Hi! I'm Taryn, a writer, designer and soon-to-be-bride from Atlanta, Georgia. Sit a spell with me and catch up as I plan the wedding of my beer-loving, confetti-throwing dreams to the wonderful Mr. Williford.Honeymoon Redeux, Part 2
Until the flights are booked, dream honeymoon plans exist only in your dreams. Rooster and I had big hopes to make our fantasy trip to London a few weeks after our wedding to watch our two favorite teams play in the NFL International Series at Wembley Stadium (talk about serendipity!), but it wasn’t meant to be. Money woes and a very important wedding planned for the same weekend de-railed our plans.
We determined the best thing to do, both for our schedules and our wallets, would be to take a honeymoon someplace closer and cheaper right after the wedding. But we still really wanted to (irresponsibly) go to London, too, even if it meant we’d miss the game. It was like a devil and angel were on our shoulders, telling us where to take our first trip as newlyweds.
Figurine from The Cake Creator
So we did what we usually do when we’re faced with a tough decision: Not make one.
Yep, we’re doing both.
Wikimedia Commons
Right after the wedding, we’ll head to Chicago for a mini-moon. We’ve both been there before, but we love spending time in The Windy City. Roo’s sister owns a vacation condo (in an awesome location near Divison Street) and has generously offered to let us stay there while we dine and play all over the city. Taking a domestic honeymoon with a free place to stay allows us the freedom to play for a whole week and spend our honeymoon budget treating ourselves with a trip to the spa and really nice dinners (with really nice cocktails to go along). If we’d splurged on a trip to Europe right after the wedding, it would have been short (like, 3 days) and we would have had to watch every penny. I’d rather relax after the wedding than rush around London with no money.
Wikimedia Commons
Then next spring, we’ll take our dream trip to Europe. With fresh vacation days and some fresh paychecks, we’ll have more flexibility and a bigger budget to take the overseas trip we’ve truly wanted to take all these years. The plan right now is to take a couple of weeks and hit up London along with Amsterdam and Brussels, but we’ve got plenty of time to decide how we want to spend part two of our honeymoon.
Now that the decision to take a two-part honeymoon is behind us, we can really see that it’s the right thing to do for our budget and our schedule. Plus this way, we get two honeymoons for the price of one! (You’re still newlyweds after 6 months, right?)
Where are you going for your honeymoon? Anyone have any recommendations for me in Chicago?
Honeymoon Redeux, Part 1
If you looked around our apartment, you’d discover two things about Roo and I: We love London, and we love football.
Remember our living room from this post?
We’ve been to plenty of football games together, but neither one of us has actually been to Europe. London was definitely the ideal destination for our honeymoon—even before we were engaged—but it became a dream honeymoon when the NFL announced that our two favorite pro football teams, Roo’s hometown Detroit Lions and our own Atlanta Falcons, were set to play each other in the NFL international series at Wembley stadium in London. Two weeks after our wedding. It was like the honeymoon gods were shining down on us.
NFL Rush
There’s only one problem. We had to find some way to pay for this dream vacation.
I Love Vinyl Records
London and the Lions game were always in the back our our minds for the first several months of our wedding planning. Big Ben peeked his head in at each of our budget sessions reminding us not to go overboard on the wedding, or else we wouldn’t be able to make the trip of our dreams. But we kept at it, finding new ways to make money or save money to try and make it across the pond.
Then we ran into another problem. My best friend and Maid of Honor tipped me off that she and her boyfriend of ten years were going to make it official with a ceremony this fall—the same weekend as the football game.
I Love Vinyl Records
As serendipitous as our football-loving London honeymoon seemed to be, I knew I wouldn’t miss my MOH’s wedding for anything in the world. We decided to scrap the London honeymoon.
As we get closer to the wedding, I realize that we probably couldn’t have made London work, anyway. It would have been a lot of money for us after saving up for the wedding, and it would have had to be a really short trip. But now we have a new plan…
Did life or money get in the way of your honeymoon plans?
Our Wedding Day Timeline’s First Draft
Rooster (who’s been taking charge with a lot of our vendors lately) asked me a question the other day that threw me for a loop: What time do we want the photo booth to start? It’s not a difficult question to answer with our unstructured cocktail-style reception; we want people to start snapping shots some time after the ceremony is over. But like many snowballing wedding decisions, this little one hinges on a few larger outcomes. Exactly when does the ceremony end? When does it start? What time will we be done with photos?
