Weddingbee Blog

I’ve been very worried about how RSVPs will go for all our wedding events because of two people: my mother and my fiance. Momma Kettle and Mr. Kettle are both…RSVP-delinquents. Seriously, hive, they never never RSVP. I just knew this would cause a catastrophe for our wedding-related events because that’s how karma works.

Many a bride have had to track down my momma to ask about attendance at a wedding for my mother only to respond, “I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know next week.” And to my knowledge, Mr Kettle has never RSVPed to a wedding he wasn’t a musician at.

In dramatic fashion, I’ve been drawing the back of my hand to my forehead and sighing worriedly that no one will RSVP to our events. Don’t worry, I knew they’d come, I just figured we’d never be able to get an accurate head count ahead of time.

Our e-party invites had gone out and on them people were asked to either call/text my mother with their RSVP or go to our wedding website and do it.

There have been all types of responses. A couple called/texted my mom and a couple went to our website. But oh, there were others.

There were rebels.
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In my last post, I left off with ominous words. Yes, we left David’s Bridal and headed to Eva’s Bridal. This wasn’t the Eva’s Bridal in Tinley Park where I bought my dress. This was the Eva’s Bridal in Orland Park. They had dresses and were up the street, so we figured we’d check them out so the day wouldn’t be a total waste.

After the magic with the first dresses, I didn’t think we’d find it again. But I went through the same routine nonetheless:

1. Have the girls pick out dresses they all seriously like.
2. Veto the ones I hate on sight.
3. Have them try on the dresses they picked.
4. Have other girls try on dresses as I decide they work on each successive girl.

We changed it up this time and made step #3 “make sure the dress is available in our color choice.” We looked at all the purples and ultimately chose that same blue-ish purple color we now know is called Regency.

I didn’t have high hopes that we’d find yet another dress that looked amazing on every girl. They’re just too different. They have seriously different body types. Kind of like this:
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I didn’t want to make a big production of finding bridesmaids’ dresses. I had my maid of honor and Mr. K’s maid of honor look online for the last month or so. We found a couple of great options. David’s Bridal seemed to be the place to go to in order to fit into a certain price range and style selection. I made an appointment for a Wednesday when most everyone was available.

My maid of honor, MOH Indy, lives in NYC, so she wasn’t available. But Mr. K’s maid of honor, his sister, was available, as were her twin daughters who are our flower girls. Also available were all my bridesmaids, except one. Our two junior bridesmaids were also there to try on dresses. Throw in my mother, Mr. K’s mother and sister, and we had a group of 14 females—only 4 of whom weren’t trying on a single dress.

It was so much more fun than you could imagine. I was going around ooh-ing and aah-ing at all the pretty dresses and taking pictures. The flower girls didn’t want to take off their “princess dresses.”

Personal Image: Vera Wang shoes that we still drool over in memory.

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Trying to find the perfect location for our engagement party seemed like a big deal, but only to me and Momma Kettle. Grandmother Kettle kept reminding me that she’d never been to an engagement party before so she didn’t see the big deal.

I reminded her she’d just never been invited to one before, so that wasn’t quite the same thing as it being some made-up newfangled party for Mr. Kettle and me.

I do think my mother and I made it more difficult on ourselves than we had to, though. We went through several idea before we settled on one that worked.

Image: Maggiano’s / Here Comes The Guide

Plan: Sit-Down Dinner At a Restaurant; like Maggiano’s in Chicago

Why It Seemed Great: Imagine that picture, except for an engagement party instead of a wedding reception. All of our family gathered for the type of food Chicagoans constantly drool over.

Why It Didn’t Work:
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Everyone says how important it is to get a guest list together before you get too deep into wedding planning. Those people would be 100% right. Because we only had a tentative guest list of around 250 people, we felt confident that all the venues we were looking at would work no problem.

Mr. Kettle and I, Momma and Daddy Kettle, FSIL Grand, and Mema and Dad Kettle all sat down and hashed out a preliminary guest list. But then the numbers began creeping up. Mema Kettle thought of more people who had to be invited. Most were family, so we added them.

