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I’m a firm believer in the power of the edible favor. I’ve never been to a wedding with a non-perishable sendaway, and I’m not a fan (for us) of anything but. This is not to say I don’t love things such gifts as wildflower seeds, mixed CDs, recipe books and the like. Honestly, I just don’t want guests to leave their favors behind if I can’t eat the leftovers. I also don’t want to hand out anything that guests can’t easily transport back home on an airplane.
Favor Idea #1: Italian cookies
With all that in mind, I decided a few months back to purchase trays of Italian cookies from one of my favorite stores EVER — Mazzaro’s Italian market — and pack up three to five cookies per guest with a cute little note.
Photo via Mazzaro’s Italian Market
However, a couple of months ago, we had a site visit at our venue and decided all our rentals. And our rental budget thereby doubled.
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Late Friday night, I came home to a pile of mail on the kitchen table—and what was tucked in there but this:
Personal photo/design by Gutcher’s
My very own invitation to my very own shower! MOH Ginger made sure to point out that the “us” was missing in the top line, and she hoped nobody would notice. Um, judging by the fact that I was WAY TOO EXCITED to notice myself, I think we’ll be just fine.
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The wedding planning universe is a funny, funny place. It’s full of pretty meaningless details that can go from being completely ignored to absolutely essential in a manner of hours—nay, minutes. For us, the most recent wrench has been the ceremony’s seating of the parents. Warning: You’re about to dive into a logistical nightmare of epic proportions, with every combination of our bridal party doing an endless number of things. You’ve been cautioned.
We thought we’d pretty much figured this out at our meeting last month with the officiant: The Reverend, Mr. Ladyfingers, and his groomsmen would file in from the side of the lawn, along with FFIL Ladyfingers, who would just kind of sit down without fanfare. Then, we’d do a special song for seating Mr. LF’s mother and my dad’s fiancee, and then the bridesmaid processional song would begin, followed by my processional song.
Then, I got on the phone with our caterer/coordinator to do our ceremony appointment—and it’s been a crapstorm all afternoon since.
Scottish-style bridal processional/Image via Blue Bonnet Tartan Weddings/Photo by Alison Cooke Photography
Her line of questioning, along with my vague grasp of what we’d decided in the first place, ended in an all-afternoon email session with Mr. LF on why MY way of seating the parents is the RIGHT way.
He’s voiced his opinion, and I keep deciding he’s wrong. This is clearly not in the spirit of collaborative wedding planning—nor in the spirit of the ceremony in general.
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After the must-have perfume search, my next slightly frivolous purchase was my wedding day underpinnings. I’m blessed by my dress (not by my bod) to not have to don constricting foundation garments or long-line bustiers, so all that I needed was a little pair o’ panties. I started where I always do—online.
Let’s just say I don’t own a ton of lingerie. It makes me nervous, and ends up not being, um… worn very long, so it strikes me as kinda unnecessary. My idea of “sexy panties” are these:
An actual pair of undies I own, and trot out for “sexy nights”/ Image via Target
I wanted something more grown up, feminine, and “special occasion-y, but I was discouraged that all my wedding panty searches were unearthing such finds as these:
Featured on Weddingbee
Unique Wedding Favors
“Add a memorable touch to your wedding with unique favors that match your theme.”
How did I find Weddingbee?
I said I would hold off on wedding planning for a few weeks after getting engaged. I lasted about two hours before I was looking at wedding blogs. Not counting the wedding blogs I’d started saving prior to the engagement, under “misc” in my Google Reader. You know, just in case Mr. Ladyfingers was peeping on my computer.
But honestly, I’m not clear on how I found Weddingbee. I had been frequenting my local boards at the Knot, but that was the extent of my participation in wedding-related discussion boards. Otherwise, I just started collecting wedding blogs in my reader, and along the way, ended up with the Weddingbee blog feed in there. I so loved reading how real chicks were planning their weddings, without all the super misty vintage photo styling of “real wedding” features on other blogs (though, don’t get me wrong, I still love some misty vintage-y wedding photos). I loved reading the vents and the rants. I loved all the planning pictures.
Then I ended up on the discussion boards, and I started to think… could I be a blogger bee?
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It was ironic (or was it?) that BM Esquire proclaimed she would be at our latest crafternoon “with bells on” – because pretty much all we did was craft up these darn farewell bells. I’m a bad, bad bee because I didn’t take any pictures that afternoon, but all you need to know is that we devoured an entire grapefruit-sized cheeseball between three of us, ate about 6 cupcakes (including frosting out of the canister), and produced about 2.3 boxes of farewell bells. It was a success… on so many levels.
