Weddingbee Blog

I am a HUGE proponent of travel journals. I have been on a few significant trips in my life: Europe with my Dad and Tweets, Hawaii with an old boytoy, and most recently: my Sistamoon. On each, I kept a travel journal. At the end of every day, I took ten minutes to write down everything that happened that day. Vacations go by SO fast - it’s easy to forget all of the details… I am so happy to have those travel journals to look back on to remember all of the fun moments.

SO, of course this meant I had to prepare a travel journal for the Sistamoon. I promptly referred to my fave craft book… (This is seriously the best book ever!)

Trusty Esther had a travel journal tutorial… SCORE! Creating this journal was a lot of work, but I knew this was a special trip, so I wanted a special kind of journal - all the work was well worth it. Let’s get started!

You’ll need:
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Earlier this summer, because I called off my wedding, my honeymoon became my “Sistamoon”. My sister Snappy-L and I vacationed for two weeks on a Mediterranean cruise, and I can honestly say it was the best trip of my life. We had a great time of relaxing, sightseeing, learning, bonding, and eating… a whole lot! It was just the medicine I needed. I know some of you are planning cruise honeymoons, as well as varying trips to Europe/Asia. SO…

If you’re in Barcelona, make sure to visit the Mercat de Sant Josep for fresh fruit…
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Recently, as of about six months ago, I met my new technological love. This beauty is attractive, fashion-forward, fits in my party clutch, and is always there when I need her. Friends, meet your new best bud: The Flipcam.

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I can’t tell you how handy this lil’ number has been… I’ve broken her out for parties, nights out, everyday life - and perhaps MOST handily, at weddings and while on vacation. I absolutely love my Flipcam! My favorite part about her is that she fits in my purse. We would all love to have a camcorder at the ready for those most special moments in our lives, but… I have no inclination to drag a camcorder around a wedding! Too bulky.

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*All pictures mine, unless noted otherwise.

Yes, this is report from the field… specifically, Operation Mrs. Powder Puff: a date that shall live in infamy.

Mrs. Powder Puff, Mrs. Quiche and I all became bees right around the same time, back in late 2008. Sharing our freshman fears, we quickly became fast friends. We may or may not have consumed multiple alcoholic beverages in concert, ahem.

In any case, at our last dinner, Miss Powder Puff asked Mrs. Quiche and me if we’d like to come to her wedding. This is how the convo went:
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Hi, Hive - I’ve missed you ladies! (And gents! - Gents? Do boys read this blog?)

Long time no blog - mainly because I was busy crying in my oatmeal. (Kidding - mostly!)

I just got back from my Honeymoon turned Sistamoon, and I promise to share all of the deets with you soon: including cruise and travel tips, as well as a DIY travel journal to end all travel journals (The journal is either incredibly amazing, or incredibly obsessive-compulsive, depending on how you look at it.) Before we get to that though, I was moved to write this blog because I am still active on the Weddingbee message boards, and on a fairly regular-ish basis, I see a post by a bride who had to call off her wedding, due to a variety of horrible circumstances.

Weddingbee is about the experience of moving towards the altar, and for some brides, that journey gets cut short, which is what happened to me.
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Within my rather “exciting” previous post, I promised you lovelies a look at the Snapdragon wedding invitations! Before we get to the paper porn, I want you to know that the support I have received from the Hive has been invaluable. I have never in my life felt so much love and support from every person in every single area of my life. Many, many thanks, and much love! I am doing just fine.

And now…. on to the invites! As I have said before, these invites were a labor of love, and somebody besides my garbage guy should appreciate them!!!

I refer to the Snapdragon invitations as Texture on Speed. Every piece in the suite is dimensional. I LOVE invitations that you can really FEEL - so that was in the background of my mind as the invitation design came to life. Every piece is DIY. The only way this invitation could have been more handcrafted would have been if I had milled the paper myself…. which would have been totally crazypants!
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Hi, Hive, it’s been a bad week. This is a pretty difficult post for me to write. I am hoping it will help me find some closure, as well as letting you know why I won’t be able to write here much longer on Weddingbee.

