- Blog
- Bios
- Boards
- Classifieds
- DIY
- Gallery
- Vendor Reviews
- Shop Weddingbee
Weddingbee Blog
It’s been quite some time since I announced our engagement, so I wanted to share some of the inspiration The Ginger and I have been gathering along the way, mostly thanks to Pinterest. To give you a quick recap, we’ll be having an uber intimate wedding in our own backyard with 15 guests (our parents, siblings and significant others, and our pooch, Betty White).
For starters, we’re planning on having two long, wooden tables in our backyard, picnic-style, with benches for our guests. It’s been quite a challenge trying to nail down a vendor for renting a few rustic tables, but I think we’ve finally found a reasonable option thanks to Craigslist. We snagged some yellow, grey, and gold streamers which we plan on slinging over bulb string lights to give the yard a pretty glow (and hopefully not catch our house on fire).
We had been debating whether or not we should make an arbor, but I think we’ll be dyeing and tying ombre-style pieces of yellow fabric to the dogwood tree, along with hanging mason jar vases with flowers and candles. I really love these tissue paper-covered lanterns and we already have oversized yellow balloons from our barbecue party that never happened, so those should look pretty (assuming we don’t get another Hurricane Irene).
{1: Image via Once Wed / Photo by Jose Villa 2: Image via Once Wed / Photo by Our Labor of Love 3: Image via Green Wedding Shoes / Photo by Katherine Elizabeth Photography 4: Image via Martha Stewart}
When I originally told her that I was totally against bringing lighting into our venue, a friend asked me what I had against lighting. Thinking about it, I felt a little silly. After all, we follow a band whose lighting guy is deemed the fifth member of the band. People actually shoot video of him working at shows. Having stood under his lights quite a few times in my life, unable to blink for fear of missing a second of the show, I think it’s safe to say that I’m a fan of lights.
Unfortunately, when I think of lights at weddings, my Jersey roots come out and I picture ballrooms with bold hues reaching every single corner. The rooms are literally washed in purple or pink or blue. The feel is almost theatrical.
From DJ Zone Magazine
That’s fine for a hotel or banquet hall, but it seems totally out of step with a vineyard wedding.
Read more…
Bees, it has been WAY too long since I have completed a DIY project. Between starting a new job and the holidays (yes, I realize it has been almost a month since Christmas but I am still recovering from all of the festivities), my craft cabinet went a freakishly long time without being busted into! But no need to worry—the disturbing drought came to an end this past weekend.
In an effort to dip my toes back into the DIY pool instead of cannon-balling, I decided to take on a smaller project that I could likely complete with a quick turn around. The project that fit the bill: table numbers!
During one of my antiquing escapades, I came across vintage flashcards with basic addition, subtraction, and multiplication problems on them.I knew these were perfect for us because I have a nerdy love for doing basic math in my head, and Mr. D has a nerdy love for giving me math problems to do in my head and seeing how quickly I can do them (you don’t have to tell me, I know we’re cool). When I got home, I finished off my collection with an Etsy purchase of very similar cards.
 |
| Vintage Flashcards by paintedpony99 on Etsy |
Our table numbers for our Vegas reception won’t begin at one. There will be no table two or table three (or table four, although that’s because we will only have three total tables). Instead, we have decided to number our tables with the years that are important to our relationship. We will be having tables 2009, 2010, and 2011.
In order to show our guests which tables are numbered what, we will be having framed photos of ourselves from those years in the middle of our candle centerpieces. Our venue is going to be providing more votive candles and small vases of seasonal flowers. (Again, hooray for restaurant receptions!)
Imagine that I cleaned the vases before taking the photo
Mr. Mole helped me add the years to the relevant photos that will be in the frames through Photoshop. (My skills are so minimal in Photoshop that I needed help to add a text layer. I think I will stick to my day job.) Then, we used the magic of the internet to send them to Walgreens to be printed.
Interestingly enough, all of the photos that we chose were taken on trips that were important to us.
Featured on Weddingbee
All-Inclusion Invitation Suites
“Make an elegant invitation statement without the fuss. Stylish invitation sets with matching envelopes, reception and response cards included.”
I previously promised that I would share some of the inspiration for our new venue. In fact, when I go back and look, I realized that the only real reception inspiration I’ve shared with you all at ALL was in my post about the wedding brand. Bad blogger.
I mentioned early on that we were big on making the reception our own and avoiding the “I’ve seen that before” syndrome. However, now that we are in a more traditional location (with more weddings under their belt), there are likely to be fewer elements that would be completely “new.” In fact, we know there are guests who have attended other events at the Rittenhouse (weddings, bar mitzvahs, etc).
To be honest, after the drama of the venue change, we realized that in the greater scheme of things, being completely unique just wasn’t that important anymore.
So, we “borrowed”. A lot.
 |
| Inspiration for having both high and low centerpiecesKristina & Todd’s Rittenhouse wedding - Sophia Negron |
Hive, It has been a long time since I have been so undecided about anything. This is one of those big wedding questions that I have been kicking down the road since day one. I start to lean one way, but before I am ready to make a call, the winds of change blow in and my mind is turned the other way. Mr. Aardvark has been absolutely no help by sweetly saying, “Whatever you want dear!” (Side note, most of the time that is the correct answer.)
The conundrum that has been vexing me, and keeping me up at night, is the age old question of the toss. The bouquet and garter toss to be clear, and really, more the garter toss than anything. Actually, I take that back…both tosses are in question.
For the bouquet:
I really dislike the fact that it turns “getting married next” into some kind of big competition.
