Weddingbee

My bachelorette party weekend happened back in July, but I needed a couple of weeks to recover before posting about it. The weekend turned out to be both tame and slightly wild. We had some relaxing days on the beach and some interesting escapades in the evenings. But best of all, it was great to spend time with my friends and sister before the wedding.

We started out Friday rushing to pick up Julie (in from Ohio) at the La Guardia airport, and then high tailed it out to Long Island to meet my friend Melissa and sister Kelly. We finally arrived in Montauk, around 3 p.m. We hit up the Lobster Roll (delicious) for lunch before spending a couple of short hours on the beach catching up before dinner.

The view from the room

Post dinner we headed over to the Point for a few drinks while we made our game plan for the evening.

Where we ran into a bunch of gentlemen I recognized, including one of Mr. Grasshopper’s groomsmen! Stalker Alert! He sent a few scandal suggesting text messages to Mr. Grasshopper, bought us a bunch of shots and posed for a picture with my sister and I before we headed out to an awful karaoke bar and sang a horrible rendition of I Need a Hero from the excellent film, Footloose before we called it a night.

Saturday morning my friend Meghan showed up with breakfast and mimosas for everyone and then we spent the entire day on the beach relaxing and mixing cocktails. We watched a nice little beach wedding at the inn next to ours, which was actually sort of weird because all the beach enthusiasts were sitting around in their bikinis and speedos with their sand tools watching this cute little couple exchange their life long vows to each other. I don’t know why I didn’t capture this on film.

Saturday night we made our way to dinner at a delicious restaurant called East by North East - it was family style fun. The ladies had some quizzes to issue between courses. The first was a quiz they had emailed to Mr. Grasshopper and he had to answer all these questions about me, which I heard he was all stressed out about because he really wanted to do well. I am happy to report he did great- he scored a 90%. Some of the questions were really hard!

Like, who was my first crush?
a) Kirk Cameron
b) Michael J. Fox
c) Ricky Schroeder
d) Corey Haim

Hint:

Michael J. Fox, people! Kirk Cameron didn’t hit Bop until a few years after the Fox.

And, what was my go to wardrobe piece in H.S.?
a) birkenstocks
b) tie dyed Grateful Dead shirts
c) roll neck sweaters
d) all of the above

*Sigh* It was d) all of the above. It’s no wonder I think I picked out the wrong wedding dress.

This quiz led to a quiz about Mr. Grasshopper, which was actually very tough because it was not multiple choice, so we’ll just say I got an 85%….

Our next stop was at to the Oyster Pond Bar where some man with a popped collar handed over his wallet to Melissa and told her to buy drinks for everyone and empty his wallet.

I love this picture of Julie cracking up at him.

Meg and I feeling the result of the free drinks.

While this picture may look like the girls hired a kinky stripper, I assure you there were no strippers to be found during this weekend. Phew! This man was a guest from the aforementioned beach wedding, attending the after party at the bar. I don’t quite remember how Marisa ended up cutting a rug with him.

The evening carried on with more drinks, a borrowed cowboy hat from one of the regular Montauk sharks, some eighties dancing at yet another local establishment and ended with my sister declaring she was too old to be out that late, we all agreed and headed home.

It is officially crunch time! There are about three weeks left until our wedding and we have a lot to do still. Mr. Grasshopper and I have been using Backpackit.com to help us keep track of our shared wedding to do list. Mr. Grasshopper is an obsessive organizer (we refer to him as Captain Schedule) and hates the idea of having multiple to-do lists emailed or floating around, so we are relying on the free version of Backpackit to help us out.

Backpackit lets you create a document and invite others to edit the same file. Instead of 6 Word documents named todo_v1.doc, todo_v2.doc, etc., we have one shared document that can be easily accessed and updated from any computer. There are many software applications that allow multi-user editing, but so far this one has been rather easy to use and shows a great example on the site of how one could use it to help plan a wedding.

Our wedding to-do lists has the following categories:

Miss Grasshopper to-do (strangely the longest list…)
Mr. Grasshopper to-do
Shared to-do
Think about
Done! (my favorite list)

Club Monaco has these cute beaded clutch purses for $79.

I had originally had my eye on this beaded number by Rave, but was hoping for a sale or to find one while monitoring ebay (my other part time habit), as it is $187.50! I think it was actually about $20 lower a few months ago.

I will probably use the Club Monaco bag again at various fancy events and it’s half the price of the Rave bag. Unfortunately Club Monaco does not have an online store so you’ll have to run over to your nearest shop if you are interested in this little sparkle bag.

While we cannot compete with the awesomeness that is Miss Caterpillar’s invitations, I thought I would still share our rehearsal dinner invitations.

To match our wedding invitation, we used the same layout and color scheme and swapped out the artwork for something that is very us- kids playing bocce. Also, we planned to incorporate bocce into the pre-nuptial festivities on the eve of the wedding because we love bocce that much. Despite Mrs. Bee’s suggestion to not go out after your own rehearsal dinner, after our dinner, everyone is headed to Union Hall in Park Slope for bocce and good times. I’ll plan to call it a night by 11 because I know she is probably right.

The invitation

The envelopes and address labels

When thinking about favors I would like to receive, I thought I would just love to get an Eggling. They are a bit pricey for individual favors, but they are freakin’ cute and unique.

