Fall recipes, crafts and ideas coming soon

Coming soon, fall recipes, craft ideas (including wreaths), and additional ideas.  The fall has been quite busy and I promise to get this blog updated soon!

Wedding Wednesday: Booking your Honeymoon

Hello blogosphere!  I hope everyone had an enjoyable end to their summer!  I apologize for the lack of posts in August.  Work and personal life and enjoying the last bits of my favorite season got in the way of blogging. :)

Getting back into the swing of things, I wanted to post a Wedding Wednesday that I think many other bridal blogs don’t necessarily touch on: The Honeymoon!

Yes, technically it is after you have already been married, but it can be a detail that brides and grooms struggle with.  You only have ONE honeymoon, so there can be a lot of pressure to make the right decisions.

I recommend investigating and thinking about your honeymoon early in the process.  It will help you budget and plan accordingly.  You want to make sure you will leave yourself with enough time to take the vacation, as well as enough funds to afford to go on the vacation.

Mr. Bear and I started by making a list of the types of things we wanted to be able to do on our honeymoon.  We determined we wanted to go to a beach, but we also wanted to be active and adventurous and wanted to go for about 10 days.

After making this list, we began investigating destinations that would fit our requirements.  I found one of the most helpful places to be Community Wedding Message Boards (i.e. weddingwire, theknot, weddingbee) in addition to my go-to of TripAdvisor.

We then made a short list of countries we would want to visit that fit into those requirements and began investigating hotels (TripAdvisor is my favorite for this) and types of activities/excursions.

After finding a lot of hotels and activities that met our desires in Costa Rica, we made the decision to focus our honeymoon hunting there.  Taking into account our budget, I narrowed it down to a few hotels/resorts.  There were two areas in Costa Rica we wanted to hit: Arenal (a volcano area in the rainforest), and Guanacaste (the resort focused area near the beach).  Costa Rica ended up being the perfect decision.  We went ziplining, waterfall rappelling, swimming in hot springs and hiking to a volcano.  In the second part of our trip we enjoyed a relaxing time at the beach.

I am always the one to book and plan all aspects of a trip, but it became relatively overwhelming trying to figure out flights, transportation, hotel check-in, etc.  This is where we employed the help from some family friends who are travel agents.  

They were very helpful in helping us book flights (since we would be flying in and out of different airports), AND they booked our transportation to and between the two hotels through a shuttle company.  It would have been much more expensive and a larger headache had we booked the transportation ourselves.  Additionally, since they made all of our reservations through their systems, they were able to let all the companies know we were on our honeymoon and we got many upgrades.  Finally, since we booked through them, we were able to pay for the trip in its entirety before we went, only leaving incidentals and food, so we didn’t have to worry about maxing out our credit card in a foreign country right after paying for our wedding.

If you are doing a multi-destination honeymoon, or haven’t travelled out of the country much, I highly recommend going through a travel agent.  It will be one less thing you have to worry about.  Travel agents are very helpful in recommending places that meet your desired experience if you don’t know where to begin.

Obviously every honeymoon doesn’t have to be an international or beachy affair!  There are tons of great options in the States and in locations that fit all types of vacationers.

Some great options for those who want to get away but may not have a ton of time they are able to take:

-Rent a nice cabin for a few nights in a romantic location.  The Ohio, West Virginia, Tennessee regions have tons of options

-On the West Coast, do a few nights in Wine Country OR travel up to San Juan Island in Washington

-My best friend and her new husband went to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.

-New Englanders could also take advantage of the scenery in Maine

-If you are looking for a big city feel, there is always New York City.

-Internationally, think of places that might be outside the typical honeymooner’s thoughts.  Friends of our went to Iceland for their honeymoon!  They have amazing pictures of swimming in hot natural springs surrounded by snow!

There really is a honeymoon for every budget and style.  A little work in the beginning of your engagement will lead to an excellent and exciting honeymoon. 

Just remember that flights fluctuate in cost.  Buying super early or relatively close to the date usually results in the best prices, so why not book early and not have to worry about it later when your wedding planning is in full swing!?

