The Many Sides of Chuppah

As I've mentioned before, Mr. Lion is Catholic and I'm Jewish.  Neither of us are traditional in practicing our faiths, but we definitely identify with them culturally.  As a Jewish bride who plans to have a non-denominational wedding ceremony, I wanted to somehow incorporate a few Jewish traditions.  One tradition that we decided to include was using a chuppah.

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A chuppah, or canopy, is a piece of decor that sits at the altar during a Jewish ceremony to symbolize the home that the bride and groom will build together.  Traditionally, the four poles are carried down the aisle by members of the wedding party.  From there, it can either be secured at the altar, or the wedding party members can continue to hold it up throughout the ceremony.  The groom walks underneath first to symbolize his ownership of the home, then the bride walks in to symbolize the groom providing for her.  No offense to tradition, but we'll probably walk underneath together because that's more our style!

The chuppah is usually open on all sides, to symbolize the hospitality of an open home.  The chuppah is typically covered, to symbolize God's presence over the home and over the marriage.  The cover can be designed with traditional Jewish symbols...

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...or it can be a more modern and unique design...

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...or it might not even be fabric at all!

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The chuppah itself can come in all shapes and sizes.

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Some chuppahs aren't even covered on top, but the concept is still the same.  Plus, it serves as a great way for the couples' personalities to shine through!

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So what will our chuppah look like?  Well, we wanted it to fit in with the rest of our whimsical garden decor.

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We're Mr. Lion is planning on going the DIY route with this project.  A few wooden poles, some cement and flower pots for the bases, and some fabric for the top should do the trick.  Our florist is providing a little bit of greenery, but other than that we wanted to keep it pretty simple.  I'll let you know how it turns out!

What's the significance behind your ceremony decor?

Vote or Blush!

Get it?  It's a play on P. Diddy's (or whatever he's calling himself these days) "Vote or Die."  Well, I think that sounds a little dramatic; but seriously, you should vote.  On what, you ask?

I need help choosing lingerie for my wedding night!

I chose not to have a lingerie shower, because I asked Mr. Lion, "Do you want me to have lingerie or stuff to make you yummy food?" and he answered the latter.  I got some fabulous kitchen toys at my bridal shower, but now I have a little shopping to do for the wedding night!

I wanted something bridal, and I wanted it to be super sexy but pretty tasteful too.  I've narrowed it down to two options.  I like this first one a lot because the blue accents match my engagement ring.

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Option two isn't as exciting from the front, but the back is unique and definitely bridal.  I mean, it has a bustle!

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What do you think, Hive?  Cast your vote below!  Or just sit there blushing.  I am a little bit.
Option 1 - Blue Bows
Option 2 - Bridal Bustle

It's Complicated

We booked our venue over a year ago.  We knew early on that it was exactly what we wanted, and we eagerly signed up to have both our ceremony and our reception there.  The venue was then crossed off the to-do list and promptly placed on the back burner.  Our Day-Of Coordinator over there checked in with us from time to time, but other than that, it was out of sight and out of mind.  Now that our wedding is about two months away, I decided to schedule a meeting with our DOC to start ironing out the details.  What time does this vendor arrive?  What does the pattern of traffic flow look like from ceremony to cocktail hour?  Where is my candy buffet going to be?

What followed were a series of epiphanies.  Not the good kind, either.  The kind where innocence is lost and you're left thinking, "Crap!  What do I do now?"  I believe there's a Disney princess out there somewhere whose face can convey this emotion...

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I'm glad I have an experienced venue and an awesome DOC to help me figure things out.  Nonetheless, my meeting resulted in adding some new items to my to-do list, some new problems that I now needed to solve:

1.  Our tables seat 8, and I initially thought they seated 10.
My bad.  I shouldn't have assumed, and I don't really know why I did in the first place.  So, now we need an additional 5 tables to accommodate our guests, which means 5 additional centerpieces.  Groan.  It's only money, and we over-budgeted for the sole purpose of covering our booties in the event of mistakes like this.  Problem solved.

2.  Table linens bring up the white vs. ivory debate that I so despise.
My dress is ivory.  Mr. Lion and the Lion Gmen are wearing gray tuxes with ivory shirts.  The Lioness Bmaids are wearing multicolored shoes with a white background, but they are wearing ivory fascinators (I figure they're far enough apart and there's a lot going on elsewhere in the ensemble, no one will notice).  When my DOC and I began to discuss table cloths and chair covers, we instantly decided on ivory.  Then, we had to decide on sashes for the chair covers.  I could choose between black, burgundy, olive, white, silver, or gold.  They all looked great with the white, but the gold was pretty much the only option for the ivory.

