Mrs. Canary, New YorkAge and Occupation: 24, MarketingFiance's Age and Occupation: 25, Journalist/EditorEngagement Date: February 16, 2007Wedding Date: July, 2008Blogging Since: October 19, 2007Venue: Pier Sixty, Chelsea PiersAbout Me: I'm a born and raised New Yorker who loves all things crafty and artsy, food (cheese and dessert!), magazines, and shoes. I'm a power shopper always on the lookout for good deals or great quality-- sometimes I'm lucky and I find both! I love to dance and "shake what my momma gave me" but can also really enjoy a quiet night in with Mr. Canary and a good episode of Seinfeld or curl up with a good book.
If you hadn’t guessed yet, here are a few photos with clues from our second anniversary shoot by the fabulous and super-talented Steve Koo AKA Mr. Stiletto (who was nice enough to squeeze us in for a shoot while visiting New York last month).
Mrs. Hippo, New York City/Dallas, TXAge and Occupation: 34, Event Planner for a Non-Profit Fiance's Age and Occupation: 35, Finance ITEngagement Date: August 8, 2009Wedding Date: March 2011Venue: Samuel Lynne Galleries and Marc EventsAbout Me: I’m a thirty-something bride living in New York City and planning a modern-ish wedding in Dallas, Texas. I love trashy reality television (Jersey Shore, anyone?), online shopping, Sunday brunch, Central Park, and random celebrity spottings on the streets of Manhattan. While I love NYC, I miss good Tex-Mex, my college friends, central A/C, and being in close proximity to a Target. I’m thrilled to finally be planning an event that’s not work-related and to be marrying my best friend in what I hope will be a unique and personal ceremony followed by a reception with plenty of good food, good drinks, and dancing (regardless if it’s good or not).
Hive, I have a problem. I’ve been searching high and low for something, and I can’t find it for the life of me. I’ve asked you for wedding advice before, but this is a little more serious. I need a tie. This tie to be exact:
Sean John Satin Tonal Stripe tie
If you remember from this post, we decided to have the guys wear their own black suits. We found ties we liked on sale at Macy’s in a perfect shade of navy to match the bridesmaids dresses. But…we are short one tie, and I can’t find it anywhere. Four Macy’s in four different cities and a ton of online searching, and I still can’t find the one missing tie. I’m running into a couple of major problems: Read more…
Mrs. Jaguar, SydneyAge and Occupation: 27, Primary School TeacherFiance's Age and Occupation: 29, IT ConsultantEngagement Date: August 8, 2009Wedding Date: June 2011Venue: Curzon HallAbout Me: I'm an Australian girl who is a self-proclaimed nerd, loves all things stationery and would be lost without books, music and the internet. Mr. Jaguar and I have been together for the past eight years and he finally popped the question last August. Hurrah! We currently live in Sydney, Australia with our adorable cat who thinks he's a person. We're a couple who likes to multi-task: we've been planning a wedding abroad, a permanent move from London to Sydney, and preparing to build our own home all at the same time. Travelling makes me giddy...as does Mr. Jaguar, of course!
Gift registries: they may seem innocent, but in actual fact, they are more like a minefield cleverly disguised beneath a bazillion gift-wrapped gadgets and gizmo’s.
Making the final decision as to where we’re going to create registries has been harder than we anticipated, particularly because our options are a little limited down under. All the traditional big name registries that most of my North American friends frequent don’t apply here—but we do have one fairly big department store called Myer where the majority of couples are content to go zap-happy with the scanner. I feel like they have a monopoly on wedding registries and don’t really shop there on a regular basis, so we’re considering shopping around and creating our registry somewhere a little bit different.
If I’m being completely honest, we don’t even really know what we want to put on our registry.
