Weddingbee Blog

One of the million and one things that’s on my to-do list for this weekend (our last before we leave… ack!!) is to do my hair trial… by myself, that is.

The resort where we’re going to be married, like most all-inclusive resorts in the Caribbean, has a salon on-premises. But I don’t know… there’s something about getting my hair done down there that makes me uber-nervous. One time when I was a bridesmaid for a cousin’s wedding, I got my hair done and it was so crunchy-curl-awful that I came home in tears, ripped it all out and started over myself. Oh, and I was $80 poorer. Grr.

I figure I know my own hair better than anyone else does so I’m going to give it a shot this weekend. My hair is quite long now (about halfway down my back), layered, quite thin (as in there’s not a lot of it), and stick-straight.

I did my own hair for the wedding we went to last weekend thinking it would be good practice and it turned out much better than I had expected.

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I’ve seen some pretty out-there ideas when it comes to wedding venues, but this one takes the cake.

Marriage in the Sky is hosted on a platform, where 20 guests are strapped into aircraft-like seats and suspended at a height of 50 meters. As befits an exclusive venue, Marriage in the Sky can be customized to every couple’s wishes, including spectacular elements like bungee jumping off of the platform after vows have been exchanged. A second crane can be used to suspend another platform at the same height, making room for entertainment or more guests.

Events in the Sky, via Springwise

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OK, um what just happened here? How is it that we are now just SEVEN SLEEPS away from leaving for Punta Cana for our wedding? Did I unknowingly step into a time warp and–OMG!!–it must have been all my radioactiveness! It caused me to flash-forward à la Lost Season 4!!! (Oops sorry, too late for a spoiler alert?)

Oh alright, ha ha not funny. You might be thinking this is going to be one of those ‘oh-my-gawd-I’m-so-stressed-out!’ pre-wedding posts and honestly, if I had written it before last weekend, it definitely would have been.

In fact, I was so on edge, my boss presented me with a hand-made coupon book:

(And yes, that IS me in the photo on the cover holding chocolate eyeballs to my face… if ever anyone doubted how wacked-out I’ve been the past while, here is your evidence.)

There were all sorts of awesomeness in it like:
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I’m going to try to make this as short as possible (no promises… I’m quite the blabbermouth once I get started, I know) as my evenings are now filled to the brim (make that, “overflowing”) with last minute wedding preparations. It’s now T minus 13 days until we leave… but I have soooo much to tell you about still!! Ack!

Way back in the spring when we were creating our invitations, I had this vision of a logo that I wanted to create. For various reasons, it never happened. We got away with not using it, until now! We finally decided what to do about welcome bags and favors, and we realized that we needed one after all.

Note: some people call this a monogram but as Mr Breezy and I are both marketers by day (and cheeseballs by night), and we see it more as a logo. Especially for what we’re doing with them… more on that soon, I promise.

Now, unfortunately, I am not one of you blessedly talented Photoshoppers out there. I don’t have any design programs on my computer nor would I know how to use them. However, I did have a very clear idea in mind of what I wanted—I just needed to translate it into something real in a way that was fast and easy.

So Mr Breezy and I sat down and opened up… Microsoft Powerpoint. That’s right, Powerpoint, as in, your friendly neighborhood presentation software.
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I’ve been wracking my brain for the past four months as to what to give my bridesmaids as a thank-you gift, and now my brain is hard wired so that I can’t NOT ask myself, ‘Could this be a nice BM gift?’ whenever I see just about anything.

It just happened again and this is probably not an original idea (is ANY wedding idea original anymore??) but it occurred to me that it might actually be quite sweet to give your bridesmaids a ring. A friendship ring, that is. I mean, the wedding couple exchanges rings as a symbol of their love, so why not give rings to your best friends to show them how much they mean to you? I’ve always liked the idea of jewelry, as it’s something they’ll have forever, but I think most brides lean towards pendants and bracelets, at least, in my experience.

What made me think of this?
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And no, that’s not my Halloween costume. Though it could be.

A couple weeks ago I did something to my foot which made me start limping. I didn’t twist it, or fall on it, or wear super high heels or anything… the top of my right foot just started to randomly ache. I mean, the only thing I can think of is the boot camp I did, but the most high-intensity thing we did there was skip rope. Not exactly dangerous.

After a week and a half of hobbling around though, I went to my doctor and got an X-ray. It was inconclusive, so yesterday I went for a bone scan. Basically, they shot me up with a radioactive tracer to detect damage to the bones that the X-ray may not have picked up. Read more…

Picking shoes for a destination wedding is not an easy task.

I had a hard enough time picking my own shoes, but when it came to the boys, I was kerflumuxed. Given what the groomsmen and groom are wearing, what type of footwear would be most appropriate? Shoes? Sandals? And what color??

Well, since Mr. Breezy is wearing a suit and tie, we figured sandals wouldn’t cut it. I know a lot of people equate hot climates with sandals, but I don’t think they’re necessary. Our ceremony is in the evening when it will have cooled down a bit. Not to mention the fact that there is going to be a LOT of dancin’ goin’ on at this wedding, and shoes seem to be a better choice for that.

