Weddingbee Blog

… are two things that are becoming a pretty big deal in my wedding world: shoes and jewelry.

I never wear jewelry, ever. I own a few pairs of earrings, but to be honest I only bought them to match particular dresses for special occasions, and I never wore them again. Even wearing an engagement ring every day really took some getting used to at first. When Mr. Martini asked me what jewelry I was going to wear on our wedding day, my first thought was that I wasn’t going to wear anything other than my engagement ring. Maybe simple studs? I have no experience in jewelry; I wouldn’t even know where to begin looking!

When I went to RK Bridal in the NYC with two of my BMs to try on BM dresses, we got to check out the bridal jewelry displayed there. I begged them to help me choose a pair of earrings for me. I don’t even want to think about what would have happened had I been left alone to choose my own earrings. In the end my BMs liked these the best:

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I just got back from a 5 day trip to Puerto Rico and I have to say that I’m soooo sad to be back. To be honest, although I was excited about the trip, I felt stressed because I didn’t think I should be going on a trip like this when there was so much to be done in terms of wedding planning. But there was no turning back because Mr. Martini and I booked this trip with 15 friends many months ago - way back before we were even engaged. At the time, he was working on finding the ring, while clueless me was just excited to be going away to PR with such a large group of friends. After we got engaged, I started having second thoughts about the spending money we would be forced to spend on the trip, when we could be spending it on much needed vendors and invitations.

Now that I’m back, I can’t help thinking that this trip was probably one of the best things I’ve done all year. I needed the break, and it was the longest vacation I ever took, the first vacation outside the States with friends, and the most fun I’ve ever had in probably my entire life.

When I went to Jamaica last year, it was the first time I’d ever been to a beach that didn’t belong to the coast of NJ. And if you know NJ, you know that our beaches are ghetto. The fried oreos and funnel cake try its best to make up for it, but it’s hard to get too excited about the Jersey Shore. I fell in love with Jamaica and at one point considered a romantic and casual destination wedding. If I could have my way, I would love to renew my vows one day to Mr. Martini on a gorgeous Caribbean beach at sunset.
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I’ve mentioned before that I’ve written on a personal blog for years. However, I never considered myself a “writer”. My blog was just a way to tell embarrassing stories about myself and share pictures with friends. When I was lucky enough to become a Bee, I opted not to tell anyone (except for close friends and Mr. Martini of course) that I was writing for Weddingbee. For some reason, I felt more comfortable writing for those who don’t know me than for those who do. Also, since I will be writing about every aspect of our wedding, I wanted to keep some of the “mystery” alive for our guests. What fun will it be if all of our guests already know what my dress looks like? Would they think the food was just as good if they knew what they would be eating? Wouldn’t a sake bar be totally cooler if they didn’t know it would be there? Would they still think the hallway of our venue is breathtaking after seeing multiple pictures of it? And the worst of all - what if they secretly hate all my ideas?

My brilliant plan was to keep mum about it until AFTER the wedding, then TA-DA! Announce my entries on Weddingbee to those who might be interested in the process of how everything came to be.
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A while back, Mr. Martini randomly ran into an old friend. Years ago they were pretty close acquaintances, but it had been a while since they had a chance to get together and over time they lost touch. The first thing he said to Mr. Martini when he saw him was,

“Hey Mr. M! long time no see. You engaged yet?”
“Actually, I am! I’m getting married sometime in March.”
“Why didn’t I get an invite?”

*awkward pause*

“Actually, we’re still finalizing the guest list…”
“Awesome. Can’t wait!”

After a few more minutes of small talk, they said their goodbyes and parted ways. As he turned to cross the street he yelled back, “See you at your wedding!”
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Mr. Martini and I chose not to get married in a church, simply because we preferred not to change between two locations, not because of any religious reasons. There were slight objections from our Christian families who preferred us to get married in a church, but we were able to negotiate having a religious wedding at our venue location.

Our venue, The Venetian, is great in every single way, except for the ceremony room, which I feel is just too small.

This is a picture of the ceremony room (from my previous entry):

From the back

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I realized that I never really mentioned the venue that our wedding will take place in, except very briefly in my profile. To be honest, we didn’t really visit many venues. I have to say that one of the main reasons for that is because the first venue we visited just happened to be the Venetian in Garfield NJ, and we fell so much in love with the place that the three other appointments we made for that day just didn’t seem as nice. It didn’t take us very long to make a decision about booking here. It was probably one of the easiest part of our wedding planning so far.