I busted Mr. Dragon for a full on affair. Not kissing, not emotional… it was a full-on affair with all of the ugly asides. Lying, hiding, everything. I console myself with the fact that I know I had nothing to do with it.

There is no subtle or nice way to say it. I found out the way you always find out - through the phone bill. Through many layers of lies, I was finally able to get him to come clean enough to know that I no longer want to spend my life with him, because I don’t recognize him anymore. He is not at all who I thought he was.

I will be honest - I am devastated. That word exactly captures how I feel. After thinking about it, I know that he will never be capable of loving me the way I love him. He will never be unselfish the way I was in staying with him through our relationship’s many ups and downs and his many other mistakes. He doesn’t have what it takes to be a good husband or father, and I thank God every second that I found out about the affair. I have successfully dodged the biggest bullet of my life. All I have to do is think about my parents and how much they love each other and would never treat each other the way he has treated me. It took exactly that long to realize that I deserve better.
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I have long touted my obsession with spicing up Weight Watchers and making my wedding weight loss plan a way of life! Mr. Dragon and I have been eating more consciously for a couple of years, and now we are eating with a mind to be Hottie McHottersons for our wedding. For as long as I have been a blogger on Weddingbee, I have preached the helpfulness of Weight Watchers, and this week I am going to show you what I am talking about! I do NOT work in any way for Weight Watchers, but I truly believe in it because it is a life change, not a diet, and no foods are “verboten”. WW has made a huge difference in my eating habits, and I love it! So this week, I am taking you grocery shopping with me and Mr. Dragon. On the menu this week… Shrimp and Basil Tabbouleh and Spaghetti and Meatballs from scratch. I am going to show you my favorite flavor-inducing tips, as well as exploring the eternal grocery shopping question… where on God’s green earth is the bulgur???

I don’t know about you ladies, but for me, cooking healthy meals during the week is really difficult!
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Ever since Mr. Dragon and I began planning our wedding, I have been using our wedding as an excuse, er, kick-in-the-pants to lose weight and get in shape. I have been doing this the healthy way, using Weight Watchers and exercising about four times a week. Generally, this method has been working pretty well for me. I like Weight Watchers because it is simple, easy to follow, and it’s not a diet (even though the name might lead you to think otherwise!). When I follow Weight Watchers, I get all of my daily recommended servings of dairy, fruits, veggies, and water. I also lose weight - bonus!! Today, I looked at my Weight Watchers progress chart, and I have lost thirteen pounds since August. That might not seem like a lot… but I am proud of myself!

My goal is to lose ten more pounds by my first dress fitting, but my weight loss has stalled out - it’s The Dreaded Plateau, friends! Dun, dun, dun.

I AM thirty, so I knew losing weight at all was going to be tougher than if I were younger, but…. I just know I can get it off. I am not the fastest runner among my friends, so I know I can do better in that department. I still make a number of poor food choices, so I know I can do better there, too. I have about eleven weeks until my first fitting, so that weight needs to start droppin’!

So far, these are the things that have helped me the most in my weight loss:
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For some couples, choosing a first dance song is easy. They’ve always had “their song” and so their search for the appropriate song lasts about five minutes. For Mr. Dragon and I, this particular search was not so easy. Our favorite songs were either totally wedding-inappropriate OR they were TOO emotionally meaningful to us. I do not want to be crying all over the dance floor - I am kind of private about some things (shocking, I know). Over the course of several months, we went back and forth, trying to find something that felt right. Well, we finally found something that feels perfect! I am not going to share the song because… I have to keep some things a surprise!!

In the course of our search, however, we found several songs that might be fantastic at YOUR wedding! So, without further ado… great first dance songs not-for-Snapdragons.

So Small - Carrie Underwood

This is the song we didn’t choose because I would be sobbing the whole way through! There is “pretty cry” and “ugly cry.” This is my ugly cry song, so NO GO!