I gave him some ideas, but in the end, here’s what Mr. Breezy went and picked out all by his lonesome:

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To say I’ve never been a fitness junkie would be the understatement of the year. But with less than two months before our destination wedding (and two weeks of flouncing around in a bikini), I kicked my procrastination in the butt and, heeding the many suggestions of you lovely readers, joined a boot camp to get buff.

My goal was not to lose weight but to gain some tone and hey, if I would be able to finally open a jar of pickles without having to wait for Mr Breezy to get home, BONUS! (Mmm… I love me some polskie ogórki!)

On the morning of our first day of Mode Boot Camp, I had so many butterflies in my stomach I thought I might start levitating. And as Mr Breezy and I walked over to join the group and watch this super buff guy pull multi-colored rubber bands out of a bag, my knees felt weak. But as the hour progressed and I snuck glances at the other people in the class I realized, hey–we’re all in the same boat here! And I started to enjoy myself. Read more…

Hello dear hive!! Maybe you haven’t noticed I’ve been M.I.A. this past week but I sure have… I’m missin’ you like CRAY-ZAY. Last week was insane and sad at the same time. It’s given me a lot to ruminate on… and if you read Meatball’s Midnight Confession, then you’ll have an inkling of what’s been going on in my head too. To make a long story short, my company laid off a third of its workforce last week for the second time in the past two months… I wasn’t one of them. It sure was hard, though.

Needless to say, it’s made choosing the color of our parasols even more trivial/frivolous than it was before (which it was, I’ll be the first to admit) but then again… in times like these, sometimes what you want most is a little distraction, you know? If we look to history, we’ll see evidence of this effect time and time again. We’re only human, after all. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself.

Speaking of distractions and parasols…

After going through your votes and awesome suggestions for various purple-lilac-white combos, I finally decided what to order.

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Here in rainy Vancouver, we’re quite accustomed to taking our umbrellas with us everywhere we go during the fall and winter. However, in 5 weeks, I’ll be trading my umbrella for a parasol! In fact, all the girls in our bridal party will be sporting them.

If you’re thinking (like I was) that parasols are a new wedding trend, think again… they were quite the sassy accessory back in the ’70s:

Source

Thankfully, they’ve since gotten less, ahem, frilly; the modern version of the wedding parasol is usually made of rice paper.

And oh, what wonderfully spectacular photo ops abound when there are parasols around!
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While editing photos for my post on groomsmen’s attire, I accidentally adjusted the color from this:

…to this:
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Dressing the Beach Boys - Part 1

The other day I was talking about how tough it is to dress groomsmen for a destination wedding in the Caribbean. Finding examples of hot—or should I say cool?—beachy groomsmen helped a lot though, so off I went.

The first things I bought, and the easiest, were their purple shirts. To keep things light and airy, I chose a very pale shade of purple and made sure the material was very thin and breathable.

I found these Calvin Klein shirts at The Bay (the Canadian version of Macy’s) which just so happened to be having a sale—buy three or more men’s shirts and get them all for 40% off. Shazam!!

Now for the hard part. What color should the pants be?
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My mama is the one in our family who reminds the rest of us about special dates - birthdays, anniversaries, etc. I think this role is stealthily being handed down to me but it looks like I have a lot of work to do… because Mama Sea Breeze called me yesterday morning to remind me of our own anniversary!

How on earth could I have forgotten? One year ago yesterday, Mr Breezy asked me to marry him… and in 41 days, I will.

When I joined the hive, I told you about how we met, but I never did get around to telling you about how he proposed.

As I found out after the fact, apparently, it was in the works for quite some time.

During a visit to El Rancho (as I affectionately call the ranch in Alberta where my parents live) last spring, my dad volunteered Mr Breezy to accompany him on a trip to the veterinarian with one of our horses. It turned out to be quite a memorable trip for him in more ways than one - on the way home after having witnessed a vet checking the fertility of the horse by, er, taking matters into own hands (ifyouknowwhatImean - I think he is still having nightmares), he took advantage of the rare situation of being alone with my dad to ask him if he could marry his daughter.
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When it came to outfitting our bridal party, I knew from almost the very beginning that they would be wearing purple.

Although I did consider the non-matchy-matchy look which is gaining popularity, I soon realized that because we’re having a destination wedding, the bridal party’s outfits are one of the few places where we can establish our purple theme.

Figuring out what the girls would wear was pretty much a no-brainer - purple dresses (even though finding them wasn’t).

But when it came to the guys, I was stumped. The issue at hand was complicated enough - how to pull off a purple-ish look that wouldn’t look cheesy - but then factor in the fact we’re in a beach-type setting and you’ve pretty much got Mission Impossible.

So I turned to other beachy weddings for inspiration.

Although in the beginning, Mr Breezy had been advocating short sleeved shirts and shorts, I wasn’t able to find too much evidence that this was a common thing, except for these:

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If gasping just a tiny bit every time I opened up my computer wasn’t enough*…

… I now do it every time I look at my phone too**!

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