Weddingbee Blog

Like so many other brides before me, I finally succumbed to the allure of the post-wedding chop. I’m proud that I managed to hold out for almost two months, but who am I kidding? That long hair was killing me, and it had to go!

Here’s what my hair looked like at our rehearsal dinner, before it really started to get on my nerves:

Holy long hair, Batman! / Personal Photo

And after I chopped it all off:

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And no, I’m not talking about Mr. Parasol. I’m still shout-it-from-the-mountains-smooshy-face in love with him.

**Just to clarify: this post is in no way anti-name changing. I truly admire all of you women and men who are excited about and follow through with the process of changing your last name, and to be honest, I’m a bit jealous!

Some of you may remember my name change post from a while back, where I wrote about why Mr. Parasol and I decided to take each other’s last  names. A lot of careful thought and discussion went into this decision, and we were excited about sharing a hyphenated last name.

We’ve now been married for about a month and a half, and unlike Mrs. Cannon, Mr. Parasol and I haven’t begun the process of officially changing our last names. And we currently have no plans to do so.

At first, we both had a “We’ll deal with that later” attitude towards officially changing our names. I don’t know about you, but given the choice between dealing with various government entities and not dealing with said entities, I always choose not. Besides, like most twenty-first century newlyweds, we changed our names on Facebook, and we used our new last name socially, so we figured there was no rush to make things official. Apparently we Parasols are lazy. But as the weeks ticked by, I started to feel uncomfortable with the idea of our new last name, and I realized that there was more than laziness behind my nonchalance about legally changing our names.
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Now that I’m on the other side of wedding planning, there are so many things I want to tell brides-to-be. But instead of bombarding you all with my old-married-lady wisdom, I’m going to give you my #1 piece of wedding-day advice:

Get yourself a waterboy (or girl).

Photo via Amazon

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Hive, I’d like to introduce you to someone very special today: my Grandma P!

Photo via Grandma P

Isn’t she the epitome of grace and loveliness? Grandma P is amazing. She’s tough as nails (in the best possible sense), has a great sense of humor, and has been a constant source of strength, inspiration, and encouragement for me. She’s been there for every major event in my life and has cheered me on at every single one of them. She makes me feel like I can accomplish anything.

And on top of everything else, Grandma P is responsible for giving me the best wedding gift ever.

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Hello again, hive!

Mrs. Parasol here and back in action! I still can’t believe the day we’ve been building toward for nine months has come and gone, and I’m so thankful to all of you who sent your well wishes to Mr. Parasol and me.

I know I’ve been a bit of a wedding skeptic around these parts. I wanted a romantic elopement in lieu of a big wedding, I struggled with various DIY projects Mr. Parasol and I took on, I had a pretty bad attitude about weddings in general when we reached the one-month mark, and I came down with a case of the bridal crazies in the last two weeks. I didn’t want to think of our wedding as something I just had to get through, but to be honest I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to escape that attitude in the end.

Well, let me tell you, hive. This wedding skeptic has been permanently cured of her cynical ways.

Our wedding was perfect.

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Well, hive, this is it. Today’s the day. The day I become Mrs. Parasol.

Personal Photo

It’s been nine months since Mr. Parasol got down on one knee and asked me to spend the rest of my life with him, six months since I bought a dress and we set a date, three and a half months since we started seriously wedding planning, and two months since I joined the hive.

This day has been almost four years in the making, and I am ready.

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So I’m sure I’m not the only one who has those weird out-of-body experiences where you don’t recognize yourself. Usually you’re looking into the mirror and all of a sudden you think, “Wait, is that me? Is that really what I look like?” All of a sudden, the face and body you’ve known for years becomes almost unrecognizable, and it’s difficult to wrap your mind around the fact that this body is, in fact, yours.

Every once in a while, I have those experiences. They’re weird enough, and I wish I could say that it only happens with myself. But sometimes, it happens with Mr. Parasol. A few times, when we’re doing something boring like sitting on the couch and watching TV, I’ll look over at him and blurt out, “Woah, are you really my boyfriend? Really?” It’s a strange feeling, looking over at the person you’ve spent years of your life with and feeling like you don’t even recognize him. What was once familiar is now completely foreign, and everything just feels so out of sync. Mr. Parasol always has a good laugh and teases me, and thankfully, the feeling of disconnect usually quickly passes.