I have no idea what the total number of people was who were suggested to be on the list. But I think, between the seven of us, that list had the potential to be almost 500 people had we included everyone. That definitely wasn’t going to work.

In that first meeting, I saw my dreams of a smaller guest-list wedding going away and never coming back. I reassessed my priorities and realized it was probably better to include more people if it fit in the budget because that meant a bigger party and more people there we cared about.

So, you must be asking, where does the rebellion come in? The fight I had on my hands to get everyone’s addresses required a bit of rebellion on my part and Mr. Kettle’s part, too.

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I’m not exactly a type-A personality, but being organized is super important to me. Marrying a man like Mr. Kettle makes that all the more important. We each have things we forget, and of course they’re different types of forgetting. That type of behavior doesn’t gel with effective wedding planning.

Seeing as how we didn’t want to pay money for a wedding planner, just a day of coordinator, it was imperative that I stay very organized while putting together the details of our wedding.

I managed to get some big decisions handled up front. At least they seemed big at the time. Then five minutes later, I would think about everything else left to do and that one item checked off would seem like nothing. I feel this way every time.

Enter a two-fold solution: A wedding binder and a wedding website. I have both and so far I’m super glad I do. Some things I have recorded in both. Others I use just one or the other.

As I mentioned before, I got a binder from Russell and Hazel.

This Russel + Hazel wedding planner became my best friend. From Office Depot I got a calendar, page protectors, highlighters, colored gel pens, and a briefcase. The briefcase has a dual purpose. This wedding binder will have to be carried with me everywhere I go from now until February 11th, so I wanted something to carry it in that wasn’t my purse. ‘Cause that sucker is huge!

Personal photo: This is the super cute bag I got for my binder.

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I saw all these things online, including on Weddingbee, about brides who had designed their own save the dates. There were the picture-booth STDs, the refrigerator-magnet STDs, the personal-photo STDs. And then there were STDs that were some lovely combination of the three.

I thought, “I could do that! I work 12-hour shifts sitting in front of a computer. I can knock those out with my occasional free time in a couple of shifts!” So I headed over to Vistaprint to see what I could come up with.

I quickly learned the easier thing to do was to design something myself about the right size on my beloved Microsoft Word and upload it as my own design. Making it the size of a postcard was waaaaay cheaper than paying $7.99 for every 10 invites of a different size.

Wedding Planning Tip #5: If you have a large guest list, don’t order anything that only comes in sets of 10, except party favors.

I got to work designing the invitations. I used that first color that we came up with. The one that’s on the thank you wreath. I felt pretty proud of my design. I was feeling confident that I could easily design our wedding invitations as well since this had been so painless.

Personal image: Original STD design

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Anyone want to say this post title three times fast? It’s hard. Hehe, I crack me up.

OK, hive. It was quite the journey to our current color palette, but I’m very happy with how it turned out. I’ve alluded to our colors here and there and mentioned some changes we went through. Ultimately, I’m very happy with how it turned out.

When Mr. Kettle first proposed, I was thinking blue. Like a nice, happy royal blue.

Image: Royal Blue Tuxedo Vest from Tuxedos Online

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What’s flush tea?

Taking that first crack at looking natural in photographs was no easy task for me, but before we even got there, we had to find a photographer.

For some reason, finding a photographer for this wedding has been a major source of stress for me. I didn’t know this would be the case at first, so I dove into finding a photographer with the same gusto as everything else. Mucho gusto, that is.

But then I hit a wall. I had too many photographers. I was getting follow-up calls at the most inconvenient times. I couldn’t coordinate schedules with Momma Kettle or Mr. Kettle to set up meetings. I began avoiding the calls like I was avoiding a bill collector. It was bad, y’all.

