Then my coordinator, Miss P, emailed me and casually mentioned these bad boys from Victorian Petals at the end of her note:

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Be still my beating heart! The feathers! The romance! Me gusta. Her idea was to hang them on the pews as the finishing touch to the ceremony decor. I was all over it. Then she emailed me and said she thought we could DIY! She found some materials on Save-on-Crafts (the place I bought my Bridal Illusion Tulle as well):

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And then, she offered to make them herself since I have so many other projects on my plate! I {heart} Miss P! I ordered the supplies and had materials sent directly to her (enough to make 12 of them). I love how we can work together like this. I toss ideas to her and she helps me make the dream a reality. Or in this case, she found an awesome idea and is taking the lead on executing it. With all of the other stresses in my life right now, knowing that she’s thinking of the details that I’m not, really takes a weight off of me.

P.S. - Save-on-Crafts also had this baby in their online catalog for $2.99! Unfortunately it wasn’t available at the time I purchased my supplies.

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Are you decorating your ceremony space in a significant way? What elements from the space itself are you keeping in your decor?

A knock at the door! Who could it be? A surprise visit from one of my Best Women!

I feel blessed to have some amazing women in my life and am excited to have four of them stand up with us at the wedding. Both SistahChips and my lifelong BFF agreed to partake in the wedding shenanigans in the role of my best women. My BFF—we’ll call her Sweet Potato, because she is—and I have been attached at the hip since the first grade! We even won our high school superlative for “Best Friends” in our high school yearbook! Our bff-ship will live on in perpetuity within the graduating class of 1998!

Whooaaaah, don’t you tell me I look the same!! Don’t you do it!

I know I know, I totally look the same.

Sweet Potato and I have been together through thick and thin! She even works at the university I attend, so we get to see each other almost every dang day to catch up, kvetch, and drink pumpkin mistos.

So back to that Friday night, with the knock on the door, and the surprise visitor. Sweet Potato had dropped by to give us our very first wedding present. Wedding-Prezzie-Seven-Months-in-Advance-say-whaaaa???! I know, she is nuts! She is an avid reader of this blog (or she tells me so to stroke my ego, either way is fine) and was tired of hearing me yap about my craptastic point-and-shoot.

A photographer I am not, but I do take a LOT of pictures, particularly ones that document this journey to the altar (and ones of my food, but that’s neither here nor there). So in order to digitally capture our planning, parties, wedding, and beyond, we received this:

Canon

A new, totally awesome point-and-shoot! I was floored by her generosity. Being in our wedding is gift enough—she certainly didn’t need to buy us anything! Not to mention, I am totally weird about receiving such generous gifts.

Me: “What!! No!! You’re crazy! Too much! It’s too much!! Are you nuts?? Why’d you do this?? I can’t believe it!! Are you sure?? You spent too much!! In this economy?? You’re bananas!! Thank you!!! Seriously! Aughhhhh!”

Gifter: “Just say thank you and shut up.”

This is totally inherited from MamaChips, b-t-dubs. It’s related to the Portuguese Guilt Complex, I think.

What was your first wedding present? Was it a total surprise? Do you have extreme reactions that make the gifters roll their eyes too?

*”Sought after bistro”=takeout curry from suburban Indian restaurant. “Exclusive nightclub” = our couch

However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I just had to make it happen. The moments that I will share with my family, friends, and Mr. Fro Yo that day need to be captured, and with more than just photography. Also, I’ve heard so often that people really regret not having video of their wedding. I can already imagine us watching it with our kids years down the road and reliving all those wonderful memories.

Enter Vanessa McKellar. Now, this girl is talented. I watched her videos and cried. I don’t even know these people, and I cried. I’m serious. Plus, she is so sweet and wonderful to work with. And best of all? She posted about Weddingbee and how awesome it is!

So, are you ready to see one of my favorite videos?

Erika & Phil in Super 8 from Vanessa McKellar Productions.com on Vimeo.

Did you love it, like I did?

So what are we doing for videography? Some regular video and a little mix of Super 8! You have no idea how excited I am!!

Did your videography love get incorporated into your wedding, too?

And I’ve been sewing since about 6th grade, when my mom got me a pattern to make a snappy vest (and who knew vests would be back in style now!). Over the years I’ve made skirts, Halloween costumes, and more recently, a slipcover for my couch.

But that’s about it. I haven’t really been crafty for years. And I’m wondering, is it like riding a bike, or did I lose some of my skills over the years?

I started wondering this when I went to Michaels this past weekend.

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‘Hi! I’m a bride and I’m ready to DIY anything I can get my hands on!’ I thought to myself as I walked in the door.

I had a long list of items to get, supplies for our STDs, card box, a glue gun for my napkin rings, etc. But then, I walked in the door, and it hit me. So. Much. Stuff… So. Many. Options.

Yikes!

So I grabbed a cart, shopping list in hand, and started going up and down each and every aisle, trying to get a lay of the land, figure out where stuff was, and TRY to not get distracted by every little… embellishment… glitter paint… things I did not need and had no business looking at. About two hours in, I had found most of the items on my list, and was only feeling slightly overwhelmed by the fact that I may very well be out of my element, trying to DIY things when I haven’t done so in years. But then it came time to find a corner rounder.

That damn, elusive corner rounder! I had big plans for it for our STD cards, and I must find it today. On about my 10th trip around the store, I went down the aisle with all the punches again, and I swear, I looked at every one there! Corner punches with flowers, punches with paisleys, corner punches with every imaginable shape, but not a simple rounder. So I moved on, up and down the aisles and aisles of scrapbooking supplies, and around the whole store again. Finally I came back to the punches aisle, determined to see if there was an empty hook, with promise of a restocking soon.

And then I found it. I literally slapped myself on the forehead and said a big Homer Simpson “D’oh!” out loud (luckily I was in the aisle by myself). Ladies, for any of you who haven’t used one before, or have been out of your “crafty element” for years, this is what a plain and simple corner rounder looks like:

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OMG, I felt so dumb. But hey, I’d never seen or used one before. And after the hours of shopping in just one store, I could have been going a little cross-eyed.

So I left, $278.16 poorer, and feeling a little depressed. If I couldn’t even find a stupid corner rounder in a craft store for hours, how was I going to be able to pull off all of these crafts I was planning? Well, I’ve got the supplies, and now it’s time to find out!

Did you feel overwhelmed after your first visit to the craft store for wedding DIY supplies?

You see, I would really love to have an elegant wedding. Pretty, sophisticated, and formal. And that’s the plan so far! But my heart lives for cuteness. And the one detail that I can go crazy-freaking-cute with is the favors! We have no idea what we’re going to do for our favors, but I’ll use this time to propose some ideas.

1. First up, silhouette tea tins. Pretty classy, right? I’m not big on tea, but one of my favorite childhood candies came in a tin like this. I think it’s still available at Asian grocery stores. We could easily wrap up the candy tins with any pictures and text we want.

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2. Bunny beanbags. Oh, these are cute. These are wedding-favor-worthy. These are reuse-in-Easter-baskets-worthy. These are keep-around-the-house-and chuck-at-the-future-husband-when-he’s-not-looking-worthy!

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3. Pom-pom bunnies. Admittedly, the least useful favor, but look—even the carrots are cute!

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4. Long-eared note cards. Small packs of this stationery would make adorable gifts. (I never said these favors would be guy-friendly!)

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5. Bunnies gone postal. I could sew 200 of these, write our guests’ names on the envelopes, and make these work double-time as our favor/place cards! Yeah, I realize how crazy that sounds, but I still think it’s a fun idea.

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6. From what I hear, everybody loves an edible favor. Well, say hello to the sweet and sugar-sprinkled bunny marshmallows! What’s next—bunny cotton candy? One can only dream.

Source: Twig and Thistle via Kim Vallee

There are endless options out there for every theme and color scheme—how did you choose your favors? And do you have a favorite of the ones above?

The album came with this lovely floral case. I store it inside whenever I don’t have it out to show it off to protect our big investment from accidental damage.

I decided to order the 12X12 with a black leather cover, and it’s HUGE. It’s beautiful, but I think if I could do it over I would scale it down in size.

The front page. I’m so glad Kelli Nicole took the time to take detail and establishing shots, as this shot of the Seattle skyline really sets the stage for the rest of the album.

I chose not to have any overlapping images or graphic elements in my design as I wanted things to be very clean and simple. It took me hours to narrow down thousands of images to just over 100, but I think those that I chose tell the story of the day really well.

My favorite part of the album? The full page spreads. At two feet wide they are absolutely stunning to view in person. The quality of Kelli Nicole’s photography really helps, as well.

A few details…

The book lays flat when opened, and the small fold in the middle is hardly noticeable.

Any my favorite: a yummy super-soft leather cover.

I’ll leave you with my favorite spread. Stunning, right?

Did you order an album through your photographer? Do you have any suggestions for companies non-photographers can use to get their album done?

From this…

… to this!

So, I have had a total of 3 makeup and hair trials. Why so many, you ask? Because I have bad beauty luck? I don’t think my request is unreasonable - I just want to look clean, classic, fresh-faced, and natural. I don’t typically wear makeup, aside from the occasional (and I do mean occasional) mascara, eyeliner, and some Chapstick, if you’re lucky. (Check out Miss Parfait’s post for more Asian makeup inspiration!)

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The hair I want is more of a low, simple, and sophisticated, slightly romantic look. Think soft curls, lightly pinned up. Surprisingly, finding someone who could actually figure out what this meant, or even listened to me has proven to be a bit of a challenge. Rawr.

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I love Eva’s look in these 2 photos - so chic, sweet, and romantic!

From the front, this is pretty much exactly what I want! The back is a little curlier than what I’d like… but it’s still so cute!

And the ever fabulous Miss Swift.

So let’s do a bit of a recap on what has happened to me….

