Tuxedos never really fit in with the outdoor ceremony we’ve been planning, and though I was slightly sad I wouldn’t see Mr. Bunting all dressed up in one, I’ve never regretted our decision to avoid the tux. They do look snazzy, but there were several factors that turned us away from them and, honestly, they never stood a chance. (We really wanted to embrace the atmosphere of our park, and tuxedos were just too formal. We also had to consider the potential summer heat.)
In the beginning, I had told Mr. Bunting that he could choose what he and the groomsmen wanted to wear aside from a tux (unless he reeeeally wanted them). If they wanted to wear suit jackets, they could wear suit jackets. If they didn’t want to (and I was secretly hoping they wouldn’t), then they wouldn’t have to. Of course they didn’t want to wear jackets for an outdoor June wedding, so it was a win-win situation!
I stayed true to my decision of putting Mr. Bunting in charge of the groomsmen. I let him mull it over. He mulled it over a lot (or perhaps too little). I casually reminded him that we needed to start making decisions for their attire. He mulled it over some more. I began to wonder if he really was thinking about it, or if he even cared, so I started probing him more for ideas and answers. I thought maybe if I showed him some ideas, he’d find something he liked. So I started focusing my Google and blog searches on groomsmen attire.
Haha, that’s when it all changed.
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…but there’s one specific detail I don’t care about. As in, I don’t give a flying you-know-what about the finished product revolving around this detail. As long as it serves its function, we’re cool. It could be the ugliest thing on the block, as long as it does its job. So what wedding detail doesn’t excited a single bridal bone in my body? Stamps.
Image via MovieWeb
I’m slowly but surely preparing to send our invitations out into the big, bad world (more on that to come soon!).
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We planned for an October wedding. I knew—although not firsthand—how quickly time would fly. Mr. Sweet Cream on the other hand thought that we had all of the time in the world…until, that is, it came to booking both our dream vendors—our caterer we were lusting after and our church—in the fall. I wish I had a picture of his face when the person at the venue told us the dates left in October. And then the caterer told us the same thing. Luckily we snatched up that date before it was taken by another couple with similar dreams.
Once these big things were signed and sealed we—or I—started to think about the big picture. I had so many ideas, and ultimately I knew that they would eventually have to be edited. I think that I was truly meant to have a small, intimate wedding with the details that paraded through my imagination.
Look at how gorgeous these mismatched, kitschy, vintage place settings look. I certainly could collect 130+ plates, cups, wine glasses, dessert plates, and utensils in over a year! I swear!
Image via Country Living
I’m a child of the internet age, and with that in mind, I have done pretty much the majority of wedding planning thanks to the internet. Sure, there’s a little word-of-mouth thrown in for good measure (for example, our jeweler who is the one my parents use and our venue, which is where Mr. High Wire’s cousins got married). But generally, the way we decide on our vendors is research, obsessively reading reviews, and working with vendors who give timely responses to my emails and requests for additional information.
If they type their emails in a way that makes me think they have this expression, even better:
Image via I Can Haz Cheezburger
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.”
After my weekend get away to NOLA, I had the full week prior to our wedding free to do anything I wanted/needed to do. Without any DIY projects to work on, the week was spent running errands and “cleaning” the apartment. When I say cleaning, I mean as clean as you can get with DIY projects, gifts and other wedding stuff all over a two bedroom apartment.
Monday - I went for my last dress fitting with Becky, who is just the sweetest person ever! (If you’re in the Dallas area and need a tailor PM me and I’ll send her info.)
Everything fit great and we discussed using “top stick” to keep the top of the dress from moving around. After much thought…well, really not that much thought, I think in the back of my mind I always knew what shoes I wanted to change into for our reception.
After being severely let down, the mister and I were ready to forget about caterers and see if one of our favorite local restaurants would be willing to take on the task. They were excited about the idea, but didn’t have the capacity to make the amount of food we’d need, let alone transport it to our venue.
Image via The Escapist
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
We decided to do something a little different to number our tables. We love the Zinc Letters at Anthropologie.
image via Anthropologie
How to incorporate letters instead of numbers? I thought about picking a letter from different cities we visited together, but then we’d end up with a random mish mash after the fact. It would be better if we could pick some letters that would be fun to display afterward.
And oh yeah, we will have six tables at our reception, so we needed six letters that don’t repeat. We decided to go with “ME & YOU.”
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Our newest bee is a military-spouse-to-be, and spent part of her engagement planning her wedding while her mister was deployed. Her wedding is quickly approaching and we have a lot to catch up on! Please join me in welcoming Miss Marmalade to the hive!
Miss Marmalade, Norwalk, CT/Raleigh, NC
Age & Occupation: 27, Administrative Assistant
Fiance’s Age & Occupation: 28, Army Officer
Engagement Date: December 31, 2009
Wedding Date: July 2011
Venue: Old Cadet Chapel/Highlands Country Club
About Me: I’m a Tri-State area “lady,” through and through. A big chunk of my life has been split between NYC and Connecticut, and I’m finally heading down south to live with Mr. Marmalade. Our long distance relationship has been one adventure after the next, we’ve spent time in Texas, Louisiana, Florida,and Georgia, thanks to his military career. Next to Mr. Marmalade, my loves include live music, useless trivia, shoes, design, and my crazy half-tiger kitty, Oliver. I have a passion for food and wine, and I’ve been known to travel long distances to get my hands on the best meals. I come from a tight-knit big fat Greek Ecuadorian family—we’re loud, we talk with our hands, and we spend hours talking loudly with our hands over large meals. I’m going to miss them so much as I pack up and begin my life, far away from home. But with Mr. Marmalade by my side, I’m ready to take on whatever may come. Next up: our wedding!
