Thankfully, the day of our rehearsal dinner was super relaxing. The day before our wedding was mine and Mr. Scepter’s 10 year dating anniversary, and even though we had a lot to do that day Mr. Scepter brought me a croissant from my favorite local bakery. (These aren’t just any croissants, and if I hadn’t immediately stuffed my face with it I would have taken a picture to prove it.)
After Mr.Scepter left, Sherlock and I finished up some last minute wrapping of our bridal party gifts:
After gifts had been wrapped, and everyone rolled out of bed my mom, sister, bridesmaids and I headed off to the salon to get mani/pedis for all! (Unfortunately MOH Dancer had to work that morning, but we did hijack Groomsmen M’s wife so she could partake in our girly time.)
Good news! We survived!…Barely!
My BFFs and I just spent a whirlwind three days/nights in Sin City for my bachelorette party. It simultaneously feels like we were there for two minutes or two weeks—we kept referring to the city as a “time vortex.” Casinos, lights, music, general decadence—add a three hour time difference and the fact that it’s completely acceptable (encouraged, even) to drink at any hour of the day…it was definitely a crazy experience. We kept joking that we would fly back home and it would somehow be January.
We had a super early flight on Thursday morning and arrived well before our rooms were ready, so we killed some time walking around, shopping, and playing beer pong in a bar (normal?)…
Had to take this picture. These (Gray) Wolf slot machines were everywhere!
The morning of our rehearsal I woke up to the sound of a bride’s worst fear: rain. The week of our wedding, it rained nearly every day. Heavy rain. The forecast showed a slight chance of rain on the days of our rehearsal and wedding, so I went to bed Thursday night confident that the weather would cut us a break. But literally the second I woke up, I was filled with dread. I just knew our wedding would get rained out.
The weather was so intense that we were forced to hold the rehearsal indoors because the grounds were flooded. The rain didn’t look like it was letting up any time soon. As you can imagine, I was freaking out.
Ha, look at our faces!
Sadly, that was the only photo from the rehearsal. At one point we decided to line up outside when the rain was a bit lighter, but we ended up rained out almost as soon as we started. Eventually, we got all of the logistics down and headed back to get ready for the best part of the day: dinner!
Our post wedding festivities began the way any wedding night should: complimentary champagne, chocolate strawberries, and room service. Although we were both able to enjoy our dinner during the reception, we quickly realized we were both starving when we finally made it back to our hotel room. We also discovered a nice surprise left for us by the hotel—champagne and chocolate covered strawberries. We may or may not have snacked on those while we waited for the rest of our food to arrive…
What I’m most excited about, besides the ceremony and the dress and the cake and…
Well, high on The List of Things I’m Excited About (which is about a mile long) is our decision to use Wish Lanterns!
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| Image via Martha Stewart Weddings |
Previous bloggers have explored Wish Lantern options, like Mrs. Frog!
I have to admit, most of my desire to have this as a main-event for our reception stems from Tangled. I mean, what bride has watched that movie and not had their eyes grow big as saucers with the sheer possibility of this amazeballs tradition.
Now, Tangled gets cray with it, since it’s a whole village sending these off. That’s simply not in the budget. Although the best pictures I’ve found have several hundred, we’re hoping for a similar effect with 50-75. Since I’m sure everyone has heard some horror stories about setting these off, we’re going to take a ton of precautions. Luckily, our awesome venue has OK’ed the idea, and there’s a huge parking lot nearby where we can set them off without any trees or buildings getting involved. If we order 50-60, we’ll be able to ask our guests to partner up to coordinate the launch, so no one has to figure it out by themselves. We’re also toying with the idea of asking a fire marshall to come out. Like I said, precautions.
Our daydream for this idea looks like this:
Now that we were husband and wife (hip-hip-HOORAY!), it was time for us take the fun pictures we had been looking forward to. First, there was one quick order of business:
I wanted to make sure that my dress was already bustled when we left because I knew that we would be heading straight from pictures to the reception. I had my childhood best friend and her mom come to my final fitting to learn how to bustle my dress, and they were more than happy to! I really admire how they were so eager to do it, considering I had a 14 point bustle that was kind of a pain to do. I am so thankful for them though, because they were quick and efficient!
