Being a Bada$$ vs. Being a Bride

(Sorry for the swears in the title... I was hopping that the dollar signs would make it less offensive. If you don't like the word badass, please skip this post. See you soon!)

Ok, now that that's out of the way, we can get to the point of this post. I have recently gotten re-involved in my very very favorite sport. Roller Derby:

So I am not actually roller derbying here just goofing off.

When Mr. Aardvark and I moved a few months ago I had to give it up, or face a three hour commute to and from the rink. While I love the sport, that much car-time and wedding planning and working full time was a no-go. But I missed it SOOOOOO much. Lucky for me, I found a new team that was just getting of the ground and was located a convenient 30 minutes away. SIGN ME UP!

Now, while I don't claim to be the most badass chick, or even a highly badass chick. I believe, and I hope you agree, that there is a minimum amount of badassery required to play any contact sport, including roller derby. This is becasue there are risks involved. Mostly risks of rink-rash on your hip, or bruises on your bicep, but occasionally the risks are greater, like breaking bones or black eyes.  Knowing this, but loving the sport anyway is what makes someone a badass.

With all this in mind. I recently posted a flyer on my facebook wall about an up-coming bout. Two of my non-derby friends quickly commented that I should be careful because of my fast approaching (15 days!) wedding. While it is true that I don't want a black eye in my wedding pictures, and hobbling through a first dance on crutches would be a drag, I felt like their concern was a bit of an overreaction.

One of the things Mr. Aardvark loves about me is that I am a badass (or that I try to be one). Why would I give that up pre-wedding? And if I did, how far would it go. People get hurt in cars all the time. Do I stop driving? Stop wearing heels for fear of rolling an ankle? Stop handling paper products for fear of cuts? Stop eating at restaurants for fear that someone will choke on a chicken bone, get the heimlich and shoot the chicken bone at my face, blinding me for life?? Ok so the last one may not be SUPER likely, but you get the point.

There are inherent risks in every single thing we do. In some cases it is the risk that makes them enjoyable. No matter what happens, Mr. Aardvark will be marrying me, not some super polished, air-brushed perfect version of myself with no flaws. Often times, it's the stories behind all the little scrapes and bumps that makes us who we are: a badass.

So ladies (or gentlemen) you don't have to decided between badass or bride, you can be both! I say, if it isn't harmful to the marriage, it won't be harmful to the wedding.

Do you think of yourself as a badass? Have you been warned to cut back on anything "for the wedding"?

Things Could Get Ugly.

Alright, so here's the deal. With less than three weeks to the wedding, my beauty routine has headed into "The Home Stretch". I am not a very fancy person most days. Makeup consists of concealer (boo adult acne) and eyeliner if I'm feeling jazzy. Once in awhile (usually for roller derby) I will do "full makeup" and while that is fun, I am too lazy to deal with it on a daily basis.

As far as other grooming goes, I got my eyebrows waxed years ago and have more or less kept them up with tweasing.

Now, for the ugly part. Thanks to religious use of Pro-Activ my skin is...Ok. It is not perfect or totally clear, but it is better than it has been in years. At this point I am going all out skin pampering mode. I have stopped wearing make up to work. Gasp. It is not really that big of a change. I don't even know if anyone besides me noticed. But my skin is a bit happier and that is what we are going for!

On top of the uneven skin tone, I have stopped tweasing my eyebrow in prep for having them waxed in a week and a half. This have been much more difficult than the no-concealer bit. I feel like I look like this:

Like Frida Kahlo but less cool.

Ok, so maybe it's not quite that bad... but I am so looking forward to getting some shape back!

Are you shaking up your beauty routine in the weeks leading up to your wedding? Do you believe things have to get worse before they get better?

Deadline.

Our RSVP deadline was yesterday. If you recall, we were in a bit of a pickle due to inviting too many guests for our venue. while we are not out of the woods yet, we are doing pretty well.

Here is what the side of our refrigerator looks like currently! If you don't feel like counting, that is 120 guests attending. WELL under the 175 person limit. We also have had 51 people send their regrets. And while we will miss them, we are relieved that our attendance is trending in the correct direction.