Makeup Trial #1:

I found a girl on Craigslist that does freelance makeup work. We scheduled my trial for the same day as my engagement shoot. She was actually freelancing at the Nordstrom in Chandler at the Smashbox counter, so I stopped by there for a *free* trial. The only bummer was that she doesn’t usually use Smashbox, so the trial was kind of not true-to-life. At any rate… like most Caucasian makeup artists that I’ve encountered throughout my life, she initially tried to make me look like I have double lids. Sigh. I realize that I’m quite Asian, and I know that I’m never going to have double lids unless I get surgerized… nothankyouverymuch. Anyways, after much prompting, we finally found a look that I liked (I left my inspiration pics in the car - boo). And we ended up wiping of 2/3 of the eyebrow darkening stuff she used. Scary eyebrows avoided = happy Ramen.

Anyways, while I really liked the girl and she was super nice and quite affordable, I felt like I could essentially have done my own makeup to the same level. In that sense, it was not quite worth it to me. (Granted, in the above picture, I probably had sweated off 1/2 of my makeup….)

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What I DON’T want to look like….

Hair/Makeup Trial #2:

So, I decided that I needed to try out an Asian hair and makeup artist this time around. Again, I went to Craigslist, and found an Asian girl… but she ended up not doing bridals anymore, so she referred me to a friend of hers that she’s worked with, who does bridal hair and makeup. So, here come the realllllllllly fun pictures. Please brace yourself.

A blurry shot - but the last one of me looking normal.

At this point, I was feeling good - like, “Woo hoo! I finally found my person!”

And from the sides, the hair wasn’t so bad… maybe a bit more body than I wanted, but eh, it was ok.

… And then I saw the back. OK, don’t get me wrong - I know some of you will love this hair, but I didn’t. It was all tight curls pinned to my head, versus the sophisticated and soft romantic hair that I wanted. I talked about it with the stylist and I thought we came to an agreement of what I wanted versus what she had done. But it was at this precise moment that I started to see that she was kind of used to doing things a certain way and didn’t like to stray from her normal routine.

So…. I was OK. Until she started on the makeup…

Notice the look of extreme panic on my face. This would be the start of the ugly geisha face, complete with extreme eyebrows. Seriously, whenever someone starts filling in my brows uber dark, I’m thinking, ‘what on God’s earth makes you think that could possibly look GOOD?’ No one has pure black eyebrows! And for reference, I had actually made her take off most of the eyebrows at this point. She kept insisting that it looked better this way.

And then… it gets better. So, after showing her my “VERRRRRY natural” inspiration, she proceeded to tell me why I should have darker makeup, for pictures, blah blah blah. OK, I know people keep saying that, and I agree - to a certain extent. But this… this was taking darker to a whole new level. I asked for neutral colors and got… a black eye. The stylist decided that it would be best if she did 1/2 of my face light “like I wanted” (and I use that quote quite loosely), and the other 1/2 darker like she recommended. She said I would probably like the darker side better…

I’m sorry if this makes you cry. As you can tell, I wasn’t exactly pleased. The left side of the picture is the “natural” and the right side is the darker side, aka SCARY!

Not scary enough for you? Need a better view?

Here’s a pictures with my eyes closed. Again, notice the unnatural darkening of my left eye? It literally looked like I got into a bar fight. Needless to say, I will not be hiring her, and am happy that that trial only cost me $25, or 3 hours in work-study equivalence.

Hair/Makeup Trial #3:

The Asian Craigslist girl actually recommended this other girl who does makeup and teams up with one of her friends who has a small salon in Glendale.

I was kind of an idiot and didn’t even get pictures of this, but let’s put it this way - Sister Ramen, upon seeing my hair said, “uhm, NOT worth it.” And FMIL Ramen told me to just do my makeup myself. Bah.

Overall, I would have hired at least the makeup girl, BUT both girls wanted $100 for travel. Each. For travel alone. Not including the actual service fees. If I’m going to be spending over $300, I was definitely just going to hire one of the best hair and makeup artists in the area.

Again, what the Ramen does NOT want to look like….

So anyways, I’m back at square one. I really don’t want to spend more money on hair/makeup trials because with my luck they will probably be a waste of time and money. And did I mention we have 1 month until the wedding?!??!? Sigh. I have a Yelp recommendation that I’m going to try out. But if that doesn’t pan out… I’m not sure what I will do with myself!

Do you have any tips? Should I brave the waters and try doing it myself? Or should I splurge and go with one of those top-of-the-line artists?

Did any of you have multiple (failed) trials?

Since our invitations are going to be a very formal navy and white (with maybe a hint of yellow), I wanted our STDs to be mostly yellow, and more playful. I liked the overall design, and I enjoyed the yellow envelope, but I was not sure what to do about the backing on the card. I did try the material backing with some scrap fabric, and here is what it looked like:


Even though I loved the extra texture that the material provides, I worried that the pattern on the front combined with the different pattern on the back was just too busy. So, I tried it with a navy backing:

Even though the STDs looked undeniable better with the navy backing, I was not in love. I had my heart set on incorporating fabric. So, I went back to the drawing board.

Did you rework your STDs several times before getting them just right?

* All photos taken by yours truly!

We decided to use photos for those too, but this time, I opted to order them from Shutterfly.

I chose the blank photo note cards. They come in boxes of 12 and are blank (duh) inside. Because of this, I used Photoshop to just write our sentiment on the pictures themselves. The cost was about $40 for 4 boxes of 12, so 48 note cards with envelopes. They’re small cards, too - perfect for Thank Yous and juuuust big enough for mailing. (Unfortunately though, they still require a 0.42 stamp!)

Here they are, from afar.

I chose four different pictures, as you can see.

I am overall pretty happy with the quality of the cards. (At least they aren’t *ahem* upside-down like the announcements.) The cardstock was heavier than that of the announcements (which, if you recall, I got from VistaPrint), and the cards themselves just felt higher-quality.

My only complaints are trivial: For one, the picture cracked along the fold when I folded the cards. The cards came flat and really weren’t scored very well. The cracking isn’t noticeable really. Just thought I’d show you.

Additionally, and slightly more annoyingly, the text got cut off on the edges.

I lined everything up according to their templates, and online, it showed that my text was well within the guideline for printing. Yet on three of the four designs, a part of the sentiment got cut off. Not a whole letter or part of a word though, so it wasn’t a huge deal - just a minor eyebrow-raiser. Next time I order something like this from Shutterfly, I’ll be sure to put my text closer to the center of the photo.

Taking pictures and writing about my Thank Yous is one thing. Actually writing out and mailing the Thank Yous? That’s another. I need to get on that!

Stay tuned as I share with you my photo-book printing experiences and some gifts for special people in our lives!

What kind of Thank-You notes will you have, or did you have for your wedding?

Hostesses welcome new members to the hive, become a resource and source of support for other brides, and generally enjoy hanging out with our wonderful community!

We currently have openings for the following boards, as well as many local and cultural boards:

• Accessories
• Announcements
• Destination
• Food
• Gifts
• Honeymoon
• Photo
• Reception

We are currently accepting applications for our newest generation of hostesses. Check out the guidelines here, and if you think you’re cut out to join the team, email us at hostess at weddingbee dot com!

Dusty Gold Aurang shirt and lehenga, $2,000 from Bargello. Purple calla lilies, image from The Knot. Tejani bridal jewelry, image from Maharani. Bridal hair image from Maharani. Brian Atwood gold strappy leather ’Katie’ sandals, $636 from BlueFly.

I’m starting to feel more comfortable with color these days (although I would probably want to still find color that is more subtle if I do go this route). And, if I can find something that I love as much as some of the Bargello outfits (which are made to your measurements, so at least alterations should be minimal) in my price range, I might have to give this even more serious consideration. If I did, though, I would probably avoid the heavier head ornaments and dark makeup often sported by South Asian brides… I still want to look like myself, after all.

Are you deciding between a cultural dress and a Western, traditional white dress? What made you ultimately decide on one style?

(Personal Photo)

(Personal Photo)

I used my handy-dandy glue gun to attach a few to a yellow ribbon I got at Michaels in the clearance bin. My own take on a combination of Martha Stewart’s bunting flags and fabric flower decorations. I’ll either string these from the sides of the Chuppah or use them  to decorate the guest book/family pictures table.

Pretty, no?

Got any other ideas for uses for these?

That’s when I came across one of my favorite vendors to date - our invitation designer! Her work may look familiar; I’ll try to let you figure it out!

Here’s a little sneak peek (that will hopefully leave you wanting more):

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Did any of your DIY ideas turn into BIY (buy it yourself)?

Have a wedding item for sale? Post it with pictures in the Weddingbee classifieds and you might see it featured on the blog!

Other great items for sale:

5000 white silk rose petals - $40

Maggie Sottero Mona Lisa Royale gown - size 6 - $1000

Kirstie Kelly for Disney - Belle Collection Crystal Chandelier Earrings - $65 + shipping

60-foot hot-pink aisle runner - $75

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I decided that I really loved the nautical look of the polka dots and when I bought the red dress above (for $24!!!), I was working under the assumption that I could coax my woolly counterpart into a pair of his service dress khakis, with that cute garrison hat - how romantic and how vintage, right??? Like straight out of a WWII Hollywood flick! I commenced with a search for the perfect red shoes to go with the dress and found these knockouts:

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I wasn’t 100% sure about buying vintage/used shoes and so I sat on them, checking them daily until one day they disappeared. I literally was searching for them with my credit card in hand, ready to purchase. Instead, I set about a frantic search for a replacement and enlisted the help of Lambaid L. She deftly found these awesome pumps:

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The Nine West Tampest pumps fit perfectly with the polka dots of the dress. They look killer and unfortunately feel killer as well. Like many women who have gone before me, I prioritized the look over the feel and wore them for our engagement shoot anyways. My feet hurt for one day, but our pics will last a lifetime. Who am I? I don’t know, but I hope after the whole wedding thing is over that the sensible shoe wearing version of myself reappears. My bunions will thank me later.

