Congratulations to our winner, Megrit!
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With the recent launch of Weddingbee’s Invitations Shop comes all sorts of fun promotions, and this week’s is a giveaway worth up to $250!
We’re giving away 150 Personalized Note Cards of your choice! To enter, visit Weddingbee’s new Invitations shop and return to this post to tell us what your favorite product in the shop is! For a second chance to win, follow Weddingbee on Twitter and retweet this contest (if you’re already a follower, simply retweet by clicking here!). Then come back here and let us know that you followed/retweeted. You have until Monday, October 11 at 11:59 PM PST to enter. Good luck! 
I had a really frustrating experience while dress shopping this weekend.
I drove to a place almost an hour away because they carry Watters, Pronovias, and Jenny Yoo. I had a long list of Watters dresses that I wanted to try, plus two Pronovias dresses and one Jenny Yoo dress. But when I got there, they had none of the ones I wanted to try on. Even worse, all of their samples were a size six, which is like a street size two, and there was no way in hell that I could even squeeze my zaftig bod into one of those teeny little things. The sales associate said, “Well, you could just hold them up to you to see how they look,” which I found patronizing and ridiculous. Not to mention the fact that I didn’t even want to try anything on since they didn’t have the dresses that I wanted to try.
Sigh.
When I got to my car, I got on the trusty iPhone and found another store that sold Jenny Yoo. It wasn’t too far, so I gave them a call and they said they had the dress that I wanted to try in stock. I sped over there and tried it on. Unfortunately, they didn’t have it in white (it’s technically a bridesmaids dress that Jenny Yoo markets as a “bridal alternative”), but I tried it on in purple and I actually really love it.
“Let me live, love and say it well in good sentences. “
- Sylvia Plath
{source}
With our little beach wedding seven months away, I’ve decided to begin the inspiration search for my vows.
Having a writer for a fiance makes the vow-writing process an intimidating adventure. Over our ten-year love story, Mr. Ostrich has made my heart skip a beat with just a few words (and silly drawings) in birthday, Valentine, and holiday cards. He’s truly a master of the English language, and I can only imagine that his vows won’t leave a dry eye in the house.
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One add-on our reception venue has that I love is the ability to use a gobo (for a slight upcharge, of course… argh!). What’s a gobo, you ask?
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| Gobo Fraggle |
Ummm…OK, not that Gobo. And yes, I totally dated myself. Anyhoo…according to Wikipedia, a gobo is “derived from ’Go Between’ or Goes Before Optics.”
Huh???!?
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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 have a ridiculous amount of photos that I love from our reception. And as much as I love the photos of our guests, I’ve decided to start with the details. I believe that the “details,” meaning the linens, the flowers, and all of the little projects that I poured my heart and soul into during our engagement, are truly the foundation of the event. I had the most wonderful time at our wedding, as did our family and friends; and the warmth of the love that we experienced on that July day will forever fill my heart with joy. But nothing delights a bride like seeing all of her wedding details finally come together.
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There’s a really important part of our wedding planning that is coming up very soon—a part that we’re doing completely backward. So of course, the traditional way to do things is to first get married (!) and second, jet off on a honeymoon. What are we doing differently? Well, switch the order of those two around, and you’ve got it! We’re going on our “honeymoon” before we’re actually married.
If you’ve read my bio, you’ll have noticed that Mr. Jaguar and I are currently living in London. Our big move back to Sydney is coming up soon, and we knew we wanted to do some travels before we headed home and threw ourselves into wedding planning, house building, job finding, and goodness knows what else. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s planning holidays, so I put my travel-agent hat on, and off I went. It didn’t take long for us to realise that many of our dream-travel destinations were so much more affordable for us to visit here, simply because we’re already in the Northern Hemisphere. I won’t lie—I got very excited when I realised this—and we quickly put our travel plans into action.
I’ve jokingly started calling this trip our pre-wedding-moon because it’s the kind of holiday adventure that would be perfect for a honeymoon…if we were actually married! But since we’re here and we’re on a budget, we’re doing it now. When it comes time for the actual honeymoon, we’ll find somewhere that is closer to home back in Australia and keep it local and on the cheap. Two holidays in the space of twelve months? Sign us up!
So here’s what our pre-wedding-moon looks like—this is what you call taking the long way ’round back home to Sydney.
First stop: Orlando, Florida!
{Personal photo taken in 2008, just before Halloween!}
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
There have been a handful of weddings that I have seen on the internet that have totally inspired me. They have proved to be immensely helpful, if even just for me to refer back to. I’ve sent them to my vendors when trying to describe what I wanted. I showed them to friends and family members when asking them their opinion on something similar. I loved collecting images that captured a style that I liked. Even if I didn’t know why I liked the wedding, it was totally worthwhile to keep it and often times it came in handy.
