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Now that I’m officially back and you’ve seen a glimpse of my wedding-day ensemble, I wanted to introduce you to one of my very favorite parts of my wedding-day look (who am I kidding—they all were my favorite parts), my bracelet.
Personal image taken by Doloris Petunia
Our wedding reception seemed to disappear in a flash before my eyes. One minute we were just being introduced, the next minute we were dancing and mingling and it was almost time to leave. How did that happen?
We spent some time mingling with our guests and attempting to get to every table, which is way harder than it looks. Mr. Jaguar and I grabbed each other’s hands and made the rounds, thanking our friends and sharing our excitement.
Mr. Seashell and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary by taking a road trip up to Door County, Wisconsin. In my mind it would be a perfect fall-getaway type weekend where we could wander, explore, hike, and enjoy the start of fall. It was definitely all those things, despite the fact that it literally rained the entire weekend.
As a native New Englander, I was picturing Door County to be a bit like coastal Maine/New Hampshire. It did not disappoint! Plus, I got to challenge my notion that the only thing to see in the Midwest is Chicago.
Mr. Seashell took the metra from downtown Chicago to the north suburbs (near my office) last Friday afternoon. I snuck out a little early so we could hit the road. We first made our way to Cedarburg.
OK, hive, it’s time to get real here. Let’s talk about sex.
Or more specifically, the lack thereof.
You see, there are several of us bees who are choosing to wait until after marriage to have sex. Now we fully realize that such a choice may seem strange these days. Choosing to wait is not a particularly popular approach to dating, sex, relationships, and marriage, and a lot of couples today ascribe to the “test drive” philosophy. We live in a pretty sexually open society, and let’s be honest, sex is kind of everywhere: TV, movies, books, the news, ad campaigns, and US school curriculum. For many individuals today, sex is an important part of a healthy relationship between two people. Plus, we hear it can be pretty fun and awesome.
So why would anyone choose to wait until marriage to have sex these days?
Well for us, the decision is in large part a faith-based one. Those of us writing this post, as well as our partners, identify as Christians and have made a commitment to save sex for marriage. To us, sex is God’s gift to a husband and wife. It is a sacred and intimate act, and when it comes to our own relationships, we see sex as this amazing thing we get to enjoy only once we’ve been joined together with our spouses as “one flesh.”
But even setting aside faith, there are still a lot of other secular reasons we’ve chosen to wait.
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Hello bees! Because it’s Friday and autumn is in the air (well, at least here in blazing-hot Texas it’s finally in the eighties/nineties), I found myself playing around on Pinterest. And why not share with you some of my favorite wedding-related pins of the day?
Juicy Couture short lace dress? Yes, please!
Image via Style Me Pretty / Photo by Veil and Bow / On Pinterest
With the majority of the ceremony planning behind me, I suppose it’s time to start showing you all the things Mr. D and I have started to work on for the reception. There was one project in particular that I started on shortly after we got engaged because I simply could not wait any longer to do it. That, my friends, would be the guestbook. There are so many clever ideas out there for personalized guestbooks. I wanted to make sure that we had a guestbook that would capture our day in a way that we would remember forever. I wanted to give our guests a chance to say something meaningful and do it in a fun way. Which is why, when I saw these bad boys, I knew I had to have them:
Image via Guestbook Store
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
The Balloons entourage started out the rehearsal day by spending some time exploring Aspen.
Catch up on the entire After “I Do” series here! And if you have a burning question you’d like to see discussed, submit it here!
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Do you and your SO come from different backgrounds (cultural/racial/spiritual)? If so, how has integrating your (culture/race/religion) with his/hers been? Were there any hurdles or obstacles you’ve to overcome? Any compromises you’ve had to make? How will this affect your future (in regards to rearing children, presenting yourselves to your families, etc.)?
I come from an immigrant family and was raised Jewish. Mr. Spaniel’s family has been in the U.S. for centuries, and their background is Catholic. I’d thought that since we were both born and grew up in Southern California and were atheist (me) and agnostic (him), any conflicts that we had in our lives/philosophies/ideas about children would not be cultural or religious. HA! I AM STUPID! The biggest fight we’ve ever had in nearly six years together was about whether a potential son of ours would have a bris or not (not to mention all of the theoretical conversations about “what if our kids want to be garbage men/musicians/lawyers/doctors/professors?” that start off joking and sometimes end in hurt feelings).
We’ve both had to learn to really, deeply examine our (sometimes starkly different) values and put them on the table and leave them open for discussion. I’ve learned that I can’t take the values I was raised with for granted when it comes to how we’ll raise our own children. These are not really easy discussions to have, and we know we’ll have to keep revisiting them over our relationship. While I can’t say it wouldn’t be easier if we came from the same backgrounds (and had the same unspoken values), I also think that this openness has helped us to be a better couple, and to be more unified when either of our families question our decisions.
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…on your wedding day. Isn’t it ironic, don’t ya think? I would like to formally apologize now for getting that song stuck in your head for the rest of the day. I’m sorry, but it had to be done.
We chose the month of May to have our wedding for one huge reason: the weather. We really would like to have an outside ceremony and reception. Typically in the month of May in California, the weather is gorgeous. Not too hot, not too cold, and blue skies as far as the eye can see.
