Weddingbee Blog

As my friends were getting dressed, it was finally my turn to get ready. I started feeling a little bit nervous at this point! As I mentioned in my last post, for most of the morning/early afternoon I was sort of like, “Oh this is fun, hanging out with my friends,” but once my hair got set into rollers, it sank in that today was the day!

(I think this is a good look for me*)

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On the morning of our wedding I woke up around 8 AM. I had set my alarm for 10 AM just in case I decided to pass out and sleep through our wedding, but luckily I woke up with the sun (!! Sun! Not rain!), feeling rested. One of the great things about having to drop everything off with the venue Friday morning was that I couldn’t do any more projects after that. So, I went to bed at a semi-reasonable hour on Friday (after hanging out at the bar near our hotel, post rehearsal dinner), and got plenty of sleep. I highly recommend this if you can, because I know personally—and Mr. GP will happily testify to this—I get pretty cranky when low on sleep (or food, especially)!

(Good morning, gorgeous view from my room!*)

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“Oh man I can’t wait to eat crabs. I wonder how many I can eat and still fit into my dress? I’m gonna need a bib.”

That’s pretty much the sum of all the thinking I did about our rehearsal dinner. I count myself very, very lucky that Mr. Guinea Pig’s parents organized a stellar rehearsal dinner for which I did not need to do, plan, or create anything. I told you before about our Crab Feast RD plans, and boy oh boy was it awesome! I’m pretty much going to tell the story of our rehearsal dinner in photos, because that’s the way I remember it. First, the food:

(My plate. Just kidding, I let Mr. GP eat one)

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The day before our wedding (Friday), the Guinea Pigs, our families, and our many (many) carloads of stuff trucked it over to Kent Island to drop off all the decorations and Out of Town Bags, check into the hotels, and get ready to rehearse!

Many people arrived around lunchtime, so I headed to a nearby restaurant and had lunch with my lovely ladies, while Mr. GP went to a different restaurant to hang with the groomsmen. It was great to have this relaxed time where we could catch up with our friends before having to do anything wedding-related. At 4 PM, we all arrived at the venue to figure out exactly how this whole getting married thing works.

Everyone mingled while Mr. Guinea Pig and I went over the order of events with our venue’s coordinator, Teresa (who was great, and the reason I never even considered a DOC).

(Bridesmaids! With Sister GP trying to figure out my (Canon) camera, in the background. Silly Nikon girl)

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It’s official, Guinea Pig recaps are here! And to start things off, I thought a sneak peek of the day might be in order.

You know how wedding photographers and websites like Once Wed, or Southern Weddings, etc. do posts with a handful of photos that give you a general feel for the day? I figured—what better way to kick off the Guinea Pig recaps than to do a quick photo tour of our wedding! I’ll admit, it was really hard to choose so few photos. I feel like there are so many more awesome photos to share (which, yay! I get to!), but I tried very hard to pick photos for this that would set the stage and give you a good idea of what’s in store for my recaps( as opposed to just 100 photos of Mr. GP and me - although I will admit quite a few of the two of us snuck in there!).

So without further ado, our wedding: wedding-blogland-style.
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I knew from the moment I started thinking about bridesmaids’ gifts, that I wanted to make something for my friends. Since I had already contributed $100 to each girl towards the purchase of her bridesmaid dress (I had promised myself a dress cost limit, and if it went over I would cover that out of my wedding budget), I had a pretty tight money restriction for gifts, plus I liked the idea of spending time making something for them.

I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to make until I saw this tutorial on how to make a clutch with a purse frame. Lightbulb! I knew this was perfect, and I immediately went on the hunt to find purse frames. My goal was to make a cute, elegant clutch that would go with lots of colors, and really had nothing to do with our actual wedding colors/scheme (because hard as it is for me to imagine, not everyone loves blue and yellow as much as I do).

I found some great frames on Etsy through the seller 3DPatternPaper: 8 x 3 inch frames in gunmetal!

(photo from seller 3DPatternpaper)

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In case you missed the first installment of our honeymoon recap, we Guinea Pigs went to Amelia Island, FL for a week of sun, relaxation, and fun activities!

We hung out on the beach,

(Mr. Guinea Pig checking out the small creatures living on a sand bar)

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After the wedding, we took a week’s honeymoon and relaxed in the amazingly perfect high 70s-mid 80s warmth and sunny weather of Amelia Island, FL (the only time it rained was the morning we were leaving)!