Image: Lockhorn vs. Lockhorn Blog / Cartoon by The Lockhorns

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Hive, I must tell you, the first two DIY projects I talked about weren’t actually my first. You’re never supposed to lie about your first, but…I was ashamed. I was proud of what I did at the time, but then…well…

You look on Weddingbee and someone points out how something you just spent hours on was probably a terribly unimaginative, wholly unimportant, overwhelmingly uncreative waste of time and money. They weren’t talking about you specifically, they were talking about your type of project. You hang your head in shame and vow never to speak of your first.

An amazing amount of creativity finds its way to the surface, and you are overwhelmingly uncreative no more. Your unimportance suddenly is less whole and your imagination is far less terrible. The clouds part and you put out good work.

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While I was working on the STD bunting, I was also working on my idea for our thank you cards. I’d seen around the internet some ideas for thank you cards incorporating pictures of the couple with a sign saying “thank you.” I loved idea soooo much.

Once I realized I’d use the bunting to say “save the date,” I wanted to do something different for our thank you cards. I knew I’d rather have the pictures be from our engagement photos as opposed to our wedding photos, so I needed to get it done immediately.

While at Michaels, I was strolling around and stumbled across the wooden number/letter aisle. I don’t know why, but I really like wooden letters. And then the wheels began turning. I could paint those in our wedding colors! Oh yeah, and I could attach them to…something. Then inspiration struck! At the front of the store, they had all sorts of doodads for hanging.

It was an ah-mazing sale on wreaths and wreath hangers. Feeling pretty pleased with my idea, I headed to the paint aisle to see if they had the right colors. They did! Winning! I quickly grabbed up small bottles in the colors of our wedding (at least what they used to be). Since I was over there, I grabbed some fake baby’s breath to add more flair. I was ready to get to work.

This is the aisle at Michaels. Soooo many letters and numbers just waiting to be jazzed up. Crafty droool.

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Hive, I have a confession. I’m crafty, but my intentions are not pure. When I first discovered Weddingbee, the blogger in me was dying to become a part. I wanted to be a bee blogger so bad.

Knowing how Weddingbee is so full of DIY projects, I figured I’d have to do a couple and get them on my blog so when I applied I would be a more appealing candidate. The benefit of these first couple of projects to my actual wedding was very very secondary. Whew! I feel good for getting that out.

I saw, on the lovely world wide web, lots o’ DIY projects of handmade things for the bride and groom to hold while posing for pictures. Some say “thank you” and then are used for special-order thank you cards for after the wedding.

I loved this idea and thought I could incorporate it into something fun as one of my first DIY projects. I wanted to make a banner for our STDs (hehe, still funny even though bee after bee has immaturity moments with this).

Bunting seemed like the easiest thing to do, so I went with it. A trip to Michaels secured all the supplies. And a large dining room table courtesy of Mema Kettle supplied the work area. I went to Michaels to pick up supplies for this and my other DIY project (a “thank you” wreath).

When I got back to the house, I set to work. It was a lot of steps and, because I was working on both projects at once, it took all day. Plus I ran out of ribbon and had to take FNIL Tiny (’cause she’s tiny) with me to Wal-Mart to find more. But FSIL Hon helped out tremendously. When I told her I was taking pictures in hopes of blogging about it in the future, she refused to let more than her hand be photographed, but I will get more shots the next time she’s back stateside.

That’s FNIL Tiny. She’s waaaay high up in the tree in front of Mema Kettle and Kettle Dad’s house. She’s very helpful and she’s going to make a great junior bridesmaid!

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When I think of me being Miss Kettle, I tend to think of this:

Image: Mrs. Potts from The Disney Wikia

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I’ve been trying to be clever and think of tea-themed post titles. Maybe I’m not so clever…but I know that a kettle belongs in the cupboard with other tea items, so I think of our wedding venue as our cupboard, especially since the ceremony and reception will be in one spot.

Image: Amish Corner Cupboard Hutch / Furniture by Dutch Crafters

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What is the best way to be a rebel bride when it comes to your wedding venue? Well, it depends on a couple of factors. For me, it was all about avoiding the church.

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