Anyone who has an Italian grandma has probably heard those words shouted over a family meal at least once in their lives. Mangia, mangia! Eat, eat!
And eat is exactly what we did. I know there’s this big mythos around whether or not the bride and groom will get to sit down to eat on their wedding day, but honestly, we had no problems with it. B let the head table go through the buffet line first, and guest tables went two at a time after that, so everyone else was eating at the same time we were. We were asked to pose for the occasional picture…
I’ll explain to you exactly what I’m wearing here in another post / *
And glasses were clinked for the occasional kiss…
After wrapping up our portraits, our guests began arriving quickly. We had a table welcoming them to the ceremony with programs, our guest book, escort cards, and yarmulkes for the men to wear if they wanted to.
I have to admit, I’ve been reading the ’bee for much longer than I’ve been engaged. When I was in college, and interning for a wedding venue, I spent so much time on wedding websites that it was no surprise that I had lots of ideas about what I wanted in my wedding. After talking about how we value quality time together and the idea of the sweetheart table, I remembered another important moment: our private last dance.
Photo by: Kallima Photography on Every Last Detail via Lover.ly
The first time I came across the private last dance was the lovely Mrs. FroYo. Then last year, right around the time my engagement happened, Mrs. Elephant and Mrs. Jaguar wrote about their last dances. I knew then that I had to remember to include a last dance in our wedding plans. Thankfully, I haven’t forgotten. 
A lot of our wedding attire came together last-minute (really, it’s us…could it have happened any other way?)
You might remember that I bought my dress, the J. Crew Sophia in silk chiffon, really early, about a month after we got engaged, so about a year before the wedding.
It was a really, really comfortable dress (and my something new!). A bunch of people were asking me at the end of the night if I wanted to change out of it, but I swear it felt better on my body than yoga pants would have! It’s free of embellishment, and, aside from the hem, fit well, so it felt more like wearing a nightgown than a ballgown.
I bought it early, yes, but it took me up until the last minute to decide on how to wear it! In the end, I didn’t even pack the lace top.
When it comes to weddings and dancing, I’ve seen both sides of the spectrum. I’ve been to the weddings that were highly energetic with tons of people dancing and I have also been to the more laid back weddings where people were busier conversing at tables than hitting the dance floor. Both are great, but I really wasn’t sure what would happen at our wedding. I had an inkling that we wouldn’t have many people dancing at our wedding and I was totally fine with that.
Boy was I ever wrong. Apparently our friends and family really love to dance—who knew? I certainly didn’t.
I danced with my husband’s friends:
I busted a move, or whatever you want to call it, with my parents. The sad thing is I am fairly certain we were dancing to Sexy Back and NOT Walk Like an Egyptian, but whatevs.
Hey, y’all!
Like I’ve mentioned before in previous posts, Mr. A and I are planning our wedding and putting it on the tab of Mama Dillo and Papa Dillo—that said, spending a ton of my parents’ money on a one day event totally skeeves me out. We’re sticking to a relatively modest budget and are trying to make smart choices to cut back on things without sacrificing general aesthetics or the comfort of our guests. But, let’s be honest here. Even at the most budget-friendly weddings, some aspects of the ceremony/reception are relatively pricey depending on the size of your guest list, no matter which way you slice it. The biggest issue with sticking to our budget remains that our guest list will probably be on the larger size. We’ll be sending out somewhere around 200 invitations. (Read: We’re inviting somewhere around 400 people.) If it was just up to Mr. A and myself, this shindig would probably be much smaller and more intimate, but the general word on the street is when the parents pay, they also have a say. And I’m actually totally fine with a larger scale reception; it’s not what I originally had in mind, but I know my parents are just as excited about this wedding as we are. And to be honest, the idea of throwing a huge party with everyone’s friends and family there to dance the night away and celebrate love and marriage and optimism for the future sounds pretty darn sweet to me.
But with a larger guest list comes the added cost of more people to host, more mouths to feed, more tables, more centerpieces, more alcohol, and well, more everything. If we were going to stick to our budget, something was going to have to give somewhere. And so, we sat down with my parents and brainstormed on ways we could cut back on costs while still showing our friends and family a good time. I’ll break things down into four major categories and show where we’re cutting back to accommodate our large guest list on a smaller budget: Food and Drink, Decor, Entertainment, and Miscellaneous.
Category 1: Food and Drink
Category 2: Decor
I can’t believe I haven’t talked about our budget yet! That should have been one of the first posts, but I totally forgot about it!
I am a firm believer in the idea that you should get a very solid idea of what your budget is before you start any wedding planning. I would consider myself to be excellent with money. (I have no debt. I pay off my credit card every month. I put money in my savings account when I can.) But no matter how good you are with money, a wedding is probably going to involve more money than you’ve ever spent in your whole life (unless you’ve already bought a house).
Every couple is different when it comes to wedding costs. These days, a lot of couples are paying for their own wedding. Fortunately for us, my parents are financially comfortable and offered to give us $10,000 for the wedding (Yipee!). Because my fiance and I are both students, this is an incredible gift for us. But of course, you’ve probably seen that the average cost of a wedding nowadays is more than $30,000!!! Yowsa!
