Weddingbee Blog

You may have noticed that when I posted the final layout of our invitations, I listed “Bowman Lake” as our ceremony location and provided directions.

Bowman Lake is beautiful and peaceful, just 8 miles past Polebridge inside the remote Northwest reaches of Glacier National Park. It’s also flat and accessible, with plenty of parking and restrooms. We figured it’d be a perfect place to hold the ceremony, with a reception following in Polebridge.

Read more…

We interrupt your regularly scheduled Montana Recap to bring you this breaking news…

Last night, Mr. Cherry Pie and I booked our honeymoon!

This is so exciting for me, because we weren’t originally sure if we were going to have one. I didn’t know if I could take the time off because we’re already away for a week before the wedding, and we weren’t sure if we could scrape together the finances.
Read more…

After my hair and makeup trials, we planned to drive an hour down to Polson, where Good Wood, the bluegrass band we hired for our wedding was playing.

Good Wood was taking the stage from 9 to midnight that night and the next. And though I was already exhausted after everything we’d done that day (rentals, florist, tasting, hair & makeup), heading there straight with one day left in Glacier made more sense than trying to see them the next night and starting back to Seattle in the morning.

I was so wiped out that as we started the drive down, I started to wonder if we should just skip it. But I really wanted the chance to hear our band live, and going to Polson also meant I’d have a chance to meet with our fabulous wedding (and engagement pic) photographer, who lives nearby. So, I figured I’d just tough it up and have a few extra shots of espresso.

Well, just a few miles out, we were driving by an old truck that was making an awful lot of noise. I was pretty annoyed, until a minute later, the truck turned right and the noise kept right on going. Then, with a little wibble and wobble, my back left tire blew out.

Read more…

After my makeup trial (which was fun but in need of some fine-tuning), I moved on to my first hair trial, also at Sage Salon & Spa.

I truly love getting my hair done… it’s so soothing and relaxing. But this time I was more than a little tense. I still didn’t know whether I wanted my hair up, down, or half-back. After showing my stylist my hair inspirations and talking about the location and qualities of our wedding, we decided that an up-do would be best.

The first deciding factor was that if there is wind or weather, an up-do would (hopefully) stay in place longer and function better than leaving my hair down. Secondly, an up-do would give me a more functional place to hold a veil, should I so choose. Finally, talking about styles helped me realize that I really did like the classic look of pinned-up wedding hair.

To help get a feel for what I did want, we talked about the things that I didn’t want. I told her that I didn’t want my hair to look too prom-like, or too “severe,” which meant avoiding high, piled-on the head, tight, scalp-pulling ’dos.
Read more…

After visiting the rental company, meeting with our florist, and attending a tasting, we headed into Whitefish for my first hair and makeup trial at Sage Salon & Spa.

It was a real relief to have a trial so far in advance. For a long time, I had assumed that I wouldn’t be able to go out to Montana until September and so I scheduled what was to be my only trial on the day before the wedding.

Sage includes a trial in the price of their bridal hair and makeup ($60 apiece). Once I knew that I’d be driving out in May, I called Sage to see what it would cost to add a second trial - and I was delighted to hear that both trials would be free! I know that this isn’t standard, so I consider myself lucky, but they’ll be getting plenty of dough out of me for the travel and hourly rates to have them come out to Lake McDonald Lodge on the day of the wedding.

We got to Whitefish way before we were scheduled, so they started me early on my makeup. Here I am bare-faced (I had a stressful week, as evidenced by my pimply forehead):

Read more…

Our invitations are finally proofed and off to the letterpress. Hopefully they’ll be back to us in a few weeks so we can make sure everyone has plenty of time to make reservations!

I was torn about whether to post a preview of the final digital mock-ups before getting the actual hard copy invites. But seeing as I’ve diligently laid them all out so I can be sure what they’ll look like, I really ought to share.

Here are the invitation envelopes and sash designs. The envelopes are letterpressed with wheat and have our address on the back flap. Our guests’ addresses will be printed on the front with Pantone-matched color on a regular printer.

The sashes will be made of Waste Not paper in red and chocolate, with our names on cotton Rives BFK (the same paper as our invites). I’m not sure whether to go horizontal or vertical, but Mr. Cherry Pie likes horizontal, so we’ll probably stick to that.

Read more…

Before I get any farther into the story of my Super Wedding Weekend last month, I want to take a moment to say thank you to my readers for all the welcome words of encouragement and advice.

(I’m not sure whether to love or hate those sparkly MySpace thingies!)

In particular, I want to say thanks to Angel, a Seattle area wedding and event coordinator. She read my post about collecting mason jars for flowers and candles and offered to give me some jars she’d found while cleaning out her garage. In her original comment she said she had 27(!!) but it turned out she found more than 40(!!) in all shapes and sizes.
Read more…

After visiting with our rental company and florist on Saturday morning, the three of us ladies headed up the road to Cimmaron Cafe & Catering to taste a sample wedding menu.

