Mrs. Rainbow, TampaAge and Occupation: 22, Makeup ArtistFiance's Age and Occupation: 25, Electrical Engineer/ProgrammerEngagement Date: November 27, 2008Wedding Date: May 2010Venue: The Gamble PlantationAbout Me: I'm a quirky (and slightly Type-A) freelance makeup artist who was born in Washington State, raised in Alabama, and now living with my one and only in sunny Florida. I'm fashion and beauty obsessed, and have recently discovered my inner domestic diva extraordinaire. I'm a wannabe chef, decorating addict, and trying desperately to be as crafty as possible---albeit only with a glue gun. I'm hopelessly in love with my fiance, and all things sparkly and feathery. Despite the glittery exterior, I'm a total hippie on the inside. When I'm not making up pretty faces, I love doing what I can to help people, animals, and the environment. Someday the FI and I will change the world, but first we're tackling our modern-vintage-Marie-Antoinette-meets-Alice-in-Wonderland inspired wedding. I just can't wait to be Mrs. Rainbow!
In all honesty, we didn’t have a budget. That’s not because we had unlimited funds—quite the contrary, actually. It’s just that we really didn’t even discuss it. We knew we didn’t want some big lavish affair, and we knew we didn’t want to go into debt for it. That said, we simply booked vendors that we liked and had prices that we felt comfortable with, and that was that. We weren’t aiming for a particular number, but we knew what we could afford and what we couldn’t.
So how much did we spend? I have no idea. But once I’m done itemizing it for you here, well, I guess then I’ll know!
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.
Cheeseola header, no? Though it wouldn’t be a true San Francisco wedding without a shout to Journey.
Outside our venue on a stumble back to the hotel. Pic by Right Angle Images.
Like my pals in Journey, I love the city at night: quieted office buildings, people heading to dinner, pockets of smokers standing outside bars, and street folk asking for 36 cents; that guy hangs near my house and he’s always very exact. Concrete, bus-loads of people, randomly lit windows, and person-to-person unpredictability is as welcoming for me as it may be disconcerting for others. Read more…
Mrs. Magic, Chapel Hill, NCAge and Occupation: 30, Licensed Clinical Social WorkerFiance's Age and Occupation: 30, ResearcherEngagement Date: December 1, 2009Wedding Date: October 2011Venue: Barn at ValhallaAbout Me: I’m a tall drink of water (5’10”!) and a Southern bride with an enormous appetite for Mexican food, good deals, anything French, and all things wedding! By day I am lucky enough to work with individuals with autism and their families. By night, I’m even luckier to be able to spend time hanging out with awesome friends, crafting, shopping, thinking about exercising, and kicking it with Mr. Magic and our two cats. I tend to have sudden, intense cravings that will not be denied (seafood enchiladas! new jeans!) and I’m prone to being a disorganized mess of anxiety and stress. After waiting (and waiting!) to get engaged, I am finally planning the colorful, fun, fabulously awesome Fall wedding of our dreams. In an effort to share the fun and craziness that is wedding planning, I’m gonna blog about it for y’all---the good, the bad, and the pretty!
For those of you who know me as a label whore, I’d just like to say that I fell in love with these shoes BEFORE I knew they were Christian Louboutins. OOPS! I was gonna build up to that part, so the big fancy designer reveal would be more climactic. But I’m impulsive, which is really what this blog post is about.
I have a problem. I’m not sure what to call it, other than impulsivity. If I want a Sun Drop (an extremely delicious North Carolina soda), I want it now, and I will get it now or ask Mr. Magic to get it for me.
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!
After all of our travels, Mr. Jaguar and I have enjoyed getting settled down into our lives here in Sydney-town. We’re all set up in our apartment, we’re currently inundated with home-building paperwork, and we’re counting down the days until the wedding.
We put off organising the honeymoon until now, mainly because we were exhausted after our trip, and the thought of getting on a plane again was enough to make us want to cry. (Our final flight home from Honolulu-Sydney? Worst. Flight. Ever. Guys, it was bad.) Also, we’d spent so much money on our epic trip and had so many expenses to pay for when we got home, that we financially couldn’t afford to book anything up until this point.