Once that was done, we all loaded up into our respective cars (we carpooled to the reception, but our reception site offered transportation from the reception site back to the hotel, it was great!), and headed out to a location that Jenn, our photographer, had picked out.
When we got there, Jenn got immediately to work, getting some individual pictures of Mr. D and I:
There will be dancing at our wedding. Even if I’m the only one on the dance floor, dancing will be happening. And while I’m proud to say that I once won a dance-off at a kind of awkward bar in Mississippi, my dance moves really aren’t all that spectacular. So, in order to guarantee that others will be jamming out with me, we’re getting a band!!
I used to think that having a wedding band was a weird idea. That’s probably because I had only seen wedding bands in the movie The Wedding Singer. Why would I think an Adam Sandler movie was depicting real life? I have no idea. But I thought wedding bands were probably terrible.
Image from IMDB and the movie The Wedding Singer
I maintained this opinion until I actually attended a wedding with a band a few years ago, and I had a BLAST! I was dancing the entire night, and everyone seemed to be having an awesome time. Not only did I overcome my assumption that wedding bands were terrible, I decided that I wanted one! Luckily, Mr. Whale is also completely into music and also has a weird vendetta against DJ’s, so he has been 100% on board with this idea since day one of wedding planning. Yeah!!
is selling a stunning new David Tutera wedding dress with a sweetheart neckline. She is asking $500 for the size 14 dress.
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I’m feeling a twinge of nostalgia and homesickness, so I’m going to write about one of the most important wedding topics to Mr. Wallaby and I: family. Our families are near and dear to our hearts; we both come from very close-knit families and we spend as much time with them as we can. We have dinner with Mr. W’s family every Friday night. My parents live further away, but we make as many trips up to Seattle as we can, and my parents are great about visiting every few months. My brother goes to college in Houston, so I see him weekly, depending on his course load and social life.
Our families have started blending together—my parents and grandma flew to Houston last Thanksgiving to celebrate the holiday with Mr. W’s extended family, and we all had a blast. (My grandma even said it was the best Thanksgiving ever!) Then this past February, Mr. W’s mom and sisters visited my parents in Seattle, and we showed them the sights—and the trip culminated in a family ski trip. So, needless to say, I couldn’t wait for the family reunion at the wedding!
Wallaby Dad, me, Mr. W, W Sister H, W Sister R, Mama Wallaby, and MIL Wallaby, after an afternoon of skiing and sledding. Personal photo.
I feel very, very fortunate to have been chosen as a bee. You have already talked me down from the cliff numerous numerous times already and I’m so eternally grateful.
While this community meant a lot to me before I became a bee, becoming a bee has helped to shape my planning process so so much. You guys rock, really.
Thus, like many of my fellow bees, I have chosen to carry a few things with me so I can have the hive with me on the big day.
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| via Mrs. Pain Au Chocolat / Photo by Heather Fowler Photography |
I’m so excited to carry the bee charms. I really love how it connects all of us together. In addition to the bee charms though, I also wanted something that represents a more personal connection to the hive. Long before I became a bee, I fell in love with the idea of having my moniker charm attached to my bouquet like many, many other bees ahead of me.
You have no idea how seriously jealous I was of those cute adorable charms. I desperately wanted to be a bee, but I was sure that by the time I was able to apply, they would have ran out of adorable icon ideas, and I would be stuck with something awful, like Miss Pimple.
Thus, when the current generation came out, I was so excited that I might get a cute animal as my moniker (thanks Mrs. Bunting!)
Like most other details in this wedding, I had to make it myself, half because I’m stubborn and cheap, and half because I really couldn’t find anything I liked on Etsy.
