Weddingbee Blog

***sneaks in wearing Blue Blockers and trenchcoat***Pssst, hey! Over here! It’s me, Lovebug! This is totally an unofficial visit since I made my GREAT BIG DRAMATIC GRAND EXIT and all - but it seems my wedding well has a few more bucketfuls in it, after all.

I had to pop by and mention my discovery of Wordle, because it has great potential for DIY fun. You enter in some text, and clickety-click: it generates a pretty little word cloud, weighted according to frequency. Brilliant for poems, random thoughts, favorite passages…and wedding ceremonies!

This is what I got when I entered in the text of our own ceremony:

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The next sentence is going to suck, no two ways about it. Chances are, this is my last Weddingbee post. Told you it would suck.

After this, I’m pretty much out of professional photos to show you. Sure, I could pop up a year from now with some random shot of the bathroom baskets, but that’s not how I roll, yo. My fragile ego requires that I go out with a bang - and it doesn’t get much bang-y’er than your overwhelming response to my last set of posts.

And while Mrs. Corn is onto something brilliant with her Looking Back series, my own coulda/shoulda/woulda’s wouldn’t be much help. The few cosmetic changes I’d make to our wedding are trivialities, really. I was blessed with a day of no regrets.
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While Mr. Lovebug and I were posing for some fountain-side photos during cocktail hour, I suddenly remembered this adorable photo of the newly wed Mr. and Mrs. Onion:

(photo by Daria Bishop Photography)

Ridiculously sweet, right? You can almost hear the little *click!* of her heels neatly hitting the pavement. But the best part is Mr. Onion’s “and down you go, little lady!” expression.
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We’ll return to your regularly scheduled, sophisticated wedding in just a few moments. But right now, it’s time to get a little silly. Journey with me through some of the low (read: awesome) moments of the Lovebug nuptials. Some will call me crazy for sharing these ridiculous, unflattering shots. Some will call me shameless. But you guys are my peeps, and I couldn’t possibly deny you the comedy. Don’t make me regret it!

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Ok, maybe not. But that would be an interesting twist on things, you have to admit.

Magnificent moment though it is, slicing into your perfectly pretty wedding cake is painful, people. Forget freezing the top layer. I wanted to smuggle the whole thing out under my dress. Alas, we had to do it. We had to commit pastricide:

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Waiting to walk down the aisle, I felt a sense of serene emptiness. Waiting to make our grand entrance as husband and wife, Mr. Lovebug and I were all butterflies and anticipation. We were nervous about our first dance - all those eyes on us! - but mainly, we were just anxious to talk to everyone, hear reactions to the ceremony (ok, maybe that was just me), and poppez le Champagne.

Funnily enough, as we waited around the corner and “hid”, some of our friends came trouping down the hall. “You’re not supposed to see us yet!” I whisper-yelled. But then it was an “Oh my god, I love your dress!”-fest with the girls I hadn’t seen earlier, while Mr. LB snuck a quick shot.

Suddenly, we were on! Our DJ was on a cordless microphone all night, so coordinating the entrance (and cake cutting, toasts, etc.) was seamless; “All I Want is You” by Barry Polisar kicked up, we took a deep breath, and headed into our wedding.

I’m not crazy about our entrance photos, but this one has two things going for it: 1) how I apparently shot off and left Mr. Lovebug a good three feet behind, and 2) my freakish, Linda Hamilton-esque arms:

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Every wedding evolves, from conception to execution. For us, one of the things that changed the most during planning was our wedding cake. Mr. Lovebug and I originally wanted a topsy turvy, crazy, colorsplash of a cake. Then there was the typewriter key cake phase. Then it was a stenciled cake. But after showing Mr. LB this cake in one of Mrs. Shortcake’s posts, everything we thought we knew about what we wanted flew out the bakery window.

We realized we just wanted a pretty, delicious-looking cake. That’s it. Just something simple and sweet. And when we finally saw our baker’s creation, I was so glad we’d decided that. Blush pink, dotted, and utterly adorable, it ended up fitting our “Sweetest Type of Love” theme after all - it was so “sweet” looking, it made my fillings ache:

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Since I’d spent part of the day setting up the reception room, I knew more or less what it would look like that evening. But there were some things I hadn’t seen yet: the cake, most of the flowers, the completed candy buffet, or the uplighting - and in fact, I’d never actually seen our venue’s reception room at night!

