Weddingbee Blog

I have a fascination with Tears of Joy tissues, so I’m going to show you how I made my own.

First, let’s talk about the materials that I used…
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Hi all! You may have noticed over the past 24 hours that posts that receive over 50 comments aren’t displaying all comments (notably, recent contest posts). We’ve been getting an overwhelming amount of traffic over the past few weeks and are working hard behind the scenes to accommodate it all and make sure that the site runs as fast as possible. While we work the kinks out, we’ve been limiting the number of comments displayed on posts to 50. Never fear—we’ll return to displaying all comments as soon as we work out the kinks! In the meantime, if you’re entering our current contests (currently the Petal Happy contest is live, and we have a great contest coming up tomorrow!), please know that we’re still receiving your entries despite your comments not appearing.

We’ll keep you updated! Thank you so much for your patience!

Early on in the wedding planning process. I toyed with the idea of incorporating a “travel” theme into the wedding. Mr. Latte and I had traveled cross-country quite a bit during our long-distance relationship, and I wanted to celebrate the fact that we survived - and that it would soon be over!!! I started to collect cool boarding pass and passport books STD and invitation ideas, and brainstormed creative ways to incorporate stamps, suitcases, and maps as details for other aspects of the wedding.

Although the theme fizzed out over time (passport stamps weren’t that great of an idea once I realized that we had only traveled to a handful of cities together!), once I saw this cute little suitcase, it was confirmed… the Latte wedding would celebrate a long-distance relationship.

(Cute pink suitcase! Image by the Lattes.)

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Lesson number 1 of the weekend: if your dog has especially athletic skills, such as the ability to leap six feet in the air from a dead stand-still, it’s probably a good idea to be careful when you ask her to go somewhere near you. For example, do not try to teach her that a certain space is her bed by leaning over it and saying “bed” while you are standing right next to your actual bed. Possible outcomes of this scenario include her leaping over the bed you indicated and onto the bed that is yours, connecting the hard part of her head directly with your nose and resulting in blood pretty much everywhere. Additional possible results include a crooked nose and a debate about whether it’s worth it to go to the doctor. Next time you see me, see if you can tell which direction my new nose curves in. Or, as Fancee corrects, see if you can tell me in which direction my new nose curves. This is why I love her, people.

My nose totally curves to the left now. Stupid nose.
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My hair-guru bridesmaid Jdubs was in town this weekend for my bachelorette party (way more on that caraaaayziness to come as soon as I have all the pics!) and we managed to find a bit of downtime to work on that majorly-important detail of the wedding: my hair.

Bridesmaid Jdubs not only grew up in a salon but now is a representative for a very upscale hair product company called Oribe. So basically, girlfriend pretty much rocks the shiznit at hair, which is awesome for me because my hair-styling skills are wash, rinse, repeat.

I told her I wanted it to look natural, not too overdone and that I wanted to go curly.

Here’s the before picture of my crazy/frizzy/wavy/ridiculous hair (also, this is pre-makeup. Yikes! )
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Because really, I don’t know enough about them to come up with a clever title.

I hadn’t really talked about flowers - to be honest, the whole subject intimidates me a bit. When I first started planning, I didn’t have the best experience with potential vendors. If a vendor doesn’t wish to work with your budget, I thought it would be common courtesy, especially after meeting and communicating over email, that they would let you know instead of leaving you hanging for 2 weeks? Perhaps not (I obviously hold a grudge against this particular vendor.) Aaaanyway.

They didn’t want my money

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We’re Mauied! Get it? We’re married and honeymooning in Maui… {waiting for the slow ones in the back to catch on}

While at the beach, soaking up some rays before some paddle boarding with my husband (love love love saying that!) we discovered a post our photographers did, giving us a little sneak peek at our bride and groom photos. I think I had a minor heart attack trying to get the photos to load on my trusty iPhone, so I had to wait ’til we got to our condo to see these babies… oh boy, the wait was so worth it.

