*Quote by Jonathan Adler, a man after my own heart.
Yes, Jonathan Adler, you are speaking my language! I’m a color freak; I mix them with abandon and live by the mantra that, done right, no colors can clash. Being the color freak that I am, I spent a long time finding our perfect color inspiration, and it finally came in the form of this little print by artist Charley Harper.
Here is how our invitation journey started:
Invites Step 0.5 - Wording
Invites Step 1 - Chicken Scratch
Invites Step 2 - The Designer’s First Round
Now we’re on to the most exciting part: seeing my drawings translated literally into an Illustrator file! Here’s a quick look at the ‘good’ version of the 5×7 invite I drew:
And here is the first file Miss Giraffe sent us that used this drawing almost exactly:
When we got engaged, the Baconator was 24 and I was 25, but we’ve been skirting the issue of getting married for years now. What stopped us? Money? Responsibility? Lack of Big Kid Jobs? Nope, just that pesky idea that we were too young to make that kind of decision. No one ever said those words to us, but we were thinking it. I went to college out East where people get married a bit older than the national average, so the idea of tying the knot in my early twenties was out of the question. The Baconator, on the other hand, is born and raised in Southern Indiana, where the national average wedding age is pretty much average in town. We’re not talking cradle robbing here; just getting married after college graduation. No biggie.
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For some reason, though, I couldn’t get past a couple of years. I knew we were in love and that we were in it for the long haul, but I wanted to wait until some arbitrary magic age.
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I always thought that we were going to order our wedding cake from a Chinese bakery. Since Mr. French Toast doesn’t have a sweet tooth, he didn’t mind where the cake came from or how it looked. Me? Put anything sweet in front of me and I’ll devour it.
If you haven’t tried a Chinese bakery cake before, then run, don’t walk to your nearest Sheng Kee, Ranch 99 market or any Chinese bakery.
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All-Inclusion Invitation Suites
“Make an elegant invitation statement without the fuss. Stylish invitation sets with matching envelopes, reception and response cards included.”
Hi all! So sorry it’s a little slow on the blog today…we’re having problems loading images which means…no posts with images can go live! So, I thought I’d write a little no-image post. 
Recently I went to a friend’s bachelorette party where we all took a pole dancing class. It was touted as “empowering exercise” and a great group activity. I didn’t have a problem with it; I actually thought it would be great fun…plus, we brought champagne and snacks, and it was with an intimate group of girls I knew. What could be so bad about that?
The instructor was pretty awesome and it was clear that most of the girls had a good time, including the bride. But for some reason, I REALLY REALLY hated it. I was almost SHOCKED at how much I disliked the class.
As a back story, it’s pretty well known that the Matron of Honor’s husband and the bride’s fiance frequented strip clubs in their free time. No, not just in a “it’s a bachelor party, we’re going to a strip club” manner. They actually just go when they’re bored…maybe a couple times a month.
I don’t have a huge problems with strip clubs. I often say that I’d rather have my husband wasting money in strip clubs with naked women that only care about his money than I would have him in an actual club meeting real-life, nice women.
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One of the bakers under consideration is Papa’s Pastry Shop—our neighborhood pastry tasty. They’re our go-to store for birthday cakes, cookies (pignoli!), and more. It all started when Mr. P brought home their chocolate cake for my birthday in 2006.
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
I think the tradition of the bride and groom (or bride and bride or groom and groom!) spending the night before their wedding apart is really sweet. Even if the couple has been living together, I think there’s something really sweetly symbolic about spending their last night as an unmarried person with their family or close friends. For me, it would have been a great way of acknowledging the ties I have with my family. I’m sure it would have also heightened my anticipation for the next day.
However, for us this was not to be. I briefly considered this idea and then realized logistically it wouldn’t really work for us, but more importantly, emotionally there was no way I could deal with that. Despite how much I loved our wedding and how much fun I had working on it, our wedding and the lead up to it was really stressful for me to the extent that I feel I’ve almost recovered now two months later. I was by no means a crazy stress monster, but I was definitely feeling a slow build up of stress, as well as night before jitters.
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The Weddingbee Favors Shop carries some great favors to satisfy the foodie in you! Check out our favorite picks for food lovers, and share your love with your wedding guests!
