Weddingbee Blog

Alright, so here’s the deal. With less than three weeks to the wedding, my beauty routine has headed into “The Home Stretch.” I am not a fancy person most days. Makeup consists of concealer (boo adult acne) and eyeliner if I’m feeling jazzy. Once in awhile (usually for roller derby) I will do “full makeup” and while that is fun, I am too lazy to deal with it on a daily basis.

As far as other grooming goes, I had my eyebrows waxed years ago and have more or less kept them up with tweezing.

Now, for the ugly part. Thanks to religious use of Pro-Activ my skin is…OK. It is not perfect or totally clear, but it is better than it has been in years. At this point I am going all out skin pampering mode. I have stopped wearing makeup to work. Gasp. It is not really that big of a change. I don’t even know if anyone besides me noticed. But my skin is a bit happier and that is what we are going for!

On top of the uneven skin tone, I have stopped tweezing my eyebrow in prep for having them waxed in a week and a half. This has been much more difficult than the no-concealer bit. I feel like I look like this:

Like Frida Kahlo but less cool.

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Our RSVP deadline was yesterday. If you recall, we were in a bit of a pickle due to inviting too many guests for our venue. While we’re not out of the woods yet, we are doing pretty well.

Here is what the side of our refrigerator looks like currently! If you don’t feel like counting, that’s 120 guests attending. WELL under the 175 person limit. We also have had 51 people send their regrets. And while we will miss them, we are relieved that our attendance is trending in the correct direction.
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Hive, I must admit that I have not put a lot of thought into our centerpieces. A LLLLLOOONG (OK, not that long) time ago, I saw a post right here on Weddingbee by the lovely Mrs. Macarons and decided right then and there that I had my centerpieces solved.

I figured I would do it on the cheap and instead of buying candle holders, I started hoarding salsa and pasta sauce jars. I told my friends and family to start hoarding, too. MOH MD’s Mama donated a large stock of jars and then they sat in our garage for a few months.

When I told FMIL Aardvark about my plan, she too came to the rescue of my budget. She had about 100 yards of lace that she cut off some old curtains because she figured it could be re-used, and she was right!

After I had the jars and the lace I sat on this project for a few more months before starting. You see, I was feeling sheepish about the whole shabby-chic look of it. I was worried it was way overdone.

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This weekend has been a blitz of wedding crafts and basketball. After taking a week off of planning/crafting, I realized I needed to get my booty in gear if I wanted to make a dent in my craft list before the wedding. Well, with the help of Mr. Aardvark and some basketball on TV, we got a a ton done. One of the biggest items that I was SO excited to check off our list? The ceremony programs. Originally I figured we did not need a program. We could save time, money and effort by just skipping them all together. Then I realized we had a pretty sizable contingent of non-Catholics who would be attending. It would only be polite to include some kind of instruction for all of the standing, sitting and kneeling.

Mr. Aardvark and I used the ceremony planning worksheet our priest gave us to come up with the content…a bit of fiddling around and we figured out how to print half sheets front to back. After a quick trip to Staples, the easy part was done. We had 100 copies of our seven page (half page) programs. Being the crazy person I am, I decided these would be SO much cuter if we used the same corner punch we did for the invitations. I now know that means 2,800 corners to punch…
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So, here we are with one month to go. I can’t believe how fast things have progressed so far! One of the big things that we needed to check off our list was the music. Don’t worry, we hired a highly recommended DJ ages ago, but we had songs to pick! Our DJ provided us with a little work sheet with all sorts of questions and “pick a song for this, pick a song for that” type things.

I had been dutifully putting this off, because there are so many great songs and music styles out there that I was totally overwhelmed. The only song I knew I wanted all along was my daddy-daughter dance song. My dad used to sing it to meas a lullaby:

“Be Bop A Lula” by John Lennon. In fact this song is so special, I had to shut it off just now because I got a little misty listening to it!. I’ll blame that on my “Lady Time” and hope I can get through it at the wedding (even if Bridesmaid Sis tears up).
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Mr. Aardvark and I were filling out some paperwork for the church, and he realized we have been dating over three years. “I can’t believe we’ve dated so long! You’d think we’d be married by now!” he said. This caught me a bit by surprise. For one, I don’t think three years is that long at all, and two, I thought I was the one who was antsy to get married! This lead to a great discussion about what the standard aount of time is to wait until two people get married.

