Weddingbee Blog

I loved the calm in the church just a couple of hours before the ceremony was to begin. For a wedding of 100 people, we couldn’t have asked for a more perfect church to be married in. Some of our guests even commented that it felt like a little country church… that is, until an ambulance came blaring by in the middle of the ceremony. Ahh, urban life!

Daddy Stiletto made sure Mr. S’s flower was pinned on just right…
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We had debated doing a “first look” quite a bit. Mr. S was all about it, I was a little more hesitant. I even posted about it this summer. I finally decided that if it was something that he felt was really important for us to do, I would throw caution to the wind and go for it.

Our timeline was tight on the wedding day, so I left the hotel in the limo with the bridal party around 2:30, arriving at the church around 2:40. The ceremony started at 3:00 on the dot, so it was a quick look! I waited in the limo after the bridal party went into the church and waited for the “all clear” that Mr. S was all set and waiting for me in our designated spot - a little garden on the side of the church.

Mr. S waited patiently with his back turned in one part of the garden.

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I’m pretty sure I contacted everyone in the greater Chicago-area who might do hair and makeup for weddings. I wanted someone to work on-site at the hotel I was staying at for the wedding, to do both hair and makeup, to be somewhat affordable, and of course, to be fabulous!

Morgan Blaul definitely personified fabulosity. She was super chill and great to work with for my trial. I showed her what I wanted for my hair, and she replicated exactly what I wanted. I had no clue what I might have wanted for my makeup - I told her to do what would complement me. She rocked it! Quite honestly, I felt so great after just the trial, I would have been confident walking down the aisle that day.

The trial was my first time ever wearing false eyelashes. Morgan applied them perfectly and I loved them. She even did extra long ones so they added this awesome, vintage feel to everything! In fact, Morgan’s overall work had a general vintage 1960s twist that fit with the scheme of our wedding.

If you make the picture bigger, you can see my rockin’ eyelashes!

Source: Laurie Peacock

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While I was experiencing an odd mixture of gettin’ pretty amidst nerves and anxiety, Mr. S and his guys seemed to be having a good old time! He, his groomsmen, and our ushers met at the church to get ready, where they were joined by our fabulous second photographer for the day, Maggie Rife.

I love how excited he looks, like he’s telling a great story (I like to think it was about me!).

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The morning of our wedding I was cool, calm and collected as everyone got primped and pretty in my suite. OK, so on the outside I was calm, but there was immense turmoil, anxiety and excitement on the inside. I was a bit of a nervous wreck as the clock ticked closer to 2:15, when the limo would be arriving to whisk us away to the church.

Once we zipped up the dress, everything became real.

I was so glad that it fit - after our heavenly rehearsal dinner the night before where I’d eaten one too many tacos, it was anyone’s guess at to whether or not this sucker would zip up!
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I’d hinted that there might be some bees buzzin’ around our wedding festivities. As our RSVPs were coming in and I saw that our guest count was going to be lower than we’d be planning, I was SO excited to reach out to the bees to see if any of them would be at all interested in celebrating the day with us.

When Mrs. Quiche, Miss Snapdragon, Mrs. Taffy and Mrs. Powder Puff all accepted my open invitation, I was psyched! Blogging for Weddingbee became more and more important to me as the wedding day drew closer, and having some of my bee friends at the wedding was very special for both Mr. S and me.

The bees dined…

Picture by Miss Powder Puff

… danced (and even stole the show on the dance floor at one point - I can’t wait to share those photos!)…
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I’m pretty sure the day after the wedding, I wanted to email each and every one of our vendors and gush about how fabulous they were! True story. However, Mr. S urged me to hold off until after the honeymoon. While we were away, we stayed off of Facebook and made ourselves invisible on Google Chat. I did sneak in a little Weddingbee (shh…), but Mr. S sneaked in a few work emails, so I guess we’re even.

On our first night officially in town, we released the gushing emails onto our vendors - I think Mr. S was just as excited as I was to share lovely words with the individuals who helped make our day so special!

