Mrs. Ostrich, San Francisco/HawaiiAge and Occupation: 30, Fashion Buyer
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 38, CopywriterEngagement Date: October 4, 2009Wedding Date: April 2011Venue: Sweet ceremony by the sea and sunset celebration on the North Shore of HawaiiAbout Me: Born in the city of angels and residing in the city by the bay, I’m a fearless fashion buyer by day, a passionate blog author by night and a dreamy bride-to-be in between. I thank my lucky stars to live in such a stunning city that gives me gifts like organic honey lavender ice cream, movie nights in the park, tucked away beaches, legendary record stores, '80s dance parties, awesome sports teams, stellar flea markets, and vintage bookshops. Oh, and I love to dance! We always find every excuse to escape to the beach, and decided a little seaside wedding in Hawaii is our idea of bliss. Full of our favorite people, music, food and sparkly lights, this is one sunset celebration we will always remember.
“Where there is no struggle, there is no strength. “
- Oprah
A decade.
Yep, Mr. Ostrich and I have been together 10 years…with no mini-breakups in between (you know, like Ross and Rachel’s “We were on a BREAK!”).
It’s been a blast—he’s my best friend, we spend too much time laughing, and we love each other to pieces…
“But 10 years?!” (This is the typical reaction we get, complete with wide eyes of disbelief.) Yeah, the length of our relationship has baffled and frustrated most of our friends, colleagues…even neighbors. (Thank goodness for our non-judgy families—whew.)
I like to tell the story of our wedding pressure in three acts.
Mrs. Giraffe, ChicagoAge and Occupation: 23, Graphic DesignerFiance's Age and Occupation: 24, Music Student TeacherEngagement Date: October 23, 2008Wedding Date: May 2011Venue: Trinity Lutheran Church & Idlewild Country ClubAbout Me: Coming from the suburbs of the Windy City, you'll often find me with my foot in my mouth while laughing for no reason or telling bad knock knock jokes. I've been crafty for as long as I can remember, and will DIY something twice over before I have someone do it for me. I'm a semi-awkward, typeface obsessed, design junkie and have been know to break out my dance moves for no reason as well as try my best to be ridiculous at all times. My love of pop culture, wordplay, and graph paper almost rivals my love of Mr. Giraffe (who is just the bee's knees). After a 2.5 year engagement, we're planning a modern-in-disguise traditional wedding, and cannot wait!
Hive, I don’t know why I haven’t talked about this sooner! I should have blogged about this right away because this was the very first wedding decision we made—and, for me personally, one of the most important decisions!
When Mr. Giraffe and I got engaged, I was still in college, attending school to get my BS in art (with a concentration in graphic design); this means that those semesters of print making and art history, and that bit of color theory, were all super fresh in my mind, and I was dealing with color every day. Color still plays a big huge part in everything I do and what I do every day.
As soon as we got engaged, I was over the moon about getting to pick our colors. In my mind, the colors set the tone for the whole day and provide a great way in which to tie all your wedding elements together.
I’m known for changing my mind constantly, or choosing something and then changing my mind at least a dozen times…but our wedding colors? No way! In a totally uncharacteristic move on my part, I picked our colors and haven’t wavered on my decision once.
So, what’s it gonna be? Well, let me show you! Read more…
Mrs. Brooch, Arlington, VAAge and Occupation: 25, Writer/EditorFiance's Age and Occupation: 29, Front Desk ManagerEngagement Date: October 3, 2009Wedding Date: April 2011Venue: Oxon Hill ManorAbout Me: I’m an indecisive girlie-girl with a motor mouth, can-do attitude, and knack for making others laugh. I dream of becoming a best selling novelist like Elizabeth Gilbert or Julie Powell (a girl can dream, right?), and love long road trips, a beautiful countryside, music, blogs, books, and all things vintage/thrift/antique/or homemade. I’m a Virgo, i.e. overly sensitive, emotional, and critical, and there’s no such thing as short and sweet in my world. I want to say and do it all. Mr. Brooch grounds me. I point where to go and he figures out the way. He’s a pragmatic fancy-pants who enjoys video games and movies. We both adore our mutt, Rocky, and spending time with our amazingly supportive family and friends. We’re planning a garden wedding with a formal reception with lots of whimsy and unique, Southern-inspired details.
Ms. Dahlia, Detroit/ClevelandAge and Occupation: 24, PhD StudentFiance's Age and Occupation: 24, IT System AdministratorEngagement Date: December 31, 2006Wedding Date: May 2008Blogging Since: September 19, 2007Venue: United Methodist Cathedral & historic downtown hotel in ClevelandAbout Me: I enjoy cooking, dancing and swimming. I am a geek and apply game theory to my everyday life. Winter is my favorite time of year, especially when spent curled up with good coffee and a book by Madeleine L'Engle.
