Weddingbee Blog

Think about your Wedding Self and your Regular Self. Are they the same? I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Often, classmates, friends, and even Bee readers will remark that I seem like a super laid-back bride. I gotta tell you, I feel like a super laid back bride. Sure, I’ve had moments of stress and guilt, but nothing major. Nothing like my Regular Self.

As my wedding planning has progressed, I’ve realized a couple things:

1. When it comes to planning my wedding, I am the best version of myself. I am carefree and courageous, a little silly and creative. I am laid-back and light-hearted. And I’ve maintained a level of organization that continues to baffle me.
2. I am not like this in any other facet of my life. You should see me at grad school (which I just finished for the semester, so apologies for my radio silence.) I am a mess. I am high-strung and anxious. I am unsure of my decisions and myself. I conflate essay assignments with my level of self worth and cannot write a paragraph or attend a class without an anxiety attack. I am my own worst enemy and can’t seem to get out of my own way.

This seems really strange to me.
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Day 2 started off with what would quickly become my favorite daily ritual – mmmmmm, breakfast buffet. After breakfast, we met with the hotel’s wedding coordinator to go over all the details and get our welcome gift, a nice hardcover book of the islands. The meeting was super quick because we were only doing the ceremony and they had already emailed us the details. So about 10 minutes later, we hopped in a taxi and took it into town to pick up our marriage license at the courthouse. It is so weird being on the left side of the road and looking over cliffs the wrong way! Not that I make it a habit of looking over cliffs, but you know what I mean. The views on the way were beautiful, despite the fact that it was raining.

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Remember way back when we were going to meet with the jeweler about beginning the process of making our wedding bands? So we did. But the topic of the day became my engagement ring. And my dreams of a 3-stone ring were killed almost as soon as I walked through the door. No lie.

Let me start my saying that our jeweler is amazing. He is the most lovably hilarious gay straight man that’s ever existed. He totally won me over, and if you read my last post you’d be shocked that I could be talked out of a 3-stone so quickly. Ultimately, he explained that my oval’s cut is amazingly rare in its perfection (he cut it himself and witnessed the moment “it happened like a dream”), and to put anything next to it only covers up its brilliance and hinders its shine.

As you may have gathered (since we were talking 3-stones with the jeweler), Mr. Seashell and I did continue our conversation about the engagement ring. Ultimately, the underlying sentiment was about more than the ring itself. We had a meaningful discussion about what it all meant, literally (in terms of the ring) and emotionally, and made the decision that was right for us.
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I have a hard time admitting this, hive, but for you, I’ll do it.

I looked at pictures of rings online for months before we were actually engaged. Whew, there, it’s out! I wasn’t sure what I wanted but, but I ogled over delicious sparkly, shiny baubles like these:

(Source)

You may notice that they all have colored stones. I definitely wanted something unique, non-traditional, and so I thought, colorful.
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It’s funny how many little things you don’t think about when you first start planning. One that you really cannot forget is to thank those wonderful friends who stood by your side throughout your courtship and were thrilled to have been invited to again stand by your side as you say I do. (Can I get an “awwwww”?)

If your groomsmen are anything like ours… a gift connected to alcohol will probably hit the spot (pun intended). And for those who are looking for something that won’t necessarily promote lushery—it’s my post and I say it’s a word—read on because each of these gifts can go double duty.

First up:

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Ashley and Chris were all about the love for their intimate wedding, which focused on celebrating the special occasion and including those closest to their hearts. Ashley’s mother and her close friends put together nearly every aspect for the reception, and all of that love, time and attention by their loved ones made their day absolutely unforgettable.

The Details:
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As we are approaching Mr. Dolphin’s and my wedding, things are getting quite hectic. I apologize in advance if I don’t blog much this week or next. We are 1 week out and I’m freaking!!!!

Umm… Hello super scary countdown on our blog that is FREAKING ME OUT. I can no longer visit our blog, because it freaks me out too much. It doesn’t freak me out in a way that I don’t want to get married, but it freaks me out in a way that I can’t believe the time is almost here. 8 years of dating and here we are, 8 days from our wedding day. CRAZY. but… crazy happy, for sure.

I can’t believe this little 6 hour party we have been planning for 2 years and 3 months is finally 1 week away. Mr. Dolphin and I have been checking off our to-do list, packing for the honeymoon, and preparing for next weekend’s festivities.

