- Blog
- Bios
- Boards
- Classifieds
- DIY
- Gallery
- Vendor Reviews
- Shop Weddingbee
Weddingbee Blog
I’ve been quite the busy bee, hive, with my border punches and my pewter ribbon. I’ve been knocking out projects left and right, and I’m so far feeling pretty good about my ability to meet the goal of getting everything done by the week of the wedding.
First up, the guest book sign. I was inspired by Miss Parasol’s sweet guestbook sign, and whipped up our own little version in just a few minutes.
Next was finding the right picture frame to house it. After trying out a couple of too-big options around the house, I randomly stopped by Goodwill on my way home from work last week, and — lo! I found The Right One as soon as I turned down the frame aisle.
Add some spray paint, some gray paper in one of the shades used throughout the wedding paper goods, and some lace border punch, and we have our guest book sign.
(It’s signed our last name there at the bottom — aka “The Ladyfingers” — but I blurred out the actual name for privacy’s sake)
About six months ago, I saw a photo of a wedding project where the bride and groom had used their engagement photos in aisle endcaps. I loved this idea for many reasons: Since we hadn’t done save the dates or engagement announcements, we really hadn’t gotten a chance to use our e-photos, and I’m kind of obsessed with them. I also knew we weren’t going to have much of a budget for our ceremony decor, so flowers were out of the picture. With a garden wedding, flora probably won’t be missed, but I did want something to fancy things up.
Hive, I searched and searched for that original inspiration pic so I could show it to you. Apparently I hadn’t saved it on my hard drive, printed it out, or bookmarked it. I Googled every combination and searched every wedding site I frequented. So I’m now convinced the whole idea came to me in a dream. Which is fine.
Materials
At some point in our wedding planning, I completely fell for the look of mismatched vintage plates:
Photo by Wendy Lew Photography
…Mr. Pony will buy me another diamond ring? Not how that goes? Darn.
A couple of weeks ago, I pulled out all the stuff we’ll need to complete a mock up of the tables for our reception. I’ve had this vision in my mind for well over a year, but never actually put everything together myself so I was nervous it would look terrible and I would need to come up with a new plan less than two months before the wedding.
I found a white tablecloth we had lying around, our mirrors, green vases, milk glass, candles, succulents, a cheap bunch of red flowers from the supermarket, napkins, and some glassware to complete the look. The only thing I forgot was our table letters, but I was done taking pictures by the time I remembered them and I didn’t want to go through the hassle of finding them and retaking pictures.
With all of that gathered, this is what I came up with:
Read more…
Featured on Weddingbee
Unique Wedding Favors
“Add a memorable touch to your wedding with unique favors that match your theme.”
After collecting a bunch of green vases and milk glass pieces I was really content with myself, but I knew I didn’t have a clear plan. I needed a way to pull everything together and add some dimension to our tables. I wanted to include a mirror not only to hold our components, but to reflect the romantic glow of the candles on our tables. I figured I could go to a craft store, pick up some of craft mirrors and be done.
But, this 8″ x 10″ mirror was the largest I could find (I needed something larger for a vase, two pieces of milk glass and candles) and the beveled edges were doing nothing for me.
Out of this dilemma, I took a fugly dresser mirror that I have had for a long time but rarely use due to its looks and decided to spruce it up with some pretty silver spray paint that is more in line with our colors.
Read more…
Insert your favorite expletives above.
I don’t know what the %#@! problem is with tents. They are super pretty, right?
Image via Perfect Wedding Guide / Photo by Karla Fountain Photography
Image via The Merriment Blog
But for some reason, we are having a really, really difficult time conceptualizing this whole tent thing. Hence the use of multiple expletives…often.
I feel like this is a math problem that I am trying desperately to solve, but I can’t because math is stupid and sucks. But I’m wondering if I maybe explain the problem to y’all, maybe one of you will be blessed with the intelligence, experience, and rational thinking skills that I seem to lack in response to this #^%$@! $#@!%^& tent problem.
