Weddingbee bios

Yikes, what to say about the future Mr. and Mrs. Duff

Well, we live in MN and are owned by the cutest Boston Terrier in the world. We both have degrees in Mass Communication and neither of us are really working in the fields we thought we would be. He went for radio broadcasting (and had an internship/co-hosting gig on the highest rated morning show in our area). I went for public relations and I work as an assistant/graphic-designer for a marketing firm.

Together, we like to go camping, have beers around bonfires with friends, and watch movies with the dog snoring between us. Apart, I like to go dancing and he likes to play Playstation. Both of us probably think we're funnier than we really are. We laugh at each others jokes to keep our egos inflated. :)

Currently we're busy planning our wedding at the end of August. We've found that tequilla makes the process a bit easier.

 

So i was in Mr. Duff's dorm room and on his bed before I even had the opportunity to meet him. ;)

Well, it's wasn't quite as much fun as it sounds. Freshmen year of college my friend had a class with his roommate and she wanted someone to come with her and hang out when they worked on a school project and had a couple cocktails. Well, when we were up there I started rifling through Mr. Duff's things. I can't explain why but I was really interested in finding out more about him, even though I hadn't met him yet. As I stumbled upon his CD collection he happened to stumble into the room. I think my first words to him might have been, "the only redeeming thing you have in here is your frat-rock of the 80's CD." We spent the next couple hours talking about music and joking around. I think my roomate was the first one to know how much I liked him because according to her she never heard me talk about a guy that way.

We spent the next couple months just getting to know each other and started dating when I kissed someone else at a club, told him about it, and he got angry at me. I asked him if I was suppose to tell other guys that I had a a boyfriend and he told me "yes, if that's alright with you."

To be honest, I knew the proposal was coming but I was still suprised. After over 8 years of being together we had been talking about getting married and even started planning the wedding. The only thing that was missing was the ring. My grandma had offered to let us have her engagement ring, which I really wanted to do since my grandma is like a second mother to me. At first Mr. Duff was really hesitant and said that he wanted to buy me my own ring. After a few conversations he finally relented and we arranged it with my mom to have her deliver the ring.

So jump to the day of the proposal. My mom comes into town, walks into our house, and the first thing she does is hand ME the ring. I hand it back to her and say, "well, I think that's suppose to go to him for now." I had already told him that he could hold on to the ring for as long as he wanted to so I really didn't know when to expect the proposal.

That night we decided to have a quiet night in. We ordered a pizza and were about to watch a movie. I went to the kitchen to grab my first beer of the evening and was stopped by Mr. Duff. He started saying really sweet things to me about how much he loved me. Then he handed me a "coupon" from a coupon book I made him on Valentine's day 3 years prior saying he wanted to "cash it in." The coupon was for "my love and affection until the end of time" which was really just meant to be the back page of the coupon book and never "cashed" in. He then got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.

Of course I got a bit teary, said yes, and hugs and kisses ensued. We celebrated with a Miller High Life (the champagne of beers) and spent the rest of the night just cuddling and watching a movie. The next day we woke up and started the phone calls and went to visit his parents.

NOTE: To this day only 2 of the 20 coupons I made have been redeemed, the one he used to propose and the one for 1 hour of uninterrupted TV time. Glad to know his priorities are obviously me and television. :)

So we were torn between your traditional "in the trees" kind of e-session or one with a more modern feel. I love the city so I really wanted that come through, while he wanted lush outdoor backgrounds. Fortunately for us we were able to get both!! To other Minneapolis brides,  the Stone Arch Bridge is a phenomenal location to take photos. There was so much diversity in our possible backdrops.

 

From the traditional:

To the more urban:

to everything in between:

all photos taken by Heidi Munson of Chocolate Sushi Photography

So here we are in all our gorgeousness!!!! I was so happy to have my girls with me that day.

None of the girls live near by me, so this was a great opportunity to be able to see them all!!

Since each girl has been there for me at a different time in my life I couldn't choose a Maid of Honor. Instead I opted to give each girl a special task to perform on the wedding day.

Here's my handsome groom and his boys. Mr. Duff has been good friends with all of these guys for many years. Two of them since elementary school and of course his older brother he's known since birth. He's really close to his brother so that's who he chose to be his best man.

What more can you say????

