Weddingbee Blog

For all you New York ladies, the free newspaper AM New York had a 3 page spread on weddings this morning. I can’t say it was that that exciting, but it made my bus ride more entertaining. Even if you don’t live in NYC and want to read all about it, visit the articles are online!

I was perusing the knot bios of the week and saw a cute idea in honeykey’s bio.

Read more…

I need to make little “thank you” tags to go along with my favors. To do this, I just bought the Uchida Clever Lever Mega Punch in a scalloped oval shape.

I got mine at 1StopSquare, although lots of places sell them. Now I just have to find some good paper to go along with my adorable paper punch. Any ideas for places to look in New York?

Yesterday a reader asked me if I knew of a way to add a return address to wedding invitations without handwriting or using a rubber stamp. Interestingly enough, I have been hunting for a good return address embosser for our thank you cards. We didn’t get the return address leterpressed on that piece because we are hoping to move after the wedding. Embossing still seems formal to me and is much easier than writing our address on every envelope.

I have come across a few embossers, but nothing I love love love. Maybe you all can chime in with suggestions? I’m looking for no frills, inexpensive. This is what I have come up with thus far:

The pocket embosser from XStamper for $29.95:

Read more…

My invitations arrived yesterday. Mr. Lily and I went to pick them up from the package room last night, and were so nervous about seeing them. We had a pretty good idea what they would look like since Mr. Lily designed them and Wildflower Letterpress had sent us samples of the colors letterpressed. Still, we hadn’t seen the whole thing done up so we were on pins and needles with excitement.

Mr. Lily started ripping the tape of the box in the elevator. When we got inside our apartment, he tore the box open and we had an “Aaaaaaaaaaah” moment. They are outrageously beautiful. I seriously could not have asked for a more gorgeous invitation. The paper is fantastic and they are pressed deeply. Perfect, perfect, perfect. There was lots of high-5′ing and hugs! I can’t wait to share them with you, but it will have to wait until after they are mailed!! More soon.

I’m trying to do some research on groom’s cakes (shhhhh… advice anyone???) and keep getting side-tracked by phenomenal wedding cakes. Check these out from Colette’s Cakes in NYC:

Read more…

My Jim Hjelm bridesmaid dresses arrived yesterday!

That’s a full month earlier than expected. I couldn’t be happier with NetBride’s service. My camera never seems to take pictures in the right colors, so I tried messing with the flash and the exposure to get it right, but no dice. The real color is green with a hint of blue and much darker than most of the pics I snapped. Oh well, you get the idea!

Read more…

Wildflower Letterpress is hands-down my favorite vendor thus far. The quality of their work and their sincere dedication to helping you achieve the exact invitation of your dreams is incredible. I give them 5 billion stars. Maybe 5 trillion!

I contacted the owner, Samuel Wilder, quite late in the game. He quickly sent me samples of his work and I was very impressed. The letterpress itself is deep and clear, and he included a leather booklet full of many many paper options. Mr. Lily designed the invitations himself — Sam worked with him night after night to make sure all the specs were correct. When I wanted a particular color of envelope liner that doesn’t normally come pre-done for envelopes, he found color samples for me and hand-lined 200 envelopes. When I decided I wanted a very heavy card stock that wasn’t in his book, he searched all over heaven and earth to find what I wanted and to get me a good price. On that note, his prices are excellent. For a custom job with so many pieces (he is doing the outer and inner envelopes, invitation, thank you cards, rsvp cards, rsvp envelopes, and place cards) he kept everything within my budget.

Although he is based in Chicago and I am in New York, the distance has never been a problem. He is quick to call, e-mail, and fed-ex. Oh, and did I mention that I gave Sam the shortest deadline in the world? If you want to see Wildflower Press’s work, e-mail them because there aren’t many examples on their Web site. They are phenomenal!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is the conversation I had on the phone with my Mom last night:

Me: Mom, I’m trying to get my address list to the calligrapher and am totally confused.

