Weddingbee Blog

I was stuck and inspiration-less for so long when it came to invites, and then, when we picked our envelopes a few weeks ago, the ball was set rolling. Now we’re just days away of having everything we need.

Envelopes? Check! Address list? Check! Paper? On order! RSVPs? Thanks to my amazing MOH Sunny Bunny, absolutely CHECK!

A few summers ago, I bought a lot of about 50 romantic antique postcards off eBay on a whim. They are one of the best buys I’ve ever made and are the inspiration for the whole wedding.

My original plan for RSVPs was to take about six of the postcards I really loved and have 25 copies of each printed.

But my sister Sunny was adamant. Wouldn’t it be so much cooler to have real antique cards? Each an original design for the RSVPs? I could encourage guests to write notes on them and display them at the wedding, ala the photo below from Inspired Goodness:

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Where did I leave off? Oh yes! Bridesmaids!

After I was pretty much settled on my dress, I sat down to wait for my mother and aunt to arrive as Sunny, Funny and Honey started trying on possible bridesmaid’s dresses.

Once again, I can’t show photos because they weren’t allowed, but here’s a photo of the three of them:

My girls SB, FB and HB

Miraculously, they all liked the first dress we saw there. It can be worn with straps or without, and echos the design and fabric of my dress. I just had to hope that the other two bridesmaids liked it too!
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From our first stop at David’s Bridal, my three ‘maids and I drove across the street to Wendy’s Bridal, a smaller, Ohio-based chain.

I was worried that the prices would be much higher, but they really weren’t. The dresses were beautiful, and the designers they offered came in a greater variety of colors. The bad news: there were no photos allowed!

Our consultant told us they like to have the bride try on dresses first so that the bridesmaids can try on dresses that go well with what she likes. Even though I wasn’t planning on buying a dress (I wanted to attend the Running of the Brides at Filene’s the following month), I agreed to try on a few.

Knowing that most of the designer dresses would be out of my price range, we pulled some dresses off their sample rack in hopes of finding something I might actually be able to buy.

I tried on a two dresses, the first of which was similar to our favorite dress from David’s, but even better.

The second dress, which was raw silk, felt incredible, but the style wasn’t quite as flattering, so I went back to slip into a third.

The minute the consultant zipped me into the third dress, the words “I love it,” slipped out of my mouth before I even knew what I was saying.

It surprised me because I never thought I’d be one of those girls to have a moment and find “the one” dress for them. I don’t even believe in that sort of thing!

But there I was in my dream dress. It was amazing.

Mr. Bunny, if you’re reading this, STOP RIGHT HERE! You’re heading into spoiler territory!
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Okay, not quite one hundred. But it kinda felt like it after we’d been out for a few hours.

We started out the morning with a brunch of yagels — egg bagel sandwiches.

I’d made appointments at two different stores and had plans to visit a third that didn’t require appointments for bridesmaids. We headed to that store first, but discovered it wouldn’t open until noon.

So instead we drove a couple blocks to David’s Bridal and waited for it to open at 11. Since our appointment wasn’t until 12:30, we started by looking around on our own.

My requirements were that the dresses must be blue and tea length. Here were some of the contenders:

This is my lil’ sister “Sunny Bunny”, my MOH, in dress #1 from David’s Bridal. This was definitely one of my top picks for the girls. I don’t know if you can tell, but the blue is a little purple-y. Sunny liked that it had pockets.
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*Shuffles to microphone and looks down at her feet*

Hi, my name is Miss Bunny and I have trouble finishing what I start.

I have stacks upon stacks of half-finished projects in my closet — a scrapbook for my high school best friend, a stained glass window for my grandmother, a bag full of clothes that I said I would alter rather than toss. Yeah. None of that happened.

FAIL, as they say on the ‘net.

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I get distracted, I guess. I moved away and stopped talking to my high school friend. It was much too dangerous to work on the stained glass window in my carpeted apartment, I reasoned. And I just never got around to finding someone to alter those too-big skirts after I lost 35 pounds a few years ago (but hey, I’ve gained some of that weight back so maybe they’ll fit again — doh!).

