Weddingbee

I’m baaaacccckkkk!  The honeymoon was fabulous and both Mr. Penguin and I are well rested and easing back into our normal lives.  One of my favorite parts about coming back home is that Mr. Penguin has returned back to work wearing his wedding ring.  It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside seeing him head off to work with that ring on his hand.  I feel like a dog who’s peed on her territory.  Check the ring!  He’s mine bitches! 

Anyway, I’m just sitting back and waiting for our pro pics to come in, but until then, I hope to share a few things about the wedding without spoiling it all!

On Friday, we had an early 3PM rehearsal. Our venue pretty much forced us to do the early rehearsal, which was really inconvenient for our bridesmaids and groomsmen that drove in from LA that day. But the great thing about the early rehearsal was that my bridesmaids and I had time before dinner to pop into my favorite nail shop, where I treated them to a mani/pedi. We popped some champagne in the massage chairs, and had a blast getting groomed!

Enter the new Mr. and Mrs. Penguin! We felt like the time allotted for our wedding (the reception was from 6:30 until 10) was so short that we sped everything along by immediately dancing our first dance and then cutting the cake before eating dinner.

I have to admit…our first dance was painfully awkward. Mr. Penguin noted earlier in the week that he wasn’t comfortable dancing to a WHOLE song all by our lonesome, to which I noted that 3 minutes of a dance with his new wife wouldn’t kill him. Well, it practically killed him. And, quite frankly, almost killed me too. Sadly, we could not revel in the moment, because 116 eyes were all on us, so we had the DJ fade the music about half way through, which was nice. It’s too painful for me even to watch now, so you’ll have to wait for the still pictures to come out to watch that one. But the cake was delish!

After the ceremony, our guests joined us for a portion of a traditional Thai Wedding Ceremony called the Water Ceremony.  I never thought I’d be a two dress bride!  I made my parents promise us that if I invested in a custom made Thai Wedding dress, that my parents would throw us a wedding for our family back in Thailand in the near future…so the Penguins will get married twice!

Here’s a quick snippet, featuring two very special guests…

We’re back and hitched! The wedding was wonderful, the weather was perfect, and Mr. Penguin is dragging me kicking and screaming off of the computer as we have a 6AM plane to catch and he needs his beauty rest. No stills from the wedding as of yet, but a very dear friend of ours videotaped our wedding and handed over the tapes at the conclusion of the wedding, so I wanted to give the hive a sneak peek! Audio is spotty right now at best since I let the audio channels mix because I’m in a hurry, but here’s a little peek into our ceremony….and by the time you read this I’ll be on a beach on the Mayan Rivera!

The first glitch in our wedding came early, as the DJ did not have our bridal party entrance music available (which was totally our fault, as we gave it to him very last minute) so instead, they looped a 20 second piece of music that I’d never heard, and then played our first dance song (not the instrumental version)… But no worries! The show had to go on! Our ceremony was perfectly flawed, and I wouldn’t have it any other way

…and yes, there WAS mention of blogging in our ceremony…did you catch it? Lucky for Mr. Peng, I waited till the day after the wedding to come back and blog.

…and off like a prom dress!

The Penguins are gettin’ hitched tomorrow! Final (major) detail…

See y’all on the flip side! And don’t be surprised if in a bout of insomnia tonight, you hear from me one last time :)Much love to the hive,

Miss (but not for long) Penguin

Alternatively: “It all falls apart”

Miss Penguin here, two days before our wedding! I’d been planning a “surprise” slideshow since we first got engaged. By “surprise” I mean that, being a video professional, it seems like it would be ridiculous for me not to be making one, even though I don’t really mention it to Mr. Penguin. I started out slow and steady, putting fun blurs and painstakingly cutting out people to mimic movement on still pictures, but with less than 2 days left till go-time, I had about half the slideshow done and only an hour to finish it…so you’ll notice that unfortunately, it kind of falls apart at the end. I had the idea to split the slideshow into three parts, separated by song:

1. Us as kids (through high school)
2. Us in college with our friends
3. Us together

Well, 1/3 of a slideshow of JUST pictures of us is really, really boring. In the end, yes, this is our wedding, but at the same time, I think guests enjoy seeing themselves as well, and unfortunately, I just did not gather enough pictures from enough people.

We put off picking processional music till the very last minute of planning!  I’d always wanted a musician to play an instrumental version of our first dance song for my walk down the aisle, but I couldn’t bear to sink another few hundred bucks into a musician to play for less than an hour, so we opted to choose music for our DJ to play as we walked down the aisle.  Because of this, I gave up the instrumental aisle song.

BUT! Lo and behold! Itunes carries a huge selection of Karaoke music! Some songs sound pretty electronic, but I lucked out and our first dance song, “Only Hope,” by Switchfoot, was on the list…and not only was it on the list, but it sounds beautiful! The song is very long and boring, so I edited down the music to a little over a minute and left all the juicy parts in. Amazingly, it’s not the slightest bit cheesy at all! Have a listen…

Itunes Album: “Karaoke: Sing a Greater Hope”
Song Title: “Only Hope”

What is your walk down the aisle song and why did you pick it?

Our wedding is WAY out in the middle of nowhere.  I mean, it might as well be on the moon.   The problem is if you Google or Mapquest directions to the site, they take you on a really unnecessarily difficult route to get there, so we’re directing our guests the easy, 3 turn way, which in the end, is a couple miles longer, yet gives people less of a chance to get lost than the Mapquest route.

I wanted to make some rustic looking signs pointing people in the right direction. Since the route that our guests are taking cuts through barns, pastures, and a couple of towns that have been frozen in time since the gold rush, I thought weathered looking signs would look nice and blend into the scenery nicely. Well, Home Depot doesn’t carry rustic wood. So using 3 ft pine steaks, pine planks, wood stain and white paint, we faked the weathered look.

We purchased some wood made for fencing, and had them cut at Home Depot. Mr. Penguin nailed the planks to 3 foot wood stakes.

Andy: I am unfamiliar with “Cocktail Attire.”  What is that?
Ben: Have you seen the movie “Cocktail?” I believe Tom Cruise prances around in a shirt and his underwear. I’d recommend that.
Mr. Penguin: I assume you dress up as your favorite cocktail. You could probably wear a cherry as a hat and a pink shirt and come as a Shirley Temple.

If you’re at that point where you’re wondering what attire to suggest for guests at your wedding, here’s a fun list.

Black Tie - The most formal attire is requested. Tuxes for men, evening or ball gowns for women.

Black Tie Optional - Male guests are invited to wear tuxes, but can wear dark suits. Women wear dresses, ranging from evening gowns to cocktail party dresses. This implies the event is formal.

Semi-Formal - Tuxes not required, nor are long dresses. Suits for men are still implied, and women are invited to wear short or cocktail dresses.

I ordered some light (and boy, do I mean light) reading for our honeymoon this past weekend on Amazon.com.  Sitting on the beach with a drink in hand calls for some fun and flirty reads!

I may be married by the time I’m on my honeymoon, but I’ll for sure still have weddings on the brain, so I made sure to pick up a few titles in the wedding-themed category.

Amazon reader rated 4/5 stars