Because we like bullet points and pro/con lists, these were our specs for sorting out a honeymoon locale:
Congratulations to our winners: missapis, mandy72980, ohkkrista, IAmLemondrop, and KJaskevi!
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Mintedis one of our favorite stationery lines! Through their various Design Challenges, designers can submit stationery designs and the Minted community at large votes in which stationery suites will be added to the Minted collection.
Minted recently launched 175 incredible new wedding invitation suites, and to celebrate, they’re giving away five sets of 100 invites with RSVP cards right here on Weddingbee!
To enter the Minted giveaway here on Weddingbee, simply visit Minted’s website and let us know which invitations you’d choose if you won! And for a second chance to win, follow Weddingbee on Twitter and retweet this contest (if you’re already a follower, simply retweet by clicking here!). Then come back here and let us know that you followed/retweeted. You have until Monday, February 28th at 11:59 PM PST to enter. Good luck!
BuzzworthyFeature Launched: February 26, 2011About: Fun inspiration boards featuring shopping guides for real brides!
Happy Monday hive! We’re kicking the week off with a brand new feature: Buzzworthy! Buzzworthy boards will feature affordable and achievable wedding details for real brides, and will include shopping guides. So, not only can you drool over the pics, but you can find out where to buy the items featured, too!
The lovely Mrs. Cupcake is spearheading this feature, so please join me in thanking her for our first wonderful Buzzworthy Board—Meant to Bee: Weddingbee Inspiration!
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!
Cheesy, I know, but I just couldn’t help myself. I had vintage Madonna on the iTunes earlier today.
Moving on…
I realllly, reallllly, REALLLLY wanted to address all of our invites with a grey calligraphy marker. Unfortunately, when I found a grey calligraphy marker online, the shipping charges were more than the marker. Seriously. It’s a marker and weighs next to nothing. Why should it cost $6.95 to ship?
So, I ran to Jerry’s Artarama (which is a big time fabulous art store with great pricing) and ransacked the marker department. There were no grey calligraphy or fine chisel tip markers/pens to be found, but I did find a handful of brush tip markers I quite like. Read more…
Weddingbee GalleryFeature Launched: April 10, 2009About: A collection of inspirational wedding pictures from readers and bees.
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. Hot Wings, Chicago/San DiegoAge and Occupation: 28, ProfessorFiance's Age and Occupation: 32, InstructorEngagement Date: December 20, 2008Wedding Date: August 2010Venue: Ocean View Villas/Jasmine Seafood RestaurantAbout Me: I am a psychology grad student living in Chicago and planning my wedding to a fellow psych grad student. I am a Sunny So-Cal bred gal who trudged across the country to follow her love of psychology and ended up finding a partner in the process. I am overly passionate about anything I involve myself with. I am an activist, a foodie, a reality TV watching junkie, an over-analyzer, a photography obsesser, and am utterly cheesy to the core. This is a story of what happens when a boy and a girl meet, fall in love over academic dorkiness, and a shared love for life. We (mostly I) are planning our semi-destination wedding in my hometown of San Diego. We are excited to bring our families and friends together from across our lifespans to celebrate our future in a grand 400+ person culturally blended affair!
As many of you already know, the hive is full of inspiration, laughter, tutorials, and delightful wedding love. The hive has affected my wedding in so many ways, but the wedding comes and goes and few traces are left in our day-to-day lives. Now, 6 months post-wedding, there is still one bit of Weddingbee inspiration that is left in my life.
Yes, these are my rings: engagement and wedding band. But what are they sitting in?
