Weddingbee Blog

Originally published on October 14, 2010

Mrs. Socks nominated Mrs. Octopus’ post about pre-wedding weight loss for the Weddingbee “Helpful Series.” Mrs. Socks writes, “Octo’s post about pre-wedding weight loss was also SUCH a good one with great perspective.”

~~~

So, disclaimer: I’m going to write about how I lost some weight before the wedding in this post. I totally do not want to reinforce that wedding industry pressure that all brides need to lose weight for their weddings. My diet and exercise efforts were kinda necessary for me (as you’ll see below), but it’s certainly not necessary for everybody! Okay, that’s it. I just wanted to add a little prologue so this post doesn’t come off like one of those incredibly annoying Facebook ads that stop just short of “Stop Eating, You Giant Fat Bride.”

***

I’ve never been the type to worry excessively about my weight. This tendency is certainly helped by the fact that I’m naturally a fairly thin person, and I don’t usually struggle to keep my weight stable. My mental attitude about my weight held true throughout most of our engagement. I had some vague thoughts and plans about wanting to look my best, but I felt pretty casual about it all. My general health philosophy is to make an overall habit of eating nutritious, non-processed food, to make a reasonable effort to exercise, and not to worry about it much beyond that.

You may recall that, for most of this year, I was in graduate school. I bought my wedding dress the summer before my master’s degree program began, and then, over the course of that master’s degree program, gained maybe…six pounds? Seven? Not just a teeny blip on the scale, but nothing really significant, either. It was mostly due to the fact that I was so busy with school that I barely exercised, and that I probably was a bit too enthusiastic about patronizing local businesses. Anyway, I noticed the weight gain, but was not particularly worried about it.

Then, in July, I made a trip to Pittsburgh, and I tried on my wedding dress for the first time since I’d bought it. And—yikes—it barely fit.
Read more…

Hokay, FIRST of all?! I miss you so much, Hive! Not even kidding, I was overcome with glee when I cracked open the ol’ wedding blog to write this post. YAY! WEDDINGBEE!

Okay, but actually, I decided to drop by because I thought I should share the wrap-up of the saga of my wedding band, since you all were so helpful throughout the entire bummer of a process. The conclusion I eventually came to about the whole thing is not quite what I thought it would be, but it’s a conclusion nonetheless, so here goes.

If you weren’t around at the time I wrote about this, or forgot what happened, here’s a semi-quick recap of my wedding band situation:
Read more…

Oh, hive. For the first time since the day I was introduced as a new bee, I feel like I really don’t quite know what to say.

Being a contributor to this site has been such a joy. 2010 was a very hard year for Mr. Octo and me, in some ways that made it onto this blog and in many that did not. Writing for Weddingbee, though, has never been anything but fun and happy moments and bright spots in my days. Thank you so much for that, and for everything.

Thank you for all the support, the encouragement, the suggestions, and the help. Thank you for the comments that made me laugh out loud; those are some of my favorites. Thank you for being so incredibly, overwhelmingly kind to me over and over and over. I truly love this community, and the friends I’ve made here. I can’t imagine what planning my wedding would have been like without all of you.

Our wedding is well behind us now, though, and it’s time to get down to the business of spending the rest of my life with my delightful husband.
Read more…

So. Budgeting your wedding is, for most of us, really hard and awful and stressful, yes? I mean, kudos to you if it wasn’t, but I know that for us, the whole money thing was the very worst part of wedding planning. At first, I had absolutely no idea how much weddings could cost—my initial investigations into planning were utterly shocking!

I want to share a full, detailed, nitty-gritty budget recap with you in the hopes that it might give you a bit of a touchstone for your own planning. I know that when I’d look at wedding features in my early planning stages, my running internal monologue would often be, “but what does this COST? What am I looking at here? Is this a $5,000 wedding? A $15,000 wedding? A $50,000 wedding? Can I do something like this, or would it be utterly impossible for me?”

I think it would be really helpful for brides to see more impartial “here is how many dollars our wedding cost, and here is where those dollars went” types of posts. I’ve written before about my thoughts on how journalism about The Cost of Weddings These Days is often served up with a big scoop of scorn and judgment about the amount people spend (and I think there’s a pretty common thread of “how about those crazy women with their wanton, greedy, frivolous spending on themselves just so they can play princess for a day!”, as well). Of course, money is a loaded subject in most contexts, not just weddings. Still, I do think it’s possible to have more transparent, emotionally neutral conversations about wedding budgets, and that’s what I’m striving for with this post.
Read more…

When Mr. Octo and I talked about our very top priorities for our wedding, everything paled in comparison to “feels like really lively, fun, ragingly awesome party.” The dance party aspect wedding reception was more important to us than anything else.

It was also the only thing that I never once worried might go wrong. Believe me, in the last two weeks leading up to our wedding day, I found a way to worry about everything else. I woke up every morning fresh out of a crazy dream about wedding disasters, and when I was anxious with stress, I considered ways that virtually every other element of our wedding could go wrong. But the thought that our wedding reception might fail to live up to the gigantic celebration of life I was dreaming of never once crossed my mind. I know us, and I know our guests. I come from a long line of party animals, and I kind of sincerely believe that Mr. Octo and I have cornered the market on really, really fun-loving friends. I knew that our reception would be fantastic, and I was right.

