Weddingbee Blog

Yesterday, I posted some of our fun, goofing-off poses. Here are a bunch o’ the more ’serious’ ones.

This is what we’re using in the newspaper announcements:

It’s one of my favorites!

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I love our photog. She’s so much fun; and we really just got to fool around and be silly during our session. As evidenced by this:

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I just took my last final of the semester (yay!), which means that all I have standing between me and wedding planning is one more week of preschool.

What do I have left to do? So much…everything from vows and Do Not Play lists, to the flower girl baskets and buying all the food. I can’t believe I’ve been planning this shindig for nearly a year, and I still have so much to do!

But despite it all, we’re running off to St Louis one more time. Mr. Blueberry’s parents have season tickets to the Cards, so I think we’re going to the game on Tuesday, and Mr. Blueberry still needs some wedding clothes (”What do I need besides a tux?”). Most of his polos and button-up shirts have seen better days, so we’ve got to get him outfitted for the rehearsal dinner and the day-after brunch. Who knew men’s casual wear was so hard to plan? Well, for someone who hates khakis, it is!

6 days before the wedding–I’ll be in Kansas City for good. That’s when I’ll finish up all those aforementioned projects–it’s gonna be a hectic few days!

How many days are you taking off before the wedding? Do you think it’ll be enough time?

Even though I’ve been shaving my legs since I was a pre-teen, I still haven’t perfected the process. And for someone who enjoys wearing casual skirts as much as I do, it can be quite annoying to discover a massive patch of stubble that my razor somehow missed.

I think, then, that I want to check out the new Nair for sensitive skin. I hear that Nair has come a long way since the 1970’s horror stories I’ve heard, and with this new sensitive formula I think I’d feel fairly confident putting it on my tender gams.

If I do try it, I’ll test it on a small area first to make sure I’m not allergic, but hey–just in case, my wedding dress is long, right? hehehe

Have any of you guys tried Nair lately? Would you recommend it?

Now, I won’t call it a destination wedding–especially since over 50% of our guests live right here in town. But planning a wedding in Kansas City while going to school in a town 150 miles away is no easy task. Most of you, I think, can hop into Michael’s whenever you want, can meet with vendors on a Tuesday afternoon, or take inventory of your wedding purchases on a whim. See, I can’t do any of that.

Our ‘wedding central’ is my parents’ house in KC. Their guest room is dedicated to all our wedding stuff, and my childhood bedroom is full to the brim with gifts. Whenever I’m in town I love to go through it all and remind myself of what we’ve bought and received, since we don’t have constant access to it.

Back when we were hiring vendors (summer ‘06), we would have to schedule all the meetings back-to-back in marathon sessions, and in some cases we even had to hire them over the phone.

Since our RSVPs were sent to my parents’ address, I can’t eagerly run down to the mailbox every day to look for those lil’ blue envelopes. Instead, I get a daily call from my dad with the mail report. All I’m ‘really’ missing out on is reading the sweet messages so many of our guests write on the cards.

It could be a lot worse, I suppose. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t envious of all of you who can access your wedding stuff at a moment’s notice, rather than driving 150 miles to get to it or conducting business over the phone.

Our RSVP’s were marked “The courtesy of your reply is requested by the first of May 2007″. So far, of the 83 invites we sent out, we’ve gotten 45 back–just over half of them. Now, somehow I doubt we’ll get 38 responses in the mail tomorrow–don’t you?

You may know I’m not a patient person, so the amount of uncertainty we still have is killin’ me!

So for you already-marrieds: how long did it take until you got the majority of the responses back? When did you start pestering people?

I know it’s sort-of relatively last minute to be thinking about this, but now I’m having a thought (uh oh! Miss Blueberry having a thought? Hang onto your veils, girls!)…

You probably already know that we’re having a dessert reception, but I’ll just go ahead and say it again. It’ll be full-blown, not just a little wedding cake + mints + punch thing…

We’re talking cake, (fudge) groom’s cake, 2 chocolate fountains, baklava, kourambiedes, various pastries, snickerdoodles, sugar cookies, macadamia white chocolate chip cookies, mini cheesecakes, petit fours, sugar-free brownies, rice crispie treats (mmmmmmmm), Sour Patch kids (Mr. Blueberry loves ‘em!), those cute wedding-colored M&M’s, and lots more that I can’t think of off the top of my head.

But now I’m thinking (hence the aforementioned concern for y’all’s well-being). We’re having wine, and we’re having fruit. So wouldn’t it be cool to have cheese, too? Yeah, it would.

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In addition to working toward my BA in English, I’m a preschool teacher. I don’t usually blog about this because if I started, it’d open a floodgate–what cute things each kid has done that day, etc. And of course, I want to protect the kids’ privacy. So I’ll just say “I’m a preschool teacher” and leave it at that.

I landed the job in September of last year, after our wedding date had been firmly established. It was shortly after that, though, that I discovered when the last day of school is: Yep, May 25th. If the wedding were in my college town, or the preschool were in Kansas City, you bet your bippy I’d be there on the last day. But alas, it just isn’t possible.

This really makes me sad. Many of my students will be advancing to kindergarten, so I won’t be seeing them again very frequently, if at all. It breaks my heart that I’ll be missing their last day; that I’ll have to say my goodbyes several days prior.

