“Who is this random chick blogging?” you may be asking yourself. I have to confess, my steam for all things wedding is finally drawing to a close. Why? Because newlywed life is so dang fun and exciting!

From bridaloccasion.com

Sure, planning a wedding was amazingly fun, but planning a life with your spouse truly rocks. Rocks way more. And I mean that. Amongst all the bickering about cleaning and chores and work, Honeysuckle Dude and I are enjoying mapping out the rest of our lives and allowing room to wing it as well. I would make excuses about work being too hectic to blog, but it’s not true. It’s just that any free time I have I want to spend with Honeysuckle Dude.

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If I could give any piece of advice for couples getting married, it would be to get the digital files/negatives for the photos on your wedding day. That’s all our package included really. If you have any basic editing skills or knowledge with a basic editing software, you can certainly save some money by converting pictures to different tones or touching up some puffy eyes a bit.*

One way we saved during this economic crunch was to create our own album.  Our photographer’s albums ran upwards of $1500.  While I’m sure they are absolutely gorgeous, Honeysuckle Dude and I don’t have that kind of dinero.  We also wanted to have a few albums and prints to give to family and friends, so putting together an album needed to be less expensive.

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My favorite part of any wedding is the ceremony.  The reception can be tons of fun, but the ceremony is steeped in history, symbolism, official matters, and raw emotion.  I know that depending on rules for certain religious organizations it may be unlikely that a couple has the opportunity to add personal touches.  However, when the opportunity is there, I love seeing a couples’ true unique spirit shine.

From SedonaBride.com

It seems that the sand ceremony is becoming more and more popular (maybe even more popular than the unity candle).  I think the sand ceremony can be especially meaningful if the couple collects the sand from various sites they’ve visited.  One couple I know was very playful and made the sand ceremony a race to see who could get all of their sand in the shared container first.  The bride won.

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Honeysuckle Dude and I decided not to go on a honeymoon immediately after the wedding mostly due to scheduling. We’re both teachers and so taking off in the middle of a semester was not going to fly.

Photo by Liz Duren

Postponing the honeymoon until a school break really didn’t come as a disappointment as we found lots of benefits in delaying the honeymoon, such as:

• less stress- Planning the wedding is stressful enough. I’m glad I didn’t have to add planning an itinerary for the honeymoon as I was busy with all of those last minute details. We also didn’t have to worry about packing everything for the honeymoon and make travel arrangements.

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Honeysuckle Dude and I had a friend videotape our wedding as a favor. Having a friend take over the service meant I really didn’t have a lot of expectations. I really just wanted a bit of video with our vows and first dance, nothing that would cost my first born child since I don’t anticipate viewing it often.

Honeysuckle mom-in-law sent me an article about marryoke recently. I had never heard of this in my planning. Apparently, the idea is to create a music video with you and all of your loved ones lip syncing and adding the theatrics for the song. From what I can tell on Youtube, marryoke runs the range of cheesiness, silliness, bizarre, and touching.

I personally am not a big musical fan. My tolerance for group dancing and singing is not high, so trying to coordinate a marryoke video would have driven me batty. But I do think it’s very original and a chance to bring some spunk and humor into the wedding video business. What’s your take? Would you participate if a bride/groom asked you to? Are you planning on doing this?

I was called a “Renaissance woman” yesterday at the video store by the young clerk after he added Honeysuckle Dude to my account and said, “I put him in as your husband.” I politely told him, “He is my husband” which elicited the response. Now, not that I’m complaining about the compliment (and I’ll totally take Renaissance woman as a compliment), but I really don’t view it as accurate.

I’m not a Renaissance woman; I am just lazy. I like not waiting in lines. I like not having to fill out paper work and send in little adjustments to places like Paypal, magazine subscriptions, the post office, my HR department, my bank (in addition to the place I order checks from), etc. It’s a lot of places. A lot of places that may change again in a year or two (pending certain moves and career choices). It seems silly that I would have to contact all of these places. Almost like they are allegiances. When really, my allegiance and commitment is to Honeysuckle Dud.

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It seems that everyone in the blogosphere is sharing pictures of their rings.  And since I’m a sucker for peer pressure when it comes to sparkly jewelry, here you go:

When it came down to choosing an engagement ring, I knew I wanted something relatively classic to pass down to a child or grandchild. I wanted someone in the future to hold my ring, perhaps even try it on, imagine what I was like and the feelings I felt when it was first slipped on my finger, and cherish it as an heirloom of priceless sentimental value.  You see, Honeysuckle Dude transformed me into a romantic.

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There aren’t too many options for what to do with your wedding day bouquet after the big day. You can toss it of course, but many people seem to get a separate bouquet for the toss. You can have it preserved if you plan ahead. And one philanthropic idea that I love is to donate your flowers to a nursing home or hospital. If you’ve got a unique idea, I’d love to hear it.

I had so many extra flowers after the wedding since we did the flowers ourselves. Shortly after Christmas I decided to make handmade paper and tossed in a good portion of the leftover wedding flowers.

Photo from instructables.com

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Initially during our planning we had not meant to do a reveal. We had wanted to wait and have that special moment of seeing each other for the first time as I was walking down the aisle. Since we weren’t doing many traditional wedding things, Honeysuckle Dude was kind of looking forward to seeing me in my dress for the first time when I walked down the aisle. And to be honest, I was eager for that whole “Oh my gosh, this is it!” fairytale moment too. If you think about it, our culture has really romanticized the tradition of the bride and groom not seeing each other until the ceremony. I was a bit let down by having to schedule a reveal and doing pictures ahead of time. It just felt like staging that special moment and taking something away from the ceremony.

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I know a cake topper is something small and frivolous. We could have done without one, but, honestly, a cake topper was something I looked forward to as a little girl. I know most trendy cake toppers right now are not little brides and grooms but rather monograms and flowers. But as a little girl, I thought it would be so neat to have a little miniature couple that looked just like me and my groom. And contrary to the popular opinion, I don’t think all of them are tacky or cheesy.

From an early age, I was a crafter and a big fan of making little clothespin dolls for holiday decorations. A little search allowed me to see what Rory Evans created for her cupcakes, which soon became my topper inspiration. She and her husband made a bridal pair for each of the cupcakes served. They individualized them and threw in some comical alterations as well. You can see more pictures of these darling toppers at the Bluelines blog.

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