Gold kinda clashed with the rest of our color scheme, so that left me back at indecisive.  I really liked the silver, since we're using mint julep cups for our centerpieces.  Could I pull off the silver with the ivory?  Or should I just switch to white and forget the fact that it didn't match my dress?  For that matter, could I do white linens and white sashes?  What do you think?

3. My cake plan was turned upside down.
We had planned on having approximately 100 cupcakes, in three different flavors.  We were also planning on having a groom's cake, which would serve 50-75 people.  We planned to cut a small cake on top of a cupcake tree, which our baker had agreed to make for us.  Then, guests would be able approach the cake table and choose between our three cupcake flavors or a slice of groom's cake.  This concerned my DOC, as she believed that it would result in chaos and (dare I say) it might look tacky.  She thought it would be better if the cakes were served.

She also added that it would be better if all of the guests received one cupcake and all of the guests received one small slice of groom's cake.  I suppose that would appear more hospitable, but it seemed like a lot of food for our daytime wedding.  Additionally, that would cause us to buy twice as much cake as we had initially anticipated!  Could we get away with serving 100 of our guests cupcakes and the rest groom's cake?  Or would it be so bad if we stuck with the self-serve route?  Or should we just bite the bullet and buy cake for (gasp) 300 servings for a 150-person guest list?  What do you think?

Y'all, wedding planning is getting stressful as we're reaching the home stretch!  I just wanna go back into DIY mode and play with fun projects and not deal with logistics!  Thanks for reading such a whiny post, and thanks in advance for your advice.  I hope I didn't stress you out vicariously!  I'm going to go have a glass of wine now...

What kinds of roadblocks have you run into with your nitty gritty details?

Lioness Invitations: The Reveal

Since all of our guests should have received their invitations by now, I figured this would be a good time to share them with you!  But first, let's backtrack a little.  Our invitations journey began months ago when Sister Lioness designed them for us after scouring the internet for inspiration.  Then, we bought a lot of paper at Paper Source, the same way we did for our Save the Dates.  It took a while to assemble everything, but we were pretty psyched with how they turned out!

The front of the envelope included a wrap-around label in our wedding colors:

 

Our guests opened up granite-gray envelopes to find this little bundle, tied together with bakers twine:

The invitation read:

"Since you have shared in our lives through your friendship and love, we, Miss Lioness and Mr. Lion, together with our parents, invite you to share in the beginning of our new life together as we exchange marriage vows."

 The time and place followed, and the invitation finished up with "lunch an laughter to follow at same location."  Ah, I love alliteration.

The response cards included little icons to indicate meal selection.  Adults had a choice between chicken or fish, but the guests bringing children also had a little dinosaur icon to indicate a kid's meal.  The bottom of the postcard reads, "Please use the reverse side of this card to provide marriage advice, whimsical doodles, flattering caricatures, and/or well wishes."

The bundle also included a little information tag:

And, of course, our balloon motif was present throughout the suite:

{all personal photos}

One of my favorite parts of the invitations was the green-ness of it all.  Of course, if we had wanted to be really environmentally friendly, we could have done something electronic.  But since I insisted on a hard copy, I compromised as much as I could.  All of our paper was made from recycled material.  Additionally, we chose to forgo using backing and enclosures, which not only reduced our total paper use, but it also cut back on cost!  It also cut back on postage cost, as our entire suite was light enough to weigh in for the standard shipping rate of 44¢.

My other favorite thing about our invitations was how unique they were to us.  They were designed to fit us and to fit our theme, and I think they reflect that well.  How do your invitations represent you?

On the Prowl

I had so much fun at my bridal shower, but unfortunately we had to rush out of the tea room and head home to change clothes.  I threw on a slightly less classy dress, and met up with the girls to kick off my bachelorette party!

Fishnets = ready to party!

No penis paraphernalia for this bachelorette, but my girls did glam me up with a tiara (shocker) and some faux lashes.

Lioness Bmaid Emily was just a little bit excited.

We posed for a group shot before heading out...

...but we made time for a few antics first:

We cabbed over to Loca Luna for a few caipirinhas...which are wicked strong, by the way.  Two cocktails in and my princess-themed sillybandz seemed pretty intense!

Also, at one point I made this face...

...which I did not know I was capable of making.

