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Okay, so “on the cheap” might be a stretch here. If you’re gonna do a candy buffet at your wedding, you’re gonna spend a couple hundred dollars on it. Because our candy buffet is going to pull quadruple duty as favors/decor/activity/dessert (in addition to cake obvi), I’m okay with spending a bit on it. We also already factored it into our budget, so I was prepared to spend about $400 on it–that’s the projected cost of favors according to The Knot. We ended up spending more, but again, it’s more than just the favor!
Here’s what you need for a successful candy buffet:
Personal pic
Personal pic
The Unicycles like to read. I was the kid leaving the library with a stack of 20 Sweet Valley books in tow when I was in grade school. There were times I had existential meltdowns wherein I realized a book about my life would be unreadable because all I ever did was read. Despite my being the English major of the relationship, Mr. Unicycle is the better read of the two of us. While I go for quantity (see “20 Sweet Valley books,” above) he goes for quality. His favorite book is legit by Charles Dickens (Great Expectations, that terrible tome we were all forced to get through when we were 14). He told me the other day that one of the things he’s most excited about for the honeymoon is getting all that time to just lie down with a good book. And read.
Image via Wikipedia
“There’s time enough at last!”
Mrs. Brooch posted about her adorable heart straws and mocktails a few weeks ago, and it reminded me that I haven’t shown you my take on the heart straw idea that’s swiffering the nation blogosphere. I probably forgot to show you because I made these so long ago. This was my second wedding craft of ALL TIME (right after the Will You Be My Bridesmaid Cards), which means I whipped these bad boyz up way back in May of 2011 and they’ve been chillin’ in a box ever since.
Here they are!
Sorry for the absence, blogosphere! I’m sure you missed me dearly. I’ve been busy! For the past few weeks I’ve spent 50% of my time crossing things off my wedding to do list and 50% freaking out about my wedding to do list. Oh, and 50% working. That’s right, I’m so nutz that I have 150% of a life.
Don’t worry, this isn’t my “I’ve been driven to drink” face—I gave that up for Lent. No, this is my standard crazy-eyez face.
I’ve accumulated tons of stuff to blog about, but there’s no time to blog!
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Featured on Weddingbee
Unique Wedding Favors
“Add a memorable touch to your wedding with unique favors that match your theme.”
I have a hilarious story to share with you guys about our garter toss. An anecdote, if you will. Bear with me; it’s funny. Play this song while you read:
Back when I was a freshman in college, before Mr. Unicycle and I were an item, we went to bingo on campus one Wednesday night (right after we finished our 4 pm dinner). It’s what freshman did. For the first time in my life, I actually won a game of bingo. This probably sounds like a good thing to most of you, but I’m the kind of person who declines entering raffles in fear that my name will be picked in front of everyone. I was hesitant to yell “BINGO” in the middle of a quiet room, so all my friends yelled and jumped up and down like apes until they noticed me. Instead of just collecting my prize in a dignified manner, I instead had to spin a wheel in front of the whole room, which dictated which prize I won. I didn’t win the iPod or the lava lamp or the Wii. No, I won a package of socks. Men’s white socks.
I posted a little bit about makeup ages ago, when this lil’ wedding of ours was but a twinkle in my eye. Now that we’re about 100 days out (seriously how and why did this happen??) I should probably figure this shiz out. Fo’ realz. I hired a stylist to come to the hotel the morning of the wedding to do my mom’s and my hair and makeup, so thankfully I won’t have to do any of this myself. (I don’t really “get” makeup.) And I’ll be getting a makeup trial in a few months, too. So, I should really be prepared with some inspiration pics!
To recap, here’s what I showed you before:
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
As the old Girl Scout song goes, the secret to happiness is to make new friends while keeping the old. I showed you some old friends who will be standing up to my wedding as bridesmaids, and I’ve got other friends coming to the wedding as well, so I’m set on keeping the old. But how do you make new friends when you’re someone’s wife?
Image via someecards
It seems like married people have to only be friends with other married people. Why is that? I suppose single people don’t want to listen to me drone on and on about our wedding registry or how Mr. Unicycle left the toilet seat up again (side note: I don’t really find this behavior that annoying, but I pretend to be annoyed when my brother does it because people on TV are annoyed by it. What’s annoying about leaving the toilet seat up? I want to be properly prepared to be adequately annoyed at Mr. Unicycle when we live together, so fill me in). And I also suppose single people don’t want to share their dating triumphs and travails with an old married lady like I will soon be.
I got a little ahead of myself posting about bridesmaid dress shopping without explaining my bridesmaid dress philosophy. I mean, my Bridesmaid Dress Philosophy. (Who the hell has a philosophy about bridesmaid dresses?) My philosophy was simple: I wouldn’t force my friends to buy ridiculously expensive, boring dresses from chain bridal stores. I didn’t want them spending an arm and a leg on a dress of my choosing because it felt wrong and bridezilla-ish. Plus, pretty much every dress being sold as a bridesmaid dress bored me to tears (just like wedding dresses did).
Image via Dessy
Nah
And the cake saga continues. When we last left off, the Unicycles had angrily feasted on cake at a local Starbucks while arguing about the difference between “combination” cake and marble. We decided to get white cake with raspberry Bavarian filling and buttercream frosting. But I never discussed the most important part—how the cake would look. I mentioned before that I was inspired by Mrs. Star’s polka dot accented wedding years before Mr. Unicycle ever put a ring on it.