Now for the part where we are not yet out of the woods. 120+51=171. We invited 222 guests and 14 +1s for a total of 236 people. I have always struggled with math but I'm pretty sure 171≠236. This could only mean one thing! There are people who have not yet RSVPed! (gasp!)

I had read enough wedding blogs to know that getting RSVPs back can be a  challenge. There is just something about checking a box and dropping a postage paid card in the mail that people struggle with. But I did not think I would end up with 65 question marks on our due date! I was thinking more along the lines of 10.  Oh well.

Nothing to be done about it now but pick up the phone and start calling. If you are good at math, you will have noticed that we are in fact pretty close to being safely under the venue capacity. 120+65=185. SO, if everyone who is yet to RSVP comes to the wedding, we will be 10 people over. But I don't think everyone will. Of those who are left, some are families with lots of kiddos so if one or two of them decide not to come (which is likely) or decided to come sans kids, we will be totally golden.

Once we get our final numbers I will share our percentages and a better break down with you.

Have you started getting RSVPs yet? How many people missed the deadline and had to be tracked down by phone?

This Little Light of Mine

Hive, I must admit that I have not put a lot of thought into our center pieces. A LLLLLOOONG (ok, not that long) time ago, I saw a post right here on Weddingbee by the lovely Mrs. Macarons and decided right then and there that I had my centerpieces solved.

I figured I would do it on the cheap and instead of buying candle holders, I started hoarding salsa and pasta sauce jars. I told my friends and family to start hoarding too. MOH MD's Mama donated a large stock of jars and then they sat in our garage for a few months.

When I told FMIL Aardvark about my plan she too came to the rescue of my budget. She had about 100 yards of lace that she cut off some old curtains because she figured it could be re-used, and she was right!



After I had the jars and the lace I sat on this project for a few more months before starting. You see, I was feeling sheepish about the whole shabby-chic look of it. I was worried it was way over done. I was worried that even if my guests had not seen a wedding with mason jar decor, the hive will be unimpressed with my trendy-band-wagoning (wagoning?). So I drug my feet. 

But there came a point when I could not drag my feet for another second. I had collected all of  the supplies and it was time to get a move on. I told myself I had (barely) enough time to come up with a new concept if I ended up hating these.

Well, it turns out I love them. We did not use lace on all of them, at Mr. Aardvark's suggestion we "manned some of  them up" with twine. I was so excited to see Miss Dragon use this technique in her post earlier. I honestly think it is super cool! (Also I have hardcore yarn envy)

Long story short I adore my mason jar candle holders. I like that they are recycled. I like that they were pretty much free, I even enjoyed making them! AND I think they will go great for our micro-brewery reception. They are trendy yes, but they are also super cute, so I'm just going to let my little light shine!

Enough jibber jabber on my part, would you like to see how that impressive pile of glass, ribbon and lace came to be?

First off we had to clean the jars. The jars we saved and many of the ones from Mama MD all had labels. A little hot water and Goo-Gone did the trick though!

All clean! Not a label or sticky mark in sight!

Then I went about trimming the lace or twine to the correct size for the jar it would be wrapped around.
After cutting a stuffed the lace/twine into it's jar for safe keeping.

At this point I was still on the fence about theses. They needed a little jazz. A little sass. I decided to use some of the ribbon left over from our programs (I tend to way over buy craft supplies) and tie them around the neck of the jars.

I think the pop of color is what sold me on them in the end. As I tied bows, Mr. Aardvark hot glued.

After just a few hours we were done! I really like the combo of lace ribbon and twine. I also really like seeing our wedding colors together in this way.

For a split second I panicked when I realized that some of the doilies I ordered were a different shade of white than the lace on the jars. But really, I think it's okay.

So there you have it, a few jars on a doily with the table numbers (can't wait to show you those!). Simple cheap and cute. OH, and they look fantastic with candles in them:

So Pretty!

The twine does man this up! Well as much as a jar on a doily with a bow on it can be manned up!

Have you settled on a center piece?  Are you forgoing flowers? Do you ever feel pressure not to be too trendy?

March Madness

This weekend has been a blitz of wedding crafts and basketball. After taking a week off of planning/crafting, I realized I needed to get my booty in gear if I wanted to make a dent in my craft list before the wedding. Well, with the help of Mr. Aardvark and some basketball on TV, we got a a ton done.

