When everything is all said and done

I still have one (ok, maybe several, but one for now) very big question.

What should I do with my gown?

I was busy getting married when we did the Bees’ Dress Budget Series.  Here’s a little background on my dress.

Dress: Alfred Angelo 1136 in Light Gold purchased at Formal Elegance, Columbus, Ga

Cost: $500 + $65 alterations

Not my favorite picture, but it does show off the dress well.

Anyway..I didn’t spend very much on my dress.  Well, not in wedding dress terms anyway.  Of course, Mr. CC see’s it differently.  He sees a $500 dress that will never be worn again.  And $500 is a lot to him.

I’ve tried to discuss this with him and he is no help whatsoever.  Except one thing is painfully obvious.  He does not want to spend any more money on this dress.

So, I’ve done some thinking, and here’s what I think my options are. Perhaps you all have more options.

Preserve it. This will cost money.  I’m also not sure of the purpose.  Sure, I’d love to still have my mom’s wedding gown (she preserved it and a naughty kitty got in the closet, scratched through the plastic and peed on it.)  But am I really going to let Mini play in it later?  I don’t know.  Will she be sentimental enough to wear it when she gets married?  I don’t know that either, but since she’s got my blood running through her, I tend to think not.

Sell it. I’m not terribly fond of this plan.  I’m not sure why.  It just doesn’t feel right.  Plus, it will need to be cleaned.  We tried to take it to the cleaner already, they wanted $225 to clean it and Mr. CC almost stroked out right there.

Donate it to Charity. If I do this, it’s going to Brides Against Breast Cancer.  If there was a Brides Against Alzheimer’s it would probably go there, but I’m a big fan of ta-tas too.  (BTW, I totally want one of those “Save the Ta-Tas” magnets for my car.)

Clean it and have it made into a christening gown. I can’t remember where I heard this idea, but I kinda like it.  But I think my mom still has our christening gown and it would be nice for future children to wear the same one I did (or the same on Mr. CC did, if his parents could find it). And, traditionally, christening gowns are white.  But so are wedding dresses.

Clean it and have it made into an Anniversary Dress. A possibility, but that’s a pretty fancy gown.  Maybe I could turn it into a cocktail length gown and dye it like Sherry did over at This Young House.  (This may happen to my get away dress cause it’s really cute, but totally not going to wear it again in the color that it is).

So, hive, what do you think I should do with my gown?  Or, do you have a better idea?

To PWC or Not?

There’s been a lot of talk lately of the PWC (post wedding chop).

I’m torn.

I’ve always had short hair.  There’s only one time in my adult life I can remember having hair this long.

Shall we time travel?  Lets..

This picture is so dated…January 2001, I’m a senior in high school.  Check my enormous bangs.  They are hiding my caterpillar eyebrows (as I do not understand the concept of waxing yet).

High School Graduation.  Two days after Senior Prom (and a few weeks after a bad break-up), I whacked all my hair off.  It was liberating, kinda like, new life, new hair.  I still had not discovered waxing.

That’s me in the middle.  2003, sophomore year of college.  This was a good length.  Long enough for a ponytail, but still low maintenance.  I was so stinking skinny.

2005.  This is the longest it has ever been.  We’re talking lifetime record.  It didn’t last long.  Shortly after a trip to Mexico (where my hair did not get along with the water, and I thought it was my hair being too long), I hacked it all off again.

Then I let it grow back out.  Here I am at my college graduation in 2006.

Shortly (like days) before meeting Mr. CC in the summer of 2007, I chopped it all off again.

This is too short.

Once I was hooked on re-enacting, it was time to grow my hair out a little.  Then we got engaged.

Must have long hair for wedding.  Right.

It’s been trimmed, and shaped since our engagement in April 2008.  But it’s not been cut.

Here I am on our 5th day of wedding bliss.

Burnt to a crisp, but a very good representation of what my hair looks like on a daily basis.  Sort of messy, and just hanging there.  I’m totally deficient at putting my own hair up, so it’s all down or ponytail.

Hhmm… there seems to be a detail missing.  I started wearing glasses back in October.

