Weddingbee Blog

Thus far, our planning process has been pretty smooth. We’ve signed contracts with almost all of our vendors. It almost feels like we’re in the home stretch. We’re at the point that we’re getting back in touch with the different businesses we’re using to solidify details. I’m dreading the fact that one vendor might need to be reminded about the contents of our contract.

I take the concept of honor pretty seriously. The idea of not following through on a promise is unfathomable. Before I signed contracts, I scoured review websites, both general ones like Yelp and wedding-specific ones like WeddingWire, in hopes of finding like-minded vendors. I combed through blogs to read the opinions of people who had used my vendors in the past. I think I have a pretty impressive team assembled.

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It’s been a little while since I talked about flowers. Last I mentioned them, I was just gathering inspiration and taking note of all the fantastic florists in the Charlottesville area.

This is when I actually started to collaborate with another bride who was also getting married at Pippin Hill Farm & Vineyards. She found me through blogging and we chatted now and then by email about the planning process. We even met up at the vineyard for lunch one afternoon. Does that make us venue twins?

We’re both busy with time intensive jobs and were able to “divide and conquer” a little bit when it come to vendor research. For example, she had already spoken to one florist on my list and knew that she only took jobs where the flower budget was over a certain amount. That amount was a little over my budget, so I crossed her off my list. There were a few cases where we had both met with the same vendor (floral and otherwise) and it was helpful to compare notes after those meetings.

From Pat’s Floral Designs’ Facebook page / Flowers by Pat’s Floral Designs / Photo by Jen Fariello Photography

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I previously shared that I was never really shoe obsessed before getting engaged. The lust for designer heels that Carrie Bradshaw seemed to usher into the mainstream never really hit me. I like shoes and I have plenty of them, but only after getting engaged did I really start poring over footwear options.

My suspicion is that during the early days of our planning, our “to-do” list seemed long and I was intimidated. Shoes were something I could handle. Shoes didn’t require signing contracts or vendor meetings. So I went shopping.

Remember the $8 pair of shoes I found at the J. Crew Warehouse Sale in Richmond? I was pretty proud of my deal, but the more I looked at the shoes, the more I wished the flower embellishments at the toe weren’t so worn and rumpled from being thrown in a big box with dozens of other pairs of shoes at the sale.

Photo by Miss Mink

One Saturday morning, I decided to poke around and see if I could fix the flowers.
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When I find a great fabric, I want to use it everywhere! I know I have good company…there’s a fabric called Chiang Mai Dragon by Schumacher that took the design blogging world by storm last year. People were finding ways to incorporate the design into everything. Someone even painted an entire wall to mimic the design.

I’m as crazy for the Robert Allen fabric called Vintage Plumes I’m using for wedding projects. Since I don’t think the kind folks at Pippin Hill Farm would be down with painting their space just for me, I’m looking for different ways to bring the pattern and its colors into our wedding. I already created table number frames using the fabric and I decided that our escort card board could showcase a big piece of it. I was inspired by a board I came across while trying to find a template for another project on the Martha Stewart website.

From Martha Stewart Weddings

Without a die cutting machine, I went online to find paper I could run through my printer that had perforated tags on it. I found one website that had what I wanted after much searching and placed an order. About a month later, Avery came out with the same product and it’s probably at every office supply store in the country. Oh well. Next, I had to create the board.
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Am I the only one who gets fired up for a DIY project? I love our wedding projects, even the ones that are a little painful to complete. The next project on the horizon is figuring out how to get our guests to their seats. I almost put an exclamation point there. Wow.

I knew right away that I wanted to use escort cards instead of a seating chart. I’m sure you’ve seen these charts, which seem to have been everywhere for the past few years:

Photo & window by Etsy seller Beyond White

The window pane seating plan is very cute, but if we were going in that direction, I think I’d be more tempted to try to this more polished adaptation, using a large, leaning mirror:
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There’s no point in dragging this out. Yesterday, I wrote about trying to decide between cupcakes and mini cupcakes for our wedding. It all sounded so cute and fun, but we changed our minds. We want cake. Wait. I want cake.

This is one of those situations where Mr. Mink has been totally easy-going. He doesn’t care if we have cupcakes or a traditional cake. He just wants to get to the part where we have a couple tastings! Every time I started taking about cake and cupcakes, Mr. Mink would joke that we were going to have his mother’s red velvet cake for our wedding cake and we could smoosh my mother’s chocolate chip cookie fingers (almost shaped like biscotti) into the sides. I finally stopped talking and just looked at the inspiration pictures I saved to my Pinterest boards. Almost every image was of a cake.

