Weddingbee Blog

For about a week now, I have been stuck in the house, sick as a dog, with this guy right here (so please forgive my lack of postingness):

As it turns out, that’s really not such a bad thing, since “this guy right here” is none other than my best friend and my future husband – Mr. Bubblegum. (Get it? Sick as a “dog”? “My best friend”? I think it’s the fever talking…)
Read more…

So on Tuesday, we officially sent out our invitations (more to come on that). Today, as I sat at lunch with 4 of my (invited) coworkers, I asked if anyone had gotten anything in the mail lately. One coworker had. Let’s call him coworker X. Time passed.

Miss BG: So, coworker X, how’s your girlfriend? *we recently met his new girlfriend*
Coworker X: She’s good. She wants to know if she’s invited to the wedding.
Miss BG: Oh, uhh, *stunned silence*, well, she’s not…
Coworker X: Oh, okay. I was just wondering, because normally, on the RSVP card, there might be a space for a guest.
Miss BG: I know, I’m sorry - we just made a strict policy that we would only be inviting significant others for people who were in established relationships when we made our guest list.

Annnnnnd then the rest of the lunch passed with everyone making awkward conversation.
Read more…

Alternate title: “The Bee Who Stole Ideas”
Alternate title: “The Evolution of DIY”

When you’re DIY’ing a wedding, it’s amazing how much your original vision grows as the wedding gets closer. Case in point: 8 months ago, I was 100% sure that I *had* to have a Polaroid guestbook. BUT I also ordered about 140 sage 4bar place cards from Paper Source that I would no longer be using because I also *had* to have origami escort cards. So to continue to reap the benefits of DIY, I had to make some adjustments – mayhaps to the guestbook?

When I was thinking about how else to use these place cards, one thing kept sticking in my mind – a blog that I had read back in my weddingbee lurking days – where Mrs. Lollipop described how they asked their guests to draw a duck on the RSVP cards. To this day, the idea makes me giggle.

So that was it for me. I decided we’d have to have our guests not only sign our guestbook, but also dazzle us with their artistry. And how do the 4bar cards come into play? Well, a la The Jolly Postman, I decided we’d paste each card into the book – not for utility, but gosh daggit, for CUTENESS.

Read more…

Step 1: DIY Pocketfolds
Step 2: The Main Invitation
Step 3: Invitation Sashes – TA DA!

I felt like I needed to dress up the outside of my pocketfolds with something – so I took the paper from inside the main invitation and created an outside sash.

Just like on the main invitation, this required a good deal of layering, but an even greater deal of adhesive. As I was doing this, I came to the conclusion that double-stick tape was just not made for bending, so I doubled up on my adhesives by adding craft glue.

Read more…

February 14, 2008 marked our last Valentine’s Day as an unmarried couple. And what this meant was baaaasically that we weren’t about to spend any extra money on fancy V-day gifts. So instead, we decided to celebrate by making a day of buying our wedding rings (Valentine’s Day = love = wedding rings! See how that worked out?).

We had a plan. I had a map. We started in downtown Exeter and ended in downtown Portsmouth. And after going to a couple typical jewelry stores and being somewhat nicely informed that we would find nothing in our price range (at Springer’s Jewelers, the woman very nicely told me to leave now but to come back in a week when they’d be having a 50% off sale), we stumbled upon Kaya, a small jewelry store in Portsmouth.

We had a great experience. It was weird. We never would have expected to both find our rings, both in stock, both in our sizes, both ready to take home, both at the same store. BUT we did, and here’s how it turned out (by the way, nobody tell the tradition police, but we totally wore them that day):

My two rings together, presented by Baby Boy Bubblegum:

Read more…

Did you ever know two people that were CONSTANTLY fighting, but you knew that, deep down, they were really, truly in love??

Because really, if this isn’t love, I don’t know what is.

Read more…

Last week, I had to give a presentation to about 200 people in my company. I am an actuary – we’re not meant to give presentations. A common actuarial joke goes, “What’s the difference between an introverted actuary and an extroverted actuary? An introverted actuary stares at his own feet during a conversation, while an extroverted actuary stares at the other person’s feet.”

In theory, I have no qualms with the thought of 200 people watching you speak, hanging on your every word, and making judgment every time you say “um” (*shudder* or maybe I do). But whenever I went to practice my presentation, my body physically seized, and I could not get my words out (for reference, watch the part of the Princess Diaries when Mia has to speak in her debate class and runs out of the room to puuuuke). So for the two days beforehand, I spent a great deal of time practicing, stressing, having nightmares, and creating ulcers.

