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Weddingbee Blog
Alright, let’s do this, friends. Without doubt, my favorite part of the morning of our wedding was slipping on that beautifully constructed garment, my dress, Adeline.
We were running early, score! While some were grabbing a little lunch or organizing accessories, I was busy flitting around the house making sure everyone was comfortable and ready. Errrr, maybe I was trying to preoccupy myself to make the time go by faster. I could not wait for our photographer to get there so I could finish becoming the bride I had waited so desperately long for.
After what felt like hours, hours I tell ya, Sara Zarrella had arrived and I eagerly greeted her from my parents’ front window.
Our story began back in the fall of 2004. I was a freshman in college, eager to move out from under my parents’ watchful eyes and to begin to grow as a person. I had just broken up with my boyfriend, citing reasons of independence and wanting to be at college unattached. I know that it sounds like a party-girl reason to break up with someone before going to college, but I had moved three hours away from home, and I didn’t want to be “that girl” in the dorm who was on the phone every night with a boyfriend whom she saw every couple of weekends when she drove home and missed out on the many activities around campus for it. Some people think or know they are going to marry their high school sweetheart; I knew I wasn’t. So I ended it and decided against relationships for at least my first year at school.
I spent the first couple of days on campus trying to get used to the tiny dorm room, the fact that I was suddenly living with my high school best friend, and of course—classes and cafeteria food. Finally one night my roommate and other friends from high school had enough and dragged me out of the room and onto campus. We left the all-girls dorm where most of the freshman stayed and headed toward the dorm next door that had a wing of all-male and a wing of co-ed living.
As we were heading into the all-male dorm, I bumped into a guy wearing the typical college-guy outfit: a football T-shirt and a pair of gym shorts with sandals. He apologized and shot this smile at me that dazzled and walked away with his buddies. I shook off the smile and told myself that crushes were not needed at this time and there were more important things to do. So I followed my friends up to their new friend J’s room. We were hanging out and chatting and possibly enjoying some adult beverages, when lo and behold football boy popped his head in to invite J to a party in his room. J immediately said that we would all be over in a few minutes. When the mysterious guy left, J explained that the guy and his roommate were called the Vodka Kings (I know, stereotypical partying football players, but there is more to him—I promise!) and they threw the best parties. So we headed over. Before I knew it, football boy had introduced himself as Mr. D and we started talking.
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I have a little bit of a problem with office supplies. When I was eight, I made my dad a “desk set” out of the top of a shoebox and a toilet-paper roll covered in plaid ribbon (a penholder, get it?). My heart skips a beat when our office manager tells me to look through the Staples catalog and order whatever I want. I often have the urge to buy lots and lots of pretty paper for no purpose other than to have it around. I have boxes of unused notecards just because I’m afraid of running out and never being able to use any again.
Therefore, this whole wedding-planning thing has been a dream. I can buy a $12 ream of hot pink paper to line my envelopes? Count me in. Calligraphy pen? Check! Card stock in every color of the rainbow? Yes, ma’am!
My “to buy” list seems to grow every day, but I don’t mind because it’s all pretty stuff. Mr. Ladyfingers might mind…but I don’t care a whit. The more office supplies, the better! But by far, the most fun office supply is paper.
Every good wedding deserves a suite of cuter-than-cute stationery, right? Our amazingly talented, generous, sweet graphic-artist friend designed our invitations for us, so that was out of the way relievingly early. (Stay tuned for reveals on that as I put some final DIY touches on the package!) But what about thank you notes, escort cards, programs, signage, and various additional paper ephemera and knick-knackery?
First, there’s the good old save the date. We didn’t do them, but you’ll see a common theme throughout this post: Stuff we committed to not doing, which research for this post REALLY made me want to do. Bad.
Image via girlingearstudio on Etsy
We love all of our cakes that we are having at the wedding and seriously cannot wait to dive in to dessert time. Whatever our friends and family pick—peanut butter, or fruited bliss, or pound cake with raspberry preserves and delicious whipped cream cheese goodness—we know it will bring delicious delight to our guests’ taste buds!
Image via Myrtle’s Studio
But one thing is a strong possibility. With all that cake there is bound to be leftovers.
I gave this some thought and was thinking about labeling gable boxes or getting adorable little bags for guests to take home sweet, sweet goodness from our big day.
But something a whole lot easier came into the picture when Mama Sweet Cream asked the local grocery store’s bakery counter where they got their little plastic containers that contain the store’s yummy single servings of cake.
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It was time for our first look, but the rain had started to come down pretty hard. We could’ve done an indoor first look, but our hotel, while clean and very nice, wasn’t that photogenic. Luckily for us, our photographers found a cute outdoor spot right behind the hotel, and it wasn’t too rough to go right around the corner in the rain.
Armed with the photographer’s umbrella, I went around the corner, where Mr. S was waiting, umbrella-less (he never, ever uses an umbrella).
I still need to scan some pictures from my dress-shopping excursion, so we are going to start with dressing the bridesmaids!