Mrs. Elephant, Dallas, TXAge and Occupation: 27, Financial Operations AnalystFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, IT Student/Store ManagerEngagement Date: March 29, 2009Wedding Date: April 2011Venue: The Tribute Golf ClubAbout Me: I'm a Philly native creating roots deep in the heart of Texas. I might be a little obsessed capturing those Kodak moments of anything and everything (mainly on vacations). I've become more of a gamer thanks to Mr. Elephant, who I met online and can't wait to spend the rest of my life with. We are planning a wedding based on our favorite colors, blue and green, with a travel theme for 150 of our closest friends and family. Hopefully our long (2-year) engagement won't kill me!
I know that for 97% of the brides out there (totally made up percentage by me) the Easter Bunny has nothing to do with their wedding planning…unfortunately for us, it does.
BM Philly and me with the Easter Bunny back in the day
When we first got engaged we picked the closest Saturday to our dating anniversary, which was April 24, 2010. When we moved the wedding back a year, Mr. E still wanted to go with the Saturday closest to the date we started dating. This was one wedding related thing he really wanted, and I had no problem with it.
So we started planning, meeting with venues and booking vendors, all with the date of April 23, 2011.
Now this was back in 2009, so maybe our vendors didn’t look at a calendar (much like us), but about 5 months after we booked the venue I got a random text from Mr. E (not all that random because we tend to text through our work days, but the question was a little random) asking if I knew what April 24, 2011 was. Read more…
Mrs. Waffle, AustinAge and Occupation: 31, Costumer/ArtistFiance's Age and Occupation: 33, AnimatorEngagement Date: July 27, 2010Wedding Date: June 2011Venue: Hummingbird HouseAbout Me: My life is pretty much spent in a sea of fabric, paint, sequins and drama. When I’m not working, I play on a trivia team, take Broadway dance classes, read, buy shoes, and occasionally geek out on video games. I am an American girl who loves all things British and Mr. Waffle is a Brit who loves all things American...I guess it was meant to be!
Mrs. Socks, Southern NJ/Philadelphia, PAAge and Occupation: 23, Web Developer/Marketing SpecialistFiance's Age and Occupation: 26, Systems EngineerEngagement Date: September 7, 2009
Wedding Date: October 2010Venue: Ladder 15 RestaurantAbout Me: I am originally from the Midwest, but I love being an East Coast transplant! Mr. Socks and I are foodies and winos to the core---give us a hunk of cheese, some charcuterie and a glass of wine and we could die happy. We have two mischievous Wire Fox Terriers with completely opposite personalities but with a shared love of uprooting anything in our garden. Our backyard garden includes everything from tomatoes and peppers to a fig tree, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries! I love cooking, indie music, and spending time in our wedding city of choice---Philly!
The week before the wedding, everything was crazy busy, but going well. We had our DIY projects out of the way, all of our stuff was gathered in the guest bedroom, ready to be taken to Ladder 15, and all we had left to do were the flowers.
If you’ll remember, I decided early on to DIY our flowers. We ordered the following flowers from fiftyflowers.com:
Yellow Toulouse Lautrec Roses, Orange Ranunculus and Craspedia
I took the Friday before our wedding off from work specifically to put the flowers together, when lo and behold, the craspedia arrived a day early on Thursday. No matter, they were fine and would hold up until Sunday.
But on Thursday evening, I checked the shipping status of our other two orders, and saw that our roses were in Ecuador. They wouldn’t be delivered until Monday. Um…cue bride freak out. Read more…
BeehiveFeature Launched: Aug 31, 2006About: A forum for readers to post questions and get feedback from the hive, aka the weddingbee community.
Happy holidays, hive! To celebrate the season (and the inevitable new engagements coming this Christmas!) we’re offering a discount on all of the save the dates available in the Weddingbee Invitations Shop!