Right after the ceremony, our guests went upstairs to the third floor of Ladder 15 for the cocktail hour, and Mr. Socks and I gathered with my family for a few more photos. My Grandma didn’t want to climb the two flights of stairs for the cocktail hour, so she and Granddad were comfortably camped at a table with some delicious food in front of them.
We pulled them off to the side to get some photos:
I am so lucky to have my Grandma and Granddad in my life—they are wonderful people who have always been there for me, and I’m so glad that they were able to travel all the way to Philly for our wedding. Grandma and Granddad aren’t “city folk” as they say, so coming to Philly was kinda a big deal for them!
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shaydenise shows off her hand-painted wedding shoes!
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After my post about our favors, I researched where and how to buy honey in bulk. Turns out, producing honey is a pretty lucrative business! I got some really good leads and reached out to various local producers. While I waited to hear back from them, I checked the cost of ordering the honey from a mainstream wedding website like beau-coup and little things favors to compare.
I was really shocked at how expensive they were! Ordering through beau-coup, although convenient (no labeling or divvying up the honey ourselves) would cost more than $300! Little things favors was a little less expensive, but still somewhere in that same ballpark for a wedding of about 100 guests.
My planner recommended this website, which sells honey by the gallon, but for 6 gallons, which is what we’d need for 100 half pint mason jars was, once again, about $240! It’s actually cheaper to buy the honey pre-packaged from this particular website. For 100 jars of 6 ounces of honey, we’d pay something like $190, which includes shipping. Yes, that is better than $300, but still not in the budget.
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Usually I talk about the good. But today is a bit of a darker day, so let’s look at the bad and the ugly. Now, I’m not going to lie, it took me a few days to write this post. For some reason this topic is just a difficult one for me. But here goes nothing!
Our wedding budget was closely tied to some money Mr. Lox thought was headed his way. I’ve scrimped and saved and been budget conscious for almost every single thing we’ve done. But the bottom line is that we were counting on that money to get us through the wedding and honeymoon unscathed.
Last October the mister and I, on a whim, found ourselves partaking in the Day of the Dead celebrations at Olvera Street in downtown L.A. For those who have never had the pleasure of spending some time at Olvera Street, I highly encourage you to go. The street is not really that large—maybe a city block—but it’s jam-packed with vendors and yummy restaurants.
The Day of the Dead celebration was out-of-control incredible. The mariachi bands playing were amazing and made me want to start revising our budget so we could afford to hire one, and all over the plaza there were these amazing alters dedicated to loved ones who have passed away.
Personal Photos
My mom has this great photo on her wedding day; it’s a candid shot, with her friends messing with her dress for the photographer. She’s laughing, her lace-gloved hands are cupped and hovering a few inches from her face, the dress is lifted just enough to reveal a pair of bright red pumps. (My mother, as I know her now, is a black-leather-flat kind of woman.) I was sprawled on the floor, barefoot and probably about six years old when I first saw that photo. I decided right then that I also had to have red shoes on my wedding day.
Who knows who I’m going to become in twenty, thirty years? In college, I had a pair of perforated, pink-patent-leather shoes that were so pointy they ended about three inches past the tip of my toes. They were shoes that made a professor with a ponytail remark, “Cool shoes,” before launching into a critique of that week’s project. These days, I am decidedly less quirky and typically in a pair of well-worn Minnetonka mocs. Maybe someday I’ll have a daughter who will look back and realize that her mother used to be a bit of a firecracker too.
Anyway.
I need a four-inch heel to make the dress the proper length and a one-inch platform for comfort. The heel has to be pretty stable because it’s the biggest dress I’ll ever wear and those shoes have to be able to hold up all that fabric.
So I’ve been shopping…
So, when we last left off I was in a state of panicked anxiety and Mama Seashell mentioned “she might have something for me.” Exact details aside, let’s just say by the time I was rehearsing for our wedding I was slightly sedated. Praise pharmacology.
After seeing each other for the first time since arriving to Providence, I ran to Mr. Seashell and the words fall out of my mouth: “I’ve been so spazzed out that I had to drug myself.” I hugged him so tight it was unreal. Normal Mr. Seashell would have made some comment about how reassured he was about my mental state prior to our nuptials. However, he admits it’s taken him four drinks to feel sober. What? The beauty of nerves. So glad we’re both doing so well at this point.
Our blissful reunion aside, our wedding party had gathered in the chapel. (What? There were other people there too?)
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