That simple question made me realize that I needed to draft a day-of timeline sooner rather than later. Nothing set in stone (we’ll be doing that with our coordinator a little later on), but a first draft timeline that allows us to answer questions like this one.
Swell & Grand Agenda Printable
Also to begin prepping for really adorable timeline cards.
I started figuring out a rough timeline by jotting down the things that I know for sure about our day. If you’re looking to create your own timeline, obviously your list will look a little different, but starting with what you know is a great jumping off point.
- We’ve rented the venue from 5pm to midnight (and that needs to include setup and take-down time).
- We’ll be doing a first look and getting all of our posed photos out of the way before the ceremony.
- Our reception is pretty relaxed and shapeless; with a food truck, there’s no set dinner time and we’ve no need for a cocktail hour.
Beyond those things, I didn’t know exactly what our day would look like. I needed to figure out when our ceremony would kick off, when we’d serve up from the food truck and how we wanted to work through toasts and spotlight dances. I did a lot of Googling of “cocktail reception timelines” about this point (this A Practical Wedding post was incredibly valuable), and then carved out our first draft.
Getting Ready/Photo Timeline
10:00am – Makeup and hair stylists arrive at hotel
12:30pm – Photographer arrives for getting ready photos
1:30pm – All hair and makeup finished
2:00pm – Dress on, final touches
2:30pm – First look
3:00pm – Wedding party photos
Wedding Timeline
5:00pm – Vendors arrive for setup
6:15pm – Guests begin to arrive, bar opens (drinks before the ceremony!)
6:30pm – Invite time
6:40pm – Ceremony starts
7:00pm – Ceremony ends
7:00pm – Food truck opens, some music begins
7:-7:15pm – Receiving line? Maybe?
8:00pm – Announcement, first dance
8:-8:30pm – Alternate toasts and spotlight dances
8:30pm – Couple’s toast, announce truck is closing and pops are served
9:00pm – Food truck closes
9:-11:00pm – Dancing, games, general merriment
11:00pm – Final song and sendoff
Midnight – All vendors out
You’ll notice that I’ve lumped together all of the traditional wedding reception pomp into one 30-minute period at 8pm. This idea comes on the heels of hive member StL.Ashley’s thread about her own cocktail-style reception (read about it here). She talked about how great it was to get all of the ceremonial stuff out of the way quickly, and said her guests seemed to like the fact that they didn’t miss anything. I really love this idea, and I’m hoping we can pull it off well. We’ll have two (maybe three) toasts and three dances to get through, so I think we can get it done in a half hour.
Milos + Natasa Horvat
Even if we have to dance at the speed of sound.
I have a few concerns, though. Is two hours enough dance time? I mean, we like to cut a rug in my circle. And is it weird that the groom and bride will be around for the “dinner” period between 7-8pm, then get formerly announced at 8? I feel like we’re trying to play peek-a-boo with a teenager; disappearing behind a door or something with 5 minutes to go, then magically reappearing at 8 o’clock when people are supposed to clap and cheer at our mere presence in the room. It’s weird right?
What were your awkward timeline concerns? How did you handle them?
Favors: Let’s Brew This Thing!
I had no idea making decisions could be so exhausting. Planning a wedding means making lots of little choices, and it really drains your cognitive ability to decide on anything else in everyday life. “What do you want for dinner?” No clue. “Are you coming out this weekend?” Who knows. I can’t even decide what color pens to use some days, and there’s only two choices: blue or black. So when an important wedding decision is more or less made for me? I’m totally on board. And that’s kind of what happened with our wedding favors.
We’re getting married at a local brewery, Monday Night Brewing; a venue that fits us and our city perfectly. With breweries popping up left and right, Atlanta is becoming a huge market for craft beer, and attending a brewery tasting is a suitable way for locals to spend their happy hour or a weekend afternoon. But while Atlanta’s beers and breweries are diverse in style and flavor, they all handle tastings the same way: In Georgia they can’t legally sell any beer, but they can sell you a pint glass and then give you beer tasting tickets on the house. Show up at 5pm with a $10 bill, and you’ll stumble out a few hours later with a 6-ticket buzz and a souvenir glass.
Ashlee Culverhouse Photo
Steven Wallace Photo
Because Roo and I are among those frequent brewery-goers mentioned above, our cabinets are full of brewery-branded pint glasses. In fact, the only other glassware we own are for wine, a fact which I realize paints us as total lushes but also demonstrates exactly how common brewery glasses are in Atlanta households. It’s totally a thing here.