Vendor Review: Marilyn of Honeybee Weddings

Source

I shared a little while back about why we chose to hire a day of coordinator (DOC). I wanted to know that the little details were taken care of, and while I thought our DJ was a fabulous and great guy, I didn’t want to have to talk to him or anyone else about the timeline on that day. I was there to celebrate and have fun, darn it!
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We are of course waiting for our fabulous photographer to give us our full disc of wedding photos, but we were lucky enough to see a big blog post from her this week! Since I’m sure the bees who have gone before me would encourage me to wait until I have all of the pictures to then decide how to do my recaps, I shall force myself to wait!

But…

That doesn’t mean I can’t share with y’all my “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue”. I didn’t have nice pictures of everything before the wedding to share!

Without further ado…

Something Old

My earrings and necklace were made from vintage chandelier pieces. Aren’t they gorgeous?! Swoon. I can’t rave enough about the fabulosity of Precious Meshes. I also had lace from my mother’s wedding dress as a something old, but I want to wait to share pictures of my bouquet, so you’ll just have to wait for further recaps!

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Mr. S and I have dropped back into real life after a wonderful wedding and honeymoon! Leaving for the honeymoon the day after the wedding was the best idea ever - while we were exhausted, it was so great to just escape for some fantastic relaxing in ARUBA!

Check out Mr. S at the airport while we had a quick bite before our flight:

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Mr. Stiletto and I enjoyed the most fabulous wedding day EVER! I can’t wait to share more with you once we get the professional pictures back… I’m already dying to do recaps!

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with the lovely sneak peek posted by our photographer, Laurie Peacock:

Source: Laurie Peacock

Wait?! You wanted to see my beautiful mug as well? Since we were lucky enough to have great friends and bees in attendance, TONS of pictures were uploaded to Facebook right after the wedding!
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Source: Laurie Peacock

Well, this is it. Finito. Done. My last post as a single gal. Wheeeeeeeeeee!

To Mr. S - I’m so incredibly excited to be your wife and continue on our journey together. You’re my best friend, and I know that I wouldn’t even be writing this post today if it weren’t for your support and encouragement… I mean, you were the one who set up my first blog and told me that I needed to stop reading blogs and start writing one.
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Like the many Bees who have gone before me (think Mrs. D’orsay and Mrs. Spring Roll), I have opted to make tissue paper pomanders to decorate our ceremony site!

I had been searching high and low for options that would look great, be non-fussy, and affordable. I started seeing these pomanders pop up on Weddingbee and on other sites, so when I came across these instructions and saw how simple it looked, I picked up the supplies to make a couple of pomanders (I waited to buy all of the styrofoam balls until I was sure I wanted to make a lot of these).

I opted for 4-inch Styrofoam balls, and would guess that it took anywhere from 15-20 flowers for each pomander. And, better yet, Mr. S got in on the flower making action and helped me make some!

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The programs are done!!! Well, almost. But half the hurdle is deciding what you want to do, designing it, printing it, cutting the paper, and then putting it all together. As of right now, half of our programs are completely done, and the rest are ready to be assembled. Not too shabby, eh?

Mr. S and I were inspired by Mrs. Penguin’s programs for her Thai Water Ceremony. We liked the way the pages fanned out, and from a DIY perspective, the actual process was pretty straightforward.

I love Mrs. Penguin’s lovely flower design and cool, calm colors:

Source: Weddingbee

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Whew! Time is winding down until the Stiletto festivities, so every D-I-Y must get D-O-N-E. Fortunately, I’ve been able to spend the past two weekends hunkered down in our condo getting some projects started and finished.

Remember when I shared the pictures Mr. S took for our table numbers? Well, I’ve finally been able to get the project completed!

We had 5″x7″ prints made of the pictures (and ordered 2 copies of each, just in case we had any problems and needed a backup!). I mounted them on white cardstock and created tent cards.

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Whew! The Stilettos finally have their act together - we’ve chosen all of our special songs for the day, from ceremony to reception. I have to say, it wasn’t an easy task choosing some of these songs - Mr. S and I went back and forth quite a bit.

Bridal Party Entrance

“Just Like Heaven”, Vitamin String Quartet

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