But I’m not just telling my sob story for pity… Did your wedding accidentally coincide with another big event? How did you/will you cope with it?

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Since our wedding reception will be a dessert buffet instead of a sit-down dinner, and our day-after celebration will be a brunch, the only ‘real food’ of the wedding weekend will be the rehearsal dinner. And man, am I looking forward to it!

The rehearsal and dinner will both be at the venue, which makes things easy for us! We’re starting the rehearsal at 5:00 and plan on doing two run-throughs. Dinner should start at 6:00, and we’ll be feasting on:

Buffet dinner to consist of:

House Salad with choice of 2 dressings
Toasted Ravioli and dipping sauce
Chicken Spiedini w/ lemon & garlic marinade (side of spaghetti & red sauce)
Fettucini Alfredo w/ shrimp
Green Bean Almondine
Assorted Rolls & Butter
Assorted Desserts (Tiramisu, Cannoli, Cheesecake)
Soda, ice tea, water & coffee
Wine and beer Read more…

(Just kidding, actually. Mr. Blueberry has made some very important decisions concerning the wedding).

Last week Mr. Blueberry came to me with some rather startling info. He’s changed his mind about this getup:

And has decided that this is how he wants to look at the wedding:

OK well maybe not quite, but he has decided that he likes the bow tie more than the traditional one.

I am really against this–I don’t tend to like bow ties, and I think that given the builds of the other men in tuxes–his BM and our dads, it really wouldn’t be very flattering. But Mr. Blueberry wants what he wants, so I guess bow ties it will be ::sigh::. Now I’m in the process of convincing myself that it’ll be more formal, and that since this is the one time in his life Mr, Blueberry will get to wear a bow tie, he should be able to.

The other day I was Gmail chatting with my dad about my recent blog post, and he showed me a link to an ad that Google had decided worked well with our conversation:

Let’s Run Off

It’s a wedding planning site, rather Knot-esque, with hints and tips for anyone considering elopement. Though they seem to stretch the term “elopement” to include many DW’s and smaller ceremonies and are maybe a bit light on the “why the heck are you eloping anyway? Is it for the right reasons?” side of things, the site does seem to have more than a few good ideas to toss around.

But the meat of LRO is found in their registry–they work through online retailers L’n'T, Amazon, and Macy’s to create one ‘LRO’ registry.

A cute site, but really–isn’t a big part of elopement the spontaneous, secret, romantic nature of the thing? I guess I just don’t quite see the point, y’know?

So if you weren’t considering eloping before, would you think about it now?

No, really.

After this massive spate of wedding-related troubles (ring bearer issues, flower girl dress issues, hotel reservation issues, bridesmaid dress issues, etc…), Mr. Blueberry said, “I wish we’d just eloped.”

We then proceeded to have a game of chicken (”You want to go elope? Fine! Let’s go.” “OK, we’re going…I mean it!” “I mean it too. We’re eloping. Right now.” “Yep.”) that culminated in standing outside, barefoot (me in my pyjamas), at 9:30 at night, ready to get in the car to go elope. And then, only then, did Mr. Blueberry call my bluff.

So we’ll still be getting married on May 25th, but don’t think I wasn’t tempted to just do it and get it over with.

Are you ever tempted to elope? Would you?

I originally had a really great idea for us trotting around on the day-of, before the wedding: glittery tanks for us girls in the wedding party, and tuxedo tshirts for the guys! Wouldn’t that be cute?

Mr. Blueberry didn’t think so. He vetoed the idea before it could even gain any momentum.

I’m not giving up, though. If I can’t have guys in tuxedo t-shirts on my wedding day, I’m passing this on for someone else. Please tell me you’ll take the idea and run with it!

Romper Stomper Tees sells tuxedo tshirts in a variety of colors from $9.99 up.

Last week I called the shop that’s doing our flower girl dresses, just to check up on when they’d be in. “Oh, don’t worry,” said the clerk. “They’ll be in in plenty of time!”

Then a couple days later she called me back… “I’m not sure why, but the manufacturer says the dresses won’t ship until May 18.” My jaw hit the floor because our wedding is next month. “We’re doing everything we can to push that date up!” she said.

Then my cousin Julie, the mom of two of my flower girls, called the shop. They told *her* that the dresses had only been ordered the day prior! WTF?!?!?! Julie strongly suggested that it would be in their best interests for the dresses to be in on time, and they’d better be.

My question is pretty much just…..???? Why weren’t the dresses ordered *two months ago* when everyone was in for the fitting? That’s apparently because the shop knew I had four girls, and was waiting for the fourth girl to come in. But guess what? All 4 had been in, and they’d taken measurements on all four. So because someone can’t count, we may end up rushing around Dillard’s a week before the wedding.

Bah. I could handle this all a lot better if I weren’t worrying about finals on top of everything!

Whew! My very very fun, but very very stressful weekend is OVER! Don’t get me wrong–I had a really great time!

So here are pics from my shower on Saturday!
(A million bajillion thanks to my amazing MOH Katie and her mom for hosting it!!!)

The super delicious food:

This shower was attended by my friends and my family, so the atmosphere was a lot more relaxed and fun. We didn’t get many posed pictures at all; they’re all candid. Yay! Read more…