I always love these posts from other bees, so I figured I’d give you a glimpse into our guest list and RSVP breakdown.
For the ceremony, our venue holds 100 at the absolute maximum. We knew we would get some declines, but we didn’t want to risk too much. Save some of my side of the family, we didn’t invite any “peripherals”—you know, the second cousins you never see, or old college classmates—and there’s not much else going on in February, so we were fairly confident that most people would be able to make it. We ended up inviting 108:
Whoops. I didn’t realize how skewed this was until I looked at it in a nice chart fashion.
Brittany is offering hand-drawn guestbook art. She is asking $55 per guestbook.
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:
After our first look, we stole away for some couple shots before we brought the bridal party in. The images don’t really need much explanation, but I will say that they are my favorite shots of the day. Why? Well, because they are of me and Mr. CA! Duh. The entire reason for the wedding. Sarah and Chris beautifully captured us, our love, and our relationship, and I cherish these pictures. They make me remember how calm and happy I felt at the time. Just me and him (um, and our photographers, but we can pretend like they weren’t there), all excited about getting married.
One of my top five favorite pictures from that day. We put this one on the cover of our parents’ albums. Oh, and if you look real close, you will see Bill Gates’s complex on the bottom left. Ha!
Since blue has been my favorite color for as long as I can remember, it was important to me that the color be incorporated within the wedding. With the color teal chosen as a main color for our peacock-themed wedding, integrated in everything from the save the dates to the invites to the bridesmaids’ dresses, I wanted to utilize teal/blue in another, not necessarily traditional way.
 |
Image via Zazzle.com
Everyone knows the old saying “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue,” so for my something blue, I decided that I wanted it to be my shoes! So of course the next logical step was to create a board just for shoes on Pinterest for inspiration. Can you guess which ones I ultimately decided on?
brittany1984 shows off some of her natural, outdoors-y e-pics.
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!
Everyone in the wedding party had been loitering around under the tree, waiting to get the photos out of the way so they could join everyone else at the real party going on over by the bar. And the little guys were getting restless. Ring Bearer D found a badminton racket as big as he was, and was swinging it at anyone who came close:
So it was time to get the show on the road.
We started with a photo with our niece and nephew, so they could go play. Hive, aren’t they the cutest?
Although my mom is unquestionably beautiful, has flawless skin and a rockin body, she’ll be the first to call herself a tomboy.
She grew up with three brothers, races motocross with my brothers, got her black belt a year or two after I did (at age 35), is an excellent shot with a handgun, prefers a stick shift and regularly hounds me to go skydiving with her. Case in point, she’s awesome. She also raised three children, did all of the above, and went back to school to graduate with a business degree all at the same time. She’s my role model in all that I do. She does not, however, wear many dresses! She jokes that the only real dresses she’s ever worn were for prom and on her wedding day, and my grandma jokes she would’ve shown up in slacks to those too if she could’ve!
I think she’s plain silly, because as you can tell, she sure did enjoy trying on these!
My mom was 21 when she had me, her first child, so she’ll only be a youthful 43 at the wedding. She was quick to demand that she not be put in any old “grandma dress.” You know the type!
 |
| Cameron Blake by Mon Cheri |
So off we went to the mall. The funny thing is, my mom was cursed almost immediately by the wedding faux-paux of white dresses. Pretty much everything she liked was some variation of white or cream! I kept my cool, obviously, and it became more of a joke than anything else. Besides, she insisted that people still dye clothing these days, which remains unconfirmed.
(Here goes a really awkward and embarrassing post. Especially as I have lots of family who read this blog. Please continue to read my entries after today, I beg. Thank you.)
I want to talk about the wedding night. The ooo la la, after the party ends, sexy post-reception time of the night…
I know this subject can be a bit taboo, especially on public websites, but when we plan our wedding day we tend to think about all the parts of it, even the late night parts.
And my disclaimer is this: Everyone’s situation is different and completely unique to them, but at the top of this blog post it says by Miss Sword, so remember these are my thoughts on the subject and my thoughts only. Let’s dive in, shall we?
While I consider myself to be sexually liberal, when it comes to my wedding night I consider myself to be quite old-fashioned. I believe that it’s important to consummate your marriage, and that’s exactly what we Swords plan on doing. (Yes, we’ve talked about it.)
At the same time I understand that for some couples, wedding night sex just isn’t a priority whether it be because of exhaustion from a long day of hosting, familiarity/years together, or getting a little bit too drunk and passing out before anything can happen. I’m sure it’s different for every couple!
For me, it’s not only about sex, it’s about intimacy. It’s the only first night of marriage we’ll have, and as a true romantic, I can’t help but think it will be an extra special night.
Plus, I don’t know about you, but I’m so excited to dance and party with all of my awesome guests as well as my awesome soon-to-be-husband, so I imagine the amount of quality time Mr. Sword and I will get together during the reception will be pretty limited. I look forward to being alone and relishing in the last few moments of our wedding day together.
photo by Jennifer Jackson
But what about my wacky post title?? Here goes the most embarrassing thing I will put on the internet probably ever. One can only hope.
When we were in MN over my holiday break I was out to dinner with BM L Dawg and this conversation really happened. I swear.