I think we’ve all seen this graphic, but in case you haven’t, take a look:
(Sources: www.theknotinc.com, smartmoney.com, money.cnn.com)
I think this is a great graphic for a few reasons. For one, it lists (almost) all the stuff you might need to pay for. (For some reason, the officiant isn’t listed, which I completely forgot to budget for when I made my first budget. Most of the ones I looked up charge around $300-$400.) Another great thing is that you can get an idea of where you can really save money. It’s still true that every dollar counts, but when I look at this graphic, I can see that eliminating favors only saves you a couple hundred dollars. But finding a great deal on a venue could save you thousands!
I’m back with another DIY project to share with ya’ll. This has become my favorite decoration for our reception space: tissue paper garlands! I wavered back and forth between several types of garlands before I settled on this project. I loved these fabric garlands from an uber-romantic wedding inspiration shoot last fall:
Photo by Jen Huang Photography / Image via Style Unveiled.
However, I wasn’t sure where I would find the right fabrics, and cutting out fabric circles sounded really exhausting. I also loved these scalloped glitter garlands sold on Etsy:
I first met Mr. C when I was a student teacher in the spring of 2009. At the time I was working on my Master’s degree in education. After my first week, I noticed that there was a cute young-ish social studies teacher down the hall. Unfortunately, he didn’t speak a word to me for the entire 12 weeks I was there.
Mr. C often tells me of the pains he went through to start a conversation, but he never did in fear of making a fool of himself (so he says). I would have to pass his classroom anytime I went to the bathroom, the copy room, or the work room. Sometimes he’d be standing in the hallway. We’d make brief eye contact but then I’d quickly shift my gaze to the floor. As someone who hated being called on in class, I know that making eye contact is guaranteed way to initiate conversation. This is especially true in bars and during demonstrations when people are looking for “volunteers.” As a teacher I do it all the time. I scan the room and eventually some hapless student will make direct eye contact with me. Bingo. So for someone as awkward as myself, I try not to initiate too many small talk-type conversations, and therefore I try not to make eye contact with strangers.
Admittedly, I also never said hello because I was never formally introduced to him. I really wanted to have a conversation with him, but the more time that passed without us talking, the more awkward and impossible the thought of initiating a conversation became. It was the inertia of non-conversation. It also didn’t help that he never ate lunch with the other teachers in the work room, which is how I got to know a lot of the other teachers in our department. Overall, Mr. C seemed very busy and somewhat aloof to my existence. We never spoke a word to each other, so he was forgotten soon after I finished student teaching. That doesn’t sound very romantic, but it’s the truth!
I love teasing him about those 12 weeks of failed communication, even though they were as much my fault as his. At the time, he was living with his sister and brother-in-law and to this day they tell me stories of him pining for the cute student teacher with the European boyfriend who was working at his school. You see, one night he had spotted me at the grocery store with my long-distance boyfriend who happened to be in town at the time. At that point he gave up any hope of having contact with me.
Dressed as ninjas on twin day for our school’s spirit week, 2010. We were still just friends at this point! ( personal photo)
I’m not 100% sure what I plan on doing for my accessories quite yet. While I’ve found a lot of things that are close to what I’ve been thinking about, I’m really really bad about figuring out how it’ll all look together.
One thing I do know I love though is the flower crown. I’ve noticed these popping up recently and they are always so gorgeous, and have the boho-vintagey look to them.
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| Image via Green Wedding Shoes / Photo by Priscila Valentina Photography |
I’m not completely sure if I can actually pull off this look on the big day, but I knew I had to try to make one at least.
I never got around to blogging about out rehearsal dinner, but we decided to have a medium sized rehearsal that included our bridal party, their dates, our immediate families, grandparents and any aunts and uncles that had made the trip to be there for our wedding day. In the end we had about 25 people at our dinner. We chose to hold our rehearsal dinner at our favorite Japanese Steak House, Sakura. Sakura is technically a hibachi style restaurant, but they also have a nice event room in the back of the restaurant that was the perfect size for our dinner.
We pre-chose three options for our guest to choose from and Mr. Scepter’s mom made cute menus to display the choices:
Ms. Park shows off her custom made cupcake stand filled with mouth-watering cupcakes!
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I’m baaackkk! Fresh from the 2013 New York Bridal runways, Weddingbee’s got the scoop on the best wedding dresses and trends coming to a boutique near you for 2013 brides. With a complete return to the classics, designers showcased tons of lace, illusion necklines, sleeves, and metallics + intricate beading galore. Join us every day as we share ten of the most prominent trends from some of our favorite wedding dress designers, kicking off today!
First up: LACE
Banish those images of doilies and ’80s prom dresses that spring to mind at the mere mention of lace immediately—the lace wedding dresses waltzing down the runway this year are enchanting modern masterpieces in every imaginable incarnation.
So whether you favor all-over lace, beautifully embellished bodices, subtle appliques, or simple silhouettes, you’re sure to find a few somethings that strike your fancy.
Here are a few that strike ours:
1. Elegant & Enchanting:
Image courtesy of Melissa Sweet by David’s Bridal