I still wear contacts on occasion, but it is rare.

I’ve already made an appointment for later this week to get it cut, but should I leave it long or chop it off?

Love’s Valley of Dreams: The Bridals

I decided to title my recaps Love’s Valley of Dreams because they are lyrics from our song, Moonlight Serenade by Glenn Miller.  Thus begins the recaps!

About a month before the wedding (or 6 weeks ago, whatever), My photographer and I got together and did my Bridals.

Apparently, this is a Southern thing.  I didn’t know that.  Learn something new every day.  Anyway, we decided to do bridals instead of another engagement session since Mr. CC and I had one engagement session already and I couldn’t convince Mr. CC that we needed another.  I actually wanted to re-take our engagement pictures since I wasn’t very happy with the original session, but Mr. CC was not seeing the point in that.  In the end, I’m really glad I got to do Bridals.  It gave me an opportunity to try everything out together, including finding the easiest way to get into all that nonsense, lace it up, etc., etc.

Kristian and I decided that we would visit Callaway Gardens and do most of the session there.  The night before the session, we chatted about the weather, since rain was forecasted.  It had been raining for 7 days straight and was supposed to be clearing up some, but it wasn’t looking good for our particular day.  We decided that we would go for it anyway, since the wedding was closing in on us and it was too late to reschedule my hair and make-up appointments.  There were some areas inside the Gardens that were actually indoors, so we figured the worst thing that could happen is we were confined to those spaces.

Friday morning, I got a bright and early start.  I was up about 7, dressed and out the door with Mini in tow by 8:15.  My appointments started at 9 and I needed to get her to school before heading to the salon.  She was terribly upset that she didn’t get to go with me, and I had to bribe her to get her to go to school quietly.

When I arrived at the salon, there were some nasty looking thunderclouds above, but no rain yet, so I crossed my fingers, said a quick prayer, grabbed my veil and hair piece, and ran inside.

I brought my new hair inspiration collage with me and showed my stylist.  She seemed to think I had plenty of hair to pull the stle off, and got to work curling my hair.  Getting my hair done took about 40 minutes and then I scooted over into the make-up artists chair.  I tried to tell her what I hadn’t liked about my last trial and she got to work.  Unfortunately, she over corrected and I ended up with less make-up on than I wear on a normal day.  After dropping more money than I had paid for the first trial (I assume this was because there was a new make-up artist and therefore prices had changed, but I was a bit miffed anyway), I ran like a bat out of you-know-where to my mom’s house to get changed.  It was 11:30 and I need to drive 15 minutes to my mom’s, get dressed, and get to Callaway (30 minutes north) to meet Kristian at 12noon.  I was going to be late.  Very, very late.

Mom and I hurridly threw my dress on and ran out the door for Callaway.  On the drive up, the rain started.  It was just a little rain, but nevertheless, it was raining and I was not happy.  I got a call from Kristian letting me know that she was running late too, so at least I was able to relax about that.

When we got to Callaway, we hit a roadblock.  There was some sort of National Watersskiing event happening that day and Kristian’s corporate pass wasn’t going to get us in.  We would have to pay full admission, which was $20 each.  After mulling it over, we decided $60 was way too much money to spend on admission to the Gardens, especially on a day that it was raining and there was no guarantee the ski would clear up enough for us to make any good pictures.

So we left.  Kristian knew of a good field that was just outside the gates and should have been full of flowers, so we headed over there.

On the way, we found this nice big patch of magnolia trees, and decided to stop there first.  Mind you, for each different place we went that the ground was wet, Kristian and my mom would put this giant piece of plastic down to keep my dress from getting wet, so there was a lot of set up and break down for each back ground change.  Once I was settled on the plastic, they tucked it in under my dress so it wouldn’t show.

I made a quicky fake bouquet out of some silk peonies I bought last summer to use in our centerpieces and a couple of silk hydrangea from this season’s silk collection (all at Pier 1).  It actually turned out quite nicely for a girl with very little bouquet making experience.  Even the florist bridesmaid was impressed when I showed it to her.

