Weddingbee Blog

Last night I came home after a long day at work and I headed to the kitchen to get some water. I mindlessly opened the fridge, and this is the scene that greeted me. (Please, oh please, read on past the picture because this is seriously hilarious.)

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The RSVPs have started to trickle in, which tells me that it’s finally time to reveal the Ferris Wheel invitations to the world. Are you as excited as I am? Oooh, I certainly hope so! Truth be told, every single step of creating these little lovelies—design, production, and packaging—was unimaginably time-consuming. The process involved unanticipated material costs, social isolation, lack of sleep, a ridiculous amount of mistake corrections, and at least one or two probably unnecessary freak-outs (”Oh no, I think I hate them. Do I hate them? Should I hate them? Will other people hate them? Maybe we should start over from the beginning. Agh!”).  But, BUT… At the end of all that, thankfully we adore the outcome! That would be enough on its own, but we’ve heard from at least a few people that they love them too, and somehow that makes it all worth it.

Okay, enough with the words. On to the pictures!

{envelope back}

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Now that I’ve confessed to my one and only princessy bridal moment, it’s time to put that into some context for you. My musical ear is pretty finely tuned, so I was super picky when it came to ceremony music—not just what songs we chose but how those songs would fit together to set the stage for our celebration. I wanted them to create a mood, to flow from one to the other in a sensible and meaningful way. I guess you could say that I wanted to create something of a soundtrack for our ceremony that was reflective of both our personalities as well as the significance of the occasion.

This was another one of those times where not being tied down to any traditional or venue-imposed ceremony music “rules” was both a blessing and a curse. We had to figure out our own preferences (lyrics vs. instrumental, contemporary vs. classic, edit songs ourselves or play from the beginning) in order to narrow down an incredibly vast world of music. Mr. FW and I pretty quickly agreed on a few songs we liked, but finding the perfect arrangements took me for-freakin’-ever. In fact I almost abandoned the project on several occasions because I couldn’t find a useable copy of something, or the arrangements of two songs were each beautiful but didn’t work well together, etc.
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You can tell that’s the bridal march, right?

I heard a lot of the dah dum t’dumms growing up because my mom was (and still is) our church organist and she played at many of the congregants’ weddings. When I went through my teenage phase of “I wanna be completely different from everyone in the whole wide world,” I decided I wouldn’t be a person who came down the aisle to the bridal march if/when I ever got married, and I never changed my mind about that. But in all the years since then, I also haven’t been that interested in getting married in general, so I’ve given precious little thought to any other specific things that I did or didn’t want at my potential future wedding. Except this one thing….

Hive, I’m gonna just come right out and say it. This one thing is kind of a diva moment.
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Let’s talk about our floral alternatives, also known as the self-created wedding dilemma that is so unreasonably stressful to think about that I avoid it at all costs. Previously I told you that I’m torn about how we’re incorporating floral elements into our wedding. Well, I still haven’t resolved this particular conflict so I’m turning to the hive for some much-needed perspective.

Here’s the deal: yes, we like the look of wedding party members carrying bouquets and we fully intend(ed) to go that route. But… we’re a little over two months out and I still haven’t started any of it. I plan to make a bouquet for myself no matter what, but I don’t know exactly how long it will take to make one, much less six or seven of them. I’m seriously considering the possibility that this might be one of those times where I’ve bitten off more DIY than I can chew. It’s okay, I can admit that it happens sometimes. (But not often, of course. Because I’m amazing and I can do anything.)

When Mr. FW and I started talking about non-bouquet options, we came up with two possibilities that we actually really liked because both would resolve some of our ambivalent feelings about how gendered the florals were going to be. (When you’re looking at these options, recall that the wedding party dresses are gray with black trim.)

Option #1 was inspired by this picture:

bracelet by Etsy seller BCGirls

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Can you guess what’s in this box?

Here’s a hint: this is what came next.
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Warning: ahead you will find much venting of wedding steam. Proceed at your own risk.

You may have noticed that I’ve been a little more absent lately (so sorry about that!), and I’m sure you can guess that the reason is because our wedding is fast approaching. At this point we are working on the wedding 100% of every waking hour (and when we’re sleeping, we’re both dreaming about the wedding so we can’t even really count that as a break). When we do take breaks, to eat or shower or whatever, we are doing so while we talk about the wedding. In my quiet moments, I am thinking only about the wedding and it never seems I have sufficient thinking time to actually resolve any of the issues I’m thinking about in the first place. There’s no time to see friends or family, and when we do all we can talk about is the wedding. Our tiny, lovely little house is full to the brim of wedding stuff. There’s not a single uncovered surface to be found, and until very recently none of it was organized in the slightest (which, for an overly organized person like myself, is just sheer torture).

It’s. All. Just. Too. Much.

{I can’t believe I’m letting the blogosphere take a tour of my house in such disarray.}

Two years ago we started planning this shindig in earnest, and back then we both thought we’d have plenty of time to take on any and every project we could possibly imagine.
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One thing people frequently told us after we got engaged was that the only perk of wedding planning is the free cake tastings. Personally, I think there have actually been a lot of perks (like, for instance, blogging for all of you!).  But I do love me some cake, so I was looking forward to that perk in particular. There was a wrench in that plan, though. We wanted to save money in the wedding cake department, which is why we opted to go with a dessert buffet rather than a traditional multi-tiered wedding cake. We wanted the center cake on the display to be a small, “top tier”-esque cake. Just enough so that we could have the fancy wedding cake experience without actually having a full-on multi-tier cake.