As I mentioned before, I was all set to have the Lambster wear his uniform, but we ran into a slight problem. He had been growing his hair out since he got out of the military this past summer. Turns out that business school doesn’t care as much about hair length and he started wearing it either under a ball cap or in more of a Mad Men style with a side part. Wildly out of regulation hair just wouldn’t do with the uniform. I looked back at some inspiration pictures and decided to browse for a vest for him. I bought a great blue button up shirt and charcoal wool vest at H&M for about $70. Then I walked into American Eagle looking for leather flip flops on sale and found the exact same men’s wear on sale for $35. I was hugely embarrassed to walk back into H&M to return the clothes I had bought 5 minutes before - but c’mon, half price? Budget Bride got the best of me. Anyvest, come to momma, my vest wearing man!

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We finished Mr. Lamb’s look off with a pair of gray slacks that he already owned. We didn’t wear our vintage outfits for the whole shoot, so we picked out some causal shot outfits the morning of the shoot.

Are you coordinating a special outfit with your fiance for your engagement shoot?

To start this project, I ordered some fabric from Joann.com and FashionFabricsClub.com, and headed to Michaels (yet again, I swear, since this wedding planning began it hasn’t been more than 2 weeks between trips there… but I’ve finally figured out where most things are in the store!). There wasn’t much in the way of paper mache boxes at Michaels, but they did have a whole aisle of expensive-ish hat boxes. So I only bought one round hat box and headed back home to scour our garage, which is about 1/4th full of random empty boxes. I was looking for a second, smaller, round box, and two square boxes, since my plan was to do a 4 tier box that resembled a cake. You might remember this Photoshop mock up from an earlier post:

Well, I wasn’t able to find two square boxes that were the right size, so I ended up cutting up other boxes and painstakingly refolding them and taping them, so they would be the right size. I also found a small round box that was from a Victoria’s Secret Pink gift set that would work perfectly for the top layer. After hand-making the boxes I stacked them up and this is what they looked like. Not exactly the prettiest boxes, but hey, they were going to be covered!

As you can probably tell, the box that is second from the top will be where the cards go in. I cut the bottoms of the boxes out below there, leaving a small lip for gluing, so the cards will fall into the bottom box. Next, I got started on the CARDS letters, since at this point I was still waiting for my fabric to arrive. I got a purple wood paint marker from Michaels and colored the wood letters, but it didn’t turn out the right color… it was really more of a dusty pink.

So after letting the letters dry, I decided to try some dark purple glitter. Using regular scrapbooking glue, I carefully sprinkled the letters with the glitter. I had to do this in two steps, letting it dry overnight, so I was able to hold the letters without smearing the glue. Using a paper plate was super useful to catch the glitter.

After finishing the letters, it was time to start attaching the fabric to the boxes. I am NOT a fan of hot glue guns, unlike Miss Star, as I seem to get a serious burn each time I use them. And of course, this time was no different.

Using sewing pins, I started by pinning the fabric to the box, much like you would wrap a present with wrapping paper.

Then I carefully lifted up the fabric and started gluing. (all the pins sticking into the box make it look more like a torture device than a pretty card box!)

After carefully gluing the fabric to all four boxes, I had to cut out the slot for the cards, which I did with an X-Acto knife, and then pulled the flaps inside the box, using first glue and then some box tape to secure it.

This is where I got my first and worst glue gun burn, from holding the fabric around the slot. The glue squished out and gave me this on my finger:

But what could I do but continue with the ribbon! I did a strip around the top of each of the four tiers and then I thought the card slot needed something else (and cause it wasn’t quite even enough after the burn fiasco), so I did a border of ribbon around the slot, too.

I hope the slot ends up being big enough for standard sized cards. Here is a reference to the size:

Next I added some pearl stickers to the purple satin ribbon, and added the silk hydrangeas to the top of the top tier.

And finally I glued all the layers together and glued on the CARDS letters.

(Yes, that is Cat Deeley on my TV. I find that a good dose of So You Think You Can Dance and chardonnay makes any DIY project much more fun!) And here is a close up of the pretty dark purple fabric on the bottom layer, since you can’t see it very well in the above picture.

And one last shot, looking down at the box, so you can see the layers (don’t mind my table covered with wedding project crap and the glue gun extension cord!).

So there you have it, one wedding card box! And here is the breakdown of the supplies I used:

• About 1 yard of green fabric, on sale for $24.99 a yard (I bought more because I’ll be using it on another project.
• Light Orchid 3/4″ ribbon, $1.99
• Sparkle Crepe Floral Eggplant fabric, $4.95 a yard
• 3 yards of 1/2″ Taffeta ribbon, $0.45 a yard
• 1 yard of Purple Crinkled Chiffon, $4.75 a yard
• Ultra Fine Transparent Glitter in Purple Passion, $4.40
• 1 package of pearl stickers, $4.87
• 1 round hat box, $12.99
• Wood letters, $0.99 each
• Wood marker, $3.99
• Silk hydrangeas, $7.99 for package of 6 bunches
• Scissors, already had
• Glue gun and glue, already had
• Other boxes, already had

Grand total = $77.22

However, I do have a lot of fabric left over. Since I wasn’t really sure how much I’d need I just bought in full yards. I also have a lot of orchid ribbon, stickers and glitter left over, but am counting the full price I paid for everything here. And of course, if I’d chosen cheaper green fabric, or done it with wrapping paper, this project would have been a lot less expensive, too. But I’m really happy with how it turned out.

Are you planning to make a card box or other type of container to hold your cards?

(all photos in this post were taken by me)

The Greeks love their weddings every bit as much as we do, if not more. While we were on Santorini, we saw THREE separate weddings! I love how they do weddings there, with practically the whole island getting involved. They drive a parade of cars carrying the bridal party and family members through the streets of the villages, honking and making a huge, celebratory ruckus. Then they end the night with a good round of fireworks. I love how they make everyone on the island know that someone is marrying the love of their life that night.

I happened to snap a few pictures of one of the weddings that we stumbled upon, because their receiving line was so long that it ran into the public square in Oia and we happened to accidentally walk right through it. They had at least 300 guests; the whole village was overtaken!

This was unfortunately the best picture I could snap of the bride without being too creepy and stalkerish. She had one heck of a statement dress! And it was sooo sparkly! Most importantly, she looked very, very happy.

Gratuitous detail shot! I loved the huge candle lanterns she had lining the public square and walkway up to the church. And what gorgeous flowers!

This was the stunning church they got married in. And a storm was rolling in, so the sky was absolutely magical.

Part of their firework send-off. What a celebration!

Back in Athens, I couldn’t believe how many bridal stores there were! Most of them were more high-end than this one that I happened to grab a picture of, but there were definitely more wedding salons per capita than there are here, even in NYC! I was so impressed.

And as we walked by this window display at a men’s apparel store right by our hotel in Athens, I couldn’t help but smile and think of our wedding. And wonder when I am going to stop thinking in terms of purple.

What places have reminded you of weddings when you were least expecting it?

If you’re following along, the Star honeymoon recaps are:

Ancient Sites, of Course!

The Colors

Yummy Food!

Getting Around

The Expected Sights

The Unexpected Sights

Keep on loading your inspirational wedding pics to the gallery to see them featured here on the blog! Remember, your images must be under 1MB in size, or they won’t load.

I’ve been watching the Rachel Zoe Project (I have a lot of time for Bravo lately), and loved the way she styled her celebrity clients for the Golden Globes. I was particularly happy to see that both Debra Messing and Anne Hathaway wore navy blue, further convincing me that the colour choices that I made for our wedding are indeed chic!

I loved Anne’s overall look, and plan on using it as inspiration for my bridesmaids!

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I am fairly certain that I want the girls to wear long dresses, and I know that I want them soft and flowy. This way, they will mirror my wedding gown (more on that later). I made these decisions long ago, and Anne is simply modeling my vision.

However, it was Debra Messing’s outfit that had my creative juices flowing. Actually, her dress was kind of a mess, but her accessories were amazing!

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Don’t you think that those emerald earrings against the navy of the dress are just to die for? They are so unexpected and striking! I think that they would look amazing on my girls.

What do you guys think? A dress like this one from Nordstrom:

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Paired with earrings like this from overstock.com

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Hmmm… maybe that doesn’t tie into our navy, ivory, and yellow theme. Hmmm… maybe I don’t care.

What do you think? Would these accessories “go”?

Seriously, how awesome (and hot!) are these?!!

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All photos were taken by RED HEART PHOTOGRAPHY

Check out this awesome carnival themed wedding they shot:

What an entrance!

Love the details!

This is the kind of wedding I would love to be invited to (or crash)!

Would your groom be interested in rocking or trashing the suit?

Mr. Hamster and I wore the same outfits we selected for our engagement photo shoot, because we liked them so much (or rather, we didn’t want to go through the ordeal of picking out new outfits!). We met at the fountain outside the Plaza hotel and then headed into the park.

It was a sunny, weekend morning, and it was still pretty quiet. We first started out by one of Wilson’s favorite hidden-tree spots:

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Not the exact location, but this is so you have an idea (and it was autumn-y instead of spring-y).

We then proceeded to a little creek area, which I never knew existed.

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Cute, no?

Wilson told us to just be natural and romantic, which is difficult for two goofballs like us. After a while though, we got more comfortable, only to look up and see that a small audience had amassed to watch us being all lovey-dovey - some were even taking pictures! Awkward!

We ended the video-shoot sitting on some rocks, with me sitting in Mr. Hammy’s lap, much to his dismay (I don’t look that heavy, but I’m surprisingly dense. Either that, or Mr. Hammy has wimpy legs, ha!).

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Wilson asked us to share a romantic story about ourselves and we came up with… the dumpling story. Not too romantic, but very characteristic of our true gluttonous selves.

One unexpected but pleasant moment of the day occurred when a fellow bride-to-be and her fiance approached us to ask about my dress. Apparently their engagement shoot was coming up, and she was looking and looking for an outfit. I gladly shared my dress info, and they were on their way. Happy to help out a fellow bride-to-be (if you’re reading this, I hope your engagement shoot was a blast!).