I realized that there is no right or wrong amount of time. Mama Aardvark and step-dad Aardvark were together for fifteen years before they made it legal. One of our good friends married her husband after about six months of dating (although they’d know each other for years). And there are heaps of people that fall in between those two.

Even reading the boards here on Weddingbee, it is clear there is something of a bell curve, but no right or wrong amount of time to date before marriage.

When it came to Mr. Aardvark and me, everything happened as it was supposed to. Looking back I thought he was going to propose Christmas of 2009. It turns out I was off by about a year-and-a-half but I am SO glad we did not spend part of our LDR engaged.
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A very wise man once said “real life begins when you have to implement plan B, even if you aren’t sure what plan B is yet.” Now, don’t fret your pretty little faces, there isn’t major trouble in our lives or wedding planning. However, something we thought was all figured out, unfigured itself. That something is our bridal party. Spoiler alert: There is no major drama here just a bit of a bummer.

We had asked our peeps months ago when we first got engaged. They all excitedly said yes and we started planning away. About a month ago, one of Mr. Aardvark’s good friends, and groomsmen, had a change in his work situation. The change was pretty crummy over all, but made extra crummy by the fact that it made attending our wedding a financial impossibility. While he decided to look for different work, the odds of him attending our wedding are pretty slim.

There wasn’t much to be done except let him know we’ll save a spot for him if things change. We did not take him off the “Wedding Party” part of our website or anything. He is still an important part of Mr. Aardvark’s life and we both feel like he is still a part of our day, even from a distance. We are sad that he will not be joining us, but we are all rolling with it.

We are now facing the interesting situation of having uneven sides. While I am not in the least worried about it, I am curious about how it has been handled by other bees?
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Something funny has happened this week. We are under the 40-days-to-go mark (eep!) and I still have quite a few to-dos. Despite having had that now or never feeling for the last month or so, I took a break. Madness, I know.

Last weekend, Mr. Aardvark and I were getting our biz-nass in order, filling out forms and checking off checklists for the wedding. We were really rocking and rolling. Then Mr. Aardvark announced that he couldn’t wait to be done planning.

WHAT?! I thought I had been doing such a good job of sheltering him from the crazy-wedding-planning-storm. With each category, I would ask if he cared about it, and in most cases he did not. I would then plow ahead, only checking in occasionally for a thumbs up or to show him the finished product. That’s not to say he hasn’t helped—he’s been VERY helpful, but as far planning goes it really hasn’t been that bad. (Or so I thought.)

I think Mr. Aardvark could read all of this through the look on my face. He said, “I mean, I can’t wait for you to be done planning!” This

is when I realized that I was also looking forward to being done! So much so that I didn’t want to tackle another wedding related task for a couple of days. (OK, maybe that is an over-statement—I have tackled a few tasks, but they were really just things I’d already started.)

So how did I really get my mind off of it?
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So, I kinda feel like I have been holding out on you, Hive. Mr. Aardvark and I registered AGES ago. I was convinced that we needed to do it RIGHT AWAY, so in the late summer we decided to get to it. Turns out the registry’s sat unused for a few months, until Christmas. But since then my obsessive occasional checking has shown me that items are being plucked off right and left! As someone who never made birthday or Christmas lists as a child, this seems new to me. Mr. Aardvark has given me a hard time for peeking, but I figure if we already know what we’re getting… what’s the harm in it?

Image by yours truly

You may be asking yourself, “What are they getting? And from where?”
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As I mentioned here, not only did I have my hair and makeup trial this weekend, I also had a super-amazing-fantastically-fun bridal shower! My two grandmas and MOH MD put it on for me and I was totally blown away. I mean, these ladies know how to put on a party!

After I got all prettied up, Mama Aardvark and I had to make a blitz trip to the mall because both of the outfits she was thinking of wearing were too big! She has been on a pretty hard core fitness kick and is looking fab!

So, after scampering off to get her a dress (seriously, it took like five  minutes to find one) we headed down to the parish center. We got there a touch early to find it BEAUTIFULLY decorated!

