Weddingbee Blog

Like Miss Cheetah, I’ve got a major thing for non-rectangular wedding stationery. I’m particularly fond of any and all variants on the “bracket square.” (Not to be a punctuation nerd, but aren’t the curvy ones “braces”? Or is that just an American thing? I forget.) When I came across a downloadable Martha Stewart place card template featuring a particularly pretty version, I snagged that PDF before you can say “Miss Panther is a total weirdo.”

When it came time to get our Save the Dates in action, I assumed that cutting out these fancy shapes with my Cricut would be a cinch. I was only half wrong. Cutting shapes from plain paper? Totally easy. Cutting shapes that are lined up to a previously printed project? Not so much. As a reminder, here’s what our save the dates ended up like:

I’ve only been out of high school for six years, and I don’t think I’ve changed too much—though hopefully I’m a little less awkward.

As a teenage panther, I was already an indecisive overachiever. As in, I picked up a zillion hobbies and then dropped them immediately when I got bored. There were just a few that I stuck with.

I took private figure skating lessons for about five years. I was not good. I never had any desire to compete. I just liked skating around with my coach once a week. This picture isn’t from a lesson—obviously, I didn’t usually skate in jeans—but it’s the only one I have, since I never allowed my parents to stay and watch:

Weeeeee!

I also took guitar lessons for the majority of my high school career. I was a little better at this, but just not serious enough to ever get good.

I think it’s about time I share the engagement story, don’t you? Part one, coming at ya.

Mr. Panther and I knew quite a while ago that we wanted to get married in the summer of 2011. Because we wanted to have the ceremony outside, overlooking water of some sort, we knew the date needed to be in the summertime. Mr. Panther didn’t want to wait until 2012, because he thinks the world is going to end on December 21. He wanted to have a little more than five months to enjoy being married before we all die, I guess.

So, at some point around spring 2009, Mr. Panther started saving for a ring. I’m crazy, crazy picky, so he knew he’d be better off getting my input. And luckily for him, I already had one picked out:

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But of course that’s not what I ended up with. Come on! We all know that I never end up going with my first instinct, right?

My mama, like so many mamas, loves antique shopping. And since the South is a great place for a bargain, we did some antiquing while she was visiting.

We still haven’t nailed down a true centerpiece theme (mercury glass? antique silver? birdcages? hurricane lanterns? wood branches?), but I think we’re just going to combine all those, really. Yes, I know that sounds like it’ll be too much, but dude, we’ll figure it out. I’m not worried. If it looks “eclectic,” so be it. We’re eclectic human beings, Mr. Panther and I.

With that in mind, check out all the stuff we got!

Can you tell I’m excited?

Last weekend, I had some family come visit me in Georgia. My mom stayed with Mr. Panther and me, and my aunt and uncle (Cool J’s parents) stayed with family friends. In talking to them, the topic of wedding etiquette has come up a few times. And every time I think about it, I realize how little I knew before I got engaged. Embarrassing confession time!

A little over two years ago, my aunt Rebecca (different aunt) got married. She was already pregnant, and the wedding was a bit last-minute, but nonetheless, she’d wanted to get married for a long time and was really looking forward to it. I had just moved to Atlanta and honestly was a little bewildered when she asked me to be her maid-of-honor. I was poor, lived 1000 miles away, and had never been in a wedding before—I knew I couldn’t possibly do a good job. I shared these feelings with her, but she insisted, so I planned a trip up north for the wedding.

I didn’t take part in the shower at all.

Oh, hello. It’s just me here, the Shoe Monster. Just hangin’ out, thinking about all the things I could own if I didn’t insist on being the Atlanta version of a broke Carrie Bradshaw.

(Cookie Monster, Studded pumps, Platform ankle boots, Platform oxford)

Now that I have (most of) my jewelry and a hairpiece, and they’ve been deemed fabulous by Monte, I can’t help wanting to keep on truckin’ in the Wedding Day Look saga. And I’ve been holding off on something very important: Duh, the shoes.

As I’ve mentioned, my dress is being made with a custom hem, so when I ordered the gown, I had to tell them what heel height I wanted to wear. It was a high-pressure moment, and the sales associates kept telling me I’d regret it if uncomfortable shoes ruined my wedding day, and…I folded.

Relax! I’m not going to complain about them anymore. Now that they’re out and everyone should have received theirs, I can finally reveal them to the blogosphere! I’ll also be sharing some key learnings—in bold so you can’t miss them and won’t screw up like I did! So, yeah, long post ahead:

Let’s start from the beginning, shall we? Here’s what guests will see when they pull their envelope out of the mailbox:

Sorry for the privacy blur. You get the idea, right? If you’re from Connecticut, you may also notice that I accidentally put a Danbury zip code on our Atlanta address label. Whoops. I designed the address labels in Illustrator, then printed them onto metallic paper with my home inkjet.

The dress? Check. The hair piece? Check. The necklace? Check. The bracelet? Check. OK, you get the point—I bought a bunch o’ crap. But I’ve been putting off the earrings decision.

I’ll probably put it off for a while longer, but I just found this site, Portobello Jewelry, via Once Wed, and I’m loving these vintage earrings!

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OH MY GOD, THEY’RE DONE*. THEY’RE BEING MAILED TOMORROW. PRAISE THE LORD.

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Check out the cute postage combo we ended up with! My original calculations from the USPS site were apparently incorrect, and this is all we need:

When I first bought my dress back in March, the sample was just visiting the store because of a trunk show. I was sad that I wouldn’t be able to see my dress again until it came in, but accepted it. HOWEVER, a few months later, when I was at Bridals by Lori picking up a swatch, I spotted a familiar skirt peeking out from the Amsale rack. HEY! It was my dress! Apparently, they ordered a sample because it was so popular during the trunk show.

So, when MOH Mellow visited Mr. Panther and me, I took her into the store to meet Dahlia. Bridesmaid J-Dawg joined us, and I brought all my jewelry and my hair flower to try with the dress. On Say Yes to the Dress: Atlanta, when brides or their families are having trouble making a dress decision, Monte will often “jack the bride up”—i.e. get her all gussied up with her hair done, a veil and coordinating jewelry. Seeing the whole picture often helps seal the deal. I didn’t need any help sealing the deal when I bought my dress, but I was excited to see everything together, so for this visit, I jacked myself up.

What a productive weekend! Matron-of-Honor Mellow was here from Connecticut, so we visited my dress sample at Bridals by Lori, and…we picked out the bridesmaids dresses! Woohooooooo!

We’re doing the J Crew “Arabelle” and “Taryn” dresses in matisse blue. These pictures don’t do it justice—it’s like a bright tealish-blue.

(“Arabelle” source and “Taryn” source)

Guess what arrived today!

Any ideas?

Y’all, sometimes I think I’m beating my head against the wall—or some other idiom for trying to do the impossible—with all this personalized DIY on a budget stuff.

As I may have mentioned, I aspire to having the kind of wedding that gets featured on one the fantastic wedding blogs I frequent (some of my favorites are Style Me Pretty, OnceWed, Green Wedding Shoes, 100 Layer Cake and Ruffled). I think these weddings fall into two categories: a) the couple (or the couple’s parents) spent a ton of money getting a professional to create a beautiful event, or b) the bride did it herself. Since I am not loaded, I’ll need to fall into category b.

But ya know what? I’m starting to think it’s not possible to create an intimate, personal, beautiful event with all these crazy DIY details while holding down a full-time job unless the event is small. I mean, really, who has time to make 250 of anything, let alone French macaroons or triple-layer silk-screened menus?!

There are so many things I’d love to include in our wedding. For example, how amazing is mismatched vintage china?

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