Keep in mind that you will want to have a concrete date for your wedding before making any travel arrangements.  Refunds or changing dates can result in fees, etc. with the airline companies.

One last thing to think about; travel insurance. We didn’t purchase this, but I highly recommend if you are planning to travel somewhere during the winter months when snow or bad weather could impact your travel.  Look into it and see what it covers.  Ultimately it will be up to you whether it seems like something that could be valuable to you and your soon-to-be spouse.

-Danielle

Blog Update!

I promise, I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth.  I have a few recipes and some Wedding Wednesday posts in my head, I just have to find the time to write them out.  The end of summer has been super busy, and the new puppy is keeping Mr. Bear and I quite busy.

I wanted to give a quick shout out and say THANK YOU to everyone who reads!  I reached 3,000 page views last night!  For a little blog that just started in April, I'd say that's pretty good!  I hope you all find the posts helpful.  If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

-Danielle

Wedding Wednesday: (Guest Post) Bridesmaid Asks

Happy Wednesday!  This week I was fortunate enough to have Steph, from Will Work for Shoes and Vodka, share an item from her current wedding planning; Bridesmaid Asks.  These are a popular and cute way to ask your great friends to be in your wedding party!

I hope you enjoy!

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Hello Bear Necessities followers!  I’m so excited Danielle asked me to be a part of Wedding Wednesday this week!   Danielle is a wonderful friend and I’m so happy we can share our blogging hobby!

Today I’m going to show you some ideas for asking your bridal party.  First things first, In order to ask them you have to pick them!  Over the years I’ve seen and heard of all kinds of compilations of bridal parties. Whether its one person or twenty people, keep in mind it’s just as much an experience for them to be a part of your special day as it is for you! 

My fiancé, Chris, and I had some initial struggles picking our party as we have siblings we wanted to be a part of it as well as friends.  We have such a close group of college friends it was hard to pick and choose while keeping within our initial vision of a small/medium sized group.  We finally came up with the right combination for us: our siblings (his younger brother and sister and my younger brother), our best friends since forever (aka his best friend since birth, my two best friends from high school), some of our college besties (one of his roommates over the four years, one of his freshman dorm friends and one of my gal pals) and one of our close friends from Columbus (she happens to be an identical version of me, such fate!).  In case you lost track of numbers that adds up to five on each side, ten total.  We felt this was a good variation of friends and family that represented the different parts of our lives. 

Once we had our group picked out we got to do the fun part: asking!  With the explosion of Pinterest it seems the simple “Will you be in our wedding?” question isn’t quite as simple anymore!  Plus like I said before, this is as much of an experience for them as it is for you so I wanted our asks to be special. 

In my lifetime I've been asked to be in family and friends’ weddings a number of different ways.  The majority of them were in person.  Funny anecdote: Danielle asked me and another friend to be in her wedding one night when we were sharing cocktails and discussing the wedding, then she said casually “Oh so speaking of the wedding, wanna be my bridesmaids?”  Such panache D, such panache!  I did have one invite slide in via text but I chalked that up to an impatient/excited bride.  Of course if your party is very geographically spread out in person may not be feasible.  Thankfully everyone we were asking lived relatively close and those who didn't we had visits planned. 

In typical guy fashion Chris didn't want much fuss around it so there was no gift giving or special surprise it was just when the time came, he asked.  He tried for moments when he was just one on one with the person to make it more personal.  I on the other hand wanted something with a little more pizzazz and more suited to my personality. 

So I set out to find something not too over the top (live butterflies and a music box? No thanks) as well as cost effective (sorry no Tiff & Co. ladies!).  I also didn’t want to overshadow what I would eventually do for bridesmaid gifts so I tried to keep it small.  If you couldn’t tell from my blog title I’m a big fan of cocktails so after some researching I landed on champs (it actually ended up being prosecco but minor detail) with personalized labels.

I had found this little poem on Pinterest so I made print outs of that then set out to design the bottle label. 

