Weddingbee Blog

In the early months of planning, I was a little agitated because negotiations with our intended venue seemed to be a bust. Each time we talked with them, we wound up with more questions than answers. We loved this place and wanted to make it work for us.

So I jumped online to look at some backup options (being prepared to walk away, whether you state it or not, is always a good bargaining chip) and found some great ideas, and then got sidetracked by—what else?—wedding photography.

I remembered what I always promised I’d do while planning my wedding, and that is to focus on what the wedding is all about.
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Continuing with the “follow my instincts” approach to wedding planning, I believe my fiancé and I have chosen our invitations!

By the time we found our invitations last spring, I’d seen hundreds of invites online and spent some time with my maid of honor looking at books. For weeks, I hadn’t seen any I truly loved, and I certainly don’t want to pay to have something “flat-printed” when it looks identical to something I could do with some creativity and my HP inkjet.

So just for fun, my fiancé and I stopped in at Paper & Chocolate, surely one of the prettiest stores in Dallas. They do wedding invites, and we spent a while looking at books. Mr. Oyster picked a letterpress book, and voila! We found our invites. It was love at first sight! Check it out (click to see it customized many different ways):
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Mr. Oyster and I actually got engaged in January of last year (the ring arrived a couple months later), so I had a while to think about our wedding without doing anything about it.

My plan for designing our wedding was to think “outside in”. Choose the overall effect you want, and create it. Then, work inward from there. It makes sense to me! A great book for this is Michelle Rago’s Signature Weddings.

I’m a big believer in “following your instincts,” so I decided to close my eyes, imagine our wedding, and write down what immediately came to mind. Over the next several months, this would change many times in many different ways, each change reflecting some revelation or something new I’d discovered about myself or about us.

Introspection aside, initially I loved the idea of getting married outdoors somewhere and having a classically romantic indoor reception. I love the whole “inspiration board” trend, and I decided to create one myself! Do these stylistic elements match?
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My fiancé & I looked at venues for months! I began by casting a wide net online, and eliminating venues that were simply too expensive or had shoddy customer service. I initially loved the outdoor garden idea, but we decided against it — mostly because I remembered that I positively melt in the summer Texas heat. With that, we toured six venues and fell in love with two of them!

I’m going to withhold the name of our first choice, but it was a relatively undiscovered ballroom near downtown, and it’s beautiful! No garden, for sure, but it was even better: plenty of windows for beautiful light, formal décor, and oh yeah - AIR CONDITIONING. Eventually, negotiations with this venue didn’t work out, but the venue we eventually chose could be described identically.

With the selection of this venue, I’ve suddenly realized we are heading into Black Tie territory—suddenly, it looks like the “black tie” wedding I’d really wanted could become a reality! Most importantly, my fiancé is on board with the idea. I couldn’t be happier.
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Wow, I’m a bee! I’m so excited to join the Weddingbee community. I first heard about Weddingbee about four years ago, when I was Googling for something else. I thought, ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ and that was it.

A few years later, after I’d met Mr. Oyster and become engaged, I thought, ‘Wasn’t there something about a bee…?’ And here I am! What did brides do before the internet? I’m 14 months into our 18 month engagement, and I can’t imagine planning a wedding without the hive!

So, who are these Oyster people?

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I met Mr. Oyster nearly two years ago in a photography class.
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