Weddingbee Blog

If you remember, I was all over the place looking at cakes. And I have been stressing about this little decision for far too long now. It was time to buckle down, make a decision, and let it go (which has really become the theme of all of my decisions these days, actually).

I pulled up the now very large wedding folder on my computer, clicked on the “cakes” sub-folder, and was determined to make a decision. No more searching the knot, Weddingbee bios, or even the wiki. I had close to a hundred cakes saved already that I liked, so I needed to choose one and be done with it.

Sure enough, it was right there and had been there all along. I had originally saved the picture back in May of LAST YEAR.

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In an attempt to get ahead on some wedding tasks, I decided to take advantage of a weekend off of work and get started on our programs. The cathedral we are getting married in has been pretty relaxed on most things, but the program is another story. It’s pretty non-negotiable; we were given a template of information that had to be included. A four page booklet, to be exact. I had already decided the design I wanted to go with, but had really been dreading sitting down to type it all up.

But, being a good little bride, I went ahead and started knocking it out. I stopped with about a page and a half to go, and mistakenly left the template we were given on the coffee table. The coffee table that our fur baby can easily reach. Who knew church paper tasted so good.

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Everyone knows that after the bride, the mothers of the bride and groom have the biggest task when picking out what they are going to wear. Well, at least everyone involved in our wedding knows that. The bridesmaids were a piece of cake, and the boys are in tuxes… simple, simple. But in Mama Cloud’s case in particular, we have been going back and forth on details for a while. In fact, she purchased a total of FOUR dresses that she thought might be the one (the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I guess). One of them did turn out to be perfect. It is stunning on her, and you can just tell she feels good in it too. The dress has already been handed over for alterations, and we didn’t manage to get any good pictures before it went, but I did track a picture down of something that was very similar. Just imagine this in a beautiful blue-green color instead of chocolate brown, and at the side where the gathering meets, a pretty silvery broach. Trust, it is gorgeous.

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Perfect dress, check. Now accessories are needed, and we are stuck.
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If you are like me, you have been following (and drooling endlessly over) Mrs. Powder Puff’s gorgeous recaps. And in case you missed it, her bridesmaids had some ridiculously awesome dresses. So when I realized I needed yet another dress (not that I am complaining, of course) for the bridal tea I will be having the day before the wedding, Mrs. Powder Puff’s girls were there with the perfect solution. About a week ago I ordered Anthropologie’s Behind the Clouds dress. If the name isn’t a sign, then I just don’t know what is…

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I want to start by saying that I still absolutely adore ourinvitations. They turned out just the way I had hoped, and the response from our guests over them has been better than I could have imagined. With that being said however, hindsight is always 20/20. I started looking at invites before I had even found Weddingbee, or the endless supply of wedding blogs and their invite inspiration. I didn’t know what Etsy was, and had only browsed on The Knot a few times before giving up hope and thinking I would need to look at and feel things before ordering. Even after discovering all these things, I still went ahead with my final order. I wanted Mama Cloud to be involved in the process and sitting in a store doing it made it possible. It actually wasn’t until Miss Gloss posted about her gorgeous DIY invites that I started to have second thoughts. Up until those bad boys went into the mail and I received such great feedback, I borderline hated them (talk about needing reassurance from others). So what would I have done a bit differently if I could go back?

I would have at least considered going the DIY or partial DIY route
I’m making all of the other paper products for the wedding and I own a Gocco, so why didn’t I even entertain this idea? I don’t know; honestly it really never seemed like an option, mostly because I was so set on letterpress. But if I had done my homework I would have known that I could have tried to find an Etsy seller to press my own design (and would have saved a small fortune). I also might have found out sooner that the incredibly amazing art school here in Richmond also has an incredibly amazing letterpress studio in it and sometimes students can be commissioned to print things (which would have also saved some moolah). Time is normally a factor in DIY of course, but for real, I was still a year and a half out. I had nothing but time.
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I haven’t written any posts with tons and tons of beautiful pictures of what I might want our invites to look like. I also haven’t been stalking Etsy for the most stunning designs, or even playing in Adobe trying to make my own. In fact, I haven’t thought about our invites in over six months. Why? Am I a crazy bride who is leaving this very important piece of planning to the last minute? Nope! In fact, our invites have been sitting pretty in my dining room begging to be stuffed and sealed since February! And finally, FINALLY after all the months of waiting and anticipation, they are in the mail and have been received by most of our guests. So without further ado, its time for their Weddingbee debut!!

It kills me to blur out all the pretty print
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I have always been the type of gal to be willing to give the latest and greatest beauty products and treatments a whirl. And with our wedding being under three months away, I find myself really looking for any way to put my best self forward for the big day. All of those suggestions you all gave me after my makeup trial for the best facial cleansers? Yeah, I bought them all. So when I saw a friend recently and noticed her eyelashes were looking ridiculously gorgeous, I had to try whatever mascara she was using. But she wasn’t using mascara at all, she had eyelash extensions! I was immediately interested, and even more so when I found out they were waterproof, meaning no streaky black lines down my face at the altar. I’m sure my ugly cry face will be making an appearance, but I can at least try to keep the ugly to a minimum with makeup that stays put.

I booked an appointment with Kendrick of Pandora’s Lashes here in Richmond. She was super nice and explained everything that she was doing and even took a nice little before picture for me.

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I recently have been stuck on the things that will be my “lasts” before I become a Mrs. It all started in July when I celebrated my 25th birthday, and for some reason it hit me that it was my very last birthday as a single gal. I got the oil changed on my car yesterday and again couldn’t help thinking it would be the last time I would be at that particular place signing my maiden name for their service.

