Weddingbee Blog

A couple of years ago I met some of my knitting pals for brunch at the Queen Mary tea room in Seattle. I remember thinking that it would be fun to do a “women’s tea” there sometime. When I started to plan activities with my bridesmaids for the day before our wedding, the Queen Mary instantly came back to mind and I began to plan my own tea-themed bridal brunch for the moms and my ‘maids. I know that some schools of thought are that you shouldn’t plan your own party, but that’s not how I roll. I also figured that afterwards my bridesmaids and I could get mani-pedis.

The invites featured different tea cup shapes

Tip: If you want to indicate that everyone will pay their own way, simply state that the event is “non-hosted.”

I also started collecting tea cup and saucer sets from Goodwill and St Vincent De Paul’s. My idea was to use the tea cups as a favor, with either a nice sampling of tea or a personal pampering product inside. For a couple weeks I was on the hunt (with Mama Pretzel’s help) to find the perfect tea cups for my girls. On average I would find 2 or 3 suitable sets per thrift store that we visited, I am glad that we started searching for the cups early.

I ended up ordered bath bombs (fizzies) from Dragonfaery Naturals on Etsy to be placed inside the cup.

I love this tiny cup for my Jr Bridesmaid!

Overall it was a very thrifty project. The teacups ran around $2 or less each and the bath bombs were $3.25 for four (I PMed the seller and asked her to package them two to a package), so it came out to less than $4 per favor.

We assembled all 10 of the tea cup favors the week of the wedding. Friday arrived, it was T minus 24 hours to the Pretzel wedding and  time for tea!

Love the clock!

Mr Pretzel’s Aunt, Grandmother and Mom got to know Mama Pretzel better.

“The girl” enjoying her tea, especially the confetti colored sugar

One of my favorite photos of MOH Tig -  she’d been so busy helping me with stuff and wrangling my niece and nephew all week, so  I think it was the first time she got to relax.

As the bride I got to “borrow” one of the tea room’s tiaras… queen for a day and all.

By this time in the wedding week I had stopped being a good blogger taking pictures and instead decided to relax, enjoy myself and to just rely on other people’s photos. Unfortunately that means there were no pictures of our yummy food, because seriously, who (besides bloggers) takes photos of their food? Just trust me, the food was YUM! I would highly recommend Queen Mary’s for a small bridal brunch (less than 10 people).

After we were stuffed with brunch and tea the moms left and the girls headed out to have mani-pedis. A couple of months earlier I had seen a Groupon on the Weddingbee Seattle board for a deal on mani-pedis at Swoon Spa. I wasn’t familiar with the salon but it wasn’t too far from where we had brunch. The website looked like it was a nice salon and I decided to purchase the Groupon for myself and all of my bridesmaids. What a learning experience—shame on Pretzel. It was my first Groupon purchase and I didn’t check out the Yelp reviews of the salon, *tsk tsk*. A fellow bee sent me a link to the reviews and my heart sunk. I did my best to be positive and to do what I could to mitigate some of the service issues that I had read about (for example confirm appointment times the day before). Swoon Salon has recently closed, and I am not surprised. The service was poor and my pedicure wore off by the time our reception was over. Thank goodness for closed toed shoes.

We had to go in shifts as there were only four chairs and three nail techs for the six of us.

Bridesmaid S  and Jr Bridesmaid “the Girl” enjoyed hot chocolate

Bridesmaid H and MOH Tig’s turn

The Girl’s nails and toes - my toes were done in the same color as hers were.

By the time we left the salon I was getting anxious. Because they weren’t staffed to handle our party of six (despite making appointments and confirming them multiple times), our nails took twice as long as they had quoted me when I made the appointment. I had allowed us plenty of time in our schedule to drive back north to get ready for the rehearsal, but that time had gotten eaten up at the salon. *sigh* I’d love to say I was cool, calm and collected, but I was anxious the whole drive home. My least favorite thing is being late, and we were running late.

Looking back, I think that I would have tried to plan these activities for earlier in the week as opposed to trying to do them the day before the wedding. I was trying to make sure that all of my bridesmaids would be able to attend, but as it was, we were missing Bridesmaid R who was on a flight that arrived just before the rehearsal. That said, I am really glad that we took the time for “tea and toes.” It allowed some of my bridesmaids to get to know each other better. MOH Tig and Bridesmaid H really hit it off—they even got together the week after the wedding for a play date (The girl and BM H’s stepson are the same age). I am also really happy that I included my Jr bridesmaid, “the girl,” in these activities. Even though she got a little tired of waiting at the nail salon, she handle the day well. I think she enjoyed getting dressed up for tea and having her nails done. I certainly enjoyed having her there with me.

Was the day before your wedding frantic or relaxing?

Catch up on Twisted Together, aka Pretzel recaps:

• In the last week we got a little help from our friends
• Take a closer look at our favors
• Take a closer look at our programs
• We welcomed our guests to Seattle
• We took in a ball game