Weddingbee Blog

I promise I’ll cover more on my dress later - once the actual designing has begun. In the meantime, thought we should cover the manly side of our Bridal Party and get some tie talk goin’. Last week, Mr. Pom took his two most fashionable friends to MW Tux for a fashion show. There was much deliberation between the boys on what they would be wearing, as I am not one of those brides who has a specific vision - rather, I’d like for them to be comfy. Classy, mind you, but comfy.

So the real question is Tie or Bow Tie?

The green Tie Getup in question - black Calvin Klein tux, straight white shirt, white vest, green striped tie, and white pocket square.
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Turning to eBay for wedding dress inspiration was a fruitful decision. After my last bout with dress try-ons and seamstress interviews, I was rather excited to meet Carole Kenney of Carole Kenney Design after hearing about her 25th Anniversary Sale. Carole, who has been in the biz for - you guessed it - 25 years, was offering a 25% discount for any bridal bookings before the 25th of December. I quickly scheduled my meeting as the 25th was rapidly approaching and I’m the type of girl who hates to miss a good sale!

Carole was awesome. She was easy to talk to and got just about as excited as I was (if not more at times) about the dress designs I presented to her. She had fabulous books of fabrics from couture designers like Valentino and projects everywhere to play with. I was in luck - she did excellent work and had equally excellent taste! Below is a photo of the three dresses I discussed with Carole. Fool You - you thought I’d be unveiling My Dress! I’m not - but I will give you four sneak peaks of the chosen dress’ details and the fabrics Carole and I decided to use in accomplishing the final design.

Click to view larger image.

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I knew that I needed to do my first dress shopping session either alone - or at least with an un-opinionated bridesmaid. I needed a chance to try on some dresses to see what I REALLY liked without influence of outside parties. Plus, I kept hearing about Too-Many-Cooks-in-the-Kitchen dress shopping horror stories where a delightful wedding adventure quickly turned sour.

Therefore, I took my Crafty Bridesmaid - who, while she has lovely taste, she is also the most carefree. We had a fantastic morning, perusing the stores and sites of the mall. Then we headed back to Sacramento for the first of two bridal appointments.

Image via Lana’s Bridal Studio

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Mr. Pomegranate was not to be thwarted again when putting together his second proposal plan - he didn’t tell a soul! Two days after the ring arrived at the jewelry store, sized perfectly to my finger, he started to “prep me.” We were going to attend the California State Fair later that week with a group of our friends, an annual tradition of food, fun and festivities. To switch it up, Mr. Pom arranged for us to go on a different day - which set us up for a romantic summer night alone to enjoy the State Fair all by our lonesome.

Of course, there has to be a little deviation from the perfection - which adds humor to the tale. On the way in, Mr. Pom set off the metal detector. I hadn’t noticed as I was peeking in at all the lights and glitz. While I was distracted, Mr. Pom whispered to the security guy, “It’s an engagement ring!” The security guard discreetly apologized and quickly passed him through. Whew!

We wandered around; stopping to take a look at the Toytopia exhibit - very cool - where there was a Zoltar machine (ie. the movie Big). Mr. Pom gave me a $1 for a prediction. The winded speech from Zoltar made little sense, but the tear-off card that ensued spoke of a future love. I must admit, I started to suspect something - but honestly, who could rig a Zoltar machine to do something like that?
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After dating for a good 6 months, we were in love. Mr. Pomegranate and I were in that giddy state of mind where we JUST KNEW that we’d be together forever. But, marriage? It hadn’t even crossed my mind.

On occasion, we’d entertain our friends at Mr. Pom’s fantastic apartment, complete with a barbecue on the patio overlooking a grand cityscape. This particular party included my best friend (who is now my MOH), one of Mr. Pom’s best friends and his current girlfriend (who I will refer to as Girlfriend), and one of Mr. Pom’s co-workers. We were all having a great time, with Mr. Pom’s co-worker cooking us a fabulous meal of steak and asparagus, drinks mixed by Mr. Pom’s best friend and lots of joking and laughing.
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Our tours of Wine & Roses and the Old Sugar Mill proved unimpressive. We weren’t thrilled with the prospect of being “one of many” weddings held throughout the day - as this deemed the event as being just one part of a wedding machine. We we also incredulous to view such a beautiful space ridden with character - shoddy character - and unfinished details, to then discover the rental price tag was nearly twice what we felt was appropriate.

Feeling less than thrilled, Mr. Pomegranate and I made an appointment to check out this winery our wedding coordinator kept raving about. R.H. Phillips was out in the middle of nowhere and well, while we DO enjoy ourselves a glass of wine or two, we weren’t exactly true aficionados.

