Weddingbee Blog

Here’s a not-so-shocking secret about most New Yorkers: we are food SNOBS.

Image via Phillippe-Nicolas.com

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Remember that dog?

Image via VideoGum

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I am having the bridesmaid blues…literally and figuratively, it seems.

On top of being really picky about bridesmaids’ dresses (nothing stands out to me), I cannot find the right shade of blue on the right dress. Yes, this sounds ridiculous, but here’s my problem.

On the rare occasion a designer has the right blue, they do not have it available in a dress I like. Most designers go with the standard royal, navy, teal, and baby blue. Those aren’t really my colors. I want deep blue and deep green. Navy can work, but I’m not ready to settle on navy yet. I have hope.

One Friday afternoon, on a glorious half-day summer Friday, a few of my bridesmaids who were also free (i.e., the teachers, nurse, and student) met up at RK Bridal in the city. We looked through the racks, and I picked a few dresses that I had already spotted online and also let the girls pick out what they liked as long as it stuck with the overall look I was going for.

I had previously thought my solution was found with Wtoo’s sapphire/emerald combo. I loved the colors together, and although it is simple I thought it had a unique look to it. The first bridesmaids’-dress fail, however, was seeing my very favorite dress from the interwebs off the rack. Apparently I forgot how different online vs. real life can be.

Image via Watters

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I’ve been in a real wedding funk lately. Now that most of our vendors are booked, it’s time for the details. And, honestly, this is stressing me out more than anything. There are so many little things to decide on/iron out (song choices, place cards, guestbook, favors, etc.). And, most importantly of the detail woes, we have to somehow find the time with our insane, busy schedules (plus the future hubs’s annoying work schedule) to make a trip down to Pennsylvania so that I can test out hair salons and we can do a menu tasting.

The tasting has been a huge source of annoyance for me. Our caterer/venue requires the menu choice for each guest to be decided upon before the wedding. This means I can’t order my invitations without knowing what to tell the guests the menu options are. I could, in theory, order the invitations and get the menu-card inserts later, but I live in pointless fear that the invitation I choose will get discontinued, leaving me without matching menu inserts. (I know, I know…the horror.)

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When my closest group of girlfriends and I were in college, you could say we were a little too preoccupied to have healthy relationships. We were good students, but we were also heavily engrossed in our sorority and college life. That meant there were a lot of bar nights, mixers, Greek-week events, homecoming parties, philanthropy work, and overall tomfoolery. Throughout those four years someone would occasionally date someone, but we were all sort of united in our singleness and had a great time through college. I don’t regret a single moment (OK, maybe a moment or two…three tops!).

I want one of these. / Image via zazzle

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Just when I thought it was over…the guest-list monster has returned.

When I first created our guest list it seemed like a painfully daunting task. Not going to lie: it really was. My mother, ever so old-fashioned, decided it was easier for her to HAND WRITE the list. On top of this, there were some spelling mishaps and a few incomplete addresses. After I ironed those out, typed the list up, and looked sadly at my design of the spreadsheet, I started copy/pasting Mr. Porcupine’s guests into it as well. His mother had sent me her list in Word, and it wasn’t flowing right with the Excel grid from hell I had created. I should have stopped right there and reformatted the whole darn thing. But instead I like to dig myself into ditches.
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When it came to flowers, there was a lot of this:

Image via rakhirr on Flickr

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I learned something exciting and new when planning my wedding. It’s a secret MATHZ equation that apparently is a well hidden secret in the wedding industry. It goes something like this: flour + eggs (sugar / milk) = GOLD! Wedding cakes are REDIC expensive, kids!

Image via Martha Stewart Weddings

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*SPOILER ALERT* You’ll never see this one coming, but we did get engaged! Mr. Porcupine proposed a few weeks into the jittery madness that overtook our home. That’s a short, presh story for another day.

Personal Photo / My side job in life is making horrible, unflattering facial expressions.

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The road to our engagement was not particularly interesting or story-worthy. Neither was the decision of what kind of engagement ring to get, but the journey Mr. Porcupine took to get the ring was pretty funny and fitting of him.

