Wedding Blog

When Mr Pretzel and I started to talk about getting married we didn’t spend more than a minute talking about where the ceremony location would be.

Mr P: You want Fr Jim to marry us?

Miss P: Of course.

Mr P: OK, Saint B’s it is.

You see we are registered at two different Catholic parishes located a mere 5 miles apart. We split our time at both Churches, but we are more involved at the Church I am registered at. The choice didn’t even warrant a full conversation—easy-checkitoffthelist-done.

We did, however, spend more time talking about the type of reception venue that we wanted. Both of us had attended our fair share of wedding receptions in banquet halls and country clubs. We agreed that neither of these fit “us”. The words that we used to describe the type of location we wanted were urban, loft, brick, airy, open, modern. In early summer I did some web research to get an idea what was out there and how much it might cost.

The criteria I was working with:
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I love J.Crew, I really do. Someday I even hope to afford their clothing. Zing!

But seriously, I’m inspired by what they’re doing lately, all funky-preppy. I enjoy their catalogs. I like to sit and read them and imagine myself within their pages, doing what their models do. No one does Catalog People quite like the Crew. I kinda want to jump in their pages, where life seems stylish and simple: have brunch with friends somewhere perpetually warm, in tall boots and crisp jeans and a little cashmere sweater (grab one in every color!), scarves artfully arranged around necks. Join in on summer trips involved hiking, many of us in distressed camp shorts and tall socks and galoshes—who knows why?—hoisting a canoe above our heads, mouths open laughing.

No one does Catalog People like the Crew! And their wedding shots are always the picture of easy-breezy-whimsy-cheer.

But tell me if this doesn’t make you LOL.

Can we dissect this for a moment?
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Nerves were at their peak in the reception barn as we waited for guests to fill our ceremony site. As I previously mentioned, we did not have a rehearsal, so this was the first time things were really starting to feel real. We were really doing this. I was calm and excited all at the same time, waiting at the back of the line with my dad.

Our ceremony site:

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I have to admit, I knew it was coming at some point. We had been ring shopping a few times and I had picked out the design I wanted, but I didn’t know when it was actually going to happen. He did a fantastic job surprising me.

I came home from work the Friday night before Memorial Day weekend. He came out of the house and asked if I’d be willing to go to Crate & Barrel with him to buy his friend a wedding gift for the following weekend. We hopped in the car and he was super chatty the whole way, which I commented on. But he brushed it off. We got there, parked the car, and had to walk a few blocks to the store. As we approached the corner, I commented on how it was where we had our first kiss. He turned around and said, “Yeah, we have good memories here. Do you want to make another?”

He proceeded to get down on his knee right there, pulled out the most gorgeous ring I could have ever dreamt of, and told me that he loved me and asked me to marry him.

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So in my last post you got to see how I made the pocketfolds. Now let’s see what went in to those suckers!

I wanted to include some basic things: the date, the location, info about the accommodations and the discounted room block, and of course, a snazzy magnet so people would remember everything. I also knew I needed a cover of some sort and two inserts (otherwise, why bother with the pocket!). It was a bit of a stretch… I didn’t REALLY need two inserts, so I basically duplicated the info from the magnet onto the front insert, and put the accommodations and website info on the second insert.

I laid everything out on one sheet of this butter cream card stock (it is the same weight and texture as the green pocket fold, and much lighter in real life than pictured on the website). I then flipped the paper over and printed cutting guides on the back side. I did the same with this purple, lighter weight card stock, for a layer under the butter cream. I then (crazily) tried to cut these with my paper cutter.

Mmmmkaaayy, not so much! I HATE my cutter, it just doesn’t cut anything straight, and is hard to line up. So I gave that up pretty quickly, and called up my “good friends at Kinko’s” (I call them that because we give them like $100K in business a year through my company with last minute printing, so they know me pretty well). For only $19.54 they could cut everything for me, saving me about 20 hours of time!

And here are my beauties after coming back from Kinko’s, with the purple card stock glued under the butter cream, and opposite corners rounded with my precious corner rounder (edited for privacy):
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I hadn’t given much thought to the old tradition of “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue”. I guess I just had so much going on that it was the very least of my worries. A few days before the wedding though, I saw my perfect something old, borrowed and blue all in one on my mother’s hand!

My great grandmother’s engagement ring. I remember the days of my mother asking for her grandmother’s engagement ring from my grandmother and the emotion and love behind the request. My great grandfather couldn’t afford a diamond for my great grandmother’s ring, so instead he chose a beautiful setting with a blue glass stone for her.
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My hair is neither particularly long nor thick (in fact, it’s mid-length and pretty thin-looking if I don’t take a lot of effort with it). But for our wedding, I’m hoping for something kind of like this:

(source)

That’s obviously not going to happen naturally: I’d need to get over a foot of length, and about double the volume of hair, in only a few months! So instead I’m starting to look into extensions.

I’ve heard enough people say that you shouldn’t get extensions for your wedding day because “you won’t look like yourself.” I say, PHOOEY.
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Hi there.

My name is Miss Rainbow, and apparently, I’m a young bride. I just turned 22 in October and I’m currently the youngest blogger on the ’bee to date. The funny thing is, I haven’t mentioned this before, because I never really thought it was a big deal. I haven’t really gotten any surprised looks or comments about my age from friends or family, but with the internet being what it is, I have found that being an early 20-something bride is not exactly the norm for the rest of the country (or planet).

Let me explain—I was born in Washington State where people get married a bit older, but I spent all my formative years (9-19) in Alabama. The Southeast, in general, is (from what I’ve gathered) notorious for producing younger brides than the rest of the country. I’m not exactly sure why, but I can’t even tell you how many girls in my 2006 graduating class (and some younger!) are already engaged/married.

As I said, being 22 and engaged was never “weird” to me and I never planned on mentioning it.

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So, I was on a mission to make cork escort cards and also incorporate a wine theme loosely into our day. First up, I found some new corks on eBay, on the cheap (200 for $20.00).

Some brides collect their corks from bottles and some get them from restaurants for free, but I knew that I wanted them to be new and all look the same if possible (I am crazy, I know this).

So, I had 200 corks. There is a great thread on the boards about how different brides have gone about constructing their corks. Some recommend using a kitchen knife, some say a razor blade works, and some swear by rough sandpaper. Well I tried all three of these options and I still wasn’t satisfied with the results. What to do? Ask Cheeseburger Dad, of course!

Cheeseburger Dad is an engineering genius.
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9.09bride is selling 12 sets of glass hurricanes. Each set of three comes with small floral centerpieces. She’s asking $15 for each set.

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:

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