Weddingbee Blog

Like justbefore I licked our invitation envelopes shut, it dawned on me that we must have a wedding map. Let me explain: We have the bare minimum when it comes to an invitation suite, which I printed myself. We only have one envelope, the invitation and a reply card/envelope. No tri-fold enclosure, ribbons, inner envelope or other extra goodies.

I knew I loved the simplicity of our invitation suite, but I thought a map would be a nice touch. So I sat down with my drawing pad, Googled around for inspiration from various artists of wedding maps, then drew my own map design. An hour later I was satisfied. I finished it by coloring it in with colored pencils. I used pencil shavings on a cotton ball (using the cotton ball to smear the color onto the paper) to achieve the dreamiest, most blended color.

Well, I know you want to see it already, so here is a portion of it:

Since it is a map to our wedding, I can’t show all of it. That is about half of it.
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I’m finally back with a photo of the driftwood arbor Papa Paisley and I built the other week when I was visiting NorCal. It was fun and quick, taking us about an hour using just screws, a power drill, a pencil and a ladder.

Here ’tis:

I planted Moonflowers (a fast-growing annual) at the base of each post. They’re like Morning glory but white and open at 6 PM, blooming throughout the night with sinful fragrance. If the vines aren’t tall enough by the wedding to reach the top of the arbor, I’ll make a garland out of eucalyptus leaves to hang over it.

I plan to drape billowy white fabric over the top. The goal is for it to look somewhat like this driftwood arbor:
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Professor Paisley and I knew we wanted some artsy-cool engagement photographs, but on our grad-student/freelance-writer budgets, we thought it’d be impossible. Then I learned, on the Weddingbee boards of course, about finding free sessions from photographers just starting out and building their portfolios.

A while back (like a year, haha) we found Ashley Rose and were lucky to snag her LAST free sesh.

We immediately began planning how to style our shoot, including wardrobe, hair accessories, setting, props and perhaps most importantly, gathering inspiration to help us pull off the look we wanted.

We had a total blast:

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I’m Ron Burgundy? Sorry for the question mark headline, you’ll see why in a minute… I must also apologize if my posting is light this week, as I’m up in Nor Cal at “wedding central” doing 8 hours of gardening a day for nine days…

I got some respite from the manual labor and squeezed in some sewing, since it recently dawned on me that I was still a ring pillow-less bride! Oh nos! And since Professor Paisley just asked our little nephew to be our ring bearer, I needed to get serious about a little cushion for our shiny bands o’ gold.

This morning my mom wrote a note before leaving for work saying the ring pillow I made last night was beautiful and had “family heirloom potential?”

Which made my day, of course, but I’ll have you know that question mark is key, because personally, I don’t think this ring pillow will last many generations…

Because it’s made out 150-year-old napkins that were a wedding present to my mom and dad in 1971:
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I did the calligraphy myself and I just want to encourage other brides with very bad handwriting that it’s possible to do!

I actually have a form of dyslexia, and one of my unique disabilities is impaired handwriting. My hand cramps up after writing a few sentences, and my handwriting looks like that of a serial killer’s. Plus, it changes all the time. Weird, I know. It’s probably because of all the attempts over the years to try to achieve better-looking handwriting. It’s really, really bad and I’m ashamed of it. I hold my pencil incorrectly, like a left-handed person but in my right hand. Really, it’s a miracle that I got through college writing all those essay test questions, because I write much, much slower than the average person.

I’m going to spare you pictures of my hideous handwriting and show you my calligraphy. For some reason, if I put my mind to it, I can do calligraphy, sort of. I have middling artistic talent, so when I want to write pretty, I try to look at it as drawing rather than writing. But I’m still slow at it. And I still usually can’t achieve straight lines.

Here’s a tutorial for bad-handwriting-ladies to achieve DIY calligraphy:

Step 1:
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Yes, “do-it-yourself” and “die-cut” are usually mutually exclusive. But that didn’t stop me from doing it. Well, it was not exactly die cutting… I cut them out myself with scissors!

It’s not that insane, really! I promise! I did 20 per night as easy as can be and was finished within a week. As long as you’re comfy with a pair of scissors, it’s an affordable way to achieve a nice little detail.

I was inspired to do it by my graphic designer’s original invitation design (the one mine is based on), which called for die cutting in this shape. But we priced it, and it would have cost around $300 at the die cutter’s.
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It’s official, the Paisleys’ have received their very first wedding present, in gorgeous gold wrapping paper, courtesy of Mother-in-Law Paisley. Thank you to MIL P! It was really fun and exciting!