I walk around the house like a chicken with my head cut off most of the time.
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Kaykling and her future husband shot their engagement photos at their Alma Mater in the fall.

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.

The B-List was given a look into this season’s WEtv wedding programming, including a new season of Bridezillas and a brand new show called Girl Meets Gown. Girl Meets Gown is a WEtv original series that takes a behind-the-scenes look at the Dallas area’s premiere bridal salon, Stardust. Some pretty wacky scenarios come up, including two sisters searching for one wedding gown to share between the two of them for their upcoming weddings. Check it out!

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Screw the details! Maybe we can just have a giant balloon heart?

Thank you again for your overwhelmingly massive response to my ring dilemma discussed here, and here. I seem to be suffering from an inability to actualize a lot of my projects lately and actually making a decision feels really good.

I think I’ve come to realize that the wedding is now, gulp, four months away and all these things that have been hypothetical, ideological, aspirational or otherwise written and debated and discussed need to start happening. I need to make decisions for realz now. Double big gulp. It’s go time.
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… with our wedding!

(source)

Who knew 973 miles could feel so far? Ugh!

I was lucky enough to recently spend several uninterrupted days in Providence. I met with several of our  wedding vendors, and got to make a bunch of wedding-related purchases. It made me realize how much I miss/put on hold by being in Chicago!
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As soon I received our Etsy address stamp, I was dying to stamp all our envelopes with it. You see, when I went to place the order for our invitations, the lovely people over at Ajalon Printing & Design gave me all our invitation envelopes and about 1/4 of our RSVP envelopes to take home, so I could have time to add calligraphy them (more on that later!). I was able to hold off on the stamping for a few days, but in the midst of finals craziness, I decided to take a break and try out my stamp. Unfortunately, my first try was kind of a fail. I used dye-based ink (Marcela K from Target) and it bled on the 100% Cotton Crane Lettra envelopes. Additionally, my attempts at eyeballing the placement of the stamp resulted in crooked addresses. The following conversation ensued:

Me: OMG, I stamped some of our envelopes and they came out blurry! The ink is bleeding onto the paper!
Mr. Jelly: Let me look at that. It looks fine!
Me: Do you think anyone will notice it?
Mr. Jelly: If someone actually cares enough to notice that our return address is slightly blurry, then I don’t want them to come to our wedding.
Me: What if that someone is… um… your wife?

Touché, mon frère.

So it was back to the drawing board.
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Shoppy is selling 39 sandalwood fans. She’s asking $30 for all.

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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When I tell you about the 24 hours surrounding our engagement, you may not believe it. But I promise, every word is true.

Unless otherwise noted, all pictures from here on are personal photos.

It is October 2008, and Mr. Hermit Crab and I are heading out of town for a weekend in Alexandria Bay, NY and Ottawa, ON. I had planned this weekend months ago so that we could get away and spend some time together.

We arrive in Alexandria Bay in the Thousand Islands Region of Northern NY (4 miles from the Canadian border) at dusk. I had thought that I had found a great deal on a motel because it was nearing the off season; little did I know I was getting a great deal because we were staying in what I can only describe as the Bates Motel (or at least it seemed that way!). It was a tiny strip motel on the side of a nearly desolate road with just a tiny lock on the door handle. To this day I’m still not sure why I did this, but I looked under the bed. You can imagine my dismay when there was actually a trap door under the bed! I also can’t explain why Mr. Hermit Crab went under the bed to look in the trap door. He found a cement cell. Seriously, Hive, I can not make this up. We spent the next 15 minutes deciding whether to put our suitcase next to the door or over the trap door. We decided to use it to bar the door, but I didn’t sleep a wink that night!
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Last summer I developed a crush. In fact, it was a bit more than a crush. It was a semi-obsession. But don’t worry, it was a love affair that happened online. And Mr. Pin Cushion knew about it. This obsession was (okay, still is) with our photographer. I stumbled across her photography blog one day (after clicking from link to link and not remembering how I got to where I was) and fell in love. I had hardly looked for a wedding photographer, but when I saw this blog, I felt that I didn’t need to look any further. (I don’t normally ’believe’ in love at first sight… but perhaps love at first blog-site?)

The blog that I speak of is Steep Street. And my crush is on the fabulous photographer behind the blog, Kelty Luber of Steep Street Photography. Kelty is creative (how I would love to have a few strands of her artsy-craftsy DNA) and has a unique eye. Indulge me by checking out some of her photos (the kind that helped kindle my crush):

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