Weddingbee boards

I'm back after a few days of contemplation, a massive meltdown followed by a period of wedding ambivalence and avoidance, after having for a THIRD time change the location of our wedding and reception.  From an oil spill (so sad) and having to deal with relatives and their schedules and demands, we came to a conclusion!

And it is imho, the best decision ever!  I will STILL get to use my gorgeous seashell bouquet and boutinierre I had made and this time, our wedding will be OUR way!  It's going to be a combo familymoon (my son is coming with us since we can't do both a separate honeymoon and family vacation due to our schedules) in the caribbean!  It is looking like we're going to have possibly a wedding in either St. Thomas or St. John!  I'm looking now for the right particulars as it may be just the three of us there for the wedding!  We're super excited!

Now we can jet into our destination on a wednesday or thursday, have a luxurious honeymoon and magical intimate wedding on or near July 31 , and then we'll fly back to Atlanta the following wednesday or thursday.  Meanwhile, our out of town friends and relatives (and my bridesmaids) will descend onto Atlanta either wednesday or thursday as we return home!  We'll spend a few days hanging out in Atlanta, pretending we're tourists, going to the aquarium, maybe a Braves' game, and having fun just visiting with them! 

On the original wedding date, August 7, we'll have our wedding reception at one of our favorite restaurants.  That's going to be the big kicker right now.  Where?  We have 3 favorites in mind, one being Canoe of course!  I also want to have an acoustic guitar player there for our guests, the cake (the fancy schmancy cake we'll cut) and possibly show a video (on a screen) our island wedding for the guests!  If possible we may have our minister from our church stop by and give a special blessing!

So...the end result is us having OUR wedding the way we want it!  I always wanted an intimate wedding, and this way we can have just that!  So here it is!  The Belle n GA Wedding 3.0 version and I love  it!  The extra savings from the amount we'd spend on the ceremony we can put towards a fabulous familymoon and can also do our official couples' honeymoon this winter (St. Lucia)!

T is very happy!  I'm also excited as my stationer will begin work on the new invitation suite we're going to do!  The plan is to have a combo wedding announcement and invitation to our reception!  It's definitely not going to be traditional, but will look amazing!  She's fantastic and I just got off the phone with her! 

Sometimes life hands you lemons.  It's the end result that counts.

I love Georgia.  We love Georgia.  Now we can have a wedding reception in our comfort zone, have it our way, use my awesome floral friendor, and have fabulous food and drinks for our guests!

So far, Canoe tops my list as a possible site for our dinner reception!   

Thanks everybody.  It has been nightmarish having to do all this with less than 3 months to go!

I absolutely love the flexibility of my stationer.  She's great!  Letting her do all of it since I don't have the time to do semi-diy invites.

The only thing which stinks, is having to personally contact those whom I sent a save the date to.  So far, everybody is on board with atlanta and now our local friends can come.  Still going to keep the guest list at 50 or less though.

@Sulli:  Sure!  I always carry too much stuff w/me.  Just don't mind all the darn shoes I'm carrying!  lol :)

@Danielle:  thanks so much!  It's going to be so super small, and the reception is going to still be around 50 people or so.  Excited for that part.  We'll get the best of both worlds.

T is into sailing (sailed through a hurricane in college with his frat brothers) and is in love w/St. John.  I just want to have a blast and visit several islands including Virgin Gorda too!  We all 3 have passports and can go wherever we want!  I also entertained the idea of Puerto Rico, since I was born there.

So yes, there will be our regular guest list at the reception.  Our invites are going to be sooo cool!  During this week my stationer is going to begin working on them!  So happy!  She did a destination wedding herself and 30 of their friends showed up!  The style is the same (island chic) and colorscheme will be the same (fuscia, grassy green and navy)! 

I will have a different dress tho for the reception, a short one!  Short and sassy white cocktail dress!  The bm's are still going to behave sorta as bridesmaids, and I'm surprising them with small bouquets at the reception!  They're going to wear dresses of their choosing in any of our colors.  They're stoked too!

What's going to be great is I'm taking about 10 days off from work now.  7 for the wedding/familymoon, and 2 for downtime after flying back when we can hang out with our guests and family who will come to ATL early (go to Braves' game or go to GA aquarium or have them over and hang out at the pool) and then the following saturday night will be the reception!  Voila! 

What's hilarious is with each variation of our wedding, because of the circumstances, we end up calculating less money..not intended at all mind you!  The only issue I'm wondering about is do I have a photog and video person at the reception? 

What do you all think?  I'll have pics and video at the actual wedding already.   

Thanks Danielle!  I am so in the air over the video thing.  I def think a relative might be able to do that though.

I do want nice pics of both the wedding and reception!  The wedding will be on video though (most important part)!

Hugs!