Weddingbee Blog

Welcome back to the Rainbow Wedding Rollercoaster. Price of admission? A lot of patience, and possibly your sanity. This ride has been a doozy, people.

I’m not even going to bother reminding you about all the changes that have happened since we started planning our wedding. I’m not gonna do it. And you know why? Because that is all in the past, and this roller coaster only goes forward. Onward, I say!

So I’m sure you’re wondering what the new plan is, yes? Well, here it is!

We’re having a morning wedding at The Gamble Plantation, followed by an afternoon brunch at our very own loft. Done. Period. End of story.

We’re going to do the brunch in a more mingle-y small plate style, so we won’t have to worry about tables and place settings and whatnot—it’ll just be a big spread of breakfast-y foods to graze.

We’re pretty excited about this brunch business. Breakfast is by far my favorite meal of the day, and Mr. Rainbow and I occasionally like to indulge in the “breakfast for dinner” phenomenon. So, when faced with the option of having breakfast food at our wedding, it was full steam ahead.

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Some women loathe lingerie. They think it’s a pointless waste of money. It can take forever to put on, and in their case, it only stays on for about 30 seconds.

Other women love lingerie. They think it’s vital to any special occasion—birthday, Valentine’s Day, Saturday, any day. This lingerie generally doesn’t come off, but rather it… ahem… enhances the “experience”, if you will.

I’ve found that, unless the woman is a die-hard lingerie fan (or foe), her take on lingerie is generally dictated by the man she’s with. What’s the fun of lingerie if your SO isn’t into it? It’s just another pain in the ass layer to remove as far as he’s concerned. And when your SO loves lingerie? Well, you’re much more apt to play into it. Hell, why not? It’s pretty gratifying to see the man you love stumbling over his words at the sight of you, am I right?

Considering this is a post about lingerie, I think it’s obvious enough what side of the lingerie line the Rainbows are on. Yes, my friends, we are on the pro-lingerie train. We are fans, big fans. Then again, if Mr. Rainbow wasn’t into it, I’d tell him too damn bad, because I am one of those die-hard lingerie fans. So there!

Now, the way I see it, there are two types of lingerie—naughty and nice. Of course, there’s lingerie of the very naughty variety as well, but I’m talking strictly sassy sexy vs. sweet sexy, vixen vs. virginal.

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I’m one of those people that loves reading horoscopes. I believe I’ve had brief encounters with the paranormal, and I’m a firm believer in fate, destiny, and the idea that we’re not quite as in control as we think we are. I believe in signs and intuition and I don’t think that there’s a logical explanation for everything. Just look at our story.

Some people write things like that off—Mr. Rainbow is one of those people. He firmly believes that there is a logical, reasonable explanation for everything. His mindset is basically this: if you can’t prove it, it’s not good enough.

While I can understand his thinking when it comes to things that he would refer to as “pseudo science” I’m just a little more free-spirited than he is. He’s an engineer, I’m an artist—go figure.

Now, before you lock me up in a loony bin, know that I don’t take these things as fact. I find them interesting, slightly eerie, and just all around intriguing. That doesn’t mean that I devote a lot of time into these things, but I do make it a point to browse the horoscope in the latest issue of Cosmo/Glamour/InStyle/etc. and when it comes to choosing a fortune cookie, it’s no fun if it’s not randomly selected.

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I told you about my very serious illness here, and how it inflicted me with a severe case of “I-can’t-marry-you-because-I-can’t-deal-with-your-crazy-family” and “we-can’t-get-married-because-I-want-nothing-to-do-with-them-and-I-certainly-don’t-want-them-at-our-wedding-itis”. It was very difficult for both Mr. Rainbow and me to deal with, and we got extremely close to canceling the wedding because I so strongly didn’t want to be legally tied to his family.

I consulted with my mom, step-mom, and my fellow bees and came away with some great advice that I’m now going to share with you.

1. Don’t let anyone, not even a Monster-In-Law or a crap SIL, stand in the way of marrying the man of your dreams. Period.

