Weddingbee Blog

Note to Mr. Fondue: This contains photos of my half of the cake topper, so please look elsewhere if you happen to see this post.

One of the most exciting purchases for our wedding has been our cake topper. We were thrilled when we learned we could get a custom cake topper based off of our Mii avatars from our Nintendo Wii. A few different people offered them, but we finally settled on Paul Pape Designs so that we could get completely customized toppers wearing our wedding attire.

I took pictures of our Miis and sent them in along with photos of our attire. Mr. Fondue still hadn’t decided on the black tux or the pinstripe, but he didn’t want to wait, so we opted to make his Mii wear an all black tux for simplicity’s sake.

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One of my first wedding-related purchases was my garter. I bought a cute black and white set from Sheer Satin and Lace on eBay.

Here is the tossing garter. Look closely and you can see the double heart charm.

I liked the double hearts, but I thought the guys would like something a little more… Nintendo.

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In honor of Halloween today, I bring you a post about costumes.

Mr. Fondue’s first suggestion for the wedding was to have a Star Wars theme. You may remember that his only table name idea was of Star Wars planets. The boy is a wee bit obsessed (although, he will have me note that he wants nothing to do with Episodes I through III). So, of course, he thought it was the best idea ever for him to dress up as Darth Vader, have his best men as Stormtroopers, with me walking down the aisle as Padmé. And, being a cosplayer, I would be making the costumes.

Now for a bit of history. For Halloween of 2004, I decided that I wanted to dress up as Aeris (or Aerith) Gainsborough from Final Fantasy VII. I started doing research online and discovered a community of people, or cosplayers, who regularly dress up as characters to go to anime and fantasy conventions. This intrigued me and a new hobby was born. My grandmother gave me one of her old sewing machines and I quickly set to work learning how to sew, in order to make costumes.
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Note to Mr. Fondue: I know you really don’t want to see my dress, so if you are browsing Weddingbee for whatever reason, please do not read this post if you want it to remain a secret.

I went forward in time in my last post to tell you about my disappointing shopping trip. Now it’s time to rewind!

Bridesmaid Becka and I arrived at The White Room one Saturday morning to a mass of girls trying on prom dresses. I was a little worried at first, but I was soon escorted to a separate room with the wedding gowns that was much more calm and quiet. The room had three long racks of dresses, mirrors in the center of the room, and about four dressing rooms along one side. One of the dressing rooms had my name on it, waiting and ready.

My assistant, Meagan, let us go through the racks of dresses ourselves and instructed me to pick out five gowns to start with, so I immediately went over to the Maggie Sottero dresses. It was a little overwhelming at first, but soon Becka and I came up with five, three of which were Maggies.
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Note to Mr. Fondue: If you don’t want to see me in a wedding dress, then please do not read this post.

Early in February, a little over a month after Mr. Fondue popped the question, my bridesmaid Becka came to visit. Seeing as how none of my bridesmaids live in town, I decided this was the perfect opportunity to go check out some wedding dresses and to get an opinion on what looked good on me and what didn’t. There was no intention of buying anything.

I had, of course, been scouring the web and bridal magazines for styles that I liked. I knew I liked most Maggie Sottero gowns, as I loved the corset backs. Being a little curvy, I knew I didn’t want a sheath and would have preferred something fuller, like an A-line or ball gown. I also thought I might get something with some black detailing, to go with our black and white wedding.

I made appointments at two locations: The White Room in Lebanon, Tennessee, and one of the local David’s Bridals. My mom couldn’t make our early appointment at The White Room, but planned to join us later in the day.

However, given the choice, I prefer to hear bad news first, so I am going to start this story backwards with our trip to David’s Bridal. This is also to keep you guys in suspense just a little longer.
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Like the flower girl basket, the ring bearer pillow started off plain.

I bought white satin fabric and conjured up a small pillow using some fiberfill I had laying around. I then tied a ribbon around it and added some keychains. Keychains, you ask? I didn’t want the boys carrying the real rings, just in case there was a mutiny and all of them refused to walk. The craft store had some fake rings in the wedding section, but keychains were a bit bigger (so you can see them easier) and a lot cheaper (a bag for 99 cents vs. $3.99 for the fake wedding rings).

the basket and pillow before I damaskified them

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We have six little ones that will (hopefully) be gracing the aisle: three flower girls, and three ring bearers. I decided that we would only have one basket for the girls and one pillow for the boys that they could all share, with the oldest of each group carrying it. This decision mainly came about because it doesn’t make sense to have three ring pillows when there are only two rings.

