Well, folks, I think I might as well just come right out and say it: Mr. A and I almost weren’t going to have a honeymoon of any kind after the wedding.
And to be honest, I was pretty OK with it. I mean, we’re both fresh out of college and trying to save up for a house in the next year, not to mention we’re both fairly new to the jobs we currently have and haven’t accrued much vacation time. I told Mr. A I’d be totally OK with just taking a fun trip on our first anniversary, especially after he told me he would most likely be called in for overtime the week after the wedding and there would be no way he could get out of it without using up most of his vacation time.
But then, as the weeks went by and we were both becoming increasingly more stressed about the wedding, there was nothing that sounded better than escaping for a few days after the reception to have some MUCH NEEDED R&R. So, what solution did we come up with? We’re mini-mooning for three days in the Lone Star State! Mr. A is using up about half of his vacation hours, and my boss has graciously given me a few days off after the wedding to go enjoy some time with my newly minted husband. I’m so excited! But where are we headed, you ask?
Mr. M and I just spent a fab weekend in NYC and were able to get the ball rolling on a major to-do item—we visited the jeweler to select our wedding rings. We were running late (due to some terrible traffic, ugh!), but Mr. M managed to pick out his ring in less than 10 minutes. He apparently had already done a bunch of research online and decided that a sleek and classic style was really what he wanted. (He’s never consistently worn a piece of jewelery in his life, so he also wanted something very lightweight and durable.) And we saved major $$ since he decided on an alternative metal (cobalt).
 |
This is the ring he selected with a 4.5 millimeter width. / Image via Benchmark Rings
The decision for my ring was a bit more complicated. Here is a picture of my ring from our engagement shoot:
I’m just going to come out and say it. Mr. Whale and I will be spending the night before our wedding together. But shhhh! Don’t tell our parents. 
Some of you might be surprised to hear this, because you already know we’re not doing a first look. But our reasons for not doing a first look have nothing to do with tradition or bad luck. We just don’t want to see each other before the ceremony. But you know what we do want? A good night’s sleep before the wedding.
This is me when I’m too excited to sleep:
GIF via lolthatsme.tumblr.com
This is what I wish would happen every night when I get into bed:
On my laptop’s hard drive resides a very special spreadsheet, aptly named “Best Wedding Playlist Ever.xls.” Ok, the file name might be a bit presumptuous, but Mr. Wallaby took our playlist-creating task very seriously.
We love music. I wouldn’t say that we listen to the hippest, most underground/indie music out there. But we both listen to a lot of music from a fairly wide variety of genres, and we love to have impromptu dance-offs in the kitchen while dinner’s cooking, in the car on long road trips, or anywhere we just are in the mood to dance. My favorite music is folksy music from the 70s (Van Morrison, Neil Young) and 80s rock (I would be so.happy. if the cast of Rock of Ages could’ve performed at our wedding). I also have never gotten over 90s pop and rap. My iPod is full of Biz Markie, Britney, Shaggy, and Will Smith.
And we’ve been to a lot of weddings already in the last year, so we’ve grown a little tired of some of the standard wedding tunes (see “Do Not Play List” below). I do think it’s important to play some classic songs everyone’s heard of, but I do not want to hear “We Are Family” ever again, for the rest of my life. Some of you will probably think we’re crazy or obnoxious for our extensive playlists. But we put a lot of thought into which songs would appeal to our guests, our DJ was cool with it, and it worked out—our dance floor was packed all night.
Without further ado, the Wallaby Playlist (songs in no particular order):
My mum’s best friend’s daughter is getting married four months before us. When we got engaged those two got incredibly giddy and started talking about how they would go shopping for mother-of-the-bride dresses together, and help with invitations, and every other thing under the sun that best friends talk about.
But what made me laugh the most about the stories I heard was when my mum asked what her friend’s daughter’s name would change to after she was married.
“Well, I don’t normally beat you on many things,” my mum said to her friend, “but I think I beat you on this one!”
My mum hadn’t even asked me if I were going to take his name, she just assumed. And she assumed correctly.
I know I’m not the first bee to tackle this subject, and I’m probably not the most eloquent either! Mrs. Mink and Miss Otter covered the subject well and gave arguments for having an unplugged wedding, of which there are many. Both Mrs. Mink and Miss Otter shared this photo, which shows the biggest downside of allowing guests to use their phones at will.
Image via Offbeat Bride / Photo by Solare Photography
I think all of us would say we would rather have guests watching us in person than staring at us through a tiny screen, right? So why not post a sign like this and ask guests to stay unplugged for the duration of the wedding?
katemoore88 shares a photo of her bouquet full of spring colors!
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!
After teasing you with the outside of our invites, it’s time to share the meat. Since we are obnoxious and decided to make a book, we had a lot of pages to work with. Like I mentioned earlier, we viewed the invite as our last chance to sway those guest who hadn’t decided if they could make the trip or not. We provided all the details right in the invite (what etiquette?). Sure, we could have used the ever popular wedding website, but we decided not to have one for a couple of reasons:
1. We wanted our guests to have all the wedding info right away. I imagine guests who decline don’t take the time to look at websites to see what they may be missing. We wanted to dangle the awesomeness right in their faces. It worked! I’ll give you the final numbers later, but we seem to keep hearing about more relatives who changed their mind and decided to come.
2. Mr. S and I slowly worked on the invite design over a period of many months. There were many adjustments and edits. I knew if we added a website, it would be one more thing for us him to obsess over.
I should mention our inspiration for the inside was based on this beautiful book invite. We love the idea of simple modern images juxtaposed against dramatic botanical plants and elegant scripts. We chose to use the font Mishka for a large portion of the inside. We had fun playing around with all the different glyph options. (Check out Mrs. Penguin’s post for more details on glyphs)
Unfortunately, I had to shrink my pictures down because I wanted to show how both pages look together (basically how it would look if you received it in the mail).
The lovely front cover:
We wanted the invites to be classy, yet have TONS of personality. We decided to keep most of the writing and images black, and made the botanical plants coral so they would pop. This helped the pages feel cohesive.
Let’s talk about money! You may recall that we mentioned our budget for our 100 guest wedding was “Spend-as-little-as possible-shooting-for-under-$5,000.” My parents gifted us that amount and we decided keep the total wedding budget under that number so that we could use our savings for the honeymoon.
Ceremony – $400
$100 donation to the church
$250 Pre-Cana Retreat
$50 Marriage License
Bride’s Attire – $871
Bride Shoes -$45
Dress $600
Jewelry $100
Sephora Makeup $126
