Weddingbee Blog

Mr. Dahlia and I arrived at the church a bit behind schedule.

(The original plan was to be at the church by 1:30, but we didn’t get there until just before 2. The ceremony was to begin at 3.) Read more…

The beginning
Getting ready

The plan was that Mr. Dahlia would come up to the bridal suite at 12:45, where we would have 15 minutes or so to be alone together (and check each other out in our wedding finest.)

Truth be told, I was running a little bit late. About 2 minutes late, which isn’t too bad for a bride on her wedding day.

Mr. Dahlia, on the other hand, was running much further behind.

On the phone, trying to figure out what was going on.

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After the hair and makeup, we were slightly behind schedule upon return to the hotel. My fabulous youngest brother had gotten myself and the other ladies sandwiches, and my mom and a dear friend (from Germany!) were waiting for us in the bridal suite. My original thought had been to eat lunch together, but people grabbed their lunch to go, and my mom went to make sure that my she and my dad would also have something to eat.

So I got a chance to eat, and Ken took some pictures.

Yes, that is me, eating a sandwich.

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The night before the wedding, I stayed in the bridal suite (which the fabulous hotel coordinator, Marisa Gindi, upgraded me to.) Not wanting to spend the night totally by myself, I asked my youngest brother if he wanted to crash on the pullout sofa.

Tip: if you are looking for a place to get ready in downtown Cleveland, I highly recommend the bridal suites at the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel. The suite was easily bigger than our 750 sq. ft. apartment, and the bathroom? Let’s just say that you could very easily have a dance party for 20 in it. It was amazing.

The day began at the very pleasant hour of around 7:30am. Hair and makeup wasn’t scheduled until 10:45, so I took my time getting ready and enjoyed a bit of room service breakfast.
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is about to commence. Yes, dear readers, the technological issues have been resolved, and it is now time for full recap of the day.But you need to answer a question. What do you want to hear about first?

Getting ready:

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I couldn’t blog about it before the wedding (since I know that some of the ladies in the bridal party read this), but I wanted to share what I did to thank the lovely ladies who stood up with me.Borrowing heavily from Mrs. Onion, I got a couple of small items for each woman, put together nicely and these awesome storage containers from Ikea.

Each box contained one of the following:

1 pair of earrings from Dasha Boutique, with each pair selected specifically for the lady.
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A friend of mine who was unable to make it to the wedding came by this past weekend to check out the wedding pictures* and see how her wedding gift works in action. (For those of you thinking about a shower or wedding present for friends- this ice cream scoop is awesome, and is definitely in our top 5 list of most used wedding presents.)

In preparation for the visit, Mr. Dahlia and I headed out to get some ice cream, and I whipped up a little hot fudge sauce. Because nothing is better than ice cream and hot fudge.

Image available here.
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I read this article in the New York Times with great interest, as family and gender is an issue about which I am rather passionate.

Much of what the article touches on is the inequity in the amount of house work two fully employed partners do at home. The results discussed in the article suggest that when both a husband and a wife are employed full time, women still end up spending twice as much time as men on housework. (For same sex couples, this disparity does not exist). It then goes into some of the implications about why that is the case, and it really got me thinking.

Mr. Dahlia and I try and split things 50/50 as much as possible. But my job (full time grad student, part time instructor) is a lot more flexible than his job is (8-5 in IT). This is especially true in the summer, when I work as a research assistant and am working on my own research- I can pretty much work whenever I want to, so long as it all gets done.
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A Balinese cooking class! Mr. Dahlia and I, being the foodies that we are, were really excited to take a cooking class while on our honeymoon.

We had heard about a couple of places to go, and ended up at Bumi Bali for a 5 hour cooking class, which included a tour of the Ubud Market.

The market:

Entering the market
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One of the highlights of our honeymoon was a trip (two, actually, because it was that much fun) to the Monkey Forest in Ubud, Bali. For 1,500 rupiahs (about $1.60 or s0), you can enter the park. Another 2,000-3,000 rupiahs will get you a bunch of 15-20 bananas to feed the monkeys.

And that’s where the fun begins.

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… or it’s damn near impossible to make flowers look bad.

By popular demand (and at the special request of soontobemrsc, ambrosia and wondermart, who is making her bouquet this weekend), I present to you the making of the bouquets. (For you monkey lovers, tomorrow’s post will be filled with pictures and video of the Monkey Forest.)

Around 8:45am on Friday, the day before the wedding, I headed out with a carload of helpers in search of flowers. I could have contacted a distributor (or at least the manager of Trader Joe’s and Costco) about ordering specific flowers, but that required a little more coordination than I was able to handle in the month before the wedding. Besides, it seemed like it would be a lot more fun to not know exactly what flowers I would get. My only requirements were red flowers for the bridesmaids, and white/cream flowers for me. In my ideal world, I would be able to include stock and hydrangeas, which are my two favorite flowers.
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The obligatory wedding self-portrait.

And very happily married! Read more…

Things get a little bit crazy just before a wedding. (I was actually surprised by this- I guess I thought all of the “things will be so busy” wouldn’t happen to me. Well, it did. Things get busy.)

Thank you so much for all of your support throughout this wedding process, and when I return from Bali, I’ll give the full wedding recap. Now, though, it’s time to by the flowers for my bouquet.

With the wedding tomorrow, this is Miss Dahlia signing off.

Last night we were double checking the seating chart, making sure that everyone is seated appropriately (i.e. non-drinkers are not located next to the bar, crazy relatives are separated, that sort of thing.) Reflecting on it as we were lying in bed, we started thinking about which “singles” we could possibly pair up. (It actually reminded me of high school sleepovers.)

No, we’re not doing a singles table, as most people naturally fall into a particular group (high school friends, college friends, grad school friends) of people. But Mr. Dahlia’s got this friend from high school, and I’ve got this friend from college, and well, it seems like they would just be perfect for each other.

I know that this sort of meddling typically doesn’t work out very well, but it is so tempting.

Anyone else playing matchmaker at their wedding? (And if you met your special someone at a wedding, please share!)

No limo for us on our wedding day.** Nope, we’re saving a couple of bucks, and using my dad’s sweet ride.

My Dad’s PT Cruiser Convertible, as seen by Google Street View.
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