Mrs. French Toast, Pleasanton, CAAge and Occupation: 29, Marketing & PRFiance's Age and Occupation: IT geek by day, self-proclaimed handyman by nightEngagement Date: October 2009Wedding Date: March 2011Venue: Palm Event CenterAbout Me: I’m a city girl at heart who moved to the suburbs a year ago. Now I’m adjusting to life with a front lawn, nosy neighbors, cooking attempts, and making sure the garbage pail is pulled out on time every week! When I’m not traveling, Mr. FT and I enjoy marathon sessions of Law & Order: SVU, snowboarding, photography, spoiling our 3-year old yorkie-poodle Mokka and disagreeing over what music to listen to in the car. We’re planning a small winery wedding while incorporating some cultural elements into the day as a nod to our Chinese backgrounds.
While our guests were busy filling out the address survey, Mr. French Toast and I dived right into creating our save the dates. In the Chinese culture, there is no such thing as a save the date. Needless to say, my mom wasn’t too thrilled with the idea when I told her we were making cards to send to our guests six months ahead of time to tell them to mark their calendars.
“Wah??? Why? You waste postage! Just call!” my mom said in her broken English, The Joy Luck Club style.
“But Mama, we have another excuse to go on a photo shoot and make cute cards, and also we can use it to share our website!”
“You go ahead, but my guests no need STD.”(I kid you not.)
I wanted our STDs to convey a fun and casual side of us. When I saw this, I knew we had to do it:
Mrs. Penguin, Northern CaliforniaAge and Occupation: 27, Weddingbee Editor in ChiefFiance's Age and Occupation: 30, Doctor of Physical TherapyEngagement Date: January 29, 2007Wedding Date: June 7, 2008Blogging Since: September 14, 2007Venue: Winery in the Gold CountryAbout Me: I love the Spice Girls, dogs with underbites, bean burritos, making messes, high fives, avoiding showers, crossword puzzles, blogs, weddings, and blogs about weddings!
Here’s part 5 of our bee ornament exchange! The blogging bees have been participating in a Secret Santa where we exchange ornaments or objects in our fellow bees’ likenesses, with a budget of $15 or less. Check ’em out!
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.
Miss Pancakes’ post “Wedding Planners are your Friends” inspired me to share our process for finding a planner! It look a lot of research, a few interviews, and a couple of budget conversations, but we can already say that hiring a planner was ultimately the best wedding-related decision we’ve made!
How we knew we needed a planner:
We always knew we wanted a day of coordinator, but I also really wanted someone to help us choose our vendors. Living in the Washington, DC area there are a lot of vendors, and making a wise decision can be difficult. We figured it was better to pay a planner, rather than overpay two or three vendors we knew nothing about.
We also knew we needed someone to help us pull off a wedding ourselves. We realized this when we postponed our wedding after being engaged for more than 6 months due in part to a lack of planning.
Mrs. Tartlet, Rochester, MIAge and Occupation: Age & Occupation: 27, Post-Doctoral Research FellowFiance's Age and Occupation: 28, Medical StudentEngagement Date: May 2, 2009Wedding Date: May 2011Venue: The Royal Park HotelAbout Me: I'm an exuberant gal from the Midwest with a penchant for Neuroscience and anything sparkly. I'm not afraid to poke fun at myself, and I'm a believer that given the right pair of shoes, a girl can conquer the world. While an interest in the sciences threw Mr. Tartlet and me together (again, and again, until it finally stuck), we share a love for many things---food, video games, car dancing, food, bad puns, travel, did I mention food?---that ultimately led us to where we are now, less than five months from becoming Mr. and Mrs. We're planning a laid-back, romantic, garden-inspired affair with organic and quirky touches that reflect our love for the unexpected!