I think I was swayed by two things. First, the pictures of couples cutting their cakes are appealing to me. I know we could cut a one tiered cake or a cupcake, but amidst the non-traditional decisions we’ve made, I like the idea of doing something traditional. Second, I love the variety of cake designs. Some of the cakes out there are works of art.

From Style Me Pretty / Cake by Tallant House / Photo by Red Box Pictures

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If you haven’t figured it out yet, Mr. Mink and I are pretty comfortable with embracing the non-traditional in our wedding planning process. We don’t set out to make odd decisions, but sometimes they feel right to us. There have been a few times when the sheer popularity of something has pushed us away from it, though. I think this might be happening with our dessert decision. Cupcakes are everywhere.

Long before people started standing in line at Magnolia Bakery, I loved cupcakes. I was thrilled when they became more popular. When they crossed over into weddings, I was thrilled. I still haven’t been to a wedding with cupcakes, but I feel like it’s inevitable. Dare I say they’re almost common now? I mean, it’s been almost 10 years since cupcakes made the cover of Martha Stewart Weddings…

Cover shot from a 2003 issue of Martha Stewart Weddings

When I discussed having cupcakes at our wedding with my sister-in-law, who is also a bridesmaid, she gently pointed out that eating a cupcake is sometimes a bit messy. I had pictured all the pretty, little cakes displayed, but never imagined the logistics of people eating their cupcakes.
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With a few major holidays stacked together in December, January, and February, this time of year is when many newly engaged couples are dipping their toes into wedding planning. That means it’s bridal show season! While these events are a lot of fun, they can also be exhausting and overwhelming. You can also leave these shows with your arms full of brochures and business cards from vendors you didn’t even know you “needed” when you started planning.

With a few of these events under my belt, I thought I’d share three suggestions for navigating the bridal show waters effectively.

1. Be stingy with your contact information

I believe that you are under no obligation to subject yourself to spam and junk mail when you attend a bridal show.

Most large wedding shows attract hundreds (maybe even thousands) of couples. Their registration lists are used to push out a steady stream of emails and mailings to engaged couples. Some of the communication you get might be from a vendor that interests you, but a lot of it will be spam. I think that it is perfectly acceptable to use fake contact information and a slightly altered name at the registration desk of the huge bridal shows at exposition centers.

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For years, I was convinced that I wasn’t crafty despite the fact that I love painting. Liking something and actually thinking you do it well are two different things! So, while I enjoyed DIY projects around the house, I didn’t think I was doing anything all that great.

Until wedding planning started. I realized that I love wedding projects and I’m pretty happy with how they turn out. Hooray!

Of course, up until now, my projects were fairly small…some moss letters, boutonnières for my ring bearers, table numbers, and some partially DIYed hangers. There was one big project in the back of my mind and I decided to tackle it over the holidays. Corn hole boards.

Image from Style Me Pretty / Photo by Shyla Photography

I first saw corn hole boards when visiting friends in Ohio back in 2004. They were wild about the lawn game.
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Just a few months after we got engaged, Mr. Mink and I decided to stop in do some very preliminary shopping for wedding bands. We knew we had plenty of time to order our bands, but we like our jeweler so much that we can’t help but go into say hello to her when we walk by.

Mr. Mink once said that he never imagined that he’d have someone to call “my jeweler” in his life. Diane became his jeweler when he started buying me pieces from my favorite jewelry designer a few years ago. I didn’t know her very well, but when we shopped for my engagement ring, I got to know her better. During that shopping trip, we looked at scores of rings, but I fell in love with one setting. When Mr. Mink proposed, I was so excited to see that he used that setting. I’m sure the little notes Diane had been making in her book when we shopped together had helped. I loved my ring.

I didn’t love what I learned when we did that preliminary browsing: that the shape of my ring would require a custom made band if I wanted the two rings to fit together without smoothly.

Oh pretty ring, why are you so difficult? / Photo by Miss Mink

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I never felt old before I started reading wedding message boards and blogs. Age was never really something I thought about all that much. Perhaps it’s because my mother wore her age fairly proudly and never seemed obsessed with looking younger. People always seemed shocked to know her age. Her hair stylist seems convinced that she has a colorist because she’s still a redhead in her late 60s.

