You're Doing What?

We're having a group run as part of our rehearsal dinner festivities.

Yep. 

Now, before everyone freaks out, no, the run will not be required! And yes, we're still having a dinner (we're calling it a welcome dinner now) and a time to relax and not do strenuous things. 

But, we love to run. Remember when I told you about my sisters and the bond we have with running? I'm more than thrilled to have this chance for all of us to run together—a lot of sisters would go get manicures together before the wedding, we go for a run together (although maybe we'll get manicures too). 

Personal photo / The three of us after a Thanksgiving run last fall!

Some of our friends will be joining us as well. We're not going to be racing—ahem, I say that but I'm pretty sure as competitive as some of us are this could prove less than true. On Saturday's long run I mapped out a course that I think will work. It's a 2.5 mile loop around the park where we're holding the welcome dinner. It starts at the shelter and wanders up and around the baseball fields, up a steep hill (oops, sorry about that, everyone's thighs), along the trail down by the river, around the dog park, down past some beautiful houses, and back along the river to the shelter.

Image via Cleveland Park / Awesome paint skillz by me

I've gotten positive feedback on it so far. Some of our friends are excited about running with us, and those who aren't interested don't seem bothered at all that we're going to run for 25 or 30 minutes at the end of the welcome dinner. We're titling the event the "Pre-Wedding Run & Fun in the Park," and everyone is invited. We'd love to have guests come and hang out after dinner and either run with us or just enjoy the park! There's an amazing playground for younger kids, great walking trails, and plenty of tables and benches.

The schedule will be something like this:

5:30—Welcome dinner with our immediate families and out-of-town guests
6:30—Invite all guests down to the park to hang out
7:30—Anyone who wants to is welcome to run
8:30—Everyone leaves the park around dusk!

I totally understand that there will probably only be a handful of us running. But I'm still more excited about this than anything else—besides the wedding itself of course! Anyone else doing something a little less than conventional the night before your wedding? Do you want to come run with me??

Another Bunting Post

Hive, I'm pretty sure the crown for queen of bunting goes to Miss Jackrabbit. I promise, I am not trying to dispute this, because there's no way I want to cut out 750 triangles! But I did want to do a quick post on making bunting in a smaller quantity and let you know how we're planning on using it.

In an earlier post when we were talking about my simple do-it-yourself invitations, I mentioned that I wanted to include bunting somehow in the decorations to tie in the invitations to the overall theme of the wedding. I was thinking about maybe a ten foot section or so over the fireplace and figured I could do that myself, even though I don't have any materials on hand or a sewing machine. I was thinking about using tissue paper and ribbon to cut down on cost and time.

A lady from Mr. Lemur's church who is helping out with my April bridal shower read my post and sent me an email about her making bunting for the bridal shower that I could then reuse for the wedding. How sweet is this? When I was in Detroit last weekend I went over to her house and looked through inspiration pictures—including yours, Miss Jackrabbit!

The biggest problem we had was choosing fabrics. I knew I wanted small, casual prints in shades of coral, blue, and yellow. The problem wasn't that we couldn't find any that worked—it's that there were so many fabrics to choose from! We finally decided on six different fabrics: a solid coral, a flowered coral print, a flowered light blue print, a checked yellow print, a patterned ivory print, and a flowered print that pulled in hints of coral, green, and yellow.

Even though I had been thinking just a short length, she decided to make a larger amount so that she could hang it around the room at my bridal shower. Hey—I wasn't about to complain! I have visions of draping it along the food tables or the stage.

We ended up buying 3/4 of a yard in each of the six fabrics. We then folded the fabric in half and cut it into nine inches strips, which looked like this:

We used an old Cheerios box to cut out a 7" by 9" triangle to use to trace. Then we used a rotary cutter—I had never heard of this before, but it's basically like a pizza cutter for fabric—to cut out the triangles.

The marble block you see in that picture? We used that for holding the template in place. It was so simple. Simply place the template on the fabric and zoom the rotary cutter along the edge. After moving the template a few times and a few more slices with the rotary cutter, the strip looked like this.

Ignore the rough outer edges. Those are going to get tucked under the ribbon! This picture actually shows ten triangles—each triangle is two because we folded the material in the last step. Anyway, while I was busy playing with my fabric pizza cutter, the real crafter of the two of us was applying a little bit of anti-fray glue to the diagonal edges.

Now you've seen three of the fabrics! That coral with the tiny white flowers is my favorite. After applying the glue she laid them out to dry for just a few minutes. Then it was time to sew! We had bought wide coral ribbon in the same shade as the band on my invites. After ironing it to create a crease, she started tucking the triangles in at 3.5" intervals and sewing along the ribbon. By this point I was way out of my element so I just stood and watched.

Then we stood back to admire our handiwork! After crafting about a ten foot section, we draped it along the fireplace to check it out. Hint: Each triangle was 7" wide plus 3.5" on either side. 12 triangles (two of each color) is about 129 inches, or just over 10 feet.

I'm going to pretend the reason I'm posting a really washed out picture is that now you'll have to wait around for the big reveal at the wedding! Trust me, Niki will take much better pictures and you'll be able to see our bunting in all its glory.

