Weddingbee Blog

I have a dilemma.

I don’t really know what I’m going to do with my wedding dress. I mean, I loved (LOVED!) my dress and yes, there are some sentimental attachments that I have developed in the past few months. However, am I really going to wear it again? And is anyone else really going to wear it? Will my daughter (if I have a daughter) really want to wear my dress? What about my baby cousin aka my junior bridesmaid? Will she want to wear it 15 years from now? I don’t think so.

So I want to donate it to the Bridal Garden. I mean, it’s only been worn once, plus it’s tax deductible! And it could help a bride who’s on a budget.

But my husband thinks I should keep it and have it preserved. I think he’s grown fond of it as well.

I’m torn. Do I donate it for a good cause or do I preserve it for sentimental reasons? Both are very compelling choices. Help me!

I’ve seen this question on many boards before, but I never seem to get a good answer.

There was a guest at our wedding who did not send us a gift. Not that we expected gifts from everyone, but this particular guest said that the “gifts are on the way” during the wedding. We have not received anything from this guest. I’ve called the registries and tried to find out if maybe this person sent something and we just never got it. But, it looks like we’ve received everything that was bought. So now I’m trying to figure out maybe this person went off-registry? Or maybe this person sent money?

How do I find out if this person sent something and it got lost, or if they accidentally forgot to send something?

What is the right etiquette? I will thank this person for coming to the wedding, but I would feel horrible if I didn’t thank them for a gift, if there was a gift purchased.

What do I do?

I am not a picture taker. In fact, about half the time on our honeymoon, I didn’t even have my camera on me. Yes, I am horrible! We ended up with only 2 good pictures of the two of us from the entire honeymoon! But I will post about it anyway…

Part 1 - The Ritz Carlton in San Juan, Puerto Rico

We got complimentary champagne upon check-in, and a free bottle of champagne and stawberries the first night! Plus a little gesture by the cleaning staff!

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I had so much help in planning my wedding, but to tell you the truth, you have no idea how your day is going to turn out. Sure, a few minor details were missed. And of course, I would change some things, in retrospect. But I know there were more than a few things that I did right. This is where talking to other brides, and going to other weddings really helped.

1. I scheduled in buffer time throughout the entire day.
Starting the Friday before my wedding, the traffic was unbelievable. I was late to everything, and everything took much longer than expected. So it was a good thing that I had put in about 30 minutes of buffer time in between everything. I scheduled hair from 9am to 12pm, even though I thought we’d be done by 11am. We were done at 11:30. Makeup was scheduled from 12 to 2pm, but because we ended hair early, we had enough time for the makeup for me and my bridesmaids.

2. I didn’t travel in packs.
I think I had the idea that I would be with my bridesmaids all day. We’d all do our hair together, then all go for makeup, then all go to dress, etc. However, I decided the week of the wedding that I would have 1 bridesmaid finish her hair at the salon and then go to the hotel for makeup early. Either way, we got 2 bridesmaids’ makeup done before noon. Then the rest of us got ready while the last bridesmaid was getting her makeup done.

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To all the Houston readers,

I will be in Houston from December 29th to January 1st. I know it’s just a couple of nights, but if there is enough interest, I wanted to have a Weddingbee meetup.

Please let me know if anyone is interested in meeting up on Saturday night (December 30th) by emailing me at butterfly@weddingbee.com. If there are enough replies, we will decide on a time/location later. If not, since it is the holidays… then I guess I will use that time to go eat some pho!

Sincerely,
Mrs. Butterfly

Has anything changed since we’ve been married? Well, not really. We have a new apartment, but other than that, our lives are pretty much the same. But we did recently merge our bank accounts together and now I’m learning to cope with sharing accounts. I can no longer go on a shopping spree without knowing that it affects someone else too. Although I must say, it is nice to have two paychecks.

So in terms of money, we are learning to compromise. For example, Mr. Butterfly is a heavy debit card user. He’d rather use the debit card than carry cash, which is fine. However, when I’m keeping track of the money going in and out of our account, I find myself going crazy with the daily $2.05 Starbucks purchase. It’s two dollars! His reasoning is that he doesn’t want 95 cents in change, whereas I think its ridiculous to charge two dollars to a debit card. So we have learned to compromise, and he now buys a Starbucks card in $50 increments.

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I was thinking about my wedding the other day….who am I kidding. I think about my wedding every day. Why? Because I can’t wait to get my pictures, and when I start thinking about all the beautiful shots, I start playing the wedding over and over in my mind. Also I went to Mrs. Snail’s wedding this past Sunday, so I’ve been surrounded by weddings.

Anyway, I was thinking the things I would do differently if I could do it all over again. I have definitely learned more about wedding planning and as stressful as it was, I had a lot of fun. But there are things I would change.

1. Favors - As much as I loved the idea of candles and matches, I think the favors could have come out a bit better. I would have ordered several candles from different companies to see which one I liked best. Also, I would have spent more time designing the images for each item. I think I just ordered them way too early in the planning process, because I didn’t have a full vision of what my wedding would look like.

2. Out of Town Bags - I liked how these turned out, but I definitely could have made them more personal. We didn’t provide any water bottles because in the end, we only had 4 bags to give out (2 of them being my parents who stayed in the hotel for only 1 night).

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With the months and months of planning, you just don’t think that anything is going to go wrong on your wedding day. Even though everyone tells you something will go wrong, you just can’t conceivably imagine what could go wrong. I mean, I am pretty organized and I had a schedule of the entire day printed out for each person in the wedding party. Seriously, what could go wrong?

As it turns out, several things did go wrong. My wedding went pretty smoothly but there were definitely times when things did not go according to plan.