We took a few pictures in front of the magnolia and then moved along to the field.  Honestly, the bulk of the good pictures were taken here.  We put up with a lot of dribbly rain, some nasty looking weeds, and some sticker bushes to get these pictures, but they were totally worth it.

Seeing these shots really made me glad I dyed my crinoline.  I was really happy with how well everything came together.

The rain was getting a little heavy, so we packed up and headed towards Uptown Columbus. By the time we got down there, the rain had moved on.  Yay!

I had spotted this beat up pink airstream months and months ago, and knew we had to stop to take pictures with it.  I’m so glad we did, the pictures turned out great.

Y’all have seen that one!

On the other side of the airstream was this busted up old phone booth.

I really with these would have turned out better.  They are still pretty awesome though.  We didn’t really want the street in the background, so it limited our angle possibilities.

Kristian uses these old suitcases for her baby sessions, but brought them along on my request.

I wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about climbing onto the railroad, since it’s still active, but it was so worth it!

These are just a handful of the images Kristian took.  I’m really glad I had the opportunity to do this.  My hair and make-up survived the wind and the rain fairly well.

Now, I just have to decide what to do with them.  I put off the decision because I didn’t show the images to Mr. CC until last night and I wanted him to have some say in the decision.  I can either purchase the prints I like, or buy a cd with the images on them.  I’m leaning towards the cd.  I don’t know what I want to do with them right now, but I’m sure I’ll want to print them again later and I would hate to not have that option.

All Photographs courtesy Kristian Ogden Photography unless stated otherwise

We’re Back!!

Mr. CrabCake and I just returned from our most fabulous honeymoon on PCB.  We are well rested, de-stressed, brown, and kinda bored.  Ten days at the beach was about 2 too many.

Our wedding was spectacular!  It was a huge blur, the whole weekend.  But everything went perfectly smoothly and I couldn’t have asked for a better day.  The Mr. and I were perfectly calm, cool, and collected.  Well, after 3pm on Friday anyway, but we’ll get to that later.

We’ve only seen one photo from our photographer, but it is awesome!

I mean, is that really us?  I can definitely see this one over the mantel (or something like that, since we have no mantel)!

By the way, she told Mr. CC when she was leaving that she had over 20 gigs of pictures from our day!!

I’m so glad to be back!!

Signing off as a “Miss Bee”

The last few days have been a roller coaster of emotions and frustrations and stress.  My last shift ended Tuesday evening and it’s been nothing but work, work, work since.  There have been some almost crisis..but everything is coming together nicely and I even had time for a nap and a trip to the comedy club Thursday night!

To my future husband:  This has been an incredible journey.  I am beside myself that today I will become your wife.  It’s still hard for me to believe you chose me.  You deserve the absolute best and I hope I can be everything you want.  I love you with all my heart and soul.  I’m so excited to start this chapter of our lives together.  And, yes, tomorrow we will be lounging on the beach!

To the hive:  Y’all have been so wonderful and supportive!  I couldn’t have done this without you girls helping out!  Being able to share this experience with y’all has been amazing!  I’m am so blessed to have been choosen to share my ups and downs with you!

I love you all!!

Miss Crab Cake

Here’s where inspiration meets desperation.

I can’t remember if Mrs. Cherry Pie’s detail post was the first time I saw infusion jars used at a wedding, but I do remember that I was seriously in love.  I’m talking heart-beat-skipping-dry-mouth-embarrassing-palm-sweating love here ladies.

(source 1, 2, 3, 4)

I schemed for months, trying desperately to work those beautiful infusion jars into my reception.  I tried to scheme ways to have signature drinks, pre-mixed and served in infusion jars.  I was determined, and Mr. CC was realistic.  First, our budget barely allows for beer and wine, let alone signature cocktails.  Secondly, not having a caterer means no liquor license, and we were concerned about the logistics of serving liquor.  We are hiring an ABC licensed bartender.  Anyway, reality finally set in and I was crushed.  There would be no signature cocktails with cute and clever names.  Or fantastically vintage infusion jars with cutesy signs.

