Weddingbee

Like most brides, I had heard my share of horror stories about figuring out the seating arrangement. The “so-and-so can’t sit anywhere near so-and-so”/too many people and not enough tables/”why do they get to sit near the bride and groom but we have to sit in the corner with the photographers?” type of drama.

Luckily, our families and friends are mostly drama-free, and our parents entrusted us with the seating arrangement duties, so we didn’t have too many opinions overwhelming things. Although mostly all of our wedding details were somehow aided by the use of a computer, this was one thing that we decided to do sans computer, by the recommendation of my Matron of Honor. She said that for her wedding, the easiest way to figure out seating had been to simply write each guest’s name on a piece of paper, lay everything out on a big table, and move things around until we got it right. Well, most of the surfaces of our apartment were covered with wedding paraphernalia at that point, so the floor was our next best option.

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In case you didn’t get enough of our honeymoon from my last monstrous post, how about some Antiguan sunsets? Read more…

Well hello there, hive! It has been over a week now since Mr. Cupcake and I returned from our absolutely heavenly honeymoon in Antigua, and we’re still functioning on island time a little bit. Hence my delay in telling you all the wonderfully relaxing details of our journey.

You may remember that we chose the Galley Bay Resort in Antigua for our week of R&R following the wedding. Let me tell you that we made the RIGHT decision!

Photo by me…. I think this looks like a postcard!

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It’s official—we’re now Mr. and Mrs. Cupcake!

Photo by my friend, Jen

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TODAY!*It feels so surreal that this day is finally here. My hotel room is currently bustling with excitement as the hair and makeup ladies are beautifying my already beautiful bridesmaids, mom and (almost) mother-in-law. I had the best night of sleep I have had in weeks, I feel completely relaxed, and I am beyond excited for this day that we have been anticipating for so long.

Today, I get to marry my best friend; my favorite person in the whole world who makes me laugh when I need it most, comforts me when I’m feeling sad or disappointed, and who never ceases to amaze me with his love for me. Really, I don’t know how I got so lucky.

The outpouring of love and true excitement from our friends and families over the last several months has been astounding and incredibly humbling. Knowing that they’ll all be there watching as Mr. Cupcake and I exchange vows today kind of takes my breath away. We are so completely fortunate.
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Remember when my mom and I had lofty goals of altering my cousins’ beautiful white lace cocktail dress to wear for our rehearsal dinner? The custom-made dress that both of my cousins wore at their own rehearsal dinners? Well, we tried and tried, and my mom slaved and slaved over the revised corset back, but in the end it just wasn’t working. The corset looked really pretty, but the back of the dress was still not lying flat due to the fact that I am short-waisted and the extra material had nowhere else to go. So, we finally decided to let it go and find something else for me to wear at the rehearsal dinner. Mind you, this was all on Sunday night, and the wedding is THIS Saturday, meaning the rehearsal dinner is THIS Friday. Yes, tomorrow!

Enter one of my favorite stores ever, Anthropologie. I am lucky enough to live in the city where Anthro/Urban Outfitters/Free People have their headquarters, so their retail stores are never hard to find in this area. This can also be a bit dangerous, though, as their clothes and charming housewares aren’t always budget friendly, yet my money still seems to somehow jump out of my wallet and into their cash registers whenever I step foot in there. My office is literally a 5 minute walk from the very first Anthropologie store that ever opened, so after checking online to see what white dresses they are carrying at the moment and immediately finding an adorable contender, my mom and I made a plan to meet there on my lunch hour last Monday.

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Um. Hi. Remember me? It’s me, Miss Cupcake. I know I haven’t blogged in, like, ages, and you’ve probably forgotten all about me and Mr. Cupcake and our wedding. But I hope you will forgive me, dear hive. You see, with the wedding fast approaching (nine days, gulp!), things have been a little crazy in the life of this Cupcake. (”Little” being the understatement of the century.)

There are DIY projects, lessons, failures, excitement, frustrations, and surprises to be blogged about…. but until I get around to sitting down and coherently telling you all about those things, I thought I’d tell you about something that is keeping Mr. Cupcake and I going these days. It’s what we call our “After The Wedding” list.

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For a while, we thought we’d use gable boxes to hold welcome items for our out-of-town guests. Then, the fabulous Miss Sundae wrote about finding inexpensive canvas tote bags, and we swiftly changed our minds. Giving our guests bags that they could actually reuse sounded like a really cool idea, so we decided to go for it too.

The bags that Miss Sundae found were a little more expensive by the time I got around to buying them, so I found some similar 15″ x 16″ natural cotton tote bags from InGreetings.com for $0.94 a pop (now available for $0.98 each). The material was fairly thin, but overall we were impressed with the quality for the price. There were some slight variations in size from bag to bag, but other than that we didn’t have any problems, and delivery was very prompt.

I set to work trying to create a design for our bags that wouldn’t scream “THIS IS FROM OUR WEDDING” but instead would hopefully be something that people would reuse.
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Music is one aspect of our reception that we are definitely not taking lightly. Mr. Cupcake and I have been revisiting and revising our play list for months, as we’re determined to have music that (almost) everyone can enjoy.

Choosing music has been a challenge, because a lot of the music that we like just won’t work for dancing. Currently, the six-disc rotation in my car consists of She & Him, Justin Timberlake, Regina Spektor, the Broadway soundtrack to Wicked, Ingrid Michaelson, and The Beatles White Album. Aside from Justin and some earlier Beatles songs, nothing is very danceable. We’ve had to get in touch with our inner dancing queens to compile a list that will (hopefully) have our dance floor packed all night with everyone from my 13-year-old cousin to Mr. Cupcake’s 70-something-year-old grandmother.

First, the “important songs”—entrances, first dance, parent dances, etc.:
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Although I’ll have the traditional “something borrowed” on our wedding day, I am thrilled that I’ll be wearing something borrowed for our rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, as well. Two of my bridesmaids are my cousins on my mom’s side of the family; both have gotten married in the last 6 years, and they both wore the same beautiful lace dress on the eve of their weddings. My aunt graciously offered to let me borrow the dress for my own last evening as a “Miss,” and I happily accepted.

When I first tried on the dress, though, it didn’t exactly fit, and I was very bummed. I’ve lost some weight in the last few years and feel very happy with where I am physically, but I’m still not quite as lean as my cousins. The dress was originally custom made to fit the first cousin, and she has broader shoulders than I do, but a narrower mid-section. As such, the dress zipped up to the middle of my back, and would have been fine at the top where the zipper meets, but it wouldn’t fit around my ribs. No matter how much weight I may lose, I don’t think I can do much about my ribs!
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