Soooo, I guess I have some explainin’ to do, huh? Yeah, this post has definitely been over a year in the making…
I know I left a lot of you ladies hanging, but I made sure to respond to any PMs I got regarding the topic of my eBay wedding dress. So hopefully you don’t all hate me for making you wait a year? *makessadpuppyeyesatyou*
The thing is, I wasn’t planning for it go this far.
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I designed our programs to be design-friends with our invitation suite. I’m a stickler for consistency, so they work well together, but I also went a little more whimsical with these guys. The pressure was off for the programs, and I had quite a lot of fun with these. This weekend, Mr. Scissors and I spent a good two days printing, cutting, folding, measuring, nailing, threading, sewing, and assembling our eighty programs. He was a marvelous helper, and we are both so thrilled with the results.
When I last talked about what I was going to do for escort cards, I showed you the idea I had to modify the origami flowers into escort flowers. Once I had completed that mockup I knew that was what I wanted to do, and began the process of folding enough petals to make one flower per guest. Since each flower requires 5 petals and we were estimating 160 guests, we folded 800 petals! And when I say ’we’, I really mean: my mom. Here’s a quick look at the final product, first!
(this photo copyright of Amy Deputy Photography)
I’m a baby fanatic. Always have been, probably always will be. And don’t worry, it’s not because I’m blissfully ignorant - I’ve been in the trenches. Actually, I’ll start this post with a story:
Back in college I used to nanny and babysit a great deal. Like I said, I couldn’t get enough of the babies. Late one night, I was babysitting and the little guy started crying. At eight months old, he was expecting to see one of his parents in the middle of the night and wasn’t too thrilled to see me. I did my best at consoling. After I went in his room, made sure everything was OK, and rubbed his back for a minute I left his room (with a soft “shhhhhhh, shhhhhhh”) hoping he’d self-soothe. (Side note: sleeping is a skill. If you pick your baby up every time they cry, you deprive them of learning the skill to put themselves to sleep. Hold on to that pearl of wisdom. I’ve done a lot of sleep work with families and it’s a tough cycle to break!) Anyway, there was no such luck that night. After letting him cry it out for a few minutes he grew genuinely distressed and I went back in his room to pick him up and rock him. He began to settle a bit, with his head on my shoulder, but then started coughing. He’d gotten so unsettled that he made himself sick. So “sick” that up came the vomit, and down my back it went. In fact, down my back, into my jeans, and into my underwear. Yes, my friends, I have had a baby throw up in my underwear. And I still love them endlessly.
But, this isn’t a post about me. It’s about Mr. Seashell.
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Featured on Weddingbee
All-Inclusion Invitation Suites
“Make an elegant invitation statement without the fuss. Stylish invitation sets with matching envelopes, reception and response cards included.”
I am in love with my ring, which is a good thing since I picked it out. However, while it does have 17 diamonds, I’m not so sure one would describe it as bling. I’m generally pretty understated in terms of my style, and I think my ring is no exception. Choosing my ring was a relatively simple process since I did this before I learned about how many amazing wedding resources there are on the internet.
Anyway, I wasn’t exactly actively looking for a ring when I found this one (see, I’m not totally nuts!), but I was aware I’d probably be in the market for an engagement ring soon. Hence, I was kind of keeping an eye out. Since I like lists, here’s a list of all the places I (sort of) looked.
1) St. Lawrence Market Antique Market. My go to place for everything and one of my favourite places in the city. I’ll have a longer post on the market soon, since it’s definitely going to figure strongly in our wedding planning process. I love the idea of a vintage ring. I would love to wear my mom or grandmother’s wedding ring, but as that’s not an option for me I was willing to settle for something vintage. Anyway, I kept an eye out for potential rings during a few of my visits, but didn’t see anything that would really work for me.
2) Tiffany. I have to admit I browsed on their website more than once. The store itself doesn’t really appeal to me, but I did like this ring quite a bit.
(Photo from the Tiffany and Co. Website)
Now that you’ve seen our invitations in all their glory, let’s break them down to their painstaking how tos. Other tutorials exist around the hive if you’re interested in single panel pocketfolds, too. You can check out those from the awesome Mrs Ballet Flat, Mr & Ms Sew, Miss Cola, Mrs Deviled Egg, Miss Snapdragon, and Mrs Daffodil.
I knew I wanted to have invitations with 2 panels: one in English and one in Vietnamese. I couldn’t find pre-made pocketfolds, so I had to make them myself. I began with instructions I found from Project Wedding’s Wedding DIY Challenge.
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Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
Quickie recap: I fell in love with a costly dress in December ’08, and I purchased a different (albeit similarly vintagey) designer sample in Spring ’09 and the money went to charity {Huzaaah!!}. But my heart wasn’t in it.
By the time this past February came around, I was coming up on major crunchy-decision time. I’d had little luck finding a used Bee and with a nearly year long search I had pretty much desensitized myself to the gown’s beauty as I had with Fern. It was time to turn my attention elsewhere and embrace the undeniably gorgeous gown hanging in my parents’ office, waiting for the go-ahead for a good dry cleaning and alterations.
With some time to kill on an unseasonably warm Sunday in Pennsylvania, and a hankering for some wedding fun {I’d been laying low since the holidays}, my mom and I decided to take a gander at David’s Bridal’s bridesmaids gowns. And I—genius that I am—thought it would be a fine opportunity to take some pictures of me in my gown before we left for reference when choosing dresses—and possibly maybe for reassurance that I stilled loved it but I would never admit to that.
