Weddingbee Blog

I was so excited to mail our invitations a couple of weeks back, and starting the day after we sent them, we’ve received two response cards each day! I love seeing those little envelopes show up in the mail… and, our guests have really gotten into the Madlibs aspect of our response cards, so we’ve had some fun responses.

I thought I’d share some of the standout cards… the last line of the card says:

Don’t forget to ________ [advice] after you _______[advice]!

In retrospect, we wish we had set up our cards differently so that everyone would fill this out, regardless of whether or not they’re attending (right now, this is for those who can’t make it). Fortunately, our guests are having fun filling this line out whether or not they’re attending!

Card #1 - Life Advice

From my dad’s cousin and his wife - “Don’t forget to brush your teeth after every meal!” Sound advice if you ask me!

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I randomly decided I “needed” menus and proceeded to invent what seems to be the most time-consuming method for creating said menus. And, considering the fact that I think I just wanted menus because I thought my photographer would take cute pictures of them, I probably could have just made one and pretended after the fact that they were at each place setting.

Rest assured, I’m not that jaded about them and I know they will look cute on the tables, but I did spend the better part of my Saturday working on these, and I’m only 1/3 of the way done.

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Wouldn’t it be a sign of the times if the reader at your ceremony got up there with his or her Kindle in hand? While I don’t anticipate that happening at our wedding, it would definitely make me chuckle. And, it would most definitely put a modern twist on the proceedings… don’t worry, we’re not going to take things quite that far!
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I shared a while back the story of where Mr. S bought my engagement ring, and the style of wedding band I wanted. Simple. A few diamonds evenly spaced around the band.

Well, a couple of weeks ago Mr. S and I took a trip back to Chicago’s jewelers’ row to seek out our weddings bands. I brought along pictures of what exactly I thought I wanted and we tried on ring after ring. When I finally tried on the ring that I’d thought I had to have, it just didn’t do anything for me as a wedding band (as a ring on the other hand? Perfect, sign me up! But not with my e-ring).

I ended up finding an AMAZINGLY sparkly ring with prong-set round cut diamonds. Swoon. But it would have put us at the top of our ring budget (we’d been looking to spend $1,200 max for both bands). Hmm. I put on my budget hat and tried on another happily sparkly band with round cut channel set diamonds over the top half of the band that was SO freaking under budget, there wasn’t a question which ring I’d choose. I love me a bargain.
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I’m fresh from my bridal shower/bachelorette weekend, and I can’t wait to share the fabulous details of the day and night! While I wait for my lovely bridesmaids to send some pictures my way, I thought I’d share the gifts I put together for the bridesmaids.

Mrs. Latte’s gifts for her bridesmaids had stuck in my head and I knew I wanted to do something similar… but lacking creativity, I decided not to reinvent the wheel and instead just take her idea (thank you, Mrs. Latte!).

Please don’t mind my awful photography… these weren’t completed until just before the shower, so I had to quickly snap some shots!

I bought these great gable boxes that were the perfect size, and using a handwriting font, printed out the “thank you” message onto card stock, which I then cut out using pinking shears and glued onto the boxes.

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Sister Stiletto is throwing me a big weekend of bridal celebrations on Saturday, starting with a bridal shower in the afternoon and followed by my bachelorette that evening out on the town.

As you might remember, I found two great dresses for this weekend, and both fit perfectly! The dress for the shower is even equipped with pockets, people… double bonus, in my book. Jamming both events into one day may seem like a lot, but with 3 of the 5 Stiletto bridesmaids living out of state (San Diego, New York City and Tampa), I couldn’t ask the girls to come out twice to celebrate on top of traveling here in September for the wedding.

Needless to say, I’ve been in “bridal bootcamp” this week to prepare for the festivities… let’s see what’s been on the agenda:

Any bride-to-be knows that being in good shape is extra important, so I hit the gym extra hard this week.

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Our invitations are officially out of our hands and out of my mind as of today! I lugged them all to work on the train and mailed them from the (oh-so-convenient!) post office in my building.

And, of course, who doesn’t need an entourage when sending their invites?! My co-worker Megan was kind enough to accompany me down there to snap a few shots of the big “ta-da” (please don’t mind that I rolled out of bed a tad late today and didn’t put on a drop of makeup, ugh).