Working in academia has probably kept me young at heart. I’m surrounded by the energy and enthusiasm of students in the college bubble. Though I finished graduate school just over a decade ago, people still ask me what year I am as if I’m a student. I haven’t yet considered that a compliment, but I know there’s a time when I will.

Getting engaged at 33 felt just right. I considered myself a city girl before coming to Virginia and city dwellers (especially those in the northern cities) tend to marry a little later than others. I didn’t realize that in the world of wedding blogs and message boards, I’m old.

Image 1 from Style Me Pretty / Photo by Agnes Lopez Photography

Image 2 from Style Me Pretty / Photo by Mademoiselle Fiona

Image 3 from Style Me Pretty / Photo by Olive Juice Studios

Early on in my planning, I felt just fine about my age.
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When people think of the music at wedding ceremonies, there’s a certain sound that comes to mind. There are lovely groups of musicians who specializing in playing harps, violins, flutes, and cellos at wedding ceremonies. While those groups always sound very nice when I’m a wedding guest, I wasn’t all that excited about having that sound at our wedding ceremony.

From the King Family Vineyards website

As I explained in the past, we are hugely into music. Mr. Mink is a radio show host and we are loyal fans of improvisation. At first, Mr. Mink thought I would want ultra-traditional music. I did a little homework and looked at area musicians who play wedding ceremonies. They all looked wonderfully talented, but none made me excited. I told Mr. Mink that I couldn’t imagine any of the people I found at our wedding. I wanted upbeat music that would make me smile, nothing that sounded solemn or sacred. I wanted “our” music and I wanted guitars.

That’s when Mr. Mink contacted this guy:
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Did I mention that we are going to have FOUR of our little nephews in our wedding? We don’t want them to be overly scripted or get too rigid with their roles, so I envision just sending them all down the aisle as a group to do what little boys do: make noise and make people smile.

I wanted to give the boys boutonnieres, but didn’t find the idea of having anything too formal pinned to their outfits. I started to look for a cute alternative. First, I found ribbon badges all over the internet. My favorite came from the Weddingbee boards.

The button in the middle of the ribbon badge from those images was cute, but not cute enough. I wanted something that little boys would like. I also hoped that it would be in some way related to the wedding. That’s when I started looking for little golden retrievers. I was thinking of boutonnieres like these from Fritts Rosenow:

From Love and Lavender / Boutonnières by Fritts Rosenow

Mr. Mink, who I call eagle eye when we shopping, helped me comb the scrapbook and jewelry sections of the craft store one Sunday completely expecting to find some little golden retrievers.
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I never attempted to write about our photographer before. As a blogger, I digest thousands of photos each evening, as I flip through the posts from my favorite blogs. With my feet in two blogging worlds, wedding and design, I’m keeping track of hundreds of feeds with my blog reader. I love photography. Photography is so important to me that I felt like a post about it deserved a lot of my time. Having taken a few days off around the holidays, I now feel as though I can write about this aspect of our wedding.

From Elisa B Photography’s Facebook page / Photo by Elisa Bricker of Elisa B Photography

You’d think that someone who loves photography would have launched an exhaustive search of portfolios, interviewed a dozen photographers, and created an elaborate assessment tool before picking a vendor. I like to say that I made up my mind in a pizza parlor…but it’s not entirely true.
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Having grown up with a devoutly religious mother, the wedding scenes I imagined as a child were all inside the church I visited every Sunday. As my identity developed in my 20s, my relationship with that church evolved and I no longer felt compelled to get married in it. I moved away and was exposed to more belief systems as a result. I remember taking the “Belief-o-matic” quiz and reading a lot on ReligiousTolerance.org during that period and was surprised by some of what I learned. Meanwhile, Mr. Mink grew up going to church occasionally, but didn’t feel a connection to a particular sect as an adult.

When we started to talk about finding an officiant for our wedding, Mr. Mink suggested a friend of his who got ordained online a while back. At the time, I didn’t know the friend very well and the idea wasn’t all that appealing. I was much more hopeful that a wonderful neighbor who was serving as an interim pastor for a church in town would be part of our day.

Image from the Charlottesville Wedding Blog / Photo by Anne & Bill Holland of Holland Photo Arts

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