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Well, hive, it’s happened. Last summer, Mr. Snaps and I decided to get married AND we decided I would wear a diamond engagement ring. We could purchase a ring; we could pay for a wedding. But… we’d have to do it all at the same time. We have been dating for over four years - we are both 30, and we just didn’t want to delay getting married by an additional year. We were ready to tie the knot, and we didn’t think material things like rings should delay our wedding. The timing was right to get hitched, SO we started planning a wedding before the proposal. Unconventional? Yes. Right for us? Definitely. I am a big fan of everyone doing what’s right for them, and only them.

Mr. Dragon picked up my engagement ring from a local jeweler WAY BACK IN DECEMBER. That’s right - that lil’ stinker made me wait for six weeks!

Totally worth the wait.

My friend Snappy-T and I have a standing appointment on Saturdays to run together. We are both training for the Shamrock Shuffle, an 8K here in Chicago, so it makes sense for us to do our longer runs together on the weekends. Anyhoo, this time, after our run, Snappy-T told me that we were going out to lunch, and that it was a “great day to wear a dress”. Snappy-T is not generally this bossy, and I suspected that Mr. Dragon had something to do with it, so I just smiled and nodded.
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This weekend Mr. Dragon and I boarded the wedding gift registry train! As I have said before, we have a multitude of married friends who were more than willing to advise us on the process, and of course, I will pass those learnings on to YOU, my dear Bees! Some of the tips are super basic and common knowledge, but… we might as well cover all our bases in case some of these tips are helpful to you!

Originally, Mr. Dragon and I considered not registering for gifts at all. In case you haven’t heard, there’s a recession going on, and we just felt extra weird about registering, especially since it’s not like we are 18 and just starting out. However, as a close confidant pointed out, we have a guest list of approximately 140 people, and somebody *may* want to give us a gift, so we might as well make it easy on them. This is true. Mr. Dragon and I always send some sort of wedding gift when we are invited to a wedding, and the few times that the couple didn’t register… it was kind of difficult to figure out what to give them, especially if we weren’t best friends with them.

So, onward with the registering.

Mr. Dragon and I got up bright and early, as we expected the process to take all day… which it did! We actually only got through two of the three stores at which we planned to register: the universally popular Bed Bath & Beyond (of 20% off coupon fame!) and Crate and Barrel. We felt that the combination of these two stores provided a WIDE range of price points, and they both had a decent return policy, in case anything shows up broken or otherwise unusable!

Neither Mr. Dragon nor I enjoy shopping (actually, we HATE it!) but we kept a positive attitude and it was actually pretty fun!
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“The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.” -Alan Alda

Quite often, I run across message board posts and blog posts from brides lamenting the amazing weddings they have attended or seen on the internet. I hear “I could never pull that off”, or “I am just not that creative”. Not true, my friends! Creativity is all about confidence.

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Weddings tend to be creativity on Speed… theoretically. We all want our weddings to be personal, fun, and aesthetically pleasing. Although I am so excited about our Van Gogh theme, of course with all the wedding research, I inevitably run into other themes I wish I could incorporate, as well! Right now, the idea of a Frank Lloyd Wright wedding tickles my fancy. I wish we could have a second wedding so I could realize my visions of chandeliers, vintage martini glasses, and sleek, trim lines. Hmm, maybe one of YOU should have a Frank Lloyd Wright wedding and send me the pictures instead!!

What is the theme of your wedding?  And if you could pick an alternative theme, what would it be?

“Isn’t it a crying shame that nothing ever stays the same/ I can’t fit into that wedding dress or be 23 again/ but you’re looking at me now like you don’t know who I am.

The lyrics above are from a song called “Confetti” by one of my FAVORITE singer-songwriters, Lori McKenna. Lori’s music is all so heartfelt and deeply personal. She is a mother of five from Stoughton, Massachusetts, and she has quickly risen to be a highly respected writer in the music world. If you’ve never heard of her before, YOU MUST, MUST, MUST check her out. She is amazing.

Anyway, “Confetti” is written from the perspective of a woman reflecting on life after her wedding day. She sings about how different and lost she feels after many years of marriage, and the difficulty of hanging on to individuality and identity while being in a long-term relationship. The song is sad, but a good topic of conversation (in my opinion, anyhow!).
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