Overall, it was a really fun experience and a great way for us to become more comfortable with Wilson. One thing that cracked me up was that the mans kept on staying extremely still - I had to repeatedly remind him that this was a video shoot, not a photo shoot, and motion is appreciated! Silly Mr. Hammy…

If you’ve had your engagement shoot already, how did it go? If it’s upcoming, how are you preparing for it?

So, yes… I knew what my e-ring would look like before we got engaged, but I know it was the right choice for me to be involved in the process. Plus, the memory of picking out something this special together is one of our relationship/pre-engagement/engagement highlights. (I will say, after I decided on my ring it was absolute torture waiting to wear it, but it was so totally worth it!).

Enough with the text and the sentences and the words! (Also, as if there was any question, I got my e-ring photog skillz — and I use the term “skillz” loosely — from the amazing Anne Ruthmann tutorial.)

I used a ceramic kitten mug that I got from a Japanese restaurant as a prop for this one! I think this is my favorite.

I know that this one is a little dark, but look! Just a tiny bit of green sun-flare!
Oh, and that tulle? It’s one of my aforementioned tulle pomanders. Still working on them!

That fabric just so happens to be fabric for our wedding napkins — just for the two of us.

So! There you have it. Like Anne says in the tutorial, I do highly suggest playing around with your camera and doing things you don’t think will work. You’re not wasting film, so try anything and everything! I thought the ceramic kitten mug pic would look weird, but in the end, it turned out great.

Have you taken the time to do an e-ring photo shoot?

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I’m planning to choose my bridal jewelry with my henna in mind—I don’t want to cover too much of the design, but since I think I might prefer not to wear a necklace, I want to wear something on my wrists. In keeping with the South Asian style of the mehndi, I think I’ll probably end up wearing silver (or gold, depending on the color of my dress) bangles (instead of some other kind of bracelet), like these that I found at Nordstrom for $48 and $58.

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The question is, would I need to buy two of each (for each wrist)? If so, I think I’d ask my aunts to send some from Pakistan, or my dad to pick some up the next time he visits. More authentic, less expensive. What do you think?

But it is fun to geek out over all the cool photography styles out there.

So, instead of collecting a series of wedding photographs we liked (we’d be here for years… there are some seriously talented photographers out there), we had some fun daydreaming about photography styles. Here are some interesting photography approaches we thought might be cool for weddings:

Lomography/Holga:

picture link courtesy of lomography.com

Mr. Snow and I often take our Holga with us on vacation. These large plastic toy cameras produce dreamy pictures due to light leaks and simplistic construction. They’re not precise, and you never know what you’ll get, but both b&w and color pictures turn out really cool. Here’s some of our Holga photography (BTW, none of these have had any Photoshop or editing except to crop the negative):

I think B&W Holga photography could make for some amazing wedding shots.

Ring Flash:

Canon MR 14EX - Ring-type flash

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Ring flashes were originally developed by dentists for lighting on close up photographs of teeth. Now they’re used for portraiture and fashion photography (think American Apparel catalogs). They’d be so cool for beautiful portraiture or for weddings in an urban/city setting.

Check out some great ringflash photos here: Orbis Ring Flash Gallery

Tilt Shift:

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Wikipedia does a nice job of explaining this technique here. Wouldn’t tilt shift make for some impressive large groups shots or photos of the venue?

Check out some seriously cool tilt shift photography and links for tutorials here.

Of course, these are “If we had all the time in the world…” ideas. We trust our photographers implicitly and are really excited to see their artistry through our engagement and wedding photography.

What styles of photography do you love? How did you choose your photographer?

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After reading many, many posts on lots of different blogs about budgeting, staying on a budget, how not to break your budget, why not having a budget is wedding suicide - I was planning to establish said budget early on…

Imagine my surprise when my parents said that they weren’t really comfortable putting an end-all-be-all price tag on things. No, no. I’m not saying “we don’t have a budget” like that. It’s just that, being that our wedding is the first in my (immediate) family, and my mom doesn’t read wedding blogs as her second job (pfff) ;), they really just weren’t sure how much things in the wedding industry cost.

After hearing it that way, it seemed a more reasonable. I knew, however, that that meant my parents were trusting me to either know the best deals out there or know how & where to find them. And so, I was a girl on a mission.

They did give us some rough guidelines, like a dollar amount per person for dinner that they wanted to stay below, but really, most things we have tackled individually as we’ve gone along.

Here is how I went about finding the best deals I reasonably could (full posts on each of these important aspects of planning to come, of course)!

The Big Picture - according to costofwedding.com, the average wedding in State College, Pennsylvania runs between $14,534 and $24,223. Now I know that some of you big-city-brides are wishing you were looking at numbers so low, and trust me - I was thankful when I saw them, too. But we have a rather large wedding in the works, so I wasn’t necessarily sure we would be able to apply our budget to those numbers. Regardless, they were a good starting point.

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The Reception Venue - This pretty much was decided for us as one of our venue options was inflexibly out of budget, and one was in budget but unable to accommodate us size-wise. Luckily, our venue is wonderful, big enough, and reasonably-priced (*breathes sigh of relief*).

The Cake - I used The Knot’s local vendors, Wedding Wire’s vendors, and my go-to site for all things PSU Weddings: Nittany Weddings. I ended up with a list of about 5 cake bakers in the area. From reading Weddingbee, I knew that cakes could be costly. Mainly, I knew that I was looking at a per person charge - fondant>butter cream, that special decorations would be extra, and to watch out for delivery charges. After seeing some portfolios and making a few phone calls, we narrowed it down to our top two and set up some meetings. We loved both vendors, but in the end, one proved to be a little less expensive, a lot more flexible, and just generally awesome all around.

The Flowers - Number one: I. Did. My. Research. And I would recommend it to any other bride! If you want flowers (I know I do), but don’t want to spend an arm and a leg, you need to know if what you plan to ask for is expensive or not! I started here to get an idea of what flowers are in season when. Then, I looked at wholesale sites like this and this (mainly because in the beginning I thought I would DIY our bouquets) to get a feel for what flowers are more expensive vs. less expensive - or as I like to think in wedding planning - what will give us the most bang for our buck. Armed with this information and some (tons) of inspiration photos, we headed to vendor meetings. We were supposed to meet with all 3 of the downtown florists (within blocks our of venues), but one canceled at the last minute, so then there were two. I told both florists the same story: I painted them the picture of what I wanted, showed them the photos, and even tried to wow them with my new-found floral knowledge. One of them told me he didn’t like the idea of tall centerpieces. At. All. He also said that my flower choices were “some of the most expensive,” and offered carnations as a reasonable alternative (they aren’t). Luckily, our chosen flower vendor owns her own greenhouse which cuts costs SIGNIFICANTLY, and she applauded my efforts for finding very price-friendly flower options, while also loving my decor ideas instead of shooting them down.

The Dress - The Knot was my lifeline on this one. Their handy “Search by $” feature? Yeah. Pretty much my best friend. I started at “one $”. I noted all of the dresses that I liked and their designers. Same for the “two $” dresses (wasn’t going higher than $$ for the dress). Once I had my list of designers, I visited each of their sites and found the boutiques in my area that carried their lines. Then I cross-referenced each designer’s list of boutiques to find the stores where I would have the most designers to choose from. During my shopping experiences, it was great to be able to walk in and say things like, “I really like Jasmine and Mikaella gowns” right off the bat. This also kept me from getting into any gowns that were way out of budget! It ended up working out wonderfully, and I got my dream dress at a fantastic price!

The Photog - This was time consuming and difficult, but very, very worth it in the end. Again, I used Nittany Weddings, as well as the Wedding Photojournalist Association for starters. I ended up with a list of about 30 photographers - some local and some out of the surrounding major cities - Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Baltimore/DC. One afternoon, I painstakingly (who am I kidding, I love wedding photography :), visited each photographer’s site and looked through the majority of their galleries. I made an Excel spreadsheet that included things such as: First Impression, Likes, Dislikes, Bonuses (for things like E-Session included and Boudoir Available), Location, and Cost, and I filled it in as I went. A lot of sites did not explicitly list costs, so once I had reviewed all the portfolios, I emailed the top ten to get pricing information if I didn’t already have it. Once I had all of the information, I was able to narrow it down to the top 5. This is when I brought Mr. Burger, Cheeseburger Mom, and Cheeseburger Mom in Law into the mix (come on, like anyone is crazy enough to look at 30 photographers’ work besides me?). They let me know their preferences, and I sent out some feeler emails on behalf of our wedding bunch. After quite a bit of communication with one photographer in particular, I just knew she was “the one”. I can’t wait to share her amazing work with all of you!

Aside from these tips, I am DIYing as much as possible within reason. Burger and I pay for little things here and there, but most of the big ticket items are graciously being handled by our parents - the most amazing people. Burger and I try to keep things in monetary perspective, and I think our collective parents appreciate that… although Cheeseburger Mom knows that my occasional wedding spending sprees can get ridiculous, but she has been wonderful about letting me get them out of my system without strangling me. Thanks, Mom!

How did you deal with creating a budget? Is anyone else flying blindly without a set-in-stone budget?

He said I could have all of the pictures if I let them have Mr. Poodle one weekend a month (gosh, they are so funny!) and because I agreed… here some of the pics!!

{ Image by RimRunnerPhoto, aka Groomsman Scott }

{ Image by RimRunnerPhoto, aka Groomsman Scott }

I had to use one of my bouquet pins to attach Mr. Poodle’s bout, so each time I hugged him or leaned on him too hard, he got a pinch from the bout.

{ Image by RimRunnerPhoto, aka Groomsman Scott }

{ Image by Will Carlson aka Groomsman W }

{ Image by RimRunnerPhoto, aka Groomsman Scott }

{ Image by RimRunnerPhoto, aka Groomsman Scott }

FMIL B wrote our names in the sand so we could have some cute, cute pics.

{ Image by RimRunnerPhoto, aka Groomsman Scott }

{ Image by RimRunnerPhoto, aka Groomsman Scott }

And of course I had to show some of the really goofy pics we are used to taking…

{ Image by RimRunnerPhoto, aka Groomsman Scott }

Ninja Bride got into me for a few of my pics!

