One month to go - looking back..

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When I got engaged my already married sister gave me some great advice, choose three things you care about, focus on those and let the rest go.  And I took it to heart. My number #1-  location, we chose the Commanders Mansion in Watertown, a Civil War era mansion tucked way on a few acres of meticulous landscape in the heart of an urban area. We fell in love with it the moment we stepped inside and in the month long search following – we felt like we HAD to look elsewhere – nothing lived up to the gold standard of our Mansion. I was a Commander’s Bride and we knew it was the place.

Unfortunately, it necessitated the DIYing of my #2, invitations and my #3 decorations and everything else in the wedding.  Because we were trying for a $10,000 wedding, we also had to increase our budget. But it was also a gift to me. Choice #1 gave me the chance to become intimately connected with every aspect of our wedding celebration, making each element uniquely our own, special touches of personality added throughout, completely us and not someone else’s version of us.  It allowed for my Type A, need for control personality to be put to good use, I only had to worry specifically about three things.

Well three things are never really just three things. But I have also been very lucky as all the "things" of my wedding fall in place.  My wedding cake is a gift from a baker friend with whom I work….I get to try out all the tests he does. My bridal necklace, a gift from a jeweler friend, we designed it together one rainy Saturday afternoon in the midst of tea and chatting.  My invitations, a labor of love, designed, cut, glued, folded, reglued sitting on the couch in my living room AFTER an all day round one of putting them together with my maids and mom. My cats love to bat around the scraps of paper strewn hither and yon and I keep finding snippets of ribbon stashed in their secret hiding places. 

I don’t care about bacon wrapped scallops or specifically designed centerpieces that will die on three days.
But more about later.....

Beantown Bride Post - The Groom

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Author: Mellissa A. Knowles
Photography by: Eric Limon Photography

The Groom- a wedding duo's often overlook other half-plays an important role as a support system and planning partner for his bride-to-be. He may be content to just "pitch-in" when asked or manage non-wedding life, the house (my husband-to-be put in a new kitchen floor) or the car. Either way, planning a wedding is a trial run for how you will work together as a married couple.

Remember: A wedding is a massive undertaking, definitely not a one-woman show. Even through your fiance may be aesthetically challenged when choosing centerpieces or favors, he can be involved in so many other ways. So, give him a chance to show you he can handle anything you thrown at him, be it alter flowers or a kitchen floor.

Five helpful tasks for a groom:
  1. Plan budget
  2. Choose groomsmen's attire
  3. Plan rehearsal dinner
  4. Arranging wedding day transportation
  5. Plan honeymoon

The countdown...

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Today it is 55 days to our wedding and I feel like I am woefully unprepared. They say the last two months are hell on the way to heaven...ok...there is not they, I said it.  Yeah...that is what it feels like somedays, I am not able to enjoy the engagement because the invites are out, the tree is not made, the notes not cut, the napkins not ordered. Everyday we move closer, everyday another things gets added just as something is completed, so you never really get to cross something off your to-do list. It stays the same.

No matter how many deadlines there are, I officially bypass all of them.  I think I need to start working backwards, admit my frailty, humanity and my upper limits and just be wabi sabi as my mother says.


The wabi sabi aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete".[1] It is a concept derived from the Buddhist assertion of the Three marks of existence (三法印 sanbōin?), specifically impermanence.  


Thanks goodness for Wikipedia. 


This is a rambling post.


Currently I need to finish - 
- invitations -  3 weeks late
- veil and shoes
- wish tree
- arch decoration
- wine bottles
- maps 
- dictionary
- ribbon wands
- vows and ceremony
- music
- our dance
- flowers
- hair trial
- bathroom baskets
- programs
- signs
- hooks


So I have a few things, not in that order. It is all possible. And what is not, will be Wabi Sabi.  F*** wabi sabi.