Weddingbee

I have always had a fascination with nice handwriting. I think it began in third grade when I saw my friend Melissa dot the “i” in her name with a little heart. Fortunately for me, there is also an “i” in my name. This led to good grades in handwriting- until I decided to write my name in entirely lowercase letters because I thought it looked better.

I often scrap a complete thank you note because I realize that the text had a slight slope. I will spend long periods of time playing with the pens at the Paper Source, trying to find the best tip. This obsession has created a nagging voice in the back of my head, begging me to learn calligraphy before the wedding. So, I bought a book and pens and here I go!

I bought the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Calligraphy.

Mr. Peacock’s sister/my bridesmaid kindly offered to throw us a wedding shower. She wanted it to be unique and casual, since we will still be having two typical, ladies only showers. It was decided that both boys and girls would be invited, the gifts would have a theme which lent itself to less expensive or off the registry gifts and Mexican food and margaritas would be served.

After throwing around a few great ideas, his sister settled on “entertainment.” I love it because people could bring a bottle of wine, a board game or a movie. They could also bring our blender or wine glasses if they wanted to go the more traditional route. The goal was to come up with an idea that would appeal to both guys and girls and to keep the gifts on the less expensive side. I thought that some of the other ideas we came up with might be helpful, so I am going to share.

Stock the Bar: Guests bring things to stock your bar. Bottles of wine or beer, martini shakers or a personalized pub sign would be an appropriate gift. Opening and making use of the gifts at the shower is an option.

Speaking of our rehearsal dinner, I am totally excited about our location. Mr. Peacock and I had wanted to do pizza and beer. We were having a hard time finding a place with a room large enough to accommodate our group- and where we loved the pizza. We are pizza snobs. We are from Chicago, it’s in our genes.

After organizing a fundraiser for work at Southport Lanes in Chicago’s Wrigleyville neighborhood, we changed our minds on the pizza idea. It is a little bar and restaurant which also has a private room with four small bowling lanes. It is totally old school with human pin setters. The pin setters love tips and they will either help or hurt your game based on the quality of your tipping (or if they think you are cute). These guys are hilarious. My stomach hurt from laughing and I had mascara running down my face. It is also in a great part of town that tourists don’t normally get to see. Southport Avenue, between Belmont and Addison, is home to an awesome little strip of shops, restaurants and my favorite nail salon.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Mr. Peacock and I sit on opposite sides of the political spectrum. We are both very interested in politics (we met working for a politician) and with the current never-ending election cycle, we have had a lot to talk about. Since our wedding falls just a few months before the election, we couldn’t help but include something political in the wedding festivities. Mr. Peacock has happily taken control of the rehearsal dinner and is looking forward to giving it an election theme. The only input I gave is that I would love for it to be vintage- i.e. Kennedy v. Nixon, not Bush v. Gore- and that we be on the same ticket. Elephants and donkeys, working together. Done and done.

Mr. Peacock is a little protective over his ideas, so I can’t give too many details, but I promise to share photos later! Here are a few hints as to what we are planning…

from here

Like a few other bees, I am using the Perfect Table Plan software to assign seats and lay out the room for the reception. I really love playing with it. I already uploaded all of my guests (no, the invitations haven’t gone out yet. Why do you ask?) and have assigned their seats. The software enables you to make connections between people which will help you assign their seat- do you want them to sit right next to each other? At the same table? As far apart from each other as humanly possible? Are they a VIP? You can lock people in at particular tables. If you spend enough time on that, you can just hit “Auto Assign” and the program will seat everyone for you. It is way more fun than it sounds.

Although I can’t figure out how to create my strange, octagonally shaped room, I can still estimate its size. I cut out space for the dance floor, added the bars, the band and enough rectangular tables to seat roughly 200 people. Here is what it looks like. The left and right sides do not represent walls, so it isn’t as cramped as it appears.

What do you think? Should I go back to round tables?

I really want to do long dining tables at our reception. I love the idea of everyone sitting around like a big family rather than sectioned off in our pre-determined groups. People usually prefer round tables because then you can easily look at everyone at your table and they say that makes conversation easier. It might just be me, but I can never hear the people sitting directly across from me, and I usually end up talking to the people on either side of me. It might be a bit better with a rectangular table.

I also like that we could do a variety of smaller arrangements rather than one large one at each table.

from Oh, How Charming! via Bridal Bar Blog

I just finished finals, and boy is my brain tired. I think I used it all up studying. I had plans to check some wedding items off of my list, but I just couldn’t make it happen. I was going to get back on track this week, but then Mr. Peacock decided to go to a conference in LA and drag me along with him. It’s hard work being his fiance.

Mr. Peacock travels frequently for work and sometimes I get to tag along. I usually end up with a lot of time on my own while he meets with clients or attends meetings. New York was quite good to me for wedding shopping, as was San Francisco. I tried to do a little while we were in Austin, but South by Southwest was way too much fun for shopping. I am so excited to have a little time to wander around Los Angeles. I have always loved it there.

The chief item on my list is shoes. I totally splurged on these and then regretted it- both for the cost and the color. They were gorgeous and very comfortable, but more brown rather than the bronze color that I was hoping to find.

I might be alone here, but creating our invitations has definitely been my favorite part of planning. I love paper and I love beautiful design. Receiving wedding invites in the mail is one of my all time favorite things. I had considered designing them myself, but after a few test runs with engagement party invites and save the dates, I wisely chose the supremely talented Margot of Atelier Isabey to design them for me. Due to our long engagement, we had to put it off for sooooo long. I could not wait to get started.

We are in the middle of round two of revisions. Can I just tell you how exciting it is to see Margot’s email and know that there is a magical little PDF just waiting to be opened? I can’t really show you what we are working on, but here is my primary inspiration from her samples.

I bought my rehearsal dinner dress yesterday. Until hitting “add to cart,” I hadn’t really thought about what I would wear to that particular event. After we booked the location a year ago, I kinda stopped thinking about the rehearsal dinner altogether.

Then I saw a cute white dress on one of the one million wedding blogs that I read and I started thinking that it might be fun to wear white for the RD. I headed over the Anthropologie, which is my go-to place for… almost anything, and the first white dress that I saw was this one.

My mom is a crazy cupcake baker. She makes them whenever she has an excuse and they are always absolutely delicious. When this little gem popped up in my google reader right before Easter, I knew we had to make them.