{ Image by RimRunnerPhoto, aka Groomsman Scott }

{ Image by Will Carlson aka Groomsman W}

Only one of my bridesmaids could be there, so K and I had our portraits…

{ Image by RimRunnerPhoto, aka Groomsman Scott }

… and played COOL on our way from the parking lot.

{ Image by Will Carlson aka Groomsman W}

Both our photographers and groomsmen had their portraits with Mr. Poodle, too!

Pictures taken by Bridesmaid K and me:

{ Image by RimRunnerPhoto, aka Groomsman Scott }

{ Image by RimRunnerPhoto, aka Groomsman Scott }

Well, before the negotiations for the pictures, the groomsmen wanted to have Mr. Poodle all for themselves, but I put up a really good fight.

{ Image by RimRunnerPhoto, aka Groomsman Scott }

{ Image by RimRunnerPhoto, aka Groomsman Scott }

After all of the pictures and the arrival of our last guest, we set up everything in place to start the ceremony!!

{ Image by Will Carlson aka Groomsman W}

We had so much fun with the pictures; it definitely help us calm the nerves. We were ready to start!
Stay tuned for the next post: our legal ceremony!

Want to catch up on our story?

The Poodles Make It Legal: Crafting and more crafting
The Poodles Make It Legal: Unexpected Gifts
The Poodles Make It Legal: The Dress
The Poodles Make It Legal: The Plan

(At our friend’s wedding summer 2008, photo by Mr. Cola’s dad)

We’d been friends for about 2.5 years and roommates for 1.5 years before we even started dating back in college. Fast forward 5.5 years from when we got together, and imagine us on a Halloween/Mr. Cola’s birthday weekend in Vegas. After surprising him with a limo ride to Casa di Amore for dinner and then tickets to Fantasy at the Luxor (a, cough, “adult” show), he was one happy Mr. (I know, I’m such a good girlfriend, right?).

We were sitting in our seats, waiting for the show to start, when we somehow got on the subject of hair. My hair, specifically, and how it’s getting so long, but I’m not going to cut it until we get married, if we ever get married. And it was then, sitting in the audience of the boobie show, that he told me I should go pick out a ring. Or, actually, he offered to go ring shopping with me, but since he can’t even stand to shop for himself (I do all his clothes shopping for him), I offered to just go with my mom to pick it out, and let him know what I selected.

(After eating at Casa di Amore, before heading to the show, photo by the limo driver)

Now for those of you who like a surprise, this might not have been a great moment for you, but Mr. Cola and I know each other so well, and I was on cloud 9 to be asked to pick my own ring. I wasn’t 100% sure when I’d get it, but I was super stoked to get to pick, since Mr. Cola’s taste in jewelry is probably jewelry that tastes good… like a Ring Pop or a candy necklace!

I’d known for, well, years that I wanted a three stone princess cut ring, with some bling on the band. After an afternoon browsing several stores with my ex-BFF, I discovered Verragio. Pretty much every one of his rings is sooo hot, and I wanted them all! After scouring the website and narrowing it down to about 9 of his rings I wanted to see in person, I went with my mom and aunt to the store in San Francisco with the biggest selection of Verragio rings. The saleslady at Steve Padis was super helpful, and led me to my wonderful ENG-0283 (ohhh, such a romantic name, LOL). I promptly went home and made a flier with pictures and all the details for Mr. Cola and snuck it onto his computer desktop one night, for him to discover at his leisure.

Now, mind you, this was back at the end of November 2008 that I found my dream ring. I really had no idea when I’d actually get it, but had hinted heavily that I didn’t want it for Christmas (our families don’t live close enough for us to spend it together), and he knows that I think Valentine’s Day is a joke of a holiday. But, we were going to Mexico for a friend’s wedding at the end of February… wouldn’t that be romantic, hint, hint, HINT!

So, off we went to Puerto Vallarta. We attended our friend’s lovely wedding, went on a boat and snorkel trip to Las Caletas, lounged on the beach, went zip-lining through the jungle, went to the most awesome zoo where we fed bears, monkeys, giraffes and zebras, and I got to play with a 2 month old baby lion and 4 month old jaguar. It was day 7 of our 11 day trip, and I was starting to wonder—-was I going to get my ring? Of course I didn’t ask, but I was starting to have doubts, since it seemed I would have seen it in the safe or something?

(Me playing with the baby jaguar and lion, photo taken by Mr. Cola)

So on day 7 of our trip, we were off on another snorkel trip, which turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, since we didn’t get much time for snorkeling and never went in search of whales, as was advertised. We also got back about 1.5 hours late, so we decided to just have dinner at the hotel and take it easy for the night. We ate and then went back to our room to try out our jacuzzi. For that night and the next we were staying in the honeymoon suite at one of the 4 hotels we stayed in, and had an awesome wrap around terrace with our own private jacuzzi.

(Our Jacuzzi and private terrace, photo taken by me)

To set the mood, just imagine bubbles, champagne, a warm Jacuzzi on a warm night, stars in the sky, twinkling city lights in the distance… a very nice night on vacation! After we were done using the Jacuzzi, we decided to put on bathrobes and sip some more champagne on the loungers at the other end of our terrace. We were sitting there for a while, just looking at the stars, when at one point Mr. Cola reached in the pocket of his robe, and suddenly I realized what was about to happen! He came around to my lounger, and got on his knee and asked me if I was happy, and said he wanted to make me happy for the rest of my life… or something along those lines! Once I knew it was coming, I was too excited to pay very close attention. Of course I said yes… or maybe si, since we’d been speaking so much Spanish all week! It was exactly 1 month before our 6 year dating anniversary, and it was perfect!

Some sunset ring pictures taken the next night (apparently he’d hidden the ring in the bottom of his tennis shoe that we’d used all week to store our passports and cell phones in, inside the safe!):

Mr. Cola and I celebrating the next night (can you tell I’m showing off my ring behind his beer?!):

Were you surprised when your fiance proposed, even if you picked out the ring yourself?

Our friend Tina happens to be an amazing wedding photographer, and she graciously brought her camera along and snapped some photos. This is good, because I don’t remember anything about the dinner. At all. I was so nervous, like a shaking and red-faced kind of nervous. I am not good at hosting parties! I worried about the food, the music, our families meeting, our decision to not provide alcohol, the planned surprise. The whole night is a blur in my mind, but luckily I can explain it to you through photos!

We had a local Mexican food restaurant cater everything for us. We had a vegan feast of quesadillas, enchiladas, tamales, salads, chips and drinks. Sadly, my stomach was such a mess that I didn’t eat a single bite of the dinner, OR of the ice cream sundae bar that we had for dessert. I fully regret this now.

Children played!

Speeches were made!

After dinner, the tables were cleared for our surprise guest! We had hinted that there would be something special happening at our dinner, but I don’t think anyone quite knew what it was it. We had a professional dance lesson! The instructor, who had been teaching us a routine for our first dance, agreed to come and teach a mini swing lesson. It was a great surprise and everyone had fun dancing with each other and learning new steps.

Learning the basics!

Showing off some hot moves!

Mr. Sprinkle danced a song or two with my mom!

I danced a song or two with my kidlets!

I danced with our dance teacher!

Then everyone but me enjoyed some ice cream. Thus ends our rehearsal dinner…

It was short, but sweet, and even though I was a wreck at the time, the pictures don’t show it. I am notoriously bad at parties and will either hide in a dark corner or have a cocktail (or three… or four…) to relax, neither of which was an option here! Luckily, everyone I know understands how I feel at social gatherings, and they laughed off my skittishness as “Typical Miss Sprinkle Behavior”.

After all of the guests left (and while our darling, sweet friends were cleaning up), Mr. Sprinkle and I shared a quick private moment and I presented him with his gift. It was getting late at that point, so Gina Sprinkle and I said goodbye to everyone and headed over to our hotel room. She was exhausted and promptly fell asleep, while I was suddenly starving and ordered some room service. I had the hotel piece together a real meal for me, and since it was the first actual food I had managed to eat in days, it tasted amazing.

As soon as we stepped into the hotel room my nervousness disappeared. It was like something snapped and it all fell into place, and it was so, so peaceful. I think the fact that we were doing the planning, setup, clean up, etc., for the dinner made it harder on me than it should have been. I wasn’t at all worried about the wedding the next day since I had so many people helping out to make things run smoothly. I knew that the next day I wouldn’t have to do anything except show up!

I spent my last night as a single lady laying in a fluffy bed, eating French fries and writing up my final post as a “Miss bee”. Then I fell into a deep relaxing sleep. It was perfect.

(All photos in this post: Tina Carlone Photography)

You can load up to 45 minutes of video material and break it up into 5 chapters, and it can be all recharged via your computer. So, you can combine the best of both worlds—photography and videography—in one place!

This technology would make for some killer wedding invites, too. You can tell your love story, proposal story, and invite your guest via video right in a card!

Admittedly, this concept was kind of hard to grasp for me (I’m such an old foagie!), until I saw a video of it in action:

Keeping your video in the same place as your wedding pictures sounds like a really cool idea! I haven’t purchased our wedding album yet, and it’s something I’d definitely love to have, especially considering that I don’t think I’d ever take the time to watch our wedding video—but if it were sitting right out on our coffee table, I imagine we’d take the time to watch it if guests came around to look at our album.

What do you think?

We had an early excursion called the Hot Springs Tour, so we got dressed in beach wear and met with our tour group. The ship was tendered, so we got picked up by a smaller boat that looked like a pirate ship and set out to sea.

We passed the volcano that actually created the island of Santorini, and admired the gorgeous views from the boat.

When our tour guide told us we were getting off on the volcano and climbing to the top, we felt a little, umm, unprepared! Nowhere in our itinerary did it say anything about hiking up a volcano, which is the reason I wore flip flops. Several other people in our tour group were in the same boat (ha!) as me, so I didn’t feel quite as stupid for wearing sandals. The soil was a bit rocky (read: painful) but we were in Greece and there was no way I was going to miss out on climbing to the top of an active volcano.