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
A wedding-day fragrance wasn’t exactly high on my list of priorities — at least not until I started reading past posts by such blogger bees as Miss Beagle, Miss Apple, Ms. Sloth, and Mrs. Pencils. Then, all of a sudden, I was all, “OMG I need to find my wedding-day signature scent like NOW!”
I’ve never worn fragrance. I used to dabble in my mom’s Navy and Anais Anais, and slip my grandmother’s Chanel No. 5 out of her dresser when she wasn’t looking, but aside from playing around and wearing vanilla essential oil every day for like two straight years in college, I’m just not a perfume kinda girl. Lots of scents remind me of old ladies in my family, or give me headaches, or smell like hippies. Nothing against hippies – I just don’t want to smell like one on my wedding day… or… ever.
So I started my search at Nordstrom’s perfume counters, with this ever-so-helpful request:
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I turned 31 this past weekend—and I can’t imagine a better time to get married.
There was always a stigma in my family for those who were deemed “too young to marry.” When my cousin B got married at 28, that was all anybody in the family talked about—he’s so young. Why now? Can’t he wait? That seems to have been the prevailing wisdom in the late ’80s and throughout the ’90s, at least. Most people I knew (and basically, the only people I “knew” back then were family members) were waiting until their 30s to get married. When my other cousin, M, got married in her late 30s, she seems to have crossed that barrier between “just right” and “come on, all ready”—but even her path was more well-taken than B’s.
I don’t know precisely when the tides shifted. Maybe they never did—maybe my view of marriage has been skewed, nonexistent. But skimming the bios on Weddingbee, it seems that 30-something brides such as myself are in the minority.
For the record, I don’t believe there’s a “too soon” or a “too late.”
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I’ve written before about how vain I’ve become since planning a wedding, all in the name of looking my best on the wedding day. Lately, I’ve taken that in weird directions—like, growing out my eyebrows because I’d like to get them professionally shaped and waxed a few times before the wedding. I feel weird, like people are going to start asking me if I’m OK. I mean, things are getting hairy up there.
Image via Flickr use Julie70
But I digress. I’ve struggled with cystic acne in my past, and had finally, finally landed upon a skin care routine that worked.
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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
In the midst of making our engagement photo aisle endcaps for the ceremony, I found myself spitting out a bit of a euphemism.
“The great thing about our venue being outside is that we really don’t need any flowers in the ceremony!”
And in my head, I translated it as,
“Thank God there’s some shrubbery where we’re getting married, because if we had to try to find a way to pay for ceremony floral decorations too, I might just throw in the towel.”
And it got me thinking. Much like there’s a secret code-speak in the real estate world (cozy = shoebox, quaint = walls are falling down), there seems to be a bit of a cipher going on in the wedding planning world, as well. And I’m not the only one who’s caught myself saying what I don’t mean—vendors do it, too.
So to help you newly blushing brides to be navigate the murky waters of wedding planning doublespeak, I present to you, the Wedding-to-Real-World Translation Guide.
Brides
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It’s a funny thing, my creative spark. For months, it lies dormant, hatching half-baked ideas that go nowhere as I struggle to figure out such pressing logistical issues as the best type of adhesive to connect fabric with paper (Fabri-Tac, as long as your fabric isn’t so thin the glue will seep through) or whether to buy a 2.75″ or a 3″ hole punch for our “just married” sweetheart table banner (verdict: both). It gets me really excited and incites me to buy roughly three-quarters of the supplies needed, whereupon said supplies sit in a sad pile in my craft room/office/mudroom/catchall eyesore storage space.
This is too much mess for me 
But then, all of a sudden, the creative spark is stoked by a sudden wave of oxygen, and my mind is suddenly aflurry with idea upon idea! All of my previous questions are suddenly answered, and I understand how to complete all the half-finished projects lolling about our home.
This is both awesome and awful at the same time.
The dress is being hemmed and tucked. The shoes are safely hidden away on a top closet shelf. My jewelry has arrived.
Oh, yeah. Check out my bracelet.
Personal photo
I spent agonizing hours searching for the perfect jewelry.
It’s quite possible that our caterer is our favorite vendor thus far. Of course, it’s quite a close call, but they really upped the ante at our site walk through.
I had only met our catering manager, Loren, in passing and exchanged a handful of emails with her, so I was really looking forward to meeting up with her at the venue to hear her ideas for setting up the space. We also hadn’t been there since we booked in January, so I was looking forward to a refresher.
This visit settled a lot of burning setup questions in my mind and we made some final decisions on the location and timing of the first dance, etc. It also resulted in some money unexpectedly saved—but a lot more money spent. Let’s recap—but first, some venue porn.
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