What We Didn't Do

Check out what arrived in our mailbox recently...

Whatever could be inside a box from Philip Gabriel Photography?

I like the look of this...
Photo by Philip Gabriel Photography

YESSSSSSSSSS!!
Photo by Philip Gabriel Photography

With professional wedding photos in hand, it's time to close out the posts prior to the official Turkey recaps. I thought this post was very fitting to be the last - a collection of things we decided NOT to do. Some are projects, some are services, but all didn't make the cut.

No matter how hard you try, there are things that you're not going to be able to do - whether constrained by time, money, or both. I thought it might be helpful, as someone on the other side of their wedding, to comment on those "NO GOs".

CUPCAKES

I swore up and down that we weren't going to have cake, but instead wanted cupcakes at our wedding. I told my bridesmaids we would have cupcakes, had cupcakes at my shower and three of my girlfriends surprised me with cupcakes at the bachelorette. Mr. Turkey and I talked seriously about having a completely fake cake. We were 100% on Team Cupcake.

But when we did the tasting*, the cupcakes that were part of our dessert testing didn't make the cut. We were surprisingly blown away by the delicious red velvet wedding cake made by The Rittenhouse's pastry chef.

Two flavors: Guiness + coffee and chocolate + raspberry (yes, that's an actual raspberry on top)

And although we really enjoyed the mini cupcakes, we opted for others when making our dessert selection. Plus, with cake available for guests...the cupcakes felt, dare I say it, duplicative.

I was sad about this decision for a little bit, but our dessert selection was stellar and on the wedding day, we didn't miss the cupcakes at all!

PERSONALIZED COCKTAIL NAPKINS

This was something that was on my "want" list for a long time, but just kept getting de-prioritized as time went on.

Unlike Bees like Bracelet and Elk, I never had a true vision for A) what we would put on the napkins or B) how they would fit into the cocktail hour (would they be for drinks only? food only? both?).

A simple napkin design (source)

The latter was where I really struggled because all the servers would be wearing white gloves and I had this vision of their fingers being stained by the napkins. Same could go for guests or even me (blue smudge on white dress? no thanks). Granted, not all napkins stain, but without time to do due diligence on options, it was hard to have an "unknown".

In the end, it wasn't something I noticed missing on the day of, but do think that it would have been a fun accent!

DANCE LESSONS

This. Unfortunately this was a battle that I lost with Mr. Turkey early on.

Our first dance (guest photo) - there was a LOT of looking down

Despite multiple groupons offering dance lessons nearby, I could NOT convince Mr. Turkey to go for dance lessons.

And we were woefully unprepared for our first dance. I'm not just talking about the lack of dance lessons, either. Mr. Turkey and I didn't even practice in the living room before the wedding, despite promising ourselves we would. Any details around our first dance were plotted either on the dance floor or moments before we were introduced. Talk about last minute!

I've seen some clips of our first dance and there are moments where it looks like we know what we're doing, but others make it very clear that we're flying by the seat of our pants.

I am SO jealous of the other Bees who did have dance lessons - there was Funnel Cake, Coyote took them with her dad and Lox called them the most fun part of wedding planning - and think, if we were to do it again, I would have come up with a really good bribe to get at least one lesson under our belt.

WEDDING PLANNER

Everyone told me we needed a wedding planner or, at the very least, a day of coordinator (DOC). Bees like Mink and Scone have raved about the people they're working with. Local friends recommended multiple options. They said that with limited free time and a busy job, it was a necessity (not a nice to have). But I had to say NO.

I'm just too Type A. I worried that a DOC would merely duplicate the work that I could, and eventually did, do myself (like checking on vendors, item drop-offs and scheduling). The bottom line is that at one point or other, I had to trust that all the planning would pay off and just let things happen. Releasing control to a DOC was just prolonging my need to "let it go".

Just going with the flow...

In the end, I was extremely happy with my decision. I had checked in with all our vendors a day or two before the wedding and confirmed time of arrival. They had multiple cell numbers to call if there was an issue. Everyone had their schedule for the day of the wedding (copies were handed out at the rehearsal) and ended up where they needed to be.

It was also fantastic to not have to worry about one more person to check in with on the wedding day and when things got a little off schedule, I didn't have another person worrying on my behalf. Because I didn't get worried...no one else did either! Zen :)

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As you can see above, our "cut" list was mostly self-driven and not too long. This is due to 3 key reasons.

1. Good fortune
I'm not going to lie to you, Mr. Turkey and I were very lucky in our wedding planning process. Some of this was driven by the amount of time we had to plan (we had our choice of vendors due to booking early), but much came from Turkey Mom and Dad's generosity.

2. Expectations
We knew very early on that time would not be a luxury in our wedding planning process. So, when looking at projects, I sorted them into one of three buckets - keep, drop or outsource. An example:
Keep: hand-done calligraphy
Drop: dip pen calligraphy
Outsource: having TPD print names for our place cards

Many times the answer was "drop". At 29 years old, I know myself really well (especially the tendency to burn the candle at both ends) and the goal was to remain sane and healthy.

3. Restraint
After we made a decision to "drop" a project or chose a certain direction for things, I averted my eyes when these details popped up on blogs, in magazines or on Pinterest (I took a Pinterest hiatus with about 60 days to go before the wedding). I didn't want to be that bride cheating on my dress...or any of my other choices!

What things didn't make the cut for your wedding? Were you OK with all those decisions?

*I promised here to share info about our wedding tasting. I decided to "cut" this post since it felt unnecessary considering you'll be reading about our final choices so soon. Hope you forgive me for skipping this!