We took in the views of Santorini and the sea, learned a little about the history of Greece, and after about an hour we were at the top. It was hot, smelled of sulfur, and was quite a workout, but it was worth it. I’ll let the views speak for themselves.

Proof that the volcano is still active: you could actually see steam coming out of the craters, and it was really hot if you put your hand near it.

No wonder it smelled like sulfur…

The hike back down was much quicker and slightly slippery, but we survived! We got back on the boat and headed to our next destination: the hot spring. The boat parked a few hundred feet away, and we jumped in the sea and swam to the spring.

The spring itself wasn’t as warm as we expected; it was more like little pockets of warmth that would move around. You know when you feel a warm spot in a lake and worry that someone just peed there? That’s what it felt like! It wasn’t as luxurious as it sounded. The water was really glittery and red because there was so much iron in it. It actually stayed on our skin when we got out, which was a little gross. Honestly, I much preferred the swim TO the hot spring more than I enjoyed actually being in the hot spring, but overall it was a fun and totally new experience for both of us. And the views from the spring weren’t too shabby either.

I would definitely recommend taking a hot springs tour in Santorini if you can!
After the tour we went back to the ship and showered (we were sweaty and covered in iron!) and then took a tender boat over to the island. We took the cable car up to Fira, which was an adventure in itself. We feared for our lives a little and prayed that the engineers that built those little cars up the side of the cliff knew what they were doing. We tried not to look down, but we couldn’t resist.

Thankfully we made it up safe and sound!

We ate lunch at probably one of the most touristy restaurants in Santorini, but we were starving and it was one of the first places we saw. I had the stuffed tomatoes and peppers and have been craving them every day since! They were delicious. My husband (I still don’t get sick of saying that) had the Greek sampler, which came with a stuffed tomato, moussaka, and some kind of potatoes, all of which were also good. I should know, I sampled all of it.

When our tummies were full we walked around and peeked into some of the gift shops in search for souvenirs and gifts. We wanted to walk to the black sand beaches, but we didn’t have a map or much time left and it was starting to rain. So instead we walked off the beaten path a bit to take in a little more of the Grecian scenery.

Then it was time to head back to the boat. We thought about taking a donkey down the cliff, but we felt so bad for the poor little guys we couldn’t bear to make them carry us down! So, back to the deathly cable cars it was.

We made it down alive, and hitched a tender boat back to the ship. We said goodbye to Santorini knowing that we will be back again someday. It was one of our favorite places we’ve ever visited.

When FFIL Pudding saw me ironing again last week, he said: “You know, ironing was one of the first things that my wife taught me when we got married, so that I could iron my own shirts!”

This got me thinking about why I was so concerned about ironing Mr. P’s clothes. Am I trying much too hard to fit into the stereotype of what a “wife” is supposed to do for her husband? Am I forming habits in our relationship that will forever box me into being Mr. P’s glorified housekeeper?

Upon further thought, I came to the conclusion that when I iron Mr. Pudding’s shirts, I really do it for me.

You see, Mr. P doesn’t care whether or not his shirts are ironed. He could go to work wrinkly every single day and not let that affect his productivity or self esteem. I, on the other hand, love to see him in a crisp, ironed  dress shirt. I think that he looks so handsome and clean, not to mention, grown up! I must admit however, that there is an old school Polish part of me that believes that the way he looks reflects on me as his wife. I realize that this is an irrational way of thinking that has been forced on me by my traditional upbringing. Alas, being from an old school Polish family has rubbed off on me, and not always in positive ways.

Do you iron your partner’s shirt?

Enter Windy Jennings of Weddings By Windy (aka lifesaver and wedding goddess extraordinaire!). I really cannot say enough about this woman. If I were to write a review on her with a rating system it would be an A with so many plus signs afterward you would think she was paying me to say it (which of course she’s not, I just love her that much). She not only made me love her but also made me realize the value and importance of having a planner or coordinator for your wedding. We used Windy for her “partial coordination” package even though we set out looking for just day of services. I didn’t even know there was a middle level between DOCs and the whole shebang, but it turns out a lot of coordinators offer personalized packages to handle whatever small or large tasks you need help with.

For an overly emotional gal like myself this came in very handy when the tea room where I had signed a contract with to have my bridesmaid’s luncheon decided to go out of business without telling me. I got a very calm email from Windy letting me know she had seen the notice on their site and was already contacting them. Oh, and to make it that much better she had a few places already thought out that might work instead. Emotional bride over here would have been bawling her eyes out and screaming her head off if I had found the notice myself. Never mind the HUGE crisis that was averted at the wedding when I forgot to wear my garter and decided to just forget the whole toss completely. Little did I know that Mr. Cloud had big plans for the garter toss, and if someone did not go to my room and get it I would be ruining months of his planning. Windy, cool as a cucumber, responded that I should really have someone go get it because I wouldn’t want to regret missing the tradition and never once hinted what a frenzy I was sending everyone into. (I know, I am being very vague about the huge surprise, but I have to save something for recaps, people!)

My point is, be it big or small, a planner just might save your day (and sanity) in similar ways and I highly encourage every bride-to-be to find a planner to become your BFF, at least for the day, much like Windy had to become mine for a few weeks (whether she liked it or not :)). Mama Cloud and I still agree that working a planner into the budget, even when we still didn’t want to admit we really needed one, is the best decision we ever made. Because really, the church lady just might not bother to fluff your veil right before you walk down the aisle. And more than any other day you need someone on your side fighting for your vision, or at least giving you a little fluff.

The storm clouds and wind really started to pick up.

Beyond these professional pictures, our friends got some funny pictures of this whole photo shoot taking place.

My two awesome MOHs waiting to go outside for group shots.

Photo by Claire Barthelemy

My MOH put lip gloss on me before we went outside.

Photo by Claire Barthelemy

Outside, the bridesmaids borrowed the groomsmen’s coats to keep warm.

Photo by Claire Barthelemy

Running back to base camp, they tried to prove they could handle the cold; they were strong.

Photo by Clare Barthelemy

But they ran anyway.

Photo by Kimberley-Marie Blanchot

How did we get here?

Mr. CB and I road-tripped it to Colorado.
I spent a peaceful morning with my girls.
Followed by a rowdy bachelorette party.
Two days before the wedding, we fought.
Then, we made up.
On Saturday, Mr. CB recuperated while I hiked with friends.
We celebrated our rehearsal dinner.
Sunday Morning: The girls got ready.
And the guys got ready.
Mr. CB and I had our First Look.
Budget Breakdown: Bouquets and Bouts.
Portraits of the bride and groom.

A: I get this question all.the.time. And to be perfectly honest, unless I’m lugging around bulky professional gear, I typically rely on my iPhone for quick images to upload to Twitter or Facebook. But if you have a little peanut in your family’s future or perhaps just want to make some nice images from your honeymoon, purchasing a digital SLR is the way to go. You won’t regret it.

SLR, by the way, stands for single-lens reflex. The biggest difference between a digital SLR and a point & shoot (hereafter referred to as p&s) is you can change the lens. And unlike a p&s camera that uses an LCD display, SLR cameras use a mirror to show the image that will be captured in a viewfinder (more thorough geek tech explanation found here). By manipulating the digital SLR’s camera settings, you’ll be able to capture action, photograph in low light, zoom in tight on those precious baby toes, and print frame-worthy quality enlargements as you see them in your camera’s viewfinder.

In my humble opinion, there are only two brands of cameras worth looking into: Canon and Nikon. I learned how to shoot on a manual SLR Nikon in high school and switched to Canon in 2005 when they seemed to be leapfrogging Nikon on offering the best professional cameras and lenses. At this point, they’re still neck & neck, both producing a consistently reliable quality product. You can’t go wrong with either.

You can get a decent p&s camera for under $400. You’ll need to invest a bit more to upgrade to a digital SLR, however, so don’t let the prices shock you. According to Consumer Reports, these are the top rated consumer models for according to image quality, useful features, battery life and weight (listed in order of price):

Read more…

Last week, after seeing our wedding pictures for the first time, I let down my guard and revisited the wedding sites whose posts had piled up in my Google Reader. I immediately regretted it. The wonderful memories for our wedding day were clouded by so many things I wish I had done. I wish we had taken more pictures with our wedding party, I wish I had remembered to bring our invitations to be photographed, I wish we had hired a videographer, I wish I had made enough time to make signs for our chairs, I may have even regretted not carrying real flowers, and the list could go on and on.

I really felt bad about it for about two days, but then I remembered that we had a pretty good day. If anything did not go according to plan, we were oblivious to it. After the ceremony, I felt complete happiness—a feeling I never expected. (I mean I figured I would be happy, but not that happy, right?) And best of all, Mr. Beagle and I are now married and it is better than I ever imagined. It definitely feels different—a very, very good different.

It seems strange to me that so much time and planning go into one day that lasts a total of 6 or 7 hours and then it’s over in what feels like a few seconds. I can’t wrap my head around that just yet. I’m just trying to remember our day, one moment at a time, so that I don’t forget what a wonderful day it was.

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In the first few months of our wedding planning, we’ve been pretty humbled by the process of planning an eco-conscious affair on a budget. In many instances, our desire to take the more environmentally friendly route has meant we’d also need to go green(er) in terms of expense.

It has been a fascinating and eye-opening experience.

I think it is important for Mr. Snow and I to fess up and admit that we don’t live perfectly green in any terms. We’re just normal people who try to make conscious choices about what we consume, toss out, eat, and about how we live our lives. That said, we know our wedding will have waste and that we’ll buy stuff we won’t need. We just hope to minimize wastefulness… basically, to do the best we can with what we have.

And it has been a hard to accept that our attempts to decrease wastefulness often mean we have to spend more money. It is kind of a paradox, and one we knew going in, but living it has been a little tough.

