Weddingbee Blog

Bees, I’ll admit that when we first started planning a wedding in Ohio from Switzerland, I was pretty apathetic about planning my dream wedding from far far away. I didn’t want to burden Mama Funnel Cake who would be doing most of the legwork for me.

In fact, in that first email that my mother wrote me about dates, she had already talked to one of my sister-in-laws and told me they favoured having the wedding at St. Chris in Grandview, the reception at Our Lady of Victory Hall in Upper Arlington and the catering by Berwick, a tried-and-true local catering company.

Whelp, pack your bags folks. No more blogging here. Funnel Cake wedding planning is all done!

(Box via Party Stuff Online, Graphic Text by me.)

Throw in a wedding cake from where we buy birthday cakes from:

(Image via Golden Delight Bakery)

An affordable dress from Craigslist:

($75 dress via Craigslist Ad)

…and don’t forget to book the band we’ve used for two previous Funnel Cake sibling weddings. In one fell swoop, Mama Funnel Cake had laid the grounds for our wedding plan in less than 24 hours after learning of our engagement.

But it was almost depressing how normal and unlike ourselves the wedding seemed. I couldn’t help feeling a pang of helplessness over the long distance wedding planning. Should I just resign myself to going along with whatever is easiest for everyone or should I strive to personalise it?

I tried to think about how our wedding reception would look in the Victory Hall at Our Lady of Victory Church where my family attends fish fries during Lent.

(Image via This Week Community Newspapers)

Mr. Funnel Cake was not convinced that the hall would be a great place. I think the elderly people on the OLV website scared him. I searched in vain for more pictures to “show off” what I could vaguely recall as a bright sunlit room.

(Image via Our Lady of Victory)

(Image via Our Lady of Victory)

But Mr. Funnel Cake was still unimpressed by what he considers “typical American architecture”, with its overwhelming dark interiors compared to Swiss design. Maybe he would have taken more of an interest if I had found these photos of the room sooner:

(Images via Jacobus Photography)

(Images via Studio B Photography)

Luckily this was just the beginning of planning and I would have more than enough opportunity to voice our opinions and wishes about wedding decisions. My wonderful mother is also brilliant at coming up with many ideas and options so I really didn’t have anything to worry about. But there are projects and aspects of planning that I have to forsake because of the distance, like photo booths and DIY goodness for instance.

And still… my heart can sigh that I am unable to participate in cake tasting in Columbus. I’ll have to leave that one up to the relatives…

Does your family have a big influence on the decisions about your wedding?