One month ago today the Beanstalks got married! I can’t believe a month has flown by, yet at the same time it feels like it has been ages since we were surrounded by our family saying our vows in Florida. You might be wondering, how does it feel to be married? To be honest, it feels pretty much the same. Nothing has changed in our relationship, but at the same time something has…we’re actually married! Referring to him as my husband is still taking some getting used to. I actually called him my “fiance” last week! Oops!
Being married is amazing and we both couldn’t be happier! I have a partner in life to share everything with. He makes me laugh and always is able to cheer me up whenever I’m down or having a bad day. If I had to say one thing that is different now that we are married, it is knowing that I have someone to take care of me forever. There’s a sense of security and protection I now feel that is more prominent than when we were just dating.
So in a nutshell, that’s our relationship after the wedding. How about my life…how has that been post-wedding? Again, I will use my word of the day…amazing! Before the wedding, my days consisted of DIY projects and various wedding tasks. For the 15 months we were engaged, our wedding was my life! It’s all I thought about or talked about with my family. I was a huge DIY bride, so almost every day was filled with shopping trips to gather supplies or crafting. But the funny thing is, I enjoyed every minute of it. Yes, it got crazy stressful at times, especially the last two months, but I wouldn’t change a thing. Even as we approached the last few days leading up to the wedding (a time when most brides are completely over wedding DIY crafts) and I had to cut certain projects, I kept wishing for the same thing…more time (so that I could tackle even more)!
…but not so, wedding blogs. (Puff the Magic Dragon, anyone?)
Is anyone actually “good” at good-byes? I’m not. Sometimes I leave too early, trying to rush out a side door so that nobody notices I’m getting away without properly bidding my farewells. Other times, I’m the one lingering embarrassingly long in the doorway, not quite ready to go.
I was introduced on Leap Day this year, our wedding took place as the leaves began to turn, and now, at least here, the snow is flying. And so, though I wish I could stay here forever, or slip quietly away so I wouldn’t have to really say good-bye, it’s time for me to make space for the other lovely women who are here to share their stories.
Being a part of this awesome community over the past nine months has been truly amazing. You have lifted me up, offered me assistance, and been wonderful friends, and I can only hope I’ve done the same for a few of you along the way.
My wiki page outlines our planning journey and has links to all of my recaps, so I won’t rehash all of that here. I would, however, like to show you a bit of what my world looks like outside of the wedding bubble:
You can see, as it did before we were engaged, and during wedding planning…life goes on. We work. We play. We fight like cats and dogs, sometimes. I am still a worrier while Mr. D blissfully wanders through life. But now we do all of that with a greater sense of responsibility toward each other, toward our marriage. It’s a very secure, warm feeling and we’re lucky to have it.
So…what now? Well, we’re working on some of those plans I’ve mentioned. Saving for the wedding taught us that we’re capable of putting money away, so we’ve been squirreling our pennies into savings in the hope of eventually buying a house. In the meantime, we’re keeping warm, wrangling cats, getting ready for Christmas, and trying to make it through another Northern Ontario winter.
I’ve been blogging over at Northern Exposure for a few years, and I’d love it if you dropped by. Let’s stay in touch!
A thousand thanks to all of the Weddingbee readers, to my fellow blogging bees, to the phenomenal team that keeps everything running smoothly here. I’m not exaggerating when I say that this site has changed my life.
Good luck to all of you, and good-bye!
When it came to wedding-party photos, I didn’t really have a game plan. I didn’t want anything too formal or for the photos to feel forced. Here are just a few of our favorites.
I was a bad bride. I didn’t work on any of the projects on our DIY list for several weeks. Instead, I was:
Mr. W and I reached a point where we were just ready to get married. All of our vendors were booked, the invitations had been sent, I’d made the favors, I’d collected a mountain of vases for our centerpieces and vintage postcards for our guestbook, my dress was getting its final alterations…we’d been busy as bees!
With the wedding date on the horizon, my thoughts were more centered around post-wedding life. And every time I logged into Pinterest, I started to get hair envy. I’d been growing out my hair since we got engaged in January. I got it trimmed every few months, but other than that, I’d just left it to grow grow grow. My hair doesn’t hold a curl, and I wanted to have it out of the way on our wedding day, so I definitely needed it to be long enough for an updo the day of our wedding. Here’s my hair as of March; it’s grown maybe three inches since our engagement session:
My long, frizzy hair at our engagement session / Photo by Mustard Seed Photography
Oh my gosh, hive! Upfront I feel the deep need to apologize for my absence around these parts lately. Simply put, life has gotten crazy busy in Armadillo Land. Before I knew it, Thanksgiving had come and passed and now we’re on the countdown to Christmas! Anyone else feel like the last couple of months of this year have gone by at warp speed? It totally freaks me out.