One of the biggest items that I was SO excited to check off our list was the ceremony programs. Originally I figured we did not need a program. We could save time, money and effort by just skipping them all together. Then I realized we had a pretty sizable contingent of non-Catholics who would be attending. It would only be polite to include some kind of instruction for all of the standing, sitting and kneeling.

Mr. Aardvark and I used the ceremony planning worksheet our priest gave us to come up with the content. a bit of fiddling around and we figured out how to print half sheets front to back. After a quick trip to Staples, the easy part was done. We had 100 copies of our 7 page (half page) programs. Being the crazy person I am, I decided these would be SO much cuter if we used the same corner punch we did for the invitations... I now realize that meant 2,800 corners to punch....The result of which was:

This was about 1/3 of the confetti we made. After all of the corners were prettied up we punched holes in the sides for binding. Honestly, after the all of this punching I was feeling the March madness, and it had nothing to do with basketball!

Mr. Aardvark stepped in right when I thought I was going to go bonkers if I had to punch one more hole in anything. If it hadn't been for him intervening the programs would be in a crumpled (possibly burned) mess and the hole punch would be buried deep it the woods somewhere.

There are so many cool ways to bind programs, but by the time we were ready for that, I was ready to be done. We figured a simple bow would be cute, easy and fast. We were right. With Mr. Aardvark cutting and me tying, we were done in no time.

I was so glad to cross these off our to-do list. I was also really happy to see our wedding colors in action again! Yay color!

Are you doing programs? Was it a project you dreaded? How excited were you to get done?

Stay Forever

So, here we are with one month to go. I can't believe how fast things have gone so far! One of the big things that we needed to check off our list was music. Don't worry, we hired a highly recommended DJ ages ago, but we had songs to pick! Our DJ provided us with a little work sheet with all sorts of questions and "pick a song for this, pick a song for that" type things.

I had been dutifully putting this off, because there are so many great songs and music styles out there, I was totally overwhelmed. The only song I knew I wanted all along was my daddy-daughter dance song. My dad used to sing it to meas a lullaby:

Be Bop A Lula by John Lennon. In fact this song is so special, I had to shut it off just now because I got a little misty listening to it! (I'll blame that on my "Lady Time" and hope I can get through it at the wedding (even if Bridesmaid Sis tears up)).

Mr. Aardvark did not have a song in mind for his mother-son dance. We did some browsing on the interwebs, but didn't find a clear winner. Then he had the great idea of asking his mom! And she did have a handful of fantastic options. They ended up going with My Wish by Rascal Flatts:

They there was the matter of our first dance. I had a few contenders in mind, but nothing that seemed perfect. I should add that Mr. Aardvark rarely hears lyrics when he listens to music, so I would find something with heart melting words and Mr. A would give it a "meh" on account of the melody or something. This went on for awhile and then I found a real contender, You Move Me by Garth Brooks. I can't seem to find him singing it but here is a decent cover (decent but not as good as the real thing).

Then Mr. Aardvark stepped up. There have been very few times, while wedding planning, when the Mister has had an opinion other than "whatever makes you happiest". But the day after I hit on You Move Me, he came to the table with a contender. Not just a contender, a home run. I was not familiar with the song (or the band) but after listening to it on repeat for a day or two, I was sold. And after exploring some of their...errmmm less romantic songs, I was a fan of Ween as well! With out further ado, our first dance song:

I adore it. The lyrics are perfect, it's totally danceable and Mr. Aardvark picked it out! I think he is tickled to tell his buddies our first dance song is Stay Forever by Ween.

The whole song picking process was quite painless and I really adore all of our choices. In fact the only one that gave us any grief at all was our entrance song into the reception! (We went with Crazy Little Thing Called Love by Queen). And now we are one more major To-Do closer to I Do.

Have you picked your songs yet? Did you know what they were going to be all along? Or did you have to decide on something together?

Date Time?

Mr. Aardvark and I were filling out some paper work for the church, and he realized we have been dating over three years. "I can't believe we've dated so long! You'd think we'd be married by now!" he said. This caught me a bit by surprise. For one, I don't think three years is that long at all, and two, I thought I was the one who was antsy to get married! This lead to a great dissucssion about what is the standard amount of time to wait to get married.