It doesn’t stop there. I mentioned my love for pajamas when I first became a bee. One of the reasons I chose to be Miss Cloud is because of my absolute favorite Nick & Noras! I don’t know how or why, but I got it in my head that I needed a special pair of last “Miss Pajamas”. I will be staying in a hotel the night before the wedding with my MOH, so of course, I needed something cute for our little slumber party. In full support of my craziness, Mama Cloud came through at my last bridal shower with these beauties; bonus, because they are Nick & Nora!

Personal Image

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My very long list of things to do includes a lot of items for our ceremony, including décor, programs, etc. However, nowhere on that list was actually writing the ceremony. Mr. Cloud and I were both born and raised Catholic, and preparing to have a full Catholic mass with our ceremony left me to assume we would just be told what to say and where to stand. I’ve been to and in quite a few other Catholic weddings, and I had never seen anyone get to choose or customize any part of the actual ceremony. Readings in the mass maybe, but the ceremony was pretty set.

Imagine my surprise (and stress) when at our final meeting with our priest last weekend, he started asking us about how we wanted the ceremony. Most of it is still set, but with options. For example, we have a few different sets of vows to choose from. And we were given a packet of readings and suggestions for the prayers of the faithful, but were told we could personalize or change them how we saw fit!

We have decided to go pretty traditional in most things, including changing very little from the ceremony’s wording. Not only is it one less thing to worry about (trust me, I would think this one to death if given the opportunity), but it is nice to think that we will be hearing the same words our parents and grandparents heard before us. The vows however, are a different matter. We have to choose. Originally, Mr. Cloud had his heart set on saying our own unique vows. Our church and priest may be flexible, but not that flexible. Instead, they gave us a few options to choose from. We can add on to these a bit, or just go word for word with what has been provided.

The first options would be repeated after the priest.
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My name is Miss Cloud and I am a Facebook wedding stalker. It’s true, I admit it. And I’m fairly certain this is not a normal behavior. I just can’t help myself—if anyone has a big white dress in their profile picture, I will be checking out every single one of their pictures in hopes for another peek at the wedding. Even if I don’t know them and my only glimpse of said white dress is from a tiny picture next to a comment they left on a wall somewhere. It’s gotten out of control, really.

The other day, while doing my regular FB stalking, I noticed that a friend of a friend got married a few weekends ago. The wedding was gorgeous, the outdoor ceremony was right before sunset, with a reception that followed at a local hotel. The bride was glowing, and the groom shed a few tears, and no one in attendance even posted any ugly cry face pictures. But while I was looking at the pictures, I couldn’t help but remember the last time I had seen the bride. It was shortly after Mr. Cloud and I had gotten engaged, and she wasn’t even dating anyone at the time. The lovely bride and groom whose pictures I was lovingly stalking hadn’t even known each other as long as we have been planning our wedding! A very familiar pang of jealousy struck me pretty hard.

It all made sense when we started planning.
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I know I know, everyone told me not to worry about a little spelling typo. Everyone said that no one would even notice. But I was losing sleep over one stupid little “S”, and someone was bound to notice. A guest at the wedding would very quietly mention that I had a small error on the menus assuming that I hadn’t already noticed. And then I would be the bride who was going to have the urge to hit a guest for bringing up the stupid mistake that had made me lose sleep for the past four months. I just didn’t want to be that girl.*

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I found a pleasant little surprise in my mailbox today and I am just so freakin’ excited about it, that I can hardly handle it! My fabulous bridesmaids, headed up by my amazing MOH, have been scheming and planning a very mysterious bachelorette weekend in Baltimore, MD. I’ve been curious from the beginning, but now I have a super cute invite with some very strange instructions to make me wonder even more!

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I now have a large and in charge to do list, so I figured I should also explain how I am getting organized in other ways, as well. When we got engaged I was overwhelmed with ideas that I was pulling from magazines and printing off of my favorite blogs and websites. I needed a system to organize everything, and one day I came across Brooklyn Bride’s explanation of her own wedding binders. It was just what I needed and I already had most of supplies stashed away in my office, just waiting to be used.

I did take the opportunity to buy my very first Russell+Hazel binder.
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In an attempt to regain my sanity after hitting the mother of all roadblocks, I decided to take the advice of a few fellow bees and super smart hive members. My first plan of action was to lay out what needs to be done. I love lists; I love crossing things off and feeling accomplished afterward (yeah, sometimes I write things down I already did just to cross them off. Want to fight about it?), and I always feel better when I know how far my progress is and how much further I have to go.

My brilliant solution? This bad boy is now proudly hanging on a door in our office (it’s okay if you laugh, Mr. Cloud did, a LOT).

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I have to say when we started planning, videography didn’t even make it on to the list of things we were concerned about or wanted to spend money on. A large majority of the wedding videos I had seen up to that point had been pretty boring—think single camera fixed on the bride and groom set to Enya’s greatest hits. Something like that was not something I would cherish or want to watch repeatedly. To give those videos a bit of credit, I’m pretty sure they were all from the ’80s and early ’90s, but I still just wasn’t interested.

Mr. Cloud had other ideas, however. Not only had he studied video production in school for a while, but for a time before we were engaged had been helping a few friends out with their own wedding video business. So he really wanted our wedding on tape to look back on. And he didn’t want it shot by just a friend with a personal camcorder hiding in the corner of the church; he wanted the full-blown real deal. And as Mama Cloud reminded me, Mr. C hadn’t insisted on much about the wedding at that point so the least I could do was look into it.

So I kept an eye out, not really seeing any sample videos by people in the Richmond area that amazed me, or that I thought were worth the money they were charging. Then I saw a small mention on a blog somewhere for humanstory films. I watched a few video clips and was crying; they were so beautifully shot and edited.
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