Anyway, just because I’ve gone MIA on Weddingbee doesn’t mean I haven’t been hard at work on wedding-related activities, so I can come back and share some updates with you guys! A few posts back I shared what we had planned for my lovely bridesmaids to wear down the aisle. They ranked their favorites on Weddington Way, each chose a different dress from the Alfred Sung line by Dessy, and fabric swatches helped solidify the decision to go with the dupioni fabric in “Dahlia.” However, I didn’t exactly feel comfortable asking my girls to fork out money for dresses they hadn’t even tried on, so last Tuesday I set up an appointment for me and three of my girls at a bridal boutique in Houston. Unfortunately, MOH Henna lives in Arizona and couldn’t make the trip with us, but the rest of my girls piled into my car and we made the two hour drive to Weddings by Debbie, which was the closest retailer that carried the Alfred Sung line.
Weddings by Debbie is a fancy schmancy “appointment only” salon, and I’ve got to be honest; I had no idea what the place was going to be like when I booked the appointment. The only reason I picked Weddings by Debbie in the first place was because it was the closest salon that carried Alfred Sung dresses. Needless to say, when we walked in and saw the $10,000 couture bridal gowns on the showroom floor, we felt a little…erm…out of place. They also had a few plaques up on the wall displaying their status as a “The Knot Pick of 2010″ and “The Knot Pick of 2011.” We warily told the receptionist at the front that we were there for an appointment in the bridesmaids salon and were pointed in the direction we needed to go.
Rhonda is selling a set of 30 vintage milk glass tumblers. She is asking $3 each.
Have a wedding item to sell? Post it with pictures in the Weddingbee Classifieds, and you might see it featured on the blog!
Other great items for sale:
Fun fact: I cheered from grades three to…senior year, so I can make anything into a cheer. (See how that rhymed!? Cheer material, right there.)
Anyway, let me reintroduce myself: I’m Miss Otter, tattoo lover.
Image via someecards
I have…a lot. Enough that if I try to count, I may forget one for a second. So let’s just say I have a lot. Some visible, some not. The visible ones on the big day will include: my wrists, which are both the handwriting of my deceased best friend, “radiate love” on my arm, and potentially (depending on my choice of jewelry) the blackbird on my finger. I also have one behind each ear and one on my neck that may sneak out, but since I’m wearing my hair down, that’s up in the air.
From the start, Mr. Genie wanted to get married in a church, although neither of us has strong ties to a particular religious affiliation. I was hoping for a church that encouraged an openness in spirituality. I come from a family of mixed faiths and didn’t want anyone to feel excluded. When reading about Wayfarers Chapel, a Swedenborgian church, I felt that we had not only found a beautiful place to get married, but also a place where we would feel comfortable promising our lives to each other.
In the weeks before our wedding, we met with Reverend Dan Burchett to outline our ceremony. And we were immediately put at ease with having our ceremony there. He was understanding of our changes and gave us suggestions when we needed them. And this led to our very short, but sweet, ceremony.
Now, it gets tricky. We didn’t have a videographer, and since we’ve moved a bit since we got married, I can’t find the actual transcript of our ceremony. I’m so sorry that I don’t have the exact wording of our ceremony to share with you, but I will do my best to give you an idea of what our ceremony entailed.
Reverend Burchett in his call to celebration welcomed everyone and said some nice words about love and ended with the reading from 1 Corinthians. After that, he had us face our guests and explained that we had invited them because we love them and wanted to make our commitment in front of them. He then asked if they gave their blessing. And they responded, “We will.”
Again, trying not to cry
Once we turned back around, Reverend Burchett made sure we wanted to get married (Will you, Mr. Genie, take Miss Genie to be your wife…) to which we each, in turn, responded, “I will.”
This time tomorrow, we Archers will be on a plane bound for our belated honeymoon, and we are beyond excited! I’ve not mentioned our honeymoon plans previously, so let me rewind for a second.
After our New Orleans wedding, we enjoyed a several day mini-moon. Between the wedding and the following few days, we had accounted for the entirety of our budget, so we planned to delay our honeymoon for a while to allow ourselves time to save. We were beyond humbled after our wedding to learn that we had been generously gifted by our friends and family—enough so to allow for a lovely honeymoon!
Immensely grateful, we began to assess and plan for a few potential honeymoon locations. Forerunners were the Mediterranean, the Adriatic, Southeast Asia, and Central America. We compared itineraries and schedules, price points and excursions, wanting a fabulous new experience together, some adventure in turn with some luxury, and, of course, the most bang for our (budgeted) buck. After much debate, we booked our tickets for a Costa Rica honeymoon!