Read more…
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
I’ll go ahead and be captain obvious here and comment on the fact that it has become quite popular to do a little something extra when it comes to sweets at weddings. In addition to traditional (or not so traditional) wedding cakes, brides and grooms love providing their guests access to extra dessert. An awesome trend if you ask me—I mean really, you can’t go wrong with extra dessert!
There’s the classic sweets table:
 |
| Image via HostessBlog.com / Cake by Kate Sullivan / Photo by Andrew McCaul |
There’s the more specialized selection, such as the candy buffet:
Lately I have been trying to catch up on the smaller details. Mainly my Google, Pinterest, and Etsy searches have been dedicated to one thing—card holders. To any “normal” person this may seem a little boring and possibly crazy. But to all of us engaged ladies, I think you can understand my obsession.
What would be the perfect object to house any cards that might show up at the wedding? There are many options: box, bird cage, mailbox. Or how about Mrs. Earrings’ beautiful vintage suitcase card holder. I love all of these, and so my obsessive searching began.
I still came up empty handed, though. You know when you obsess over something too much then all of a sudden you just give up and stop caring? Yeah, that’s what happened to me. I decided to let my brain have a rest and just forget about it.
Well, good things do come to those who wait.
Read more…
Nope, I’m not going anywhere. You can’t get rid of me that easily! What I’m referring to, of course, is our exit from the reception or, as our fabulous venue calls it, our “gala send off.” How fancy is that? It brings something like this to my mind:
 |
| Image via FoxNews.com |
I am definitely on board with anything that makes me feel like a princess (technically duchess, I suppose, but I’m sticking with princess), so a gala send-off it is!
We have a choice of using bubbles, rose petals, or sparklers. For those of you who are as impatient as I am, I won’t drag this out (because obviously wondering what item we are using at our send off would keep you up all night). For us, the choice was clear:
Read more…
I absolutely love the look of burlap incorporated into the decor at weddings. It has been the object of my inspiration affection for months now. Since we are four months away from the wedding, details like these are finally starting to come into play.
Image via Ruffled Blog
But burlap on the beach? Can it be done? To me, burlap has a really rustic, country feel to it and I tried Googlin’ pictures of weddings on the beach that had burlap, but I didn’t come up with anything as striking as these pictures…
It’s amazing, if I do say so myself.
personal photo taken on iPhone…sorry…one day, I will have a real adult camera…
OK, here’s how you do it! I did this in a really haphazard order, because I am losing my mind. But you are probably more organized and can figure out the most logical way to follow these steps.
Pros: warmth, sunshine (hopefully), it can be outdoors, bright and pretty colors, etc.
This is pretty much exactly what I imagine.
Image via Lovely Little Details
Cons: everyone and their mother gets married then.
Read more…
The past 11 months have been a rollercoaster of ideas, inspiration, wants, have-to-haves, needs, and chocolate (the last one more so in the last couple weeks). Along the way, I have semi-committed to plenty of things that I recently had to cut loose. There were also a few things that I swore up and down we had no need for (some of which vacillated between “we NEED” and “we don’t need”). So with 20-something-odd days to go until NUPTIAL TIME, I though it would behoove me to do a quick rundown of the things that have come and gone, as well as some of the minute decisions that we’ve finally settled on. No, really… there’s no time to change our minds again.
1. The cardigan-over-the-wedding-dress
Is there any wedding trend more controversial than the bride-in-a-cardigan? I think not. Most of you pointed out that a cardigan on an already stressful and sweaty day, in Florida—whether in November or not —might be a bit overkill. I had been going back and forth over whether I wanted one, or wanted to add sleeves to my dress. What finally made my decision? Seeing how awesome cap sleeves looked at my first and second dress fittings. That, coupled with a complete lack of cardigan-shopping and an aversion to sweaty pits, made the cardigan issue: Abandoned
…on your wedding day. Isn’t it ironic, don’t ya think? I would like to formally apologize now for getting that song stuck in your head for the rest of the day. I’m sorry, but it had to be done.
We chose the month of May to have our wedding for one huge reason: the weather. We really would like to have an outside ceremony and reception. Typically in the month of May in California, the weather is gorgeous. Not too hot, not too cold, and blue skies as far as the eye can see.
Except this past May; not only did it rain, but it stormed. There were huge winds and a record amount of rain. My heart broke for all the brides out there who planned outdoor weddings with no backup plan. Not just May though, there was another huge storm at the beginning of June. This is almost unheard of in California; it was shocking to say the least. This gave me a massive dose of reality. I had thought rain could be possible, but it most definitely will not happen. Now I am expecting it half as much as I am expecting beautiful weather. It is very possible it can happen and gosh darn it, we will just need to deal with it.
Read more…
So remember how we have a ginormous wedding party, right? To refresh your memory, we’ve got: 10 bridesmaids, 10 groomsmen, 2 ushers, 2 flower girls and a ring bearer. Phew! Anyhoo, when it came time to deciding whether we’d setup a head table for the entire wedding party or a cozy sweetheart table for just the Sealman and I, the size of our wedding party definitely factored into that decision.
After meeting with our catering coordinator and going over the dimensions of our reception space, we were presented with a few options.
1. A (very) long, single-sided head table.
Like this, but longer.
Image via ArisingImages
Though I liked the idea of being surrounded by my wedding party, I didn’t like the thought of splitting up couples. As it’s physically impossible to fit a table long enough to include everyone and their date, quite a few of our party members would be separated from their significant other.
2. A long, double-sided head table (would enable us to keep couples together).
| Visit our sister sites | eHarmony Online Dating |
eHarmony Advice Dating Advice |
Project Wedding Wedding Songs |
JustMommies Pregnancy Calendar |
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 | 30 | 31 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 |
