Weddingbee Blog

Hello hive! I’m finally back from DC (I think I’m the last B-Lister to have hobbled back home) and excited to share with you some of the details of the event from this weekend.

This was my first year at the B-List, and above all, my favorite part of the weekend was putting faces to the blogs we all love. The wedding blog world is a small one and the inspiration that the B-List bloggers have brought to me and all other brides (past and present) is never-ending.

Meet the faces behind the blogs (photography provided by Carlos Andres Varela and Shane Carpenter for Elan Artists):

Our mama bears: Anne from From I Will to I Do and Vané from Brooklyn Bride

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We recently had our food tasting, and let me tell you, there were a lot of unexpected surprises that day. For one we started the morning on an impromptu wine tasting in Sakonnet on our way to Newport.

Going to our tasting, I was pretty sure of what we would pick, at least for the entrees. The ABC has 3 different packages. Within each package there are set entree options. So, no matter what you pick, the pricing is the same. When I saw Filet Mignon was an option, I knew for sure it would be on our menu. I love a good filet!
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I am seriously crushing on this necklace:

From Etsy seller favorJewelry

Isn’t it beautiful? I’m torn between wearing my grandmother’s pearls, wearing red in my necklace, and wearing this. It’s so pretty and delicate. *Sigh.*

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Confession: I’m scared of flowers.

Before wedding planning, my flower facts included yellow roses are for friends and the fact that I like gerbera daisies (just to prove how clueless I am, the first time I wrote this post it read “Gerber daisies”. Gerber as in the baby food brand, sigh). I can tell if something is “pretty” but I can’t verbalize what I like about them. This is why I dreaded the floral decisions.

NOT

Gerbera Daisies, Gerber Baby Food

Sadly, Googling “wedding flowers” didn’t help me much either. Then I found Style Me Pretty’s 121 pages of floral inspiration and Martha Stewart Weddings’ flower section.

I’ve always loved the fluffiness of them but I’m pretty sure peonies are out of the question in August. Then I found a viable alternative from Martha Stewart… and look how fluffy they look!
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Ms. Jewell is selling 17 ivory and gold damask linen cocktail tablecloths. She’s asking $15 each.

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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Today is your big day, though not for the reasons people might first believe. It’s not your big day because you get to wear a beautiful dress, or because you’ll feel like a bride, or even because your nearest and dearest have come from all over to be with you. It’s not your big day because you’re probably throwing the biggest event you’ll ever throw. It’s not your big day because your vision will come to life, because your details will be perfect, or because the whole shebang will unfold just as you planned.

Today you’re making the kind of choice only adults make, the choice to tie the well-being of yourself as a single person to the success of yourself as part of a couple. This is a big day!

From this day forward, you’ll have someone with whom to share the tiny moments that form a life. You’ll be building a joint history with someone who is as much a main character as you are. You’ll be frustrated beyond comprehension at the tiny things you have to give up, then grateful beyond words to have this person — this person who made the same choice you did — right next to you.
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I have to say that I daydream about Mr. Dolphin’s and my wedding every day. I think about every detail and go over and over in my head how the day could go. I dream about the photographers capturing me and my bridesmaids getting ready, putting on the dress, slipping into my heels. I dream about every picture and moment that could be captured. I dream about doing a ’first look’ with Mr. Dolphin. What will his face look like when he sees me? How will I feel?

My mind then begins to worry about the little details. How to get from point A to point B without all of our wedding guests seeing me. What if my hair gets caught on something; what if my dress doesn’t fit just right; what if it rains? As I lay in bed at night all these thoughts keep me awake. I can’t help myself. My mind just goes over and over and over them.

source

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To date, everything wedding-wise has fallen into place amazingly well. Decisions have generally been easy to make, and when an idea or inspiration has popped into my head I’ve been able to find a way to execute it. When something hasn’t quite worked, I’ve been able to find a solution or an even-better alternative. Bridesmaid dresses, however, have somehow proven to be tricky. And I’ve come to realize a lot of it has to do with my own emotions.

I had initially gravitated toward the idea of putting my bridesmaids in black because I loved the idea of having them each pick their own dress. Better yet, they could even pull something from their closet if that was easier. Purple made this a little more challenging, but I was still under the impression that I could just tell my girls to find a purple dress. (Think Mrs. Bear Cub’s Letting the ’Maids Dress Themselves.)

(source)

Here was my reasoning:
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I’d thought I would have to hold off on this project until about a month before the wedding, but we were able to schedule the time for our rehearsal sooner! This turns out to be good and bad—good in that I could now make the info packets for our OOT boxes, bad because there’s been a wedding scheduled at our venue the night before ours, meaning we can’t store anything there ahead of time.