We were together for three and a half years when he proposed. We didn’t have a soap-opera-worthy road to the altar. We did hit a few snares—like his nine-month-long unemployment that put the engagement on hold for some time. We knew we wanted to get married, but for a while the timing just wasn’t right. Along with that, we’d lived together for two years by the time the engagement talk came around (feeling pretty married-ish already), which meant if he was going to get a ring without me suspecting anything he would have to be diabolically sneaky.

Image via Platinum Engagement Ring

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When the box arrived with our save the dates, I was overly excited. The packaging itself (once you got inside the brown packing box) was too cute. This was my first Etsy purchase, and it immediately got me hooked (and wondering what talent I could use to open a shop on this site)!

So without further ado, I’ll let the pictures do the talking. Please don’t mind my lame-o squiggly deleting Photoshop technique over the personal info I blurred.

**all images are personal photos*

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When it came to save the dates, I knew I wanted to do something different. With an influx of engagements and weddings only a few years out of college, I soon found my refrigerator in a sea of save-the-date magnets. I love magnets and will gladly snatch up any free magnets you give me, but I decided if I was going to do this whole wedding thang I would switch it up a bit. (Although I’m quite aware everyone sticks all save the dates—regardless of magnetization—to the fridge.)

I don’t even remember where the original idea behind the inspiration came from, but one of the first things I wanted to do was a photo strip. At first I wrangled with the idea of doing a completely DIY save the date. I Googled photo-booth locations around the city and was convinced we would scout out places and get a real strip (and then possibly a strip steak?). I figured I would scan the puppy in and edit it to my liking.

A quick Etsy search later, after months of putting off the task, and I found a designer with my EXACT concept—a photo-strip bookmark complete with the little ribbon hangy-ma-bob on the top. I thought the bookmark was the perfect touch since I work in publishing and love books. On top of that, I think a photo strip is also very “us” since we are a bit wacko and I associate photo booths with goofy faces and ridiculous poses. (It can’t just be me—can it?)

Image via rgbcolor’s shop at Etsy

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Creating a guest list was one of the most annoying of all wedding-related tasks. I started it, got bored, edited it, tried to finish it, started it over, stopped, and then ended up working off the first one again. Finally, I made some progress one random boring evening.

Image via Glamour / Artwork on it designed by yours truly

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Warning: this post is wordy and blabbersome.

Sometimes I think getting married in your mid-20s, during the whole quarter-life-crisis phase, is really just a great way to get yourself halfway down crazy street. Only halfway, though, not the full way. But maybe I am just halfway down the street because I still have a lot of time to go before the wedding is here. Maybe this is the why your 30s seems to be the “it” age range to get married in. Although, I do know more and more people getting married in their early- to mid-20s, which makes me wonder if we are all clinging to relationships to keep us sane. I have a theory about how the Sex and the City carefree generation shattered after 9-11 when we suddenly all realized life is screwed up and short (but that’s a deep tangent for another day).

I am always worrying about something stupid. Planning a wedding is just giving me more things to worry about. Recently it was: what if my DJ crashes his car (but doesn’t get hurt or anything—I’m not morbid when thinking of ridiculous situations that involve others, only when they involve me), and this causes all his DJ equipment to bust up, making him impossibly late to the wedding??? Who thinks like this? I’m not sure. But, really, what do you even do in a situation like that?

Although I am getting married, I swear, I feel like I am a child. A child bride walking down the aisle who is still trying to decide what to be when she grows up. Really, what DO I want to be when I grow up? I like books so I work with books, but what happened to the days when I wanted to be a writer? And then, there’s that whole design thing I am dabbling in at continuing-ed classes, but do I want a job where I am designing 40 hours a week? Maybe, perhaps, oh I don’t know. I just often wonder how it’s possible that I will have a HUSBAND, something that sounded so mature, adult, and beyond my kiddie brain even just five years ago.

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On the way home to the city, we stopped at one of my favorite places from my interwebs search. Riverdale Manor, also in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is a converted farmhouse with an attached ballroom and pavilion. As we drove up I was unsure of the sketchy road: leading up to the venue is just old shack-like buildings and abandoned trailers. However, as we got to the clearing it was like stepping into another world. The property itself is perched right beside the Susquehanna River, and is as purty as a cupcake.

Image via Riverdale Manor / Photo by The Weinbers

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