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I know this topic has been discussed many times on the ’Bee (most recently by Miss Fox), but for some reason it still has a stigma attached to it, so I figured I’d throw in my experience…
In the months leading up to my engagement, I began spending a lot of time with a very good friend of mine. We had been close for years and even lived together previously, but at this point we became inseparable. From after-work happy hours to Saturday-afternoon shopping trips, we spent nearly all our free time together. So when Mr. Hawk and I announced our engagement, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind who I wanted to be my MOH. We were thrilled, and she began excitedly planning the bachelorette party and other fun activities; however, it wasn’t long afterward that things greatly changed in her life.
She broke up with her serious boyfriend and moved out of the house they shared together. She moved in with Mr. Hawk and me for several weeks until she could find a new home, and she was surprisingly upbeat and optimistic. But once she moved into her new apartment things shifted. We had a pretty big difference of opinion on something, and it created a large wedge between us. During this time, I think we both felt abandoned, and we rarely spoke to one another. Our lack of relationship during that time was not at all wedding related, but was even more glaringly obvious because of all the planning I was doing without her.
These days, sending a “save the date” announcement before a wedding is standard practice. It’s obviously a nice way to give out-of-town guests some time to make travel plans, but it’s also a way to give a hint about the style of wedding you’re planning.
We wound up ordering our save the dates much earlier than most. There was a good reason for it…
As a design blogger, I have hosted my share of giveaways, and I was delighted to find out that the wedding blogs have giveaways, too. A few months after I started entering wedding-blog giveaways, I won one! What I won was a set of custom save-the-date announcements from The Happy Envelope, a fantastic stationery company in Knoxville, Tennessee. The only problem: we were so early in our wedding planning that we didn’t have a picture or wedding website to put on the save the dates. We had a date. We had a location. That was it.
We wanted the save the date to be a little quirky, and it had to include Junior Mink. I started poring through photos to find something that would work. At some point in looking through photos, a different “take” on American Gothic came to mind. If you don’t remember, this is American Gothic:
American Gothic by Grant Wood / From the Art Institute of Chicago
That’s not exactly the kind of imagine you’d expect to see on a save the date, is it?
I’ve gotten a lot of great ideas from Weddingbee over the months. I know it’s my job to put out inspiration and give the details of my plans for others to read, but I’ve gotten as much out of it as I’ve put in.
I decided to put in a sampling of some of my favorite posts that have given me some amazing ideas for our wedding, for posts, or hell, just for everyday life. These are my top 9. I guess I could have found one more, but I figured I’d just stick with the ones I’ve been saving up for months now. If you’re new to the hive, I suggest you read these. They may give you inspiration anew!
Mrs. Hyena’s idea to put the garter on the football was genius. We have a ton of young un-married people coming to our wedding (at least 50 on the guest list). I am looking forward to the garter and bouquet tosses. But most weddings I’ve been to feature reluctant catchers. If he puts my garter on a football, the guys may actually want to catch it. Plus, it’s a great reminder of the day we moved into together and an inside joke amongst all our friends that our football belongs to me and not Mr. Kettle.
Mrs. Macarons idea to use Nailtiques for nail growth changed my life.
Read more…
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.”
Yesterday, I made two important trips to the post office. First, I went to buy a stack of stamps. If you are interested, I walked away with a stack of the Herbs for our RSVP postcards and an assortment of the Lunar New Year: Year of the Rabbit and the popular Garden of Love stamps for our envelopes. Second, I returned to the post office to drop off all of our invitations!
One box of invitations, ready to go!
Video via YouTube / Song performed by Bob Marley
I know I said previously that I’m not a lyrics girl. However, I thought Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds had a beautiful message. I have a rotten tendency to be a bit of a worrier. Zeb’s a go with the flow everything will be all right guy. What a better mantra for our marriage?
Read more…
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
You guys, I just discovered the most incredible thing for weight loss. It’s seldom used, but works like a charm.
Oh yeah it’s uhhh, called exercise. I’ve been lying to myself for years thinking all those fad diets work. You name it, I’ve tried it. I even tried that all liquid “Hollywood” diet. Yeah, I nearly passed out on that one.
News flash—none of that works. Maybe it will help you lose a little weight here and there, but nothing that will keep the weight off.
In reality, we all know what the magic spell is…eating healthy and exercising. I always thought I could get away with the former, but in reality I need both. It is not fun, in fact I absolutely loathe exercise. I kept putting it off because I had a really awesome reason why I shouldn’t lose weight.
Are you ready for this? Here it goes:
Read more…
Telling you about Etsy is not at all “breaking news,” but I thought I would share my new favorite website/shopping obsession. For those who are not familiar…oh, who am I kidding, you all know what Etsy is.
As someone who would love to be truly crafty, but really only has great organizational skills and perfect penmanship, Etsy is a creative haven. I look at all the beautiful, unique goods and wish that I could duplicate their efforts. In some cases, I’ve tried and failed (the next time I make an attempt, I’ll make sure to blog about it…it’s a hot mess), but mainly I just wish that my mother’s sewing abilities had been passed on to me or that I was a wiz with a hot glue gun. On weekends, I’ve sometimes found myself perusing the site for hours—not necessarily for anything in particular, but just to see what’s out there. This has sometimes resulted in some great purchases, other times in putting me behind in work!
Since my discovery of Etsy, I’ve found a lot of great gifts—especially for newly engaged friends!! I like these gifts more than others because they’re unique (limiting the chance that someone would buy the same gift) and they’re supporting individuals, not corporations. Here is a sample of some of my favorite purchases, with links to each seller’s shop, so you can browse their great products:
Personalized bowl from Paloma’s Nest
This was an engagement gift over a year ago, personalized with the bride and groom’s names and wedding date. I feel like these are everywhere now, though! I’ve seen them used for ring storage/display at home or even for the ring bearer to carry on the wedding day.
