Weddingbee Blog

I got inspired by Miss Ostrich’s vintage postcards and decided that we must also have a vintage postcard in our wedding. The only question was how? Then, as I was revising our menu design for the fourth time (yep I really did change my mind that often) I thought, “why not turn them into vintage postcards?” So, I did!

Read more…

“Sit. Eat.”

The above is an oft-heard expression at Hammy family gatherings. Sometimes the “Sit” part is omitted, but the “Eat” is always present. When it came time to make our menus, I had this “crazy” idea (I know, it’s wild) of combining the menus and place cards into one. Here’s the finished result:

Personalized Menus!

Making personalized menus was surprisingly not time-consuming, thanks to a function called mail merge within my first love, Microsoft Office.
Read more…

…To Mr Trail Mix for pulling his weight lately in the wedding planning fun. Consider it a benefit to having a searching-for-employment-fiancé as opposed to a working-fiancé. Mr TM gallantly cut, corner-rounded and attached raffia around almost all of our 200 menus one afternoon, leaving him with a blister on his thumb from the corner rounder and me with a pile of simple and sorta-pretty menu cards.

He also cut and corner-rounded about 200 of our favor tags, also to be tied with raffia (are you sensing a theme here with the use of raffia? Well, you’re right, it’s called “Raffia Is Dirt Cheap and Can Be Bought In Bulk For Significantly Less Than Ribbon”.

Here’s a few shots of his creations:

Read more…

One last stop before the wedding day! I thought this would be a good time to show you all the “papery” details from our wedding. I say it in quotations because we didn’t get many real life photos of our menu, ceremony card, etc., so I have a few screen captures from Illustrator instead.

Our Wayne Theibaud inspired evite

Read more…

I know I know, everyone told me not to worry about a little spelling typo. Everyone said that no one would even notice. But I was losing sleep over one stupid little “S”, and someone was bound to notice. A guest at the wedding would very quietly mention that I had a small error on the menus assuming that I hadn’t already noticed. And then I would be the bride who was going to have the urge to hit a guest for bringing up the stupid mistake that had made me lose sleep for the past four months. I just didn’t want to be that girl.*

Read more…

So, I have already posted on our embossed Escort Cards and our perfectly quoted chocolate. Now, it’s time to show you two more projects I finished the week of the wedding: Our programs and menus.

First up, the programs. Since we were having an interfaith wedding I wanted to make sure that all of our guests understood the various components of our wedding. I also knew that I wanted to make the programs short and sweet.

The good news was that I had purchased about six packets of PaperSource’s Eco-White #10 Note Cards at 50% off around the holidays. So at about $2.25 for 25 note cards, the whole project cost about 5 bucks. (I think for 60 guests, I made about 45-ish programs.)

Before I printed them, I also ran them by our Rabbi to make sure he approved. He loved them.

Here’s the wording:

Love.

Friends and Family, Thank you for joining us on our wedding day. We hope our inter-faith ceremony is a harmonious mix of both of our backgrounds.
Read more…

I randomly decided I “needed” menus and proceeded to invent what seems to be the most time-consuming method for creating said menus. And, considering the fact that I think I just wanted menus because I thought my photographer would take cute pictures of them, I probably could have just made one and pretended after the fact that they were at each place setting.

Rest assured, I’m not that jaded about them and I know they will look cute on the tables, but I did spend the better part of my Saturday working on these, and I’m only 1/3 of the way done.

Read more…

There’s one picture I left out of the virtual venue visit the other day. Although I won’t experience it until the wedding weekend, I’m 100% confident the food at Westwind will be delicious.

source

Mmmmm…. Three types of heirloom tomatoes with fresh (buffalo, I hope?) mozzarella make quite the delectable Caprese Salad!

The best part (which I’ve mentioned before) is that everyone I’ve spoken to says the food is incredibly good!
Read more…

Our tasting was weeks ago, so we have really had these selections for a while, but I have to admit I was just downright overwhelmed by the whole thing and didn’t write one single dish down. Or take a picture. Not one. There was a fully charged camera hanging out in my purse the whole time and not once did I bother to pull it out. The food was JUST THAT GOOD. I’m sure the catering manager was astonished by how quickly I was willing to shovel it all into my mouth! But regardless, we did make a decision, and when I got the email with the “official descriptions” my mouth began to water again.

