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Just over a year ago the State of California processed our domestic partnership paperwork and officially made us “domesticated in the eyes of the state.” Would you like to see what it looks like?
(personal photo)
It looks kind of plain right?
Last night we met with a DJ who was not actually a DJ.
I’ve had the hardest time finding a DJ who isn’t making us travel over an hour to meet them, and who is not already booked for our date. Last night we met a highly recommended one, and it was OK but just kind of weird. Mr. Woodpecker and I debriefed after the meeting and both agreed that the guy was a little strange and there were a lot of awkward moments. Several times during the meeting I’d ask a question, and there would be pauses…long, awkward pauses where I wasn’t sure if the man was ignoring me, or not hearing what I was saying, or thinking. Mr. WP and I were surprised that when we went to meet with this DJ company we did not actually meet any DJs. We were kind of planning to pick a DJ a lot on personality, and the owner was very insistent that they just have a rotating system for DJs and all of his are good, which kind of turned us off. However, this was only the first one, so we are looking forward to a better experience the next time.
Music is not the most important to us, but we do both like to dance:
Moves circa 2006
You guys, I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to think up a favor for our guests. Like, a serious amount of time that could have probably been spent doing other things that were more important. In hindsight, I had no reason to stress about the favors. Our photo booth photos could have been our favor, as well as our sweets table, but I just really wanted something fun at each seat to show our guests how much we appreciated having them with us!
Since I thought so long about it, I feel like it’s only fair to share some of those options as well as the big winner. The runners up were…
Hershey’s Kisses in springtime colors to match our wedding colors, which were baby blue and sage green and chocolate (get it?!) brown (but obviously I’d eat all the pink ones to keep them in our color scheme).
Hershey’s Pastel Kisses via Oriental Trading (Great prices there!)
Have you heard of Hyperbole and a Half? It’s a hilarious blog that covers a range of topics from the simpleton dog to the childhood exploits of the author and illustrator. A little over a year ago, she wrote about being a sugar addict as a child and ruthlessly pursuing a cake made for a grandparent once she snagged a bite of it.
I had no idea that once I scheduled cake tastings that I’d morph into a bit of a cake monster myself. All I could think about was cake. Cake. Cake. Cake.
God of Cake is one of the funniest blog posts I’ve ever read / From Hyperbole and a Half
I managed to hold myself together on our way over to Charlottesville baker Anita Gupta’s house one Sunday morning for a tasting. Anita is the wonderful woman behind Maliha Creations and half of the team behind EyeCandy, a company that creates beautiful dessert tables. I met Anita a year ago while attending an event for a charity I was working with as a volunteer (I have met the most interesting people while volunteering…more to come on that front) and was really looking forward to finally trying some of her beautiful cake.
Read more…
Featured on Weddingbee
Unique Wedding Favors
“Add a memorable touch to your wedding with unique favors that match your theme.”
amber.woulfe is selling a pair of purple peep toe heels with bow embellishment. She is asking $35 for the size 9.5 shoes.
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:
It’s been quite some time since I announced our engagement, so I wanted to share some of the inspiration The Ginger and I have been gathering along the way, mostly thanks to Pinterest. To give you a quick recap, we’ll be having an uber intimate wedding in our own backyard with 15 guests (our parents, siblings and significant others, and our pooch, Betty White).
For starters, we’re planning on having two long, wooden tables in our backyard, picnic-style, with benches for our guests. It’s been quite a challenge trying to nail down a vendor for renting a few rustic tables, but I think we’ve finally found a reasonable option thanks to Craigslist. We snagged some yellow, grey, and gold streamers which we plan on slinging over bulb string lights to give the yard a pretty glow (and hopefully not catch our house on fire).
We had been debating whether or not we should make an arbor, but I think we’ll be dyeing and tying ombre-style pieces of yellow fabric to the dogwood tree, along with hanging mason jar vases with flowers and candles. I really love these tissue paper-covered lanterns and we already have oversized yellow balloons from our barbecue party that never happened, so those should look pretty (assuming we don’t get another Hurricane Irene).
{1: Image via Once Wed / Photo by Jose Villa 2: Image via Once Wed / Photo by Our Labor of Love 3: Image via Green Wedding Shoes / Photo by Katherine Elizabeth Photography 4: Image via Martha Stewart}
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
Here’s the deal: since our venue is located in a cute little residential neighborhood, there is a noise ordinance in effect all nights, weekends included. Thus, our reception needs to be over by 9:30PM.
Foxy and I both decided that this was much too early to end the evening. This wedding will be over two years in the making—we want to enjoy the day and the night as much as humanly possible! Wouldn’t you?! Enter: the after party.
Apparently this is a very common thing at the Vandiver. 99% of newlyweds and their guests head the whole three blocks over to “downtown” Havre de Grace after their reception to continue partying the night away with participating friends and family. Having visited the two main bars in the area several times, we’ve decided on a place to go that we will have our DJ announce shortly before the reception is over. We’ll also have our DOC call the bar and warn them a wedding fiesta is coming their way. I’m incredibly stoked about it all.
