Weddingbee Blog

Mr. Taffy and I are looking forward to January 20th for two reasons. We will celebrate the inauguration of our new president, and we will celebrate our second anniversary. Last year, we celebrated our anniversary by going to the French-American restaurant Cuisine in Detroit for a lovely dinner. Before we got all dressed up to go out, I drew a quick sketch of Mr. Taffy while he read the paper.

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When I first blogged about my fitness situation, I was feeling quite confident that the exercise I was doing would be enough and that I would not have to alter my diet. Well, that was before the holidays, and now all of the delicious food and desserts that I scarfed down are catching up with me! Since our wedding is now 5 months away, I am starting to freak out a bit. Okay, a lot.

I have an enormous sweet tooth (Miss Taffy, indeed!) and a serious love for ice cream. This is not helpful! I am finally deciding to make some alterations in order to keep some sweet stuff in my diet. A “this versus that” game, if you will.

I would love to eat this:

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I instantly fell in love with both the punch bar concept and the flowered monogram decoration in the image below, from Martha Stewart Weddings. After finding our cake, this was the first inspirational image that went into my wedding binder! Today I’ll share my punch obsession with you (I will blog about the flower monogram soon).

Punch a la Martha Stewart

Right after we signed our venue contract, I started dreaming of wedding day punch. I love the vintage aspect of serving punch at a wedding, and I love to drink it as well! Alcoholic or non-alcoholic, I can’t get enough of this delightful beverage. Mr. Taffy, on the other hand, sounded like he would need some convincing.

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It was quite an ordeal finding the perfect bridesmaid dress. The dress that we chose happened to have a small train, something that I haven’t seen before in the world of bridesmaid attire.

Last week, lovely Tafette Miss S came to Detroit for the holiday and had her dress fitting. While marking the hem, the owner asked us if she should chop the train off or add a bustle. I had not considered bustling the bridesmaid dresses, so I’m glad that she suggested it! (Our alterations are free, so cost was not an issue.)

Miss S displays the bustle (roughly pinned, before alterations). To me, she looks relieved upon seeing the dress for the first time and not running in horror from my taste in bridesmaid fashion!

I think that this color looks lovely on Miss S.
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We hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday!

I’ve already posted about our decision to use our engagement photos for holiday gifts, but I did not mention our holiday card! I didn’t want to spoil the surprise for our friends before the cards reached their mailboxes.

Photography by A Girl In Love
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My latest wedding planning obsession is ceremony and reception decor. I have some ideas that I would like to run by the hive, but I realized that I haven’t blogged about our venue yet! Let’s take a tour so I can get blogging about my decorating obsession.

Mr. Taffy and I did a lot of research on venues in the metro Detroit area. At the end of the day, we chose the University of Michigan Union, a venue that is walking distance from our house! Here is the exterior of the building:

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You have seen me make traditional veils, birdcage veils, and hair clips. You have seen me bring a damaged wedding dress train back to life. You have seen me make a tie for Mr. T, and even make a dress out of a bed sheet!

For my next trick, I will transform two of these cookie sheets into a gift for Mr. Taffy:

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Blocking hotel rooms for our guests seemed to be a very overwhelming item on our checklist. Mr. Taffy and I had been putting off hotel research for weeks. Ann Arbor has an enormous selection of accommodations, and we didn’t know where to begin comparing so many choices! After calling two hotels, I discovered a feature that quickly made some accommodations stand out from the rest. Ladies and Gentlemen, behold the free hotel shuttle service!

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This may not be exciting to some, but I was thrilled to learn about this feature.
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Mr. Taffy and I just received our high resolution files from our engagement shoot! We love our engagement photos and we have been hoping to give framed prints as a gift to our parents for the holiday. The problem is, the shots that we ordered are not very traditional. When it came time to choose a print for the parents, we realized that we were smooching in almost all of the shots, or not looking directly into the camera. This was definitely the style we were after when we chose our photographer, and there were plenty of images to choose from within our shoot. Mr. Taffy and I just naturally gravitated to the non traditional shots when we picked our favorites.