2. While family may be forever, you can always move far, far, away. I was lovingly reminded that Mr. Rainbow and I live a mere 15 minutes away from his mother’s house and she’s only been to our apartment 3 times in as many years (we usually go over there). Once we’re able to pack our sh*t and get outta dodge, I imagine the visits will be even more scarce.

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Mr. Rainbow and I initially registered at Crate & Barrel and Target. Both times we went to the actual stores and scanned the items. At C&B this worked out great; the items we scanned showed up in our online registry with absolutely no problems whatsoever. Not so much at Target. Some of the items we scanned in the store wouldn’t pull up on the online registry—the item number would come up with no picture. Obviously this was a problem, because people aren’t going to purchase something off of your registry without so much as a picture to know what it is they’re purchasing.

I went through our Target registry trying to sort it out and figure out what the items were that we wanted, but that didn’t show up on the registry. Some things we registered for in store weren’t even available online! I don’t know who’s in charge of the Target registry, but I must say, as a loyal Target shopper, I was really disappointed in their system. They’ve got way too many kinks in their system than I would think is acceptable for a huge chain like Target.

Luckily, I discovered the Amazon.com wedding registry, complete with Universal Registry Button (seriously, uh-may-zing). Whatever you can’t find on Amazon (which isn’t much), you can register for with the URB—it’s brilliant. Needless to say, I deleted our Target registry and hopped on the Amazon train!

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Mr. Rainbow and I registered for gifts sometime in October, I believe. This was back when our wedding was in May and around 75 people deep. As you know, things have changed quite a bit—we’re now getting married in October with a guest list of a whopping 25. I couldn’t be happier about our decision to have a smaller wedding, but it does, however, put a bit of a damper on our registries that we loaded with fun stuff.

Needless to say, once we decided on a smaller wedding, we scaled back our registries from around 85 items to our current 32—and it’s dwindling still, as we buy things on our registries ourselves. Hopefully we still have a registry by the time October rolls around! We just bought a 12 cup Cuisinart food processor, because I simply couldn’t wait any longer!

Now, because of our small guest list, we kept only our favorite, most wanted items, and whatever we don’t get, we’ll just buy ourselves, if we don’t buy it all before the wedding, that is! Here are our top registry picks at Crate & Barrel (I think I could live there, I love that place).

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I suffer from an ailment that is all too common in wedding world. Hell, it’s all too common in general. What is this ailment you ask? What causes to-be-weds far and wide to want to rip out their hair, burn their wedding dresses, and cancel their weddings in one fell swoop? I’ll tell you what it is, it’s a disease that is commonly referred to as “Monster in Law”.

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Being that you are a more than likely a to-be-wed yourself, you’re probably pretty familiar with this particular ailment, and if you’re not familiar with it, well, I am supremely jealous of you. This weekend, yes, Valentine’s weekend of all weekends, I had an extremely bad case of Monster-In-Law.

See, whathadhappenedwas…

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Alright! Planning is just about back on track, so here’s my very last procrastination peace offering, made just for my beloved bees (and my sanity)! Feel free to catch up on part one and part two.

A couple of you asked in my last post which bride I related to most, I’ll give you a hint- it’s the first one in this post. (I’m not good at being mysterious. )

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The Southern Bride- The epitome of southern charm and femininity, she’s a daddy’s girl through and through. Her colors are a more modern take on the famous “blush and bashful”- pinks and purples have always been her thing. She’s getting married at an antebellum mansion turned b&b, and her father giving her away is non-negotiable. She’s carrying a lush bouquet of purple and pink wild flowers that are wrapped in lace to match her dress, and accented with a vintage locket that belonged to her grandma. She’ll be treating her guests to a fun yet elegant Southern BBQ, and finishing their meal with a 5 tiered fondant confection.

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Catch up on part 1 here.

As I said before, scents have an uncanny ability to bring us back to certain days, times, and even people in our lives. I, personally, have two “signature scents”.

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My fun, flirty daytime scent:

Juicy Couture- Watermelon, Mandarin, Pink Passion Fruit, Marigold, Green Apple, Water Hyacinth, Crushed Leaves, Tuberose Absolute, Wild Rose, Princess Lily, Tuberose, Caramel Creme Brulee, Vanilla, Precious Woods, Patchouli.

