Weddingbee Blog

Hive, I’ve been feeling a little off lately, and I’m hoping you can help me. I was once the most enthusiastic of all brides to be. I spent most of my free time researching wedding related paraphernalia. I was the queen of wasting my time doing unsuccessful DIY projects.

Lately, though, I’ve lost that spark. I can’t bring myself to make a decision about anything wedding related. I have a list of things to do a mile long but can’t seem to get anything on it done. I have nightmares that I get to the wedding only to realize I never had a final meeting with the florist and she uses only calla lilies (the one flower I asked her not to use), or that I never finished writing our ceremony, or that I didn’t make sure our officiant is actually licensed, etc. etc. etc.
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Like many brides, I had a few nightmares here and there about the impending wedding. Mostly things like the wedding arriving a lot earlier than I had planned or Mr. Funnel Cake seeing me in my dress before the wedding. Just small stuff. And when the big day finally came and everything was just perfect, I really thought my nightmares would be over.

Wrong.

They started on the honeymoon. Post-wedding nightmares. I would wake in gorgeous Hawaii, turn to Mr. Funnel Cake and tell him with wide eyes “I just dreamt XYZ happened at the wedding!!!” and he would look at me like I was nuts. Who stresses about an event that is already over?? Apparently lots of hive members have post-wedding nightmares as well though. (Thank God I’m not alone!)

For the most part I keep dreaming that I am late and I need to get dressed already. I don’t have all my preparation items with me and I have to improvise on hair and makeup. Everything is rush, rush, rush. Why, just last night I dreamt I was in my parents’ front yard sewing flowers on to my wedding skirt the morning of the big day and Mama Funnel Cake was yelling at me about having dirt all over myself. We were running short on time, of course. I kept saying, “Just one more flower and it’s done, just one more flower!”

I think my favourite post-wedding nightmare so far was the one where Mama Funnel Cake informed me that President John F. Kennedy would be attending the wedding as a guest and that I needed to give him a VIP tour of our house before the wedding started.
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“You are the bride! It’s your wedding, do what you want!”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard this about a million times during my year of wedding planning, and I definitely think there is this culture in the wedding industry that the wedding is totally and completely all about the bride all the time. By the time I got engaged, this idea had pretty much infiltrated my brain. It didn’t help that I practically had the entire wedding planned out in my head within moments of saying yes!

So when I started bringing my ideas for the wedding to Mr Elk and Mama Elk, it took me by total surprise how often my ideas were shot down. At first, I can’t lie, I was pretty annoyed. I was still in this mind frame that it’s my wedding and I should get whatever I want. It didn’t take long, though, for me to realize how dumb I was being.
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I like to think that I have always played it straight with you, hive. So I’m going to come right out and say it, and I’m going to say it bluntly: I’ve been kind of a bitch lately to Mr. D. Why, you ask? Honestly, there is no real excuse, but if I had to blame it on something other than me, I would say stress. I am so frickin’ stressed out.

I know now that I take on way too much crap, so it’s no wonder I’m so stressed out all the time. I work full-time, I go to school full-time (online, but it’s still hard as hell), and I’m planning a wedding, which because of all the DIY-ness of it, is like another full-time job. Plus I’m the one that my family likes to call when they have issues with each other or other such problems in their lives. Now add to this the fact that I’m just about to finish finals and I’m dealing with my dad dying, I’m a flat out bitch. Big time. Unfortunately, Mr. D has been taking the brunt of my bitchiness lately. This is something I feel absolutely terrible about.

It’s become more and more obvious that I need to find something to do that allows me to target my stress into something important instead of snapping at Mr. D for simply asking a question.
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…you make lemonade. Then you add some vodka.

Or Bloody Mary, as the case may be.

I don’t know about you guys, but sometimes planning a wedding can just feel so overwhelming. There’s so much to think about, to plan, to spend, to have a back up for. I’m sitting here, just over six months out, and having a mini panic attack at everything I still have to do; yet, I feel like I don’t know what to do because I have already done so much.
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Let me tell you something.

Being married is awesome. But post wedding emotions are so confusing!

Like Mrs. Panther wrote about recently, I am having a lot of post-wedding feelings. Like, a LOT. And they are all jumbled up and are making me feel really confused and emotional and disorganized and stressed and happy.

First off, I think, like many of you who posted on Mrs. Panther’s posts, I just feel a bit of a void where wedding planning was.
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Planning a wedding is hard. Your degree of involvement in the planning process can determine just how hard, but no matter what, it’s difficult. There is one up-side, though: Prioritizing becomes a little simpler.

When you’ve got a hard, set goal to work toward, and when society deems that goal The Biggest Day of Your Life, it’s easy to put it first. When I was planning my wedding, my priorities were simple: 1) Wedding planning stuff. 2) Exercising so that I would look decent on The Biggest Day of My Life. And 3) Work. I knew I was going to need my paycheck to cover the wedding expenses, after all.
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This past weekend I did what any bride does on lazy days…get caught up on wedding shows, duh. You know the lineup: Say Yes To The Dress, Platinum Weddings, Four Weddings, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding…and my new personal favorite, Brides of Beverly Hills.

These shows vary far and wide in its content. However, I started to notice a common theme. I kept hearing the same phrase over and over in each show.

“It makes me feel like a bride.”

Whether they were trying on their dress, veil, shoes, picking out flowers, cake tasting. Everyone was doing something different when they would proclaim, it made them feel like a bride.

I can’t say I have had a moment like that yet.

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Howdy, Hive! Just your friendly, neighborhood Miss Seal here checking in. The Mr. and I leave for our hotel in San Francisco tomorrow and the excitement is really building. Family and friends have started arriving from their OOT destinations and the calls are flooding in. I still can’t believe I am getting married…the day after tomorrow.