I can’t believe it—I’m engaged! This is going to be fan-frickin’-tastic. I’m going to invite everyone I know. There are going to be flowers absolutely EVERYWHERE. We’re going to serve filet mignon with lobster tails, have a live band, I’m going to wear Vera Wang, let’s not forget the letterpress invitations, oh, oh, oh…
Dear Past Me,
Whoa, whoa. Sweetie, you’ve got to slow. down. Let me introduce you to someone. Past Me, meet Madame Budget. She can be one mean bitch, but you’ll need her with you throughout this process to keep you grounded in reality. The dangers of the Internet already have you wanting your wedding to look like this:
Mrs. Jam, ChicagoAge and Occupation: 25, Writer/Associate Wedding CoordinatorFiance's Age and Occupation: 25, Structural EngineerEngagement Date: December 23, 2009Wedding Date: June 2011Venue: Hunter’s Ridge, Princeton, ILAbout Me: I’m a penny-pinching cat lady getting ready to marry the frugal dog lover of my dreams. Our ideal Saturday morning includes rummaging around people’s junk at garage and estate sales followed by an afternoon date to our favorite café, where we only eat sandwiches that include the word “salad.” We actually love it so much, it’s sort of our unofficial wedding theme: Look at our delicious finds, eat homemade ham salad, and celebrate our love…barndance style. When we’re not obsessing over our love-fest shindig, we’re planning themed parties for our best friends and jamming to '90s music.
It’s really hard to believe that Mr. Jam and I have been engaged for almost a year. It feels like yesterday he surprised me with the ring o’ my dreams and put it onto my freezing cold finger amid a Chicago ice storm, and then we kept the biggest secret ever from our family and friends for over 24 hours. (Yes, that was incredibly hard and I hated it.)
And now that we’ve planned this long engagement so we could leisurely plan our shindig…we realized we have done NOTHING. OK, not really nothing. We booked a photographer, DJ, and venue. And I got the dress.
But other than that, we’ve done NOTHING. I realized this when we went to dinner with some couple-friends who are getting married a mere month before us and have everything booked, done, and paid for. Mr. Jam and I felt like failures.
Sure, I’ve spent hours melting my eyeballs out of my head looking at endless “wedding inspiration,” which seriously seems to form one big meaningless mass in my brain at the end of the day, and we’ve talked about what kinds of stuff we want. But we’ve not acted on anything, and now that we’re mere months away, it’s time to get serious.
Mrs. Jellyfish, Pleasanton, CAAge and Occupation: 27, Law StudentFiance's Age and Occupation: 26, Air Force PilotEngagement Date: February 21, 2009Wedding Date: September 2010Venue: Casa Real at Ruby Hill WineryAbout Me: In a nutshell, I’m the most optimistic worrywart you’ll ever meet. My family emigrated from Romania to San Jose, CA when I was 8, and I've been a Nor Cal girl ever since! My fiancé is also a Bay Area native, so it’s funny that we met at UCLA, as college freshmen living on the same floor (go Bruins!). Between his career as an Air Force pilot and my path to becoming a lawyer, our relationship has been anything but typical. We currently live together in Berkeley with our puppy Stinson. In addition to spending time with the loves of my life, I enjoy crafting, attempting complicated recipes, environmental law and non-law school reading (Us Weekly, anyone?). Follow along as I plan an elegant 200-person winery wedding, graduate law school, take the Bar exam, get married and get used to the always unpredictable but never boring life of a military spouse!
OK, I know what you might be thinking: Jelly, you’ve done 4 recap posts already, and we haven’t even gotten to the wedding day yet! Fear not, because we’re almost there! But before I get to the wedding day, I have a few more things to say about the night before the wedding.
Our Bocce Welcome Dinner ended at 8:30, so we went back to the hotel where Mr. Jelly and I practiced our first dance one last time, in front of my MOH. After getting rave reviews from her, we decided to call it a night and go our separate ways. One of Mr. Jelly’s Air Force buddies knows the owner of a local batting cage, so he and his friends grabbed some beers and headed to the batting cages after-hours to hit some baseballs.
Mr. Jelly’s night-before-the-wedding activity.
Meanwhile, back at the hotel, I met up with my several of my friends and bridesmaids for a little partying of my own—Das Boot style!
As soon as my husband and I got engaged, we knew we wanted to use Ben as our photographer. I have had the pleasure of knowing Ben and his work for years, and it is incredible!
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