Weddingbee Blog

I’ve asked for one thing as a wedding gift from my future husband. Most girls want a pair of diamonds or jewelry of some sort. However, I want a few sweet photos that look like this:

Image courtesy of James Christianson Photographer

So… I asked for these:
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Mr. Starfish and I have a two hour gap between our ceremony and reception due to our Catholic mass. At first I wasn’t too happy about this because it will be an inconvenience for all of our guests, but then I started looking on the bright side. Mr. S and I will have time to have a fun photo shoot and still make it to the cocktail hour! I had considered doing a first look, but realized both me and Mr. S really want to skip it and see each other for the first time as we walk down the aisle. So this leaves no room for photos pre-ceremony, which means the gap is a great thing!

I knew I wanted to do fun photos after attending Sister Starfish’s wedding. One of my absolute favorite parts of her wedding day was what I like to call the “photo shoot”. She and BIL Starfish rented a trolley and drove around to different areas of Boston. They took photos with each other, with their families and with the wedding party.

They took photos in areas of significance, including Fenway Park, the location of their first date.
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Congratulations to our winners, SanDiegoAli and thebriz!

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We have a great giveaway today, courtesy of Shutterfly Weddings! Shutterfly has long been known for their award winning and affordable photo books, but did you know that they also carry designer wedding stationery? From shower and bachelorette invitations, to thank you notes and wedding announcements, and even personalized favors and gifts like playing cards, luggage tags and jewelry—you can outfit your entire wedding through Shutterfly. Check out their entire line of wedding solutions here!

Today Shutterfly Weddings is giving away 2 $100 gift certificates to be used toward anything on their site to two lucky Weddingbee readers!

To enter the contest, head on over to Shutterfly Weddings and let us know what you’d choose if you won this contest. And for an additional chance to win, follow @weddingbee on Twitter and retweet the contest by simply clicking here. From there, comment again here and let us know you retweeted! You have until Tuesday, May 11 at midnight PST to enter. Good luck!

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The New York Botanical Garden had a list of six or seven required florists that we had to choose from. I made a few calls, looked for recommendations, and sent out emails to my two finalists. Once I compared their bids, and what they offered, I chose one. I am happy to say that we will be using Diana Gould, LTD for our flowers. I spent hours admiring the beautiful arrangements on her website and began to figure out what I liked.

Since I am planning long distance, the sales associate asked me to send her pictures of arrangements that I liked so that she could prepare for our in person meeting.
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Lairdea is selling a beaded bridal sash. She’s asking $75.

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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Mr. O and I both love, love, looooove to travel. Seeing new places is definitely one of our shared passions, and going on trips is the top priority for any spare leisure money we can pull together. We both love nothing more than a good international adventure, but we are not exactly rolling in dough, and flight prices are insaaaane. So what’s an itchy-footed, broke couple with limited vacation days to do?

(Source)

Master the art of the staycation, baby!
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At this point of crisis, I could have opted out and decided that I would not attach so much symbolism to this dress. I would have continued with the sub-par design, and it would have been pretty enough.

But to do so would have been to completely ignore that the dress did have some significance to me; to have ignored the fear that comes with making an irrevocable, once-in-a-lifetime decision; and would have skipped the hard work of finding out what that significance was and I would have passed on finding out what “beautiful” really meant to me.

A wedding is a unique opportunity to expose your own preferences to the world and have them validated, recorded and remembered for the rest of your life (no pressure!). It’s safe to say that, consciously or not, I focused too much on the “validation” part of this process and neglected some of my own ideas, for fear of taking some kind of risk.

The perfectly serviceable A-line dress I designed wasn’t what I truly wanted to wear. It’s what thought I could wear.
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In addition to the romantic photos we took with our fab photographer Kelty, we also took a bunch of fun, crazy pics. I had brought along a few ’props’ (if you can call them that), which you can see below: mustache glasses and party blowers. You’re pretty much guaranteed super classy engagement photos when you buy your props at a party supply store. Oh well, that’s how we do it around here (well, around my house it is).

We also utilized some other ’props’ that we had lying around. They’re called: the awesome sky. And flocks of seagulls (the birds, not the haircuts [though that would have made for really interesting photos....]). Oh. And sand. Can’t forget the sand.