First off, thanks for all the advice and comments. When I wrote about my awesome honor attendants here, you were all very helpful as usual! The general consensus was to avoid asking H Bomb and C Fri to order anything specific and that maybe eggplant and chocolate brown wouldn’t look so good together. Insert Miss Sword’s sad face here.
(Please note, this photo was not taken recently, but a few years ago when a very over-tired and over-emotional Miss Sword was traveling from the UK back to America.)
But I didn’t stay sad for long!! I rallied and talked to my girls and came up with a totally new plan!
And real quick, it’s worth noting that all of the men will be wearing different kilts. Instead of mismatched girls, I’ll have mismatched guys, and I guess that’s why I’m leaning so heavily towards having the bridesmaids and honor attendants be as uniform as possible.
I’ve known all along the honor attendants should be in a dark color, I just had chosen the wrong dark color. Why hadn’t it hit me before? The honor attendants should wear black!
Yes, black. At a wedding.
We had another hour of music set to play after the bouquet and garter tosses, but things were generally starting to wind down.
Pro tip for backyard brides: have a taxi company’s number handy! So many people asked me how to get a cab and I didn’t have an answer. I kept directing them to the clump of my Mom’s friends on the back deck!
Most of Mr. Dragon’s guests cleared out after the tosses, to hit up a bar. For months Mr. Dragon insisted that we should be there at the after party for at least one drink, so I tried to wake up even though I was fading, fast. I had been up since 6:00am, on five hours of sleep, and was listing toward utter exhaustion.
An emptying tent! [Photo by Aaron]
About forty-five minutes before the wedding music would run out, Mr. Dragon, to my relief, determined that we would not be attending any after-parties. With half an hour left to go, we started making our rounds, saying goodbye to anyone that was still present.
I had loaded the second half of the reception playlist with all the “fun” music (Don’t Stop Believing, 500 Miles, all of those great tunes) and was kind of bummed that they were playing to a mostly empty dance floor…but then, my Mom and my aunt appeared from the back deck to enjoy a rousing rendition of “Friends in Low Places” with my bridesmaids, which made me smile even though I was too tired to join in.
At that point, all that was left of our guests was the wedding party and a handful of family members and friends. The last song of the night, carefully selected, was Lean on Me, and I have no idea if anyone danced to it because I was inside making sure we had cab money and all of our overnight stuff packed.
mfyler shows off her beautiful up-do—and a charming little umbrella, too!
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Hey guys! I’m Miss Camel and I’m so excited to be introducing myself to you today! I feel incredibly honored to be able to share our wedding plans with such an awesome and welcoming online community. Not to mention that it’s a great feeling to finally be able to give back to a group that has given me so much over the past several months. So come along—join me on my (mis)adventures in wedding planning!
But first, a little about myself and the Mr. …
This May I’ll be marrying this super sweet, super dorky guy I met at work. We’re planning a wedding with a theme that can only be described as Marie Antoinette at the Petit Trianon. If you’ve seen Sofia Coppola’s beautiful film Marie Antoinette or visited the palace of Versailles, then you will surely understand the look and feel that we are trying to accomplish. If not, stay tuned for more details and lots of images that have inspired me over the last few months.
After we’d fully ruled out White Chapel for our ceremony, I was given the go-ahead to contact the wedding coordinator at a church just down the road from our venue, First United Methodist Church of Arlington (what a mouthful!). The first woman we dealt with was unreasonably stingy with information. Because of our long engagement, we told her we wanted to become involved in the church we chose to be married in and become members. She was a little older and very suspicious of our motives for membership. It was true that we had heard members paid a lower fee, but we also were earnest in our desire to join the church!
Regardless. This church could not be more perfect in my eyes. It is literally two blocks away from our reception venue, historic, and Methodist, like us! This church was the perfect size, and gorgeous.
One thing we both thought fascinating about this church was that it was built in 1907, and it has tragically burned down since then not once, but twice! The church never gave up hope, and was always rebuilt on the same foundation. I thought this was an amazing metaphor for marriage!
Photo by Simple Moments