The only issue this presents is that of my wedding dress. I asked Foxy if he thought I should just wear it out to the bar, which he didn’t think was a very good idea. I don’t think he realized it at the time, but he basically told me to get another dress. Boom. 
Read more…
You have been warned: this is a pic-heavy post…
Pretty pictures…we want ‘em. We also want a photographer who will be OK with non-pro paparazzi (i.e., my family and various other wedding guests) and who will play well with other vendors. (I talk a little more about our vendor requirements here if you want to read all of the randomness.)
You see, my dad doesn’t just like playing with motion pictures—he also likes photographs, as do my sister and a few other guests. These people will most assuredly have cameras on them at the wedding, and they will probably try and sneak shots alongside the pro. AND we want them to do their thing, because that is a good time for them. We absopositively do not want a photographer who is snippy and tells people to go away, or worse yet points at people and says “you here,” “you move.” So impersonal. Oh, there was a laundry list of wants, likes, and “oh no they didn’t”s to consider. The list included things like we get the rights to our own pictures, maybe they set up a faux-to booth, they are fun, they like people, etc. So we looked and looked.
There was something really surprising to us that we didn’t anticipate at all: at least half of the photographers in the Kansas City area mentioned G-d on their website. Some of them are fantastic photographers, but we didn’t want to risk it because our photographer is going to be interacting with all of our guests and spending a fair amount of time with us. After creating spreadsheets and showing websites to our nearest and dearest, we reached out to three photographers who had pictures that captured emotion and were modern.
Image from Melissa Lin Ellis on Facebook / Photo by Melissa Lin Ellis / Wedding: Nikki & Tobias
A pink and ivory wedding bouquet with a bit of bling from hive member Pomapoo
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!
When we last left off talking about my love of spreadsheets, I was explaining how my OCD kick-butt organization skills manifested themselves into this wedding spreadsheet.
We left off with this list of all of the spreadsheets:
1. Budget
2. Guest List
3. Guest Addresses—Checklist
4. Projects
5. Attire/Beauty
6. Ceremony
7. Flowers/Decor
8. Photography
9. Music
10. Stationery
11. Cookie Bar
12. Cake
Since I’ve already gone over budget, I’ll start with 2 and 3, Guest List and Addresses. You might be wondering why I have two guest spreadsheets, but it’s really worked out well. My first guest sheet is a “his and hers” list of all the people we want to invite!
Above is a quick shot of the first. This is your basic list of who we want to invite, and it is a good way to see our numbers. We also have a third list, as you can see, of people who we would like to invite but who we are not sure if we can money-wise. This is a great tool that we constantly go back to to figure out numbers.
Narrowing down the designs for our save the dates was tough. We had finally crossed off all but two designs and just could not choose between them.
So what did we do? We ordered both!
Quite a while ago, I posted about how we fell into a free photography contract with an acquaintance of mine who offered it up. Many of you expressed concerns, and at the time I had faith it would work out; it had to work out because we had no other option. I should have listened to you, hive! About six weeks before our wedding, I opened my Gmail to find an email from said photographer. My heart sunk. He was writing to tell me that his photography was going in a different direction and he “no longer needed wedding photography for his portfolio.” Six weeks before we needed him; six weeks in which everything else was coming together and many months too late to start a new photography budget. I was a mixture of emotions, from being completely pissed off to the feeling of total betrayal. We emailed back and forth, and it came to him agreeing that he would honor his contract and shoot our wedding “if that’s what it came to.” Long story short, I was getting the many hints that our photographer just didn’t want to be there for our wedding.
One night I had one of those wedding nightmares that so many Bees have written about. My nightmare? That this photographer just didn’t show up. I mean why would he? He had no vested interest in our day, no deposit to return, no money to collect. I laid in bed thinking how awful that would be and my mind drifted to a different thought. What if he did show up but was just so-so in his efforts? Which situation would be the worst?
Read more…
There were a few last minute projects that came together the week before the wedding that I wanted to share with you. I had sort of given up on any more DIY projects in the weeks leading up to the wedding, and then I got one final burst of inspiration in the last week.
First, I put together a simple ribbon bouquet from our shower gifts to use at our rehearsal.
My supplies: a bouquet holder, a Styrofoam center, and I used alteration pins to put all the ribbons into the bouquet.
Yes, I know we’re throwing a great big rocking party for our wedding guests and that should be enough. However, with a 6:30PM ceremony our out of town guests, even those that arrive Saturday morning, will have a decent amount of time to spare. What ever will they do to keep busy?
To help our guests use their free time wisely, Mr. Turkey and I spent this weekend creating a section on our wedding website entitled “What to do in Philly”. We took this pretty seriously, as we always enjoy exploring when at an out of town wedding and haven’t always found a lot of help prior to our trips.
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| Visiting the Parthenon (Nashville) |
Oh hive, like so many bees before me, I have been dreading writing this post. It has been such an amazing opportunity for me to share our wedding journey with this community! I have been blogging here for almost six months and it has been such a great experience and I have absolutely loved every minute of it. So, I’m going to make this farewell a band-aid experience—do it quickly and it will only hurt for a second… well, that’s what I will tell myself anyway.
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