We had wandered down to the beach, and Kelty instructed the mister and I to run up behind a bunch of birds. I felt like a kid, trying to scare all the seagulls and get them to fly away. And I was reminded of how hard it was to run in the sand! My thighs would be like steel if I did that every day (alas, I do not, and thus, my thighs are nowhere near steel-state [but perhaps a softer metal, like gold {oh! gold thighs!}]).

We also took a bunch of photos on a huge concrete wall above the beach. It was a foggy day (welcome to San Francisco), but Kelty made it look magical.

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I’m finally back with a photo of the driftwood arbor Papa Paisley and I built the other week when I was visiting NorCal. It was fun and quick, taking us about an hour using just screws, a power drill, a pencil and a ladder.

Here ’tis:

I planted Moonflowers (a fast-growing annual) at the base of each post. They’re like Morning glory but white and open at 6 PM, blooming throughout the night with sinful fragrance. If the vines aren’t tall enough by the wedding to reach the top of the arbor, I’ll make a garland out of eucalyptus leaves to hang over it.

I plan to drape billowy white fabric over the top. The goal is for it to look somewhat like this driftwood arbor:
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This past Mother’s Day, my mom celebrated by helping me with wedding stuff. I know, I’m a bad daughter. She insisted that she loves “any time I get to spend with my daughters” (guilt trip alert!) - so that’s my story and I’m sticking to it, ha! Sorry, mom.

One of our first tasks was tackling the card box. We started with a gray and white box from Paper Presentation, and ever resourceful - purple satin ribbon salvaged from the Bed Bath and Beyond registry gifts. Seriously, they have really nice gift ribbon:

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Justabride and her fiance kiss in the rain.

Keep on loading your inspirational wedding pics to the gallery to see them featured here on the blog! Remember, your images must be under 1MB in size, or they won’t load.

I have no idea how to dress my groom and his men. Since our wedding is in the deep heat of August in New York, I feel bad asking them to dress in a tux. Then again, it is our wedding day and shouldn’t they be able to sweat it out one day? Just one day? I will be sweatin’ my a** off in my wedding dress but I’m a slave to fashion — Mr. Lobster is too weak to endure that.

Nevertheless, I can’t let go just yet of our black tie dreams. One of my options include something like this from J.Crew - classic but updated black tux with bow tie:

Why, hello, handsome

I’m also feeling the very popular skinny black tie option which looks good on more slender guys:

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Oh, tiny ones - how can you not love those little spotlight stealers? Kidding-ish.

(Adorable source)

We have yet to determine if we will have any tiny ones in our wedding but that hasn’t stopped me from shopping for a possible outfit (or 10) for them… and by them I mean flower girl. I can’t help it – how can you not love tiny ruffles, full skirts and shimmery shoes?
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Upon entering a serious relationship (or perhaps even after a half-decent first date) it’s just oh-so-tempting to play the name game. C’mon, admit it, you’ve totally doodled a potential married name once or twice…

At some point, I came to realize my name lends itself to a few funnier options. My first and middle name is Amanda Rose, so I could be Amanda Rose Bush, or Amanda Rose Bud, and probably a few others. And indeed, it does get better: my first boyfriend’s last name was Hiscock. You read that correctly H-I-S-C-O-C-K.

No joke. My name literally could have been Amanda Rose Hiscock. Like a statement, “They were late because Amanda rose his cock”. Of course, back in high school this was the most hilarious thing EVER. When I told my mother she turned red as a beet and said, “That’s actually inappropriate.”

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So if you’ve been following along, you know that I already made a ring bearer pillow with one of my kanzashi flower. Welp, I decided that it doesn’t really “go” with our aesthetic anymore. It feels too cutesy, not very country-chic. I changed my mind, so what’s new?

Before that project, I had been looking at some pillow inspiration here. Looking back, I realized there are two that really stick out in my mind, this one and this one. You may recognize the fluffy flower from Mrs. Cowboy Boot’s wedding!

After some thought, I realized that the knit pillow would be the perfect match. It’s quaint, charming, and a clever nod to one of my favorite pastimes. It looked simple enough. Sew a pillow, knit a square, stitch it to the top. Easy peasy.

And it was. AFTER I had a little come-to-Jesus with my sewing machine.

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