Weddingbee Blog

I never really noticed all the little details at weddings until I got engaged. Now, when I see a handcrafted menu or beautiful escort cards, I appreciate all the hours of effort that took place behind the scenes. I wrote about my favorite some of my favorite outfit details (including those infamous shoes) here. Although I’m not yet finished with my recaps, here are some more of my favorite details from our wedding:

I was pretty easygoing about flowers, giving my florist free reign for most elements. However, I absolutely loved my bridal bouquet of red charm peonies. It provided a pop of color in photos and many of our guests commented on it. My florist was kind enough to make one bouquet for our pre-ceremony pictures and another for my walk down the aisle.

I also loved the bridesmaids’ bouquets featuring blue thistle and white tulips. They complemented the ladies’ dresses really well and stood up in the heat.

Then there were our accordion-style wedding programs, with covers Goccoed (and re-Goccoed because I didn’t like the alignment) by me and assembled with the help of Mom Hamster and Sis Hamster. I saw several of our guests holding onto them after the ceremony - I consider that a win!

I wanted to do something super cute and beautiful for our escort cards, but ran out of time. In the end, I purchased perforated escort cards from Staples and printed them on my home computer. They actually came out okay - not out-of-this-world, but acceptable enough!

Our guests had a ball with our wishes/predictions/advice guestbook, and we had a blast reading all of the notes. Some were touching, others were hilarious. My favorite is the prediction on the lower left corner - it says “Mrs. Hamster will always be right.” I assume this guest left his or her name off to avoid the stink eye from Mr. Hamster.

I was really pleased that we decided to go with the long tables. In fact, it was such an early and persistent request of mine that after a while, I heard Mr. Hamster telling potential vendors and friends, “Yes, we really want to go with long tables.” “We”?? Yesssssssssss, I’ll take it!

Our personalized table numbers were a hit, and our guests enjoyed going from table to table reading all the stories. Weeks after the wedding, one of our friends from grad school said “Oh yes, we were at table Dumpling.” Considering this friend made our open bar a worthy investment, I was quite surprised he even remembered being at our wedding, let alone the table name. (You know who you are.)

Our table centerpieces were left completely up to the florist, and she came through beautifully with tall arrangements of bells of Ireland and calla lilies, short arrangements of peonies, hydrangeas, roses and fiddlehead fern and bud vases of black callas. In true Hamster Auntie fashion, the centerpieces were broken down and distributed post-wedding.

The personalized menus were also a hit, with many of our guests taking theirs home after the evening was over.

And finally, the whoopie pies. Can we ever forget the whoopie pie saga? The answer is no, we can’t. The female half of many of our couple friends told me that they ate theirs, then they ate their partner’s (after some distraction, such as “Hey look, is that fried chicken I see?”). Sorry boys, you snooze you lose.

All photos by Erica Lyn. Removal of Mr. Hamster’s name by me.

What have we done so far?

• Poured tea
• Bumbled our way through a rehearsal.
• Rewarded ourselves surviving the rehearsal with some food.
• I teased you.
• The ladies got beauteous.
• We put on our party clothes.
• We had our first look.
• We sweated it out in the park.
• The bridal party set the stage.
• We stuffed ourselves at the cocktail hour.

What details are you most looking forward to at your wedding?