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Why, hello! Are you ready to get this party started? It is finally time to recap the High Wire wedding. The title for these recaps works for us in two ways. 1) There are a ton of Johnny Cash fans on both sides of our families and 2) it is a fun play on words regarding my moniker, the tightrope walker.
The weekend started early and I finished off my work week by working a half-day on Thursday. After that, we loaded up and headed out to the wedding site. Our venue is about 90 minutes away from where we live, so we had a little bit of a drive ahead of us. But luckily, we were staying at a guest house on the property, so as soon as we were there, we were really there. The excitement was palpable!
Here is the cozy living room of the house.
Personal Photo
I have quite the active imagination, but unfortunately it doesn’t always serve me well. It is great for, say, writing short stories or daydreaming to pass the time, but perhaps not so good when it comes to anxiety-related issues. I can visualize the absolute worst outcome happening. (And this vivid imagination often carries over to dream land…)
A couple nights ago I awoke in a start. I was brought back to reality from a nightmare, and I couldn’t shake the feelings I had (even a whole 12-plus hours later).
It was a smart move on our end to break for lunch and relax a bit. This gave us time to process the past three hours and create a game plan for our next stop. Everyone told me to register at Crate and Barrel, and I told all of those people…no thank you. I was quite certain that everything was too expensive and there was nothing there that we needed.
In my defense, I had never actually been to a Crate and Barrel. Go on and laugh at me. I know, I know. How can I judge a place I had never been? I don’t really have a good answer for you, I just did.
We kept hearing about Crate and Barrel though. We decided what the hay; let’s go see what they have. First off, their registry system is fantastic. If you are like us and have a tendency to want to shop alone and do your own thang…
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I <3 flowers. Not in real life. In real life I find them pretty, love getting a bouquet on my birthday, but overall don’t care. But in my life revolving around the upcoming nuptials, OMG they are practically the most important thing at the wedding (besides me…and Mr. Elk…and our families and friends…)! I don’t know how this obsession began, but I know practically every flower’s name and growth pattern—seriously, it is nuts!
So what are the flowers that I love specifically? Fluffy, romantic, large blooms are what make my heart flutter! And my favorite of all the flowers in the world? Ranunculus!
Image via Style Me Pretty / Bouquet by Sharla Flock / Image by Rebecca of Docuvitae
I drool every time I see these babies! And, of course, they were number one on my list of must-have flowers. When I met with our florist for the first time, she even had a large bucket of them waiting for an event. I squealed with delight, until she informed me of some sad sad news—ranunculus are pesky little flowers that like a certain climate, and by the end of May in the Northeast, they aren’t really growing very well anymore. I could have cried right then and there, until she assured me that we could at least have a few in my bouquet. PHEW!
So what other flowers will make a big statement in May?
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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.”
Mrs. Magic is selling a giant lot of milk glass. She’s asking $300 for the entire set of 69 pieces. She is located in North Carolina.
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:
Part of what sparked the whole ring drama with Mr. Funnel Cake was that after I chose my beautiful engagement ring, I went online to search for wedding band ideas and had NO idea what would match with it. I just knew that I really didn’t care to have a band like this on my finger:
Do you recognise my original engagement ring up there? (It’s the one Mr. Funnel Cake proposed with the first time.) I thought it would be really sweet if I decided to use the silver band FC proposed with as my actual wedding ring, but I still did not like the ring that much.
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
While I have always had a pretty robust wardrobe, I never considered myself shoe obsessed. Despite watching Style with Elsa Klensch from the time I was a child, I never pined after designer goods in an I’ll-eat-ramen-to-own-Hermès way. For some reason, after Mr. Mink and I got engaged, I became shoe obsessed.
It honestly started with one picture.
Image via The Wedding Chicks / Photo by Dave Richards Photography
I prowled around the web looking for that shoe. I seriously considered figuring out who that bride is and emailing her about her shoes. I did it with another bride after a Google image search landed me on her wedding website. Thankfully, she totally understood the importance of shoes and let me know where she got her shoes (clearance at Lord & Taylor, darn it) and that they were dyed to get that perfect teal-blue color on them.
From my own incredibly biased perspective, Mr. Mole and I have some pretty awesome engagement photographs. They capture our personalities, our sense of humor, and our affection for one another. The only thing that they don’t capture is my engagement ring: Mr. Mole and I had these photographs taken a good five months before he actually popped the question!
A ring-less shot / Photo by Frank Dalton and Lucian McAfee
Mr. Mole used to work for an ad agency in Milwaukee. Every year, that agency would have a holiday photo shoot for its employees. The resident photographer and other members of the creative team would set up the equipment and scenery and take the shots. Mr. Mole and I jumped at the chance to participate, especially since some of the props alluded to one of our favorite shared hobbies: cross-country skiing. We also decided to allow Tom Boonen to frolic in the “snow” as well. Here’s a sampling of some of our favorite shots.