Mr. Guinea Pig and I could not wait for this time of relaxing together near both a beach and a pool, as well as with plenty of other fun options for keeping ourselves entertained (and not sunburned - we went through 5 bottles of sunscreen. In one week). We stayed at the Fairbanks House Bed & Breakfast, which was absolutely amazing and key to our super fun honeymoon (they have excellent romance packages for honeymooners, too!). Bill and Theresa, the innkeepers, are so friendly and ready to help - they made sure to give us directions when we needed them, made reservations for things we wanted to do or restaurants we wanted to eat at, and seemed to have an ’in’ for quick reservations pretty much anywhere they called!

Here’s the outside of the Fairbanks House as we are about to set off on a sunset horse-drawn carriage tour of the historic center of Amelia Island our second night there!

(Spanish moss everywhere - such a romantic setting!)

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I know, I know - everybody does it after they get married. There’s even an acronym for it: PWC (Post Wedding Chop). And not that I’m normally one to follow the masses and jump off a cliff just because my friends did (who else heard that from their mom all the time growing up?), but I had finally had enough of my long hair. Although, looking through everyone else’s PWCs, it does appear we all end up going from long straight hair to the same general short style! Maybe that’s ’cause it’s awesome.

I present to you, my Before hair:

(Right before going to my appointment)

This is pretty much the exact haircut I’ve rocked for… oh, about 26 years (apart from a short stint in 7th grade which we shall never talk about again). What can I say, it met all my criteria: no hassle (tucks behind ears and goes into ponytail easily), air dries well, requires zero thought in the morning.

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Our proofs!

(*all photos in the proof book are copyright of Amy Deputy Photography. Photos of the book are by this Guinea Pig)

(Yes, I’ve given up on blurring out our names)

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Okay, whew! We accomplished quite a bit the week before the wedding, as you’ve seen from all my posts that start with this title (our programs, colorful fabric flags, escort flowers, and OOT bags!). This is the final installment of what we finished in the days leading up to our wonderful wedding, and it covers a few different projects.

When I originally wrote about the luminaries I wanted to make, I wasn’t sure what graphic to use or how to get it onto the bag. I let this idea sit for a really long time before I stumbled upon this heart graphic, which I loved, and decided to use in several of our wedding projects (programs, water bottles, and OOT bag notes). I knew it would be the perfect match for the lacy luminary feel I was going for!

I already had all the bags with their tops punched using a lovely lace Martha Stewart punch:

(I punched the tops of 50 bags to use as luminaries)

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I was surprised, flattered, and thrilled to discover that so many people like, and also want to make, the escort flowers that we made for our wedding!

I received so many questions asking for more detail on how to make them that I decided it would probably be easiest for me to just do a tutorial. I’m excited you all want to make them! So here’s how I did things, which I’m sure is by no means the only way to do them. I tried to make it fairly detailed so as to answer all the questions I’ve gotten so far, but if you have any more questions, feel free to ask in the comments or PM me.

To start, here’s the paper I used:

(origami paper: one side is blue, the other side is white)

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When I first told you about my Out-Of-Town bag ideas, I talked about the Maryland-themed treats we were going to include, and I’m happy to report that everything was a big success! Here’s a quick peek inside a nearly-finished bag:

(Everything except one missing component, which you’ll see below! We generally gave one bag to each couple)

Do those bags look familiar?

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When I last talked about what I was going to do for escort cards, I showed you the idea I had to modify the origami flowers into escort flowers. Once I had completed that mockup I knew that was what I wanted to do, and began the process of folding enough petals to make one flower per guest. Since each flower requires 5 petals and we were estimating 160 guests, we folded 800 petals! And when I say ’we’, I really mean: my mom. Here’s a quick look at the final product, first!

(this photo copyright of Amy Deputy Photography)

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Similar to Ms. Snow and her solution to having extra fabric, after making the ties for the groomsmen and Mr. GP, as well as the blue sash for my dress, I had a fair bit of our blue and yellow fabrics left over. Because of the odd shapes the tie pattern had cut out of the fabric, I knew it couldn’t really be used for anything that required large sections of fabric, and I decided to make fabric flags with the leftovers! I wanted to use this to decorate the railing that was at the front of our ceremony space, behind our ’altar’ to add a little more splash of color.

If you remember from my programs post, I had an awesome team of women helping me out the last few days before the wedding, and we tackled this project with the same quick intensity as the programs (and this is definitely not the last you’ll see of their help - have I mentioned how deeply indebted I am to them?)!

Friend DB cut out all the flags from the fabric and sewed the foldover section at the top that the rope would eventually go through:

(I’m beginning to wonder if I have a photo of friend DB NOT at the sewing machine?)

Aunt M fray checked the edges of the blue flags:

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