I soon discovered that flower girl baskets are one of the most overpriced things in the world. Sixty dollars…for a basket? Really?

So I picked up a white basket during the after-Easter sales. It was originally $16.99, but I got it for 70% off. It came with a yellow and white lining and ribbon, which, while cute, did not match our color scheme.

The basket before. Say hi to Oscar!

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I love chair sashes. I think they are a simple way to dress up an otherwise plain chair. I couldn’t bring myself to spend the money on chivari chairs, so we are using black folding chairs with white sashes. I soon began researching all the different ways to tie a sash. BBJ Linens has some great ideas on their website, but they don’t give instructions. But, worry not! Miss Fondue is here with some tutorials!

(As a side note: I would have made videos instead of just picture tutorials, but my Firewire cable is on the fritz, so I can’t get video off my camcorder until I buy a new one. Thus, I decided to forge ahead with photos.)

First up: the basics. These are the easiest ones to tie. If you can tie your shoes, you can tie these sashes. BBJ Linen refers to these as the Flip, the Bow, the Loose Knot, and the Tight Knot.

(Another side note: I am not using a real chair sash in these photos; it’s an obi from a kimono I made. Hopefully your sashes will look better.)

The Flip
The basis of most every sash tie is the Flip. It is simply the first step when you tie your shoes.
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We had our follow-up meeting with our venue, Ravenwood, last weekend to finally get my list of questions answered. So what did we find out?

• We can turn the girls’ getting-ready room into a babysitting room for the reception.
• They have high chairs, but no booster seats, so I need to rent those.
• Waitstaff costs are built into the food price. (Score!)
• We can decorate the day before.
• They don’t cut cakes, so we need to appoint someone.
• They provide white china and white napkins.
• They use plastic drinkware.

The last one made me flinch a little. So we can have china plates, but people have to drink out of plastic cups? She said that if we were really, really stuck on having glass that we could rent it and also pay an additional $250 security fee. I calculated how much it would be to rent glasses for dinner and the bar, and estimated about $250-$300. Is $500-$550 worth it to keep the elegance factor?

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!
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I don’t remember when I first fell in love with pocketfold invitations. It was at some point before we were engaged–maybe a year or more–but I knew when we eventually got married, that I wanted pocket folds.

Source: Envelopments

Mr. Fondue was easily convinced (I showed him one example and he said, “Those are awesome.”), so one of our goals during a visit to a local bridal show last January was to price pocketfolds from different companies. The verdict? Too expensive and out of budget. Deflated, but not defeated, I began researching how I could make them on my own.

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I was totally excited to register for gifts. I mean, what’s not to love about running around a store and fantasizing about owning cool stuff? Mr. Fondue was a little hesitant at first, but he soon got into it.

Can you tell the majority of the house is decorated in our wedding colors?

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I always believed that having a theme or motif for your wedding helps you to not blow your budget. If you can only buy items that have a specific color/design on them, then that rules out a lot of stuff that doesn’t fit and so you never give it a second look.

However, every trip I make to Target, Wal-mart, or Hobby Lobby leaves me salivating over their newest black and white damask items. I find myself standing in the middle of the store, trying to come up with how I could possibly use a damask-print lampshade/crib set/paper plate/comforter/name-something-it-comes-in-damask in the wedding. I come up with all these insane ideas (clearly, the lampshade could be turned upside down and with a bowl inside could be used as a candy dish) before I finally snap back to reality and run out of the store screaming. I think this is why Mr. Fondue won’t come shopping with me.
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You know how all those wedding sites and magazines have lists of questions to ask your vendors? They are useful, sure, but they don’t make it easy to take them along to meetings and record your answers.

So I compiled my own lists of questions to ask our vendors, and printed one up for each vendor meeting I went to. I left enough space so I could write the answers directly on the sheet, along with contact information, and package prices. This made it super easy to compare different vendors.

I thought some of you in the hive might find these useful, so I am sharing my work with you! You can either print them directly off your browser, or copy and paste into your favorite document editing program, if you wish to add your own questions.

They are hosted on Google Documents, so just click on the image to view the whole worksheet.
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Mr. Fondue picked our flowers.

I think he hates that I tell people that, but it’s true. We knew we wanted some sort of red flowers, so I began collecting images of all-red bouquets.

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