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
For now.
True, our wedding is over. But I can’t say goodbye. So, I promise to write an anniversary post, announce a baby Seashell (not yet), or find another excuse (or two) to check in along the way. For now, today, I want to say Thank You.
Seashell Wedding Highlights from Seashell on Vimeo.
Our wedding would not have been the same with out you. Thank you, hive, for sharing in this journey with me. You have made the process of planning a wedding infinitely more fun, more memorable, more detailed, and more rewarding.
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You may have noticed a little detail in my preview post from a few weeks ago:
Mr. Oyster and I met in a photography class, and we’re both photographers (I shoot portraits sometimes; my talented husband is a lifelong artist with a history of working with film; he also takes catalog-worthy photos of artwork). So for our “couples’ portraits,” we thought it might be fun to take some portraits with our cameras.
I brought my Nikon, and Mr. Oyster brought his brand new (but really old) Mamiya. This was probably the most fun part of the portrait session.
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It was time to get into The Dress. Portraits were starting soon! All the girls were ready except me!
Hyena Sis and Mom Hyena helped me step into the dress and somehow wrangled my “Sexy Little Bride” tank top over my veil.
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Whew. What a weekend.
We’re officially living in our first house!
Once we were all moved in and ready to start unpacking, I got slammed with a chest cold. Boo! I tried to do as much nesting as possible, but my energy levels are really low due to this illness.
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As I am wrapping up the last posts of Twisted Together: Pretzel Recaps, I keep finding detail photos that I hadn’t worked into our story. Detail photos are one of my favorite parts of wedding photos and it became clear that I would need to do a detail post to catch some of the fun touches and elements of our wedding.
Photos by Amore Studios
Ring a ding ding! My engagement ring is the Tiffany setting by Tiffany & Co. Our wedding bands are the matching Tiffany wedding bands (the men’s version has been discontinued).
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Obviously, our wedding is going to be very colorful. That’s kind of the point of the whole rainbow thing. To add even more fun and color to the event, I had a very early idea of including crayons somehow, but I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do. I know a lot of people have some kind of coloring or activity book for kids, but I thought it would be more fun to include some kind of activity book/coloring component into our programs so everyone could enjoy them. (We all pretend that it’s only the children who get bored during the wedding ceremony, but let’s be honest—sometimes us adults do, too, especially while waiting for the ceremony to start.)
We haven’t finished making our programs yet, but I did get started on the crayons this week. Since I want everyone to color, I will need crayons for everyone, so I knew I needed to get started as soon as possible. I didn’t want to just hand out a box of crayons and be done. I wanted it to be unique. Of course, I thought I came up with the world’s most awesome creative wedding idea ever, but then I logged on the world wide web and found out I’m not that clever. Oh, well, I still like the idea, so I’m going with it.
First, I bought this mold on Amazon. Obviously, if you have a theme for your wedding that would be better suited to a different shape of mold, you would want to get that. Hearts are kind of an unofficial theme of the wedding, so I went with them. I stuck with a silicon mold because it can be put in the oven. Then, I stripped all the crayons naked, like so:
(This is an easy job to get other people involved in. Our best man was hanging out at our house and expressed an interest in helping with wedding stuff. I gave him a box of crayons and he went to town. Once he found out he could use a knife to strip the paper, he enjoyed it quite a bit.)
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Once we were engaged, we really didn’t talk too much about the wedding itself for probably about six months. Which, to be honest, is very impressive of me, considering I had been waiting almost six years for the wedding date to actually be set. It was probably because we were still living apart and I was so happy when I got to go home and visit him that I didn’t want to weigh the conversation down with wedding talk. It wasn’t until February 2011 while we were on vacation in Kentucky that we really started to talk about our vision for the wedding.
Mr. D and me in Kentucky in February 2011. This was during Mr. D’s shaggy-hair days while he was in between jobs.
After a halcyon-esque morning, the air went from placid to sparking with activity in a span of 10 minutes. In rapid succession, Twofoot Creative, Aruna B., and Epic Motion came on the scene while Laura R. from Posh took the arrivals as her cue to put the final touches on my makeup:
{Photo by Aruna B. Photography}
Adding to the wedding fever, our bouquets had been delivered by a friendly staff member from The Parsonage:
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Macs has always been a french cuff kind of guy. It was one of the few stipulations he had about his attire. Macs owns several pairs of cufflinks already, but I wanted to get him something special just for the wedding. Since his boutonnière turned out amazing, I thought a matching pair of cufflinks would be perfect.
image via The Perfect Necktie
But the blog post in which I saw them was dated back in 2009 and the store they linked to no longer had them. I was so bummed, I looked through pages upon pages of search results before finally finding them in stock in a store in the UK.
I quickly placed my order with them, and according to their site I should have them within 7-10 business days. Well, ten days passed and then another ten. The cufflinks went MIA and the tracking perpetually said ‘processing’. I contacted customer service and they said I had to wait another 5 business days before reporting them lost.
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