I wasn’t sure what I would think of the venue on the way there, especially when we saw a bunch of industrial buildings with only a mile or so left to go (we were starting to get a little nervous), and a used car lot directly across the street. Even the venue itself looked to be under construction (they are in the process of building another ballroom, and construction will be completed by the time of our wedding).

But when we walked through the doors, this is what we saw:

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I meant to write about this sooner, but it was tough sorting through 895 (yes, you read that right—895) pictures. We attended the wedding of our friends George and Suegi, and Mr. Martini was a groomsman.  The wedding took place at Aldrich Mansion in Rhode Island. I’m not even sure how to pronounce it right (you’re talking to someone who used to pronounce photographer as “foe-toe-grapher”), but all I know about the place was that the movie Meet Joe Black was filmed there. From that day on, during the months leading up to the wedding date, we referred to it as the “Meet Joe Black Mansion”, or MJBM, if you’re feeling sexy.

Since Mr. M was a groomsman, I got to tag along for the photo shoot that took place at the mansion before the ceremony. So, I got a chance to see the mansion before it got too dark and was able to really take in the view. Let me just tell you—it was truly breathtaking! So breathtaking, that I totally forgot to take pictures of the grounds…

But here’s a picture that I found on the trusty internet, which was also the picture used for their STD:

(source)

After I wandered around the grounds (for a little too long) daydreaming about the day I win the lottery and own a house just like this one, I came to my senses and started making use of my backstage pass by snapping pictures of some of the details of the wedding.

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Anyone getting married will completely agree with me when I say that choosing a bridesmaid dress is TOUGH. I have 6 lovely ladies who have been kind enough to agree to be my bridesmaids. All six vary in height and weight and style preference. Can you just imagine the emails going back and forth on this topic? Some preferred long dresses, some short; others were well endowed in the boobage area while others not so much. I wanted everyone to wear something flattering, but I knew it would be impossible to find one that would make everyone happy.

After weeks of sending each other countless pictures and emails about countless different opinions, we decided it was best to just go to the store to try things on, because honestly you can’t ever be sure just by looking at pictures! So a couple of weeks ago, I made the trek to the store with two of my BMs. All three of us have very different body types so we thought that if we could find a dress that looked great on all of us, it would not only be as if we were in a really cheesy chick flick (can we say, Sisterhood of the Traveling Bridesmaid Dress??), it would probably be the winner.

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I was once in a gang fight.

OK, that’s a lie. But that’s what I tell people when they notice the small scar above my right eyebrow. It sounds a bit more interesting than saying it was just a car accident. But after I confess my lie, I take their finger and brush it over another little souvenir I got from the ordeal – a small piece of glass lodged underneath my skin on my right temple.

Several years ago, more like about 8 years ago, I got into a car accident. I was in the passenger seat and the accident occurred when the car I was in made a left turn. So naturally, the other car coming in the other direction ended up hitting me directly. I don’t really remember the accident at all. I remember briefly waking up to smoke, then passing out again. I came to briefly in the ambulance as someone told me that I had just gotten into an accident, then the next thing I remember is being in the hospital.

I’ve told this story to a lot of people, so it’s not much of a secret, but one thing I haven’t told many is that I recognized the doctor that was working on me. I woke up to multiple people using scissors to cut off my clothes (which they later gave back to me in scraps in a plastic bag).
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I. Love. Bon. Jovi.

I know it’s such a Jersey thing, to be a Bon Jovi fan, but I can’t help it! I have just about all of their hits, and I even faithfully buy their new albums. When Living on a Prayer comes on, my arms instantly shoot up to start pounding the air and my head instinctively bangs up and down. It just never gets old.

While Mr. Martini and I were talking about our “soundtrack” for the wedding, we started shooting back and forth titles of well known love songs. Then suddenly he asked, “What about Bon Jovi?”

I responded, “What about Bon Jovi? He doesn’t really have many love songs…”

He answered, “What about Always, or Bed of Roses, or I’ll Be There for You?”

I replied, “Those aren’t really love songs at all.”