There are lots of green wedding guides out there. Here are few we consulted early on in our wedding planning:

• National Geographic’s Guide to Green Weddings
• Planet Green’s Top Green Wedding Tips
• The Green Bride’s Green Wedding FAQ

After reading these and many others, we thought we were prepared to simply make the greener choice at each turn. The guides make it sound easy to do—it just becomes part of the planning. Needless to say, it has been much more challenging than we thought. Here are a few of the quandaries we’ve encountered and decisions we’ve faced in the wedding planning thus far:

Dinnerware. We thought we could lessen our environmental impact by not using disposable dinnerware, but it turns our that rental dishes cost more than our budget allows. Meanwhile, our caterer provides all the disposable dinnerware we need as part of the catering expenses. For the hundreds of dollars we’d spend to rent reusable china place settings, we could also buy carbon offsets for the event. We have some thoughts about hybridizing this area to make it greener that I’ll talk about in later posts, but it is a challenge.

Guests. We’re planning to have between 80-100 guests. We love our family and friends and didn’t want to adopt a smaller guest list to be more green, even though it is a totally viable option for lowering both expenses and waste.

Printing. Soy ink and recycled/post-consumer paper are both a bit more expensive than other kinds of printing.

Napkins. You’ve probably read the saga. It continues.

Food. Local and organic food often costs more because it is produced on smaller farms who produce smaller yields with more intensive labor required to care for the crops. We can handle those extra costs when purchasing groceries (most of the time), but for an event like a wedding, we just can’t afford it. We thought about the plated dinner option to avoid food waste, but it is impractical for our venue. We’ll make sure the food gets eaten, taken home as leftovers, or donated.

Flowers. We love our florist. Still, for the same reason that local/organic food often costs more, so does local and sustainable floral design. We’ve splurged here, but this is one of the few places where we’ll be able to do that.

Cake/Dessert. Luckily, we’ve found a cake shop who uses local ingredients and has some seriously delicious-looking cakes. We’ll meet with them in January. At this point, we don’t know how this will work with our budget, but we’re optimistic.

Carbon offsets. We’re planning to purchase these. There are several well-designed websites that help you price out your event and purchase offsets, and this is actually an easy and reasonably affordable way to lessen the impact of our event.

Favors. We’re keeping these to a minimum and making them very personal (I’ll give more details about our favors in a later post… I’m really excited about them).

I’m sure many more issues will come up, and we acknowledge that we may not be able to do things exactly as we’d planned.

We’ll just continue to do our best with what we have…

How’d you prioritize the green aspects in your wedding? Is there anything you’ve had to sacrifice for the sake of your budget? Are there any ideas for greening on a budget you discovered while planning your wedding?

At least, the bride would like to wear Prada. Maybe if I bought them now and wore them a few times first they could be my something old? (Ha!) And it would reduce the per-wear cost? Or even better! You could buy them in a size 8 and lend them to me on my wedding day, and they could be my something borrowed? I swear, I would even give them back… eventually… !

Who is your dream shoe designer? Do you have a particular style that you absolutely love?

We put up our OOT groomsmen at a local B&B not 5 minutes from Mr. Sunbeam’s parents’ house and this is where they all gathered to get dressed and get Mr. Sunbeam ready to say “I do”. Unfortunately our photographer’s assistant didn’t take many pictures of the men getting ready because I guess he didn’t like the lighting, but I’ll share the few he did take.

BIL Sunbeam, going over the poem he chose to read for our ceremony.

Mr. Sunbeam writing a love note to give to his best man #1 who was very excited deliver to it me before our ceremony.

One of the best men vesting up. I had jokingly told him he had to grow his hair out, since he’d been shaving his head for years, and he did! Granted, it was a slight mohawk, but I think he looked great. Much to my surprise, all the groomsmen showed up with a grey vest, white shirt, and grey pants in hand! If you recall, we let them each pick out their own outfit, but gave them color guidelines, and it was a nail biter wondering if someone would end up coming without an outfit!

Second best man and BIL Sunbeam helping Mr. Sunbeam get ready for his big day.

Total concentration.

Now for the finishing touches - pocket square and tie clip.

And shablam! Mr. Sunbeam becomes Groombeam! All ready for his bride-to-be.

That’s it for photos of the men getting ready. Had I been there I would have insisted on more pictures be taken, but at least we got a few. You’ll see later how great the men all looked in their various vests and matching ties that Mr. Sunbeam gifted them, along with something more personal. Seeing Mr. Sunbeam in a suit reminded me of our High School proms and how I used to tell him he looked like a vampire. Well, today he looked like a handsome groom!

Need to catch up with the Sunbeams?

Previously:

• The Dress, Shoes, & Rings
• Let’s Get Beautiful!
• Papery Details
• One last busy night
• Dessert and an impromptu photo shoot
• Pasta & practice makes perfect
• Sunbeam final fling!
• Five days and counting

Up Next: A last minute something blue.

Technically, it’s spring.

Usually, it’s still winter.

Rarely, it’s not snowing or raining.

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According to The Weather Channel’s My Wedding Weather Planner, the information for our wedding month and location is as follows:

• Cloudy - 16-17 days
• Less than 32 degrees - 23-27 days
• Rain - 11-13 days (average 3.37 inches in March)
• Snow - 6 days (average 9-12 inches in March)

And specifically for our wedding date:

Average Temperature (High/Low): 50/31 degrees

• 2009 Actual Temperatures (High/Low): 56/33 degrees
• 2008 Actual Temperatures (High/Low): 45/32 degrees
• 2007 Actual Temperatures (High/Low): 79/55 degrees

(HEY 2007! I’ll take it!)

Sounds like the BEST time and place to get married, right? Yeah, I thought you’d agree. You might remember why we’re getting married in March. It really wasn’t negotiable, so we’ve tried our best to embrace our potentially rain or snow-filled wedding date. Really, I’ve just been trying to be prepared - both mentally (so as to avoid wedding day meltdowns) and physically. This post is about the latter.

Bring on the rain (*crosses fingers*)!

Early in the planning process, I noticed lots of gorgeous summer weddings with bridal parties toting parasols:

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While they were SO pretty, I knew a dainty parasol would not help to ward off any wedding day rain, so I started looking for cute umbrellas. This is when I first came to know and love Bella Umbrella. This online retailer gives you the option of renting or buying vintage umbrellas or buying their Signature Bella Umbrella new - customized for you. There are a ton of fantastic vintage rental options to choose from, and I quickly fell in love with this one:

The $30 dollar/day rental price tag seemed reasonable at the time, especially once I clicked over to their customizable Signature Bella page, where the umbrellas start at $99 (but OMG, do I still have such an urge to splurge on this beauty!):

Then I began looking for more price-friendly options. I still loved the vintage look of the Bellas, knew I wanted the stick type, and of course, I preferred to stay within my color scheme. I was pleasantly surprised when I found myself on Totes’ site. They too have some bridal umbrellas and some basic stick umbrellas, all around $16-25 dollars - to own! Take a peek at what they’ve got to offer:

Auto-open Stick in Balsam $16; Auto-open Satin Bridal in Porcelain $25

What great, reasonably-priced alternatives! I ordered a few of the green and one porcelain, knowing that if the day was rain-less, I could give them to friends and family or sell them later!

I was feeling pretty proud of myself for being so prepared when I saw this picture featured in Kate Parker’s Rainy Day Weddings post on Weddingbee PRO:

Galoshes! Why didn’t I think of that! Look at the horrible weather going on in this photo. And yet, the beautiful bride looks calm and collected - she’s not worrying about destroying her wedding shoes! GENIUS!

Even though rain boots are very popular, I had never bought a pair. This seemed like the perfect reason to own some now, especially since I knew I would have them for the big day (just in case!). After a quick search on eBay, I found these for almost half of what Amazon was charging for them - and in my size!

Cute, no? See my wedding purples? There was no way I could pass these up. Plus, I am still searching for my final “Something Blue”, so if worst comes to worst, and it’s raining, I know I’ll have one. Plus, now I know that in the event of rain my gorgeous shoes will remain intact since they will only have to be on my feet once we are in the clear inside a building.

But what about snow?

Well, I figure that the galoshes will come in handy in this situation as well - the snow will definitely do just as much damage to my shoes as rain. But, hello, it has the potential to be freeeeezing! What’s a bride to do?

We’ve all seen the gorgeous options in furs, but that just really isn’t me, plus I am looking for a more re-wearable option. That’s when the light went off in my head. Am I the only one who gets about 5,000 Victoria’s Secret catalogs each year? Probably not. I always look through their coats section thinking, ‘wow there are a lot of white coats in here, weird.’ Now? Not so weird!

Their coats are priced around what I would normally pay for a winter jacket anyway, and there are some ridiculously cute options. And they are designed for everyday so they can, of course, be worn everyday after the wedding!

Victory!

Take a look at these great options:

Did you put a lot of thought into your wedding day weather? What are you doing to prepare?

As I was catching up with last week’s posts, I ran across Michelle and Josh’s story. Michelle’s words reached out of the computer and gave me an empathetic back rub:

What made our wedding sane was that we got married. I was really good at having the occasional ’let’s just elope’ freak out, but thankfully Josh was even better at the ’at the end of this, you will be my wife’ speech.

It’s been a rough few weeks as we’ve headed into the homestretch and have found the million loose ends that need to be tied. I had a ’let’s just elope freak out’ recently (a 5 page email melt down about how nothing seemed to coming together and everyone was against me) and this is what the future Mr. Lamb wrote to me:

One overall thought I have about the ceremony is that I want you to remember that the most special thing about the ceremony is that you and I will be getting married in front of people we love in a place that is special to us. Everything else is just material.

That’s why I love him and that is why I’m marrying him.

So here’s to remembering what is important about a marriage and what’s not worth going insane over (heel height, reception dresses, band stages, and sold out feather boas). You’ll be getting married!!!

Have you had a freak out recently? What do you do to center yourself and remind yourself what’s important?