I’m in love with this happy cheery photo! {swoon}

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Bridesmaid Erica’s wedding was last month, and we did our bridal party shots in Washington DC’s Union Station. It was great. We traipsed all over the place, taking photos on escalators, in stairwells, in front of the architecture outdoors–everywhere. It was lots of fun, and her photographer got some KILLER shots. It also got me thinking… where would be some good Pittsburgh locales for OUR bridal party to demonstrate their smile-with-your-eyes skills?

Unlike Bridesmaid Erica and her husband, we’re not going to have a first look in order to take photos before the ceremony. I totally get why the first look is a good option–it allowed us to go to Union Station, after all!–but I’ve realized that I’m really a traditionalist about this. For whatever reason, I just feel really strongly that I don’t want to see Mr. Octopus until I’m walking down the aisle. That does mean that we won’t have a huge window of time for photos, though, so I’ve been thinking about some places that we can hit up quickly.
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Part of the reason I’ve been a little absent from the ’Bee is because this past week, I flew out of state to visit my grandmother. She is wonderfully recovered (although she has no recollection of her time in the hospital) and excited to come to the wedding! It was so nice to see her.

While I was there I was able to spend some time with my mom. I mentioned to her that I wanted to display some family pictures at the wedding, and we ended up going through some photo albums.

As a little girl, I considered it a magical thing to look through my mother’s old albums. Mostly I liked seeing what she was like before I was born; it was always fascinating to me that she was a person, not just my mom. I felt like it made me know her better.

The wedding album was special because I didn’t get to see it very often. She looked so beautiful and my dad looked so happy. I love the sense of history and seeing my family members all dressed up in their finest. One of my favorites is this one of my grandfather helping Mom with her beautiful dress (purchased from JC Penney):
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Shazam! That’s what I think our lighting added to our pictures when I look back at these reception shots—a bit of shazam. Since Mr. Sunbeam is an animator, he has lots of creative friends. Several brought their fancy cameras to our shindig and worked our lighting for all it was worth. We’re so happy now we picked this barn for our reception and didn’t overload the room with lanterns or other lighting elements. The simple Christmas lights did JUST the trick. Check out some photos of the reception by our friends photos below!
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Since last week I saw a post on the boards asking about how to make a DIY photobooth, I decided to share our fauxtobooth in its mock up stages, instead of waiting until after the wedding when we’ll have the pictures from it. I had to set it all up so I could write up the assembly instructions before packing it for the wedding, and thought it might be helpful to others thinking about doing their own photobooth!

I already mentioned the USB button we will be using to control the photobooth program on my sister’s Mac here, and here I showed you all the fun props we got.

But as far as supplies other than the USB button, Mac and props, we’re using the following to construct our fauxtobooth:
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Now that you’ve seen all there is to see of our invitation suite, and you’re probably sick of it, there is one last thing I want to talk about.

(Just in case you needed a refresher - photo sent to me by Kristin at Twin Ravens Press)

We were pretty set on using certain paper, and I think you’ll be interested to hear about it. The booklet almost contained one final page that would have read the following:
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I honestly have no idea how this idea came up during our meeting with the florist. I don’t remember mentioning adding a sash to my sister’s dress, or the fact that it was going to have some sort of floral detail. Perhaps when we were discussing bridesmaids’ bouquets it somehow got thrown in the mix. I’m not familiar with “bridal amnesia”, but if it’s a thing, I clearly have a mild case.

However, at some point during our meeting with our florist, it was decided that she would create a sash with a fresh floral detail for my sister’s bridesmaid dress. I loved this idea because it would then be guaranteed to coordinate with her bouquet, and not be too “busy”.

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A few months ago, I discovered the amazing calligraphic goddess that is Barbara Kua. She is a very talented calligrapher based out of Toronto, Canada. Her work is so beautiful and I knew that I needed to have a piece of it.

[source]

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What a gigantic relief! The invitations that we have labored over for the last year are finally starting to leave our hands. Thank the wedding crafting goddesses!
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