I was sad, but life had to go on.

Then Mr. CC and I were discussing beverages a few days ago.  We’ve pretty much figured out the beer and wine situation, but we thought we needed something to serve people who didn’t want to drink.  Mr. CC suggested tea and I was elated.  Suddenly, there was something I could totally put in infusion jars.

Mr. CC didn’t understand the concept until I showed him that collage up there (yay Picasa!).  He liked them, and I told him that we would be serving tea (sweetened and unsweetened) and water in those beauties!

I’d really like to dress them up by putting something in my tea.  Any suggestions?

Rehearsal Dinner Invites

Last week, I shooed my rehearsal dinner invitations out the door (and, thankfully, it was my last huge paper undertaking).

They should have all reached their recepients, and now I can share them with you!

These were way simple and fuss-free.

Can y’all tell I’ve discovered Picasa and the collage feature?  I heart it big time!

Everything was printed on Classic Crest Baronial Ivory (it’s the same paper as my invitations were printed on, minus the linen texture).

I ran the invite cards through my xyron and then adhered them to some more of that lovely patterned paper y’all are getting tired of seeing.  I found a book of 4.5×6.5 cards at Joann’s meant for matting 4×6 photos and went from there.  I did end up having to trim a tiny sliver off the short side to get it to fit into the envelopes, but it was still easier than cutting all of them out by hand.

I’m a dork and completely didn’t put a decline place on my cards.  Duh…also didn’t realize this until after they were all sealed and ready to be mailed.  Good news is that most everyone that we invited will be there, these were sort of a formality, and it doesn’t really matter.

For the meal choices, I used the Farm & Wild Animals font from Dafont.com.  Mr. CC really loved the giant chicken and cow.

I also included a little card detailing what the chicken is and what the cow is, so that people aren’t making a decision without all the information they need.

We’re serving Poppyseed chicken with wild rice and grilled veggies and Burgundy Beef tips with mashed potatoes and grilled veggies.  We have a few vegetarians in our bridal party (one of his sisters and my sister) and they will be served Blackbean burgers with salsa, wild rice, and grilled veggies.  We didn’t want to open up a third option, so we left those off the invites.

I wrapped everything up with little bows from Mrs. Emerald’s Tutorial.

Those bows were super simple and really tied things together nicely.

The envelopes were printed at home using the same font.  They don’t look perfect, because my printer hates me.  But I’m really at the point where I don’t care anymore.

We used the King and Queen of Hearts stamps (plus two ugly 10cent clocks, cause again, I’m a dork and forgot to bother getting these things weighed before I bought postage.  It’s ok though, cause I’m really not a huge fan of those cake stamps…).

(source)

The actual invitation got a queen and the rsvp envelope got a king, so everyone got to see both.  (Who am I kidding, no one looks at the stamps except detail obsessed brides!)

A little DIY Makeup

So, here I am, 3 weeks (O.M.G.) from the big day, and I’m seriously unhappy with my make-up trials so far.

A refresher:

Trial # 1

Dislikes:  uneven eyeshadow, racoon eyeliner.

Trial #2

It’s hard to tell in this picture (thank goodness!) but we went from racoon eyes to no eyes.  I honestly felt like I had less makeup on then I usually wear on a day to day basis, which isn’t much.

So, I decided that it was time to go at this myself.  I honestly can’t stand spending any more money having trials done that I’m not even crazy about.

I gathered colors from my and my mother’s Bare Minerals collections and got to work.

Bare Face:

I forgot to turn off the flash, I swear I’m not normally that pasty!

I hate taking my own picture!

I did two different eyes.

The Right eye.

Rockin’ some Auburn orange.

The Left eye.

They really aren’t that different.  I only used one different color, but I think I like the left eye better.

I actually think I did an ok job.  My bachelorette party is tomorrow night, so I’m going to try it all again, and have some false eyelashes put on.

So, what did you think hive?  Let them do it, or do it myself?

Firing the Caterer

I’m not sure I’ve said much about our decision to fire our caterer and go at this ourselves.

