Weddingbee Blog

Generally speaking, when I make a decision I am pretty good at sticking to it. The memory boxes, however, were rubbing me the wrong way for some reason. I just didn’t like the way they looked.

The boxes will sit on the cocktail tables during the cocktail hour so that people can look through them and mingle. Momma Puff and I decided quite awhile ago to add a pink gauzy table runner to the cocktail tables to avoid having to buy upscale linens for them. This was a great idea, but when I looked at my memory boxes next to the table runners, I thought, “that looks horrible.”

SO. I added another DIY project. I went to Ross and looked for boxes. When I found some that were sufficiently cheap ($6.99) and heinous, I bought three:

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I’ve posted a couple of times in the past about the chuppah my mom and aunt made. A couple of weeks ago, Momma Puff and Puff Daddy came to visit, and they brought a whole bunch of wedding stuff with them. One of those things was the chuppah! Before we got a chance to look at it, we started discussing the ceremony decorations, and we both got a little worried that there was too much color and that the whole thing was going to end up looking like a giant circus. This is not the fault of the chuppah, mind you, but more a combination of the bridesmaid dresses, the chuppah and the lanterns.
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After my delicious shower hosted by my friends Amanda and Marianne, I went directly to my bachelorette party, hosted by my supremely creative future sister-in-law, Katie. Katie rented out a hotel room in San Francisco for us and had all kinds of fun things planned.

First on the agenda? Changing my outfit. Katie gave me a bag full of stuff. The first thing I pulled out was a shirt with a picture of Mr. Cream Puff on it. It’s probably the world’s weirdest photo of him. He’s wearing a cowboy hat with a dead rattlesnake on it– some weird guy in a Dim Sum restaurant let him try it on, and he made a really weird face and made me take a picture of him. But alas, I digress.

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I have been MIA for days! I suck!! I’ve been waiting to post about my shower and bachelorette parties until I collected pictures from my friends. Luckily they are all super awesome and on top of it, and I got them less than a week later! Let’s start with my shower, which was hosted by my friends Amanda and Marianne, with help from Momma Puff.

First off, the decorations. Holy cute! All my favorite bright colors in one place, punctuated by lots and lots of candy!!

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Well, I was going to wait to tell you guys about this until I was finished. Finishing, however, is looking to be less and less likely (!). It will probably get done, but I’m not entirely sure when. So I thought I’d share my ketubah (Jewish marriage contract) with you guys now.

First, here is the painting I did for our ketubah, minus the Hebrew and English wording:

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I have been a major crankfest for the past 2 weeks or so. I think the stress (even though I wasn’t consciously feeling much) was starting to get to me. The other day, I picked a fight. At the end of it, Mr. Cream Puff and I realized that we haven’t done anything special, just the two of us, in a very long time.

When we lived in Ohio for a year, we were totally miserable. We really didn’t like it there, and we were really far away from our families. Thus, we made an extra special attempt to go places and do things to make life better. We took tons of weekend trips and drove all over the place. It was great. Since we’ve moved home, though, we’ve become complacent. It’s kind of like the boiling frog analogy. In Ohio, we kept jumping out of the pot because the water was boiling. Now that we’re back in California, our water keeps getting hotter, but we are totally oblivious. I was apparently reaching boiling point, haha. SO we’ve decided to get the heck out of here and go somewhere for a weekend.

This, I think, is a good lesson for marriage in general. I think it’s easy to get bogged down in life and forget to pay attention to one another. Maybe a scheduled weekend trip every few months or so would help? Otherwise you might realize suddenly that it’s been a year and you haven’t gone anywhere or spent much time with one another.

Is anyone else taking a pre-wedding honeymoon?

Some of you may remember my programs (I hope so, it was just last week–we better not be that old!), which were sewn booklets.

Well.
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This post will be sort of a mish-mash of a couple of things I discovered while experimenting with and mailing our invitations. First, I present you with a photo of Future In Law Puff’s invitation, which is evidence as to why you may want to go to the trouble of hand canceling if you made custom stamps (and no, I don’t have any suggestions on hand cancelling–I didn’t end up doing it because it seemed like too much work):

I am more and more thankful that I stopped caring about the stamps.
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Hey!! Today is LOVING DAY!!!! Do you know what Loving Day is? Loving Day is the day we celebrate the legalization of interracial marriage! And what better day to share our programs with you, I ask?!

Now, some of you are probably thinking, “what do wedding programs have to do with interracial marriage?” Well, let me tell you:

First, we are interracial (we’re getting the most obvious one out of the way first, clearly). Second, our program is all about being interracial (or rather, intercultural) because that’s what our wedding is all about. And third, we actually mention this at the end of our programs.