I realized that there is no right or wrong amount of time. Mama Aardvark and Step-dad Aardvark were together for fifteen years before they made it legal. One of our good friend married her husband after abou six monthes of dating (although they'd know each other for years). And there are heaps of people that fall in between those two.

Even reading the boards here on the Bee, it is clear there is something of a bell curve, but no right or wrong amount of time to date before marriage.

With Mr. Aardvark and I, everything happened as it was supposed to. Looking back I thought he was going to propose Chirstmas of 2009. Turns out I was off by about a year and a half but I am SO glad we did not spend part of our LDR, engaged. It would have made me even more bonkers! (Koodos to you if you are keeping it together with a LDR fiance!) By the time we did get engaged, I was super ready to get married. A reletively short 10 month engagement was perfect. And now, with just about a month to go, I feel like everything is falling into place and happening the way it's supposed to (even if it's not the way we planned from the start.)

Now I'm curious, how long have you and your partner been together? How long is your engagement?

Rollin' With It.

A very wise man once said, real life begins when you have to implement plan B, even if you aren't sure what plan B is yet. Now, don't fret your pretty little faces, there is no major trouble in our lives or wedding planning. However, something we thought was all figured out, unfigured itself. That something is our bridal party. (Spoiler alert: There is no major drama here just a bit of a bummer)

We had asked our peeps months ago when we first got engaged. They all excitedly said yes and we started planning away. About a month ago, one of Mr. Aardvark's good friends, and groomsmen, had a change in his work situation. The change was pretty crummy over all, but made extra crummy by the fact that it made attending our wedding a financial impossibility. While he decided to look for different work, the odds of him attending our wedding are pretty slim.

There was not much to be done about it except let him know we'll save a spot for him if things change. We did not take him off the "Wedding Party" part of our website or anything. He is still an important part of Mr. Aardvark's life and we both feel like he is still a part of our day, even from a distance. We are sad that he will not be joining us, but we are all rolling with it.

We are now facing the interesting situation of having uneven sides. While I am not in the least worried about it, I am curious about how it has been handled by other bees? We are not having a head table, or a wedding party dance so that is no biggy. The only thing I have questions about is the aisle. I really want the Bridesmaids to walk down with Groomsmen. So far the options are: Have MOH MD walk alone, Have one GM walk two ladies at once, or have one guy loop back for a second walk.

Have any of you had to deal with this curve ball mid planning? How did you do the aisle?

Takin' a Break

Something funny has happened this week. We are under the 40 days to go mark (eep!) and I still have quite a few To-Dos, and despite that there have had now or never feeling for the last month or so, I took a break. Madness, I know.

But last weekend Mr. Aardvark and I were getting our biz-nass in order, filling out forms and checking off check lists for the wedding. We were really rocking and rolling. Then Mr. Aardvark announced that he couldn't wait to be done planning.

WHAT?!  I thought I had been doing such a good job of sheltering him from the Crazy-wedding-planning-storm. With each category, I would ask if he cared about it, in most cases he did not and I would plow ahead only checking in occasionally for a thumbs up or to show him the finished product. That's not to say he hasn't help, he's been VERY helpful, but as far planning goes it really hasn't been that bad. (Or so I thought.)

I think Mr. Aardvark could read all of this through the look on my face and said, "I mean, I can't wait for you to be done planning!" This is when I realized that I too was looking forward to being done! So much so that I didn't want to tackle another wedding related task for a couple of days. (Ok, maybe that is an over statement I have tackled a few tasks but really it was just finishing things I'd already started)

So how did I do it? I scampered on down to the books store and got the much hyped Hunger Games series. It's a fast read and I am nearly done. The fact that each chapter ends in suspense helps too. I don't think I will start the 2nd or 3rd book until we are off on our Honeymoon but who knows. A couple days totally un-weddinged have felt great and now I feel like I am rested up for the final push to the Wedding!

Have you taken a break from planning? Should you? What is your favorite way to distract yourself?