Except this past May; not only did it rain, but it stormed. There were huge winds and a record amount of rain. My heart broke for all the brides out there who planned outdoor weddings with no backup plan. Not just May though, there was another huge storm at the beginning of June. This is almost unheard of in California; it was shocking to say the least. This gave me a massive dose of reality. I had thought rain could be possible, but it most definitely will not happen. Now I am expecting it half as much as I am expecting beautiful weather. It is very possible it can happen and gosh darn it, we will just need to deal with it.
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So now that I’ve told you about my dress (!!!), I thought I’d share a few more dresses that didn’t make the cut. I mean, who doesn’t love a little more wedding dress porn? I know I do!
Part 1 brought me to Village Bridals, Macy’s, and David’s Bridal.
Part 2 was a pretty extensive look at the David’s Bridal collection.
The very first dress I tried on at DB was what I like to call the “mullet dress.”
Oh, baby! Are you nervous yet?
Image via 80’s Tees
Anyway, being serious. It’s actually called a high-low hemline, because the front is shorter than the back. This dress looked so freaking cute on the model, and I thought that if I got this dress (for really cheap), I could get a kick ass pair of heels (hiii Louboutins). The front looks real cute, right?
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amyisnice is selling a tea-length Casablanca wedding gown. She’s asking $800 for the size-10 gown.
Have a wedding item for sale? Post it with pictures in the Weddingbee Classifieds, and you might see it featured on the blog!
Other great items for sale:
Over the Labor Day weekend, I took a trip with my mom and Mr. Aardvark down to Ohio to visit my grandpa. We also got to catch up with Mr. Aardvark’s parents and MOH MD. It was a very nice family-filled weekend with lots of chit chat, catching up, and just a splash of wedding talk. It was the first time I had been able to meet with MOH MD since becoming engaged, and though it was only a few hours, it was so nice to have some time with a member of the wedding party. As we were heading home, across four states, it got me thinking about my side of the wedding party. You see, as the title implies, I have five bridesmaids in five different states. That’s right: MOH MD is in Ohio, Flossy is in Nebraska, Red is in Minnesota, Sis is in Michigan, and OT is now here, in Wisconsin. That’s a pretty big spread!
So far it has not really caused any issues. Everyone is pretty computer savvy and email has been a life saver. Not all of the girls knew each other when we started, so I made a private Facebook group to facilitate stalking, or at least putting faces with names. That also seems to be working well. They are all such fantastic ladies I can’t wait to have them all in one place at one time!
Speaking of one place at one time, there has been some talk of a group-dress-shop-weekend in Chicago in the fall. This would be the best case scenario. All of us are very busy, but we should know in the next week or so whether or not our schedule stars will align to make this possible. (Keep your fingers crossed!)
If that falls through I think we may divide and conquer and have “West of the Mississippi River” and “East of the Mississippi River” groups and shop that way. If that also proves impossible (hey, we are some busy ladies!) we will do a virtual group shop, in which everyone would go to her local store with a list of “contender” dresses. Take pictures, send pictures and comments, vote. For obvious reasons, the biggest one being I would not get to hang out with my ladies, this would be less than ideal.
Earlier in the planning process I isolated the dress styles pretty quickly and sent the following image out to my girls.
Read more…
Makeup on the big day is a given. And I’ve taken y’all’s concerns into mind and visited the MAC counter for a nice little consultation. But honestly, my real beauty concerns can’t be fixed with makeup.
First of all, I have constant bloodshot eyes. I won’t gross you out with pictures of my eyes, but I’m consistently asked if I’m getting enough sleep. After a visit to the eye doctor, I was given a prescription for an incredibly expensive eye drop. While I can’t afford the prescription right now, my remedy for the time being will be lots of glasses wearing, lots of sleep, and a supply of Visine for Contacts on the big day.
Image via Visine
If your photo is featured as the Gallery of the Day, you’re eligible for a special Weddingbee badge for your blog or website! Check out instructions on how to grab the badge here!
What’s that, hive? You want to know my Swiss skincare secrets? Well, okaaay, but only because I love you.
I’m actually sort of a rookie at this whole “skincare routine” thang. (Yeah, I said “thang”…) Up until a few months ago, I had a pretty simple routine: Rinse my face with water in the morning, wash it briefly in the shower with face wash at night, and run some lotion over my face as I lotioned post-shower, using zit cream as needed (which was every day).
Then I started a new job. With lots of women. (Pretty women!) You know, the kind who wear stylish clothes, high heels, and makeup. Cue vanity insecurities!
I was getting along fine, starting to wear makeup much more often, when one of my colleagues commented over lunch that I needed to exfoliate. “Huh?” Yes, exfoliate. A second colleague agreed that I needed to exfoliate more, and suddenly I was very self-conscious about how I was taking care of my skin. Perhaps my lazy wash-and-lotion cycle wasn’t enough to combat all the makeup I was wearing lately.
Around this time, Mrs. Macarons mentioned the Clarisonic in a post, and after reading reviews on Weddingbee and skincare sites, I took the plunge and ordered the pro model. I decided that at the ripe age of 24, I had too many pimples for someone supposedly past puberty and that I needed to rethink my skincare regime. Now my skincare routine has developed into this lengthy ordeal over the past two months, and I’m still not sure if it’s worth all the extra effort.
Here’s the breakdown!
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