Weddingbee

Since apparently all I talk about is my own family history, let me just get one more tidbit in. My great-great-uncle invented the Adirondack chair at the house where we’re getting married, meaning several of the original chairs are still there!

So when I saw these online,

I couldn’t exactly not buy them, could I?

We aren’t having place cards, so I can’t use them for placecard holders (their intended purpose), but they are just too cute not to use somehow! I bought 12 (totally arbitrary number) in the unpainted wood. What do you think I should do with them?

We’re going to have a buffet, so my initial thought was propping up little cards saying what each dish is on them. I am open to any other suggestions as well. I would also be fine just strewing them about randomly on the buffet table or putting one as a part of each centerpiece… who knows.

What are you doing to spice your decor up a bit with personalization? While I love, love, love beautiful flowers and candles and linens and vases, I really wanted something a little more relevant tossed in there too.

And speaking of vases… the house being nearly 160 years old, has about ten million different vases of all shapes, sizes, colors, and patterns. I’m thinking of just putting bunches of flowers (the same for each table) into the varying vases? What do you think?

Speaking of family tradition… when my grandfather passed away last year, my mom and her sisters found these in my grandparents’ safe deposit box:

They belonged to my great-great grandmother and are both from the 1870s or 1880s. The pin was actually a gift to her from my great-great grandfather on their wedding day (and is inscribed with their initials and wedding date in 1878). We’re not sure when she received the necklace.

I’m definitely wearing the necklace, and if I can come up with a use for the pin, I might wear it (in my hair?) or have my mom wear it. In any case, I can’t imagine a more perfect “something borrowed!”

Here’s a picture of it on my neck:

And while I can’t post a picture of my wedding dress (ordered fifteen months before the wedding) for fear of Mr. Bluebell seeing it… I might as well give you a shoe teaser!

I saw these gold flip flops with gold sequins on the straps at Ann Taylor Loft that I’m not totally committed to yet. I know they sound kind of crazy, but they look like elegant sandals, and I am sooo not interested in hurting my feet or sinking in the mud on my wedding day, so I’m pretty set on it. (Plus I wear flip flops every single day that I can.) They go well enough with my dress, and I think my gold necklace will balance the flip flops out a bit, but mainly - my dress is long so I don’t expect anyone to see too much of them.

Do any of you have heirloom jewelry (or veils or dresses or anything else) you’re going to wear in your wedding?

First, I’d like to take a minute to introduce myself and my wedding!

My fiance and I are going to be getting married next June at my family’s summer house in the Adirondacks, built in 1848 by my great-great-great grandfather. Many generations of my relatives have been married here (including my parents and my brother), so in addition to all the general history of the house, this is about as traditional a location as it gets - for my family at least!

We were hoping to hold the ceremony outside with a view of Lake Champlain and the mountains in Vermont behind us, but so were my brother and sister-in-law and it rained for a solid MONTH before and on their wedding day. So we are definitely open to the possibility of a last minute shift to the parlor. The house itself isn’t really set up for large groups of people, though, so we’re hoping to have the ceremony in open air and then the reception in tents around the house. As you may have gathered by now, a lot of the character of our wedding is going to be dictated by our setting, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

But… you may noticed, my fiance and his family don’t seem to play into the plans much so far, whoops! To try to incorporate them into our otherwise traditional-for-my-family wedding, we’re going to have his dad play the erhu (which he plays semi-professionally, and composes for) during the ceremony, and have a lot of red accents (such as paper lanterns) since that’s the traditional Chinese wedding color. Mr. Bluebell is Chinese, by the way. We will also hold a Chinese wedding banquet 4 weeks after the upstate ceremony, in NYC, which will be pretty traditional in that respect (although way more vegetarian friendly for my sake!).

So far all of our biggest problems have been logistical… trying to coordinate with vendors 6 hours north of us, trying to find places for all our guests to stay (we’re hoping to rent out a number of houses from other parts of the family up there for the majority of our guests to stay in), trying to make it different from my brother’s wedding this summer without arbitrarily not doing things we liked about it just to be different….

But I’m sure you’ll hear a lot more about all of this later!

So I’ll leave you now with pictures of the house where the wedding will be:

And the view behind us during the ceremony!