Last night I sealed them all and packed them up for the journey on the train. Don’t they look nice? That damask pattern across the top of the envelopes is one of my favorite details.
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Remember when I had this great DIY idea for a vintage suitcase card box? Yahhhh… my first attempt turned out so badly I couldn’t stand to snap a picture of it before it landed in the trash. So, I went with my backup plan.

When I was planning my candy buffet, I picked up this black cake stand, which happened to come in a great box. I’m not using the cake stand anymore, but it’s been sitting around my kitchen in that box. It only made sense to stop trying to think of something new and go with what works - a hat box turned card box.

Mr. S cut a slot out of the center with a box cutter, then I took some extra damask fabric I had on hand to cover the top. I didn’t have a big enough of a piece of fabric to cover the whole top, so I used two separate pieces.
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The rehearsal dinner has been the source of some strife in the Stiletto household these past few months. We haven’t been able to find any places to host it!

I know you’re thinking to yourself, ‘Stiletto, what’s the deal? You live in Chicago and are surrounded by so many fabulous restaurants.’ That may be true, but the wedding events are taking place just west of the city in Oak Park, and I’ve been bending over backwards to keep everything in Oak Park, within walking distance of the church!

While Oak Park has some fabulous restaurants, the ones that could actually accommodate our group just didn’t grab our interests. Or if they did, we’d have to empty our wallets and then some to host our nearest and dearest.
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Yes, the main decor element on the head table at our wedding will be a combination of cheap IKEA vases and tape… and yes, I’m quite proud of this!

My plan has always been to have the bouquets pull double duty and enhance the head table, but I didn’t want to just put them in boring, clear vases and call it a day. I thought about silver julep cups—Save On Crafts has quite the selection—but it was more of a financial investment than I wanted to make. Plus, they don’t really go with anything else we’re doing. They’re very elegant, and for any other affair I’d be head over heels for them. But there isn’t an ounce of silver anything at the wedding… excluding eating utensils, of course.

On a recent trip to IKEA, I purchased a 9-inch tall square vase for my bouquet…

Source: IKEA

and five 6-inch tall square vases for the bridesmaids’ bouquets…

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I’ve posted about the ins and outs of our invitations… we’ve had them in our house since about February, but actually taking the final step—addressing these suckers—took some planning. We have these fabulous outer envelopes, but I just didn’t know what to do in order to stay in line with the integrity of the design. Oh yeah, and in line with that pesky budget.

Source: Plush Paper

Along with many others, I fell in love with this easy way to mimic calligraphy, as posted on Project Wedding. I’m sure many others have hopped on board with this great project, including Miss Piglet (her invitations are fabulous!).
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Mr. S and I really laid a lot of the groundwork for our wedding over the winter. Sure, we booked our reception site last May and our photographer and church last July. But our florist, day of coordinator and limo were booked in the winter, while many planning details and projects were thrown around.

So, on a regular basis we held wedding meetings right here:

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At first we tried having wedding meetings at Starbucks. Even though it got Mr. S away from distractions such as his laptop, he still had that pesky iPhone. Which of course meant that getting his attention at home was virtually impossible… I could never get him to focus in on the task at hand. Since I opened Mr. S’s eyes to the wonders of the bubble bath at the beginning of the winter, I knew I had him right where I wanted him!
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I’m not a big makeup wearer (shh… I went all winter long without wearing a single bit of powder or shadow to work!). On top of that, I generally get told that based on my skin tone, brown hair and blue eyes, I can pull off any shades of makeup, hair color, and clothes. While it’s nice to be a chameleon, definitive answers like “you look best in blush tones” or “never wear the color yellow” would be incredibly helpful.

I mean, I don’t want to end up looking like this:

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I received great feedback on my recent hair post and think I have settled on “option D” as my inspiration. I didn’t even realize until today that this was the same picture that Mrs. Yorkie used at her trial!

It’s great having hair ideas nailed down, but there’s this whole face of mine to contend with.
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Mr. S and I met with our minister this weekend to begin discussing the type of ceremony we might like. The next time we meet we’ll really get into the details, but this meeting was to get us thinking about what is important to us.

In the car on the way to church, we discussed how we didn’t want a unity candle because it didn’t really feel like us. Of course, the topic came up later in our meeting, and we shared our feelings about it. Our minister, however, gave us a completely new outlook.

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We had been thinking about the thing and the stuff more than the meaning.
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