More than two years after the wedding, the thing that stands out to me most among all of the small details (and posts about those things) was my bouquet. Learning that making bouquets was really easy was a big stress-reliever, and I was really proud of how everything turned out.
Not only was I pleased with how it all turned out on that day, but I’ve since gone on to make bouquets for the weddings of both of my brothers. The time spent with each of my sisters-in-law the day before their weddings was truly special. And my bouquet making skills, as you can see, improved with each. Read more…
Mrs. Lioness, AtlantaAge and Occupation: 25, Physical TherapistFiance's Age and Occupation: 25, AttorneyEngagement Date: August 29, 2009Wedding Date: April 2011Venue: Anthony’s Fine DiningAbout Me: I’m a Southern girl with New England roots. I say "wicked" and "y’all" in the same sentence and I like to drink sweet tea with my lobster. Mr. Lion and I are both former Floridians now living in Atlanta, which fortunately is still SEC country...Go Gators! We both love baseball, coffee, traveling, cooking, and playing Words with Friends with each other on our iPhones all day long. I’m very passionate about the things and the people I love, and I tend to plan things with all of my heart...our wedding, of course, is no different! Oh, and also Mr. Lion is a first generation American of Cuban descent. I may look more like Lucy than Ricky, but I’m doing my best to incorporate some Latin elements into our vintage-garden-Southern wedding!
Disclaimer: This is a money-related post. I will try my best not to offend, but I’d also like to be honest. Bear with me.
Lately, I’ve been experiencing a good bit of guilt about our wedding. Not only are we spending a lot of money on things I would usually find frivolous, we’re also asking our guests to spend money on presents, on top of all of their travel expenses. This makes me feel as though I come across like this:
Mrs. Panther, Atlanta GA/Westport CTAge and Occupation: 24, Web WriterFiance's Age and Occupation: 25, Music Recording EngineerEngagement Date: March 13, 2010Wedding Date: July 2011Venue: The Inn at LongshoreAbout Me: I'm a total goofball who goes through life at a breakneck pace, trying not to knock anything over. I tend to fall in love with everything I encounter, but more than anything, I love my two little kitties, Bela and Josie, and my big kitty, Mr. Panther! As a wannabe crafter, I'm still waiting for my artistic talents to emerge. (Any day now, really.) In the meantime, I spend my days eating anything put in front of me, buying every pair of shoes I see and absorbing wedding inspiration from every inch of my surroundings. Mr. Panther and I are hardcore New Englanders planning Connecticut nuptials from our new home in the Dirty South, and can't wait to mix our newfound love of classic Southern charm with some modern city touches.
I think it’s about time I share the engagement story, don’t you? Part one, coming at ya.
Mr. Panther and I knew quite a while ago that we wanted to get married in the summer of 2011. Because we wanted to have the ceremony outside, overlooking water of some sort, we knew the date needed to be in the summertime. Mr. Panther didn’t want to wait until 2012, because he thinks the world is going to end on December 21. He wanted to have a little more than five months to enjoy being married before we all die, I guess.
So, at some point around spring 2009, Mr. Panther started saving for a ring. I’m crazy, crazy picky, so he knew he’d be better off getting my input. And luckily for him, I already had one picked out:
Mrs. Glasses, Tokyo/Los Angeles, CAAge and Occupation: 24, English teacherFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, English teacherEngagement Date: September 2008Wedding Date: October 2010 Venue: Parents' backyardAbout Me: I’m an expat living in Tokyo. I’ve been in Japan for almost three years now, where I met my fantastic English fiance. It’s time to leave Japan, so we are planning a fun, intimate, backyard ceremony back home in the suburbs of L.A. in October. Our wedding will be a mix of my love for food, beer, my Japanese culture, and Mr. G’s Englishness. We are on a tiny budget and DIYing almost everything!
Early on the Saturday morning of our wedding, my eyes snapped open. As I lay in bed in my parents’ house, I listened closely to the sound of Mr. G snoring quietly next to me, birds chirping, and not much else. I got up and opened the blinds quickly…beautiful blue skies! The storm that had passed over Los Angeles in the night was gone quicker than those silly weather people had predicted. I ran downstairs to the backyard, still in my pajamas, and pulled off all of the garbage bags that had been protecting the rented tables, chairs, and chafing dishes from the rain.
Mr. G joined me in cleaning up the garbage bags eventually. I knew that we had a lot of work to do before the wedding—more than expected because we hadn’t been able to set up a lot the night before due to the storm.
I hit up Target in a last-minute dash for supplies with my girlfriends from England that were staying at the house. While we were doing that, Mr. G and my dad were doing the grunt work—setting up lights and bringing the heavier things from the garage.
