn’t. That’s cool, too.) That’s because I’ve been traveling out in California with the Trail Mix family visiting lil’ bro TM, who’s stationed out in the rural Central Valley in California for part of his Americorps volunteer program.

As fascinating as my family vacation may be to all of you, that’s not what I’m writing about. Rather, it’s about the perspective I’ve been able to gain while being on this vacation. Truth be told, I’ve done nary a lick o’ wedding planning throughout the trip. No emails to our photographer regarding the requested day-of timeline, no honeymoon hotel booking (which, dear God, needs to get done ASAP!), no contacting the gourmet chocolate shop I’m thinking of using for our favors, part deux (I know two favors is excessive but the first ones don’t really count). I even stopped reading wedding blogs, although I couldn’t quite quit Weddingbee (but no reading the rest of ’em, fo’ realz!).

I can’t stress enough how helpful this wedding planning hiatus was for my mental health.
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I think it’s safe to say that I don’t like cooking. The only thing all my exes and husband-to-be had in common was their love of cooking, and I’m still unsure whether it was out of desire or necessity. I even dislike grocery stores (except Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods Market for their yuppie aesthetic), because they’re usually too cold and too florescent.

Don’t get me wrong. I love food and the pretty Calphalon products I see on the Food Network. I love going out to eat and using words like hollandaise, tapenade, and ganache with reckless abandon. I also live in a dense urban area with A-plus food, and I have zero kids (surprise!). Still, the process kills me.

To be slightly more useful in our meal prepping, I’ve graduated to making salad (not one of those ready-made bags, either) and being the all-around vegetable-chopper when we make dinner at home. But because we already have decent pots, pans, plates, and more wine and pint glasses than we can count and store, our home-goods wish list was a short one.

Therefore, we went straight to Honeyfund after hearing great things about a friend’s Hawaiian honeymoon registry.
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RunMegRun is selling her Homa Creations pearl and crystal tiara headpiece. She’s asking $140 or best offer.

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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This past weekend we took a little walk down to Vines on Clark, our home party venue, to sample some tasty treats and figure out what we wanted for our 3 appetizers. The funny thing is that Addie, the event planner, told us to pick a few things off the menu that we haven’t had before. Um… hmm… considering we order at least once a week from them, that was gonna be tough!

We already knew we wanted the coconut crusted shrimp and the toasted ravioli at our party, so it was a matter of choosing one more. For our tasting, we did just what she suggested and ordered the few things we hadn’t yet tried.

Up first was the white bean hummus…

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