Mr. Paisley was a silly Paisley-locks whilst opening this beautiful gift.

First, he came bearing the present with glee on his face.

He gave it a lil’ shake, trying to tell what was inside.
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I’ve devised a unique way of displaying our escort cards: on a magnet mirror!

I first found this magnet mirror at one of my favorite home decor sites, Layla Grayce:

Source

I did a Google search and up came the same product cheaper at other online retailers… score!

After procuring ribbon, eyelet escort cards from Martha Stewart that I found at Big Lots, and small butterfly magnets that I made, I put together 150 cute little magnet escort cards. They’re currently blank, awaiting names to be written.
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I’m back with pictures of the drink bar Papa Paisley and I constructed.

We based it on this lovely wine barrel design:

Source

I thought I’d try to add some driftwood and a shelf to the drink bar, like in this photo:
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David’s Bridal has done us good. After all of the hair-pulling, frustrating experiences of shopping for my girls, trying dress after dress, buying and returning, it’s been easy peasy now that DB is in the picture.

I wish I’d gone with them from the get-go.

Check out Maid of Honor Paisley in the winning dress:

She’s gorgeous!
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At first I was frustrated. Scratch that, I AM still frustrated, to be perfectly honest, that I can’t just select an adorable frock for my bridesmaids from my favorite store, Anthropologie. Or perhaps one of the dressier, cute options at my second favorite store, ModCloth.

I mean, that’s what I’d always intended to do, in my caviar dreams of what my wedding would be like. Back in the days when I felt as though I held a magic wand in my sweet little paws. A magic wand that with a flick of the wrist would send make-everything-pretty dust all across Paisley weddingdom.

I merrily selected my bridal party, and then realized: my favorite stores don’t have the right sizes for my best girls!

The nerve! I mean, I’m truly offended.

It really sucks that my best ladies, and many ladies around the world, can’t just walk into any store they please and pick out a cute dress.

The past 10 months (I am not exaggerating) has been an exercise for me in life as an above-size-20 lady.
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I wrote about my hair trial already, but only had one photo to show you. Now I’m back with the rest of the pictures, courtesy of Papa Paisley’s camera and photo emailing skills!

Here are a couple of my inspiration photos to show what I was hopin’ for:

And:
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I first fell in love with the concept of birch vases when I saw wedding planner Beth Helmstetter’s design:

These photos by Jose Villa are incredible, and I swooned for birch!

I mean, look:
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My first bridesmaid dress plan tanked. Remember, I had put a deposit down on some used Twobirds designer dresses I found on the Weddingbee classifieds? Well, the bride I was getting them from no longer had the size B I needed for one of my ‘maids. The full price the dresses, at over $300, are waaaay out of our price range, so, I got my deposit back, and then it was back to the drawing board.

I found out there’s still time (barely) to order dresses from Aria, so I went to the Pasadena store yesterday and tried on about 50 different styles. It was actually pretty fun. I had the whole salon to myself for two hours, with one assistant who willingly snapped front and back pictures of each dress I tried on! I loved them all! The Paisley ‘maids are picking out any style they like, and now it’s up to me to pick a color and a fabric.

Here’s an inspiration board I made of me wearing my favorite Aria dress at the moment––the eyelet lace in powder blue. I included pictures of some of my wedding things to show how the colors will go well together:

Photo credits: personal photos, Martha Stewart Weddings, Project Wedding, Style Me Pretty

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My trip up north to do wedding things went pretty well. The wine barrel drink-bar-constructing was completed, but the grand plans to build a driftwood arbor were laid aside, since I underestimated the time it takes to gather numerous large pieces of wood around the lake. With no motorboat available, I used a kayak and towed the 7-foot hunks o’wood using rope tied to the stern. It’s a good thing wood floats.

I got about half the wood I needed for the arbor in one day. The next day, I was all set to go out for round II of wood gathering when my dad said to me, completely somber, “Oh, keep an eye out for a body. A man drowned in the lake two days ago and they haven’t found him yet.”

My face dropped as I contemplated both the tragedy of somebody drowning in the lake and the possibility of stumbling upon the body, something my own dad had the misfortune of experiencing on Clear Lake some 30 years ago. I did not want to have to see my first dead body while rummaging around the lake shore looking for driftwood for our wedding day arbor.
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