Tonight Mr. Grasshopper, his Mom and I are heading to our rehearsal dinner venue, Chestnut in Cobble Hill, to have dinner and pick out the wines we would like to serve at the rehearsal. We had originally planned on having the dinner at Superfine in Dumbo, but after one dinner at Chestnut during Brooklyn restaurant week, we quickly changed our minds and booked Chestnut a week later.

It has quickly become one of my favorite restaurants in Brooklyn. It’s additionally great because they have an outdoor area where we can conduct our rehearsal, rather than trekking everyone over to the Foundry the night before the wedding. If it rains, it will all take place indoors no problem, if it doesn’t, we can carry on the evening outside in their garden, which I prefer.

Before we booked Chestnut though, we inquired with quite a few venues. Here are some of the places we had in mind that I thought I would share in case any Brooklyn couples are still finalizing their rehearsal dinner plans:

Superfine in Dumbo

This place is a pretty hip restaurant in Dumbo with a relaxed attitude and good food. Local artwork, a pool table and funky furniture make this Brooklyn venue an interesting and fun place to host a rehearsal dinner.

Frankies 457 in Carrol Gardens

Frankies has great prices for some incredible Italian food. They have a great little outdoor garden and a private building called the “stable” for parties. I’ve heard of a few people having wonderful, smallish sized weddings here.

Bubby’s in Dumbo

This sister restaurant to the Tribeca favorite, has a mezzanine that holds 80 people and offers some decent deals for their buffet and cocktail style dinners. From what I remember of my last visit to Bubby’s their homemade meals were quite good.

Little Bistro in Cobble Hill

Little Bistro is some what new to the Brooklyn restaurant scene with delicious, unique plates of meats and fish, but they were less accommodating about hosting a 35 person rehearsal dinner at 6:30 on a Friday (understandable since the place only holds about 40 or some folks). They did offer to have us come in at 5 p.m. though. They are probably best suited for a smaller dinner party.

Jolie in Boerum Hill

If you like French food and a Parisian atmosphere, Jolie restaurant on Atlantic Avenue might be a good place for you. This place has a lovely outdoor garden and very large indoor space. The owner also keeps the art gallery next door, which he opens up for events. We inquired about it for the wedding, but found our venue before we could schedule time to check out the space.

I have lived in Brooklyn for over five years now and only just made it to the Jacques Torres chocolate shop in Dumbo this past weekend, while sampling the delicious favor options Brooklyn has to offer. We bought a few a la carte chocolates to see what the deal was all about and I have to say, this chocolate deserves all the press it gets.

They have two boxed favor options: 2 pieces for $4.75 and 4 pieces for $7. Or go a la carte and package the chocolate up the way you want it to look. Added bonus: brides outside of the New York area can order their favors online.

My friend Melissa was telling me about a shower she went to this weekend, where the guest favors were dry cookie mix in a glass jar with a tag indicating the baking directions (add an egg, oil and vanilla and bake!), and a funky wooden spoon. I have seen these before, but had never considered them for a bridal shower favor. I think it sounds like a great do-it-yourself favor for someone hosting a bridal event. Check out the directions for a mix here. Seems pretty easy and delicious.

This weekend is my bachelorette party! We are headed to Montauk for the weekend to get in some proper beach and quality time together. It’s a small gathering of just the ladies in the bridal party minus one who is in California and is getting ready to head to Berkeley for law school in the next few weeks, so she is excused, but of course we’ll miss her. Anyone who has held a competition between her friends to see who could kiss a guy from each state of the U.S. first is always fun to have at a bachelorette party.

Speaking of such games, my sister and matron of honor, who is my senior by nine years and mamma of three, has so graciously organized this weekend’s festivities, but was the first to admit she is too old for the traditional bachelorette party antics. So she properly named my roommate from college the “social chair” and said social chair wondered if even we were too old for a scavenger hunt with the t-shirt checklist. Thankfully she asked me about my weekend expectations and it was clear we were all on the same page that this weekend would be more about sipping daquiris in beach chairs and less about drinking body shots off the Montauk townies. Not that I don’t like dancing on bars as much as the next bride-to-be, but I think I checked off most of those scavenger hunt tasks in my early twenties at such bars as Automatic Slims (I hang my head in shame).

I’ll report back to everyone on Monday and let you know if the weekend turned out as tame as I suspected. Have a good weekend everyone!

People pick their bridesmaids for various reasons: you’ve been friends forever; she’s (or he’s) your best friend; she’s your sister; she supports you- the list goes on. I have a little from each group: I have my sister, my best friend since forever, the friend from grade school, my college roommates and a friend from post college.

When people hear I have six bridesmaids they tend to laugh or say “wow!” and I think “Um… excuse me?” One guy from work said to me when he heard I had six bridesmaids, “WHAT?! You’re not 22 anymore!” Ha. I told him I was still extremely popular at the elderly age of 27.

Ya, it may seem like a lot of bridesmaids to some, but I have heard of people having more, like WAY more, and for me, these were the girls I wanted close to me the day of the wedding.

Last week in the midst of writing some thank you notes, Mr. Grasshopper came in with the mail; in it was a check from one of my bridesmaids for her dress. Here is the note that she sent with it:

I opened this letter and could not stop laughing and I thought THIS is why I picked Maggie to be in the wedding, because I need her humor on the big day to help keep me laughing all the way to the ceremony when my instinct is to freak out about my hair starting to frizz.