Then it got me thinking.
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Two of my bridesmaids recently asked me, “Would you mind if I cut my hair?”. I was a little taken aback before responding, “Of course not! Why would I mind? Honestly, the last of my worries is the length of your hair.”

Apparently, and I’ve heard this from multiple people, brides are usually not very enthusiastic about their bridesmaids cutting their hair before the wedding. To be honest, I don’t believe that your girlfriends’ hair has anything to do with how much better or worse your wedding is going to be. I want my girlfriends to look lovely standing there with me, and I could really care less how long their hair is. My MOH eventually got her hair cut in a really cute bob (she’s never had it that short before, and it looks absolutely fabulous) and my BM was pretty close to getting hers cut as well, but then decided to wait until after the wedding. The main reason? She found out that I am going to chop all my hair off right after I say “I do”, and thought it might be fun to go together!

I am SO excited about cutting my hair that I can’t stop thinking about it or talking about it. Sometimes I feel as if I’m more excited about getting rid of it than I am about getting married. Currently, my hair is SUPER long and just so gross. It comes all the way down to my mid to lower back. The last time I had short hair, I brought a picture of Jessica Alba with me and requested her adorable haircut:

(source)

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I know I have gained weight since I bought my wedding dress, but I never knew how bad it was until I tried it on again a few days ago. Not long after I bought the dress, I decided to stay FAR away from it until I started going to the gym because I honestly didn’t think it would fit me anymore. Everyone has been telling me, “You have so much time, you have so much time.” So when I stuff my face with burgers I tell myself that I have so much time, and then I freak out every time the calendar reminds me of how close the wedding actually is. So as you can imagine, my dress has been locked up, untouched in my parents’ walk-in closet carefully wrapped in a bed sheet.

But then…

Mr. Martini, please don’t read further!
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In an email I got from Mr. Martini recently, he added:

“Btw the dollar is still rising… vs the Euro, it has gone from $1.67/ 1Euro to $1.28 / 1euro. That’s like a 25% discount for us… let’s hope it keeps going.”

Why has he been keeping an eye out for the dollar fluctuations in Europe? Because we’re desperate to go to Europe for our honeymoon! France, to be exact. The only time I’ve ever really left the country as an adult were a few trips to Niagara Falls (the Canadian side is soooo much better than the USA side), and Jamaica last year with Mr. Martini.

When we were thinking about where we could go on our honeymoon, everyone advised that we go the Caribbean. “You’ll want to take it easy,” they told us. We considered going to a beachy location, but neither of us are beach people and dangit, we don’t want to relax! Jamaica was great fun, but we didn’t relax one bit, and actually felt as if we needed a vacation from our vacation by the time we got home. I think we spent an hour max just sitting on the beach the entire duration of our stay. It didn’t take long for us to get restless, so we signed up for just about every activity we could get our hands on. We literally came back to the hotel just to eat and sleep. Sometimes I think it was a bit of a waste because we didn’t take advantage of the gorgeous resort, the Gran Bahia Principe, which at the time was the newest and largest resort in Jamaica.
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During our journey of finding a photographer, we realized that we had a list of things that we felt were important to us:

1. We both want a photojournalistic style. But as I mentioned before, Mr. Martini preferred a more conservative approach to documenting our wedding day, and although I do love the edgier look, I agreed that it would probably be better not to go too nuts with our wedding pictures because we will be using the pictures for our parent albums as well.
2. Giving each of our parents a really nice, leather bound parent album is something we really want to do. We need a good deal on three albums, not just one. I noticed that a lot of the parent albums were of lower quality, and we want something nicer.
3. Since we’re sticking with a conservative style for our wedding, Mr. Martini has agreed to a more creative engagement photo session. He still wants Central Park, and I still want cobblestones and yellow taxicabs. We need a photographer who could not only meet our need to visit more than one location, but also want someone who has the vision to give us what we are looking for artistically.

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We finally booked our photographer! With only five months before the wedding we are feeling behind, so I definitely breathed a little easier once I was able to check off “find photographer” from our To-Do list.

I have to admit; deciding on a photographer was probably one of the hardest decisions we had to make. For some reason, everyone knows a photographer! People were sending me links left and right. And they were all very talented, in their own way. Mr. Martini and I also have very different tastes in the type of photography we prefer, so it was a bit of a challenge for us. The way we found out about our different tastes however, is pretty interesting.

(image courtesy Bella Pictures) 

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