How cute are these tables?!

It was a pretty sweet spread. Each place setting had these super cute favors that my Grandma and her sister had painted by hand! How cool is that!? So cool. The answer is So.Cool.

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Last weekend was a whirlwind! I had an amazing bridal shower in Michigan and my hair and makeup trial! I will tell you all about the shower soon (It was SO much fun!).  But, first things first! I had to look good if people were going to watch me open gifts!

Mama Aardvark cleverly suggested the pre-shower trial and booked me in with Salon Hanna. Lisa has been doing my hair since I was in junior high and it was so much fun to go back in for this big event! Not to mention, she does amazing work!

You know what they say about pictures, so I will spare you the thousand words and get right into it!

I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted and had printed several pictures to bring with me.

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I have given very little thought to flowers. In fact, I don’t have any flower inspiration pictures saved anywhere. I really like them, they are pretty and smell nice, but I just can’t get excited enough to drop  big money on them. For myself, the moms, and maybe the ‘maids (still undecided on them), I am planning on going to the grocery store on Friday or Saturday morning and bunching up some flowers. I don’t think that I can do what a florist could do, but I know I can do something that’s good enough for me.

For the men-folk, I have had my mind made up on their florals since wayyyy back in July when the lovely Ms. (now Mrs.) Ferris Wheel wrote this post. I was totally sold. I didn’t give the  bouts another thought until a few weeks ago when I decided to tackle this project for myself.

One thing Mrs. Ferris Wheel didn’t say was how easy she made it look! While it wasn’t hard per se, it was rather tedious and I got blisters on my fingers from hot glue burns and wire twisting! But the end result, after only a few swears, was very much worth it!

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I know. I have already written about shoes a few times. I’ve talked about bridesmaids shoes, I’ve talked about my non-wedding-bridal-shoes, and on several, different occasions, I have mentioned my own shoes. However, this post is not about my shoes or my moms’ shoes or any other lady shoes at all.

In fact this is a post about MAN shoes! Yep, with out so much as a pro/con list Mr. Aardvark selected and purchased his shoes for the wedding! Enough of my blabbering on, let’s get to the pictures!

He ordered them from Zappos. We were sitting on the sofa one quiet afternoon and he asked, “What do you think of these for the wedding?” I really liked them. They were cool, but not trendy. They were stylish, but not too much so. And the color was to die for.
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Mr. Aardvark and I love kids. We are lucky enough to have a number of kids in our family who will be in our wedding. We are having three flower girls and a ring bearer. One thing I really wanted to do-up right was the thank you gifts for the children. They are all fairly young (between five and two) so I wanted to make sure their gifts were age appropriate, but I also wanted to make sure it was something they could have as a keepsake as they grew up.

After a bit of brainstorming and memory searching, I came up with an idea that I thought was brilliant. When I was little (and now) I loved “treasure boxes”: any wooden or plastic box totally captured my imagination. I would fill them with pretty rocks or fall leaves or earrings my mom had lost the match for. I still have a couple of these “treasure boxes” to this day, and I use them as jewelry boxes.

Mr. Aardvark and I decided treasure boxes (filled with candy treasure) would be fun enough to feel like a real gift to a little kid, but still something they could keep their whole lives.

Of course, just buying pretty boxes would be too easy. So, I decided to paint my own!

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No, that is not a typo. This is a story about how, my Mama Aardvark, Step-Mama Aardvark and I  all went dress shopping together and found their (S)MOB dresses.

Before we get to the pretty pictures, there is something you need to know. My family is pretty unique   in that, despite divorces and remarriages, everyone gets along. In fact, getting along is a bit of an understatement when it comes to Mama and Step-Mama Aardvark. One might even go so far as to say they are friends.

And, as sometimes happens with friends, they have very similar taste. I cannot count the times they have shown up dressed identically (without planning) to an event. They purchased the same grill within weeks of each other (first off, how often do you buy a grill, and second, what are the odds they both got the same one!?). They have purchased the same glassware (unknowingly). I even remember a time when I was I was in high school and we all three had the same pair of shoes in the same size and color!

Knowing this, we decided to all shop for dresses together so that they wouldn’t accidentally end up in the same dress at our wedding!

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