That said, I’ll be honest:this recap was harder to write than any of my others! I’ve found it really tough to articulate exactly how it felt to be surrounded by my brand new husband and family and friends, all the people I love most in the world, all of whom were just as excited and joyful and celebratory as I was.
Read more…

As our dinner finished up, it was time to kick off the dance party with our family dances.

First, I danced with my dad to Paul Simon’s song “Father and Daughter.”

(All photos courtesy of Corey Ann Photography)

Here’s a secret!
Read more…

Once everyone settled down at their tables, it was time for our toasts to begin. The first speaker was MOH/Sister Lauren, who gave a sweet, funny, and light-hearted toast about how Mr. Octo has become a part of our family through the years, and the ways he and I support each other.

(All photos courtesy of Corey Ann Photography)

I love my sister. Can you tell?
Read more…

I don’t get many things right the first time
In fact, I am told that a lot
Now I know all the wrong turns
The stumbles and falls
Brought me here

Read more…

Being announced into the reception was another one of those “wow, is this really happening?” moments on our wedding day. Kind of like, “AAAHH! It is time for our reception! The thing I’ve been looking forward to more than anything in the world for months and months is HAPPENING RIGHT NOW!”

First up were my parents and Mr. Octo’s dad.

(All photos courtesy of Corey Ann Photography)

Next up were Bridesmaid Clara and Groomsman John. I always tease Clara for being the least whimsical person I’ve ever met in my entire life. She continued her unbroken streak of stone-faced straightforwardness with this completely uninspired reception entrance (aka just walking straight in). Hahaha!
Read more…

We arrived at the Children’s Museum with just enough time to enjoy a few appetizers, some whirlwind socializing, and, for me, a quick peek into the Grand Hall to see our reception set-up for the first time (Mr. Octo was more interested in having a gin and tonic with his buddies). Bridesmaid Katie put a cocktail in my hand within minutes of walking through the door, the reception looked fantastic, and I was in a great mood, finally relaxed and happy and ready to enjoy the party.

(All photos by Corey Ann Photography)

Read more…

Guys, I hope you’ve come to know me well enough by now not to expect any great shakes from the “details, details, details!” post. Our wedding had, like, four details, which is perfectly fine with me. Still, I thought you might like to see how everything looked all put together.

For fun, here’s the board I made way back in the day to help me picture the colors I wanted to use:

Top row: 1, 2, 3, 4 Middle row: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Bottom row: 1, 2, 3

First up, our venues…
Read more…

After we wrapped up our photos on Pitt’s campus, we realized we were quite a bit ahead of schedule. With glee in my heart, I realized that this meant we had enough spare time to stop at a photo location that I had originally planned to go with my bridesmaids, but had to scrap when our photographer got held up in traffic. Yay!

We all piled into our non-fancy-but-functional shuttle van (oh, and note Groomsman/Brother Adam’s photo bomb in the back corner. A love of photo bombing is just one of the many bonds he shares with Mr. Octo).

(Guest photo)

Read more…

Okay! Brace yourselves for a whole lot of gazing!

First, we gazed at each other in the Cathedral of Learning.

(All photos courtesy of Corey Ann Photography)

Then we took some pictures at a fountain outside the Cathedral of Learning. After our second official date eight years ago, we sat on some benches near this fountain and had an animated conversation. Mr. Octo swears up and down that it was during this conversation that he realized he was in love with me (on our SECOND DATE!). As I have said, he is far more romantic and prone to falling-in-love-instantly scenarios than I am—I didn’t realize I was in love with him until six months later, when we were slow dancing on the grimy basement “dance floor” of a frat house. True story.
Read more…

Once our bridal party was finally all corralled into one place, we tromped into the University of Pittsburgh’s main academic building, the Cathedral of Learning. It is very beautiful and dramatic and Hogwarts-y, and I was anticipating lots of gorgeous pictures. I was not anticipating that the Commons Room (the big, beautiful, dramatic main room) would be packed with students studying, who were clearly NOT amused by our hijinks. We took this photo…

(All photos courtesy of Corey Ann Photography)

…and then took our cue from the sulky students and rolled out. (By the way, glowering college students, it was 5 PM on a gorgeous, warm, sunny Saturday and you will never experience such a carefree time again in your lives. Go outside and play!)
Read more…

In the interest of keeping it real, I’ll tell you that the time period between our family portraits wrapping up and our bridal party portraits beginning was the only time during our wedding day in which I felt genuinely unhappy. Like I mentioned in a prior recap, our ceremony felt like A Big Deal. It was joyful, but important and serious, too. It was also short—from the officiant’s opening words to his pronouncement, the entire thing took less than twenty minutes.

What made me unhappy was feeling like I’d had no time to really process what had just gone down. As soon as the ceremony ended, we were whooshed downstairs by the Heinz Chapel staff, where our excited bridal party immediately mobbed us with hugs and shrieks of congratulations. Then, right after that, we were whisked back upstairs for our family portraits. Our formal portraits turned out beautifully, and I’m glad we have them, but the process of taking them was not quite what I’d call “fun.” I was starting to feel hot in the stuffy chapel, and my dress was feeling heavy and tight, and my bouquet was heavy, and our young nieces (who, do not get me wrong, I love very much) were really excited about me in my bridal getup and wanted to be really close to me at all times, and it’s kind of hard to beam radiantly for photo after photo after photo, you know?!
Read more…