Mrs. Pain au Chocolat, Wilmington, DEAge and Occupation: 29, RealtorFiance's Age and Occupation: 34, RealtorEngagement Date: November 21, 2009Wedding Date: June 2011Venue: Greenville Country ClubAbout Me: An ENFJ with an artistic streak who loves backgammon, sailing, graphic design, and sleeping in. Travel (near or far), good wine, and tasty food makes my heart sing. I'm a compulsive list-maker who lives to plan and organize. Mr. P and I have lived together for 4 years, all the while renovating our city townhome bit by bit. We're planning a whimsical, Anthropologie-inspired garden wedding in June 2011.
As perennial party hosts, we’ve thrown enough parties to have the basics down. But what about the intangibles that elevate a good party to an awesome party? You know it if you’ve ever attended a party where something was missing…but you couldn’t put your finger on it.
I’d read about “party architecture” on Apartment Therapy a few years back, but now that we’re planning a wedding (really just a BIG party), I’m seeing it with new eyes. The four aspects of party architecture are density, structure, lighting, and flow.
1. Density. It’s crucial for dinner and dancing. While you don’t want to cram your guests around a table for dinner, a packed dance floor is less of an issue. Especially if you have issues about dancing. *raises hand* A crowd can hide a multitude of dancing sins. Unless you’re the one in the big white dress. Crap.
Mrs. Cotton Candy, Riverside, CAAge and Occupation: 29, Field CoordinatorFiance's Age and Occupation: 34, Process ServerEngagement Date: July 5, 2007Wedding Date: June 2011Venue: Riverside Art MuseumAbout Me: I’m a girl in love with her best friend planning a small mid-century modern inspired wedding that’s been a long time coming. I love all things design, sewing, flea markets, and a good book. I’ve been known to swoon over a well-designed chair and often find myself craving a new addition to my chair collection regardless of the lack square footage in our home. I’m Mexican American girl who hates all things spicy but loves her rowdy Mexican family and her Latin roots. My wedding muses may not be your typical wedding superstars, but with a lot of DIY, a dash of offbeat style, and lots of love and laughs, Mr. Cotton and I plan to create a day that is unmistakably us.
When you first start planning a wedding, one of the last things on your mind is the amount of crap you will accumulate and store in the 12 plus months before your wedding. The mister and I are notorious pack rats, and now, with the addition of our wedding supplies, having enough storage and a clean work space to complete our DIY projects has become a huge issue.
Our current apartment is a whopping 600 square feet, with an awkward layout that leaves the 200 square feet that make up our kitchen and dining area unusable the majority of the time. We’ve had to get pretty creative with our space planning and have managed to carve out enough closet and storage space to store our wardrobe and all of our various knickknacks. This weekend we were finally able to create a space for me to store my laptop and the growing craft-supply collection that is currently occupying our living room and bedroom.
Motivated by the piles of craft supplies that we purchased this weekend in anticipation of the completion of our save the dates, we headed off to Lowes in search of a solution to our storage needs. Thirty minutes later and 60 dollars lighter, we had all the supplies we needed to create this.
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!
Hive, I can’t thank you enough for your supportive comments in my previous post. It made Sister Tartlet’s day, which in turn made my day (and weekend)! I’m happy to share that despite the perplexing experience, not all was lost because BM Tanya came to the rescue and suggested another boutique in the area she was familiar with. The women at Bridal Couture of Plymouth kindly let us drop in without an appointment, and we found the consultants to be far more laid-back and friendly. Energized by the warm atmosphere we quickly hit the racks, and the most incredible thing happened: we found one dress that looked spectacular on all three women. Cue the choirs of angels and the flying pigs!
Shopping Tip #1: If at all possible, find an example of your dress in the color and material you want. Because this shop only had the dress-sent-from-above in Violet, we had to rely on a swatch book. We narrowed the selections to “Pink” and “Peach Fizz,” both of which were sweetly pastel. In my head, the swatch translated into dresses of this delicate shade:
Mrs. Trail Mix, New YorkAge and Occupation: 26, PE TeacherFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, MBA StudentEngagement Date: March 2009Wedding Date: June 2010Venue: Tannery Pond at the Darrow SchoolAbout Me: I'm a country girl who somehow found herself living in the Big Apple and loving every minute of it. I'm planning a rustic, country-chic wedding in my hometown in upstate New York and it's going to be a Party with a capital P. White wine, flea markets and running keep me happy and my friends, family and fiance are my world. I'm a little bit crafty, a little bit crazy but mostly just crazy in love.
