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Before I knew it I was getting tapped on the shoulder and being told that it was time to cut the cake. Already? Our reception was flying by.
Our cake cutting song came on: Silly Love Songs from Glee. Both Mr. Gazelle and I were excited about cutting the cake.
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After toasts it was time to chow down on some serious eats! We chose to go with a buffet for dinner and there was so much food!
While walking around Stone Town in Zanzibar, I came across this sign:
Personal photo
It got me thinking about pre-wedding skincare. I’ve got those horrible “chicken skin bumps” on my upper arms, and I’d love to get rid of them before I wear my strapless wedding gown. I also have started breaking out on my face more in the past year. This is disappointing to me because I always had really clear skin prior to that, but I’ve been able to mostly control the acne with Clinique’s 3-Step Skin Care System.
Besides maybe trying to rip off the Zanzibarian recipe in the future, I’ve been trying to:
..And I do know when I’ll be back again! (May 1st 
)
Today I begin my journey: a month-long trip to Tanzania, Africa. I’ll be collecting research data there for my graduate degree. I’ll definitely be eating as many as the local foods I can, playing with all the kids, and watching the beautiful African sunset every night. Oh, and taking a vacation to Zanzibar Island and going on Safari in the Serengeti every weekend. I can’t wait!
But, I am so sad to leave Fiancee Eagle. I shed only a few tears in bed this morning, but I have a feeling I’ll shed a few more before I step on the plane. Since the beginning of our relationship, we’ve maybe spent five days apart. And during those five days, we were constantly texting and talking on the phone. I won’t have the luxury of my iPhone working in Africa, and I’ll only have intermittent e-mail access. I’m going to miss her SO much, but I know that it will be amazing when I get home, seeing each other again. I can’t wait for that moment!
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Featured on Weddingbee
Unique Wedding Favors
“Add a memorable touch to your wedding with unique favors that match your theme.”
Hive, I have something to confess: I’m a bit of an etiquette stickler. I know that I’m all modern and “alternative” (read: lesbian) and such, but I really am a pretty traditional girl. Sometimes I think I must have been a debutante from the South in a previous life. I “believe in” hostess gifts, timely thank you cards, proper business etiquette and being a good host to your guests.
Needless to say, I was very happy when I came across this website: Emily Post Wedding Etiquette. I remember when I first got engaged, I would spend hours on this site, trying to take everything in and make sure I wasn’t going to do anything “wrong,” etiquette-wise, at the wedding.
Emily Post Wedding Etiquette / Image via Amazon
I must admit, I also frequented the Wedding Archives of Etiquette Hell.
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Just like every other bride on the paper board (which I frequent!), I’m obsessed with all things paper. Invitations, menus, programs, save the dates…these are all music to my ears. I caved and decided that since we’re having a black-tie wedding we should have fancy letterpress invitations (and decided to DIY them). I sold my soul to the devil and we completed 100 five-piece letterpress invitation suites in a three-day weekend. Clearly I’m into paper. Along with letterpress, I also knew that I wanted to have an inner and outer envelope. Fiancee Eagle? Not so much.
To inner, or not to inner? / Image via Breathe Upon
Fiancee Eagle tried to argue that it was a waste of paper, but after I reminded her that all pieces of our invitation suite, including the envelopes, were cotton paper (and super GREEN!), she rolled her eyes and knew I’d won. Inner and outer envelopes for the Eagles!
I just love how “fancy” double envelopes make wedding invitations feel. After every single paper (550 sheets later…) we letterpressed, Fiancee Eagle was BEAMING with excitement/pride and kept saying “These look SO NICE and FANCY!!” I feel like the envelope(s) will really help further the “These are nice invitations!” feeling that people will hopefully have when opening them. It’s pretty old school (I’ve never received a wedding invitation with a double envelope), but I think it works for our invitation aesthetic and overall wedding feel.
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
Remember earlier this month when I shared my biggest bridal fear with you all? Engagement photos. I was so scared that I would look ridiculous, huge, disproportionate or just un-in-love. Well, we took our photos this weekend, and our photographer Brittany Esther has given us “just one” as a sneak peek.
Amanda and Jacinda / Image via Brittany Esther Photography
Needless to say, my fears were clearly ludicrous. I think we look awesome (and Brittany’s stellar photography really helps). Since I was so nervous and obsessively worrying the week before the shoot, I thought I’d pass on some engagement photo shoot tips for other nervous brides like myself.
Miss Eagle’s Engagement Photo Tips
1) Spend the time on your hair and makeup! You’ll feel more confident and carry yourself in a different way. If you think that you look good, your confidence level will show through the photos.
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I know I’ve been totally MIA hive, but I’ve been dutifully letterpressing our 5-piece invitation suites, DIYing all of the calligraphy, and getting ready for my month-long trip to Africa. Blogger fail.
I wanted to talk about registering for non-china wedding gifts. I already told ya’ll how much I love china. I am so excited to finally have my own set of china, fancy silverware and crystal. But, we’re also only 22 and 23 years old (actually, we’re almost 23 and 23 - my birthday is April 1st!). While we do have our own apartment set up, we still need “grown up” stuff. I’m a bit of a bargain shopper, and a lot of our stuff is hand-me-downs from our parents. Together, this amounts to having a lot of crappy housewares. While we’ll still be in an apartment/condo for the next few years (hello grad school / living in one of the most expensive cities in Canada), we’d still like to upgrade our basic housewares and have higher quality bedding and cookware.