Here’s the situation. We have rented a place called The Barn at Valhalla. It consists of a structure referred to as a “barn,” but it’s not really a barn, and if you refer to it as such it will piss Mr. Magic off to no end. (I know, there’s already a lot of factors in this problem, right?!?) This structure is not big enough to seat everyone for the reception.
How big is it, you [gutter minded girls] ask? Well, it’s, like, this big…
Image via A Wedding Minister
Ok, fine, I’ll give you some not exactly precise measurements in just a minute, but first, let me just explain that there is the inside part (see?) and an outside covered porch on either side (you can only see one of the covered sides above), and then an uncovered porch (that’s it on the right side of the photo).
Image via Duffy Gilligan, Owner of The Barn at Valhalla
Note that the 50 x 30 for the Main Hall includes the space for kitchens and bathrooms. Below are my crappy diagrams where unusable space is blacked out. The first one is the sunny day plan.
We could also put a couple more tables on the dance floor and then break them down…but that seems like such a pain.
Here is the rain plan.
So, this one has all the guests seated in the tent. Dancing and stuff would be in the barn.
[Ugh, I feel so stressed just writing this blog post.]
Ok, so, we obviously need to rent a tent in case it rains, and probably a 40×60 tent (I have been advised that size is best, and that size is bigger than the one in the above rain plan).
But, here’s my big question. Do we just commit to using the tent rain or shine, as it will be more roomy and will give us more piece of mind…or do we use the tent only as a rain plan? If you are thinking the latter (which is somewhat more cost efficient…might save us 500-800$…which in the big scheme of things is like a drop in the bucket…might as well go ahead and rent some pink ponies while we’re throwing this big huge freaking wedding…), let me tell you that first we put down a deposit, but then at most places we have to cancel the tent order one whole WEEK before to avoid paying the rest of the cost (we still lose our deposit). So, in some ways, it makes more sense just to spend the money, embrace the tent, have plenty of space and peace of mind.
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
Pretty early on in my wedding blog browsing, I decided we must have milk glass somewhere in our wedding. I loved the clean, polished look that milk glass gives while still looking fun and vintage.
Photo by Stout Photography / Floral design by Blooms by Martha Andrews
Plus I knew that milk glass can be super cheap and easy to find, so its addition to our tables seemed like an obvious choice.
My initial plan was to combine my original inspiration images so that I would have my green vases and candles on a mirror with a couple of milk glass pieces with succulents on each side. This idea only really seemed to work with long tables, which we won’t be having (sad face). And shoving everything onto one mirror would look way too crowded.
For a while I wasn’t even sure we could use any milk glass on the tables.
After establishing what I thought would be a clear vision for our centerpieces, I began collecting green vases and milk glass in haste. I set a limit of $2 for my vases (although I found most for $1 or less) and began collecting/hoarding.
Get ready for a lot of green coming your way:
One day last summer as I was innocently shopping at Target, I rounded a corner, the heavens opened and a ray of light shone down on this:
Do I spy with my little eye an aisle full of cobalt blue, black, and white plates in multiple patterns?! Plates that, with just a little tweaking, would make perfect cake/dessert stands for our dessert buffet? The retail gods had dropped our wedding into Aisle 10 just in time for me to stumble upon it, and it was a miracle! I quickly snapped some pictures of various ways we could use these affordable melamine beauties.
Read more…
Bees, I’ll admit that when we first started planning a wedding in Ohio from Switzerland, I was pretty apathetic about planning my dream wedding from far far away. I didn’t want to burden Mama Funnel Cake who would be doing most of the legwork for me.
In fact, in that first email that my mother wrote me about dates, she had already talked to one of my sister-in-laws and told me they favoured having the wedding at St. Chris in Grandview, the reception at Our Lady of Victory Hall in Upper Arlington and the catering by Berwick, a tried-and-true local catering company.
Whelp, pack your bags folks. No more blogging here. Funnel Cake wedding planning is all done!
(Box via Party Stuff Online, Graphic Text by me.)