Literally. All of them. From Breweries near and far.
So when we were offered the suggestion of customizing Monday Night Brewing’s pint glasses as favors for our wedding, we knew it was the perfect idea. The front of the glass will feature MNB’s logo, while the back will have our wedding logo plus our names and the date. Everyone (including the kids) will get a glass to use all night at the wedding to keep the beer, soda or mixed drinks flowing. (Wine will still be served in a proper wine glass, sine drinking wine out of a pint weirds me out.)
Caroline Fontenot
Caroline Fontenot
As far as brewery weddings go, pint glasses are a pretty common favor (all the event photos in this post are from real weddings at our venue), but I’m not going to let that stop me. I figure most people haven’t even been to a wedding at a brewery. And they certainly haven’t been obsessively Googling “brewery wedding” for months, like some brides who-must-not-be-named.
Shaune Harrison
Who, me?
I don’t know yet how we’re going to hand out or display our pint glass favors. We could keep them near the bar so the bartenders can hand them out with everyone’s first drink. Or we could set one up at each place setting. Or (and this is my favorite idea, I think) we could set them all up on a table outside as faux escort cards. We aren’t assigning seats, but since I always love searching for my name at escort card tables, I think it could be fun to line up all the glasses with people’s names attached as they walk in to the brewery. Roo and I have been throwing around the idea of opening the bar before the ceremony, so I might display them with a cute sign that cues everyone to “grab a glass, grab a drink, then grab yourself a seat!”
Escort Cards by Paper Daisies, styling by Scarlet Plan & Design , shot by KBG Photography
No matter how they get dished out, pint glasses it is! I’m impressed with myself. Both for choosing a favor so quickly and decidedly, but also for making things more difficult than they need to be, as our fast and easy favors may have just turned into escort cards and a DIY sign display. Oh, and koozies. I still really want koozies. Is it overkill to have more than one brewery-themed favor?
How did you decide on favors? Did they play into your wedding location or theme?
Ponytails and Pops of Color
I have been dragging my feet on booking someone for hair and makeup for so long (note to brides: don’t put it off; don’t put anything off, actually). But I’ve got a trial set up this week with a sister team of artists I’m really excited about. They asked me to send them photos of some inspiration for my wedding day look, which means, you know, I have to make decisions. Not the easiest task for me.
Thankfully when it comes to hair, I seem to have a good grip on what I like and don’t like. I’m a firm believer in the idea of staying true to who you are on your wedding day. Nine days out of 10, my hair is pulled up or back and just a little bit messy, so I know I’m not going to feel comfortable with an impeccably polished and intricate updo. Instead, I searched for photos of messy and edgy ponytails and bridal buns with lots of texture at the top and sides.
Olivia Palermo in the June/July issue of Brides magazine.
Carrie Underwood at the 51st Grammy Awards, image via CMT
Messy Pony Tutorial from A Cup of Jo
Emma Stone at the MTV Movie Awards, image via Elle Spain
Side Updo with a Twist Tutorial from Real Simple
When it comes to makeup, I’m clueless. I am a drugstore makeup girl who knows nothing about contouring or how to choose the right lip shade for me. (My morning routine involves a layer of foundation, a bit of blush, neutral shadow and liner, and a swipe of mascara.) But with fair skin and light brown hair that’s been highlighted blonde several times over, I decided to start by finding inspiration photos of girls that had the same coloring I do. I want something that’s dewy and fresh-faced, but I love dramatic winged eyeliner and going heavy on lashes.
Lauren Conrad’s eyes could kill on the cover of her book, Style
A glamorous pre-twerk Miley Cyrus at the 2012 Oscars, image via Allure
Another favorite Miley Look from the 2012 Billboard Music Awards (minus the clumpy mascara), images via Steal her Style and Celebitchy
Alexa Chung’s cat-eye from this Vogue video tutorial
If I knew it looked good on me, I would totally finish off the look with a bright pop of color on my lips. Something in an orangey-coral shade, or maybe pink. But I’m not confident that it will look great on my complexion and all together with the rest of my bridal look.
Image via Beauty High
Zooey Deschanel at the 2012 Billboard Awards, via Venus Buzz
I think I’m going to let the professionals do what they do best. Armed with some inspiration, I’m sure they’ll knock it out of the park. I cant wait to see how it goes at my trial. Any advice for me?
