Weddingbee Blog

Back in March I said I was going to cool it on my Mr. & Mrs. addiction. Well, I’ve been working hard to kick the habit, but there have been others egging me on.

It started when, a couple weeks ago, I received a package from our save-the-date and invitation designer, Two Paperdolls. I thought perhaps our thank you notes or “day of” materials had come through…and got excited.

A day with a package from Two Paperdolls is a good day!

But what greeted me inside was not at all what I anticipated.

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I used to think a wedding was a simple affair. Boy and girl meet, they fall in love, he buys a ring, she buys a dress, they say I do. I was wrong. That’s getting married. A wedding is an entirely different proposition…

You fathers will understand. You have a little girl. An adorable little girl who looks up to you and adores you in a way you could never have imagined. I remember how her little hand used to fit inside mine. Then comes the day when she wants to get her ears pierced, and wants you to drop her off a block before the movie theater.

From that moment on you’re in a constant panic. You worry about her meeting the wrong kind of guy, the kind of guy who only wants one thing, and you know exactly what that one thing is, because it’s the same thing you wanted when you were their age.

Then, you stop worrying about her meeting the wrong guy, and you worry about her meeting the right guy. That’s the greatest fear of all, because, then you lose her…

- (slightly edited) quote from Father of the Bride

Although the above quote comes from George Stanley Banks (played by Steve Martin), it could have been said by my father. You see, if you’ve seen Father of the Bride, you “know” Turkey Dad. He is (pretty much) that character.

Father of the Bride / Image via IMDB

This has been one of my family’s favorite movies since it came out in 1991, and it’s only become more meaningful this past year. I even showed Mr. Turkey the movie before he met my father…you know, for training!

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It seems fairly common for brides to use the day before their wedding to relax and get pretty, specifically when it comes to mani/pedis with their bridal party. Well, I don’t often buck tradition, so it seemed to be a good idea to look into salon/spa options for the group.

Since I have trouble doing things simply, I decided to make the Friday before the wedding an “event” for me, the bridesmaids and Turkey Mom.

Invitation by Sweet Wishes (specific design)

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With a black tie (optional) wedding, tuxedos for the men seemed to be a bit of a no-brainer. As much as I love the mismatched look for bridesmaids, there’s just something about men all fancy in black tuxedos.

Mr. Turkey rockin’ the tux - sometimes with a bow tie, others with a vest, and once with suspenders

Yes, there are options to mix up the look with tuxedos (gray, colored, etc), but we were hoping for a classic look that wouldn’t date our wedding.

Now, I highly doubt any of our groomsmen read this blog, but just in case they do:Turkey Groomsmen…please walk away!
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Yup, we have “the number.”

A giant stack of RSVPs

A little under a month out from the wedding and we now know our guest count. The number that all factors can be multiplied by, one to use when putting together the seating chart and, more importantly, the number of family and friends that we are SO excited to celebrate with in May!!

And that number is…
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I’ve now shared both the full recap and some tips from the fashionista bridal shower. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t cover all the details.The Fashionable Five (AKA bridesmaids) and Turkey Mom worked very hard to create such a color and decor coordinated shower…and since all brides LOVE details, I just had to share! I think the elements speak for themselves, so I’ll be pretty quiet during this entry and let the photos do the talking. WARNING: pink, green and photo heavy post ahead! Right from the entrance, guests started to feel the theme.

You already saw this picture of the dressmaker’s dummy at the entrance

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Back in the fall I shared my DIY calligraphy for the save the dates and said that I planned to go “higher class” for the wedding invitations.

That’s right, I was going to buy a dip pen and ink and do REAL calligraphy.

I purchased all supplies, including 2 colors of ink at Utrecht

I spent hours practicing, including all the exercises outlined in the book Mastering Copperplate Calligraphy: A Step-by-Step Manual. Yup, in the absence of any real curriculum in my life, I decided to become a student of calligraphy. Nerd alert.
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I started my bridal shower recap by going through tips with you all, but I’m going to back up (and take it up a level) to give you a full picture of the day.

The fashionista bridal shower all started with the invitation below (made by Turkey Mom) and was clearly inspired the event’s design.

Shower invite

When I entered Albany Country Club that Saturday, I was greeted by a new friend…
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I’m sure every bride feels like they have a fairy godmother many times during the planning process. After all, on the wedding day there are a LOT of people in place to help us look practically royal.

Source

However, I recently discovered that there is another fairy godmother roaming around…the Mother of the Bride fairy (or MOBF)!

Have you not heard of MOBF? Well, she was new to me as well until Turkey Mom sent me this picture a while back.
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Although it at one time felt YEARS away, my fashionista bridal shower was this past weekend. Besides being a wonderful event where I felt so blessed by the love shown by family and friends, it was also another marked milestone on the wedding timeline.