I check them twice, re-organize them, and do a little Hammy “High 5!” when I cross things off. Itineraries? Love ’em . I like to know exactly where I’m going and when I’m going to be there. Checklists and worksheets? Up there with cookies (Okay, maybe not, but what really *is* up there with cookies?). So when it came time for my final dress search I wanted it to be just as logical and organized. The result?

The Hammy Dress Worksheet

(*Okay, so I don’t really want people to cry when they see me walk down the aisle, but I would be really touched if they did!)

Each member of my dress-judging committee received this worksheet and evaluated potential dresses based on both shazam-ness and tear-jerking strength. I even drew a basic silhouette of a trumpet gown to provide an area to visually capture dress detail, should the judge desire.

After recovering from roll-on-the-floor laughter induced by the ludicrousness of this worksheet, my friends actually filled it out! What started as a crazy little joke for myself actually turned out to be quite useful! Huzzah!

How did you approach your dress search?

Have a wedding item for sale? Post it with pictures in the Weddingbee classifieds and you might see it featured on the blog!

Other great items for sale:

Fascinator and/or ivory birdcage veil - $10 for veil, $30 for fascinator

Romona Keveza RK933 gown - size 12 - $2700

170 brand-new red Chinese take-out boxes with wire handle - $50 for all

Two J.Crew “Sophia” silk chiffon dresses in tulip (pink) - size 0 and size 6 - $80 each or both for $150

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Yeah, well, that was then, and this is now.

We’re officially six months out and *gulp* I am so over it. I’ve spent almost a whole 365 days thinking about our upcoming wedding, and to be honest, I’m a bit sick of it at this point. In my opinion, our engagement was way too long. If I could go back and do it over again, I would have given us six months to a year max to plan. It’s gotten to the point where I’m just losing steam, I’m losing motivation, and I just want to get. it. over. with. I can’t tell you how many times in the last few weeks I have seriously considered scrapping it all and just eloping.

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But no, as I said, it’s too late for that. It’s all too involved, we’re in too deep. The date’s been set, the vendors booked, deposits have been made, the dress has been purchased, and there’s no going back and changing the date now. It’s full on go time, whether we feel like it or not. Now all that’s left to do is buck up, man up, and get our rears in gear! Easier said than done, right?

So, ladies with long engagements, am I alone in feeling this way? Did you ever get to the point where you just wanted to say “enough already, let’s just do this!”?

FMIL Pudding has been asking me to think about sending Save the Dates, since her family is spread out all across the USA, and will be traveling to the Greater Toronto Area for the wedding. I hadn’t really thought about sending these out, because they are not customary for Polish weddings. Actually, I have never received one myself!

Nevertheless, I realized the importance of getting the word out ahead of time so that people could plan their vacations appropriately, so I started searching for inspiration (anyone else out there believe that searching the internet for ideas is the hardest and most complicated element of DIY?).

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I have fallen in love with these fabric backed invitations, and am thinking of incorporating this idea into our STDs.

Anyone else using fabric in some part of their wedding stationery?

Although, I have no clue how long it takes to get a pocket square just right.

The day of, I had a hint as to what Mr Frenchie was up to the morning of our wedding. My uncle called to get his cell phone number and that is when I found out Mr Frenchie was trying to get his shoes shined. Groomsman JP stopped by our parents’ room a few hours later to drop off a bouquet of flowers from Mr Frenchie, so I knew he’d been to the store. But, other than that, I didn’t know what he was up to until I saw these pictures.

Have a told you all how much I LOVE the country look of our venue? Because I love it! The French Bulldog style is very modern most days, but we like to think we’re ’A little bit country and a little bit rock ‘n’ roll modern’ and we think our wedding definitely showed that.

Boys are silly!

They even shared wine for those pre-ceremony jitters. Mr Frenchie was so worried about standing up in front of all those people during the ceremony. I’m really glad Groomsman JP got them a bottle to share.

I promise, he shared. See?

Is your groom nervous about being in front of all of those people?

Up next: getting ready to walk down the aisle

This is a sample invitations suite mock up (note, some of this will be changing, but it gives you a good idea of our color scheme. I will definitely be using the stylized flower and vine with flowers motif throughout):

A closer look at our STD magnets, which will accompany our insanely excessive STD cards (more on those later!):
A mock up of a potential program design:Placecards mock up:
I even Photoshopped the floor plan on our venue’s website, where I want everything to go:
And then I Photoshopped furniture and an arch similar to what we’ll be building onto a picture of our venue’s ceremony location (don’t cha just love the view of the bay through the trees?):

Next up, a mock up of the dining tables looking down. I did this all to scale, with 60″ tables and 13″ chargers, to make sure the beautiful purple glass chargers I found would be worth the 88 mile drive to Sonoma to rent (my mom was very concerned the table would look too crowded; what do you think?):

A close up of a single place setting & swatches:
And of course I had to do side views of the tables, so I could visualize the centerpieces (note, I did these before discovering the lovely purple chargers above). Here is the tall centerpiece:
And the short centerpiece: And the centerpiece for the cocktail tables: Next up, my four tier card box:
And also, favors mocked up (but we might be changing these to something else…):

And signage, lots of signage! These will be the buffet signs:

This is the sign that will explain our nontraditional Wishing Stone guest book:

And this is a mock up of the Gift Table/Guest Book Table:
I also made cute bathroom door signs, to cover the ugly signs they currently have on the doors:

And then there was the matter of our crazy 6.08’ tall cupcake stand that Mr. Cola will be making. I, of course, had to make sure 100 regular sized cupcakes and 200 mini cupcakes would fit on our stand, allowing for room at the corners of each shelf for flowers. Each big square below is a shelf of the cupcake stand, and circles are the cupcakes. Yep, they all will fit! (and no, I don’t expect our baker to set them up EXACTLY this way, but they’ll get the idea from this to stagger regular ones with minis):

And finally, I couldn’t leave you without a peek at what I’ve mocked up for our rehearsal dinner. Since we’re doing a casual BBQ in the park for all our family and out of town guests, I’m going with a Paisley Picnic theme. Here are the buffet signs:

The placecard and sign explaining seats aren’t assigned, but we’re using placecards so everyone can learn each other’s names:

And a birds-eye view of the rehearsal dinner picnic tables all decked out (but I’m thinking of maybe using metal pails instead of the boot centerpieces. And there will definitely be citronella candles!). Well, that’s about it for now! Our next step is to start implementing these designs (and so many more that I haven’t shared!) into real life mock ups, and then the final products. I think it will be so interesting to look back at this post over the coming months, to see how many of these mock ups actually evolve into real elements of our wedding, and how many morph into something different.

Did you feel the need to create mock ups of your wedding creations before implementing them in real life? Do you find it helped to solidify your vision?

That’s my sis-in-law on the left and my BFFs to the right. I asked the girls to choose and try on any dresses they liked, so they started hunting through the racks!

My niece helped by checking out the prices for us. Thanks, baby girl!

That’s Mr. Parfait’s sister-in-law on the left. These two dresses were early favorites, despite the strange brown+navy color combo of one sample. You’ll have to imagine all of these styles in pink!

Heehee, I was in this girl’s wedding two years ago, and I think the white bridesmaid’s dresses had her reminiscing. After a few rounds of dress-up, I found a dress that I had kept in my inspiration folder and made all four girls try it on. Here was the inspiration:

I loved everything about this dress! The romantic ruffles at the top, the shiny ribbon around the waist, the flowing skirt. I was so excited to see it in person!

My dear friends, however, vetoed the dress (left) almost immediately. And sadly, I had to agree. Maybe it was the color and size of the sample, but it just wasn’t as lovable in person!

Meanwhile, everyone was still feeling the green and brown/navy dresses.

Despite the shine, I added this blue dress to the mix. It looked stunning on each girl, but the unforgiving fabric inspired talk of workout videos, Spanx, post-pregnancy Spanx-like apparel, and crunches. After three hours in the store (!!!), each girl chose her favorite, which narrowed it down to the top three:

Known to us as the Brown/Navy dress, the Shiny Blue dress, and the Green dress!

And where was I this whole time?

Oh, I was there all along—playing with my sweet little munchkin!

Now we need to decide if we want to narrow it down to one favorite dress! Did you go shopping with your bridesmaids, or did you find the perfect dress(es) some other way?

Enter the concept of the after party. Excessive? Perhaps slightly. Majorly fun? Hell yes! All the weddings I’ve been to have had some sort of after party, be it an actual party in a different room of the venue or an informal gathering at a local bar or even a hotel room!

I would love to do something at a dive bar (can you picture me in a wedding dress at some grimy, hole-in-the-wall bar? I can!!!!). But sadly, my town is so stupidly small that there is no bar for us to go to. There’s one restaurant that also has a bar, but things are usually shut down by midnight.

So that leaves us with the few bed and breakfasts that all of our friends will be staying at. Unfortunately, most of the rooms are not big enough to accommodate a party of more than 2 (and THAT type of party won’t be happening until waaaaaaay later in the evening.

Enter the idea of a late-night bonfire.

The bed and breakfast where we’ll be staying, along with the bridal party, has agreed to allow us to host a bonfire after the wedding reception! I’m so excited. I’m picturing s’mores, red plastic solo cups, a keg and me in a hoodie sweatshirt over my wedding dress. It will be a time to kick back, re-live the night and prolong the inevitable yet sad end to hopefully one of the best days of our lives. To me, a bonfire conveys a nostalgic, old-timey atmosphere that makes me think of banjo music, whiskey and reminiscing on good times back in high school and college.

Take a look at a few other weddings that have done something similar…

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See? Super-duper fun-ness…

Are you having an after party? What’s it going to be like?

When: 6:30-ish to whenever (it’s a “school night” ya know)

Where: Elysian Fields in SoDo (next to Qwest Field) 542 1st Ave South, Seattle, WA 98104

Well, apparently the bridal gods heard me because ban.do created an entire new line called heart dedicated to brides like me on a budget. None of the pieces in this collection are over $50. So, are you ready to see what they have?

Now, I’m not bold enough to rock the headband like these ladies are, I’ll just wear it prim and proper like Blair Waldorf would.

Which one is your favorite?