Weddingbee Blog

While the girls and I got pretty in the Welcome Center, Mr. EB and his groomsmen finished getting ready in the cabin that Mr. EB and I were sharing for the weekend.

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After we rehearsed, it was time to start getting pretty! The staff at IslandWood very graciously let us use one of the rooms back in their office so that we could be close to the Great Hall. This was perfect for me so that I could spend time with my girls as we got our hair and makeup done, but still peek in on the set up in the Great Hall.

Prior to the wedding I thought briefly about doing my own makeup. However, my bridesmaids surprised me a few months before the wedding and gifted me my hair and makeup. It ended up making the day much less stressful for me not to worry about my makeup, and they did a fantastic job! Bridesmaid K has worked in the salon industry in Seattle and has some very good friends that were willing to give us a great deal for hair and makeup for myself, my bridesmaids and Mr. EB’s sister (who was his groomswoman).

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Our ceremony decorations were amazing. And I feel like I can say that because I had almost no involvement with their execution. I’ve mentioned my amazing aunt before and how wonderfully creative she is. It was her idea to bring in live trees to decorate our ceremony space.

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I haven’t yet introduced you to our officiant, Annemarie Juhlian, but she was one of the best calls that we made when planning our wedding. I facetiously told you about how we found her before the wedding, but I should mention that the gist of that story is totally true. My mom really wanted to have someone slightly more official than a friend officiate our wedding, but Mr. EB was very strongly opposed to any sort of religious officiant. I really had no idea what to do, so I started googling “wedding officiants” and “IslandWood” and her name was the first to pop up.

I really liked the idea of someone who had already officiated a wedding at IslandWood (they don’t do many weddings there, so I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to find someone who had or not), but mainly I wanted someone who was familiar with the island.
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Finally it was the morning of our wedding! The day dawned bright and clear—amazingly beautiful weather for a Northwest wedding in February.

Since we had a welcome dinner the night before and no real time to rehearse, we planned our rehearsal for Saturday morning, after which my girls and I would start getting ready. Clearly that meant that Mr. EB and I would be seeing each other in the morning before the wedding. Luckily neither of us had been set on not seeing each other until I came down the aisle. But we also decided to stay together the night before the wedding—which honestly, was more my choice than Mr. EB’s.
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This was one of the things that I was anticipating the most during our wedding weekend (you know, other than the wedding itself of course!):

One of the places that IslandWood had that we could take advantage of was the Friendship Circle (which I talked about more previously). They built up a huge fire in the middle and had all the necessary supplies for hot chocolate, coffee, and of course, s’mores.
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All along we knew that we weren’t going to have a traditional rehearsal dinner. In the spirit of our wedding weekend, we wanted to include all of our guests who had traveled to be with us, and I really wanted to make sure that any in-town guests who wanted to come to dinner were welcome as well. This could have meant that we ended up with essentially two reception dinners, but instead the Welcome Dinner stayed very close to the casual, welcome to the Northwest vibe that I really wanted (and a lot of guests ended up not being able to make it, so the dinner was much smaller than it could have ended up being!).

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After my more dramatic-than-intended morning, I headed to my parents’ house where we were hosting our extended family during the in-between time when people were arriving from the airport or after spending the morning in Seattle, but before we could head over to IslandWood.

My dad had the wine flowing, my mom had lots of food spread out and everyone was remarking on the fact that in the middle of February in the Northwest there wasn’t a drop of rain in sight!
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Friday morning did not go as I had planned. I was really looking forward to the morning before the wedding. Friday afternoon would be spent greeting all of our extended family that had come in, getting settled at IslandWood and ready for the Welcome Dinner that night, but the morning was supposed to be a time for me to relax and prepare the weekend ahead.

See, a couple of weeks before my mom had noticed that her chiropractor’s office was offering a great discount on massages for new clients and she asked if I’d like a massage the day before the wedding. I took her up on this immediately as there are very few things that relax me as much as a good massage. And getting to spend an entire hour focusing on my own relaxation sounded like an excellent way to prepare for a weekend full of people. As a sidenote, I should mention that I am definitely an introvert. I love my family and friends and I knew that for our wedding I wanted to spend as much time with them as possible, but I also know myself and my need for alone time, which was one of the main reasons why I was so looking forward to the massage and how the time to myself would help me get through the rest of the weekend. Of course, as I alluded to earlier, things are never that easy.

I got off the ferry and arrived at the office about ten minutes early for my appointment, only to discover that they had double booked their massage therapist and that the next open appointment wasn’t until 3PM—exactly when we would be entertaining approximately 40 family members at my parents’ house and getting ready to head to IslandWood. All I could think was how much I’d been looking forward to that hour alone before the whirlwind of the weekend and now it wasn’t going to happen.

So what did I do?
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My girls are incredibly special to me, and after all they had done for me leading up to the wedding, including an amazing book shower and a great bachelorette weekend away, I knew I wanted to give them something really special at the bridesmaid luncheon. But I also wanted their presents to be meaningful to them and to our friendship. So I decided the best way for me to do that was to make part of their present.

I made my girls make up bags (full disclosure - they were supposed to be clutches but I didn’t make them sturdy enough so I called them makeup bags).
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My family is from the South, and even though I technically haven’t lived there since I was 6 weeks old, there are some Southern traditions that have stayed with us (including my propensity to say “y’all” whenever possible). One of those traditions is the bridesmaid luncheon. I believe this usually takes place the day before the wedding, but for logistical purposes we held it on Thursday. My grandmother has hosted this luncheon for most of my cousins, and she and my aunts hosted the luncheon for me. We invited my bridesmaids and Mr. EB’s and my female relatives who were in town to lunch at my aunt’s house.

But first, my girls and I went to get our nails done.

Bridesmaid N and Bridesmaid K

I met my girls in the morning to get manicures and pedicures, which was a great way to kick off the weekend festivities and spend some time together. Unfortunately, while my pedicure was great, my manicure was not and I ended up taking it off before the wedding and just putting on some clear polish and calling it a day.
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After we bottled, sealed and labeled our wedding wine, we were officially one week out! That last week before the wedding I was remarkably calm. Our adventure to get our marriage license had been accomplished, and I had given myself a deadline of the Sunday before the wedding to finish all of my outstanding projects, like the Facebook, our seating chart poster, our programs and the gifts that I was making for my girls (which I’ll show you soon).

A sneak peek of the clutches I made for my bridesmaids.

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When we brought the wine home after bottling it there were two more steps that we had to do before our wedding wine was complete: labeling and sealing the bottles. We planned to label all of the bottles, but we only wanted to seal the bottles that we were giving as favors and the ones that we would keep after the wedding. And all of the wine that we planned to serve at the wedding didn’t need a seal since we would be opening it soon.

Dad set up an assembly line as he labeled the wine while the wax melted and Mr. EB, Mom EB and I got ready to help him seal the bottles.
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Before the wedding I talked about how we had the opportunity to blend our own wedding wine. After we blended the wine and it spent some time in the barrel it was time to bottle it! We had such a fantastic experience blending and bottling our wine, and I’m so glad that we had the opportunity to have such a hands-on experience. I learned a lot about how wine is bottled, and discovered that one barrel of wine equals approximately 24 cases of wine, which surprisingly actually does fit stacked into the back of a Ford Explorer. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First, Mom helped to set up the barrel so that we could get the wine out of the barrel and into a stainless steel tank (on the right of the above picture). I helped by taking pictures of the process. Read more…

Source

I lived in London for a semester in college, but that wasn’t where my love (OK, OK, obsession) with the royal family started. I actually have no idea when it started as it seems I’ve always been fascinated by this family and their history.
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