Weddingbee Blog

As much as I may try, I’m probably not going to be able to control the weather on our wedding day. *sigh* Thanks to Mrs. Tiramisu, I learned that as long as you have friends and family surrounding you on the inside, it doesn’t matter that the outside of your tent is being pelted by a hail storm (in July!).

In any event, I plan on being TOTALLY prepared with a cute umbrella and even cuter shoes. I just purchased these puddle jumpers to perfectly coordinate with our wedding colors.

$24.99 from here

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Due to an ice storm, my Christmas day was super productive since I couldn’t leave my parents’ house! I started and finished our STDs this past Christmas.

I had posted previously about the concept here, and the design didn’t really change at all before we were finished - we just made a few font modifications, and the design was slightly elongated to fit the envelopes.

Supplies :

• 3 sheets 30×42 4-ply museum board ~ $15 each
• Gocco ink - red, black, white ~ $5 each (but there is tons leftover)
• Navy envelopes ~$30 for 100 (including shipping)
• 7 sheets computer paper
• 1.5 rolls of permanent adhesive for the 1.5″ Xyron ~ $10ish
• Roll of magnet strip ~ $6

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I’ve been trying to come up with THE PERFECT monogram to help tie all our wedding-y paper goods together. I want something classic, that will still be useful after our wedding - so I’m not sure I want to tie in too many nautical details, because I have a feeling by the time our wedding rolls around I’m going to be SO over rope and compass roses. But I also want our monogram to feel at home on all our wedding items.

While searching for inspiration, I found these monograms from Monogram Design—and there are plenty more! I really love the simplicity of the Ws in the lower right.

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I debated for a long time over… you guessed it… C O L O R S .

Let me set the tone - a boat, navy blazers, bright white tablecloths/navy runners/white vases, and (insert mystery color here) flowers.

I went back and forth for about 8 months on the following question:

Kate Spade yellow OR Kate Spade green?

I truly could not decide. There are benefits to each color:

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When I asked my bridesmaids to be, well, bridesmaids, I said the only thing I truly cared about was:

1. That they show up
2. That they would be kind enough to remove any errant baby’s breath or carnations from ANYWHERE that I could possibly see.

Well, hours of perusing wedding blogs has altered my opinions. There are many carnation bouquets tightly wrapped together that look so stunning, like this one. (I’m still not really sold on carnations as singular entities, but in bulk they do wonders.)
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Dear Mr. Gloss,

If you are for some reason reading this right now, this is your hint to stop. Really, or I will hurt you, and then make you buy me a new dress.

Anyhoo… here is the dress story:

I ’ran with the brides’, except I didn’t really run—I waited until everyone else ran, and then rolled in with my girls around 10. It was RIDICULOUS. With me was my mom, my MOH, one of my bridesmaids, and a friend from work. As I said, the doors opened at 8AM, and some brides and their troops had been there since 3AM!!!

Not us! We like sleeping in… so by the time we arrived there were no lines to wait in, which was great, except the racks of dresses were just racks! Everyone who had arrived early had grabbed as many dresses as they were able to and were guarding their stockpiles of dresses. It was SO overwhelming, and I really had no idea where to start. But we fanned out and went our separate ways to search (armed with walkie-talkies and one really loud bridesmaid). After about the first 5 minutes I basically stood in an area, and my troops brought me dresses. They knew roughly what I was looking for (which really wasn’t what I bought) because we had a giant sleepover at my place the night before and I had put together a PowerPoint presentation of potential dress candidates. (I’m really not that OCD, my PowerPoint consisted of download pics off the internet and ripped from magazines. It was really more of a slideshow, and they had requested it to help them know what to find!)

I tried on A LOT of dresses; it was like a speed trial for dress shopping. Honestly, they probably brought me like 60 dresses, and I tried them all on (it was exhausting).
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Oh yes, I am the proud owner of 80 of these bad boys.

My plan of action (POA) is to line 4 of these down each table with flowers of varying heights and types but in the same color family… say, orange or yellow.

I snatched these up at IKEA and I think they provide the perfect simple, but modern DIY centerpieces for our tables. And at 4 per table (of 8), each couple could take one home if they wanted to.

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Almost 5 months after Mr. Gloss popped that bling on my finger we FINALLY secured our venue… and have a date! We are getting married in Greenville, Maine in the middle of Moosehead Lake on the 100-year-old steamship Katahdin, affectionately nicknamed, ’the Kate’.

Our venue (if I can call it that) doesn’t typically do weddings, although they have done a few in the past. When I ‘toured’ the boat I spoke to the captain who was EXTREMELY helpful, since his daughter was married on the ship two summers ago. There were also a few surprises (good and bad).
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Let’s talk about the “L Word”….

