Weddingbee Blog

Hey, all!

Mrs. Swan here! Remember me? I dipped out for a bit, but I just wanted to begin to bring some full closure on my time on Weddingbee. Can you believe that Sunday will be my 1st Anniversary? I can’t!

I know that a reader or two had asked about a post with my Swan Tips for the day of your wedding all in one place. I thought I would just lay them out here. I’ve linked them to the related recap post just in case you are wondering what the heck I’m talkin’ about. Also just in case you’ve forgotten what my wedding looks like (or have never read any of my posts), I’ve interspersed some of my favorite pictures from the recaps throughout the tips.

So here are my Swan Tips just in case you might want them:
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So I know it’s been a few weeks since you last heard from me… since getting married and returning from our honeymoon, Mr. Turtle and I have been trying to enjoy the relaxing couple of weeks we have before making our cross-country move. Since we are kind of homeless right now, we’ve been bouncing back and forth between our parents’ houses, packing up all of our possessions and visiting our favorite California places and people before we make this big change. Being married feels totally surreal still, and I think it’ll keep feeling that way until we are moved into our new place with all of our own stuff, playing house!

Our wedding stands out in my mind as such a beautiful memory, as close as a day can come to being the perfect day! I am so looking forward to sharing our recaps with you and telling you all about it once we get all of the professional pictures back. But since that might be a while, and I know that Mr. Turtle and I are about to be caught up in about a month of craziness before we are settled into our new life, I’m going to take this week to share some details and photos of our amazing European honeymoon! (I had to come up with something! I don’t want you guys forgetting me, as I slip into becoming an old Bee!)

I’ll skip all the boring traveling parts.
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I adore calligraphy. I’ve always known I wanted it for our wedding invitations.

Luckily, I have an aunt who is a calligrapher and has done many of my cousins’ invitations and escort cards over the years. Shortly after getting engaged, Aunt P told my mom she’d love to do the calligraphy for our wedding invites. I was thrilled!

Source

We decided to drop off the envelopes to her a couple weeks before the date we set for the invitations to go out. I stamped the return address on all the envelops and packaged them up, excited to drop them off. When I gave her the invites, she looked at me and explained she has never done colored envelopes before. She felt extremely bad and felt she couldn’t do them, since she knows how important the invitations are. I completely understood. But where was I to get another calligrapher at this point?
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Alright, alright. The post office is forgiven. They must have noticed the anger and frustration in my post yesterday, because when I went to check the mail yesterday afternoon I had a cute little box waiting for me!

But, before I show it to you, I want to back up and explain how I chose it. You see, I don’t know if I’m the only one, but when I first got engaged all of the veil options out there completely overwhelmed me. Mantilla? Cut edge? Fingertip? Cathedral? What did it all MEAN? On top of all the options, there was the price. $300 for a piece of tulle attached to a comb?! Are there threads of gold sewn into the fabric?

Just thinking about what type of veil to get got me all sorts of worked up. How was I supposed to chose one?
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Hive: I need your help! Follow along, will you?

It all started with these:

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I think I’ve mentioned my dress doubts once or twice around here. Sigh. But don’t worry, I’m *really* done whining and ready to get down to business. And what better way to make a decision than to check out all your options? That’s right folks, I said options—plural. And that’s where the gulp comes in.

When you shop for a living and you don’t want to wear a traditionalweddingdress, by which I just mean one that comes from a Bridal Shop, you have A. LOT. OF. OPTIONS. Through the spring and summer months, short white(ish) dresses jump out at you at every turn, begging to be taken home and put through their couldthisbemyweddingdress paces.

And what else can an indecisive bride do but oblige them?

Seriously, I’ve taken home nearly every white, cream or gold, short/cocktail length dress in Los Angeles, submitted it to a series of fitting photos and promptly returned it to the store. Big Sigh.

And that’s how I’ve ended up with the final three. Yes. You read correctly. Three.
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After seeing many other brides write newsletters for their bridesmaids I decided this was a must-do on my to-do list. So, I designed and wrote my first newsletter. It took most of the day, but luckily I had the whole day free to play around with it. I think it came out rather nice.

It seemed important for me to do because all my bridesmaids live far from me and far from each other. It served as a way to keep in touch with the projects I’m working on as well as getting to know each other.

I’ve written two more since then, and plan on writing one more about a month before the wedding.

Here’s a quick tutorial on how I made my newsletter:
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Allow me to set the stage: it was about 2:30 in the afternoon when the photographers arrived at our suite in the Indiana Memorial Union. Our hairs were did, our makeup complete, and we were all lounging about making death stares at the TV. By we I mean my mom and bridesmaid M. T, because of my inability to understand hairdresser talk, missed her original appointment and was being hustled through back at the salon. Crisis Number One.

