Weddingbee Blog

If there is one thing I totally underestimated (not just in the wedding planning process, but in life in general!), it is the power of video. Now, I am all about photography and always have been… I am an avid scrapbooker and also hold the title of unofficial historian among all my friends . And there is nothing more beautiful than a perfect moment captured on film (or memory card, rather ). But you’d be amazed at how quickly we can forget. Lately, perhaps due to the fact that the wedding brought together so many old and new friends, I’ve been reminiscing more… and I’ve found that video has the amazing power of bringing me back to a certain time in a uniquely different way than photography does.

Anyway, for your workday viewing pleasure , I thought I’d share the “Getting Ready” video that one of our buddies put together for us. I can’t describe the giddyness and “awwwww, I miss everyone so much!” feeling that clinched my throat as I started watching it. So much fun and love. Enjoy!

Music by one of me and Mr. D’s favorite bands, Caedmon’s Call.  Thanks to our buddy, Lawrence Chen, for your amazing work!

Dear Mr. Shortcake’s Printer,

This is a letter to inform you that you are now officially the most reviled inanimate object on the face of the earth. The fact that no one else has even met you makes no difference, as I hate you enough for six-point-something billion people combined.

I don’t care if you’re old. I don’t care if you can print Mr. Shortcake’s thesis paper with ease. I want you to print our gee-darned invitations with ease! I have gone through eight different designs just to try to appease you and your un-reliably-inking ways. I am now preparing to hand calligraph seventy six invitations, reception cards, rsvp cards, and map inserts because YOU CAN’T GET YOUR EFFING CARTRIDGES TOGETHER. I can’t even get you to print thequickbrownfoxjumpedoverthegeedarnedmummyhuggingfence the same way twice!
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OMG. I am so completely thrilled. As odd as it might seem to have engagement pictures taken a week before the wedding, I am so glad we did it. When we hired our new photographer (a month ago), she really wanted us to take some engagement pictures. She said it would loosen us up and help us get comfortable with her, so that on the day of our wedding we’d be sort of “used” to someone snapping tons of pictures of us. She was SO right. After our session with Kim on Friday, we were even MORE sure that we’d made the right decision to “fire” our old photographer and get a new one. Kim of Jennifer Kloss Photography is amazing. We felt totally, 100% comfortable with her, and she’s really, really talented.

She and Jen really wanted us to have some pictures before the wedding, for two reasons: first, they wanted us to have them to display at the wedding, and second, they wanted us to see more of Kim’s work. And in just three days, Jen emailed us the teasers. Holy. Crap. That’s all I have to say. Holy crap. It’s the best decision we’ve made yet.

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Part 1: Primped & Prettied
Part 2: The Dashing Gents

While the guys were dressed in minutes, back in the girls’ camp we were still fussing and preening. Erwin snapped pictures of my wedding threads as he waited for us.

All photographs are property of Apertura Photography. Please credit them if you repost their photos.

I promise this picture isn’t proof of the ghost of weddings past. My gown was still stuffed with tissue paper from the seamstress so that it wouldn’t wrinkle. As it hung on the canopy bed, Erwin took an eerie photograph.
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Last night Mr. Pineapple and I traveled to Plum, PA to meet our baker at Jennuine Cakes and Cafe. We did not know quite what to expect because the cake was included in our venue/catering package. We were pleasantly surprised, the cafe was adorable and the cake was delicious!
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We interrupt this regularly scheduled programming to bring you BREAKING NEWS.

Until now, my postings have exhibited the true-to-Capricorn-ish nature under which I normally operate. So far, I’ve tried to tell you about things in a fairly logical order–how we chose to do a DW, how we picked our resort, blahblahBLAH–but stop the presses! Because there’s a SHOE DRAMA to report!!
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You know how sometimes someone mentions something, sort of in passing, and it’s a thing that you would love to have happen, but you are not sure how serious they were, and you don’t want to make the relationship awkward? The beauty of blogging is, you never have to deal with that awkwardness. You can suggest anything on your mind, and hope that it may possibly work out.

When I wrote about the vintage bow-on-the-butt dress on my personal blog awhile back, I found a comment in my inbox from a commenter called “bridal fashion by MILLIE” saying:

“I SO would have let you borrow a MILLIE gown…”

I was of course, intrigued, and so I wrote back to her. Our banter continued back and forth, with my hopes slowly building each time that this might actually pan out.
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I love old wooden boxes!

Little ones, big ones, crates and containers… I think they’re just so neat and special looking.