So remember that calm before the “inevitable storm” I spoke of? Well, as it turns out…the storm has yet to hit. I’m still waiting for the crazy to slap me across the face, but I’m hoping it’s just not gonna happen. I mean, I did get those two teeth extracted, but with the exception of a bit of soreness and eating more slowly, the swelling is gone and I feel good.

The lovely Miss Ferris Wheel (my date/city/birthday bee twin) even sent me this adorable bouquet on the day of my oral surgery. It definitely put a swollen smile on my face.

Anyhow, I’m writing today not so much to update you on my life, but to let you know that you can and will get through wedding planning.
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People sometimes tend to lose all tact when it comes to anything wedding related. From the acquaintance who expects an invite to the relative who thinks they should decide how your dream day should be. It always astonishes me  how people forget to filter what comes out of their mouth when speaking to a bride-to-be.

I’ve had to handle the, “Am I invited?” question more than I thought possible. It’s always awkward; there isn’t an easy way to break it to someone, that, no, you are not, and what I’m best at is avoidance. They can probably tell they aren’t invited when I quickly look away or find an excuse to step away from the conversation—avoidance at its best. I find it hilarious that some people think they would be invited but at the same time it’s appalling that someone would even ask that question. I guess it could be taken as a form of flattery—that everyone and their mom really wants to attend your wedding. Nah, it’s still what I deem as tactless.

In the last few months, I suppose as the wedding is getting closer, I have run into what I consider to be the worst of tactless acts. After running into an old friend (who was sitting with someone I didn’t know) and catching up for a minute, the conversation suddenly turned into this:
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Way back when…okay really like ten months ago, I was a regular on the waiting boards. I was speculative about when the big day would be.

For a while, I was sure we were on the same page and that it was going to be a holiday proposal with plenty of time to plan. But then mid January rolled around. Mr. Skunk’s grandfather passed and I felt selfish for even thinking about a possible proposal. I stopped lurking around on Weddingbee and tried to be as supportive as possible to Mr. Skunk. It was a really hard time for all of us.

And then out of the blue, he proposed. It was magical and fantastic and we promptly decided to plan a fall wedding.

And then a couple weeks later, Mr. Skunk lost his job. I honestly think he handled it a lot better than I did. I cried.
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Warning: This might a bit of a rant, but I can’t help my annoyance!

Image via People/Photo by Clint Brewer/Splash News Online

By now everyone is quite aware that Kim Kardashian got divorced after 72 days of marriage. Most people are probably thinking something along the lines of: WHO CARES? I don’t know why I care, but I do. It pisses me off. Mostly it annoys the hell out of me because it brings to light a huge, gaping flaw in our society.

I find it incredibly annoying that celebrities can go have shotgun, ridiculously lavish, expensive weddings on a whim.
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And no, I’m not talking about Mr. Parasol. I’m still shout-it-from-the-mountains-smooshy-face in love with him.

**Just to clarify: this post is in no way anti-name changing. I truly admire all of you women and men who are excited about and follow through with the process of changing your last name, and to be honest, I’m a bit jealous!

Some of you may remember my name change post from a while back, where I wrote about why Mr. Parasol and I decided to take each other’s last  names. A lot of careful thought and discussion went into this decision, and we were excited about sharing a hyphenated last name.

We’ve now been married for about a month and a half, and unlike Mrs. Cannon, Mr. Parasol and I haven’t begun the process of officially changing our last names. And we currently have no plans to do so.

At first, we both had a “We’ll deal with that later” attitude towards officially changing our names. I don’t know about you, but given the choice between dealing with various government entities and not dealing with said entities, I always choose not. Besides, like most twenty-first century newlyweds, we changed our names on Facebook, and we used our new last name socially, so we figured there was no rush to make things official. Apparently we Parasols are lazy. But as the weeks ticked by, I started to feel uncomfortable with the idea of our new last name, and I realized that there was more than laziness behind my nonchalance about legally changing our names.
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Only not really.

I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while, but I was sure that once the wedding got closer, it would no longer be relevant. That hasn’t happened, so here goes.

We’re less than two weeks out to the wedding. In addition to schlepping bread to farmers’markets five days a week, babysitting three, and helping out another pastry chef as needed, I’m also supposed to be getting bride brain. Or so I’ve heard. When I do have a few moments that aren’t devoted to sleep or sneaking in a quick sesh at the climbing gym, I’ve shopped for two awesome Halloween costumes. And last night I carved a pumpkin.

(personal photo)

Actually, Mr. Skunk carved (word up y’all, if you want your mister to join you in cheesy holiday traditions, get power tools involved) while I looked on giggling in excitement.

I keep getting asked if I’m stressed or nervous.
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Let’s be real for a moment here. Family drama exists, and more often than not it rears its ugly head around family functions…like a wedding. A wedding you may just have happened to spend the last 11+ months planning. A wedding you may or may not have just spent thousands of dollars on. A wedding you possibly want to be one of the happiest days of your life and the last thing on EARTH you want to deal with is FAMILY DRAMA!

My own personal little ball of family drama decided to drop yesterday afternoon. A certain someone was recently…indisposed, but found themselves released from prior constraints yesterday and has announced they will be attending our wedding…yay? Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I did in fact send this person an invitation (ONLY at the vehement request of my dearly beloved aunt). However, when I sent this invitation there was NO question in my mind as to this person actually attending. As far as I was concerned, unicorns would be making a flight to Pluto, the once epic planet, and CNN would be airing the live coverage prior to this person actually coming to the wedding.

Well Unicorns… your big day is here!

Horrible Paint Art by Miss Ticket

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