Before I begin, I must say that I have never paid attention to or even noticed programs at weddings, but I never doubted that we would have them. Half of our guests are Chinese and won’t understand the Jewish ceremony, and the other half of the guests will be Jewish and not understand the Chinese parts. We also have our friends, some of whom aren’t Jewish OR Chinese and won’t understand any of it. Thus, the programs.
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Color me surprised! I never thought my post from yesterday would get so much attention! Thank you for all of your comments–I really think this is an interesting discussion and definitely worth a follow-up post. I’m taking a break from work in order to write it.

In addition to your current 78 comments, our discussion has inspired an entire blog post. Take a moment to read it–I’ll wait. Okay, are you back? Good. Some of you might be offended by what the author is insinuating–basically that we’re all kind of lame for caring about our weddings. I, for one, am not offended. On the contrary, I’m kind of intrigued. The entire post supports my musing from yesterday–which is that the judgment truly is there, and there is apparently a backlash. My confusion (and I am, honestly, totally confused), however, comes from the question of why. Why weddings?

It seems like there are a few arguments here. First, the idea that we are spending too much money on our weddings. Second, that we are spending too much time. Third, that we are feeding into an industry that tells us what to want, and we can’t help but do what they say. Fourth, that we are being socially inconsiderate by having weddings (impact on the environment, etc). Let’s start at number four and work backwards, shall we?
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Hey, have any of you guys noticed that weddings don’t seem to be “cool” these days? Outside of Weddingbee, the knot and the wedding industry, I mean. I don’t feel that any real negativity has been directed at me, but it does seem like people our age think planning a big (by “big” I mean lots of planning, not necessarily expensive) wedding is kind of…lame. Kind of like how pink and girly-girls are kind of “out.” Am I the only one who has noticed this?

I first noticed the negativity toward weddings when I came across a book called, “One Perfect Day, the Selling of the American Wedding” by Rebecca Mead. Actually, I came across an article in the NY Times about that book (which actually caused a major wedding freak-out during which I almost called the whole thing off!). Indirectly related is the media’s sudden attention to unjust practices in diamond mining (I, for one, am very thankful for that attention, don’t get me wrong). The conflict diamonds men buy for their brides-to-be seem to be more evidence supporting the argument that weddings are self-indulgent and shallow.
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As some of you might recall, my mom and my aunt are creating a fabulous multicultural chuppah for Mr. Cream Puff and I. In my previous post, they were in the planning and experimenting stages. However, June is here and they needed to make the real thing! Unfortunately it was a lot more work than they anticipated (THANK YOU SO MUCH, you guys!!) but the outcome looks absolutely breathtaking. I still haven’t seen it in person! My aunt made this slideshow to document their 6-day chuppah-making extravaganza:

The main thing we’re going for with this wedding is FUN. And also multicultural. We really want the wedding festivities to be a reflection of who we are, and we want to show people a good time…so when it came to planning the rehearsal dinner and day-after brunch, the first thing I thought of was a Chinese Dinner and Bagels n’ Lox Breakfast. Sadly, finding a location for a bagel brunch in San Francisco is kind of hard…so we’re just going to have a regular brunch. However, we still really liked the idea of having chinese food for dinner.

Planning the rehearsal dinner has been kind of funny. Seeing as how Mr. Cream Puff’s parents are Chinese, they know all the great authentic Chinese places in the bay area. However, we also have to consider the fact that the majority of the out-of-town guests are from my family, so feeding a bunch of Jews shark fin soup and sea cucumbers might not go over well. Plus, most of their favorite restaurants are in Oakland Chinatown, and we couldn’t ask people to come all the way from the city to Oakland for dinner.

Then we came across this place, which is right smack in San Francisco’s Chinatown:

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Okay, so the invitations are out, and I’ve even received a few phone calls from people who wanted to tell me how much they liked them! How awesome! I can’t wait to get the RSVPs back. In the meantime, now that most people have received them (hopefully), I’m going to share them with you!

This is the whole package. I had a custom rubber stamp made with our return address on it at Berkeley Rubber Stamp and Engraving Company ($15). I then used a clear VersaMark stamp pad and clear embossing powder and embossed our address on the envelope flaps. The ribbon is silk, made from recycled parachutes. The one pictured here is blue, but originally all of the ribbons were a beautiful purple (sadly I ran out and had to get a different color!)

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I am so super excited!! The other day I got home from Oregon to find this ADORABLE pink invitation waiting for me! How freakin’ cute are these? I am totally afraid of my shower, but have been feeling much better since the host (my friend Amanda) has made me feel very loved by throwing it for me. I’m so excited.

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