Weddingbee Blog

I thought I’d interrupt my regularly scheduled wedding recaps (haha, riiight) to post about various lessons learned from my own wedding. Keep in mind: the wedding was the shiz-nit. An amazing, fun, without-a-care-in-the-world day and all-round hootenanny of hilarity with most everybody pitching in to get ‘er done! The following is just some information I personally could have used before the big day. Just nitpicky things. Not huge regrets. So hold on to your wedding hats, hive, cuz I’m about to get all up in the nitpick-pickety.

(Tip: scroll allll the way down to read the super short version of this post.)

All photos unless otherwise noted are by the lovely and amazing Tanja Lippert.

Here’s what I learned:

1. It’s sometimes easier to say you’re sorry than ask for permission. I know, I know, shouldn’t I be a tad bit more ethical, being a journalist and all?

I’m not talking anything illegal, but when it came to my at-home wedding, it was definitely easiest to just go for it, rather than ask, when it came to things like our parking-in-the-meadow-across-the-street-situation:

Personal Photo

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I’m back with the leading-up-to-the-wedding events I hadn’t yet covered in my very first recap!

It was pretty much a bunch o’ yard work!

Here’s an “after” shot of the ceremony site:

Photo courtesy of Tanja Lippert

And:
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Hello ladies, I’m back to formally introduce A Lakeside Storybook Wedding and unfurl the carpet for my RECAPS! Can we get a woo to the hoo, an amen sistah and an audible sigh of “fiiiiiiiiinally” up in he’ah?!?!

Today when the mister burst through the door with the news that the oh-so-longed-for CD of professional wedding photos had just arrived in our mailbox, I felt overcome with happiness to return to the hive.

So let’s start at the beginning of the Big Day.

Professor Paisley and I awoke together after a pretty good night’s sleep. Thank goodness insomnia-girl (yours truly) actually slept like a babe due to pre-wedding exhaustion … remember, our wedding was completely DIY and an at-home, backyard hootenanny. There was a LOT to do in the week leading up! I’m pretty sure the day before I was running from task to task and didn’t even stop to eat. Mama Paisley made a sandwich and chased after me to shove it in my mouth so I could eat. True story.

Anyway, on the morning of we stopped for breakfast and coffee on our way to drop me off at the hair salon at 11. Once there, I learned they were short-staffed and only had two girls for our group of six. Not all the ‘maids were arrived yet, and since there wasn’t much I could do about any of that, I decided to “let it roll off my shoulders” like mom always advises, and join my maid of honor at a nail salon next door for some luxurious pampering.

Or so I thought.
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We did it! We tied the knot! Words fail me right now to describe how fun, how meaningful and how amazing it was to marry my love on a perfect, warm summer day at my grandma’s house by the lake, where I grew up. The day was magical, personal and far exceeded my expectations.

Mr. Paisley, I love you so much, and am so very proud to call you my husband!

Our day was so happy, so charming and so full of love. It was intimate, with only our dearest friends and relatives. There were cool summer cocktails, delicious Spanish tapas, the best live “backwater blues” band I’ve ever heard, and the best wedding cake I’ve ever tasted.

I’ll let these few teaser photos speak for me until I get our pro photos back.

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So, you want to know how to save a bundle on flowers?

Did you perhaps receive a florists’ quote exceeding $4,000, for what you thought was a rather skimpy amount of blooms?

Of course, not to knock the florists’ talents! It’s well worth the money to avoid the hassle of planning and arranging for your own floral needs at your own wedding! As professionals, florists deserve to mark up their product, just like any other vendor would.

That said, I am an avid gardener and passionate arranger of flowers and so I will be doing it myself all for under $300.

Anyway. If you’re going the DIY route, first off, establish a budget. This, we saved until the week before the wedding, like big stupid heads.
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Wow! How did we get to ONE WEEK before the wedding SO. DAMN. QUICKLY?!? There are so many things left to do!

I need to buy my groom’s present, buy my makeup, floral supplies, do the candy buffet… I’ll spare you from the whole list, but, suffice it to say that I added up all the hours (of gardening plus projects) and they equal 60 total hours of work! Before you join me in a spine-chilling bridal scream, let me assure you that divided by the number of wonderful helpers we have this week, it all comes down to just three hours per person. Whew! That was close, guys, that was close!

Some of the projects I’ve completed:

Programs!
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Storybooks are my favorite, from the fairy tales Grimm to Babar the Elephant to yes, even storybooks’ physical manifestation via Storybook Land at Disneyland.

I owe a great part of my admiration for storybooks to my mom, a children’s librarian.

To pay tribute to her, my wonderful bridesmaid Alexa will recite a reading based on the book, The Runaway Bunny.