In fact, I picked up something pretty much just like this Dupont Explosives box (but more weathered) at the Fremont Sunday Antique Market a few months ago…
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Thanks to Miss Creampuff’s recent post, I discovered her older entry about photo reminder cards, a concept that made me audibly squeal in my chair. I absolutely love photos and probably have over 1,000 photos of Mr. Candy Corn and I saved on my computer. It’s sad, but true. That’s right, I’ll admit it, I’m a photoholic. After seeing Miss Creampuff’s awesome diy project, I immediately decided to design my own double-sided postcard that our guests can tuck into an envelope (not yet designed, bear with me!) with copies of their photobooth photos. Thanks to Miss Creampuff’s super informative post, I was able to “borrow” (or blatantly steal) her text for the back of the postcard with the upload instructions. I totally owe Miss Creampuff my first born and I hope she doesn’t hate me for being super inspired by her craftiness!

The front of our card with an illustration I did of Mr. Candy Corn & I. I threw a little damask in there to represent for the damask-loving bees!
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I love shoes. Maybe a little too much. So when it came to my wedding shoes, I was in all out shoe mania mode. Especially since photographers take some fabulous pictures of your wedding shoes as seen in the shoe style posts regularly featured on The Bride’s Cafe.

I had dreams of Louboutins, Giuseppe Zanottis and Manolos. Then I found her. Prada Silk Cristal Pumps! Gold and silver! Crystal Encrusted Heel! Swoon.

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After my Nana passed away last Friday, I was, of course, very upset and felt like it would be wrong to go out for my bachelorette party that was scheduled for the next night. I didn’t know how much I wanted to be celebrating after such an emotional and heartbreaking event. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that a night out with my girlfriends was probably just what I needed after a stressful and sad time. I had already requested something low key that wouldn’t break the bank for anyone, which ended up being dinner and drinks with 10 of my fabulous girlfriends, so we went ahead with everything as planned that Saturday night.

We headed to El Vez, a Stephen Starr restaurant in Philadelphia. Stephen Starr is known for owning some of the coolest restaurants in Philly, and El Vez is no exception. It’s a contemporary Mexican restaurant with perhaps the greatest guacamole I have ever tasted. (The pitchers of margaritas and sangria weren’t so bad, either!) I was surprised at how reasonably priced everything was, and it was the perfect atmosphere for my fun-but-not-crazy night out.
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Helloooo hive! I cannot express to you how honored I am to be a part of this wonderful community! My motto is simple: relax, have fun, and plan a big celebration! Mr. Champagne (or “Champ”, as he wishes to be called) and I have been together for what seems like forever, and I’m so excited to share inspiration with fellow bride to beeees… I know, a bit of a stretch. Sorry.

So why champagne of all the yummy drinks?
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Alright, say you got real intimate with other brides’ bazoombas at Kleinfeld’s and escaped the clutches of an emaciated, three-story-tall bridezilla at Priscilla of Boston. Where do you go for a respite from high-pressure and high-priced bridal boutiques? If you are Miss Haute Cocoa, you’d head to the Bridal Garden in Manhattan or the Vows Bridal Outlet in Newton, MA. You’ll hear more about Vows (where Mrs. Toucan found her second dress!) in my next post, but first let’s finish off our New York Sampler with the Bridal Garden.

The Bridal Garden describes itself as “New York’s only non-profit bridal boutique.” Yeah, you read that right: non-profit. If you’re like me, you’re probably feeling a little violated by numerous vendors reaching into your pockets with their sticky little fingers. Well, no coffer-lining here.

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mingomimmysmarried

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Thanks for bearing with us during our weeklong test to limit “Read More Right Here” to the top few posts!

An update: visitors have definitely increased!  That’s wonderful - it means that pages are loading faster, more people are able to access Weddingbee, and new visitors to the site are sticking around instead of leaving before the page loads.  However, all is not well for our servers: while they’re serving more users, they also seem to be crashing more.

Poor Bil Bee and Mr. Bee - they are sleeping in shifts to make sure that they can reboot the servers at night.  But we are also huge fans of Read More Right Here ourselves, and don’t want to just disable the feature.

So Bil Bee just suggested a creative solution: we’ll create a special page, where Read More Right Here will live.  That way, you can still access the feature… but hopefully since only a few of us are using it, our servers will be happier.

In the meantime, we’ll turn off Read More Right Here on the main front page - this will limit the load on our server, and make the site faster for new users.

Here’s the link to the Read More Right Here option:

• http://www.weddingbee.com/?preview_theme=wb81

If the servers hold up, we will continue to support this feature at that link and you can just bookmark it for your convenience.

Try it out and let us know what you think!  Also, on a related note: have you noticed the front page loading considerably faster this past week?