Weddingbee Blog

I have yet to have my hair trial and I will be sure to post pics when I do, but for now I wanted to give you all a few tips for getting the just the right look that you want from a stylist’s perspective. Use these tips for both the trial run and the wedding day. And while I’m sure some of them are obvious, some people forget once they’re sitting in the chair.

1. Come with dry dirty hair

Ok, not that dirty!

Clean hair is very slippery which makes it hard to pin up and create long-lasting curls. If you can stand it, wash your hair the day before, but skip the shampoo the day of. It also blows my mind when a client comes in with freshly washed wet hair before an updo. That extra time needed to blow dry cuts into the stylist’s updo-playtime, silly!

2. Bring all of your possible hair accessories with you
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I’m still questioning whether or not the groomsmen have their suits for the wedding (they don’t, I actually know this, I’m living in denial), but at least I know Mr. Fro Yo has his already. We found an amazing deal at a store I don’t normally shop at but decided to give a chance. See, I was on my way to happy hour and had a few minutes to kill before my friend met me, and right nearby was a Stein Mart. I decided to check out what they had and it was like the grey suit mecca. I couldn’t believe it. They had several options and I was tempted to buy one without Mr. Fro Yo even present because I was afraid someone else would stumble on this hidden gem. However, when I called him to beg him to let me buy him a suit right then, he reminded me that the weekend was just 2 days away and there was likely not going to be a mad rush on the Stein Mart, and that we could just go over the weekend. He was so right, but that bride brain can get you!

So, with Mr. Fro Yo in tow, we browsed some suits. He tried on a few and ended up finding one that requires zero alterations that he really loved. Sweet!! And… it was only $150 for the entire thing. I was shocked and overjoyed!! A wedding bargain! Here’s what he ended up getting:

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My handwriting sucks. While I just winged it and hand addressed our save-the-dates, much to my guests’ amusement (”No, Uncle John, my nephew didn’t help me address those envelopes, har har”), I wanted something more professional for our invitations.

See that? Not so good:

Okay, so I wrote that in Microsoft Paint, but my real handwriting is even worse.

There were several options floating around the hive - there is fauxligraphy, which I was pretty sure I’d still manage to mess up. There are the lovely wrap-around labels. There are some super-talented bees out there who DIY their calligraphy (not gonna happen). Then there is paying someone for their calligraphy talents. Bingo! We have a winner.
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Congratulations to our winner, 314Cherokee!

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Customized Wedding Creations has introduced the new Eco-runners™ into their customized aisle runner line. Eco-runners are made from melted down plastic bottles woven into a recycled polyester fabric. Each runner is hand-painted with 100% organic paint, with absolutely no chemicals. They’re available in five colors: white, black, red, burgundy, and royal blue and can be custom cut into any length. Today they’re giving away a free Eco-runner to one lucky Weddingbee reader! The runner up for grabs is white, 36″ wide, and up to 55’ in length, and will be hand painted with a logo design from one of their Essential or Traditional Collections. This aisle runner is valued at up to $300.

To enter, check out Customized Wedding Creations’ logo Traditional and Essential designs and tell us which logo you’d have hand painted on your aisle runner! You have until Thursday, February 18th at midnight PST to enter. Good luck!

My grand-master-plan before last Thanksgiving was to get pictures of Mr. Sewing and our brothers trying on suits in Monterey (so I could post some awesome pictures).

Well, that didn’t happen, for two reasons. First, apparently most shops don’t let you take pictures.

Huh?

I guess it’s similar to how some bridal shops won’t let you take pictures in the designer dresses, but Macy’s said no pictures. I didn’t bother trying at Men’s Wearhouse, for the second reason.

Nothing fits my fiance.

Macy’s took one look at him and said, “Nope, not going to happen.”
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Like many other bees, I am obsessed with scents! Whenever someone doesn’t know what to purchase for me as a gift, one of the default suggestions I give is for a new perfume/body spray/etc. I know I probably sound insane, but I most certainly change up the scent that I wear depending on the time of day, the outfit I’m wearing, or the mood I’m in! I have gathered quite the collection over the years… including:

Victoria’s Secret PINK : This was one of the first perfumes I ever bought back in high school. Awwww. I love how fun and playful it is. It has been one of my go-tos for a sunny and happy day.

Source

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Hello hive! I am so excited to have been chosen to be a BEE! I wavered back and forth before applying, wondering if my ideas were good enough, if my writing style would be well-received, but I finally took the plunge and here I am. I am unbelievably excited to be able to share my thoughts, ideas and plans with you!