But I’ve discovered that these feelings of dissociation have also started to rear their ugly heads at another particular moment:
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Image via Chicago Marriage

OK, I think my title is a little over-dramatic because we never were technically without an officiant. But it certainly felt like it. Before I delve into the specifics of our situation, let me give a little background.

A very long time ago, I told you about how Mr. Parasol and I did premarital counseling at our church in New York before we even set a date or started thinking seriously about our wedding. Well, naturally once we set our date and started wedding planning, it seemed only logical to ask the pastor with whom we had done our marriage counseling to officiant. We were close to him, we respected his wisdom and guidance, and he knew us well as a couple.

And he would have been more than willing, but there was a snag:
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The wedding is less than a week away, and I don’t want to freak out or stress or worry or complain. Instead, I want to focus on some of the things that make me happy, namely those wedding-related items Mr. Parasol and I deemed “must-haves.” We may have had to cut quite a few things we wanted for our wedding, but by scaling back in other areas, Mr. Parasol and I were able to splurge on those few “gotta have” items we really, really wanted.

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Alternative post title: No one ever told me that you go crazy in the last two weeks of wedding planning.

Image via Rotten Tomatoes

Everything was chugging along wedding-wise, and then, somewhere between finishing my last string of bunting and finally getting our official head count, I went a little nutso.

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From the beginning of our wedding planning journey, there was one thing I was totally adamant about: there would be no bouquet or garter toss.

Image via 5th Floor Photography

The tosses are lovely traditions, and I think it’s so fun and cute when other couples do them. But the tosses so don’t feel like Mr. Parasol and me at all. I can’t really explain it, but I just don’t think there’s any part of me that would ever want to toss a bouquet or allow Mr. Parasol to publicly feel up my leg and remove a garter.
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When it comes to wedding favors, I was surprisingly (and thankfully) very decisive: we would be providing an edible favor or nothing at all. I can’t tell you how many bottles of bubbles and little boxes I’ve collected at weddings over the years, and they all end up forgotten at the bottom of some drawer. Edible favors, on the other hand, always get put to very good and tasty use.

Mr. Parasol and I bounced around a few different ideas and ultimately decided on providing homemade granola for our guests. We both absolutely love granola, it’s easy to make, and it’s a relatively affordable favor option. And when Cousin Parasol E, who is just about the best 17-year-old cook in the history of the world, said she makes a mean granola, I was totally sold. So one weekend, I went up to Cousin E’s for a sleepover, and between lots of gossip and bad TV, we whipped out more than enough granola for our 90 wedding guests.

Our first stop was WinCo, the most amazing and affordable store ever. I still can’t believe I’d never heard of it before. We quickly stocked up on all the granola supplies we could ever need.

Personal Photo via Cousin E

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As with most of my wedding decisions, I went back and forth about what I wanted to do with my nails for the wedding day. I know a lot of people go with french manicures for the big day, and those can be really nice.

Image via Luxury Nail Art

But I immediately nixed this as an option. I had a bad run-in with fake nails in high school (let’s just say it involved long nails and trying to get a contact lens out of my eye–not a good combination), and I’ve been too scared to try them again.

I knew I didn’t want anything too colorful on my nails, even though my all-time favorite nail polish color is Revlon’s Midnight Affair.

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In spite of my best efforts this summer, I have acquired two small, but noticeable tan lines on my chest.

Personal Photo

I know they could be a lot worse, but I kind of really hate them, especially because I tried so hard to not get tan lines when I went on vacation this summer. My bathing suit and all my dresses have straps, but I made sure to take them off and tuck them away whenever I went out into the sun. These little beauties are the result of my bathing suit straps starting to peek back out again without me noticing.

The problem is that you can just see them in my wedding dress, and as small as they are, I really don’t want any pictures of me with splotchy, uneven, untanned skin. This is not the look I’m going for:

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Like many other bees before me, I knew I wanted to incorporate my adorable Weddingbee moniker into my wedding somehow. Although I had contemplated using parasols in my wedding prior to becoming a bee, I hadn’t made any final decisions on that front. But since then, I’ve found a few fun ways to weave my Weddingbee identity into my special day.

First, I bought two ridiculously cheap paper parasols for guests to use as props in our homemade photo booth. That way, they can be honorary members of the Parasol Clan.

Personal Photo

I also splurged a little and bought a much nicer lace parasol for myself.

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