Anyway, I'm thrilled with the way it's turning out, and can't wait to see all of it in action at my shower and then again at the wedding. In about an hour and a half I cut out nearly all of the triangles, so now the rest of them just need to be sewed into the ribbon.

You guys are probably sick and tired of bunting posts by now, so thanks for holding on and reading! Now, tell me about the decorations at your wedding. Anyone else re-purposing shower decorations?

A Kid-Friendly Wedding

Flower girls and ring bearers are adorable. There's no denying it. Not only do they provide a cuteness factor to the wedding, they also create perfect photo opportunities.

Image via Lover.ly\ / Photo by John Schnack

Image via Lover.ly\ / Photo by J. Shipley Photography

Although we love kids and I even love the look of kids in weddings, having a flower girl or ring bearer was not for us. The wedding participants are entirely family members, with the exception of the officiant, who is a family friend. If any of our siblings had kids, we wouldn't hesitate to include them. However, Mr. Lemur has just one married brother and neither of us have nieces or nephews. We decided not to include a non-family member in this role but to simply not have a flower girl or ring bearer.

When it comes to kids at the wedding, however, we're very open. I think the wedding lends itself to being a family affair. Both of us are very family-oriented and are friends with a number of families from our churches and communities. Also, we're getting married in a simple lodge and a casual setting. It's a morning wedding with a brunch, which makes it easier for kids to attend than an evening or late wedding.

We indicated kids were invited by including their names on the invitation and we've made it clear to families that we know that we'd love to have their kids there on the big day. I know this may cause some problems...kids crying during the ceremony or a less than immaculate reception. That's ok. If we were getting married in a formal cathedral I might be more uptight about it, but I'm willing to sacrifice some things to have the families we love celebrating with us.

I want to have something for the kids to do while they're at the wedding, however. It's not necessarily a long reception, but I have no doubt they'll get bored. Remember the Scrabble tiles I talked about? I've thought about spreading some of them out on the tables, or on one table just for the kids. I've also bought crayons and started working on coloring pages for the kids. Maybe something like this?

Image via Disney Stationary

I loved Cinderella when I was a little girl, and I could include some other Disney princess wedding pages for the girls. Maybe something a little more masculine for the boys who didn't want to color Ariel and Belle!

What else could I include to keep the kids occupied? I know a lot of brides have included bags for the kids...what did you put in them? I want to make this fun for them!

Hard Times

Oh these times are hard,
Yeah, they're making us crazy,
Don't give up on me, baby.

Mr. Lemur and I are long distance—and have been on and off throughout our entire relationship. In fact, by the time we get married we'll have been long distance for almost half of our time as a couple. So yes, I knew it would be hard going into our final four months apart. Unfortunately my trips up to Detroit are few and far between.

Personal photo

But guys, it's really tough. When I'm here I get into a pretty good routine. I work 8 to 5 or later every day, eat dinner with my sisters or roommate, go to class for several hours in the evening, run and workout, and by then it's time to go to sleep and get up the next day to do it all over again. Mr. Lemur works twelve hour shifts with a lot of overtime and runs a good bit himself. We hang out with our friends here or there when we have time. So we stay busy—and that's good. It works.

I sit here writing this fresh off a weekend in Detroit. These are the days that are hard. It's hard to focus on writing an entrepreneurship business plan. It's hard to enjoy a typical dinner with a group of family and friends. It's hard to lace up my shoes and run by myself.

Personal photo

We fight more when we're apart. It's easy to snap over something small, especially when the distance already strains emotions. Read: I am a hormonal mess.

The whole girls and chocolate thing? Yeah, that holds true for me. Dark chocolate preferably. I'm all out—you can mail me some more and we'll be best friends forever? What can I say, it was a tough day. And that bag of M&Ms from my future mother-in-law went really quickly...

Personal photo

One of us struggles taking pictures. That person is not me. I love him anyway.

Girls in a long-distance relationship: How do you make it work? Any advice for me? Encouragement? (I could use some right now.)

Invitations Part III

Miss Part I or Part II?

Now that I had my invitations and mini Moo cards with website information, the only thing left to do was assemble the final product. I could have just dropped the Moo cards into the envelope with the invitations, but I was a little nervous that people wouldn't see them—and I wanted to do something a little more special, since I wasn't doing much else with the invitations.

I took my heart hole punch (you knew that was coming) and, well, punched some heart holes. Pretty self-explanatory, right?

Personal photo

After doing all 100 mini Moo cards, my hand was a little sore and I was bored. (I did all of them, not just the 25 with this shot. I had them stacked by picture.) Guys, if you're like me and your mom/fiance/a lot of your friends live 800+ miles away from you, doing wedding planning by yourself gets boring. Start a good show at the beginning of your wedding planning and just watch it through. And if you're like me and really bored, start a second show when you finish your first.

Anyway. All I needed now was a way to attach the cards to the invitations. I picked up two rolls of thin coral-colored ribbon. It looked like this. (I couldn't find the exact ribbon, so just pretend I was a good blogger and took a picture of the ribbon.)

