Weddingbee Blog

Many a bee has blogged about significant celebrations, often, in the process, creating a term to describe the event, like the engage-a-versary, the meet-a-versary, the date-a-versary…even the pre-versary.

Well, here’s a new one. One year ago, I made my most expensive wedding purchase to date…

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…new eyes! About a week ago, I celebrated my left eye-niversary, and now I’m coming up on my right eye-niversary. Okay, let me explain…

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My roomie walked through the door with two shimmery envelopes in her hand. Yay, they’re here! I have been itching to see these bad boys ever since my mom called me the other day telling me how gorgeous the bridal shower/bachelorette party invitations were. All courtesy of my bridesmaid, Hojo. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again… and again… and again, and again… girl got skills!

Here’s the envelope. My jaw dropped when I saw that she Zazzled the stamps. She used one of the pictures from our e-Photo session with Inhar. What a nice personal touch this adds! It makes me want to do them for our invitations. I know for me, this sort of personalized touch would warrant a place in my collection of invites I’ve held onto as keepsakes from friends’ weddings.

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Oh Alaska.

I met Jack and Andrea at my very first I-didn’t-have-to-beg-for-the-job wedding (I can’t believe that was only last year - so much has happened since!). Some of you may know Mrs. Tulip. Well Andrea is Mr. Tulip’s sister. And when I met her, and she told me that she was in love and living in Alaska, not so deep down inside I really hoped she called me when wedding bells came a ringin’. But not just because she lives in the foothills of Mt. McKinley, which I can finally confirm is the most amazing place I’ve ever seen in my life, but because from the moment I met her, I was so deeply struck by the open and deep sincerity she beams in her easy smile.

I was further struck by the sincerity of Jack and Andrea’s love for each other. I took a picture of them looking at each other fondly at Tara and Ed’s wedding. Whenever I went through the photos, I always found this simple photo striking. It always made me pause and smile at the love they so obviously share.

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For the Bridal Shower Goodie Bag that I put together for Mr. Cookie’s brother’s fiancée (say that three times fast), I made homemade vanilla soy candles in vintage tea cups. They are super-duper easy and really fun to make at home. These candles are perfect as a bridal shower or wedding favor.

Supplies:
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I’m sure a lot of you remember this post. You know, the one where I said I wasn’t having a pro-photographer? It just wasn’t fitting into our rough budget. Especially with the new financial concerns we’re dealing with as of late.

That said, a few weeks ago I contacted Shawna Noel — a local/regional professional photographer — to ask her about my idea for an after-wedding photo shoot. It would essentially be an “engagement session”, but done in our wedding attire after our wedding date. We wanted to do this in lieu of day-of photography because it would save us a lot of money while still giving us some great shots for framing. Shawna hadn’t had a request for something like that before, so I explained to her my reasoning behind it: our 20 minute courthouse wedding doesn’t warrant hours of coverage or hundreds of photos (for thousands of dollars).

Not only did she completely agree with me, but she loved the idea of the after shoot. We chatted about that a lot, and she then also asked me when our wedding is. I told her the date (which is a weekday) and the next thing I knew, she was offering to shoot it! Even though their weekends are booked with weddings, she thought it would be really fun for her and her associate, Kory, to come take photos at our courthouse ceremony. They haven’t done one before, and they’re excited to take on a new challenge. And since we’re not asking them to shoot a reception or any other traditional wedding day events, we won’t have to pay the traditional wedding price, either. She and I were able to work out an extremely reasonable price for her services. Since I saved so much money on accessories and my dress, these photography services actually fit within our budget!
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What is it about weddings and balloon pictures? They make me fall in love! I keep thinking of things I want to do for our engagement pictures, bridal portraits and day of! And balloons are a must!

These pictures are from the latest wedding on the Once Wed blog. They are by the amazing Jill Thomas Photography.

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Hello Hive… Mr. D and I spent two-and-a-half hours attempting to print out addresses for 16 envelopes. TWO AND A HALF HOURS.

It was absurd. We played with page sizes, line spacing, font size, number size, alignment - the whole shebang. We also learned that Mr. D’s computer and printer prefers the metric system, while mine is all about the inches. Which really meanr that to get the page size correct, we sent several documents back and forth before finally figuring out the problem. Also, my American envelopes are just too wide for Mr. D’s printer, so we had to orient all the addresses to landscape and re-mess around with the addresses. It was pure bliss, I tell you.

