Weddingbee Blog

I’ve got two great coupons for you today.

The first is for Crafts, Etc., which is basically Hobby Lobby’s online store. You can get 20% off your entire order through October 24th for National Boss Day if you use the code BOSS1016. They also have free shipping when you spend over $25.

The second is for buyfabrics.com, which is where I got my damask fabric, but they have a lot of other great patterns as well! You can get 20% off your order of $50 or more through October 19th if you use the code FALL20.

Happy shopping!

Being from the South, it should come as no surprise that we’ll be having a groom’s cake. There have been very, very few weddings I’ve been to that didn’t have a groom’s cake. To put that in perspective, I’ve been to 30+ weddings in my lifetime and can only think of three that didn’t have one (granted, I wasn’t that observant at my cousins’ weddings when I was a kid).

Mr. Fondue knew he wanted something gaming related.

Source: Flickr; Cake by: Let Them Eat Cake

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Besides the exhausting venue hunt, the number one thing that has been most difficult for us has been deciding the table names.

We’re having assigned seating, so naming or numbering the tables is a must. I always liked the idea of having names for the tables instead of the traditional numbers, and we figured it was a good way to work in some more of our interests and personalities. But agreeing on the names? Impossible.

My first idea was different words for the color ‘red’, since it’s our accent color. For example, “Rouge”, “Scarlet”, “Crimson”, “Cherry”, “Claret”, etc. Mr. Fondue said no.

My next idea was video game couples. It was a take on the popular “famous couples” idea, except would be representing the geek in our geek chic wedding. We’d have the “Link and Zelda” table, the “Mario and Peach” table, and the “Locke and Celes” table. (My favorite was “Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man” but Mr. Fondue tried to argue that they weren’t actually a couple.) He suggested expanding this idea to include movies as well, so we could have the “Han Solo and Leia” table and the “Wesley and Buttercup” table. I went as far as to make some mock-up table cards for this, but then Mr. Fondue decided he didn’t like it at all.
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Remember that Mr. Fondue went down to Street Tuxedo to get some general ideas on what he liked, as far as tuxedos went. We discussed some of the stuff he tried on, and he went back so we could figure out vest and tie colors.

Last time, he had gone to the closest location. They told us that another location was where their warehouse was, so it was the best place to try stuff on. So that’s where Mr. Fondue headed for this trip. You can see the large variety of vests here in the background. (And note the shop’s color scheme. What a great place to try on tuxes for our wedding!)

He tried on both black and white vests with a variety of tie colors and styles. Here he is sporting a black vest with a solid black tie.
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Mr. Fondue insisted that he needed to go tuxedo shopping without me. He said that I rush him when he shops, and he wanted to take his time to find the perfect tux. I agreed, but only on the condition that he would take the camera with him.

So one afternoon, he headed out to a local tux shop called Street Tuxedo. They have three locations in the area, so he chose the closest one. The goal for the first trip was to get a basic idea of what he wanted.

He tried on a couple jackets to try to figure out if he liked two-button or three-button coats better, as witnessed by these MySpace-esque photos.

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I can’t remember the exact moment when I thought to myself, “Damask has to be in the wedding!” But seeing Miss (now Mrs.!) Sundae’s table runners definitely played a part in the decision. I immediately got yards and yards of the Traditions fabric from buyfabrics.com, where I happened to have a 25% coupon at the time.

When I received the fabric, I noted that the design didn’t start at the edge; it was centered. So I could get three table runners out of the width, with leftovers on the ends. I promptly started making table runners.

But what to do with all that leftover fabric? I certainly didn’t want it to go to waste.
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One lighting element I really wanted was a monogram gobo. We priced them through a few local vendors, but we decided to buy our own projector and got a custom gobo from GoboMan. They have a wedding package deal that includes the projector, gobo, and a clamp for around the price most vendors here were charging for the gobo itself.

Here is the little projector. It’s not a heavy-duty professional thing by any means, but we don’t need it for large, commercial event anyway.

Ignore the cat hair on the couch.

Here it is projecting onto a wall just a few feet away, but it can be adjusted to project much, much further.

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We had our tasting at Ravenwood a couple weeks ago. We met with Chef Stan, who was incredibly nice. We had picked out a lot of items on their menu that we’d like to try, but as most of it required ordering stuff in bulk, we only got to try a few of them. But they were all delicious!

Mr. Fondue likes to pretend that I’m not taking pictures.

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I did a ton of research when I looked for someone to tackle my hair and makeup for the day of the wedding. Just when I thought I might schedule a trial with someone, I would find someone who I liked the sound of even better. Finally, I decided upon Whitney Lowe of Faces by Whitney. She was just getting started in the business, but came recommended by our photographer. Whitney had done our photographer’s hair and make-up for her vow renewal, and they had worked together on a couple photo shoots as well.

Source: Krystal Muellenberg

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I have a bit of a secret, which I might as well disclose before you see pictures of me sans make-up before my make-up trial. I have a disorder called trichotillomania that causes me to pull out my eyebrows. I don’t tweeze them; I actually pull the hairs out with my fingers, and a lot of the time, I don’t realize I’m doing it. Sometimes I get so focused on pulling out one specific hair that I can’t focus on other things until it is gone.

Trichotillomania, trich, TTM–whatever you wish to call it–is an impulse disorder somewhat related to obsessive-compulsive disorder. It affects more women than men and the symptoms, pulling one’s own hair out, usually starts in the teen years.

Fifteen years ago, when my eyebrows were intact

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Last summer, I made a list of 365 reasons why I love Mr. Fondue, a la Mrs. Hummingbird and Miss Candy Corn. A lot of them are inside jokes and a few are quite personal, so I won’t share them all, but you may see several of them pop up throughout my posts.

Today my focus is on reason #11: “You make funny faces when I take pictures of you.”

Something happens when you point a camera in Mr. Fondue’s direction. Think Chandler from “Friends” (Mr. Fondue is A LOT like Chandler), except not as scary.

Source: TBS

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“What are these?” you are wondering.

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Previously: Coasters

One cute little touch that I was considering for a DIY project was matchboxes. I really wanted black matchboxes that I could stamp our monogram with white ink, or white matchboxes to stamp with black ink. I scoured the web, but there wasn’t much I could find for less than 50 cents a box. And that was just the supplies, not including the hours I would spend stamping the things.

Then I came across the Etsy seller LSeabol. She does stuff like monogrammed aisle runners and banners. She also does matchboxes… for 50 cents a box.

Hmm, I thought. Spend the same amount and have a DIY project, or outsource? Outsourcing won, of course. I still haven’t finished our coasters. Or our invitations. And especially not the table runners.

So, I was happy when the mailman delivered these:

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I often wonder how much money I waste on failed DIY projects.

I had fallen for these flutes from Brocade Home, but Mr. Fondue wanted a more traditional glass shape because he says it makes the champagne taste better.

Mama Fondue suggested trying to etch the damask shape myself. I looked up some instructions on how to do this and it didn’t seem too hard, so one afternoon I stopped by Hobby Lobby for some supplies.

I couldn’t find any Contact paper at the store, so I went with the next best thing: laminating paper.
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We’ll be stocking our bar with a few different favors that guests can take, if they’d like. If not, we’ll be more than happy to take and use the extras after the wedding, so they don’t go to waste.

For the first of these items, I’m stamping and embossing two different styles of coasters, both featuring our monogram.

The design on the left is based on our invitations (and programs and menu cards), but I wanted to offer some variety, so some of the coasters have the second design (on the right). There’s a 2:1 ratio, with the invitation design being more common because I like it better.
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