We really wanted our catering to be provided by Polebridge via their saloon kitchen, but a series of rather bumpy miscommunications and delays with Polebridge staff and residents led me to decide that it was probably wise to have a backup caterer on standby… at least until we were sure that Polebridge could provide what we needed. This meant potentially forfeiting a $200 deposit, but given how essential food is for a wedding reception and how (sadly) small $200 is compared to a total catering bill, it was worth the cost.

I was really excited to meet with Cimmaron. They’d seemed incredibly receptive to all of our ideas, including using local and organic ingredients where possible. They were also very accommodating and allowed my mom to take part in the tasting even though they were only expecting two of us.
Read more…

After visiting the rental company outside Whitefish, mom, Katalin, and I headed back to Columbia Falls to meet with Glacier Wallflower and plan our wedding florals.

Our meeting with the florist had me a little nervous. I have to admit that while I like flowers, I don’t know very much about them, or necessarily how to communicate what I want.
Read more…

I apologize for my looooong hiatus. Two shortened work weeks coupled with weekend travel made me one very busy Bee!

Last you heard from me, I was headed out to Montana for my Super Wedding Weekend. As I wrote, I didn’t get to take the train because I couldn’t take my bike on board, which I would have needed to get into the Park before it opened for the season. Instead, I drove with my mom and we had to walk 1/2 mile from the car to the cabin on the first night because the road was still closed at Lake McDonald Lodge.
Read more…

NOTE: This post was contributed by Mr. Cherry Pie

As some might remember, when I last wrote for Weddingbee, it was because I was trying to decide what to wear for the Big Day. Well, I felt the same as most of you ladies: I wanted a suit. That left me with a few choices… I could buy a suit and have it altered or have one made.

Now, we have many fine stores here in Seattle. There’s Nordstrom’s and Brooks Brothers as well as any number of high end men’s boutiques that would be happy to sell me a suit that I could have tailored at a later date. Which one to pick, right?

The obvious choice, at least to those who know me, was none of the above. I decided that I wanted a custom-made suit. A bit of research turned up outstanding reviews for a local store named Kuhlman’s. This Kuhlman’s is different from the chain store of the same name - it’s a small boutique in Belltown. They sell trendy clothes and bags, but out of the back of the store the owner, Scott Kuhlman draws up individual patterns and hand tailors suits to order. They’re wonderful, but not cheap.

Read more…

Late last week, my mom decided that she’d like to join me on my trip to Montana for my Super Wedding Weekend. At first, I was a little worried about my mom being there. It meant that couldn’t have any “secret single behavior” time on my grand solo adventure.

I don’t know what “secret single” things I imagined doing out there in a secluded cabin, but I don’t get to spend a lot of time alone, so I was looking forward to it.
Read more…

Last Monday night, Mr. Cherry Pie and I met both Scott Kurtz, the artist behind the PVP web comic AND the captains of Discovery Channel’s “The Deadliest Catch.” It’s kind of a long story as to how this serendipitous happening came about, but suffice to say it was one of the coolest chance meetings I’ve had in a while.

After we met the sea captains, Scott invited us to his hotel bar where we chatted and he drew some awesome sketches for us. It never ceases to amaze me how artists can just whip something up in 30 seconds that would take me an hour to draw an ugly version of.

I wanted to share this sketch that Scott made for us of his character, Jade, who was married in the strip on May 4th, 2008. I’ve been feeling especially “bridal” reading this story arc - I started getting absolutely livid when Jade’s mom tried to call off the wedding. HOW COULD SHE?! (Haha.)

Read more…

Wow, Kristin is a seriously rockin’ friend. In addition to tackling our letterpress invitations, she keeps sending me cool things like environmentally friendly wedding projects, do-it-yourself decorations, and hand-made accessories. I totally should have made her a bridesmaid. She’s way more on-the-ball than most of my other ladies! Hmm… maybe I still could!
Read more…

This Thursday, I’m taking the train to Montana for only wedding-related visit before we’re married. So much has changed since our August 2007 trip, where we made the preliminary steps toward our upcoming Montana wedding. The thing is, I hadn’t planned to go at all. I thought it would be prohibitively expensive and time consuming and I figured I’d just let Katalin, our wedding coordinator, take care of the details on our behalf.

Katalin told me that she was going to make the trip from Bozeman to Polebridge at least once before the week of the wedding to work with our venue and vendors face-to-face. Once Polebridge was no longer buried under record snowfall, she set the date for May.

(It’s snowy in the hills but dry at lake level today!)

Read more…