For the rest of this post I declare:
… and “it” is money.
I was talking to a good friend of mine a couple of years ago, and she pointed out that there are two major topics that everyone is always in some sort of tizzy about, and they happen to be the two topics that we all have to deal with in some way, at some point: sex and money. In general, our education around these things is briefly touched upon in school, but mostly left up to our parents, and often parents don’t know how to talk about it, either because it’s awkward or doesn’t come up. So for both issues, we are left to figure things out ourselves. Which, if I may say so myself, completely sucks.
You make a lot of mistakes and have to do a lot of experimenting to make things work for yourself and for your partnership. No one rule works for everyone – and that is really frustrating. Why can’t someone just give me all of the answers?
Another friend emailed me recently and said that a lot of her couple-friends are keeping their finances separate, even after they marry. I think these were all straight couples she knew, and she was wondering how that worked for us. So here you go: a peek into the great money issue of Seahorse and Fancee.
talking about money makes her want to bite me.
We were married and it was fabulous! The weather held up, the food was amazing and the music had the dance-floor packed. I’m waiting for our pro pics to start my recaps, but just wanted to pop on by and leave you with this little teaser…
Photo by Erica Lyn
Hi hive! Thank you for your continued suggestions for Weddingbee Spring Cleaning categories. To find out more about Spring Cleaning, click here!
Today’s featured item of the day is manzanita trees and branches!
Sellers: if you have manzanita trees or branches for sale, please post your item to the Weddingbee Classifieds by adding your item, and then return to this post and add the lindamask to the item you’re selling in the comments, along with a quick description. Also pay attention to the comments in this ad to see if any buyers are searching for the item you’re selling by subscribing to the comments.
Buyers: if you’re looking for manzanita trees for sale, you can do a couple things:
Here are some items currently for sale (see all decor for sale here):
SabrinaR424 is selling a gold faux manzanita tree. She’s asking $50 plus shipping for the 4-foot tree.
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After some hits and misses in bridal stores and after gallivanting around strangers’ homes, I gave up dress searching for a few months. I breathed some non-wedding-dress-breaths into my life. It was nice. Until January came, and those breaths (along with my heart rate) quickened significantly when I realized that if I was planning on getting married (check) and I didn’t want to do it naked (double check), then I better buck up and buy a dress.
Luckily, I stumbled (metaphorically) across an online ad for a sample sale at Marina Morrison. Marina Morrison is a bridal salon in San Francisco that I never considered looking at during my extensive gown search because it’s quite fancy schmancy. And while I can appreciated fancy schmancy, I’m not much for fancy-schmancy-this-dress-can-buy-a-car-prices. But with my ensuing panic attack, I decided to make an appointment.
The salon is like an art gallery for wedding dresses! [Source]
Having a wedding is sort of like an extended Christmas/birthday season. The gifts seem to just keep on coming! The only weird thing is that you sign up for the gifts you want and you can see what gets purchased and when. It reminds me of looking for our Christmas presents when my brother and I were little. One year, we found them hidden in our parents’ closet. Thrilling. I dislike most surprises because I find a lot of joy in being in the know, so the registry was super fun. That said, some of my favorite gifts were strays from the registry. Here a few of my favorite gifts:
Since I already inherited a KitchenAid from my grandmother, I was on the hunt for attachments that we could add to our registry and that I would be most likely to use.
What was it? Getting our marriage license! Honestly, I don’t think I’ve been excited about any other legal document, except when I got my driver’s license when I was 16!
In California it was ridiculously easy to get our marriage license.
We filled out the paperwork in advance, showed up at the County Clerk’s office around opening time, waited about 3-4 minutes for our number to be called, swore we filled out the forms accurately, wrote a check for $79, and signed the forms. That was it!
It was also convenient that I could enter my new last name (I’ll be hyphenating, for reasons I posted here) on the license application, so our marriage license will have my new name on it.
Of course, we had to take the required blog photo outside the Clerk’s office with our license! 
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Around 3:30 or so, the ladies were ready—our makeup was complete, hair was done, and the bridesmaids were all dressed, looking gorgeous.
The final moments as I left the hotel to get to our venue were harried, rushed, exciting, and surreal. It was a mere three hours away from me becoming a wife, a married woman, a Mrs. It was going too quickly and not fast enough. I took a moment to take a deep breath and our photographers caught me.
FOUR DAYS. Yes, those capitals are necessary because when one’s wedding is only FOUR DAYS away, it is impossible to think of it in any other way besides ALL CAPS. Anyways, I’m back home for the week and it’s so refreshing being upstate, away from the giant sauna that is Manhattan. We’ve been knocking down projects right and left and for the most part, it’s been smooth sailing.
However, there’s been some thorns in my side, a few arch nemeses, if you will. And so, with the wedding being FOUR DAYS away and all, here’s my assessment of the good, the bad and the ugly:
The Good - I feel loved. I’ve had so many texts, emails, phone calls, etc. and it’s wonderful to hear my friends get excited for this coming weekend. My dad baked 212 chocolate chip cookies to put into the welcome bags, resulting in numerous extras ready for consumption while warm from the oven (wedding diet, be damned!). My brother’s coming home from the West Coast on Wednesday. I’m so looking forward to being surrounded by my family and friends this weekend.
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