Weddingbee Blog

(Word of apology: Sadly my camera was left at home all day, so this post isn’t quite as illustrated as I wish it could be)

The morning on the day before the wedding was full of hustle, bustle and bonding: the ladies of the wedding party, along with some ladies from out of town, set off to Potbelly’s for some pre-mani sandwiches and the boys were off to Wrigleyville for sandwiches as big as their heads.

Baconator with his dad and the Bacon Groomsmen getting pumped!

The ladies were then off to get our nails done and some midday cocktails, but the boys had something so much more… um… manly to do: Whirlyball.
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Happy New Year, Hive!

(Who am I kidding, I’ve missed quite a few holidays, so please forgive me as I quickly catch myself up.) Happy Columbus Day! Happy Thanksgiving! Happy Hannukah! Merry Christmas! Whew, now that we’re all caught up, let me say that I’m so excited to share our wedding day with you. I can’t believe that we’ve already been married four months; I mean, come on, where did all that time go? My dress still isn’t dry cleaned (ew, I know, but I promise I’m working on it…) and the Baconator is still procrastinating his last few thank you cards, so how in the world is it already 2012?!

Photo courtesy of my über talented cousin

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(The alternate title to this post was “Did a Wild Animal Tear Apart Our Apartment?”)

We’re jetlagged, we’re tired, we’re checking our emails constantly for an email from our photographer, we both have colds, our apartment looks like the host of WWIII, and we both are having our first day back in the office…oh yeah, and we’re MARRIED!!

The wedding was amazing. I can’t believe that it’s over already. I really wish that we’d booked the venue for a couple more hours so that the night could have lasted longer and that we’d had more time to visit and dance with each and every guest. After dissecting the night the way that only newlyweds can, we came up with only two regrets: not eating more of our wedding cake and not getting more time with each guest. I have a feeling that no matter how much time we had with each person in attendance we’d still want more. The night was a whirlwind and I can’t wait to get the professional pics back so that I can start recapping.

Before the recaps begin, I’ll be stopping in with some South African honeymoon highlights and some other last-minute items that never got to be blogged. Until then, here are a few teaser pics to enjoy that were taken by my talented cousin, Jonathan.

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Hive, I’m sitting in my hotel room while my maid of honor is still asleep, enjoying the 30 minutes before this day really begins. It’s quiet in here and the skies are blue out there and the Baconator has already lost his mustache socks. I feel scarily calm even though I know that in a few short hours, I’ll be putting on my wedding dress for real. I mean, last night, at the rehearsal dinner, I was already a blubbering mess as our family stood to do speeches, but today, I feel cool as a cucumber.

It’s really true, what they say.
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Hive, I have a confession. I am getting married on Saturday and I haven’t written my vows. Not one word. I kind of… um… forgot that I needed to write them. OK, maybe forgot isn’t the right word, but I just haven’t done them yet.

I’ve had them on this big long to do list of wedding greatness for months, but they still aren’t done. Now it’s down to the little, insignificant things on the list like ordering lunch on the day of so that we all don’t faint during pictures, wrapping wedding party gifts, printing inserts for the out of town bags. Oh right, and that one, big, huge, super important, cannot be ignored, reason that people come to the ceremony in the first place thing: vows.

The Baconator wrote his back in June. JUNE people. Really? How am I so incredibly under prepared? To get an idea of how long mine are supposed to be, I started sniffing around about his. Oh his? They’re roughly 2 pages of double spaced prose. Yep, the Baconator pretty much has vow poetry and mine go something like this: “Uh, ditto.” I have a feeling that’s SO not going to fly.
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The other day a coworker sent me a link to mustache pillows at Urban Outfitters since she remembered our invitations. Of course, this snowballed into a mustache-seeking extravaganza.

Image via Urban Outfitters

Clearly those babies went immediately into our “Shopping Bag” and I started searching the site for any other mustache goodies that we could incorporate into the wedding. Who knew that Urban had so many mustache themed items?

We picked up all these goodies and I can’t wait to show them off next weekend… (OMG NEXT WEEKEND? When did that happen?)
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Let me get a little something out of the way.

Alrighty, now that that has been taken care of, let’s get down to business. Before we begin, I’d recommend playing this song in the background to really set the mood.

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There was one more thing that I got during my bachelorette weekend that I simply cannot not blog about. It’s something that BM Maura got for me as if she is simply psychic. In the week leading up to the party, I was suddenly overtaken with an obsession for custom hangers. No idea why, but I was scouring Etsy like my life depended on it. I favorited hangers from loads of different shops with lots of different customization options, but couldn’t pull the trigger because I didn’t really know what I wanted my hanger to say.

Did I want simple and straightforward, “I do” or “bride?”

Via Etsy Seller: Rockabuycreations

Did I want something more romantic like “Mrs Mynewlastname?”
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I had two criteria when planning my bachelorette party: I wanted to get my tan on and I wanted no penis shaped paraphernalia of any kind. Thankfully, the Bacon Bridesmaids are totally kick ass and delivered both in full! We threw around a million ideas, but ultimately settled on the very first one that was thrown around: a weekend on Cape Cod with nothing but beach time and Dunkin Donuts coffee to keep us happy.

I’m sure this sounds totally random since I live in Chicago, but all three of my stateside bridesmaids have some connection to New England and the Cape, so it was actually a really easy decision. The hardest part was coordinating all four of our schedules. Once the weekend was nailed down, the ladies set about finding the perfect beach town with a hotel under $300 a night that also allowed for four guests in a room. Fortunately, they are pretty resourceful and found the only place in town that fit the bill, the Beach Breeze Inn in West Harwich.