The Mystery of Registry

So, I kinda feel like I have been holding out on you, Hive. Mr. Aardvark and I registered AGES ago. I was convinced that we needed to do it RIGHT AWAY, so in the late summer we decided to get to it. Turns out the registry's sat unused for a few months, until Christmas.  But since then my obsessive occasional checking has shown me that items are being plucked off right and left! As someone who never made birthday or Christmas lists as a child, this seems new to me. Mr. Aardvark has given me a hard time for peeking, but I figure if we already know what we're getting... What's the harm in it?

Image by your's truely

You may be asking yourself, "What are they getting? And from where?" Well, the where part was easy. In our little town there are not many choices, we wanted to be able to go in-store, and also let people shop online if they wanted. Kohls seem like an easy answer. Everyone (pretty much) coming to the wedding had a Kohl's nearby. We also wanted a bit of a "higher end" option, although after looking we realized they had all the same housewares at both.

Our local department store is a Boston Store. Now, I had never heard of Boston store until we lived in our current town, so I was worried no one would know what it was. As it turns out it is part of the Bon-Ton group of stores that includes Yonkers, Elder Bearman, Herbergers and others. If you go into any of the Bon-Ton stores (or websites) you can find our registry. I figured this would make it easy peasy for our guests. I figured wrong. I have had to explain the "Bon-ton" group of stores thing about a bazzillion times because I could not think of clear enough wording on our website. Oh well!

We were also this close to registering at fleet farm. (Not even kidding) but they did not offer an online option so we crossed it off the list. Two stores would have to do.

Now for the what to register for question, we had to use our noggins a bit more. You see we both have lots of...stuff. Most of it is mismatchy , collegey, or hand-me down. Some of it we love and would never dream of replacing, but some of it we for sure wanted to upgrade. (Matching towels anyone?) While we don't plan on staying in our current apartment forever, but, we have to live there for now and we don't want our neighbors submitting us for an episode of Hoarders. We had to be selective.

I knew we wanted Dishes. Mr Aardvark has a nice set of dishes, but they don't all match and they don't have much sass. I knew right away what we (I) wanted to replace them with....FIESTAWARE! I heart Fiestaware. SOOO much. The colors are what do me in every time. All the colors. Together. Two of each!


Image from Homer Laughlin

 Sadly, Mr. A reminded me that we would have no room for 30 place settings. In fact, even one of each was not an option. Reality check time, we don't even have a kitchen table let alone a dining room. So sad.

With the cold harsh reality sinking in I realized we would have to make cuts. I really wanted settings for eight because, by gosh, someday, we will have a dining room and I wanted to be able to host at least eight people with matching dishes. We decided four colors would be the way to go. After arranging and rearranging saucers on the in-store display to see what looked best together, we had our final four.



Image from Homer Laughlin

 The colors are Marigold, Cobalt, Peacock and Paprika. In the picture the Cobalt looks a lot darker than it is in real life. Because I couldn't walk away from that spectrum of beautiful colors with only 4, we decided that all of our serving pieces would be Ivory.  I adore the way this all looks! We have already gotten a few pieces and it has been so much fun putting them in our cabinets!

With space such a crunch we did not register for "fine" china at all. Aside from the facts that we are only a little bit fancy at best, and we are short on space, My family has some pretty significant collections of china that may be passed down to me someday so I did not want to crowd that out.

Of course we didn't register for only dishes! We asked for all kinds of utensil and doo-dad upgrades for our kitchen, a super vacuum for the cat our apartment, towels and really soft sheets. But we made sure to only put things we knew we would use on there.

Since, and before, the shower I was told that I have too many and too few items on there. I have received a number of off registry gifts, which I love, and a few duplicate items. I have a sneaking suspicion  a group of great-aunts got together, and picked a crystal pattern for me because I have gotten a few bowls and candlesticks that are all very fancy and all match. (If you did not guess from earlier I did not register for crystal.) I have come to the conclusion that there is no really right way to do a registry.

That is not to say it is wrong to register, but nothing will ever go perfectly and I think it's best just to roll with it. I have no intention of adding or removing anything from the registry at this time. I will keep and treasure my new found crystal pieces (look who just got fancier!). I will get rid of old to make way  for the new. But most importantly, I will be grateful that people are willing to buy me us stuff at all.

Have you registered? What were your thoughts on the whole process? Did you find it odd? Are you a peeker? What is your favorite color Fiestaware?