Weddingbee Blog

Originally published on October 21, 2008

Miss Dalmatian nominates Ms. Fondue’s tutorial on embossing invitations. Miss D says, “There have been a few excellent embossing tutorials. The one that I bookmarked was this one from Ms Fondue—I plan to use it when embossing our invites!”

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Don’t worry; I won’t keep you guys in suspense!

You’ve previously seen the damask stamp I ordered from Impress Rubber Stamps on projects like our coasters. However, I originally purchased it when I was working on our invitation design last spring.

I showed you all the original designs we considered. But as I was designing all of those, as I mentioned, I decided I wanted something with a little more texture. Now it’s time to reveal the real thing.

Note: If you are invited to our wedding, please do not proceed beyond this point!

Our invitations were created in four stages:

1. Print the wording onto card stock
2. Emboss the damask design
3. Add ribbon
4. Assemble card stock pieces

For the first stage, I simply created a Microsoft Word document using the dimensions of my white card stock and printed them all on my home printer.

The second stage was the longest, and so I bring the tutorial I promised in my coasters post! (Would you believe I took these step-by-step photos back in April, just in case I was ever blogging for Weddingbee one day? Ha!)

Supplies:
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Okay, so I’m technically not a married bee, but a lot of people seem to really enjoy this post (I seriously had an old high school friend message me on Facebook last week saying she came across the post and got inspired and then realized that she knew the author of it, haha).

~~~

Don’t worry; I won’t keep you guys in suspense!

You’ve previously seen the damask stamp I ordered from Impress Rubber Stamps on projects like our coasters. However, I originally purchased it when I was working on our invitation design last spring.

I showed you all the original designs we considered. But as I was designing all of those, as I mentioned, I decided I wanted something with a little more texture. Now it’s time to reveal the real thing.

Note: If you are invited to our wedding, please do not proceed beyond this point!

Our invitations were created in four stages:
Read more…

Previously: Paris | Lake Como | Venice

And now for the conclusion to our great European adventure!

The train ride from Venice to Florence was long (about three to four hours) but, thankfully, a straight-shot. The train started out relatively empty, but filled up at each of the stops along the way.

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Previously: Paris | Lake Como

We arrived in Venice on Wednesday, June 10, by train. We had decided that since we would only be in the city for a few days, we would just take our carry-on luggage and store our large suitcases. There was a luggage storage area in the train station, so that was our first stop.

With small bags in tow, we then tried to figure out how to get to our hotel, the Comfort Hotel Diana which was right off of St. Mark’s Square. We finally figured out which water bus we needed to take and climbed aboard. The trip down the Grand Canal was incredible.

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Previously: Paris

Early in the morning of Monday, June 8, our train arrived in Milan. From there, we caught another train to Como. In Como, we had to take a bus to Bellagio. I wasn’t sure where to buy bus tickets, so I tried the train ticket line. The woman at the window didn’t speak English, but, luckily, a woman next to me offered to translate, so that I wouldn’t have to dig out my phrase book. I learned that bus tickets are bought in tobacco shops. Of course.

Bus tickets in hand, we wait. About 45 minutes to an hour later, our bus finally arrives. We then endure an hour long bus ride on the narrowest streets that could ever exist. The bus had to honk around every curve to warn oncoming traffic that a giant bus would demolish them if they tried to continue driving. There were times when I had no idea how we didn’t scrape against another vehicle.

We finally arrived in the town of Bellagio. It is a cute little town with lots of cobblestone stairways and few real roads. It is located right on the lake, at the intersection of the three branches. (And for those of you who didn’t know, the wedding scene in Star Wars, Episode II was filmed somewhere on the lake [not Bellagio].)

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Hey, anyone out there remember me?

When the ex-Mr. Fondue and I were discussing our honeymoon, I was really pushing a trip to Europe. Neither of us had ever been, and it was a dream of mine to go, especially to France and Italy. But he vetoed this, his reason being that he wanted to relax, not go sightseeing on our honeymoon. We decided on Costa Rica instead, although nothing ever got officially booked (thankfully).

One of the first things I did when we split was book a trip to Europe. My mom expressed interest in coming, since she had also never been and my dad had no interest in joining her overseas, so I invited her along. We planned to go to Paris and then head down to Italy to visit Lake Como, Venice, and Florence. Some of you may be planning your honeymoons in one or more of these locations, so hopefully you can garnish some good tips from my tale.

So, in the beginning of June, we headed on our journey. My dad drove us to the airport. We had a brief layover in Charlotte before the nearly nine-hour flight to Paris. I was excited to be on a big plane, since this was the first time I’d ever been on one with two aisles. Unfortunately, we were seated in the center section. I was really hoping for a window to catch my first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, but c’est la vie. It was an overnight flight, since we left around 3PM Charlotte time and arrived around 8AM Paris time.