No, not ’love’… LINENS!

Let’s talk about how our potential rental company thinks they can charge $30 to rent a plain white tablecloth. Can’t you actually purchase them at that price? No, you can’t. You can actually purchase them for much cheaper, like $17.

Hello?
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I was strolling around the internet the other day and stumbled across this great site called Pioneer Woman Photography. She has some great posts about photography and Photoshop. If you don’t know, Adobe Photoshop the ultimate tool for photo editing - it’s quite expensive to buy if you don’t use it all the time, but you can download a free-trial at Adobe.com.

Anyway, she has created some ’Action Sets’ that you can download for free! Actions modify your photos through the use of layers to create different effects and can easily add drama to your photos. It basically takes all the guesswork out of adjusting your own photos and saves a TON of time.

Action Set #1
Action Set #2

This is a picture I took a few summers ago - these old men sat on this bench downtown every day. I like to imagine they are the oldest of friends and will be sitting here until they have each moved on. I’m not sure why the guy on the end looks so confused, as I asked if I could take their picture… but I kind of like it anyways!

The Original -

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The day after Mr. Gloss proposed I was online buying a Gocco and a ridiculous amount of supplies. I had been eying them after seeing the amazing invitations made by previous bees, and stalking the Gocco Flickr stream, like, every day. When it arrived on my doorstep I didn’t really have anything that I needed to mass-produce, but I couldn’t wait to try out my new toy! Enter PaperSource, a girls bestest friend. I walked out with waay too many flat and folded cards (with matching envelopes, of course) with the excuse that I would make amazingly cute note cards for a friend’s upcoming birthday.

Without further ado, my first Gocco experience:

To start I watched this fantastic explanatory video. I really think this lady has been exposed to way too many Gocco flashes. Although, I’m not going to lie – I enjoy her immensely and have found myself watching other PaperSource tutorials just to get more of her!

I made my design in Illustrator and had decided to start with something simple - but I’m also way cheap and wanted to expose two cards for the price of one. I haven’t printed the second card yet because I need to wash the first screen so it doesn’t get on the SECOND print. But this is the first one - inspired by Kate Spade, obviously!

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Mr. Gloss and I looked EVERYWHERE (three different states, although Maine was our primary search location) to find that perfect/affordable venue. And we finally found one after about five months of searching, which seems like forever in the wedding world! We looked at lots of places, and researched way more, that had ‘Reception Packages’ and traditionally held/hosted Weddings. But, apparently I like to make things way more difficult than they need to be, as we elected to choose none of them.

One day, Mama Gloss and I tossed around an idea for a venue, and we chalked it up as something fantastical that would probably never happen. But we indulged ourselves anyways. There is a 100-year-old steamship that runs somewhat near the town where I grew up. There are regularly scheduled 3 or 5 hour tours, BUT it turns out you can also rent out the boat for private events. It costs $1500 for the first two hours, and something like $250 for each hour after that (which seemed pretty reasonable when compared to the rental charges of the other places that we were considering).

The benefits:

• The sentimental value, since I pretty much grew up on the lake
• It’s a very touristy area in the summer
• It is local enough so that we could potentially get ’good deals’ on catering
• I think it’s pretty unique
• The boat holds up to 250 people and has indoor areas and outdoor decks…

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I am most excited to be the newest addition to the hive and to be Miss Gloss! Nonetheless, at first I didn’t think I was ‘Miss Gloss’ material. I don’t obsess over new shades, and would never wait in line to get the latest in the lip-gloss craze. After pondering it for a moment, I realized that I miss it when it is not there, and that I actually have 2+ tubes on or around me at all times – stashed at work, or in my car, and in almost all my coat pockets. Plus, a little shimmer and shine just makes me smile (and sometimes it tastes really good!).

Both Mr. Gloss and I are small-town Mainers (yes, that is what we call ourselves, except if you throw in the Maine accent it sounds like ‘main-ahs’) and are planning a ‘semi-destination’ wedding back home from our present location in Boston. We have been dating since high school, and will have been together almost a decade by the time we actually tie the knot! For 6 of those years we were separated by different states, and for about 6 months, a different continent. We have been able to make our ‘long-distance’ relationship work because we knew, very early on, that we would be together forever (although no one takes you seriously when are 15 and say that!) and that if this is what we wanted, we could make it work. Being together for such a long time has given a very practical edge to our wedding planning. It is more important to us to have a down payment for a house, than one perfect day (although I want them both)!

As a soon-to-be architect, I design space for a living and attended school for it for five long years.
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