Mrs. Perfume, DCAge and Occupation: 36, Consultant (and Part-Time Professor)Fiance's Age and Occupation: 41, ConsultantEngagement Date: May 13, 2008Wedding Date: May, 2009Venue: The Homestead, Hot Springs, VirginiaAbout Me: I'd like to think that I'm a modern day Little Edie Beale. Only not as..."talented". More realistically, I'm a foodie who can't bake; a dancer and dilettente; an art collector with a penchant for the whimsical and subversive. I live in the city and adore the country, but not much in between. I like smart design, great craftmanship and good value. Most of all, I love the new vintage aesthetic: classic, sweet, delicate, bespoke. If I had to do it all over again, I'd go for a culinary arts degree rather than a PhD; but wouldn't trade Mr. P for the world.
The lovely Mrs. Perfume shares her favorite posts! Here they are, rolled into one!
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Tonight we finally finished putting together our invitations. We (okay mostly I) really love them! But they were a pain. A real pain. And they weren’t even DIY. Well, they were partly DIY in that I wanted to use boxes instead of outer envelopes. Little did I know I was in for such a maddening experience…
Our finished invitation boxes. (If the Sheraton ever needs gift boxes…)
Midway through our planning, I became obsessed with confectionary colored elements (as is well documented here, here, and here), especially Laduree packaging.
Mrs. Taco, San FranciscoAge and Occupation: 29, writer/editorFiance's Age and Occupation: 37, editorEngagement Date: May 13, 2009Wedding Date: August 2010Venue: The Green Room at the War Memorial Veterans BuildingAbout Me: I like laughing and talking with good friends over good food and good drink, be it wine, cocktail, or brew. I write and edit things for fun and profit, but I rarely "write" these days without a keyboard and high-speed internets. Favorites include Mr. Taco, my Boston terrier, San Francisco, getting out of town, and the Roaring ’20s. I was kind-of planning a wedding since roughly 2006, when I discovered "Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?" on the WE channel. I ran and didn't look back with a theme I called "urban vintage," and it culminated in the most magical day a taco could ask for.
My first minutes of marriage were probably a lot like everyone else’s. We were, in the interest of my beloved schedule, of course, shuffled out of the room. Guests were ushered (thanks, ushers) out to the balcony so our catering staff could flip the room into reception mode. Meanwhile and elsewhere, the bride and groom kicked off their most-photographed hour (couldn’t believe it was only an hour) of the day.
Cocktail hour was, they say, a magical affair, with passed appetizers, the beer-and-wine bar, whatever people had in those flasks, a nice view of City Hall, and life-size cutouts.
Mrs. Prairie Dog, Cincinnati
Age and Occupation: 24, Program CoordinatorFiance's Age and Occupation: 25, PhD/Biomedical EngineerEngagement Date: December 18, 2009Wedding Date: May 2011Venue: Glendale LyceumAbout Me: I'm a pilgrim soul of a girl with a house full of books and a coffee addiction that could slay Juan Valdez. My life is a whirl of grammar correction, good music, glue-gunning, and two pets named Hazel and Winston Churchill. I'm marrying my high school boyfriend in a formal-ish spring affair, roughly themed: "Elizabeth Bennet crashes a party co-hosted by Jay Gatsby and Cath Kidston, and loves it."
Genetically speaking, I got my dad’s eyes, and my mom’s guilt. Guilt runs in our family like a dominant gene, and it is exhausting.
Here are a few of the many, many issues that I’m wrestling with:
1. I feel guilty that my parents are paying for the majority of our wedding and are just so freaking nice about it. Never once have they made me feel guilty about it…and so, I feel guilty about it.
2. I feel guilty that I let myself get stressed about wedding-related minutia. 99% of my concerns are petty, first-world problems.
3. I feel guilty that bridesmaids are supposed to pay for dresses, presents for shower / wedding, bachelorette stuff, etc. I should pay THEM- a lot- for keeping me sane(ish) since my pre-teens. Read more…
Ms. Cheetah, Los Angeles/Palm Springs
Age and Occupation: 31, Artist, EducatorFiance's Age and Occupation: 32, TV FinanceEngagement Date: April 2010Wedding Date: March 2011Venue: The ViceroyAbout Me: I’m a silly, sassy lady with a compulsion to create. I love to sing and dance, despite the fact that I lack any talent doing either. I somehow manage to be messy and organized at the same time. I like to spend my days road tripping, watching '80s movies, reading true crime books, buying things on sale, sending postcards, playing board games, dining at food trucks, snuggling, and drinking ginger ale. I have a weak spot for all things sweet, especially Mr. Cheetah! I’m a Chicago girl and he’s a Nor Cal boy but we love living in the City of Angels. After 10 years as a couple we are planning a fun-filled semi-destination wedding in Palm Springs. Hope you enjoy the ride!