Mom: OK, honey, what’s the problem?

Me: I don’t know how to address the inner envelopes! Some of the invites I’ve received use Mr. Lily and my first names and some say Ms. Lily and Mr. Lily. Which is correct?

Mom: Did you check the Emily Post book I gave you?

Me: Yep. Not in there. Apparently Emily forgot to share this info — tisk, tisk.

Mom: Did you google it?

Me: Uh-huh. I get both answers.

Mom: Why don’t you call a stationery store.

Hm… the last piece of advice my Mom gave was pretty good. I’m going to do this, but out of curiousity, how are you all addressing your inner envelopes? Ms. Lily and Mr. Lily is very formal, but first names are nice because they are a bit more personal. The crazy things I think about these days!

When I found out that Emily at EMPrint planned to have her rollers cleaned during the month of January, I frantically began searching for other companies to letterpress our wedding invitations. Miss Plum blogged very favorably about Speak’s Letterpress so I immediately contacted them. Sean was great to talk to and incredibly helpful. He got a quote to us quickly and was willing to work within the quick turnaround time I requested. Here is a sample of his work:

Unfortunately, he didn’t have the envelope linings we wanted in stock and couldn’t get paper samples to us quickly, so in the end we chose not to use him. I don’t think this reflects negatively on Speak’s Letterpress so much as my poor time management skills!

Which letterpress company are you using?

For my venue I really wanted battery powered lanterns so I wouldn’t have to deal with ugly cords. I found the perfect ones at Paper Lantern Store and just ordered a whole little army of them! Some of the ones I ordered were 16″, which are no longer listed, but this happened once before and they seem to reappear once they are in stock again. They come in multiple colors, but I bought white:

3 months until the wedding and things are starting to feel really official. Yesterday I received an invitation to a bridal shower for me! It was so strange to see my own name in the middle of an invitation — I don’t think anyone has thrown a party just for me since I was 8! Yipeee.

On the invitation was a list of places where we are registered. Um. Oops. Haven’t updated the registries in months and I know a ton of things were discontinued (FYI this seems to happen a lot at Crate & Barrel and Macys). So, yesterday I logged onto these sites to see what I could clean up and found people have already bought us presents. I wasn’t trying to peek, I swear! How weird to know what I am getting before I have opened anything! I feel like I need to update everything really fast now so I won’t spoil any more surprises!

Do any of you ladies peek at your registries?

Like 8 billion other brides, I have fallen in love with letterpress. I know, it’s the hip thing these days, but I tend to like things that are old or use old techniques (hence, wearing my Mom’s dress) so it’s perfect for me. Finding the right person to do our invitations was a daunting task. One of my favorite letterpressers (is that the appropriate technical term?) is EMPrint Press. In the end, we did not use EMPrint simply because of timing issues (she is having her rollers cleaned when we need them printed… a total fluke since it’s not something that gets done often).

The owner, Emily, is awesome and her work speaks for itself. EMPrint is based in Nebraska, but Emily is great about working long distance. She even mailed us lining samples to help us find the correct shade of green for the envelope lining. Whatsmore, her prices are very reasonable! I think the examples speak for themselves. Take a look:

(The pics above were taken by yours truly, the rest are of the EMPrint Web site)

Read more…

My list of things to do is so big and scary that sometimes I just want to bury my head under the covers and hide… or maybe run to Vegas and get hitched by a wannabe Elvis. I’ve perservered though and checked another item off the monster list — my cutie flower girl dresses for my three nieces to be. They are by US Angels (a division of Priscilla of Boston), but purchased via NetBride (the same place I bought the bridesmaid dresses). Below is a picture of the organza dresses with cloth covered buttons up the back. The ones I ordered are ivory with silver sashes. Aw.

Following in Miss Plum’s footsteps, I just ordered napkins from For Your Party. I think they are going to be really beautiful! Here is the mockup from the website: