Zero Days to Go

Well, my dear readers and friends, the big day has finally arrived.

It's time for Sphinx and I to step up on that altar, say our vows, and live happily ever after.

Currently, I'm here in the hotel room with BM Taco and BM Dino, waiting for hair and makeup to get here so we can get this day started off.  The other ladies will arrive soon, and we'll enjoy some champagne, snackage, and girly music while getting ready.  My daddy just dropped off my coffee order, so things are starting out great.

Anyone who has come across me in the last two days would know I am lying if I said that I'm just excited and ready to go.  Nope, I've been stressing out pretty hard.  The weather is still keeping the city pretty soggy, the AC at the church wasn't working at the rehearsal (they got it fixed!), and the timing of everything has had me pretty on edge.  I can't say enough wonderful things about my bridesmaids, friends, and family members who have stepped up to help handle the things that I can't.  I have some amazing people in my life and I cannot thank them enough.  I'm just trying to remember that at the end of the day we will be married, we have so many wonderful friends in from out of town to share in this day, and that's all that matters.

To Sphinx, this day has been a long time in the making, but worth every step of the journey.  I can't wait to start our lives together and see what our next adventure is.  Thank you for being such a great partner in this whole engagement process - especially your unending support of this WeddingBee activity.  I love you, bug.

 I have every intention to pop in here after the wedding to share a few guest photos with y'all, so be on the lookout for that! See you on the other side, hive!

Miss Pyramid
(Looks like this name is about to be ancient history!)

Rain, Rain Go Away

It's here, hive.  Through all this planning, it's kind of been hard to process that this would actually, really be happening.  It's our wedding week.

I've been on the strangest roller coaster of emotions all week. Mostly, I feel stressed about the things that still need to get done (why, oh why did we leave parent presents and the ceremony program to so last minute?).  Every once in a while I realize what we're doing and I get really anxious, but in a good way.  And whenever I think about having all of our friends in one place, I get so excited I could bust!  No matter the feeling, I've been having butterflies in the tummy nonstop!

I'm wrapping up work today, but tomorrow I'll be off to have a fun-filled day with my bridesmaids.  Mani-pedis, brunch, some drinks in the quarter...hopefully not dodging rainstorms!

At least the expected temperature dropped a few degrees!/Snippets from weather.com

Pyramid Gals Take Vegas!

Once I asked my girls to be bridesmaids, of course the first topic of conversation to come up was the bachelorette party.  Since I currently have five bridesmaids in five different cities, I wasn't sure what the plan would be.  BM Perk threw out the idea of doing Las Vegas, and my initial reaction was "No! I don't want people to have to spend money and travel for me!" So we polled the bridesmaids and some other close girlfriends and the general consensus was "Hell yea!"  So I had a Vegas bachelorette party!

Me, MOH Curls, and BM Dino showing off our shot glass rings in the limo!

Dream come true? Is it weird to use that phrase to describe your bachelorette party? Whatever, I'm sticking to it.  I have the most amazing bridesmaids and some really awesome friends who made this a trip I'll never forget.  With all of my peeps spread out, I don't get a lot of girl time, so just that alone was super special to me.  Twelve fabulous ladies came out to Vegas for my weekend, and I was so grateful and happy that we had such a great turnout.  Even though the trip was for me, I think it's safe to say that everyone enjoyed the girly vacation for themselves.

Let's Break it Down

You know the wedding is getting close when we start busting out the pies.  Pie charts, that is!

When compiling our invitations, I compiled our list of guests into a spreadsheet and assigned each a number for the back of the RSVP card.  Fortunately, we didn't need to use the number to figure out where a card came from, but I did use the spreadsheet to keep track of the guest responses.  It was then easy to send that list to both our mothers to let them know which guests on their ends needed a little reminder to send their response card in.  After we started receiving a few cards, it made it easy to project what I thought the final number would be.  We were doing some menu adjustments before all the cards rolled in, so it was nice to be able to have a good number to work with there.

So all that means we've finally got a final guest count number!  I can stop saying "around 200 guests" or "maybe 215?" when talking to my vendors.  

Grand total? 

The Pyramid wedding will have 221 attendees!  

We sent out 144 wedding invitations to a total of 289 friends and family members.  Let's not even discuss that, and we'll just say that we were not immune to the guest list creep phenomenon.  It was more like a guest list landslide.  But I digress.  

Basic Decline/Accept Chart

I didn't have a fancy weighted calculator like Mrs. Filly, but everyone and their mother said that you should anticipate 80% acceptance.  Well, I don't know about you, but I don't like taking standards when it comes to a personal situation.  What if everyone was so impressed by the invitations and the idea of a weekend in downtown New Orleans that they would all accept?  Sure, we could fit them all at the venue, but it might mean reworking the menu some to make the money available for them all.  So, in the end, we fell just below that well-known number, but that includes a few courtesy invites that we had to send to some out-of-town family who we knew would not attend.  If I were to take that into account, we would probably hit closer to 80.  Go figure, we're normal!

Invited and attending guests based on their location.

Most of our guests invited were local, but there were some pretty important friends and family that we were hoping could make the trip from out of town.  A lot of people are traveling to enjoy a weekend in NOLA and our nuptials, but there were a few declines in the mix that we were pretty bummed about.  I considered anything over an hour outside of New Orleans as out of town, and that totaled to 30% of our invited guest list and 23.5% of our final headcount.  To put it another way, 58.4% of invited out of town guests are attending.  

So let's take a look at some categories.  

The categories that made the most sense for use were Bride and Grooms Families, Bride and Groom's Friends, Bridal Party, and Bride's and Groom's Parents' Friends.  As you can see, the parent friend category on both sides were the biggest slices of the pie, followed by family, the bridal party (including dates), and our friends.  So our parents know a lot of people!  I know that the the group of "parent friends" can be a bit of a testy subject.  For the most part, these weren't "Hey, come see my son/daughter get married, even though you don't know them!" type of invites - in both cases, these are family friends that have been around our whole lives.  Cutting out these guests would have immediately gotten us to a much smaller, more intimate wedding, but these are people we want to celebrate with!  They've supported us for years, know us both, and we'll be honored to have them at our wedding.

And here's a look at how many will be attending the wedding in those same categories.  

The declines shown for the bridal party come from two members not bringing dates, fyi.

This crazy color wheel was my way of showing both of those charts above at once.  The darker color shows who is attending in each group, and the lighter color shows the declines.  Overall, the acceptance rate was pretty even across the board (~85%), with the exception of Sphinx's family.  He had quite a few out of town relatives who couldn't make it for several reasons, but they'll really be missed!  

Whenever I would see these breakdowns, I would think "Wow! Those bees have it so together, with their hard and fast headcount number!" So I'm trying for something like that.  Honestly, there are still a few unknowns up in the air.  Some poor little RSVP cards never found their way back into our mailbox.  For most of those that haven't, we've heard something from them.  Because New Orleans weddings are cocktail style, the final headcount isn't as imperative.  There won't be place settings and a seating chart, so if someone who hasn't returned a card or talked to Sphinx, Momma P, Sphinx Mom, or me in the last six weeks ends up attending, then it won't be the end of the world.

Still, I didn't address and put postage on those envelopes for nothing...

Hey Pac-man, did you eat the missing RSVP cards?

Of these that haven't returned the card, there's probably only about four or so that we haven't heard a definite answer from, so I'm not too worried. 

And that's it for this pie-chart explosion!  My little engineering heart sure had fun putting these together, and I hope it gives you some insight into an expected number if you're having a similar shindig!  Oh, and it means the wedding is really, really close now!  It seems like everyone I know greets me with "Countdown is on..." or "It's getting close!"  Stop reminding me! I have so much stuff to still do!

Let's get Excited!

We're getting so close to the big day, hive! Things are a very messy, very busy whirlwind at this point, and I know my presence around here has been kind of light. That's a combination of not really having concrete things to talk about, and having less than zero time for writing.  Coming into the home stretch here, we do have lots to do, but I don't feel overwhelmed or like I want to go huddle in a corner.  Sure, several times this week I've been reduced to tears and needed to be treated with doses of wine, but I'm powering through.

So today, I just wanted to focus on the positives and come at you with a quick Friday pick-me-up post!  If you're near, far, or past your big day, I want to hear what you're excited about today! Here's mine:

The most recent - look what we picked up!

Our marriage license! And if you've been paying attention, today is the 9th of the month, our "monthaversary" date. I was off of work today, so I figured this was the best way to commemorate the last of  the 9ths.  

The next bit of excitement: one of my newest accessories, which I bought at the Kate Spade outlet in Las Vegas for my bachelorette (a post about that trip is coming, once I gather up some more pictures!):

I couldn't find this on the Kate Spade website, but they had several marriage-related ones.

I needed a new phone case and planned to look when we went shopping, as I'd had plenty of luck with KS cases in the past.  No one was expecting Miss P to run around the store showing it to all my friends and shrieking "Look how perfect!!!"  If you recall, our invitations featured gold polka dots, so I couldn't imagine a cuter phone case for me.  I also bought a teal one with stripes so I can change it after the wedding and not look like a weirdo.  But currently, I think it's precious and makes me smile whenever I look at it.

I'm also excited because I got the proofs for my bridal pictures back - all 150 of them - and I'm in love!  I'm dying to show you guys, because I love the work that my photographers did and how my outfit came together.  But we've waited this long, so let's wait a little longer!  If all things go as planned (ha!), I'll have my posts on the wedding dress coming at you while we're on the honeymoon.  Let me just tell you, the plantation was the perfect place to shoot at and we had the most gorgeous weather that day.  How can I see about reserving that weather for the wedding day? Can I put a deposit down or something, please?

Last weekend, I flew up to Pittsburgh for BM Duffy's bridal shower (she's getting married soon after us).  I'm one of her bridesmaids, and I really wanted to be there for her.  The shower was beach themed (her favorite) and her MOH did an excellent job with all of the decorations and games!  It was fun to be on the working end of the shower, and we had a fun weekend, even though it was really quick.

I was so impressed with all of the beachy details!  

And of course since I was in Pittsburgh, I had to stop in and see a few familiar faces...

Me, Mrs. Palm Tree, and Miss Parisian!!

My first Bee hangout!  It was so cool to meet them in real life, and I can report back that they're really awesome!  

Of course we've got RSVP cards rolling in, presents being delivered, and arrival plans are being finalized for all of the OOT friends.  It's making everything seem so very real and close!

So that's enough exclamation points for me right now (seriously, that key is hurting).  What is exciting in your life right now - wedding related or not?

Beauty Base Zero

If you've read any of he Hunger Games books, you'll know that Katniss's prep team gets her to a state of "Beauty Base Zero" before they start on the extravagant hair, makeup and outfits.  It means that she is cleaned up, scars are healed, all unwanted hair is removed, nails are filed, and anything else necessary to make her camera ready.  She's natural, but perfected.  As nice as all that sounds, I don't have a prep team or a bathtub of skin-healing goo, so I've had to take a bit of a different approach to get my hair, skin, and nails to my own beauty base zero.  I'll take the extra work in exchange for not having to fight to the death in an arena, kthanks.

I'm in love with Katniss's makeup in this scene from "Catching Fire."/Photo from the official trailer, found on TorontoSun

Makeup can work miracles, and you can hire the greatest makeup artists and hair stylists in the world, but you'll definitely be happier with the results if you can manage to bump up your beauty regimen a bit before the wedding.  Here are some of the tips I've discovered, in order to make the most of all those products I love to talk about so much.