However, my mood turned around once we started on the drive up to Esparto, CA - it was beautiful. Rolling, dry, fuzzy hills; tattered barns spotted along the landscape; the random cow traipsing along - it was endearing to my farm town upbringing. When we arrived at the winery, my heart skipped a beat - it was modern, nicely landscaped - quite the hidden gem! An oasis of grape vines and olive groves met us as we turned down the county road.
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Now that I’ve shared with you some of the small details of our wedding, let’s talk about the BIG stuff - the venue! We were told that our first choice venue, The Crocker Art Museum, was to be going under renovations for the next 2 - 3 years - so we began our search online, looking for galleries and other interesting wedding sites in the Sacramento Valley area. I’ve compiled our first round of venues in an Idea Board to make it easier to list the pros and cons of each.

We were looking for:

1. Enough space to hold 150 guests comfortably.
2. Close proximity to the Sacramento area for ease of travel.
3. Something modern or quirky about the space.
4. Preferably close to nature.
5. Not too many restrictions on vendor selections.
6. A low catering minimum (if catering was included).

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The design of our custom monogram was developed over many, many conference calls at work and devoured a ton of legal pads in the process. In fact, my coworkers must have thought that I was taking notes in a new form of shorthand that resembled Egyptian hieroglyphics - or perhaps Frank Lloyd Wright stained glass windows. I designed the center square with the intent of adding flourishes that I eventually purchased from iStockphoto.

I love how the back-to-back “K’s” combine to form both sides of an “M.”

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Making our own Save the Dates was not a terribly quick process, but it was pretty easy. Once I got Adobe Illustrator down pat, I was swift in creating my envisioned pieces for the collection. While Mr. Pom has the full version of Illustrator on his computer, I did not - so I simply downloaded the 30-day free trial to assist me in my project.

My Partner in Crafting Crime: Adobe Illustrator CS3.

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It was rather late in the evening when I started the Wraparound Labels for the Save the Dates. Mamita Pom and I had been “crafting” these STDs for about 8 hours at this point (including a 30 minute trip to Michael’s to get the Xyron unstuck, our 2.5 hour stay at Kinko’s and a 1.5 hour dinner break). I was determined to see at least ONE finished product that evening.

I fed each 8.5″ x 11″ color printed sheet into the Xyron sticker maker. We chose a laminated and permanent sticker cartridge.
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These puppies were a labor of love. While I was somewhat familiar with the Adobe Creative Suite due to tinkering with Photoshop for the past few years, I had never felt completely comfortable with Illustrator. However, I knew that working with the Pantone color code I had swindled out of Paper Source would be easier in this product. I created our monogram, Save the Date front, Save the Date back, and the Address Labels in Illustrator. I’ve since learned that In Design will help with my designer woes when I take up DIY again in creating our invitations.

Our Save the Date collection, including all pieces involved in the making.

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My hair color has gone under a transformation in the past few years. I’ve been pretty happy with my blonde tresses for the past few months, but I’m still unsure about what color I want to wear on my wedding day. I’m a hair color chameleon - all three in variations look alright on me, so I can be flexible.

Blonde Pomegranate

Crafty Bridesmaid (on left) and I (on right) posing for a bathroom photo op.
Please excuse the fuzzy cameraphone picture.

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Boy do WE have a lot of catching up to do!

I’ve been planning our wedding for almost 9 months now and only have 4 months to spare. Fortunately, I’ve been a bit of a procrastinator with my Do-It-Yourself projects and will have a lot to share with you in the proceeding months. Let’s talk color scheme, okay?

When I first discussed colors with Mr. Pomegranate - I’ll admit it was the day after the proposal - I had thought that a bright modern wedding would be a blast! My first color palette included a nice black and white damask* paired with a persimmon orange and a subdued lime. I wasn’t able to find my original inspiration photos from 9 months ago, but the wedding below captures the complementary color scheme idea quite nicely (they added raspberry as well).

Images via the Knot

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Can I please start out by saying that I am so excited to be a Bee?!

I’ve been a Weddingbee reader for quite some time now. In fact, I’ve been through two application processes - thus proving that it’s best to “try, try again.” I absolutely love blogging - especially writing about weddings and have been doing so from the day after Mr. Pomegranate proposed to me over 9 months ago. Since that fateful day, I haven’t stopped!

Now that I’ve been given the opportunity to join the hive and be Miss Pomegranate, I’m stoked! Growing up, we had a pomegranate bush that grew the cutest, most adorable, mini pomegranates ever. They weren’t the tastiest, but in revisiting my small, sweet, friend again when sampling Pom’s juice blends, both Mr. Pomegranate and I became fans once again. Plus, they’re high in antioxidants!

To introduce Mr. Pomegranate and I - we met via a popular online social networking website almost three years ago. However, there were multiple instances in our lives where we totally could have met sooner! I like to think of it as kismet that we met when we did. Otherwise, love probably wouldn’t have sparked between us - rather fizzled out due to bad timing.
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