One of the first things you hear when you start wedding planning is that things will not go as planned.
How I envision me on my wedding day. (from tumblr)
Mr. Whale and I have been knocking out all kinds of wedding stuff during the last few weeks. I bought my bouquets. We bought our rings (Eee! More on that later). We worked on a design for our invitations. And this past Saturday, we had our engagement photos!
As the events surrounding our engagement photos unfolded, I began to see what people mean when they say that things do not always go as planned…
First off, recall that Mr. Whale and I live in Maryland. But our wedding will be in the Blue Ridge mountains in Georgia. Naturally, our photographer is located in Georgia as well. This made engagement photos a bit tricky. Fortunately, we knew we would be driving down to the Gulf Coast during our winter break to visit Mr. Whale’s family. We decided that we would spend a night in Atlanta on the way back and have our engagement photos taken then.
Honestly, it all worked out in the end, and we had a super fun time. But what was I thinking? We were just asking for things to go wrong.
Our first issue was that we had to pack our clothes a month in advance. We left Maryland on December 14th. Our engagement photos were January 12th. I knew we would be outside some of the time, so I packed this super cute winter coat with adorable mittens and an awesome scarf.
Getting ready on the morning of our wedding was one of my favorite parts of the whole wedding experience. Okay, I could probably say that about every part of the day…and, I think I already said it about our rehearsal dinner and night out with our closest friends, but I really did like it all! Don’t make me choose! 
There are so many things I liked about the Piazza, but unfortunately they only give you a short amount of time before the ceremony to get ready in the bridal suite. (You can pay for extra time the week of the wedding if for some reason they don’t have a morning wedding on your day, but our budget was way past maxed at that point and waiting until the week of the wedding to decide where we were getting ready sounded like unnecessary stress to me.) Because we wouldn’t have enough time to have hair & makeup done at the Piazza, I decided to reserve a large suite at a nearby Marriott so we could enjoy our time as well as the extra space to move around. Again, it was one of my favorite parts of the day. I loved having my best friends and sweet mother all in one room with me, getting ready for one of the most important days of my life. We had Starbucks, listened to music, laughed and laughed some more—it was fabulous!
Our view for the morning was pretty spectacular, and because I spent a good bit of time in the makeup chair, I got to thoroughly enjoy it. For those in the DFW area, we (as well as our bridal party and families) stayed at the Marriott Solana in Westlake, and we were very happy with the service!
 |
| Check out that view! Dallas, you continue to surprise me. |
I chose to pay for each of my bridesmaids to have their hair done, and then let them decide what they would like to do for their makeup. Two ended up choosing to do their own, and MOH L wanted to have hers professionally done, but everyone looked spectacular in my opinion. I was so happy with how everyone’s hair turned out, and Amanda did a fantastic job on the makeup for my MOH, Momma Coach, and me.
Beautiful Bridesmaid J getting her hair done
Oh, heyyy, Momma C! Lookin’ good!
Lovely ladies touching up their makeup
Some of you might remember my post about choosing Amanda to do my makeup, and how I hardly wear any makeup on a daily basis. Well, for someone who wears very little (makeup, that is), I sure do love having it professionally done. Same goes for my hair. I enjoyed every second sitting in those chairs, having the ladies work their magic.
Considering the amount of laughing that was taking place, it may have taken Amanda a little longer than normal to finish her work…
 |
| Watching the pros hard at work/Check out that gorgeous hair! |
I really love the picture below of my momma and me. If it’s even possible, she was just as excited as I was the entire day, and every photo of her is absolutely stunning because of the way she was glowing.
The picture on the right is of her gift from me, and personalized handkerchief made out of…wait for it…pieces from HER wedding dress. *tear* A few months before the wedding, she brought me her wedding dress and told me I could do with it as I pleased, as she knew I wouldn’t be wearing it. I found a seamstress to work some wedding magic, and Momma Coach loved it. Keep an eye out, because it will be making a few other appearances throughout the day!
After everyone was completely made up, we took a little time to pose for the camera. Many of you probably already noticed (you’re a sharp bunch!) that my girls and I were donning our monogrammed oversized button ups while we were getting ready. MIL Coach actually made these for us, and saved me a ton of money (thank you, thank you, thank you!!). I found the shirts, showed her my inspiration photos, and she took care of the rest. What do you guys think?
 |
| Why, hello there, lovely monogram. So nice to finally meet you. |
I was SO happy with how they turned out, and the girls loved them. I had mentioned in my inspiration post a fear that the girls wouldn’t get to use them post-wedding, but almost immediately after opening them they all commented they could wear them as night shirts, or even with tights—score! I was so excited to hear they loved them as much as I did.
Once pictures were finished, we grabbed a quick bite to eat (which I highly recommend!), and the girls slipped into their beautiful dresses.
Finally, we gathered all of our belongings, loaded up the car, and headed to the Piazza so that I could put on my dress! Stay tuned!
Miss a recap?
First, I shared some of my favorite guest photos from the big day!
Next, Mr. C and I spent some quality time with family, rehearsed for the big day, and then enjoyed our tasty rehearsal dinner.
