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Weddingbee Blog
I love summer nights in Boston. I love the comfortable temperature, the smell of summer rain and all the fun things to do outside. From free movies on the Esplanade to camping under the stars, we Bostonians know how to take advantage of our short summer months.
My absolute favorite summer evening activity is to take a trip out to the Berkshires. This region in MA is the summer retreat of the Boston Pops Orchestra, where they perform outdoors at Tanglewood. Laying out under the stars hearing the orchestra play beautiful classical pieces is so relaxing and peaceful… and oh-so-romantic! It was my secret dream to get engaged out in Tanglewood. Well, secret until the summer of 2006 when I blurted it out to some friends who came to Tanglewood with me that year. Sigh, me and my big mouth.
Fast-forward 2 years.
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Okay, well, that isn’t EXACTLY true.
We’ve already set it. A few times…
Mr. D’orsay and I were engaged on August 10th, 2008. I think we set a date the following weekend and wrote out our guest list on the back of a used envelope at happy hour on the beach. There are some days that I really miss Miami… I digress.
I mistakenly thought setting a date was the easiest part of planning a wedding. In my mind, we set the date and people would show up; we began with the wonderful date of 10/10/09. I have a terrible memory so my though process was obvious. I could see myself being unable to recall the exact date and thinking, “what is our wedding anniversary? Well, we got married in October—the tenth month… oh, I know! 10/10 is our anniversary!” Not to mention 10/10/2009 is the same in both the British date writing (day/month/year) and American (month/day/year). Pathetic I know, but useful and handy!
Additionally, October is very beautiful in Maryland. The humidity begins to die down, the heat subsides and we begin to get little pops of colors in the trees. So I began to imagine our Maryland fall wedding, with bright orange trees and our wedding colors of deep aubergine and chocolate brown.
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Since getting engaged over a year ago, I started thinking about the next round of brides out there who are waiting for a proposal as we speak.
With the holidays approaching, there has to be a few grooms-to-be holding on to a ring waiting for the right moment. And then I found this article. It’s a few years old, but it states that 26% of couples get engaged between November to December. And according to this wiki, another 10% get engaged on Valentine’s Day.
And then I started thinking about the economy, and I started to wonder if the number of proposals will shrink due to the fiscal crisis.
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A big day has come in the course of Mr. Dragon’s and my journey towards the altar: The engagement ring has been bought, set, picked up, and is now hiding somewhere in my apartment (he made me promise not to snoop). We have been saving up for this for a long time, and selecting, and then making the Big Purchase was an adventure, to say the least!
About six months ago, Mr. Dragon and I - totally on a lark - stopped into a local jewelry store to look at engagement bands and settings so that Mr. Dragon could get an idea of what I liked. We spent about two hours in the store, trying on different bands, metals, everything! By the time we were done, we were both totally exhausted and DONE with shopping. Who gets tired of jewelry shopping?!? Oh, the Snapdragons, that’s who. Originally, I was dead set on something like this:
Featured on Weddingbee
Unique Wedding Favors
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I have to say, unlike most girls, I had absolutely NO CLUE that an engagement was near. Now, don’t get me wrong, Mr. Powder Puff and I had definitely discussed marriage, but he had me so convinced that he wasn’t going to propose for a good long time that I was completely surprised by it when it happened!
In May I went on a short family vacation to Disney World (which was AWESOME by the way!), and I asked Mr. Powder Puff to pick me up from the airport. Now, before I go any further, I have to say that I was looking snaaazzzyyyy. I had just flown for a couple of hours, I was wearing my glasses, no makeup, jeans with a giant hole in them, and a sweatshirt. Wow.
Once we got home, I jumped on the computer to catch up on the latest episode of “The Office” (my fav!) when my phone started vibrating. I had called a girlfriend of mine earlier in the evening, so I thought she was simply returning my call. To my surprise, it was a text message from Mr. Powder Puff, who was in the other room.
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I am just now realizing that I never posted our engagement pictures! I posted about having them done, but never the end result. So, without any further ado…
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
Mr. Sushi and I had talked about our life together and marriage in the past, but I honestly never expected to receive a ring from Mr. Sushi. I always thought we would just go and do it… no ring needed. Plus (no offense, Mr. Sushi!) Mr. Sushi isn’t exactly Mr. Romantic.
We had just bought a condo in May 2007, so money was kinda tight. That Christmas, we decided to put a $30 price cap on each other for Christmas gifts. Yes, $30! We thought it would be a good way to save money and get creative with trying to find a gift in that price range. Well… Mr. Sushi went a lil’ over his $30 limit by a few hundred dollars and got on down on his knee on Christmas. His mom helped him pick the ring out, although he had a hell of a time trying to explain to his mom that he was buying an engagement ring that didn’t feature a diamond. I had told him long, long ago that diamonds weren’t really my thing. As pretty as they are, I like color.