I worked FOR-EV-ER ago on our save the dates (Sandlot, anyone?). Read more…

And here we get to the touchy subject of money.

Confession: neither Mr. Bunny nor I are good with money. We both spend on pretty much whatever we want and hope that our money will last until the end of the month. Which, fortunately, it does — most of the time.

I’ve managed to sock away a couple thousand dollars, mostly from when I lived at home with my parents and from the stimulus check I got from the government last year.

Mr. B has saved up small amounts from time to time, but emergencies — a surgery earlier this year, an untimely car accident — have used up that money. Even if his proposal hadn’t been spur-of-the-moment, he wouldn’t have had the money to buy my engagement ring for a few months. (I’m still waiting for the actual ring, though it’s been picked out and he’s put half the money down.)

So we’re relying on my family for the wedding expenses. Mama Bunny has set a budget of $5,000 — and to be honest, even if she hadn’t, that was my original goal. I didn’t think that what I envisioned should cost much more than that.

But then I looked at the beautiful pictures on the wedding blogs I love so much.
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When Mr. Bunny and I got engaged back in September, the first thing I did (after calling friends and family to announce the news) was run to the grocery store to pick up a copy of that quarterly wedding planning bible, Martha Stewart Weddings.

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*cue angelic choir*

I never wanted to be that girl who had her whole wedding planned before she even got her groom. But, knowing my obsessive self, I knew it would be impossible NOT to become her if I let myself look at wedding magazines before I got engaged.

Honestly, allowing myself to indulge in Martha wedding porn was one of the biggest perks of official engagement! I bought the two latest copies and toted them around in my work purse for a few weeks.
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I designed my STDs to look like handwritten vintage postcards using the trial version of Adobe InDesign.

After downloading and installing InDesign on my MacBook, I started by creating a new 6″ x 4″ document.

The program automatically converts inches into picas (that’s the “p” you see in the box there).
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Back in December, I had a week of vacation to burn. I didn’t have anywhere to go or anything to do… except work on wedding plans.

I spent an entire day at a coffee shop creating these:

This is the back of our Save the Date card! The goal was for it to have the look of a handwritten vintage postcard. What do you think? I’ll show you the front of them in another post.

I spent several hours working the backs up in the trial version of Adobe InDesign that I downloaded.

I learned how to use InDesign in college — first for the school newspaper, of which I was the editor, then in a graphic design course I took during my final semester. Let me just say that taking that course, which was not required for my journalism major, was one of the best decisions I ever made, in spite of the fact that I took ridiculous amounts of time to complete every project. I just couldn’t let it go until I figured out how to make something look exactly how I envisioned it in my head!

In my opinion, Adobe software is the best out there for creating professional-looking projects.

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Hi, hive! I’m Miss Bunny, and I’m absolutely thrilled to be here.

I’ve been a fan of Weddingbee since before my engagement last September, and I started my own blog within a week of getting engaged. It seems unbelievable that I’m finally here as a Bee!

Mr. Bunny and I met through work. We’re reporters who write for competing weekly newspapers, so we got to know each other at school board meetings and at parties with mutual friends.

Out with work friends, May 2008

My first memory of Mr. B was when we were both sent out to cover a tornado and he tried to butt in on my interview with a Red Cross worker!
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When we let everyone know we were engaged, the second question everyone asked was, “Have you set a date?” (The first question was “When and how did he ask you?” But that answer requires another whole post.)

No, we hadn’t then, so we just told people that we were planning on Summer 2009.

Then I realized that I had less than a year to plan! And where are we going to hold it? What if there weren’t any dates available?

For years I’ve wanted to get married in a barn to go along with a more casual feel for my wedding.

When I visited Everal Barn in Westerville for a friend’s graduation party, I thought it would be the a great place for a wedding — a beautiful old white barn with a refinished inside, and a walk-out lower level with a brick patio.

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