{like one of these side cakes}

cake by Cater It Simple, image via the Cater It Simple Flickr page

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For over a year now Mr. FW and I have talked about having a photo booth at our wedding. First we considered DIYing it like so many fabulous bees before me have done. Seriously, if you are considering going that route, check out those tutorials for a near-exhaustive rundown of all the various ways you can DIY a photo booth. With so much information out there, I was sure this was a project we could take on. Then, the days and months kept ticking by and the list of projects kept mounting, so that finally at some point we decided we better look into the cost of hiring someone to make our photo booth dream come true.

But having seen so many DIY photo booths in blogland, I was dead set on avoiding the old-school photo booth that could only seat a few people on a bench. Instead I wanted a massive booth that would easily hold a whole group of people.

{like Hot Wings and her crew}

image by Eric Dos Santos via Weddingbee

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This past holiday season I did a little DIY project that I think would make a fabulous wedding gift—either something to give the happy couple, the members of your wedding party, or even your wedding guests. I used glass etching to make personalized oil and vinegar bottles.

They turned out so well I want to share them with you in case they spark your creative thinking.
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My thoughts about wedding day earrings were along the same lines as everything else when it comes to this wedding: “I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but I don’t think this is it. I’m certain I’ll know it when I see it.” I’ve concocted a fuzzy mental image of the earrings I’m looking for, but as far as I can tell they’re not anything that’s ever been manufactured in the history of the world. Freaking out that my indecision would result in bare lobes, I sucked it up and bought some earrings that I knew weren’t “perfect” but would probably be “perfectly suitable.” Today they came in, and they’re quite lovely.

Generally jewelry isn’t really my thing, but I love earrings and I like them BIG. So I’m just not sure these baubles are as… ostentatious? distinctive? statement-y? as I want them to be.
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I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but we’ve done (and continue to do) a lot of DIY for our wedding. Even with the multitude of projects we’ve undertaken, I will be the first to admit that DIY doesn’t always mean cheaper or better. (Goodness knows it never means easier or faster, but I suppose that’s the natural and expected consequence of ’doing it yourself.’) Yet I do think in the long run there’s some kind of even trade-off that happens—either you are able to save a little money on a project because you’ve invested your own time and energy, or you end up spending the same (or more) money as you would’ve to buy something in a store but you feel like the end result is more personalized and perfect.

Well folks, today I feel like I completed the holy grail of DIY projects. Something that saved me money, gave me exactly what I was looking for, and was unbelievably fast and easy to boot. I can’t wait to share it with the hive because I just know there are a handful of you out there who will want to attempt this project for yourself.

Okay, before I tell you what I’m talking about…

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Last night on our way home from running some wedding errands Mr. FW noticed, “We’re taking turns breathing heavy sighs.” And once he said that I realized I, too, could hear the sounds of deep, controlled inhales alternating with unsatisfactory exhales. For the first time it was really starting to weigh on us just how little time is left before our wedding day and just how much needs to get finished during that limited time. We are working on wedding projects constantly at this point, and days are flying by at breakneck speed. Yet it never seems the list gets any shorter. In fact, for every one item that we start or complete, at least one other item gets tacked on. So we both get ridiculously giddy when we find a project that seems like it will be quick and easy to cross off the list.

The ring dish should’ve been one of those easy items—”should” being the operative word here. Mr. FW spent an hour or two combing Etsy to find a few good options, one of which we both agreed would be perfect for us.

image from Etsy shop Cats Paw Pottery

One dish for the wedding, one to go on my nightstand right away. Affordable, patterned but simple, our choice of colors, and the seller would create a hole in one of them so that we could tie on the rings. Perfect!
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I bought my wedding day shoes, and they cost $16. Mmmhmm… True story. Well, at least that’s the true gist of the story, although it was a smidge more complicated than all that. (When is that not the case for me? Seriously.)

Sometime around the fall or winter of 2009 I decided that I really liked shoes from Aldo and I was planning to purchase a couple of pairs online. As I always do, I checked the clearance section before I placed my order - you know, just in case there were any not-to-be-missed deals. Now, you’ll recall that we’d already finalized our wedding colors by then, which is why the sapphire blue flats caught my eye. I always knew I’d wear flats for the wedding because, as much as I love heels and even find they can be comfortable for limited periods of time, there’s no way I wanted to risk having aching feet on our wedding day.

Okay, so… these shoes caught my eye, they seemed like they’d be the right color, and the price was certainly right - so I bought them. I figured I could return them if the color was off. Or, if I eventually decided not to wear them for the wedding, then I’d just have some cute blue flats for everyday wear.

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ring from Etsy seller Kablamindustries

The other day someone asked about where we were going on our honeymoon, and at some point in that conversation I casually said that Mr. FW would be my “newly minted husband.”

And it stopped me right in my tracks.

That word. Husband. Hu… husb… (slowly now) huusssbaaand. So weird. So foreign. When I said it there were no warm fuzzies, no contended smiles about this idea of someone being my husband. To be completely honest (and I know this is harsh), it felt icky to utter that word.
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