Throw in a wedding cake from where we buy birthday cakes from:
Haha. Gotcha. This is not an invitation post. Those babies have left the building and we’re waiting on those last few RSVPs before I can share the results. In the meantime, let’s talk about mailboxes.
 |
| Image via Warner Bros Studios |
Way back before I started heartily searching the wedding blogsphere, I had no idea that one needed a box specifically for cards at the wedding. I kinda assumed that cards would go in a pile on the gift table, then be stuck in a bag somewhere during the reception. Nope, apparently that’s not actually what’s done. So once I realized that the cards at our wedding would need a vessel, I became immediately obsessed with the idea of using a real mailbox to hold those babies. Of course my vision wasn’t just any mailbox, this one needed to be red and I’d LOVE to have our new last name written on the side.
Finding a plain red mailbox is much more difficult than you might think.
Read more…
I’ve always envisioned the wedding as a candlelit dinner with really minimal floral decorations, but lately I’ve been wavering from that vision just a bit. I don’t suddenly want huge centerpieces, but I am worried that my candle-only approach is going to be boringtown.
A couple weeks ago we went to the wedding superstore, aka the local IKEA, and bought out their whole stash of candles, candle holders and big picture frames (along with a rug or two and a bed frame) to decorate the reception tables. We are going to end up with 16 rectangular tables pushed together to make eight long feasting tables with 18 people per table. That means we need LOTS of things to go on top of them.
 |
| We don’t pack light, but we do pack well! |
Maybe it was all the hubbub from the possibility of being on TV or maybe it was the countdown letting me know that we are way under two months from the wedding, but suddenly my vision seemed really plain…and I realized I was in desperate need of a plan! Being the internet savvy lady I am, I searched the internets for non-flowery centerpiece options. I stumbled on a the bountiful-candle-laden-with-flowers-and-petals look that Mrs Lemon had at her wedding!
Read more…
Sometimes it feels almost impossible to make your wedding stand out from the pack. Magazines, websites, books, and blogs offer a lot of the same ideas over and over again, making the weddings look almost cookie-cutter. With thousands of brides looking at the same sources for inspiration, it’s inevitable that some new idea will become common practice in no time. This clone-like aspect of weddings, combined with my relative lack of creativity and crafting skills, kind of sends shivers down my spine when I let my mind wander in an attempt to come up with a flair of personality and individuality for our upcoming wedding festivities. With that being said, just try to imagine the sheer ecstasy I experienced when I finally conjured up an idea that I didn’t beg, borrow, or steal from anyone or anywhere else. It’s allllll mine!
Image via I Can Has Cheezburger?
(OK, realistically, I’m sure I’m not the first bride to do this project. However, I’ve not seen it in any of my wedding materials, so I’m going to keep up my delusion that I actually am the first person to experience such a stroke of genius to result in this creation. Humor me, mmkay?)
A little bit of back story.
Read more…
Even though we are not planning on doing a formal ’send-off’ at the end of our reception (we can’t do sparklers, so what’s the point really, right? That, and I’ve never been to a wedding with an end of festivities send off, so I highly doubt the absence will be missed by our guests). But, I’m thinking that having something tossed, thrown, or shaken at us on our way back down the aisle right after we are pronounced husband and wife might be a fun celebratory gesture.
Plus there are so many options for such an occasion. First, there is the traditional birdseed. It’s inexpensive, doesn’t hurt birds, and gives the couple a nice shower.
Photo by Luster Studios
There’s also bubbles. I actually bought a crapload of bubbles from a garage sale last year for a dollar hoping to use them for this very purpose, but I am terrified that these iridescent beauties will leave stains on my silk gown, so I am not sure these are the best choice for us.
What inanimate objects get dressed up for a wedding? Tables and chairs, of course!
Naked / Fully Clothed
image via jumpandparty.net / Image via 88 Events Company
And in true Ms. Ferris Wheel fashion, I have decided to make this infinitely more difficult for myself. Would you believe me if I told you that white or ivory floor-length tablecloths AND chair covers are INCLUDED in our wedding package?! Of course you’d believe me. Why would I lie to you about something like that? I wouldn’t.
| 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 | 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 | 30 | 31 |