We’ll be spending 12 days in Costa Rica—we’ve reserved a rental SUV and Mr. Archer is psyched to drive us through the jungle. We’ll be traveling through several areas of the country, and I’m so looking forward to visiting the different areas. After an overnight in San Jose, we’ll spend a few days in Arenal. We will be staying first in a hot springs resort near the volcano, then an actual tree-house hotel! I have booked us a couple’s massage on our wraparound patio, and we have plans to tour the hanging bridges, luxuriate in the hot springs, and zip-line through the cloud forest.
After a few weeks of research, Mr. C and I had a small selection of local venues from which to choose. Our top choice was Tucker Plantation, a restored barn located on a historic farm about 20 minutes from where we live. Even though it was close to our home, being there gave us the feeling that we were hundreds of miles away. I say barn, but really the place looks more like a restored factory with exposed brick walls, wooden floors, and high rafters supported with thick wooden beams strung with rustic chandeliers.
At some point people stopped booking ballrooms and started booking barns and lofts for their weddings. I don’t know when this shift occurred, but I’m going to be cool and pretend that this is something I would have wanted even if it wasn’t so popular right now. Seriously, though, ballrooms just aren’t my thing but they are awesome if you are going for the sleek, modern look. There’s nothing sleek or modern about Mr. C or me, so it’s off to the barn/field/warehouse for us!
Tucker had the perfect romantic, casual setting that we were looking for. It also met all of our other requirements in that we could choose our own vendors, serve our own alcohol, and hold the ceremony and reception at the same site. The building is divided into two sections: one for the ceremony with a gorgeous large window overlooking the fields and trees, and a second larger room for the reception. It has a groom’s barn for the boys to get ready in, and a lovely bridal room with large mirrors and vanity lights. It is a blank slate that can be adapted based on the vision of the bride, groom, and/or wedding planner. Even after visiting the other venues on our list, we kept coming back to Tucker Plantation. It was actually the first place my fiance really seemed to love. Check out these amazing photos:
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Image via: StyleMePretty / Photography by: Laura Leslie Photography / Venue: Tucker Plantation
Did you know we don’t have a cake yet? Back in September 2011, when we started talking budget, we nixed cake. It was not THAT important and it’ll be pricey; however, as soon as I told BM DrA about the engagement she started asking what could she get us, and three seconds later she said she was going to pay for our cake…OK!
So, knowing we’re having a cake after all, I started browsing cake toppers on Pinterest, and then I stumbled upon these beauties:
Image via Red Light Studio on Etsy
These are perfect for one simple reason: Mr. Toadstool’s nickname is “Pollo,” which means chicken (wait, wait—in Spanish it is nothing but a poultry animal and has nothing to do with someone’s courage). People called him that when I met him and have continued to do it through the years, so among out friends we are “The Chickens.”
It’s true. Mr. Whale and I have decided to have a flowerless wedding. In some sense, this makes things a lot easier. Flowers are pretty dang expensive. When I told one of my married bridesmaids that we probably weren’t having flowers, she wholeheartedly supported the decision, saying, “I totally understand. When our florist gave us a quote, I said, ‘They cost how much? And they DIE?!?!’”
It’s incredible really. I think flowers are amazingly beautiful, but I wanted a band instead of a DJ, and giving up flowers is what made room for that decision.
So, going flowerless saves money (potentially). But, it also opens the door to so many other options. I decided that I should first work on my bouquet. And WOW, there are SO MANY bouquet options.
Brooch bouquet (Image from Kippie on Weddingbee)
After some shots putting the final touches on my outfit, I followed the photographers outside to take some pictures on my family’s property. The results of this 30 minute shoot, squished in before leaving for the ceremony, ended up providing us with some of my favorite shots of the day.
I’ve heard a lot of ladies complaining about their fiances putting their foot down on certain wedding-related details. Some have even gone so far as to accuse their significant others of being groomzillas. Now, I think the “-zilla” title can be a little unfair, whether it’s thrown at a man or a woman—but I think that opens up an interesting discussion into the role of both parties in planning a wedding.
Photo via idogifts.com
I’ve read that, traditionally, the bride-to-be would take her mother to appointments with vendors. Now, the role of mothers is often replaced by the grooms. I admit, Mama Wallaby lives 3,000 miles away, and I was more than happy to have Mr. Wallaby by my side each time we met with a vendor. Of course, it depends entirely on your circumstances: since Mr. W and I live in the same city and our work schedules are very similar, it was easy for us to pencil in vendor appointments in the evenings after work.
mrsbiddyf shows off a photo of her pink and green bouquet, complete with striped ribbon.
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