Weddingbee Blog

So, the last time I blogged I was writing about my own risqué bachelorette party.  It got me thinking about the flip side– what do men do to celebrate the end of their bachelorhood?  Yes, yes, traditionally it involves looking at boobies, but these days there seems to be more than that.  Guys have really stepped up the male bonding experience with gambling, paint ball, laser tag, fishing excursions, etc. etc. 

Are you ladies curious about what other people’s guy friends and hubbys did for their bachelor party?  I am!  Leave a comment or a story if you know of some interesting bachelor parties — I want to peek into the world of men for a change!  Hee, hee…

I confess.  There are a few things about my wedding that I haven’t blogged about.  Here’s a biggie: my bachelorette party.  If this doesn’t pique your interest, I don’t know what will:

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You guys are the best!  Last week I threw out an SOS in hopes that some of you could help my dear best friend find a place to get married here in New York… with the added stipulation that she wants to get married by this summer.  Y’all wrote your hearts out and — you helped!  My lovely friend has secured a date at Pochron Studios for the end of May.  Hurrah!  Thank you guys so much!

Calling all New York Brides!  My very best friend in the whole world got engaged this past weekend (yay!) and needs your advice. She and her fiance want to get married in May or June — they are planning to take a year off from their lives and travel around the world (so brave, I only wish I had the nerve). They are very excited to tie the knot and want to do it before they leave… but planning a wedding in 5 months has her nerves in a twist. She went looking for places this weekend that could hold her ceremony and reception on such short notice. So far, no luck.

This is where you, the lovely, amazing, readers of Weddingbee come in. Can you guys suggest some places in Brooklyn or Manhattan for her to look? She wants a wedding for 125ish people, pretty, not crazy flashy. She has looked at places like the Foundry and a loft space like where Mrs. Bee had her wedding, but so far no luck in terms of free dates. Any suggestions will be soooooooo appreciated!!!  Merci!

I really want to have holiday cards mades with pictures of our wedding. I brought this up to Mr. Lily and he said that idea is puke-y, overly romantic, but he would let me do it. The question now is, where is the best place to get this done? As I mentioned in my last post, Sony Imagestation closed down. They were my go-to place for prints and cards. My experience with Shutterfly has only been mediocre. Ditto Snapfish. Has anyone made cards elsewhere that turned out nice? Also, are you guys making cheesy cards like me… and does it make your boyfriends/FIs/husbands want to gag?????

Mr. Lily and I spent a good solid week rushing making wedding albums before Sony Image Station closed (I loved the quality of their prints so if anyone knows another place that is as good, let me know!). When I say albums though, I don’t mean the type where you put pics in plastic slots… I mean the type that looks like a glossy cofee table book. Ooooh. Aaaaah.

With 20 minutes until I was done with the Sony book (on the eve of the company closing), Mr. Lily showed me Blurb. I had put so much effort into the Sony books, but the Blurb ones looked much nicer and… cheaper. Why he didn’t show me that before is a whole other story. I really was so confused about whether or not to just purchase the Sony Books or go with Blurb, but in the end I decided to take the risk and make a Blurb book. I have made one test book for my grandma and just ordered it 10 minutes ago. It was much much easier to use than Sony and Sony had a 100 page limit maximum. Now I can make HUGE books. I am so excited. I hope it turns out! If any of you are making Blurb books now, I have a coupon for free shipping (up to $7) with the code holidayfs (expires tomorrow). I will keep you posted on how it turns out!

I was flipping through the newest Crate and Barrel catalog and found these cute ornaments in the shape of present boxes that open up. I thought they would make adorable favors, especially for a December wedding. You could even put a little hershey’s kiss with a thank you note inside!

Why do I love Illuminations so much? Because their stuff actually goes on sale and the quality is always excellent. When planning for our wedding, I really wanted little lanterns to line the stairs, but just couldn’t find them. They are everywhere now, but at the time they were hiding from me! Illuminations has a bunch on sale. Check it out:

Copper Vine Lantern, small is $6.47 and large is $14.97

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OK, technically these are just regular dresses, but I was browsing through Anthropologie’s site and saw a bunch of dresses that would make fabulous bridesmaid attire! Check ’em out! Totally wearable again and no need to wait the many moons bridesmaid dress companies require for the dresses to be made!

PS In case you can’t read the tiny print, these dresses are: Gold damask, Etoile, Evermore, and Bramblewood

After sugaring up yesterday with mounds of Halloween candy, I remembered that I never blogged about our awesome candy buffet.

People have asked me, “Did anyone actually EAT the candy at your wedding?” The answer is YES. There was actually none left. And I bought A LOT of candy. Guess my family and friends are sugar hounds too!

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There are so many details of my wedding that I still have to blog about and never enough time. One of the most wonderful is the jewelry designer who designed and created all of my wedding jewelry: Tobie Bloom. She created our wedding bands, my wedding necklaces, my earrings, and necklaces for all the bridesmaids. We wanted the best quality for eveything, but really shopped around to find someone who would do an excellent job and not gauge us on the price.

Tobie was AMAZING. Did I say amazing? I mean SUPER-AMAZING. You can currently find her work in select Saks 5th Avenue stores, SoHo Gems in NYC, and Joe Brand in Texas, among others. She also has a studio in LA’s jewelry district where she sees clients and all the glittery magic takes place. Oooh, and she was in In Style (Cameron Diaz was wearing her earrings) and People magazine (Vivica Fox was wearing a necklace).

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Now that Mr. Lily and I have been married for a few months, we decided it was time to take another new step in our relationship: buying a home. Looking for an apartment in Manhattan, as those of you who live here can attest, is a trying process. We **think** we have found a place we like (do you ever really know after a 5 minute walk through?) and we **think** we are going to put an offer in tomorrow. This made me wonder, how many of you out there are in a similar boat?

And if you do own, did you have panic attacks, dry mouth, and gag reflex when thinking about your very own mortgage?

We had a hard time coming up with ties for our groomsmen and daddies.  We loved the suits we got from After Hours, but the tie options were a major thumbs down. I recently went to a wedding down South where all the guys (groomsmen and Dads) wore black suits with different colored JCrew ties in stripes. It looked so good. I think it’s pretty cool how many colors they come in. Depending on the color of your bridesmaids dresses you could do shades of blue or shades of green… two different colors… one of each color… endless possibilities. They’re pretty reasonable too. The colors that are on sale are only $19.99 - $39.50. I liked the look so I thought I’d share!

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Part 1: Getting Ready
Part 2: Portraits
Part 3: Ketubah Signing
Part 4: The Wedding Party
Part 5: Ceremony
Part 6: The Cocktail Hour

Here’s the official last batch. Beware, this one is huuuuuuuge. Most photos are from Sergio Photographer, but again a few are from friends.

To pick up where we left off, after the cocktail hour, we jumped right into the reception. Here we are standing outside, just about to make our big entrance:

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I still have to upload our wedding reception photos, but in the meantime, I thought I would share a cute post-wedding pic of Mr. Lily and I and let you know about the great photographer that took a bunch of newlywed photographs of us: Diana Berrent.

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