I credit Mrs. Star with my wedding’s polka dot theme, especially the cake design. The photos we’re sending to the bakery are the same ones she shared on the blog almost three years ago, which I’ve had saved to my hard drive the whole time (this was pre-Pinterest, people). I’m glad my taste in cake design hasn’t changed in the past few years! Here are the two cakes Mrs. Star posted about:
Image via The Knot via Mrs. Star on Weddingbee
Nothing strikes fear in the hearts of people marrying into the Catholic Church like pre-cana. Mr. Unicycle is Lutheran, as I mentioned in my last Catholic Church post, so he was absolutely dreading going to pre-cana. I’m pretty sure he thought a priest would lecture us about “pulling out” for eight hours while we all held our hands over the bible and vowed never to use birth control, eat meat on Fridays, or have fun again. In reality, it was a lot more enjoyable than that.
For starters, it wasn’t run by a priest, probably because priests don’t know much about marriage. The full-day retreat, which was held at a church about an hour from my house, was run by couple who has been married for a really long time.
Ah, the ol’ cake tasting. One of those parts of wedding planning that everyone gets PUMPED for, brides and grooms alike. I actually don’t know what’s so exciting about it. You people realize you could just eat cake any day you want, right? We’re all adults here. But for some reason it is exciting, probably because you get to try so many different flavors in one sitting. Or maybe because you get to dream about your wedding whilst stuffing your face, two of my favorite pastimes!
If you’ve ever read a Martha Stewart craft tutorial, you were probably left scratching your head, shouting obscenities, or punching your computer screen right where her little head shot shows up.
Martha’s tutorials sometimes focus heavily on pretty pictures, but are sometimes lacking in the instructions. Take this crepe paper flower tutorial, for instance, which my MOH and I tried out the other day:
Image via Martha Stewart
(As you may recall, all the flowers at my wedding will be made of paper because I’m a cheap masochist.) The tutorial instructs you to cut out petals with their template and shape them by stretching the crepe paper. This was all simple enough, and I got through these steps feeling like I could totally pwn good ol’ Martha in a paper flower match to the death. But when it came to attaching the petals to the stem, the instructions are weak sauce: “To attach petals to stamen, stretch floral tape slightly, then wrap it twice around stamen. Add petals, wrapping tape across base of each as you add it. Once petals are added, wrap tape around twice more, then wrap down along stem to anchor and to attach leaves.” But how exactly do you attach the petals with floral tape? In case you didn’t already know, floral tape really isn’t very sticky.
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Like I mentioned before, my MOH and former college roommate visited me last weekend to get a bunch of wedding stuff done and just hang out. Part of the reason we picked that weekend was because I had scored some free tix to the Windy City Wedding Show (I’m pretty sure everyone in attendance had scored free tix by the way. I wouldn’t recommend ever paying to go to a bridal show because they were begging me to get my free tickets even after I’d already gotten some).
Image via the Windy City Wedding Show
I went to a bridal expo last May and wasn’t that impressed with it, but I heard after the fact that it isn’t that great of an expo in general, so I had high hopes for this one.
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I never thought I’d care that much about bridal jewelry. To me, “bridal jewelry” meant boring, thin chains with tiny gems or pearls attached—the kind of necklaces and earrings that you can’t even see from afar. I’m a tacky person (and I mean that in the best way possible), so traditional bridal jewelry just wasn’t doing it for me. I wanted something big and bold. Something that made a statement. And that statement would be “I’m tacky and I’m proud.” Not that the ol’ ball ‘n’ chain reads this tripe anymore, but just in case:
And by “dress pics” I mean “necklace pics.”
Back in the day, when I still thought bridal jewelry looked like this:
My MOH/former college roommate visited me this weekend and we did a bunch of girly, wedding-related frivolity. First we had conveyor belt sushi and tackled a Martha Stewart paper flower tutorial while we watched Lifetime movies and drank Franzia. Basically, it was my ideal night. I’ll share more about the flowers later!
On Saturday, we went out in search of bridesmaids’ dresses along with another one of my bridesmaids. I haven’t written about bridesmaids’ dresses yet, so lest you think I really am letting The Knot’s wedding timeline get the best of me, I would like to tell you that I’ve been searching for bridesmaids’ dresses since last summer. I decided I wanted the girls to wear yellow dresses, and after Google image searching/pinteresting the hell out of yellow dresses, I came to the decision that they could all be mismatched and just find their own dresses. I was at my wits’ end and was about ready to force this upon them:
Image via eBay
You know I like to complain, so I’ll give you some more back story later about why I was at my wits’ end.
Read more…
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Miss Unicycle, Chicago, IL Age and Occupation: 23, Editor for a Web Publishing Company Fiance's Age and Occupation: 23, MD/PhD Student Engagement Date: March 26, 2011 Wedding Date: June 2012 Venue: Bridges of Poplar Creek About Me: I’m a writer by trade who likes analyzing pop culture, making fun of celebrities, and laughing until I cry. I’m the queen of half-assed crafts, and there’s nothing I won’t try to DIY. You can usually find me reading blogs on my laptop in front of a good Lifetime movie, wine in hand. I’m planning a polka-dotted summertime wedding to my physics geek college sweetheart, and when I’m not making stupid puns I’m freaking out about my wedding timeline.
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