1. The night before the wedding, we were all supposed to get our nails done, but because of the horrendous traffic we had to wait until after the rehearsal dinner. Not many nail salons are open past 8pm. We found one, but the manicurists were about to leave. I panicked and said “but I’m getting married tomorrow!!!” They did our nails and I gave them a hefty tip.

2. I forgot to bring a button down shirt, so I had to borrow my bridesmaid’s pull over to get my hair done.

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Ah!! How could I forget about my paper and invitations vendor?

Invitations and Other Paper Items - Custom-Programs
Oh, how I loved my invitations. Unfortunately, due to a small mistake, I will have no professional pictures of them. Boooooohoooooo! I will, however, have pictures of my escort cards, menus, table cards, and programs.

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Here are the rest of the reviews!

Wedding Dress - Casablanca (MyrJan Bridal)
I absolutely loved my wedding dress. The alterations were done by Fancy Cleaners (check the Tuesdays “Sales” blogs for a discount!). Everything about the dress was perfect! The veil was from MyrJan and the tailor altered it because I didn’t like the original length too much. MyrJan Bridal was good to deal with as a vendor.

Final Rating (MyrJan): B+
Final Rating (Fancy Cleaners): A

Bridesmaid Dresses - CocoMyles.com
I got sooooo many compliments on the bridesmaid dresses. And people’s jaws literally dropped to the floor when they found out how little they cost!

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Ok - I finally have some down time now. Exams are over, my official honeymoon is almost over, and everything goes back to normal on Monday. Between now and Monday, I thought I would write some more about my wedding. So let’s talk vendors.

Overall, I was realllllly happy with all my vendors. But here are the details anyway.

Photo/Video - 5 West Studios
I absolutely loved them! 5 people showed up in my hotel room on Saturday at 1:30pm. Honestly, I could barely remember everyone being there. I really wanted some pictures of my husband (husband!!!! :D) seeing me in my wedding dress for the first time, and they made sure to capture that. We then piled into a limo and drove to Washington Square for some outdoor pictures. I had sent Spencer (photographer) a long list of all of the family combos, bridal party combos and other “must take” pics. He brought the list and made sure everything was captured. After seeing that teaser of some of the pics, I am absolutely thrilled with his work and I am soooo happy that I hired him!

Final Rating: A+

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Oh my - I cannot believe that I am back already from my honeymoon. And I’m actually sitting in class as I write this.

Anyway, our honeymoon was absolutely wonderful. I spent a lot of time sleeping in, while my husband worked on his school papers and presentations. Yes, we were working while on our honeymoon. Well, he was working - I procrastinated.

Our first three nights were spent at the Ritz Carlton in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

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I am sitting in my hotel room at the Ritz in PR on the first night of my honeymoon, and I’m blogging. Hahahaha. Seriously though, my photographer sent me a photo teaser and I couldn’t help but share!!!

Enjoy!!! (click for a link to a larger image)

Hello Weddingbee readers!

Yup, I am now a married woman. The wedding itself was soooo wonderful. I had one minor (really minor, I swear!!!) temper tantrum because people were running late and not sticking to the schedule/plan I gave them. But otherwise, things went just fine.

Some of my favorite moments.

• How I almost forgot to bring my husband’s wedding ring to the venue.
• My entire bridal party screaming “FREEEEEDOMMMMMMM!!!” in the middle of Washington Sq Park for some fun pictures - the men were watching Braveheart while they were getting dressed.
• All the men trying to hold me up for a picture, but failing miserably - apparently my dress was really heavy!
• All of us forgetting about bringing the veil to the venue. I didn’t have the veil for pictures which was fine with me, but right before the rehearsal started, someone asked me “where is your veil?” and all of us just looked at each other like this: 8O. Luckily Mrs. Bee was still at our hotel so she brought it with her.
• The way my husband’s voice cracked a bit when he was reciting “I take you to be my wife.”
• How our first dance went off very very well. My MIL’s jaw was on the floor and all of my husband’s friends were sooo impressed. Hell yeah!
• How one of my red sticker dots came off my face and onto my husband’s nose during the tea ceremony.
• My 7 year old cousin, Justin, dancing with all the girls, then getting in the middle of the dance floor, taking off his jacket, swinging it around and throwing to the ladies. He was a rockstar!
• When we were rounding the tables, my brother’s table decided to SCREAM and cheer and bang on the tables when we got around. Then of course, my parents’ table had to beat them in the screaming. During our second round (to tell the young people about our after party), tables 1, 2, and 3 were all screaming trying to out-do one another in the loudness. It was hilarious!
• Some parts of the day ran late, because of traffic and stuff, but luckily there was enough buffer time throughout the day that we were OK. We didn’t get to take pictures in the West Village unfortunately, but I think we got some great Times Square, Washington Square Park and Fifth Avenue shots.

My parents, my in-laws and everyone was very impressed with the wedding and everyone had a great time!! I got the most compliments on my choice of minister, the bridesmaid dresses, our first dance, and our venue choice.

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So it seems like there may be some chance of rain on our wedding day. I’ve been telling myself over and over that rain is good luck, pictures in the rain look wonderful, a big bright umbrella will really liven up the pictures, etc. But in my heart, I don’t want it to rain.

Since we are staying at the W in Times Square, I thought it would be amazing to get at least a few shots in Times Square in my wedding dress. Very New York pictures, don’t you think? Then we were going to take some quaint pictures in the West Village. However, with the possibility of rain, we have to think of alternate locations.

I really love the quintessential New York style, so if it rains, we are going to take pictures in Grand Central Station. It does make for beautiful pictures, and I know my photographer has shot there before.

But… I still dont want it to rain.