Weddingbee Blog

Before I start my recaps (no, I haven’t forgotten them!) I want to take a moment to get real with you all. Not that I’ve ever been anything else… but this is something I need to say.

You all know this is my third marriage. As in, I’m already divorced…twice. Right. Third marriage. You all get it.

So here’s the thing. More than once in the past year, I’ve wondered what people must think of me. After all, some of these folks came to my first wedding. And some of the same folks showed up at the open house we had after my second husband and I eloped in St. Lucia. Some of these folks must wonder where I got off having an event for my third wedding.

When it got towards the end, I was all over the place emotionally. And finally I sat down with one of my oldest and dearest friends and told her what I was feeling. It was a good choice I made. What she told me that day still makes me cry. So pardon my tears while I tell you what happened.
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So, aside from relaxing, we did actually do some cool stuff on our honeymoon. I mean, we were in Costa Rica after all!

Our second day there we went on a hiking and ziplining tour. When we showed up for the early tour there was only one other couple going with us… our friends from the resort! (Psssst! Hi there guys!) Instead of telling you about it, let me just show you.

Loxes all geared up and ready to go!

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Well my loves, recap time is almost upon us. But while I sort through my pictures and make sense of all of this, I thought you might like to know what we did when it was all over.

Our wedding ended at 6:30 on a Sunday evening. We stayed that night at the B&B where it was held. And on Monday, we hurried home to pack and prepare for our Costa Rican honeymoon!

This was a big adventure for both of us. I had not traveled out of the country since I went to St. Lucia in 2005, and Mr. Lox hadn’t ventured outside our borders since his days as an enlisted man. So he was sporting a sparkling new passport and we both had our sense of adventure with us. Which was good, because it needed to get us through two 2.5 hour flights before we would land in San Jose, Costa Rica.

After getting off our plane, we hopped a ride to the rental car place and grabbed our ride… a Toyota Rav4, before setting off on a 3.5ish hour drive to our final destination.

We saw things like this…

What’s that on either side of us? A crazy yet purposefully planted forests of palm trees. See?
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So, now that the planning stage is over, I am totally qualified to tell you about my favorite part of the planning process. And it might surprise you… at least I know it surprised me.

One of the things Mr. Lox and I decided to do a long time ago was to take dance lessons before the wedding. But then, as wedding planning kicked into high gear, neither of us could really find the time to research and find a place to take lessons. I was surprised to learn that it’s not as easy to find good dance lessons as I thought it would be. But then, it was Groupon to the rescue. We found a Groupon for a Ballroom Blitz class. It was four weeks long with a different dance being taught each week. We figured we could decide which one of the four would be right for our song and then we’d be set.

After the third group lesson, we realized that a class like that wouldn’t cut the mustard for what we really wanted. It was fun, and I’m totally glad we did it (would do it again in a heartbeat) but we needed private instruction. So, just a handful of weeks before the wedding, we went for a package of 10 private dance lessons with Beginning Ballroom. And hive, this was the best wedding planning decision we made.

The obvious benefit was a confident and nice looking first dance. You all get that. But it had another, even greater, hidden benefit.
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Hive, I missed you all so much! Mr. Lox and I are back from our amazing honeymoon and I just wanted to check in.

The wedding…it was amazing. I’d sum it up for you if I could but it’s not a one post sort of thing. So let’s just wait for pictures and video and then we’ll talk in recaps, okay?

In the meantime, I thought you might enjoy a little photographic evidence that we actually did manage to do this amazing thing and get married. I promise, we will talk more about it later. In the meantime, I may take some time to gather myself, maybe talk about some last minute projects, and perhaps the honeymoon, too. We’ll see. But I’m here and I missed you.
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Dear Hive,

Well, it’s about that time. And I find myself completely at a loss for words. You all, every one of you, have been nothing short of amazing and our wedding… that little thing that’s happening TODAY… is better because I know you.

You have given me ideas, cheered me on when I faltered, and given me courage when I was fresh out. This wedding that’s about to happen is something more than it was when I started planning. And that’s because of you.

So in just a moment here, I’m going to sign off and go enjoy this one day I’ve been leading up to for the past year. I’m going to let people take care of me. I’m going to try to live up to my zen bride ideal. I’m going to try to take it all in. And I know, at least once or twice today, I will stop and think of how I simply can’t wait to tell you what just happened.
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You guys, we are two days out from the day. Two! Days! So pardon my utter insanity, pretty please?

One of the things we decided to do for our ceremony was to write our own vows. Or rather, I suggested it and Mr. Lox was on board. I’ve never done this before so I’d like to share the experience with you and perhaps help you from falling into the same trap that I did.

Obviously I read wedding blogs. And so I’ve read multiple times about people writing their own vows. I had visions or us telling each other how much the other means to us, why we love them, and what we promise for the rest of our lives. I did not, however, communicate any of that to Mr. Lox. Now, Mr. Lox does NOT read wedding blogs. After all, why should he when he has me? So when I said, “Let’s do our own vows!” he had something quite different in mind.

Then we decided it would be super romantic to keep the vows a surprise. You can see what’s coming right?

Mr. Lox sent his vows to the officiant last week, just a day or two before I was ready to send mine. I had about half a page typed that I was still refining a bit. And after he sent his, I had a horrible feeling. A feeling that these two sets of vows were not going to match up. So I asked him, without revealing the content, if he could give me an idea of the structure.