On the “big” wedding-related event scale, it’s just my bachelorette now between us and the weekend we get married…scary.

My incredibly detailed wedding timeline (thanks, PowerPoint)

There’s a lot to share about the shower and so, like my drawn out posts about save the dates (I, II, III, IV), you can get excited for several on the bridal shower. Don’t lie, you’re totally thrilled.
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There has been a decent amount of wedding tradition talk in the past month—from ceremony locations to walking down the aisle to handfasting to the (ever debated) dollar dance. A few things were still being debated, but with our band’s deadline for information (on songs, speeches, etc) quickly approaching, we needed to make decisions…and moving this post from draft to published was a great impetus to finish things up! Although a lot of our wedding is traditional (white dress, first dance, etc.), we chose to skip some things. Some were just personal preference, but other decisions came from the fact that Mr. Turkey and I have attended a lot of weddings together and were simply burnt out! So, without further ado, here are some of the traditions the Turkeys have chosen to skip.

Ceremony Traditions—unity candle, flowers to the blessed Mary

These traditions were forgone due to timing than anything else.

As mentioned, we are having a Catholic wedding ceremony versus a mass. This means only about 30 minutes total, so we decided to keep with just readings and vows. If we were going to have a mass, I’m sure we would have incorporated at least one of these traditions—they’re lovely!

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I have a wedding shower coming up at the end of April and since I am going to be one of the younger attendees (or so I think), I thought it might be fun to give something that’s not strictly on the registry and perhaps a little more “fun” (see Miss Fox’s fabulous DIY monogram gift). I know some people take serious issue with off-the-registry gifts, but I’m not in that camp myself.

Throughout my posts, I think you’ve seen that I love to give unique gifts; some creative and DIY (bachelorette ideas here and here) and others personalized to the event/couple/bride (engagement ideas here and here). Well, this upcoming event seemed like a good time to expand to bridal showers, staying away from your traditional china or crystal. Looking for the hive’s help with some of the ideas I’m considering!

I did some googling and found a first option that fit with a love that many of us have…wine (everyone loves wine…right?): a wine basket with individual bottle to celebrate specific events.

Heather from Occasions Magazine coordinated the tags & decor with the wedding colors (Source)

So, that’s on the table…with a bit of personalization, likely. I’m thinking of spicing up the poems and maybe even putting photos on some of the wine bottles.
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Unfortunately this isn’t as exciting as the search for the dress (I shared some of those not chosen here), but I did want to share the journey of my dress as it is making a longer commute for the wedding than me! Our venue is only a few blocks away from where we live, but the dress is coming from NYC / wherever the designer made it and has already had quite an adventure.

Let’s back up first…in February (just over six weeks ago), I mentioned that my dress had arrived and I was SUPER excited. However, due to scheduling difficulties with Kleinfeld, the fitting was scheduled for late March. It was such a tease and I was sad that I had to wait so long to see my dress again.

Luckily, things got busy and I (kind of) forgot about the dress until it arrived one Thursday evening. Now I was excited…and impatient.

It’s a dress in a box (makes me think a certain (NSFW) SNL skit…is that wrong?)

You’re probably asking yourself why the dress was shipped to me instead of remaining at the shop (where I was planning to do alterations). Well, you don’t pay NYC taxes if you ship your dress out of state (big time $ savings)…but there are a few catches.

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…if you never met me?

I was in my car en route to work earlier this week when I heard a new song on the radio (when the talking heads finally took a break) that made me think. Called “Woman Like You,” the song (country, of course) involves a conversation between a man and a woman, where she asks him what he would do if he never met her.

It’s cute…go ahead, listen below.

Like I said, it made me think…specifically, what would be different if Mr. Turkey and I never met?
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I know it’s been a while since one of these posts have gone up, but I’ve always enjoyed reading how the bloggers found Weddingbee and it was really helpful to understand the expectations / reality before applying. So, here’s my story!

How I Found Weddingbee

In 2010, I was a bridesmaid in one wedding and a guest at eight others, so there was a lot of wedding related Googling. It was when browsing for bridal showers, bachelorettes, etc. that I stumbled upon Weddingbee. After I bookmarked pages for inspiration a couple times, the site became a frequent resource for me throughout the year. My first introduction to the blog were through posts I distinctly remember by bloggers such as French Fries, Fro Yo, Lamb & Pencils.

Reading their posts and others inspired me then to take on such projects as panty poems, water bottle labels and DIY-ish invitations.

My rug, however, would not be as excited by the DIY inspired by the Bee

After the wedding madness, I returned to my usual browsing of celebrity gossip and cooking blogs, but found Weddingbee again after we were engaged (thanks, Google).

My Application Story
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