Okay, maybe not after Mr. D printed not one, but two addresses upside-down. Did I mention we don’t have any extra envelopes? Because we don’t. They came in a pack of 50, and I just couldn’t justify spending the same amount of money to get “extra” envelopes. Though, I’m sure if I had justified it, we would have an entire extra pack of 50 laying around and we’d have had all the envelopes correct on the first try. Such is life.
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Continuing from Part I, the third task that I accomplished was finally finding a pair of wedding shoes. Well actually, I found two pairs and I finally narrowed it down to one pair.

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I already shared my bachelorette party invite… now it’s Mr. Taffy’s turn! He got this in the mail last week:

His brother designed these and printed them on the Gocco. I love them! Mr. Taffy used his crazy Photoshop skills to change his name for Weddingbee, but kept the Gocco-printed look.
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This is going to sound really silly when I write it, mainly because the thought of saying it out loud sounds even more ridiculous, but I need to avoid tan lines at all costs this summer.

Natalie Portman Rocking the Tan Lines
(Source)

My dress, as you’ve seen, has a low-cut, strapless sweetheart neck, so the remnants of bikini ties, tank tops, or even backpacks could be detrimental. No, not someone’s-going-to-die detrimental, or the whole-day-is going-to-be-ruined detrimental, but worth putting some effort into. Here’s why: We are an extremely outdoorsy couple. Hiking with the dogs every morning, bike commuting to work most days, boating the New Mexican rivers on the weekends, surfing while home in Los Angeles. All of those things are bound to put their little sun-scorched fingerprint on my body. Especially since we live at 7,000 feet (the sun is stronger at high altitude) and the warm months continue through October (when our wedding is), you can bet we’ll be outside until then.
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I have been searching for the perfect jewelry to go with my dress for what seems like ages now! I LOVE a lot of sparkle, but my dress isn’t blingy at all, and neither is our venue. I didn’t want to wear my basic pearl studs (a birthday gift from Mr. Gloss) since I wear those almost everyday, anyway. I wanted something a little more special and had the hardest time finding it!

Well, I was cruising around Etsy (surprise surprise, right?) and found my perfect earrings with a matching necklace. They had pearls and crystals and were the perfect length. I immediately fell in love and decided to purchase them the next morning at work (my home computer has a terrible virus and I get nervous to transmit any banking info).

So, imagine my extreme disappointment when I arrived at work this morning and they were SOLD!! I almost cried, and the Etsy seller had a note on her site that due to her present workload she was only accepting custom orders for 3+ bridal party pieces. Ah… I had the perfect accessories, and they escaped my clutches!!

I quickly messaged CindyV my plea for her to make me another set. She responded, and said she would happily make me another set!

So, let me present the latest in a long line of ’wedding’ related purchases:
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A while back when I got the pattern for the BM dresses, I picked up a retro fifties-looking swing dress pattern just for kicks. I thought I’d have my mom make it for either my rehearsal dress, or maybe a dress for the reception.

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Today’s photo of the day was uploaded by kendi. Check out her gorgeous Veluz Reyes dress. The details are absolutely stunning!

Keep on loading your inspirational wedding pics to the gallery to see them featured here on the blog! Remember, your images must be under 1MB in size, or they won’t load.

I just realized that in my cake-crazed, DIY-fueled scramble toward the Big Day, I’ve forgotten to tell you about my absolute favorite part of this wedding… Mr. Yorkie!

I should start by sharing exactly how we ended up together. It’s a long, lovely story, but I’ll try to keep it short. Basically, even though we’ve worked at the same place for nearly five years, we exchanged little more than passing glances and the occasional “hello” during the first two of those years. It wasn’t until July 2006 that something finally happened.
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About a year ago, or more (it was definitely before Mr Frenchie proposed), BM J’s mom (we’ll call her Auntie S) generously offered to host my bridesmaids’ luncheon. Once it was decided that our wedding would be in San Diego, BM J and Auntie S started brainstorming where to host the luncheon. I knew the restaurant would be fancy, because Auntie S doesn’t mess around; just look at where BM J had her luncheon (more than 5 years ago)…

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But I had no idea it would be this fantastic! Check out the first place they suggested, Georges California Modern in La Jolla.
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