Growing up, on the rare occasion when I thought about getting married, I thought I’d be at least in my late 20s. This is pretty common in Toronto amongst most of the people I know. Getting married any younger seemed really weird and like a surefire recipe for divorce. The prevailing wisdom both then and now is that people change so much in their twenties that they’re not possibly capable of choosing a partner before their late 20s.
Thus, it was a bit weird for me to realize at 23 that I was ready to get married. While I realize that in many other parts of the world this is a completely normal age to get married, it just wasn’t for me and I referred to myself as a child bride quite a bit because I sometimes felt a bit awkward about the fact that I was engaged at such a relatively young age.
Adding to this, Mr. Knitting and myself are by far the first of our friends to get married and we suspect there will be a few years before any more of our friends of the same age get married.
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Shortly after Mr. Funnel Cake proposed, I was about halfway through his delectable homemade pineapple-coconut-Malibu ice cream when we decided the main logistics of getting married.
One thing was clear: With the clock ticking on my residence permit, it was imperative that we sorted a civil union immediately. I would have gotten married the next week if it were possible, but there happens to be a lot of red tape involved with marrying an American in Switzerland. (Sticky, yucky, irritating red tape that deserves it’s own post later.)
Is there one of those for me? (Via the European Union Times)
When he originally brought up Plan Z over a year earlier, Mr. Funnel Cake and I had discussed how it would make sense to do a civil union first and marry in the church when we were really ready to be married.
The Wedding Salon’s Miami event is quickly approaching on June 13th at The Gansevoort, Miami Beach, and they’d love for you to attend! Huge names in bridal fashion will be joining you, including Neiman Marcus Bal Harbour featuring Chanel, Laura Mercier & Bobbi Brown. The event will feature a couture fashion show by John Dunn, beauty makeovers, cocktails, cake tastings, and fabulous goodie bags including swag from Bobbi Brown and Laura Mercier. You’ll also have a chance to win a honeymoon courtesy of Secrets Resorts and Spas!
Tickets are $15 when you use code WBMP for Weddingbee readers, and we also have 10 free sets of tickets to give away right here! If you’re able to be in Miami on June 13, simply be one of the first 10 commenters on this post (if you’re not a registered user, be sure to enter with a valid email address!) and we’ll send you a code for free admission. Good luck!
… Or, the invitations. Insert fanfare here.
I started thinking about our invitations almost immediately after we got engaged. I went through a bunch of bad designs, then I went through a bunch more, and finally, I picked one and just got the damn things printed. I hemmed and hawed over what kind of belly band to use. I spent countless hours bent over my Cricut working on envelope liners. I wore down the blade of my paper trimmer to cut out backing sheets. I rolled cards through my Xyron until I could roll no more. And finally, there they were.
So, without further ado (and without much narration, because I am EXHAUSTED), here are our invitations. I’ll start with what the guests saw when they received them. Mr. Panther and I chose the Hawaiian Rain Forest stamps, because they were colorful and different. OK, and because we were both rain forest nerds in elementary school. Plus, um, hello! Panthers live in the jungle! (Right? Do they?)
We didn’t realize until we got them that they were HUGE, but it was too late then!
I know it’s been a popular wedding trend over the last year or so, but sometimes a trend is so appropriate for your own wedding that you just have to grab a noisemaker and hop on that jolly ol’ bandwagon. Folks, trends typically become trends for a reason (because they’re awesome), and there comes a time in every bride’s life when one trend just cries oh, hell yes. Well, I have heard that cry, and I’m unashamed to tell you that I’ve got two handfuls of noisemakers for the bandwagon ride!
What bandwagon will I be riding today? Hair flowers and fascinators, of course!
Image via Long Wedding Hair Online
I am a bride who loves paper. I love combing through Etsy looking at invitation suites. I love seeing other brides DIY invites and all of the time and planning that was put into them. I love getting invitations for weddings and seeing how each one fits the bride and groom—an invitation with its own personality, whether it’s the font, phrasing, or colors. Before we could get to the invitation stage, I was on a mission: To find the perfect idea for the save the dates.
With a 15-month engagement, I just knew I wanted to send something in the mail announcing our date. Never mind the fact that most of the relatives learned our date during phone calls or at someone’s christening. This date was ours and it needed to be saved in something worth saving—at least for us to save and pull out to remember.
I first fell in love with something like this for the save the dates…
Image via JuneBug Weddings
After what seemed like minutes (but was actually hours and hours of amazing dancing), it was time for the last dance.
As the strains of Don’t Stop Believing came through the speakers, we all joined together to belt out one last favorite song.
We got almost everyone on the dance floor with this one, even Daddy Cardigan who had never heard the song (WHAT? Yeah, I know, it’s ridiculous). Luckily, he was a good sport about it.
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