OK, I’m just going to say it: I hate platform shoes. I know they’re all the rage, but I just can’t get on board. Please don’t hate me all you platform-loving ladies out there. Especially you, Lady Gaga—we’re still besties, right!?!
Mrs. Lace, Pasadena, CAAge and Occupation: 29, Elementary school teacherFiance's Age and Occupation: 29, EngineerEngagement Date: September 6, 2009Wedding Date: June 2010Venue: Orange County Performing Arts CenterAbout Me: Born and raised in Southern California, my fiance and I are marrying in Orange County. We're planning a vintage wedding with a modern twist. I am an elementary school teacher by day and a wedding planner by night. I love reading, blogging, scrapbooking, trying out new DIY projects, buying awesome finds at incredible deals and spending time with friends and family. Trying new restaurants, traveling and shopping also top my hobby list. I'm anxious to share my wedding ideas and planning with the hive!
Hope you all enjoyed your holiday this week! I am stuffed full of prime rib and hot pot…our typical Chinese-American Thanksgiving. It was our first Thanksgiving together as a married couple, even though it didn’t feel all that different since Mr. Lace has been spending Thanksgiving with my family for the past couple of years anyway. More on holiday adjusting later…
Anyway, here we are—the bridal party. All photos are courtesy of Hanssie Trainor.
Mr. Lace’s groomsmen are his oldest and dearest friends and family. His cousin, far left, flew out from Texas to be in the wedding. I had the chance to befriend Cousin Lace in college while he was stationed there before Mr. Lace and I ever became a couple. His other four groomsmen are his childhood friends, and the group still gathers together regularly to play video games (what else, right?).
Keep on loading your inspirational wedding pics to the Weddingbee Gallery to see them featured here on the blog! Remember, your images must be under 1MB in size, or they won’t load.
Mrs. Zebra, Providence, RIAge and Occupation: 24 Marketing/Costume DesignerFiance's Age and Occupation: 26 Management/Firefighter Engagement Date: December 12, 2008Wedding Date: March 2011Venue: The Providence BiltmoreAbout Me: I'm a small town New England girl with an affinity for procrastination, crossing the proverbial line, and putting her foot in her mouth. I'm a lover of history, all seasons, sewing and Incubus. I design costumes on the side for my old high school's theatre department, which is where I met my sexy man. Our motto for our Big Fat Lebanese/Portuguese/Irish near-300 person wedding is "the more the merrier"! We are marrying in a Catholic ceremony and are hammering out the details of our Victorian-inspired reception.
Writing about my secrets is like being asked to say 3 things about yourself but make one a lie. I immediately default to something stupid like how many siblings I have. I’m just not that interesting, so I hope you’re not disappointed.
1. My life’s goal is to ski Tuckerman Ravine. Every May for 5 years I have had every intention of hiking Mount Washington and skiing it but then we get incredibly busy and cancel our plans. Zeb’s done it and I’m coming for it next.
Mrs. Jelly Beans, OttawaAge and Occupation: 28, Pediatric Registered Nurse and full time bride to beFiance's Age and Occupation: 28, Investor and very supportive groom to beEngagement Date: July 7, 2005Wedding Date: August 25, 2007Blogging Since: June 20, 2007Venue: Cathedral Ceremony and Rooftop Tent ReceptionHoneymoon: ItalyAbout Me: I have been in wedding planning mode since Mr. Jelly Beans popped the question almost two years ago. I am a very dorky and sentimental person. I love laughing and living life alongside my husband-to-be. We have been in a long distance relationship for over 6 years - he is in California and I am presently in Canada, so you can imagine how excited we both are for our upcoming wedding.
I was looking through my old posts trying to pick out my favorite Weddingbee post. I picked this one because I can still remember how ridiculously excited I was when I finally got the email that said that I was going to be a blogger on Weddingbee! You would have thought I won the lotto or something. I was elated and slightly dazed. I am very blessed and lucky to be in the company of such wonderful, creative and supportive individuals. Thank you for allowing me to share and celebrate “everything wedding” with all of you…
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Hi *points to name tag* I am Miss Jelly Beans and I am a weddingplannaholic!
Once upon a time (July 2005), in a land far, far away (it’s really not that far), Mr. Jelly Beans got down on one knee (he hates getting his clothes dirty, so I knew this was big), on a very windy day (good thing I had a cute white blazer on), at the very top of the Eiffel tower and asked Miss Jelly Beans to be his wife. To this day he claims Tom Cruise stole his idea.
We have been together for almost 9 years now and have been in a long distance relationship for 6. I moved from sunny-all-year, Los Angeles to four-seasons, Ottawa 6 years ago with my family. This was not a deterrent but merely a minor navigational glitch in our relationship. Read more…
All-Inclusion Invitation Suites