To truly appreciate the rest of this post, I have to give some back story…
For as long as Mr Trail Mix and I have been talking about weddings (specifically ours), it has always been followed with a conversation where I would give him my most serious, I-am-not-joking-even-one-little-tiny-bit face and tell him that smushing the cake in my face at our wedding would absolutely ruin the day for me and the only thing we were going to do is politely feed each other dainty little bites. It was tacky, I proclaimed. Trashy to the max. ABSOLUTELY NO CAKE SMASHING. ZILCH. NONE. Capisce?
Alright, now on with our story here…
After feasting and dancing for a while, the subject of cutting the cake was brought up and since dessert was being served (strawberry shortcake), it seemed like a good time to do the damn thang. By this point, our photographer had left as had our DOC and everything (and everyone) was kind of a mess. I looked around for a knife to cut it with but alas, in my semi-sober state, could only come up with a soup spoon (we used the handle to cut it. GHET. TO.)
See, here we are, all smiling pretty, prepared to slice into our lovely little cake… All looks well and good, right? Riiiiiiiight… Read more…
Ms. Sloth, PhiladelphiaAge and Occupation: 35, Account Manager and Fashion BloggerFiance's Age and Occupation: 30, Design AdminEngagement Date: December 25, 2009Wedding Date: May 2011Venue: Bartram's GardenAbout Me: I'm an internet junkie and music snob with a good eye for a bargain. I couldn't live without thrift store shopping, cheeseburgers, sushi, Coke Zero, websites devoted to silly photos of baby animals, Photoshop, and Mr. Sloth. Speaking of which, he and I are a pair of goofball homebody nerds who love our beagle (the most ridiculously adorable dog EVER) to an embarrassing degree. We're planning a low-key and intimate yet festive and quirky outdoor wedding with DIY details and deeply personal touches, and it's all taking place in the city where we fell in love and call home: Philadelphia.
Waaaaaaay back in the fall, I wrote about how I wasn’t sure what to do with the old tattoo that I hated. For the last four months, I’ve been heavily weighing my options, and I finally made a decision a few weeks ago:
I was going to get that mother covered up with a much better tattoo!
I came to this conclusion based on several factors:
I’ve tried every tattoo cover-up cosmetic I could get my hands on and none of them were worth a damn.
Laser tattoo removal is crazy expensive, much more painful, and not guaranteed to work 100%.
I love the idea of having a big, beautiful tattoo showing on my upper arm when I’m wearing my wedding dress.
I found an idea for a design that I really, really loved, and I found a tattoo artist who is the best for cover-ups in the city of Philadelphia.
Mrs. Cardigan, AustinAge and Occupation: 21, Student/Soon-to-be Special Education TeacherFiance's Age and Occupation: 20, Student/Soon-to-be Accounting Systems AnalystEngagement Date: August 16, 2009Wedding Date: January 2011Venue: Vintage VillasAbout Me: I'm a native Austinite who was raised as a die-hard Aggie. Luckily, I'm a pretty persuasive girl because I managed to convince my high school boyfriend (now fiance!), Mr. Cardigan, to ditch his hardcore Longhorn ways and join me up at A&M, where we currently reside with our adorable dogs, Cullen & Ranger. We're currently planning a bright, cheery wedding with a ridiculous amount of DIY projects that I can't wait to tackle! I love crafting in any form, reading, and margaritas (I think I love them the most!). Organization is what keeps me sane and I love helping others, which is probably why I ended up as an education major. It gets a little chaotic sometimes when you're planning a wedding among all of the papers, projects, finals, and certification exams, but we're having the time of our lives and we can't wait to get started on our journey as husband and wife - and we're so excited to share our wedding with the hive!