You might remember the embroidery floss binding I did on our programs, which I considered doing again for these info packets. But since I’m a stickler for punishment, I decided to play with a slightly different binding method for these, involving hole punching and threading ribbon.

First though, I spent a couple evenings laying out the info and printing everything out. Most of the content came from our wedding website, so it was mostly just a matter of figuring out how to arrange the pages so they would print double sided.

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When I left off, I was contemplating the negative portrayal of modern brides and weddings that I’ve been noticing in the media and in my interactions with people. There seems to be a school of thought that says that most people throw big weddings for less-than-awesome reasons, or that the act of having a wedding itself is inherently wasteful and unnecessary.

But I think that it’s totally legit that Mr. Octopus and I decided to have the wedding we’re having. Yes, it’s going to be big, yes, it’s going to be what most people would consider traditional and what some might consider fancy, and yes, it’s going to be expensive. But I really believe that it was the best possible choice for us. Here is why:

Because I wanted to give this transition in our lives a heavy weight. Mr. O and I will have been together for eight years by the time we come up on our wedding day. We were boyfriend and girlfriend for a very, very long time, and becoming husband and wife feels like a major rite of passage to both of us. We both wanted a fairly long engagement (sixteen months) and a big wedding because we wanted to really feel this change.
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26.2 miles were run on Monday in Beantown. It wasn’t pretty but it’s done, and damn, if it wasn’t crazy-fun yet totally torturous all at the same time.

Words are failing me at the moment so some picture narratives will have to do instead:

Finally, I am the proud owner of the highly-prestigious/much-coveted (fine, only in the running world but still…) BAA marathon jacket. Seriously, every time I’ve seen someone wearing one of these while running in the park, I had a major case of the envies. Until now.

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I recently had to think very carefully about what it means to be a bridesmaid, and I discovered - I had never really thought about it. Which seems silly seeing as I have four, plus my sister as maid-of-honor! I know there are general guidelines that people follow when choosing, but what does it really mean to me? I realized that I had always just ’known’ what the role meant to me, and that I would ask people accordingly. How do other people choose their wedding party?

The main factors for me in asking people to stand up with Mr. Guinea Pig and me at our wedding, is that these friends have been there for us, loved us, supported us, and will continue to do so for as long as humanly possible. They are friends who would help without a second thought, would be there for me in a heartbeat, make me laugh and keep me sane. Mr. GP and I would do the same for them without question.

I also realized if I cannot fulfill that role for someone who asks me to be a bridesmaid, or they are not a kind and considerate friend to me, I do not feel qualified to do the ’bridesmaid’ job justice, and would have to decline. I know several people who have said one should never decline this request, which again leads me to wonder - how do other people choose who to ask for their wedding party? I always assumed that everyone operated under the same basic friendship rules!
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Many moons ago, Mr. Pencils and I wanted to have the “registry experience”. I required requested that we swing by one of the locations we had planned to register at to do so in person.

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It was a rainy Saturday night in October, and Mr. and Ms. Pencils had just eaten a classy meal of Subway. They entered their local Target with all intentions of creating their first round of registering. Little did they know that a Saturday night was perhaps the worst time to register. Many hours before, during daylight, countless couples had spent their days registering at this very store, ringing up panini presses, towels, hampers, and other home goods.

This manifested itself in Mr. and Ms. Pencils going through one, then two, then three, then four, and finally FIVE separate registry scanners. Each one would work long enough to scan two items and then go kaput. Dead, from lack of battery.
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Seeing as I can count the number of things that I won’t eat on one hand, I gave the reception food-choosing responsibility to the pickier-eater in the household: Mr. Sew. All I asked was that he make sure to include my beloved whole roast piggy, which he lovingly did.

Well, everyone’s got a favorite food, right? Well, Mr. Sew’s happens to be noodles. No joke, we probably eat some kind of pasta-esque dish at least three nights out of each week. Spaghetti, pho, yakisoba, ramen, pancit, chow mein/fun, ravioli - you name it, we eat it. Someone once tried to convince us that the waxy starches in noodles build up in your stomach and slowly kill you, but I’m not buying it. Pasta for life!

(source) Hello, summer noodle lover.

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I’m talking about our menu tasting, of course. What were you thinking of?

Choosing 5 appetizers, entrees and desserts to try at the tasting might have been the most difficult decision to-date in the wedding planning process. I mean come on, my answer to Mr. Hamster’s proposal was an obvious yes (awww). But choosing from a list of dozens of food options? Let’s just say - I believe they invented buffets for a reason. It was a tough job, but someone had to do it. So let’s jump right in, shall we?

Our guests will be starting with:

Smoked Salmon and Crepe Gateau with Paddlefish Roe, Cucumber Crème Fraîche and Sweet Pea Shooter
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