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I know it’s been a while, and I promised you guys I’d share a few more of my projects. I’ve just recently (in the past month or so) been able to start reading about weddings again without getting all misty-eyed and, since this would have been our wedding weekend, I thought I would share one of the first projects that I did: our wedding website.

I actually started on our wedding website before the proposal (shh…), mainly because I wanted to make sure our domain name was available.

The main page of the site gave our guests some basic things that they could do. This included giving them instructions on where they could learn “Thriller” or what hotel to book rooms at.

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I hope you all will forgive my absence, but it has been a rather emotional and stressful month. However, you readers have been so great to me that I feel you deserve some sort of explanation.

Soon after the New Year, Mr. Fondue expressed some concerns with our relationship. He had been acting moody, which I thought was due to holiday stress at his job plus quitting smoking, but, as it turns out, was mostly due to wondering if we were doing the right thing by getting married.

I don’t want to bore you with all the details, but we had a long, drawn out, emotional talk until 4:00 AM one night. He felt our relationship was stagnant and predictable; he said he grows more bored with it every day and misses the excitement of dating. He feels that, while he loves me and doesn’t want to hurt me, he would eventually end up cheating on me. You can imagine my shock and heartbreak—being told by your fiance that he’s not sure he wants to marry you because he knows you too well and doesn’t feel he is mature enough—is not something I would want anyone to go through.

I immediately made an appointment for counseling.
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I hope everyone had a great holiday season!

I have several cool things to share with you in the coming weeks, including bridesmaid dress shopping (although I’m still waiting on some photos Mama Fondue took) and my fauxtobooth epiphany. However, I’m still recovering from New Year’s Eve, so all you’re getting today is some photos of my New Year’s party decor.

Most of it was based on designs from the Hostess with the Mostess site, so I won’t take credit for it. I went with a red and silver color scheme to match my house (which is mostly decorated in red, black, and white–can you tell these are our favorite colors?). I always decorate my Christmas tree with red and silver, as well, so it gives the added bonus of being able to reuse a lot of the stuff for next Christmas.

You can see here that I did some of the Martha Stewart pom-poms above the bar, although I used less tissue paper so they are a little flatter. I was also in a major hurry when I was trying to do all of this stuff.

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We used Blurb to make the books. This was the second time I have used them — the first being a wedding gift to my bridesmaid Becka and her husband of photos I took at their wedding after their photographer flaked out on them back in spring 2007. This time I used a couple of Blurb’s newest options: their thicker paper and the ImageWrap hardcover.

I was really happy with the way the books came out. Here is the front (on the right) and back (on the left) of the book. The back was just a mirror image of the picture on the front.

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Many brides, at some point during their engagement period, will have a dream (or nightmare, usually) about their wedding day. I am no exception.

Shortly after becoming engaged, I had a dream that my parents decided to hold the wedding at this itty-bitty church in the middle of nowhere, and I didn’t know about it until the night of the rehearsal. The majority of dream was spent trying to frantically decorate the place to make it look presentable.

The only other major dream I have had about the wedding so far took place in the atrium of a hotel, where our wedding was being held. I somehow fell asleep at the table during the reception. No one bothered to wake me, so I woke up the next morning and there were all these strange people at the tables eating breakfast. My photographer was still there for some reason, and she offered to give me a 53% refund (I know, it’s a random number) since I fell asleep. I said okay, and asked where Mr. Fondue was. She gave me some general information about the direction he had gone in. I finally tracked him down (after going through a maze) and he told me he wanted the marriage annulled! Then I woke up.

Mr. Fondue told me the other day that he, too, had had a bad wedding dream.
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Before I even went dress shopping, I knew I wanted to wear red shoes under my gown. This, in part, is fueled by pictures like this one from our photographer, Kate Crafton:

My other criteria involved having a 2-3″ heel (I’m 5’1″ and need all the help I can get) but for the shoes to not be ridiculously uncomfortable. I had the hardest time narrowing down what I wanted them to actually look like, however. All of these were contenders:
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Back in September, my bridesmaid Becka (you may remember her from the day I went gown shopping) was in Knoxville visiting family. She and her husband moved to South Carolina a year or so ago, and we rarely get to see them. So Mr. Fondue and I headed over to East Tennessee to hang out with them. (Too bad I didn’t know Miss Cheese then!)

Over the weekend, Becka and I headed out to David’s Bridal so she could get a good idea of what necklines looked best on her. My girls will be wearing tea-length black dresses of their choosing since they are all different sizes, and I want something that they will feel comfortable in. David’s didn’t have most of the options she tried on in stock in black, hence the variety of colors you see here. It’s amazing the difference a neckline can make!

She went in thinking she might want a halter, so she tried on a few of those.

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