There was a bit of confusion on that fateful day, though.
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August 28, 2008 was an awesome day. It was a propitious date on the Chinese calendar (the word “eight” in Chinese is a homophone for prosperity and “two” is a homophone for easy, so 8/28/08 = prosperity, easy prosperity, more prosperity). It was the day of Barack Obama’s historic acceptance speech. And it also happened to be a very special day in the Hot Cocoa family. That night, after a viewing of Obama’s speech in downtown Philly, future sister-in-law Hot Cocoa’s wonderful boyfriend proposed! She said yes, and there was much rejoicing around the country (fireworks in Denver!).
Check out FSIL Hot Cocoa’s unique and beautiful e-ring. She designed it with the help of New York jewelry designer Sarah Perlis, who handmade the ring from 22k gold and adorned it with a pink sapphire center stone and ethically sourced diamond side stones. Since some of you out there might be looking for alternatives to the traditional diamond e-ring, I thought I’d deliver some eco-friendly bling for your viewing enjoyment.
Well let’s just dive right into it, shall we?
Mr. Dumpling and I have been together for a long time, y’all. I tend to ramble, so the short version is that we did the long distance thing for a while, then I made the big move to Las Vegas so we could be together.
Fast-forward to almost two years later and there we were, happily living together and very much in love. We talked about getting married a few times but I never pressed it. Things were great the way they were and I was happy.
Ha! Who was I kidding? I wanted to marry Mr. Dumpling from the moment I saw him. I was really just trying to play it cool.
Anyway, one night after work I came home, completely exhausted.
Monday as I was about to leave for work, I received a text from our photographer saying our engagement photos were ready and up on her blog. What?! Spend the last 10 minutes doing my hair or looking at our pictures? Um ya- I went to work that day without even running a brush through my hair… but the stray strands and knots were totally worth it. Our photographer, Sandra Salisbury, is so awesome. She’s a redhead, she drinks coffee like a woman after my own heart, and she totally knows how to rock a camera. And she’s affordable. We love her.
Are you ready for this crazy duo?
As I mentioned earlier, the trip to Naples, Florida with Champ our sophomore year of college was where I really fell in love with my best friend. So it only seemed fitting that five years later we would visit the same spots, swim at the same beach, and enjoy the same company we had enjoyed so much before. When Mr. C asked if I would be interested in heading back to Naples, my heart fluttered a little in hope that this would be “THE vacation.” So off we went to Naples!
We were fortunate enough to have two engagement sessions - totally unplanned! The first was completely unscheduled, but impromptu plans sometimes turn out the best, yes?
The first engagement session was inspired by my lovely FSIL who also happens to be an extremely talented photographer. We all happened to be meeting up to welcome home my FBIL from Iraq. My Future-In-Laws were gracious enough to host us all at a rented beach house on the Topsail Island beaches of North Carolina where we spent a week of having family fun.
I’ve always loved taking pictures. I’m not particularly good at taking them, but I’m very good about pressing the snap button…A LOT. So you can imagine my delight when I discovered photography blogs! Jessica Claire, Susan Stripling, Chenin Boutwell…OH MY! Yes, these names are second nature to me now, it’s quite pathetic. I’m a super photography blogstalker, LOOK OUT!
Naturally, the first vendor we booked was our photographer and the search was quite difficult for us. For one, we had a budget and the photographers I had been drooling over were well beyond it. I will admit that I was skeptical I would find someone with great talent at a low cost, but after much diligent searching and cost comparisons I found one. His name is Jason Angelini. Jason is great for a lot of reasons. He and his wife, Lucia give me tons of feedback on vendors and random questions. They are my wedding analysts. Most importantly though, he was very reasonably priced. For two graduate students, that was essential.
We’ve been best friends since we were fifteen. And just in case anyone out there is counting, that’s almost half of our lives.
In high school, we’d show up for first period in the same outfit. She’d look at me and say, “I knew you were going to wear that.”
We lived together all through college…and we not only survived, we’re still as close as ever.
I’m going to backtrack a little while I wait for our professional pictures to come back…
In May, Mr. Jasmine and I met our valima photographer, Laurie Tennent, in Millenium Park. My mother-in-law wanted to create a photo guestbook for the valima and she asked us to take some engagement photos with Laurie. We met Laurie in the park on a *ridiculously* cold day for May. I was all bundled up in a black coat which I threw off to take pics and would throw back on between shots. I felt very much like a ANTM contestant 
I’ve featured some of my favorite shots below. Laurie was such a joy to work with and I think she really captured our personalities. I would definitely recommend her to any Michigan area brides looking for a photographer!
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