The Other Miss Lollipop
August 27th, 2007 @ 12:35 pm by Mrs. Lollipop
A few days ago, on a whim I googled my WeddingBee name and discovered that the top result is not for a person, but for an airplane. The original Miss Lollipop was a B-17 bomber that flew missions over Europe during World War II. While the lovely Miss L found an inauspicious end at the bottom of the English Channel after only three months of service, the coincidence stirred the aviation genes deep within me.
And those genes came directly from my father, an aircraft mechanic. When I was younger, he took us to dozens of aircraft museums and we would spend hours looking at aircraft spanning the whole existence of human flight. And my dad knew something about each one, some fact or story. I really treasure that time spent with him and with the things he knows best. My brother must have felt the same; he grew up to be a pilot. I grew up to be someone who really loves planes. Every year when I lived in DC I would go to the Air and Space Museum for my birthday and would name as many planes as I could when driving past as a tour guide.
So, my inner aviation nerd collaborated with my inner design nerd to produce two stenciled B-17 travel cases, one for me and one for Mr. Lollipop.
My $100 Wedding Dress
August 24th, 2007 @ 4:22 pm by Mrs. Lollipop
Mr. Lollipop, I probably don’t need to tell you that you should wait to read this one until after the wedding.
I bought my dress almost exactly a year ago today. I wasn’t supposed to buy my dress when I did; I had only been engaged for a month. I was planning on a long, slow fight trying on dozens and dozens of dresses until I drowned in a pool lace and beads and tiny, fabric-covered buttons. We took a trip to the local David’s Bridal store because it was convenient and would be a good place to establish a baseline before moving on to more expensive stores. We wanted to know how I looked in a strapless vs. a v-neck dress, or an A-line vs. ball gown, etc.
I find David’s to be a hit or miss place. The staff can either be personable or grumpy and the dresses can be poorly made with cheap materials or pass for a much more expensive gown. It all depends on the store and the timing. Somehow we managed to get both right.
I went to the store in Robinson Township that day with just my mom and one of my bridesmaids. Through a stroke of luck we managed to hit the $100 dress sale. I tried on my first two gowns and both were not quite right. It turns out that both v-neck and strapless dresses make me look like a space alien.
The Backup Cake
August 23rd, 2007 @ 8:30 am by Mrs. Lollipop
Crud. So, my cake baker moved to Maryland and now she isn’t answering my emails. It might just be a momentary blip, but just in case, we have a plan to make the cake ourselves. Luckily, it will be a rice crispy cake and therefore easy to make structurally. I have some experience decorating with icing, so I hope that I can put something together that won’t look like it was made by a drunken marmoset. We are trying to keep it simple with plain white icing and decorations that can be made separately.
I couldn’t find marzipan anywhere that wasn’t already as hard as a rock, and I don’t trust myself with fondant, and so the decorations were made from Fimo clay. The figures were inspired by the penguin habitat in the back of our reception venue. There are 32 penguins total. There are 24 on the first layer, 6 on the second and two slightly larger ones on top.
The Table Layout
August 22nd, 2007 @ 11:52 am by Mrs. Lollipop
Weddingbees, I need your help. I put together a table layout yesterday to get an idea of what our reception will look like, but I’m torn about what kind of table cloth to use. We’re currently signed up for a cream colored tablecloth, but it might make the table look washed out. Orange would be too eye-watering, and bright green would hide the ring of circles and wheat grass around the centerpiece, and I spent far too long cutting them out to lose them. Maybe I should go for a celadon green?
Lino Block Print Thank You Cards
August 21st, 2007 @ 1:07 pm by Mrs. Lollipop
Our post-wedding thank you cards are much different than our pre-wedding cards and most of our other stationery. This is mostly because 1) screen printing in multiple colors is labor intensive and 2) I am tired.So, I went with a single color linoleum block print of our logo:
Getting Everyone Home Safe
August 19th, 2007 @ 10:27 am by Mrs. Lollipop
So, our hotel block didn’t work out too well. My fiance’s family booked a hotel 12 miles out of town so that they could save a few dollars, and my family procrastinated until the block expired. In the end, only five rooms out of the 20 were reserved before the deadline. We had planned to hire a shuttle service to drive everyone back to their hotels so that no one would have an excuse to drive while intoxicated. However, with our family scattered to the wind, such a shuttle suddenly became impractical.
What should I do? Would it be enough to frame some phone numbers for taxi companies, place them on the bar and leave it to the guests to make their own arrangements?
Sayin’ It With A Flag
August 17th, 2007 @ 11:50 am by Mrs. Lollipop
I’m not really in to having things thrown at me or leaving a mess on the church steps, so I had to think of something to replace the traditional rice or bird seed. Bubbles wouldn’t be a good substitute; I’ve never been able to open those little bottles without spilling their contents all over myself.So, to give everyone something to hold, I decided to hand out flags:
Pittsburgh Venue Round Up - Part 1
August 15th, 2007 @ 12:20 pm by Mrs. Lollipop
We started our search for a venue over a year ago, and it was by far the one wedding decision that required the most leg-work and careful research. We didn’t visit some well known locations like the Priory, Hyeholde or Armstrong Farms, but we did look at a variety of venues running a whole range of prices. Most of the observations below are a year old, so take them with the usual amount of salt.
Yay! Boo! Yay!
August 14th, 2007 @ 5:29 pm by Mrs. Lollipop
Inspired by Miss Eggplant’s post, I thought I would also post a list of our recent ups and downs.
Yay! All of my bridesmaids have purchased and tailored their gowns.
Boo! Our cake baker just moved to Maryland, though she swears that she’ll still get our cake done. I’m worried because we won’t be there for the trial run of the design.
Yay! We had enough guests decline so that we will be under budget and fit in our venue comfortably (although no surprises with so many guests overseas).
Boo! We will really miss seeing most of the guests who won’t be there.
Yay! Our koi nobori finally arrived! They will be used to decorate the aquarium and the church and they mark our last big wedding purchase.
Thank You Very Much!
August 10th, 2007 @ 12:49 pm by Mrs. Lollipop
Our first pre-wedding gifts have started arriving and our house is slowly filling with boxes and packing peanuts. I love checking the porch everyday to see what has arrived. I’d initially wanted to avoid registering or register only for a charity, but I was talked out of it by my mother and my fiance. Now, I look at the online registry every day to see what has been purchased for us. Deep down I am a greedy little monkey. (However, we do have a donation registry at Heal Africa just to balance out our karma a little.)
Anyhow, getting presents means writing thank you cards. I’m terrible about getting them done just because I feel obligated to write much more than a “Thank you for X!” Mr. Lollipop puts the same amount of thought into his thank you cards, but he is a lot more disciplined about getting them done. So, we usually do them together to prevent me from procrastinating. For our shower thank-yous we sat in the library for three hours and each wrote half. My mother’s family tends to fall into traditional gender roles, and they were shocked and amused to receive ones from Mr. Lollipop. Really, without him they would never get written, and besides, he picked out most of the registry himself!
Just as with our other correspondence, we created a customized design. This is our wedding shower and pre-wedding thank you card:
Mrs. Lollipop, Pittsburgh
Age and Occupation: 26, Computational Linguist
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 26, Project Manager
Engagement Date: August 2, 2006
Wedding Date: September 2, 2007
Blogging Since: July 17, 2007
Venue: The PPG Aquarium at the Pittsburgh Zoo
About Me: I'm a Pittsburgh transplant who grew up in the deep south. I have a weakness for exotic alphabets, DIY projects, mobster movies and international travel. My fiance and I are both non-native Japanese speakers and we have a bullfrog named Skinny.