So at the end of cocktail hour, when Mr. Lovebug and I ducked into the room for a minute before everyone started filing in, we were just enchanted with what we saw. Everything was so soft and rosy and glowing. The ambiance, combined with all the little touches, had transformed a rather average ballroom into a such a pretty space. It wasn’t dramatic or striking - but it was romantic, cozy, and inviting:

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After we made our end-of-ceremony getaway, Mr. Lovebug and I ducked into the nearby bridal chamber to catch our breath and have our first minutes alone as husband and wife. Outside, we could hear our guests laughing, glasses clinking, and the string quartet starting up again:

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…While Mr. Lovebug and I were exchanging vows, Chaucer the bling bearer was being a patient (if pant-y) little gentleman right around the corner:

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You guys have been so ridiculously awesome with all your feedback on my pro pic posts. Seriously. I can’t tell you how much it means to me. Yesterday we were out birthday shopping (omfg I’m 33, people - 33!), and I kept making Mr. Lovebug bring up Weddingbee on his phone so I could read the new comments. And though I don’t respond to every single one, trust me - I have a good portion of them memorized.

Means. The. World.

So as a token of my gratitude, and as a wee gift to those of you who demand–er, requested that I post over the weekend, I’m giving you something I had absolutely NO intention of sharing with ANYONE, like, EVER. Presenting the single most horrific photo of our wedding:

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…Everything was in place. Mr. Lovebug and Melissa had taken up their positions on the steps of the ceremony site. The string quartet was playing the last few bars of Canon. I waited with bated breath for my cue. All I could feel, all I was aware of, was the breeze stirring my skirts.

Only, wait. That breeze sure is…breezy. In fact, that’s not so much a breeze as it is wind. I look up at the sky. It’s suddenly grey. It’s so very…grey. Oh my god. It’s going to rain. It’s going to rain on my–

CRRAAAACK! Audible gasps. Nervous laughter. What the…? What’s going–

And then, before I know what’s happening, the music starts. I wouldn’t know what the commotion was until after the ceremony, when I find out that seconds before I walked out, the wind tore a huge branch off one of the trees. It came crashing down inches away from one of the photographer’s assistant’s head, nearly braining him.
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…So there I was, a few short steps away from where I would begin my walk down the aisle. I’ve thought and thought about how to best describe that feeling, and the closest I can come is the word “confluence.” As in, the merging of things, especially as refers to bodies of water.Because really, that’s what’s it feels like. Like all these rivers of emotion that have been building and building all throughout the months of your planning (excitement, anticipation, anxiety) are suddenly flooding their banks, and they’re joined by other, new feelings: bewilderment, awe, solemnity, gratitude, vindication. Everyone’s mix will be different, and highly personal. But whatever yours is, it will rock you.

But then you just sort of go empty and calm, and this incredible peace comes. There’s a moment between the ending of one song and the start of your song where time stands still. You take a deep breath, gather yourself in to the experience, and give your kick-ass photographer one last smile:

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Happiness is having, in your hot little paw, the complete set of your professional wedding photos. My paws are so very happy today. The Inimitable Chris Richards (I’ve given him an epithet, à la Homer) has bestowed upon us all the files of our photos - fully sized and fully awesome! Hopefully, you’ll indulge me if I revisit the stories of the day through them…

Our wedding day began with one very nervous little bug. I’ll admit it - I was a stress case. Between all the DIY projects and details I’d arranged, I was feeling extremely anxious about whether I’d have enough time to set it all up exactly how my control-freak self wanted it.

I awoke at ten, in my hotel room at our venue, to a phone call from catering manager Kathleen telling me that the reception room was all mine. I flew out of bed and spent the next three hours hauling favors, menus, books, signs, candy, jars, etc. across the grounds to the reception room and arranging it just so. It was largely a solo operation, until it dawned on me to employ the services of the bell boy and waitstaff. Durrh.
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Sitting around waiting for our professional pictures to arrive (we get them tomorrow!), I’ve had plenty of time to get my Flickr account nice and tidy. In doing so, I’ve discovered the wonderland that is Picnik, Flickr’s photo editing tool. And oh, what a wonderland it is. If Flickr is my crack addiction, Picnik is my own personal meth lab.

Scenario 1: Say you’re like me, and you’ve got a load of crappy pictures taking up your hard drive. But they’re not so crappy that you want to dump them - maybe they’re all you’ve got from some important event, or they’re the only shots you have of that one night your girlfriend Prudence reaaaallly cut loose.

Scenario 2: You’ve been inundated with all the mediocre photos your friends and family took at your wedding. (Don’t feel bad for thinking they’re mediocre. After all, everyone takes mediocre pictures sometime.) Or you have wedding planning photos you can’t bear to part with, in spite of the fact that you have eight trillion professional pics as well.

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