I work in Marketing and have access to Photoshop so I stayed late a few days at work to put the original design together.  I tried tying in our wedding colors: black and white with red accents.  I’m a shutterbug/obsessed with Instagram and pictures so I wanted to include a photo of each girl and myself.  Plus I obviously had to ask the big question! 

I printed these on full sheet label paper, cut them and stuck them to the bottles.

I think the trickiest part was finding suitable pictures for each.  For example, a lot of my pictures with just Chris’ sister and I were kind of old since we typically take pictures with the whole family.  For my maids of honor it was hard to find pictures that all three of us weren’t in or that it didn’t look obvious that I’d cut the third out!

I made a tag with the poem to place around the top of the bottle.  I used ribbon to loop around the top then glued the tag to it.

I wrapped it in a fun bottle bag with polka dotted tissue paper in our colors.  I got the prosecco at Kroger, the label paper from Office Max, the bottle bags from World Market and the tissue from Hobby Lobby.  For the tags attached with ribbon I had scrapbook paper for matting already on hand as well as the red ribbon.

Then it was off to ask each girl!  This was the really fun part, they were all a little confused as to why I was randomly giving them a gift then they read the poem and their reactions were priceless!  Chris’ sister told me “Nope, sorry I’m busy that day” (kidding of course), some cried, some laughed but overall it was a happy “yes” answer. 

There are all kinds of ideas out there, some include:

-          treat them to lunch, drinks or dinner

-          mail them a special package with photos of you over the years, etc.

-          send them a cute note

-          a piece of jewelry

For guys you can do booze, beer or cigars with a nice note or poem attached.  That is of course if you can get your groom to agree to it.  Chris was not into the ideas I showed him, especially the notes and poems! 

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to bridal party ask ideas.  Just choose something that fits your personality and your budget and you’ll be all set!

Thanks again for clicking in to Wedding Wednesday, it was such a pleasure sharing this fun wedding related post!

Cheers!

Steph

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Thanks again to Steph for sharing!  I look forward to collaborating with her on future guest posts!

-Danielle

Wedding Friday: Preserving the top of your cake

I'm a few days late on this post, so today we have "Wedding Friday".  "Wedding Wednesday" has a much better ring to it, but just go with it for this week. :)

As I mentioned a few posts ago, Mr. Bear and I recently celebrated our 1st anniversary as husband and wife!  In keeping with tradition, we saved the top tier of our wedding cake to eat on our anniversary.

After defrosting, it actually still tasted pretty good!  I had been nervous because most other married couples said theirs tasted horrible.  I wanted to share how our cake was preserved in the hopes that others may have a similar experience (good cake).

First and foremost, you have to start with a delicious cake. Ours was super moist at our wedding, and it had about 1/2" of buttercream frosting on the outside that locked in the flavor.

Second, make sure whoever is baking the cake knows you want to keep the top tier of the cake.  Our bakery left the caterer a small box for the top tier.  This made it easier to take home.  You will also want to make sure that your venue/caterer/whoever is cutting up the cake to serve knows that you want to keep the top tier of the cake so they don't cut it up and serve it.  Additionally if you are saving the cake and it has a filling that needs to be refrigerated, make sure to tell your venue/caterer so they can keep it in the fridge for you until the end of the night (or the following day if you are collecting all of your items in the morning).

After you take your cake top, you will want to take the box and put the entire box into a plastic bag.  We used tall kitchen trash bags for this and tied them off in the middle of the bag to create a tighter seal.

We then wrapped the cake in one more kitchen bag before placing in my parents' ice chest.  We let the cake freeze, untouched for several weeks until we came home from our honeymoon and were able to pick it up.

The cake then was transferred into our freezer and remained there until our first anniversary.

A few days before our anniversary, I took the cake out of the freezer(still in the plastic) and placed in the fridge to defrost.  After 2 days, we then cut into and ate the cake.  It wasn't as moist as the original servings, but it was still pretty tasty!

Here is a look at our cake after we cut into it:

-Danielle