When we got engaged, we knew one thing for sure.  The rehearsal dinner and reception would be done by Mr. CC’s favorite restarauant.  We (read: he) eats there at least once a week.  The food is good (most of the time, I’ve had a few things I don’t care for) and the prices are totally reasonable for lunch.  The atmosphere is spectacular.  The restarauant is in the bottom of an old hotel.  The very same hotel that John Wilkes Booth was shot in in the 1850s (before that Ford’s Theater disaster).  It’s covered in historic memerobilia and knick-knacks.  I think I might like this place for it’s decorating more than for it’s food.

Anyway, once we had compiled most of our guest list, we went straight down to chat about rehearsal dinner and reception options.  We knew at this point that we wanted an evening reception (no dinner and therefore cheaper, right?) with heavy-ish hors d’heuvers.  We picked out a menu (I can’t remember what it was, that was a long time ago) and went back for pricing.  And our jaws hit the floor.  This particular establishment wanted $20 per person for hors d’heuvers.  I was shocked and dismayed.  Especially when I multiplied that number by the amount of people I was assuming would be coming to the wedding (200).  I just couldn’t fathom paying that much money for freaking snacks.  (Can you tell I’ve never hired a caterer before, I should have been warned!) A few months went by.  We paid deposits for both the reception and the rehearsal dinner.  But I was still terribly uncomfortable with the amount of money we were going to be spending on food.  I desperately wanted to keep the costs of this thing down, and I couldn’t see how this (hiring a caterer) was keeping costs down.

Sometime in the fall, during a conversation with my step mom, she says “I wish we lived closer, I’d just cater it for you.”  Done.  I made a few phone calls, mainly one to my mom, seeing if she would allow my step mom into her kitchen.  Then I called my step mom back.  I told her I wanted her to take care of the food.  We would choose things that could be cooked up ahead of time, in large batches, and there would be help here for her when she arrived.  She was estatic to get to help in such a huge way, and I was happy that we could fire the caterer.

And we did (fire the caterer that is), although, not so much.  We are still having our rehearsal dinner there.  We were able to apply our reception deposit to our rehearsal dinner.  Mr. CC still gets his restarauant and I didn’t have to shell out 4000 big ones for food.

Unfortunately, it opened up a few new cans of worms.  Namely, linens, dishes, glasses, serving dishes, servers, and non-alcoholic beverages.  We will cover all of these shortly.

Even though firing our caterer forced me into a lot of new decisions I didn’t really want to deal with, I’m still glad we did it.  I’m really excited to be serving up homecooked snacks to our guests.  We’re going for traditionally Southern foods (things like deviled eggs, cheese straws, pigs in a blanket (except more elegant), cornbread cups, and meatballs).

Tiding Up the Programs

I’m not quite done designing them, but I decided to put a call out to the hive for some help anyway.

I was completely inspired by these poster style programs.

(source)

I know they aren’t vintage at all, but I’m sorta at the point where it needs to be quick and easy.  I had considered a program that mimicked my booklet style invitations, but then I remembered how long it took to assemble the bloody things and decided I was completely out of my mind.  So, this project came accross my RSS feed one day and I was sold.

The problem is this: what to do about the little band.  Mr. CC said we should just fold them and go from there, but since we condensed everything onto one page, I really want to be able to slip a little card with directions to the reception on them into the band.  So, there must be a band.

I came up with three solutions.

Solution #1:

Paper, using that fantastic embellished paper we’ve seen several times already.

I have a ton of this paper.  There’s also about 12-14 different prints, so there would be some variation among the bands.  I think this might be the most simple solution.  I just cut a strip of the paper using a guillotine and used a little piece of double sided tape to hold it closed.

Solution #2:

Black Ribbon, with a little paper circle.

Very, very easy.  Six inches of ribbon, held together with a piece of double sided tape, and then a 1″ circle of paper held on with a zot.

Solution #3:

Ribbon with little flat bow.

Not so easy.  In fact, it’s a bit tedious.  But it’s so cute!

So hive, what do you think?

Just FYI, I have about 150 people coming, so I’m thinking 75 invitations or so.