I’m an elementary school teacher in California. I really love teaching because of the a-ha! moments when they go from “this is too hard,” to “this is so easy!” I also love the relationships I get to build with my students and being able to care for and encourage them. I get to see a microcosm of the world in my classroom every day. In my spare time, I love reading. I like all kinds of books, but my favorites seem to be children’s literature and period pieces. In addition to that, I love doing crafts, mainly paper, but crafts in general. I have a love/hate relationship with scrapbooking. I love the concept behind each page and the end product, but I hate that it takes so much time and at the end of it, I have about six zillion scraps leftover! Mr. Lace and I LOVE trying new restaurants and food. I recently became a Yelper for the purpose of making my voice heard on all the awesome and not-so-awesome restaurants in LA and the OC.

Mr. Lace and I were friends for 8 years before we began dating. That’s not to say I didn’t have a huge crush on him along the way.
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Carrie Made the Cake created OwlBride’s decadent chocolate cake with dulce de leche and chocolate filling covered with vanilla buttercream frosting.

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’ve mentioned this before, but one of the first things I wanted to do after Mr. Guinea Pig and I got engaged was to make a guest list. I’m not even sure why, exactly, but I was SO excited about making this list of everyone we loved and wanted to share in our celebration.

(source)

So we made a list, sent it to our parents for any additions, and then sat on it. Of course, at this time we also decided that we would be getting married 18 months later. This list remained essentially untouched until we decided to send out our save the dates: so about 9 months later, we emailed out a Google Form to everyone on the list asking them to fill in their addresses. {This very handy feature has already been blogged about here by Ms. Fondue, and now Google has actually teamed up with Style Me Pretty to make lovely templates for this, too!}
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Now that I’ve hit the four month mark, I’m starting to get more serious about my skin.

Allow me to give you the background on my skin: I started breaking out after I graduated from college last summer and it got pretty ugly. My over the counter products were failing miserably.

Of course, this was all happening when I was unemployed for six months (thank you, recession). I had no idea if I still had health insurance (I did) and we couldn’t afford the expense of going to a dermatologist. So I trudged around DC, poor and zitty.

After becoming gainfully employed though, I made a dermatologist appointment. The doctor described my acne as “mild” (going to disagree there a bit) and prescribed me a retinol and a benzoyl peroxide. Those two things are the paladins of the zit crusade, healing and exorcising my face.

Things have definitely improved in the year I’ve been using the prescriptions, but I still deal with hormonal and stress-related break-outs. So even if you have mild or occasional acne, get thee to a dermatologist and then perhaps try some of these products too!

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Little balls of loveliness, created from two things I love: tea and food coloring (it reminds me of Easter!). You just take some brewed tea, add a few drops of food coloring, and take standard white tissue paper pre-cut into 10″ X 5″ stacks. After following Martha’s instructions, I got this lovely thing:

custom dyed tissue pomander

Pretty, no?

I even saved time by skipping the hot glue.
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shelliduke

Start your own Weddingbee Bio and you could be featured on the blog!

You enter a bridal salon, magazine pictures in hand. Hopes high. Glossy eyed. You’re invited to sit down and begin talking about how you want to look on your wedding day. What do you say?

For me, the first thing out of my mouth is what I do NOT want to look like. It’s harder to say what I want to look like.

“I do not want to look like a princess.”

What’s wrong with being a princess? Why shouldn’t I want to look like a princess? I did grow up loving to watch Cinderella and The Little Mermaid. It wasn’t ’til I reached college and began my education in Women’s Studies that I began to see the world differently. I began to think about how the world around me had affected the way I thought of myself. More specifically, I began thinking about how those childhood favorite movies had conditioned me to think about womanhood and my role in life. As a feminist, I believe that women deserve choices. So brides ought to have the choice to be the princess bride or someone completely different.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong about wanting to look like a princess or feel like one on your wedding day. But I do feel like it’s a choice that one should make and not feel forced into by any industry.

Then I read this article on feministing.com and it was all there. Samhita has the analysis that I have only haphazardly thought about in my head and failed to really capture.
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If you know anything about me, you know how much I love Martha Stewart. I frequently buy the Martha Stewart Living magazine and regularly purchase the Martha Stewart Weddings magazine each quarter. How can a girl resist?!

So, to my surprise, the lovely Cheree Berry was one of Martha’s featured weddings for the Summer issue, which was exciting for a few reasons: 1. She’s a FANTASTIC stationery designer with a great history (can you say “former art director for Kate Spade”?), 2. She’s from St. Louis (score!), and 3. She had a wonderful display of photos at the entrance of her reception (see below):

Source

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I had originally wanted to do our couple portraits on the steps of the main branch of the New York Public Library — you know, the one with the lions out front (Ghostbusters, baby!):

(photo credit)

I mean, it’s iconic. It’s gorgeous. It’s classy. Buuuuut then my smarter-than-me photographer pointed out that by the time we finished up the ceremony, it would be dark outside already. Duh, Star.

So we decided to do portraits inside of Grand Central Station — also iconic, gorgeous, and classy.
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