So here’s how this relates. While stressing, I couldn’t stop thinking – is this how I’m going to be at my wedding???
Read more…

For many months, I spent hours upon hours scouting where, online, I would make my bulk purchases. Now that we are a little over three months from the wedding, the boxes are literally taking over our lives. We have several corners that are now dedicated to the housing of boxed goods:

Read more…

Okay, this is a short one…

But in the past week, I cannot stop hearing about brides making their bridesmaids sign contracts. Apparently, “You & Your Wedding” magazine is saying that one in five brides would consider this, so I. Just. Couldn’t. Resist.

A POLL!!!!! I think we can put together a fairly good sample size (though I make no claims as to the legitimacy - this is not a random sample).

To be clear, let’s say that there are some more “normal” things to expect from your bridesmaids - maybe you want them to wear their hair up, maybe you want them to wear a certain dress, certain shoes. But let’s say that we enter into “contract” realm when you would consider having your bridesmaids sign something saying that they will not gain weight, color their hair, get pregnant, etc.

That being said, how ’bout it?

I don’t think it’s a secret that weddings are expensive. In fact, at www.costofwedding.com, you can enter your zip and come up with the average wedding cost in your city. For mine, it’s $35,140. Ouch.

When I got engaged, I knew that my budget would be a small fraction of the average wedding cost, so I immediately started scouring the internet and bridal magazines for cost-saving tips. It’s really ridiculous how many bridal magazines I’ve bought because the cover said “50 ways to save money on your wedding!!!” – and yet, how much have I spent on the bridal magazines??

From all my scouring, I found some good, consistent tips:

1. Get married off-season: approximately 70% of weddings are held between May and October – so from November to April, vendors will be more willing to negotiate prices.
2. Skip Saturday: since Saturdays are more popular, they usually have higher minimums and higher prices – opting for a Friday, Sunday, or even any other weekday, could save you significant coinage.
3. Cut down on guests: obviously, most prices are per person, so fewer people = fewer dollars spent. I didn’t have to tell you that.
4. Skip dinner: people like to be fed, but most would be perfectly happy munching on hors d’oeuvres all night. Hors d’oeuvres are cheaper than dinner, so why not?
5. Daylight wedding: just like Saturdays, evening weddings are the norm, so marrying earlier in the day can really cut costs – especially because, who eats dinner at 11 am?

Like I said – all great tips that I’ve heard again and again. But what happens when you want to get married in May, on a Saturday, with 130 guests, and a seated dinner in the evening???

Read more…

I maaaay have mentioned that my wedding planning had hit a wall. HOWEVER, I got to spend the entirety of this past week looking forward to our tasting. Honestly, we booked our venue with absolutely no knowledge of how the food would taste, so this past Friday had the potential to be very good *fingers crossed* or very, very bad.

Mr. BG and I went with my parents and his mom. We were about 15 minutes late (stupid snow), and in the excitement of it all, like a total doof, I forgot to take pictures. SO I’ll do my best to find replicas.

We had chosen our tasting menu beforehand, and here’s what we tried:

Hors d’oeuvres - Spanikopita, Coconut Chicken, Sesame Chicken Tenders, Scallops Wrapped in Bacon, and Maryland Crab Cakes.

Read more…

GASP!

While scrolling through Something Old, Something New last week, I came across the. most. beautiful. ring. ever.

Don’t get me wrong (especially YOU, Mr. BG) - I love my engagement ring. But I cannot help but gaze in awe at this beautiful specimen - an infinity ring by Cathy Waterman:

Sigggggh. Isn’t she beautiful???

Read more…

Miss Bubblegum has officially hit a wall. In fact, she hit it so hard that she began referring to herself in the third person.

I’ve heard other bees talk about their encounters with said wall. And I thought, “no, it won’t happen to me. I don’t even like walls. I’ll just stay outside all day and avoid them altogether.”

… But the walls are everywhere … *dun dun dun*

Read more…

What do Miss Bubblegum, Miss Toucan, and Mrs. Corn have in common?!?

+ + = FUN!

They’ll all be watching 27 Dresses with YOU this Saturday!!!

Read more…

That’s Save. The. Dates. Mind out of the gutter, people!

Save the dates were my first major DIY project - and since I was SO excited, they went out NINE MONTHS before the wedding (I think the “etiquette” is at least 4-6 months before, but 9-12 for a destination wedding - mine is not a destination wedding, but heck, I wanted to keep people informed).

I thought the simplest way to do this would be a calendar (since, really, the objective is for our guests to save the date) such as this lovely one from weddingpaperdivas:

Read more…