To tie in the theme, I created program backs using the pages of my favorite children’s book (about a wedding, of course!) “A Frog Went A-Courting” adapted and illustrated by Nina Barbaresi:

I used different pages so about every row, if they put their programs together, can get the gist of the story:
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My OC girls threw me the most fabulous night out on the town, Sex and the City style. The movie had just opened (I know, I’m a little late posting this), and, ardent fans that we were, we had been planning for months to make a day of it and see it together.

When my bridesmaids (who live in NorCal) realized they needed to host a party there, an 8+ hour drive from the OC, and we quickly realized that what with graduations and schedule conflicts, nobody from down here could make it up there, my OC girls decided to turn SATC day into a celebration of my devotion to one man, since they are awesome like that.

What was meant to be just a last minute, mini-bachelorette turned out to be my largest (with five of us altogether) bachelorette party! (Stay tuned to read about the other bachelorette party!!)

After getting dolled up in our carefully-planned and coordinated SATC-inspired outfits, we hopped in the car (fully intending for our men to pick us up later on):
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I think I waited until a month before our wedding to show you guys my dress because I was secretly worried some readers would criticize me for picking such a ubiquitous dress. Yuppers, mine is an extremely popular one… as the bridal shop informed me, and the alterations place, and many people around wedding blogosphere.

Actually, my seamstress ever-so-slightly-passive-aggressively informed me it is not popular anymore. So maybe I have nothing to fear! According to her, it’s practically vintage! She got, and I quote, “thousands, literally thousands of this dress like two, three years ago.”

Sweet! Not only has everybody and her sister worn my dress, but now it’s old, too!

You know what I say to that? What-freakin’-ever! I fell in love with my dress two years ago after seeing it in a magazine, and despite trying on dozens of others, I couldn’t find another I love more.

And so without further ado, I give you, arguably one of the most popular dresses of the ’10s, (and for good reason):
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… if you don’t like my favorite store, because this post borders on Anthro-worship.

But where else would I shop for my bridesmaids’ gifts, since it’s the best store ever, right? (Note: I only ever shop for sale items here, however.)

The question then, was, which of the lovely things in said store should I gift them? (Paisley ‘maids, please go away now! No more reading!)

I recently fell in looove with their monogram necklace:

Source

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Hard.

We’re narrowing it down when it comes to the boys’ ties to complete the look, but we need a little help from the hive, so please vote in the poll below! Here’s an inspiration board I created, with the help of two photos from our very own Miss Apple Cider and Miss Cowboy Boot!

All photos unless noted are by Miss Paisley

Upper left: Source Middle right: Miss Apple Cider Lower left: Source Lower right: Miss Cowboy Boot

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That’s right, ladies, she has her MOB outfit!

We had a difference of opinion when it came to our idea of a MOB outfit. Let’s just say I have an abhorrence of simple, button-down white blouses when it comes to a MOB ensemble and let’s leave it at that!

Let me be clear: it was nothing that resulted in a fight or even a tiff, it was just a misunderstanding that was resolved after we were able to flip through some magazines and inspiration photos together (note: Mama P really gets a kick out of phrases like “inspiration photos”… but, I probably would too, if I weren’t the bride obsessed with them!).

After an in-person perusal of my mom’s favorite catalogs, we were quickly on the same page. Here’s one photo I gave her for inspiration, although I’m not sure whether it factored into the decision-making or if it instead ended up floating around in email abyss:
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So, I was at Jo-Ann’s the other day looking for ribbon for my Moroccan lantern project, when I fell upon the perfect fauxtobooth fabric in the outdoor fabric section. At $4/yard, I felt like I’d hit the wedding jackpot, especially since I’d been eyeing this expensive designer wallpaper by Amy Butler, then eyeing my bank account, then eyeing said expensive wallpaper, for about a month without caving in to buy it:

Said expensive wallpaper. Source

I was in love with this expensive wallpaper by Amy Butler as well:
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What could be more delightful, more youthful, more whimsical, than ribbons dancing in the breeze?

Ribbons entered our design scheme purely as a solution to a tricky problem (more on that later), but I’m so glad they did.

Revel in their prettiness:

Source

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Now, what is a napkin treatment, you ask? I’m honestly not sure if I’m making that up, or if I’ve heard it somewhere. But when I told Professor Paisley what I was doing, he looked utterly confused, so let me explain:

I am doing DIY napkins out of various colors of fabric. Navy blue, grays, yellows, pinks. I’m trying to put one color per long table, but it might not work out that way, so I needed a way to tie all these colors together.

I had some white eyelet fabric left over from my candle project, and I already had my pinking shears out from cutting all those 20X20″ squares of fabric.

So I made these:

Little napkin belly bands.

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