Remember the half a page I had written?
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So this weekend, Miss Sparkler reminded me about my plan to walk down the aisle alone. I know the last time we talked about it, I seemed like there might have been some wiggle room in that decision. That was a little unfair of me because there isn’t. For all the reasons I gave there and then some, I still plan to do this one by myself.

But I haven’t been able to shake the fact that I wouldn’t have made that decision if my step-father were still here to step in. It would have been his greatest joy to escort me down the aisle and I would have been delighted to have him do it. But it is what it is and he isn’t here with us, so that is not a choice I get to make.

So my dears, that brings us to the question of why on earth I’m writing about this again. I mean, if nothing has changed, then why bother to re-open the topic? Well, because something has, in fact, changed.

Like I said, I keep thinking of my step-father when I think about this. So it occurred to me that maybe I could find a way after all to take him down the aisle with me. Enter, my keychain:

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So as I’ve mentioned a few times before, there will, in fact, be children at our wedding. We could go over tons of reasons why and why not to have children at a wedding. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer or decision there. We decided to let them be there because I simply hated the idea that someone we love would miss our wedding because they couldn’t find a babysitter. So there it is. Children will be there.

That doesn’t mean I like the idea of bored kids running around, making noise at inappropriate times, or photobombing us. I do like the idea of kids dancing, having fun, and not being bored so their parents have to leave early. So, dear hive, what is the best way to keep children from getting bored? Give them something to do! This was the one project Mr. Lox has wanted since we first started wedding planning. And since he really hasn’t asked for much throughout this process, he was always destined to get his way here. So I started dreaming up ideas for activities for the children.

And we came up with this…

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Sorry y’all, I’m too frazzled now for cute titles. But I did want to not leave you hanging on the monogrammed totes. So cute title or not, we have spotted a tutorial!

First, you should gather all of your supplies. Here are mine:

Okay, there are some freeloaders in that shot, so let’s focus on the real supplies. Those are:
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No no, not you all. I mean, I’m glad you’re here and all. But today I’m talking about thanking those guests who are choosing to come a longer way and stay overnight with us at the inn. So Mr. Lox and I chose to make out of town bags for them. Okay, maybe that’s’ not exactly how it went. Perhaps to be more accurate, I should say that I decided to make OOT bags and Mr. Lox supported me like he almost always does.

Making the OOT bags was something I knew I ‘d do as soon as we knew we’d have OOT guests. And, truth be told, we don’t have many. But I still thought it would be nice. So that decision was simple. What wasn’t simple? Was deciding what they should look like and what should be in them!

After many iterations of what these would look like, they ended up like this.

Starting with the bag on the left and going clockwise, this is what we have:
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Hive, let’s take a moment to let me freak out. Our wedding…it’s getting CLOSE. Y’all can see I’m a May bride right? I mean, I’m less than a month away. So now I’m working on those last minute things… some of them more last minute than others. And as I get frenzied, I am hoping to keep up with you all. But if I don’t quite hold up my end of the bargain, you know where I am right? Right.

So back to the details… program fans were something I’ve been set on since I can’t even remember when. I was just fixated really. Initially, I hunted down templates all over the web. And each one was kind of worse than the last. Then I decided to just use 2 8.5×11″ pieces of cardstock. You know that was too big, right? Yeah, so do I. Now. So I got a little desperate and the hive came to the rescue. Specifically the fine bees in this thread. Thanks ladies!

In case you were wondering, the end solution was to use one piece of 8.5×11″ cardstock… cut in half. And so I was ready to go. And here is the skinny on how I did it.
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So the other trial I had this weekend was my makeup trial. I know…busy busy!

Unlike my hair trial, I didn’t go in armed with inspiration pictures. I did show her pictures of my dress and give her a general idea of what I was looking for. Basically, I want to look polished and have my skin look fantastic. I’d like a sort of natural look but with some oomph to the eyes. And of course, I had to go in bare-faced.

Here’s the deal. I know you all love a confident woman. And I’m totally cool with who I am. But who I am is a chick who doesn’t leave the house without a little bit of makeup at the very least. So what I’m showing you here is a testament to my love for you all. And visual proof of why I wear makeup even to the grocery store.
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This weekend was the weekend of trials for me. And first up? Was the hair.

Now before we get started, let’s take a walk down memory lane. We talked about my original hair-spiration. We also talked about how much I hate my natural curls. (I know, a bad curly girl is me. But that’s the way it goes.) And then we talked about new hair-spiration for straight lox. (Sorry, couldn’t help it.) Let’s revisit the final chosen inspiration…

From The Knot/Photo by Mary Claire Crow, Old Hickory

With side swept bangs like these…

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Mr. Lox and I finally have the complete set of numbers to give to the venue. So I thought, in the interest of full disclosure, that I would share them here. I’m going to limit our discussion to the adults we invited. As we’ve discussed before, we invited everyone’s children. However, a lot of folks chose to leave the young ones at home, so including the children in our numbers doesn’t give an accurate sense of our acceptance rate. And honestly, I’m pretty pleased with where we landed so I wanted you all to get a solid idea of it.

Here we go!

Total # invited: 70
OOT Guests: 9
“Local” Guests: 61
Total # of Invitations Sent: 40

Local is in quotations for a reason.
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