The wedding between Jill Stonerock & Josh Schwartz was one of my most influential. Rustic but not country. Relaxed but not casual. Beachy but not near the ocean. (?)
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Hope you like pictures—because there are a bunch coming your way!
Now, we had three location choices for the wedding: Chicago, L.A., and Palm Springs. Our plan was to check out venues in all three cities to help us make the final decision. Since I *may* have done some research before we were engaged, I already had a few venues in mind. We only had a few criteria. It had to have space for the ceremony and reception. It had to hold enough people (guesstimated at 150). And it had to be awesome.
Chicago
Chicago is the city where I grew up, and the majority of my family still lives there. Since my relatives were going to make up a large part of the guest list, it would be easy for them to attend. Plus I loved the idea of having some of my friends visit Chicago for the first time. I wasn’t going to be in Chicago for a few months, so the search began online. Here are the top two Chicago contenders.
Salvage One
trulyoo is selling clear acrylic frames to be used as table number holders. She is asking $40 for 30 5×7 frames.
Have a wedding item for sale? Post it with a picture in the Weddingbee Classifieds, and you might see it featured on the blog!
Other great items for sale:
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Everything about our wedding was navy and white. I’ve really wanted to include color somewhere, but wasn’t sure where. Then it hit me—the thank you gifts! I wrapped part of the bridesmaids’ gifts in fun colors. It’s not a huge detail, but I was excited to include the fun pops of color.I started with the thank you notes.
Of course, all of our wedding guests are VIPs! But the people I’m talking about here are the ones who don’t fall under the “family,” “friend,” “coworker,” or “strange neighbor” categories. I’m talking about the people who are invited but who are not exactly expected to come. Mrs. Lemon previously discussed inviting the President, among others, and we decided to do the same.
The White House apparently has a separate greetings office that deals exclusively with invitations and announcements. If you send your wedding invitation to this office, you may receive a personal greeting from the president. I don’t believe it’s guaranteed, but it’s certainly worth a shot!
So why is an April bride blogging about this in October? Well, upon further research, it seemed that brides who successfully received a White House greeting sent their invitations approximately six months prior to their wedding date. Sister Lioness designed our invitations and we’re printing them ourselves. We were putting off the daunting task of printing until just before sending them out in January, but we figured we could assemble some a bit early.
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Well, I’m still waiting on my pro pictures disk, but I just can’t wait any longer…I have to at least post a teaser! Our online gallery is up, and though it’s protected where you can’t save the images to your desktop, I took low res screenshots with my computer to make a Polyvore set. Don’t you just love modern technology? I thought it would be fun to do a comparison of the inspiration set and photos from the real thing! So here it goes:
The Inspiration:
(sources, from top left - Rings, Invitations, Barbecue, Bouquet, Picnic, Barn, Frame, Cans, Gazebo, Bridesmaids)
The Reality:
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Our meeting with the florist is quickly approaching and I’m busy collecting inspiration photos.
At first, I thought it would be really hard to compile pictures of, let’s say, brides’ bouquets that I like, because I have a tendency to like everything and anything, but to my surprise the bouquets I’m drawn to are pretty similar. Weee!
It’s so unlike me to know exactly what I want so this is pretty exciting!
With such difficult making decisions, I’m relieved when I just know what I like, and when it comes to brides’ bouquets, I know! Here’s a peek at my inspiration file:
After our ceremony, we took a few family photos (I know those aren’t the favs on the hive, so I’m skipping them), and we were eager to get to the reception! Even though everything had gone smoothly at the ceremony, my stomach was still in no mood to eat, which was so disappointing because the food looked delicious! Mr. Fro Yo and I shared our signature drink, a mojito, before being introduced. We both needed a little liquid courage.
In the beginning I didn’t want to be introduced, but 5 minutes before we were going to head into the reception, I changed my mind. I’m really glad I did, and now I see how silly I was being about the whole thing.
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Several months ago, before the wedding planning had fully begun, I read a guest post by Meg of A Practical Wedding on Snippet & Ink. There was one really fantastic piece of advice that she offered:
My first, and most important wedding planning tip is this: before you think about anything else, decide what you value as a couple, and how you want that to be reflected in your wedding. Think of this as your wedding mission statement.
I’ve been thinking about this ever since, and I think I’m finally ready to attempt to articulate what our wedding mission statement is. And here you go:
We want…
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