Or really, Crisis Number Two, because Number One was the weather. The whole week in Bloomington it had been raining. The humidity was high and the weather report suggested more of the same. But as we watched the endless loops of The Weather Channel, our hopes diminished until I got a text from a friend: “Radar looks great!” With that vote of confidence from someone not utterly hell bent on having an outdoor wedding, we made the call to have it all outside!

So there I was, lounging, as I said, and secretly nibbling on gummy bears. I have evidence.

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I’ve gone missing: I’m staying on an island with no cell phone reception, no email, and no land-phone (in my room). I’m so sorry about not posting a pre-wedding update, but I wasn’t expecting I’d be in the dark. I am now borrowing my 15 year old niece’s computer in her room (she has ethernet).

The great news?

The wedding was AMAZING! And I am the happiest married woman alive! The week of wedding festivities has  almost come to an end—we leave Catalina Island tomorrow headed to Calistoga, CA and San Francisco for a mini-moon. I’ll send more updates when I return with Mr. P!

Thank you all for being so supportive while I was fervently planning. I can’t seem to upload any pics from this computer so you will just have to wait to see how it all turned out.

XXXOOO

Mrs. Pashmina

I loooooove to play tour guide. I love it when my friends come visit me so I can have a sense of renewed appreciation for Tokyo. I’ve become a bit jaded and everything that was once cool and exciting is now banal. Well, dear readers, I get to do what I love to do now. I’m gonna let you in on some romantic and interesting places to visit in and around Tokyo! Hopefully you’ll consider a honeymoon here! I’ve got a lot of advice to give but this is just one location that is special to my heart.

First up, you can’t miss Hakone, located in Kanagawa prefecture to the west of Tokyo. This is a mountainous area famous for Lake Ashi and spectacular views of Mount Fuji. The most economical way to get there is the Odakyu Line Romance car (reserved seating), which takes 85 minutes and costs roughly $20. A regular express train (non-reserved seating) costs about $11 and takes about 2 hours. I’ve been to Hakone many times, including our 2 year anniversary, so I’ll use my personal pictures to give you a peek:
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Why hello there all, and long time no see! Maybe some of you might remember me, but if you don’t, I got married nine months ago (gosh, has it been that long?!) and now you’ll get to hear (and see) all about it.

The day before the big day, I woke up exhausted. I spent most of the week running errands and finishing up last minute projects and I really could have used a long nap or vacation. Instead, I ran more errands with Mr. Beagle that included picking up our linen rentals, the groomsmen’s tuxes, maybe eating lunch and probably getting coffee. When we finally arrived home, I quickly finished up my projects left over from the previous night and gathered up all our wedding crap decorations to drop off with Pam, our wonderful DOC (seriously, this woman was the. best.). Soon after, our out of town bridesmaid and groomsman arrived at our house which meant 1) I was running behind schedule, again 2) it was almost time for the fun to begin!

We double and triple checked all our goods to make sure we had everything (marriage certificate? Check!) and then headed over to the church.

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I knew from the start I wanted a wooden ring “pillow”. It’s country chic, and super cheap! So I sent Mr. SD to his work ranch in search of a stump. Here’s what he came home with.

A nice raw slice of cedar. If you’re not familiar with cedar, I just want to tell you how delicious it smells. It’s heaven. I sanded it down smooth, cut up 4 ribbons in our colors, and voilà!
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When I thought about how I wanted my bridesmaids to look, I was inspired by the growing number of brides who let their ladies choose their own dress. It seemed to begin with everyone wearing the same fabric, with each maid choosing their most flattering cut:

(source)

The trend seemed to evolve into the bridesmaids choosing not only the cut, but the shade as well – all of them belonging to the same color family, like these stylish ladies:

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Hey all! We’ve been meaning to update our Weddingbee badges for quite some time, and they’re finally here! If you’d like a Weddingbee badge, head on over to our Badges page and grab yourself the badge of your choice for your blog or webpage!

Adding a badge is as simple as grabbing the HTML code provided and pasting it into your page where you’d like it to go. But, you can also customize the HTML to have the links point directly to your bio, profile, board posts, vendor reviews, or any page on Weddingbee you’d like!

For example, check out the badge below.
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…of our guests’ tables.

Mr. Locket and I have slightly differing views when it comes to what we want in our wedding centerpieces. He loves the look of florals (and I do too), but he doesn’t realize how quickly the cost can grow when you add a dozen roses to each table (and multiply it by 12).

In an effort to avoid flowers and still make a statement, I’ve had visions of tall, branched pieces (pictured below) adorned in jewels and dressed with delicate orchids, but these are not budget friendly either .

Gorgeous Manzanita Branch Centerpieces: Source

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