Not an obvious theme, anyway. Like vintage or pink-and-green or chevron. We have no set colours, no year, no anything really. I guess our “theme” is just…us.
We did think about a theme, but nothing really stood out. He is a musician and songwriter with a love of things from his childhood like Pokemon and the Nintendo. I work in an office and like crafty, pretty things. I’m not really big on music, and he’s not really big on crafts, so both of those things can’t really make a “theme” without excluding one of us.
What about things we both like? Like tattoos and piercings since we met on a body-modification website? Well, we’re not really that big on all that now, so that seems a bit pointless. And we both like science stuff…but not enough that it’s something that represents our relationship. We like vintage-style things but aren’t “vintage” people, so that would also look a bit weird…every way we looked at it, we were lost. How could we come up with a theme if we didn’t represent anything as a couple?
Maybe it’s because I work in the private sector and we hardly get any paid holidays off (so jealous of my teacher friends!!), but I love to celebrate holidays. Even if it’s just a sweet text message, or an attempt to replicate a project on Pinterest, or a sarcastic e-card, I love days that are a little out of the ordinary. And y’all know by now that I have the world’s biggest sweet tooth—so I fully support any celebration that involves sweets (especially chocolate).
Image via Someecards
I made homemade valentines when I was a kid, and my dad would always give me a valentine and a heart-shaped box full of chocolates. When I went off to college, I realized how much I missed that little ritual—especially the years when I didn’t have boyfriends. Valentine’s Day became a day that I celebrated with my single ladies—and we may or may not have watched Sex and the City marathons and gorged on ice cream. Don’t tell them I told you that.
Even when I did happen to be dating someone in February, I never made a big deal about the holiday. I just didn’t see what all the hype was about. I was like:
Allison is selling a royal blue bow tie. She is asking $10.
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Other great items for sale:
With my hair & makeup trial coming up in a month, I’ve been scouring the interwebs to find the perfect looks and started off with hairstyles. I pinned ones that would look great with a feather fascinator and veil, like the images below.
Image via The Knot.com
OK, so the schedule. A few things you should know—I started crafting our schedule about six months before the wedding, and I reviewed it at every single vendor meeting that we had. (Truly, my biggest fear was that I would forget to do something, or go somewhere, or be somehow unprepared for our wedding—I had at least four nightmares about it!) Anyway, I reviewed the schedule with the reception venue, the catering staff, the DJ, and the photographer. Each of them had very definite ideas of how the schedule should go and, although it certainly helped me to have their suggestions on how things would flow best, I didn’t always take their advice. Even though I’ve never had a wedding before, I had a very clear idea of how I wanted things to flow.
Example: Our DJ originally told us to cut the cake and then go right downstairs for the first dance. I was all, “What, I don’t get to eat the wedding cake that I paid a million dollars for, or all of the wedding pie??” And he was all, “No, the people will get antsy, and no one wants to sit back down for dessert!” Then, on the wedding night, he came over and let us know that there was a pretty substantial line for wedding pie, so we would need to push the first dance out 15 minutes. Of course we would need to wait—don’t you know anything about pie?
Anyway. Here’s how the schedule was created. First, I opened one of my trusty Google spreadsheets. I used column A to schedule the entire day in 15-minute increments. Then, as I was made aware of when things would happen, I added them in. Here’s my example:
Hive, I have completely been neglecting my wedding recaps. I am determined to pick them up again soon so you can all check out the details and the ceremony and all the fabulous fun we had at the reception.
It’s a story that I definitely want to see through to the end!
But before I get back on the recap horse, I should tell you why, exactly, I’ve been on such a long hiatus.
Or maybe I’ll just show you instead:
Surprise!!! Yup, Mr. C and I are expecting a little Cauldron in June. It’s amazing to think that in just a few months’ time, we’ll be welcoming a tiny addition to our newly created family. It’s had me a bit distracted, to be sure!
Anyway, now that you know what I’ve been up to and why I’ve been so absent around here, I promise I’ll get back to those recaps, post haste. I miss you all!
Mr. W and I didn’t become roommates until we got married. He obediently paid his own mortgage, utility bills, and car payments, and ate canned vegetables for dinner. I paid my own rent and utility bills, tried not to shell out too much money each week on gourmet groceries and eating out, and did my best to avoid Sephora. Sigh. We knew it would be an, ahem, transition to get used to each other’s spending habits, but at the same time it felt too weird taking turns paying for dinner once we were married. Or splitting the mortgage payment. So we paid a trip to our neighborhood Chase to straighten things out.
Photo via FinishRich
Single Mr. W had a checking and savings account at Chase, a Chase Sapphire credit card, and a Macy’s card. I had a checking account, savings account, and several CDs at Bank of America, a United Explorer credit card, and a Banana Republic card. Here’s how things went down.