We worried that this would not be parent material:

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Yesterday I wrote about our save the dates, and how the stamps did not match them in any way. In this post, I will show how I have made up for it with my current matching frenzy!

The “don’t forget” string and bow motif that we used for our save the dates will be tied in (couldn’t resist the bad pun!) to our decor at the wedding, starting with the bridesmaids’ dresses. Yes, I have blogged about our dresses before, but they came in last week in our color (robin’s egg blue) and I could not be more excited! I love the light blue & black combination. In addition to robin’s egg blue, we will be using a blue-green (similar to the ink used on our save the dates) in our color palette. Our accent colors will be black and ivory.

Bow exhibit #1, color A:

Brave Taffette Mrs. A agreed to be photographed with no advance notice.
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Back in September, I showed you the design file for the awesome save the dates that Mr. Taffy’s brother designed for us. Today I would like to show you the final, printed product!

Remember how I was hunting for the perfect blue for our color palette and bridesmaid dresses? As a placeholder, we asked Mr. T’s brother to use a gray blue for our save the date design. By the time the gocco came out, we had switched to a color palette using both robin’s egg blue and a darker blue-green for our palette. Take a look at the finished product!

Don’t mind my sloppy name hacking in photoshop!
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Those of you that have been to Ann Arbor, Michigan (or even the Detroit area) may have heard about a very famous deli…

Yes, Zingerman’s. Zingerman’s is the most famous deli in Michigan, hands down. It also happens to be very close to our house! We go there a lot, and adore their fresh mozzarella, vinegar, cookies and deli food. Yum!

Almost everyone we know has asked us if we will be ordering our wedding cake from Zingerman’s. This past summer, Mr. Taffy got me a mini birthday cake from their bakery.

Isn’t it cute? (Don’t mind the cardboard circle underneath!) Mr. T supplied the cute polka dot candles.
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Oh yes. I have been dying to share my wedding dress with you!!! I was waiting for two reasons- first I had to suck it up and write about my decision to not design and make my dress. That was pretty tough. The second reason- I did not bring a camera to try dresses on, mostly because I was still thinking about designing the dress. I wanted to take pictures for the blog in my actual dress, in my actual size, so I had been waiting for her arrival! Luckily, she came in a few weeks ago.

When the time came to go dress shopping, my first idea was to go to Chicago. My lovely roommate Michalena from fashion school at FIT is from Chicago, and opened a bridal boutique there three-and-a-half years ago. I had been to the store for her opening party, and knew that Michalena had wonderful taste and would carry designers that I loved. Her boutique is called Vegas to Venice. I was thrilled to find out that Mrs. Peacock went there for her bridesmaids’ dresses! (Small world!)

The more I thought about it, and the more that Michalena and I talked, we both agreed that finding a dress locally made more sense. With that, I set out to find a dress, shopping in Ann Arbor, Birmingham, Dearborn, Plymouth, Berkley… all over metro Detroit.

Mr. Taffy, don’t even think about taking a peek! I repeat, do not “read more”!
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Wedding Announcements, that is! 

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Mr. Taffy and I usually pick up a Sunday paper every week, and have a great time reading it together. I have always seen the wedding announcements in the Sunday Styles section, and wondered what steps a couple would take in order to get published. A few weeks ago, Mr. Taffy randomly emailed me a link with all of the info, so I thought that I would share it with the hive!

(My apologies if this has come up before; I have not seen any posts on it since I became addicted to Weddingbee last summer!)
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Mr. Taffy bought a tuxedo a week after we got engaged. We had a black tie charity event to attend that month, and he figured that he could get the most out of his tux if he bought one right away. Here’s the tux:

He did a great job choosing; I love it! Mr. Taffy spent a lot of time looking into the other details—the shirt, collar, tie, etc. All was going well. He went with one of his groomsmen to have him try on a similar style this past weekend, and the subject of shirt color came up.

Now, Mr. T has no idea about my dress style.
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