Weddingbee

We interrupt your regularly scheduled Montana Recap to bring you this breaking news…

Last night, Mr. Cherry Pie and I booked our honeymoon!

This is so exciting for me, because we weren’t originally sure if we were going to have one. I didn’t know if I could take the time off because we’re already away for a week before the wedding, and we weren’t sure if we could scrape together the finances.
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After my hair and makeup trials, we planned to drive an hour down to Polson, where Good Wood, the bluegrass band we hired for our wedding was playing.

Good Wood was taking the stage from 9 to midnight that night and the next. And though I was already exhausted after everything we’d done that day (rentals, florist, tasting, hair & makeup), heading there straight with one day left in Glacier made more sense than trying to see them the next night and starting back to Seattle in the morning.

I was so wiped out that as we started the drive down, I started to wonder if we should just skip it. But I really wanted the chance to hear our band live, and going to Polson also meant I’d have a chance to meet with our fabulous wedding (and engagement pic) photographer, who lives nearby. So, I figured I’d just tough it up and have a few extra shots of espresso.

Well, just a few miles out, we were driving by an old truck that was making an awful lot of noise. I was pretty annoyed, until a minute later, the truck turned right and the noise kept right on going. Then, with a little wibble and wobble, my back left tire blew out.

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After my makeup trial (which was fun but in need of some fine-tuning), I moved on to my first hair trial, also at Sage Salon & Spa.

I truly love getting my hair done… it’s so soothing and relaxing. But this time I was more than a little tense. I still didn’t know whether I wanted my hair up, down, or half-back. After showing my stylist my hair inspirations and talking about the location and qualities of our wedding, we decided that an up-do would be best.

The first deciding factor was that if there is wind or weather, an up-do would (hopefully) stay in place longer and function better than leaving my hair down. Secondly, an up-do would give me a more functional place to hold a veil, should I so choose. Finally, talking about styles helped me realize that I really did like the classic look of pinned-up wedding hair.

To help get a feel for what I did want, we talked about the things that I didn’t want. I told her that I didn’t want my hair to look too prom-like, or too “severe,” which meant avoiding high, piled-on the head, tight, scalp-pulling ’dos.
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After visiting the rental company, meeting with our florist, and attending a tasting, we headed into Whitefish for my first hair and makeup trial at Sage Salon & Spa.

It was a real relief to have a trial so far in advance. For a long time, I had assumed that I wouldn’t be able to go out to Montana until September and so I scheduled what was to be my only trial on the day before the wedding.

Sage includes a trial in the price of their bridal hair and makeup ($60 apiece). Once I knew that I’d be driving out in May, I called Sage to see what it would cost to add a second trial - and I was delighted to hear that both trials would be free! I know that this isn’t standard, so I consider myself lucky, but they’ll be getting plenty of dough out of me for the travel and hourly rates to have them come out to Lake McDonald Lodge on the day of the wedding.

We got to Whitefish way before we were scheduled, so they started me early on my makeup. Here I am bare-faced (I had a stressful week, as evidenced by my pimply forehead):

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Our invitations are finally proofed and off to the letterpress. Hopefully they’ll be back to us in a few weeks so we can make sure everyone has plenty of time to make reservations!

I was torn about whether to post a preview of the final digital mock-ups before getting the actual hard copy invites. But seeing as I’ve diligently laid them all out so I can be sure what they’ll look like, I really ought to share.

Here are the invitation envelopes and sash designs. The envelopes are letterpressed with wheat and have our address on the back flap. Our guests’ addresses will be printed on the front with Pantone-matched color on a regular printer.

The sashes will be made of Waste Not paper in red and chocolate, with our names on cotton Rives BFK (the same paper as our invites). I’m not sure whether to go horizontal or vertical, but Mr. Cherry Pie likes horizontal, so we’ll probably stick to that.

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Before I get any farther into the story of my Super Wedding Weekend last month, I want to take a moment to say thank you to my readers for all the welcome words of encouragement and advice.

(I’m not sure whether to love or hate those sparkly MySpace thingies!)

In particular, I want to say thanks to Angel, a Seattle area wedding and event coordinator. She read my post about collecting mason jars for flowers and candles and offered to give me some jars she’d found while cleaning out her garage. In her original comment she said she had 27(!!) but it turned out she found more than 40(!!) in all shapes and sizes.
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After visiting with our rental company and florist on Saturday morning, the three of us ladies headed up the road to Cimmaron Cafe & Catering to taste a sample wedding menu.

We really wanted our catering to be provided by Polebridge via their saloon kitchen, but a series of rather bumpy miscommunications and delays with Polebridge staff and residents led me to decide that it was probably wise to have a backup caterer on standby… at least until we were sure that Polebridge could provide what we needed. This meant potentially forfeiting a $200 deposit, but given how essential food is for a wedding reception and how (sadly) small $200 is compared to a total catering bill, it was worth the cost.

I was really excited to meet with Cimmaron. They’d seemed incredibly receptive to all of our ideas, including using local and organic ingredients where possible. They were also very accommodating and allowed my mom to take part in the tasting even though they were only expecting two of us.
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After visiting the rental company outside Whitefish, mom, Katalin, and I headed back to Columbia Falls to meet with Glacier Wallflower and plan our wedding florals.

Our meeting with the florist had me a little nervous. I have to admit that while I like flowers, I don’t know very much about them, or necessarily how to communicate what I want.
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I apologize for my looooong hiatus. Two shortened work weeks coupled with weekend travel made me one very busy Bee!

Last you heard from me, I was headed out to Montana for my Super Wedding Weekend. As I wrote, I didn’t get to take the train because I couldn’t take my bike on board, which I would have needed to get into the Park before it opened for the season. Instead, I drove with my mom and we had to walk 1/2 mile from the car to the cabin on the first night because the road was still closed at Lake McDonald Lodge.
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NOTE: This post was contributed by Mr. Cherry Pie

As some might remember, when I last wrote for Weddingbee, it was because I was trying to decide what to wear for the Big Day. Well, I felt the same as most of you ladies: I wanted a suit. That left me with a few choices… I could buy a suit and have it altered or have one made.

Now, we have many fine stores here in Seattle. There’s Nordstrom’s and Brooks Brothers as well as any number of high end men’s boutiques that would be happy to sell me a suit that I could have tailored at a later date. Which one to pick, right?

The obvious choice, at least to those who know me, was none of the above. I decided that I wanted a custom-made suit. A bit of research turned up outstanding reviews for a local store named Kuhlman’s. This Kuhlman’s is different from the chain store of the same name - it’s a small boutique in Belltown. They sell trendy clothes and bags, but out of the back of the store the owner, Scott Kuhlman draws up individual patterns and hand tailors suits to order. They’re wonderful, but not cheap.

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