Sister Lioness and I had glazed-over eyes after a few hours at Loca Luna:

Then, I got stir crazy.  My friends asked where I wanted to go next  "I just wanna go drink a Guinness," I replied.  "I want a Guiness and I want men to tell me that Mr. Lion is the luckiest man in the world."

So, that's exactly what we did!  We ventured over to the Virginia Highlands and hit up a couple of pubs.  The good Irish girl that I am, I grabbed a Guinness...

...and I made friends with lots and lots of boys, who told me that Mr. Lion was the luckiest man in the world.  One of these new friends was dressed like Marty McFly from "Back to the Future," and I found this pretty hilarious at the time.

What kind of antics ensued during your bachelorette party?

Winter Wonderland: The Details!

Sister Lioness spent so much time and effort on the details of my shower, I simply had to devote an entire post to them!  Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

When guests first walked in, they were greeted with a table filled with mismatched teacups.  Guests were instructed to choose a teacup.  As you can see, the table was adorned with black and white "Alice in Wonderland" illustrations.

Each teacup included a homemade sugar cookie, as well as a few bags of tea.

My teacup had a tag with my name on it, but every other teacup had a tag that read "pick me."  Attached to that tag was a scroll that described what that teacup revealed about their personality!  At the end of the shower, we went around the table and read our scrolls.  The funny thing is that they turned out to be pretty accurate!  Obviously, mine was:

Teapots and ceramic filled with flowers served as centerpieces...

...and monogrammed teacups spelled out the theme for the day:

I sat in the middle of the table, mostly because the head of the table was occupied by the white rabbit himself.

And instead of a Cheshire cat, we had a Cheshire lion...a nod to my Weddingbee moniker!

I loved the literary motif.  It was whimsical, but a different kind of whimsical than our wedding theme.  How were your shower details different from your wedding details?

Winter Wonderland: My Shower!

As y'all may have heard, Atlanta had a bit of bad weather last week.  We got about five inches of snow where we live, and our Southern city is definitely not equipped to deal with such a thing!  The city-wide policy was to wait it out.  In the meantime, I sat on the edge of my seat waiting for the icy roads to melt...because my shower was that Saturday!  Fortunately, the highways cleared, most of the side streets got a little better, and all of my out of town shower guests were still able to come!

We donned some pretty dresses (with tights, of course), threw on some warm coats, and headed up to Marietta Square for some tea.  You may recall from these lovely pieces of inspiration and this fabulous invitation that Sister Lioness and Mama Lioness had planned a "Mad Tea Party" themed shower for me.  It was supposed to be reminiscent of "Alice in Wonderland," but more so from the novel than from any of the movies.  Well, I think my fabulous hostesses pulled it off flawlessly.  I walked into The Vineyard Cafe and entered a true wonderland.

A very long table, filled with 17 of my favorite women

I was surrounded by love.  Love, and lots and lots of delicious food of course!  I think I was grinning from ear to ear for the next several hours.  Mostly because I was just psyched, but also because I posed for lots of pictures!  First, with one of my two fabulous hostesses, Mama Lioness!

Next, I posed with my other fabulous hostess, Sister Lioness!

How awesome is that painting behind us?  Yay for hot air balloons!  Oh, if I may digress for a moment, I'm pretty proud of my hostess gifts.  I got Mama Lioness and Sister Lioness umbrella charms (Get it?  Shower?!), both very unique to their personalities.  Sister Lioness' charm had an umbrella and a locket, while Mama Lioness' had a beach umbrella with a piece of seaglass:

Locket by foowahu.  Sea glass by Seashaped.

Now then.  Where were we?  Oh yes.  We sat down for tea, and each of us received our own little french press with tea of our choice.

We snacked on fresh fruit, finger sandwiches, and an assortment of muffins, scones, and cookies.

Next, my guests gathered 'round as I opened my gifts.

Some of my favorite presents were the ones that weren't from my registry...

...and sometimes I was just excited about the gift wrap alone!

Lioness Bmaid Laura did an awesome job making my ribbon bouquet.

Next, we posed for some group shots.  First, with my fabulous bridesmaids!

I freeking love our buttons!  This one's my favorite photo from the whole day:

How gorgeous are those ladies?!  It was absolutely incredible to be surrounded by so many of my favorite gals.  It made everything feel a lot more real...I finally felt like a bride!  It was some of the most fun I've ever had.  I probably would have stayed all day if they hadn't kicked us out!

What was your favorite part of your shower?