We danced our first dance to Jason Mraz’s I’m Yours. A few weeks before the wedding I’d gotten in my head that we needed dance lessons, so we contacted Dancing Til Dawn. I based the choice of teacher on which website mentioned “emergency” rehearsals, as we were only 3 weeks out. Dawn was a pleasure to work with; we ended up having a second lesson with her and both our sets of parents on the Thursday before the wedding as well. I wouldn’t call our first dance fully choreographed—it was more like she gave us a few bits and told us how to string them together, and then we just went out and repeated them in whatever order Cinnamon Buns felt like until the song was over. We could move around the floor, do a spin, and a turn or two.
But first, at Dawn’s suggestion, we faked everyone out like we were going to do the high school sway for the whole time.
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…or multiple stamps, as the case may be!
Let the invitation games begin! No, we are not getting married until May. Yes, we just sent out our save-the-dates. Yes, the wheels have already started turning about our DIY invitations. I have a plethora of inspirational design ideas to share with you, but let’s start with a jumping off point: my first invitation-related purchase!
Let me start by briefly explaining my shopping habits. I love online shopping. I also love a good deal (almost as much as Mr. Dalmatian does). Thus, flash sale websites are right up my alley. In case you couldn’t guess, I also love weddings. So when I heard about DressRush.com, a site with daily deals for brides (and others too), I was all over it.
Now, let me briefly explain what I envision for our invitations, and pretty much every other detail of our wedding:
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After our engagement-session pics were in, Mr. Unicycle and I set about the arduous task of choosing a pic to use for our save the dates. I briefly mentioned here that we wanted to make save-the-date postcards and have them printed FO’ FREE from Vistaprint. It wasn’t that hard to decide on a pic because most of them were definite nos. Firstly, we hardly even got any with the banner. If Jenn hadn’t kept reminding me to pull it out, we probably wouldn’t have had any. Second of all, it was hard to read the banner in most of the pics because the wind was so strong or we were too far from the camera.
Photos by Jennifer Shaffer Photography
Exhibit A: We look like awkward doofuses, and you can’t read the date.
Etablir designed a vintage dessert table for her wedding
Keep on loading your inspirational wedding pics to the Weddingbee Gallery to see them featured here on the blog! Remember, your images must be under 1MB in size, or they won’t load.
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!
Recently, I got to meet a very special newborn old baby girl, the daughter of BM K and her hubby Groomsman R. Over the past couple months, after finding out about BM K’s pregnancy (and maybe even before then?), I’ve been thinking about how BM K and GM R are one of my “inspirational couples.” When I look at them and see how much love and mutual respect they have for each other, I can’t help but hope that one day Mr. Hawk and I can be as great a team as they are. (Not to say that Mr. Hawk and I are a crappy team! But we’re still learning and establishing ourselves as a unit.) BM K and GM R are always affectionate and kind toward each other. I have never seen them publicly argue, and they really have a true partnership.
In the day and age where divorce seems to have run rampant and people can’t WAIT to spit out divorce statistics, it is so fantastic to see couples who are making it work and are blissfully happy. Take Momma and Daddy Hawk for another example (my other inspirational couple!). They have been married almost 35 years. They have survived raising 1.5 children (they’ve still got a few more years to go on the short stack), four cross-country moves, numerous careers, unemployment, all amongst other typical family struggles and life in general. Somehow after all that, they seem as close and as in love as ever! (Take that, Mr. Statistician!)
I hope Mr. Hawk and I are still having this much fun in 35 years!! (personal photo)
First off, Aardvark Dream Team…yes you five bridesmaids…shoo. This is surprise for you.
Everyone else,
I had this big plan that I would wait and do a post about the bridesmaids’ gifts after I had all the parts in place, then these came in and I was so excited I could not contain myself and I need to show someone.
I came home from a weekend of thanks and turkey to this HUGE BOX.
I had never really heard of gifting your spouse-to-be at your wedding before I became wedding obsessed and started going to every wedding website imaginable. I always figured an engagement ring/wedding band/wedding/honeymoon were quite enough of a gift. But then I stumbled upon the PERFECT gift for Mr. Elk and decided, why not?
Now to understand this gift, there are a few things about Mr. Elk you must know:
1) Mr. Elk loves me a lot, but if he had the choice between me and Indiana Jones, Indiana Jones would win EVERY time.
Image via dreager1.wordpress.com / The one and only
2) He grew up on Legos. They were his favorite toy!
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