Image via Easy Weddings

Note: Ten yards of ribbon is not the same as ten feet. Two rolls ended up being not quite enough (six invitations short!) so I went back to Walmart to pick up more to finish the invitations and to use with the crossword puzzle programs and I Spy cards. I was trying to mentally calculate how much I needed to buy but read "ten feet" on the rolls instead of "ten yards." So. I got a lot more than I needed. Good thing it was only $0.49 a roll!

Then I simply threaded the ribbon through one heart hole, under the picture, and out the other heart hole. I dabbed a little bit of glue on one end of the ribbon and pressed it against the other end to hold it firmly in place. Pictures always make more sense, so here's what it looked like in the end.

Personal photo / Cute carpet in my apartment, huh?

The ribbon holds the mini Moo card snug against the invitation, but all you have to do is slide the ribbon down to release the card and see the rest of the invitation information. I guess my only worry is making sure people look at the other side of the card. If you received an invitation like this, you would at least glance at the other side of the mini Moo card as you pulled it off, right? I'm hoping people will unthread the ribbon and hold onto the card since it has our picture and website.

Even just a simple project like this took me a few hours! I have way more respect for all you ladies out there to undertook a much larger invitations project now.

Tell me about your invites! And while you're at, anyone else worry about guests catching all the information on the cards? I could use some reassurance!

On a Plugged-In Wedding

I know I'm not the first Bee to tackle this subject, and I'm probably not the most eloquent either! Mrs. Mink and Miss Otter covered the subject well and gave arguments for having an unplugged wedding, of which there are many. Both Mrs. Mink and Miss Otter shared this photo, which shows the biggest downside of allowing guests to use their phones at will.

Image via Offbeat Bride / Photo by Solare Photography

I think all of us would say we would rather have guests watching us in person than staring at us through a tiny screen, right? So why not post a sign like this and ask guests to stay unplugged for the duration of the wedding?

Image via Weddingbee / Photo by Jodi Miller Photography

A couple of reasons. In fact, I'll number them for you. Here's my personal justification for having a plugged-in wedding—which to me means more than just allowing devices, but actually encouraging them. I'll get to that in another post!

Note: If I was getting married in a cathedral, this post would probably be different. If I was having a formal wedding, again—this post would probably be different. Everybody's situations are... different. You get it.

1. It's hard to control. I don't want to be the "cell phone" police, asking people to turn off their phones or put them away because this is my moment. No, I don't think all unplugged weddings are like that! But I don't want to feel like I'm back in high school with the teacher taking away someone's phone for texting in class.

2. I love to use my phone at weddings. I snapped this picture at my cousin's wedding over Christmas. Awful picture? Yep! Great reminder of a moment I wouldn't have otherwise? Also a resounding yes. The photographer at the wedding mainly took group shots, pictures I'll probably never see. If I hadn't taken this picture (and some others) on my iPhone, I wouldn't have any memories of hanging out with my crazy family.

Personal photo

3. I really, really want those pictures. Not the perfectly posed and framed pictures with the guys looking dapper and handsome—ok, I mean I do want those!

Image via Niki Marie Photography

I mean the casual, "just happened to snap a photo as you guys were laughing" pictures. The ones the photographers can't always get, because, well they can't be everywhere at once. If you catch my dad crying as he walks back to his seat, take a picture. I want the pictures of groups of people at tables that I only got to visit with once or twice and the kids playing with their food. Heck, take a picture of your kid screaming because he can't have more cake!

I can't wait to see them.

Anyone else doing a plugged in wedding? Thoughts on unplugged versus plugged-in weddings?

Honeymoon Hotspots

From the beginning we had a pretty good idea of where we were headed for our honeymoon—but that doesn't mean I resisted the urge to Google top honeymoon destinations and drool over the beautiful locales and perfect resorts. Our honeymoon will be more low-key than any of these, but I might send a few them off to Mr. Lemur as a hint for our one-year anniversary!

1. Curacao

Image via Romantic Getaways

Anyone else not know Curacao existed until the last season of The Bachelorette? After Jef (with one f, I never did understand that...) proposed to Emily with the darling buildings in the background, I had to add this one to the list. The fact that Jef & Emily are sadly no longer together does not ruin this beautiful island for me!

2. Spain

Image via Michael Jurick Photography

Spanish architecture floors me. It's so stunning. And after eight years of Spanish from middle school through college, I'm due a trip to Spain! I'm secretly still listening to Spanish hip hop to stay up on the language... anybody want to borrow a six year-old Juanes CD?

3. New Zealand

Image via National Geographic

My grandparents went to New Zealand five or six years ago and brought back some truly incredible pictures. Ever since then it's been in the back of my mind—and Mrs. Wallaby's beautiful honeymoon kinda reminded me that oh hey, I need to go there!

4. Peru

Image via World Wider

We love to hike and just the though of hiking somewhere like this gets me so excited! Yes, I love hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the Appalachian Trail is great. But really, do they have anything on the Andes Mountains? Actually maybe this category should just be "Mountains." I'll take any of them—Rockies, Alps, Mount Everest...

Anyone been to any of these places? Share your stories with me so I can live vicariously through you!