Since we already registered at BB&B for china, crystal, and silverware, we also added some fun housewares to our registry there. These were some of our favorites:
Paris Royal 630 Dot Queen Sheet in Ivory / Image via Bed Bath and Beyond
When I saw Miss Mink’s table numbers, I knew I had to recreate these for our own wedding! I think that table numbers are a great, easy DIY that can turn out super beautiful (as evidenced by Miss Mink!). Since we’re going for a blush and champagne colour palette, I knew we would use those colours for this project, but I was worried it wouldn’t “pop” as well as the teal coloured number did in Miss Mink’s. But when I found silver photo frames for less than $2 each, I knew this project was just meant to be… and I thought the silver would help them “pop.”
I ended up buying some super cheap blush coloured upholstery fabric for $2/meter at Fabricland. For this type of fabric-backed table number, it is uber important to use a thicker heavy-weave fabric, to support the weight of the number.
First, we gathered the main supplies to attach the fabric backing. The glass of the photo frame, Mod Podge and a brush.
We traced the outline of the photo frame onto the fabric and cut it out.
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While we booked our photographer, Brittany Esther quite a while ago, we still haven’t taken engagement photos yet. We wanted to shoot them in late 2011, but decided to move it to late March. Why? We are both so terrified of engagement photos! I can’t put my finger on why exactly, but it scares me. When I was a teenager, I did some plus-size modeling and worked with tons of professional photographers. I’m not uncomfortable in front of a camera lens (which may not be the case for Fiancee Eagle), and I know what angles are best for me. I’ve even had people tell me I look better in photos than real life (rude, but true—I’m pretty photogenic!). I’m not afraid of looking bad in the photos, and with our photographers skill, I’m almost positive we will look absolutely beautiful in our engagement photos.
So why am I worried? I’m worried because all of the engagement photos I’ve seen have very “heteronormative” posing. There is a clearly defined masculine and feminine position in the “poses”, and while that works for heterosexual couples, I’m pretty worried we’ll look silly if we try to recreate these types of poses:
I admitted to you all before that wedding planning has turned me into a mildly compulsive online shopper. Well, I’m a full blown online shopping addict, now. We bought one of the most important “wedding” things online. We bought our wedding rings.
I knew that we wanted/needed to save money on our wedding bands, and since we both have solitaire engagement rings, we thought that plain bands would look good and wouldn’t break the budget. But, Fiancee Eagle’s engagement ring is a round solitaire with a knife-edged band, and mine is a pear-shaped diamond with a rounded, comfort fit band. I really wanted us to have the same wedding ring, but a plain band that matched her engagement ring wouldn’t match mine, and vice versa. So we decided to buy matching diamond eternity bands.
The online vendor we used was Pompeii3. Their online storefront can be a bit overwhelming—they have so many choices and the prices are so amazing. The one thing that is important to keep your eye on is the diamond quality. Their quality is actually quite similar to mall jewelry stores, but sometimes they will have products that have diamonds rated I3.
The rings that we bought were rated SI2-I1. If you look very closely at the rings, you can see that there are a couple of diamonds that aren’t as good as the rest, but it doesn’t bother us. We customized the rings to be 3/4 eternity bands (to facilitate sizing in the future), and Pompeii3 knocked off 10% of the price, because there were less diamonds used overall. Their customer service was amazing, and we had the rings earlier than expected, even with shipping to Canada. I would recommend them to any bride or groom looking to purchase a quality ring, online.
We bought these rings. While they are designed to be worn one on each side, since we wanted the same ring, we each just will wear one.
After all of our guests had taken their seats it was time for Mr. Gazelle and I to make our grand entrance into our reception.
Registering for wedding gifts was something I was a bit apprehensive to do. I felt like maybe we wouldn’t even get wedding gifts from people because we already live together, or that people would think that because we’re gay, our wedding isn’t “traditional,” therefore “traditional gifts” aren’t needed. Yes, I realize the ridiculousness of these anxieties.
Wrong. We were encouraged from both of our parents to register quite early in our wedding planning, despite not having an engagement party. And everyone kept asking about china. China was one of those things I just knew we had to register for. We both grew up in households that used fine china on special occasions, and we both wanted to be able to continue that tradition, and share that with our future children. Plus, I just love housewares and get excited about the thought of hosting dinners with fine china. There is something special about being invited into someone’s home and eating off of their fine china.
Now I know there is a huge divide among brides everywhere, on the necessity of china. I will admit, I won’t be using the china every week, or maybe even every month. But it is something that will stay with us throughout our whole lives. Something that we hope to be able to pass on to our children one day. So for that alone, we feel like it is a necessity. China is the thing that we want the most off of our registries.
FI Eagle’s and my tastes lean toward the traditional. We both love very traditional looking china, but I noticed I was also drawn towards designs featuring pastel colours.
Philippe Deshoulieres Arcades Dinnerware / Image via Bed Bath and Beyond
Time to share all of the little details that I put a lot of thought and hard work in to! Our seating chart was one of the first things our guests saw as they came upstairs. I still love the idea that we came up with:
As soon as our ceremony ended cocktail hour on the lawn started. Mr. Gazelle and I got to the end of the aisle, we kissed, and the amazing staff at the Brock House were ready to hand us a glass of wine. Our bridal party joined us for a toast.
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