In the The Bees are Thankful For… post, I admitted to being thankful that tights are in style (among other things). I thank da lawd daily that tights are in style, because I like to wear dresses every day, whether it’s cold or not. That got me thinking about other things I’m glad to hop on the bandwagon for. Jeans tucked into boots—sooo practical when it’s wet out. Scarves—they keep me warm in the office on the daily. Headbands—my bangs can’t be trusted to behave very often. Sure, I could wear these things even if they weren’t in style, but would I? Would I even think to wear a scarf indoors if hipsters hadn’t proclaimed it cool? Probably not—you don’t see me wearing snowpantz to work, no matter how cold my legs get under that desk.
Image via Style Me Pretty / Photo by Arrow and Apple
I want these tights! All of them! At the same time!
Then I realized there were a number of wedding-related trends that are making my life easier as well. Paper flowers, for example. OK, they might not be making my life easier per se, but making my own flowers will save me a bundle. And I don’t have to worry too much about how weird it is to have paper flowers because, well, it’s not that weird anymore. In fact, they’re downright prolific in the wedding blogosphere.
I like to think that I have always played it straight with you, hive. So I’m going to come right out and say it, and I’m going to say it bluntly: I’ve been kind of a bitch lately to Mr. D. Why, you ask? Honestly, there is no real excuse, but if I had to blame it on something other than me, I would say stress. I am so frickin’ stressed out.
I know now that I take on way too much crap, so it’s no wonder I’m so stressed out all the time. I work full-time, I go to school full-time (online, but it’s still hard as hell), and I’m planning a wedding, which because of all the DIY-ness of it, is like another full-time job. Plus I’m the one that my family likes to call when they have issues with each other or other such problems in their lives. Now add to this the fact that I’m just about to finish finals and I’m dealing with my dad dying, I’m a flat out bitch. Big time. Unfortunately, Mr. D has been taking the brunt of my bitchiness lately. This is something I feel absolutely terrible about.
It’s become more and more obvious that I need to find something to do that allows me to target my stress into something important instead of snapping at Mr. D for simply asking a question.
Read more…
I am not a cake person. For some reason it’s just never been my thing. Even as a child I would pass on the birthday cake. Now show me some warm chocolate chip or peanut butter cookies, and we have a different story; however, in the past year or so I discovered something very curious: my distaste for cake comes to a screeching halt when cake becomes CUPcakes. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that cupcakes come in so many flavors: key lime, apple pie, salted caramel, carrot cake, red velvet, s’mores, banana split, peach cobbler. (I could fill a whole post, but for y’alls’ sakes, I’ll keep myself in check.)
Trying new flavors and cupcake shops has almost become a sport for Mr. Hawk and me. If we find a new shop in town, we pick out a half dozen to take home and feast on them rest of the week. (Correction: mine last a week. Mr. Hawk eats all of his within two days and then pouts until I share my half with him.) We even have our favorites cupcakes and shops ranked. (Moistness of cake, cake-to-icing ratio, and cupcake size are all considered.) It.Is.Serious.
Pearl’s Deep Dish Apple Pie—my absolute favorite! / Image via Foodspotting
So naturally, since cupcakes are somewhat of a large presence in our lives, they must be a part of the wedding-dessert menu. It makes me a little sad to be missing out on some gorgeous wedding cakes, but it just wouldn’t be the Hawk wedding without cupcakes.
I put off thinking about our bridal party for quite some time. Wedding blogs and the boards here have plenty stories of bridal-party drama, and while I didn’t expect any from the people I had in mind, I didn’t want to worry about that aspect of wedding planning at first.
Originally, I wrote down the names of people I felt obligated to ask along with the names of people I really wanted to be in my party. I wound up with seven or eight names…which felt way, way too large to me. I started to envision all of those people throughout different parts of the wedding day and realized that I didn’t want a cast of thousands. I wanted three people, from three different “parts” of my life.
One. Two. Three. / Photo by Miss Mink
I wanted my closest Charlottesville friend, who jokes that we are work spouses, as my matron of honor. I couldn’t imagine not having my sister-in-law with me. We’ve seen each other through so many different phases of life. I also wanted a good friend who I made through my biggest passion: music. We love seeing live music. We especially love seeing live music with her and her husband.
I realize that title can have approximately 27 meanings, but here’s the one I’m talking about:
Foxy and I have made the decision to go to a combo of premarital and couples’ counseling. The former for obvious reasons, and the latter because of certain issues and differences that we feel we need to work on—namely, communication. The best and worst thing about the two of us is that we are so different, yet so similar, especially when it comes to our stubbornness. Throw in a minor disagreement, and you can potentially have the recipe for disaster (or just a really big blowout for no real reason). Hence, couples’ counseling.
We had our first session this past Monday, and while I went in nervous, I left with an overwhelming feeling of hopefulness and anticipation. Part of that excitement, if you will, came from our first “homework assignment” - to buy, read, and implement strategies from the book The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman.
Image via The 5 Love Languages
Have you heard of this book? It’s been on my “must buy/read” list for a few years now, as I’ve had many a (bloggy) friend rave about and review it.
Read more…
paleta28 is selling 32 glitter masks in various colors. She’s asking $3.50 each.
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:
Hive, I sincerely apologize for this post. This particular part of our wedding reception came at a time when everyone had enjoyed a few beverages, and we were feeling a little silly. I had just tossed my bouquet(s), and it was Mr. Lion’s turn to take the stage. Naturally, he chose Eye of the Tiger as his theme music. Sigh.
The song began, and Mr. Lion went in for the kill. By the way, keep your eye on that little kid in the corner.
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