Weddingbee Blog

Hello there, hive! Does anyone remember me? I feel like I’ve been gone forever. What’s that? It’s only been a few weeks? Oh. In case you hadn’t guessed, Mr. Panther and I are back from our honeymoon and enjoying our newlywed bliss. Actually, I’m enjoying our newlywed bliss with our dog and two cats, and Mr. Panther is on a business trip, but that’s OK. We took tons of photos in St. Lucia, but I think before I get to the honeymoon, I should go back to where I left off in my blogging ventures! And that brings us to my magical, wonderful bachelorette party. Can anyone guess what the theme was?

No? OK, why don’t I start at the beginning?

Oh, hey, hive! Just wanted to check in and say hi and tell you a little about this thing Mr. Panther and I did over the weekend …

We got married!

It was amazing. It was full of warm, smushy, happy love; the weather was absolutely perfect; and our friends danced their pants off until the very end of the night. And the best part? At the end of it, Mr. Panther was my husband!

The wedding’s getting close, guys, and I’m starting to lose it. Prepare yourself for an overflow of randomness in this post.

Back in my early ‘Bee days (eight months ago! OMG!), I wrote a post about my unwillingness to keep things simple. I said, “This is my wedding. If I’m going to go overboard, isn’t this the perfect opportunity?”

I kept up this mindset for a long, long time, but as the wedding creeps closer (10 days! OMG!), I find myself desperately trying to simplify, simplify, simplify. Instead of tissue paper flower escort cards, I’m making single layer tented cards. Instead of making bird-on-a-wineglass place cards, I’m forgoing place cards entirely. Instead of hand-stamping and matting all our thank you cards, I created a design that matched our invitations and had them printed out. It all makes me sad, especially the bird place cards, but there’s nothing to be done. I just ran out of time. And I don’t want to kill myself over something that, in the grand scheme of things, doesn’t really matter. Sigh.

There have been many casualties in my mission to annihilate unnecessary details. Sadly, one of them just might be my beautiful, sparkly, wonderful J. Crew bracelet.

Gah, I have so much to share! This past weekend, I had my amazing bridal shower, and it was SO much fun! We drove up to Connecticut for the shower so that we could bring up all our wedding stuff and drive our gifts back down, so I had to finish a few projects that I’d been putting off for a while. I meant to finish all the day-of stationery before we left, but that just didn’t happen. I was, however, able to finally finish the table numbers. Want to see them?! OK!

As you may recall from my last table number post, I had some trouble with a bunch of frames that had the glass GLUED in. We ended up just cutting the fabric as close as we could and then gluing it to the glass itself (instead of wrapping it around and taping it in back). This means we won’t be able to re-use the frames after the wedding, but you know? C’est la vie, man! We have 18 days left until the wedding. No time to care about these things.

… Or, the invitations. Insert fanfare here.

I started thinking about our invitations almost immediately after we got engaged. I went through a bunch of bad designs, then I went through a bunch more, and finally, I picked one and just got the damn things printed. I hemmed and hawed over what kind of belly band to use. I spent countless hours bent over my Cricut working on envelope liners. I wore down the blade of my paper trimmer to cut out backing sheets. I rolled cards through my Xyron until I could roll no more. And finally, there they were.

So, without further ado (and without much narration, because I am EXHAUSTED), here are our invitations. I’ll start with what the guests saw when they received them. Mr. Panther and I chose the Hawaiian Rain Forest stamps, because they were colorful and different. OK, and because we were both rain forest nerds in elementary school. Plus, um, hello! Panthers live in the jungle! (Right? Do they?)

We didn’t realize until we got them that they were HUGE, but it was too late then!

Hey, hive! How’s everybody doing? Everything good? I miss you guys! It’s been a crazy few weeks here at Chez Panther. We’ve attended two weddings of our dear friends, written a ton of thank you cards for a lot of wonderful early gifts, visited with visiting future in-laws and … LAST WEEKEND WAS MY BACHELORETTE PARTY! I can’t WAIT to post about that when I get pictures!

Speaking of pictures, I’ve been holding out on you guys with the invitation reveal and I’m very sorry. I finally sat down tonight, all ready to get my post on, and laid out a neat invitation suite to photograph. I got up to get Mr. Panther’s fancycam and … it wasn’t there.

“PANTHER!” I screamed from across the house. “WHERE’S YOUR CAMERA?!”

“Uhh … It’s at the studio,” he replied calmly. “Why?”

… Motherfudger. So, the invitation post will have to wait one more day. But at least I have some other pretty things to share, and I already have pictures of them! Look what finally came in the mail!

Welp, like Miss Cotton Candy’s, our wedding invitations are late, late, late. Just how late they are depends on what you consider the Must-Send-Them-Out deadline, but I’ve also been getting some Facebook questioning, so I figure I must be tardy. Our wedding is seven weeks from Saturday. They’ll probably go out by then, so it’s not TOO bad, but our RSVP deadline is June 1. Oh, well.

Anywho, while I finish these suckers up, I thought I should start talking about the road that led to them. I have been absolutely obsessed with wedding stationery since before I got engaged, so I can’t even tell you how many inspiration photos I have saved on my computer. It’s a lot.

Before I knew that I was going to tackle the stationery on my own, I wanted these:

Lotus Blooms by Wedding Paper Divas

I loved the colors, and thought digital printing seemed like a great option. I really didn’t care about letterpress and didn’t understand why anyone would pay so much for something that limited your color options.

I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to write this post. Worst blogger ever. I’ll be better once I get these damn invitations out, I promise! (And then I can post about the invitations—wahoo!)

Anywho, two weeks ago, Mr. Panther and I had the pleasure of attending an awesome, awesome party at bridesmaid Jess’s house. The fact that this party was for US only added to its awesomeness. Remember this post, featuring a frigging amazing fringey invitation in a kraft paper envelope? Well, if you thought the invitation was incredible (I did!), wait until you see the party itself.

Bridesmaids Jess and Mary Alice, my two craft-spirations, worked their butts off to make the prettiest decorations and yummiest food I have ever seen/tasted. Seriously, it’s like they climbed inside our brains, pulled out all our favorite things and hung them from the rafters. Look at this!

Our wedding is a little more than two months away (HOLY SHIT), and I can’t wait to marry Mr. Panther. I mean, I’ll be honest—a great deal of that is because I am so sick of all the pressure and just want this wedding to be DONE—but also, I love this man and I’m ready to start our lives together as a married couple.

Mr. Panther and I have a great relationship. Sure, we fight and scream and threaten to kill each other from time to time, but that’s normal, right? Right?! Regardless, our relationship is solid. I’ve never had a moment of doubt. I knew from the first time I kissed Mr. Panther that I wanted to spend my life with him, and that has never changed. Mr. Panther feels that way now, but he wasn’t always as certain as I was.

When Mr. Panther and I met, I was 19 and he was 20. Just babies.