Salad
Virginia field greens with pickled onions, Belgian endive, cherry tomatoes, shaved asiago cheese and lemon thyme vinaigrette

Entrée Choice
Beef: horseradish crusted beef tenderloin with Shenandoah apple and potato pave, baby sunburst squash and asparagus, marchand du vin

Fish: roasted Atlantic salmon with a maple and pecan glaze, whipped sweet potatoes, haricot vert

Vegetarian: crispy gnocchi with braised spinach, oven roasted cherry tomatoes, asparagus and gorgonzola cream

Dessert
Wedding Cake: vanilla sponge cake with raspberry marmalade

Yummmm-o! Since guests will be picking from basic choices on the invitation response card (they just say Beef, Salmon, or Vegetarian) I wanted to do menus for the tables so they know what they will be eating as soon as they sit down. I love the look of pocket fold napkins with the invitations tucked in but am still all over the place on the design. The table with be mostly black and white with the only color of red being in the flowers, so I am hoping to have a little red pop in the menus as well. After combing the internet and some of my favorite resources for inspiration this is what I have found so far…
Read more…

I spoke a little with FMIL over the weekend, and she’s made some progress on planning the picnic they’re throwing for us the weekend after our wedding. The biggie: She’s booked a caterer, which means we’ve got the beginnings of a menu!

The main courses being served? BBQ ribs and pork roast.

[source]

Yes, we’ll be smearing our faces, hands (and let’s face it: shirts) with sticky, gooey, dark red barbecue sauce as we gnaw on rib bones at our reception.
Read more…

Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry for such a long hiatus! Rather than make excuses for my laziness, I will just say that I’m back in full blogging force. I finally received our wedding pictures from our photographers, Cly Creation, and all the pictures are just absolutely amazing. I’ll definitely post them soon, and I can’t wait to share them!

But first I wanted to finish up the post I’ve been meaning to finish - here are a few more last minute things that kept me busy just days before our wedding:

1. Petal Cones

I know that I wanted petal cones for our ceremony, but it was tough trying to figure out how, because the chairs in the ceremony room had rounded backs. It was something that bothered me at first because there would be no way to hang the petal cones on the chairs like this:

[source]

Read more…

You get your wedding minions family members to do things for you!

This weekend I had my future SMIL (step MIL) pick up a chalkboard that I found on Craigslist.

I’ve mentioned how we’re trying to cut down on paper usage for our wedding by including the use of plantable paper. Another major source of needless paper (that will be thrown out within the hour) is dinner menus at each place setting.

I should tell you right now - Mr. Cubbie and I are major foodies (you didn’t catch on to that with my baking endeavors?). I admit to daydreaming about beautifully prepared menus to align with our beautifully prepared wedding dinner! However, I can’t justify the use of these 80 or so extra pieces of paper (no matter how lovely).

There are other ways to attaining beauty and style when it comes to educating your guests on their impending adventure in Gastronomia - a chalkboard menu!

source

I also plan on getting some liquid chalk pens to make the handwriting look cleaner.
Read more…

When Mr. CB and I first moved to Santa Fe, two years ago, we road tripped it from New York City through the south. We’d been living in Brooklyn for a year and were craving some wide open space. If the concrete jungle taught us anything, though, it was how to eat and plan your meals carefully. You can’t get a table without calling ahead, you can’t cook at home without first devising which way you’ll walk from the subway to ensure you pass a grocery store, and you can’t eat well unless you look at reviews first.

BBQ Menu Inspiration Board from Snippet & Ink

Thus, on our road trip, I carefully mapped out which restaurants we should stop at along our route out West.
Read more…

A majority of the weddings Mr. Beagle & I have attended throughout our lives have included a few primary elements, one of them being this: BBQ.

source

Actually, a wedding is not the only excuse to serve BBQ. We love “fixin’ it” for pretty much any occasion that involves a large group of people (Graduation? Birthday? Tailgate? Yes, yes, and yes). We love this food staple. (Salt Lick, anyone?) So, choosing to serve this option at our wedding was easy-peasy.
Read more…

This has been quite the busy week! Mr. Yorkie and I had our last money management session with the financial planner. That has been one of the best investments of our planning time, and I would highly recommend it to any couple getting married. Tomorrow after my morning run, I’ll head home to (hopefully) wrap up a handful of DIY works in progress: the drink menu, aisle runner, seating card tree, and lacy luminarias.

Here are a couple of photos of the drink menu that I’ve been working on. (The shadow box and decorative paper are from Martha’s collection at Michaels, of course!)

Read more…