I’ve already talked about my perfect proposal and the jealousy that inevitably creeps in when you compare yourself to others. Because what’s right for you is almost certainly not right for someone else. Even when someone tells you “Oh, that’s the exact ring I want!” (that happened this weekend), it doesn’t mean their story is anything like yours—or should be! So this post is about my ring, but I want to make a few extraneous remarks too.
Miss Jackrabbit has a really awesome post on her moissanite ring and just rings in general, so I won’t repeat her here! But it goes without saying that if you have a huge diamond or a small diamond or a colored gem or a scientifically-created stone (umm, cool!), the most important thing is just that you rock the heck out of that thing.
I already mentioned Mr. Lemur and I picked out the ring together, but during our the summer when we were also long distance (ugh) I wanted to get an idea for what kind of ring I liked in person, not just from pictures online.
Side note: This is how I found Weddingbee! I was searching for rings online and came across threads in the ring forum, which led me to the blog, eventually.
So way back in June, I went and tried on rings with a friend. For girls who want to go ring shopping but don’t want to drag their significant others along: Just do it. Take a girlfriend and say “I want to look at rings to get an idea of what I might like!” They’ll let you try on as many rings as you want. I told the lady at Kay’s I was looking for a princess cut solitaire with a cathedral setting, and she showed me this ring.
Personal photo/The ring I preferred is on my right hand. In the second picture I’m wearing a similar, but slightly bulkier, ring on my left hand.
shannonmykayla shares this photo of her bridesmaid zipping her up and getting her ready for her big day!
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Crucial (and by that I mean relatively unimportant) wedding updates below!
1. I picked a wedding day perfume!
To Catch Up: Read This Post.
I had narrowed it down between Vera Wang’s Princess and Coach’s Poppy Flower and wasn’t going to reveal my final choice until after the Big Day. Well, screw that, things change, and now I have something to reveal.
The Princess perfume was in a beautiful bottle and aptly named, but Mr. Sword and I weren’t too sold on the actual scent. I was really leaning toward Poppy Flower when BM L Dawg told me it was an “everyday” perfume and not a wedding perfume. Whaa??
In the first post I talked about how much perfume BM L Dawg has, so I wasn’t at all surprised she had an opinion. And I took her opinion to heart because she is a perfume snob much in the same way I am a nail salon snob and I love her for it. 
Back to the drawing board it was! After much procrastinating, and one final visit to Sephora, I’ve made a decision and I’m really excited to share it now!
image via Sephora
Marchesa. The bottle alone was enough to make me fall in love (I think it’ll photograph wonderfully with my jewelry), but the scent is elegant, sophisticated, romantic, and fancy. Perfect for a wedding day perfume. I splurged on the larger size bottle for $85.00, but I had a $50.00 gift card for Sephora, so it wasn’t too bad and it’ll last me forever. I can see myself wearing this most date nights and evenings out. And, Mr. Sword approves too! I’m so glad I decided to search a bit longer before making a decision!
2. Whitening your teeth sucks! It literally hurts.
Jack and I live less than 200 metres from our Church and less than two miles away from our reception venue. So, it would make sense to stay at home the night before, especially as our parents don’t live near us so we can’t crash at their houses in our old bedrooms.
But no, we’re not doing that. I like the tradition of not seeing the groom the night before and I’m all for making my wedding last longer than 12 hours, so starting the celebrations early and staying in a nice hotel the night before seemed like a good idea to me!
I started looking at hotels in my city and believe you me, the nice ones are niiiiiiiiice! Absolutely beautiful, posh, Mr & Mrs worthy hotels. I wanted to spent a maximum of £250 for the bridal suite per night and I thought that was pretty reasonable for a good room! In my job I book hotels for meetings and £200 gets a very nice room, so for £250 I could get something swish, right? Wrong.
This is Hotel du Vin.
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| Image via Paul Fletcher Photography |
Our reception venue is at the top of that road! Doesn’t it look beautiful in photos? I could imagine having my picture taken outside whilst our Rolls Royce waited to take me to the church…And the suite!
As you may remember, I always thought I would have an obnoxiously yellow wedding. I didn’t end up going this route, but my family knew that when it came to planning a wedding shower, yellow was the way to go. The wedding may be full of dramatic whimsical flourishes, but I love modern decor as well so they also decided to incorporate chevron into the shower theme. I knew I was in for an awesome time when this came in the mail:
I am seriously one lucky lady. In addition to having Mr. S, I have the most FABULOUS women in my life. My sisters, mother, and friends completely out-did themselves with the thought and detail they put into my hometown shower.
From the moment I walked in, I was blown away. The ladies had set up a mimosa bar that was exactly what I needed to start the party off right. MOH C stocked the bar full of many different juices, heart shaped fruit, and champagne. MOH K pimped it out with her signage, mirrors, and of course, lots of chevron!