My family

His Family

Him and his Brother

Me and my grandma

 

Our families were fantastic through the whole process we couldn't have done it without them. One family member that was noticibly missing was my grandfather (who I thought of like a father) since he passed on three weeks before the wedding. He was suppose to walk me down the aisle, but instead my grandma and mom did and I attached a photo of him to my bouquet.

 

Our flowergirl Abri is one of my bridesmaid's daughters and adore her. I actually happened to be not only the first person to know (other than mom of course) that she was on her way, I was also her first roommate. I watched her grow everyday the first 11 months of her life, and now I watch from a distance. :) We'll always have a special bond.

 

We were also fortunate to be able to get a shot of the entire group. All of our close friends and family coming to celebrate our union.

I wanted a bridesmaid's dress that:

• didn't break the bank
• was short and red
• all the girls liked or could fake liking
• could easily be worn again

I was so happy to find this on amazon.com from vendor GoJane:

 

Everyone is going to look fantastic!!!!

I loved the idea of a feather bouquet but I was afraid it might be a bit too much.

Then I found this wonderful inspiration through google image and fell in love:

I just felt that it needed to have a bit more feathers, and of course be white to match the dress.

So here's what I came up with:

So from the beginning I knew I wanted to do two different centerpieces; a tall and attention-grabbing one for the dinner following the ceremony, and then a shorter, more casual one for the reception. I wanted the tall ones to also work at the reception, so they had to be a bit  more country/rustic. Also, because I'm not a flower person they either had to be fake interesting florals or non-floral. For the shorter centerpieces I had an inkling I wanted to use mason jars to keep the country picnic vibe going.

Here are the tall centerpieces we came up with:

They weren't obtrusive during dinner coversations, they were contemporary yet rustic, and they made a little bit of an impact. Just what we were going for.

For the lower centerpieces we went with:

What you can't see is that the top of the larger candle had little embelishments on it, I really think it made a difference. The larger mason jar is a half gallon, and not only were they a little hard to find (we found our finally at Fleet Farm), finding candles that actually fit is a bit of a problem too. The width of the standard candle is 2.68 (I think) inches, and nothing more the 2.25 inches will probably fit through the top of a mason jar. Quickcandles on Ebay is the vendor we ended up going with (candle was 2" X 6") and we were happy.

So to go with our barn/picnic/country theme, I really wanted to do tin bucket favors. Imagine my surprise when I found 3 for 1 at the dollar store. Perfect!!!! I designed the labels (using our "beloved" flower motif) and our dear old brother and sister in-law spent the good part of an afternoon putting everything together.

They're filled with red cinnamon disks (one of my favorite candies ever), blue mint discs, and peppermints. What I like about the cinnamon/mint combo is that it's hot (my personality) and cool (his).

Here's our end result:

One of the my favorite details of our wedding are the ceremony fans we had. I created them and we assembled them together. It was fairly easy: fold page in half, place large craft stick in middle, use double stick tape to hold it all togehter, and finish it off by corner punching the edges.

The full instructions can actually be found here, on glorious Weddingbee. Thank you Intimate Weddings and Amanda Colyer from Della Stella.

I thought it was perfect for an August outdoor wedding, but of course we were blessed with the perfect 70 degree day (not too hot, not too cold). They were super cute anyway!

Here they are:

So we essentially had three venues: a ceremony site, a "night of" dinner location, and the reception hall.The ceremony site had to be small and intimate and the reception site had to be large (to fit 300 guests).

For the ceremony site, the minute we saw the Excedra garden at the Marjorie McNeeley Conservatory in Como Park we fell in love.

It was everything we wanted: outdoors, near water, and small. Also, it was in Como Park so there were great photo ops around.

When I was searching for reception venues, I really wanted to have it in a barn. We already had decided on doing a barbecue style dinner (totally us) and I thought a chic country/barn motif  would go great. Unfortunately, every barn I found was too small to hold our guest list. Then Mr. Duff's parents talked us into going and checking out the Cottage Grove VFW (I didn't like the idea of a VFW/Legion wedding). Well, it hadn't even occured to me before they brought us there but the outside looks like this:

I found my big red barn!!!!!!!

Things that we loved about the VFW: we could bring in our own caterer, no rentals were needed, and they took care of so much for us (clean-up afterwards, already had lights wrapped in tulle up plus arches to use, provided our table coverings for cheap, and gave us full use of their kitchen). Sure, it's not a ritzy hotel ballroom but we're not really ritzy hotel ballroom kind of people. :) 

We settled on Ray J's for the dinner following the ceremony and we were set for our sites!!!