We ended up with only two bridesmaids at the bachelorette because MOH Bacon had a family emergency (don’t worry, her family is OK—it was just a bit dodgy for a bit), so the weekend was a little different than we’d originally planned, but it was still a great success.
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Oh my, Hive, it’s been a busy couple of weeks! I was all cool, calm and collected, then suddenly the one month mark hit and I’ve been a flurry of last minute projects, seating charts, bridal showers, fittings and all kinds of bridal goodness!

Image via the Wedding Center

Whew! So let’s start with the big news. I’ll give you two clues: It has to do with one of the first decisions I made in wedding planning, and more brides would have freaked out.
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The Baconator and I have looked high and low for an appropriate unity ceremony that works for a blended family with 3 pairs of parents. Unity candles kind of worked, but he didn’t love the idea since he’s seen it at so many of his friends’ weddings. Unity sand really only comes in pairs and we could have purchased a second set to break up, but that one didn’t seem to fit since we aren’t getting married on the beach. I threw around the idea of a boxed wine ceremony, but we don’t drink all that much wine. Hand fasting was also out since neither of us have any kind of a discernible Celtic background. So now what? Our families MUST UNITE!

I was flipping through a bridal magazine months ago when something on the table of contents page caught my eye. There was a teeny tiny blurb about incorporating love padlocks into weddings. How to do it wasn’t covered, but I cut out that little photo with it’s caption and pasted it into my wedding inspiration notebook. I remember hearing about the idea when I was in China a number of years ago, but at the time, I had no one to lock away with, so it didn’t really stick with me. But now, four years later, there is something charming and hopelessly romantic about locking together and throwing away the key.

Image via the Google Earth People & Cultures Community

I brainstormed ways to give each person at the wedding a piece of ribbon that would be clasped together with a padlock with our name and date inscribed on it, but that’s an awful lot of ribbon.
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Once the rings make their way through the crowd and after the wedding party processes in, we’re finally ready to begin. Since the Baconator’s uncle is marrying us, we won’t have a homily, but he’ll do a welcome and maybe a opening prayer. We are sending him Union by Robert Fulghum in case he wants to include it. I love the way that it is so frank about what marriage might be, but the Baconator wants his uncle to have the freedom to put something of his own together for the ceremony.

Union by Robert Fulghum

You have known each other from the first glance of acquaintance to this point of commitment. At some point, you decided to marry. From that moment of yes, to this moment of yes, indeed, you have been making commitments in an informal way. All of those conversations that were held in a car, or over a meal, or during long walks - all those conversations that began with, “When we’re married,” and continued with “I will” and “you will” and “we will” - all those late night talks that included “someday” and “somehow” and “maybe” - and all those promises that are unspoken matters of the heart. All these common things, and more, are the real process of a wedding. The symbolic vows that you are about to make are a way of saying to one another, “You know all those things that we’ve promised, and hoped, and dreamed - well, I meant it all, every word.” Look at one another and remember this moment in time. Before this moment you have been many things to one another - acquaintance, friend, companion, lover, dancing partner, even teacher, for you have learned much from one another these past few years. Shortly you shall say a few words that will take you across a threshold of life, and things between you will never quite be the same. For after today you shall say to the world - This is my husband. This is my wife.

After the welcome-slash-introduction-slash-description of marriage is over, one of our usherettes will be coming forward to read Corinthians.
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I have envied brides with small weddings since I entered weddingland a year ago because of the intimate ceremonies that they have and the fabulous ring warmings that are limited to guest numbers below 100. We have 137 guests, decidedly too big for a ring warming ceremony…or is it? That’s only 40 extra people, and I am willing to bet that if we started the process after the processional, the rings could weave their way through the crowd by the time we get to the vows. The Baconator was pretty on board with the idea and he really liked the “audience interaction” that would occur, so we took the idea with us to his uncle.

Image via Proud to Plan

Once we got past the confusion on what the whole thing was about, his uncle only had one concern:
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The Baconator and I are what you might call spiritual but not exactly religious. We both had fairly religious upbringings, but never found a church in Chicago for us to join. We kept meaning to, but it just didn’t happen, so when we decided to get married, we had to face the fact that a church wedding wasn’t really in the cards. We nixed looking at churches for the ceremony and committed to finding a venue where we could have both the wedding and the party.

Once that contract was signed, sealed and delivered, we started weighing the pros and cons of the right officiant. First up was a Justice of the Peace, but while they are easy to find, we were worried that the ceremony would be too straight forward and not full of enough character.

Next was the idea of inviting a childhood priest to come and officiate, but that would have only been sentimental for one of us, while the other half of the couple might as well have a stranger. Besides, since neither of us grew up in the Chicago area, he would have to travel eight hours to the wedding and we’d have to cover travel costs and hotel.

We then moved on to a DIY officiant where we get a friend or family member to do the ceremony for us with one of those online officiant certificates.
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I’ve spent the last year (and some change) watching every wedding TV show around: Four Weddings, Platinum Weddings, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, and the list goes on—anything with a white dress in it was locked in on our TiVo. I’m the girl that had a subscription to Brides before I was even engaged. Really. I was combing all the wedding blogs I’d ever thought of on a daily basis. I have been living in wedding inspiration central what seems like forever and this tulle induced haze has been magnificent.

But here’s the reality: we’re just over one month from the wedding and if I get any more inspiration and add any more projects to my list, the Baconator might explode. As it is, we might be a teensy bit over the budget and we just spent the whole last weekend completing wedding projects. So to avoid adding some uber cute bunting or another paper and ribbon project, I’m giving my stack of wedding magazines away and I’m deleting my scheduled recordings of wedding TV and I’m slowly starting to accept that my days of wedding planning are numbered.
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