It has been a crazy three months. With my best friend and my brother both getting married within 8 days of each other I've been swamped with wedding work and too busy to keep up with the blog.
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| Photo Credit: Co-D Photography |
I had the privilege to be Maid of Honor for my bestest friend. Most of my duties included doing online pricing research, helping locate some hard-to-find "detail" items, and wrangling bridesmaids.
She had 6 bridesmaids who are some of the coolest people I've met. I got to spend some time with them at both the lingerie shower and her bachelorette party.
When I say wrangling, there wasn't much actual wrangling involved but I did take over answering the thousands of questions they had during the last week before the wedding, especially questions like:
What time do I need to show up?
Where are we meeting?
Are the dresses ready yet?
Our dresses turned out to be kind of a fiasco. We hired a seamstress to make our dresses. We chose a pattern and had a meeting with the seamstress to be measured way back in April. The seamstress received the fabric in May which left her with almost 4 months to work on the dresses, 6 for the bridesmaids and 1 for the junior bridesmaid, the groom's little half sister.
First we found out that there was no way to modify the dress pattern to fit the junior bridesmaid so we had to go find a children's pattern to match our pattern. Then, around the beginning of August we were told that there might be some problems with our pattern because the pattern was for Misses sizes and most of the bridesmaids were Juniors sizes. (It sounded like a bunch of excuses to me but since I know so little about sewing I didn't say anything at the time.) We were asked to meet again to re-measure and fit the pieces that she had already started sewing, but the woman didn't show up when we had scheduled. It took a whole extra week for all of us to meet with her. I was quite upset when I found out she had only made a small piece of the bodice for each dress. This was just 2 weeks before the wedding! We should have been trying on fully made dresses and being fitted for alterations. I mean, the whole reason we decided to have our dresses made was so they would fit us better.
I know every bridesmaid complains about the dress. Bridesmaid dresses are expensive and rarely can be worn more than once. They're notoriously ugly, frilly monstrosities that no woman would ever want to wear again. With this being an outdoor summer wedding we tried to choose a dress that would be cool and comfortable. I think the choice of dress was a wise one. It had a layer of satin with a sweetheart neckline overlayed with lace that came all the way to the neck. The lace was super breezy and as long as the wind was blowing at least a little we weren't super hot. The only problem was that no one's dress fit properly. Some were too tight around the waist, others had areas where the lace was a different size than the satin leaving lace sagging in places, and most of them had uneven hems. The seamstress felt the need to add an extra layer of fabric beneath the satin skirts so that we were roasting from waist to knees, but the most infuriating thing was that she delivered the dresses only 4 hours before the wedding was scheduled to begin! See, I told you it was a fiasco.
Luckily we only had to wear the dresses for a few hours and you can't see the imperfections in the photographs. We all look beautiful in the pictures, especially the girls that managed to get their hair into beautiful updos.
My hair was too short for an updo but one of the other girls helped me curl my little bob and it turned out quite well. For all the complaints I have about the dresses, the wedding was really beautiful. I mean, my bestest friend is gorgeous anyway but when I saw her in her dress I wanted to cry. She looked like an angel!
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| Photo Credit: Co-D Photography |
Bailey was a flower girl and one of the cutest little flower girls I've ever seen. She made sure she covered the entire aisle with petals (unlike most flower girls who just sprinkle a handful every couple of steps) and when she ran out she tipped her bucket upside down and gave a cute little look of disappointment at its emptiness. Then she sat quietly with the bride's mother for the entire length of the ceremony. I was so proud!
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| Bailey made friends with the bridesmaids as well. |
This was the highlight of the reception for me.
Bailey loves to dance and she's not too shy to get out on the dance floor all by herself.
So that's my bestest friend's wedding but it wasn't the only one.
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| Photo Credit: Sullivan Photography |
My brother married the most amazing, wonderful woman this past Sunday. The whole thing happened in Nana's back yard. They wrote their own beautiful vows. I had heard the bride's vows beforehand but my brother's brought tears to my eyes. (He's a writer after all and one of the most eloquent speakers I've heard.) They took dancing lessons and blew the crowd away with their first dance. Yaya and my brother's dance was equally adorable and my new sister-in-law looked so beautiful dancing with her father. I even got to do the cupid shuffle later on in the reception.
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| The bride and groom's cake. |
I was asked to make cupcakes for the wedding and they turned out so perfect! I spread the work out over three days to allow for sleeping time but I still had a couple of hours of work to do when I arrived at Nana's. I chose to frost and decorate them on site to avoid damaging them while transporting them. My brother asked for pumpkin spice cupcakes and raspberry white chocolate cupcakes so I made
a pumpkin spice cupcake with spiced cream cheese frosting and
a raspberry cupcake filled with white chocolate ganache and topped with white chocolate buttercream frosting, a raspberry, and raspberry syrup drizzle. The bride's cupcake choices were strawberry and banana cream so we had
strawberry cupcakes with strawberry buttercream frosting and a sliced strawberry flower on top and
vanilla cupcakes filled with banana pudding and topped with whipped cream, sliced bananas, and Nilla wafers.
And of course Bailey got a chance to show off her moves again, this time with Li'l P.
It's been a long few months with lots of work. I'm glad it's over but I'm so excited for both of the newlywed couples! (And also a little jealous as my bestie just returned from her honeymoon in Savannah, GA and my brother and his wife are living it up in Hawaii this week.)
Now that all of the wedding stuff is over I hope to get back on a normal blogging schedule, starting with some of the recipes that I managed to make and photograph during my break. I'll be returning to my weekly menu updates as well as the Wishlist Wednesday posts. I can't wait to get started! Keep an eye out this week for at least two more posts.
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