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While our wedding plans are still up in the air (yes, you heard that right, more on that later) it’s time for our second installment of RW2WD. Catch up on the first here.

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The Glam Bride- Her wedding is nothing if not gilded. She’s getting married in a swank ballroom that’s dripping with sparkle. Her colors are mixed metals—bronze, gold, and silver. Her reception is a huge soiree for her 300 closest family and friends, and if someone ends up swinging from the chandeliers, it’ll most certainly be her, though she’s careful not to ruin her Vera Wang.

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When I’m stressed, bored, overwhelmed, or any other unfavorable emotion, I pass the time on Style.com—it’s the online version of Vogue. I browse the recent runway shows and I always seem to find something that cheers me up and makes my heart beat a little faster. I absolutely love fashion. A great jacket or a perfect dress can get me out of my rut in no time.

So, when I’m feeling overwhelmed with my own wedding, it’s only natural for me to head over to Style and see what’s gracing the runways. This time though, I did something a little different—I didn’t look at the clothes, I looked at the makeup.

You know how, when you’re in the middle of planning a wedding, you find wedding inspiration everywhere you look? Well, that’s exactly what happened. The look at Gucci was so fresh and bridal, it had me inspired… what if the models were getting made up for their weddings, as opposed to a runway show?

I found inspiring make-p looks from a handful of designers and ran with it. Here’s the result:

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The Classic Bride- She’s getting married at her parents’ big beautiful house, wearing a lacy Monique Lhuillier and white satin Louboutins.

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Holy crap. Is it seriously February 1st already?! My, how time flies! With exactly 8 months until the wedding, it’s time for my first official hive check-in! If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can catch up on my New Years Resolution here.

Now, I generally give up on New Year’s Resolutions a few weeks in (as do most people), so I devised a way to keep myself accountable - sharing my journey with the hive! If that won’t keep me honest, nothing will! Plus, I’m hoping it’ll inspire some of you ladies to stick with your resolutions as well. We need all the support we can get, right? Right!

Okay, here goes!

Here’s my very first chart from my starting point:

Ground Zero - January 1, 2010:

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So now that we’ve all got perfectly flawless faces, it’s time to get those babies contoured.

Now, contouring is not something I do every day. I love how it makes my face look, but it’s a little time consuming for my day-to-day routine and it’s just “too much” for everyday wear, in my opinion. I only ever contour myself if it’s a special occasion and I want to look extra fabulous, or if I know I’m going to be photographed (wedding, derr).

Contouring takes a light hand and a little practice, but it’s one of those things what, I think, is non-negotiable if you’re going to be on camera. Camera flash tends to give you “pancake face” because the light fills all the hollows (read: natural shadows) of your face, making it look like it’s basically all one plane. That ain’t cute.

Before I get into the nitty gritty, I’ll show you my nifty little diagram, so you know exactly what I mean when I say “apple of your cheek” and what not. I left out jawline, forehead, and temple because, seriously, I think you know what that is.

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No, it’s not a typo, I know it’s actually “sense and sensibility”, but that makes absolutely no sense in the context of scents, now does it? Confused yet?

Well, if you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m talking about perfume—the nectar of loooove. Or allergic reactions, or stank, depending on the perfume . But we’ll stick to the lovely kind.

Anywho, I have a total weakness for perfume. I love it. I would bathe in it, but I don’t want to be one of those people. You know, those people you pass in the mall and their scent trails them for… oh… 3 miles? As much as I love perfume, I’d like to think I have a little more restraint than they do.

Before I get ahead of myself, I want to take a minute (just sit right there, I’ll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel Air… sorry.) to tell you about my favorite scent memories (smemories?).

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Well, hopefully Mr. Rainbow and I would be played be Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt:

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I often joke that we’re the broke man’s Brad & Angie; a misunderstood brunette with a heart of gold, and a blonde haired, blue eyed fox with an adventurous streak, minus the mansions, millions of dollars, and 84 kids. And uhm, they have chemistry for days, but that’s beside the point.

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