Weddingbee Blog

source

This past weekend, my FILs attended a wedding at a hotel here in Austin. They had a wonderful time, but we were appalled, as were they, when they proceeded to retell us the story of the card box.

Apparently the card basket was located outside of the reception area, in the foyer. There was a security guard on duty and the couple had also hired a wedding coordinator. At some point during the reception (they think it was during the cake cutting) the ENTIRE card box and all its contents was stolen.
Read more…

This is one item I thought we didn’t need. That was before wedding planning. After we picked out our cake, the baker offered to rent us a cake stand similar to this:

source

The catch? It was going to cost us $45 (for something I can’t keep?!? uh, no thanks). At first I was going to forgo one all together, but then I kept seeing pictures like this:
Read more…

Our invitations were semi-DIY. I ordered the actual invite and RSVP card from the White Aisle. Rebecca was really sweet and easy to work with—our invitations arrived in perfect order and on time! I decided to DIY the map and assemble them myself to save some money… although looking back I think what I saved in money was eaten up in the time I spent putting them together.

I originally planned on buying scrapbooking paper or wrapping paper to cut into liners, but I was unsuccessful. I finally gave up and decided to make my own. Our invitation envelopes were an odd size (5.5 x 7.5—the liner templates from PaperSource DO NOT include this size ), so I created liners by tracing the envelope and trimming 2cm off all of the edges. I then stamped the design shown below onto each liner using some purplish ink. I bought all the paper products from Hobby Lobby. This is what our guests saw when they opened up their mail:

Read more…

Hi, I’m Miss Beagle. I used to blog here more frequently, but recently I find that I am swamped with starting last minute projects and wrapping up projects that I started a long time ago. All the cute posts full of DIY tutorials and pictures (um, like of our invitations that I’ve been meaning to post for the last two weeks!!!) seem to keep getting pushed back. I will try my hardest to get some of these posts out before our wedding day and am sorry for the delay!

So, now that I’ve got the apology out of the way, I can move on to discuss the topic of this post. This past weekend, I had my final bridal shower. It was a little bittersweet because we had originally rescheduled it to October in hopes that my mom might be able to attend. This weekend also marked another milestone—her birthday. It was a point that was once looming in the future and has suddenly come and past. I now have three weeks ’til the big day and it’s finally starting to feel real. I’m feeling a mixture of emotions: nervous, anxious, excited, sad, and definitely ready to marry Mr. Beagle.

Even though it still feels like I have so much to do in the next three weeks, I know that they are really going to fly by.
Read more…

I think my biggest fear about our wedding is that no one will dance at the reception, and that it will be boring and our guests won’t have fun. I worry that our families and friends won’t mix and mingle. I think it all boils down to our playlist, which we have yet to get started on because, really, we don’t know where to start!

I’ve got the dinner music down and, though I haven’t blogged about it yet, our cocktail hour is covered. The only thing left is the “dance” music. Here’s the problem: My family listens to primarily to country/western. His family listens to Tejano & Oldies. We listen to NPR (and KUT, if you’re in Austin… but for the most part they play mellow music). We don’t go dancing, we’re not taking lessons, and more than likely our first dance (which is still undecided) will consist of the 6th grade sway a la the Candy Corns (although I doubt we will be able to pull off their awesomeness).

So what do we play?
Read more…

In lieu of a unity candle, Mr. Beagle and I have decided to incorporate an aspect of his culture into our ceremony. In Hispanic culture, there are three traditions during the ceremony that represent the couple’s new unity.

The Lasso:

Mr. & Mrs. Hydrangea

It is essentially a large rosary, usually beaded or made of satin, with two loops so that it can be placed around the bride and groom. The lasso forms the shape of a figure eight/infinity, which represents the couple’s unity. It is placed on the bride and groom after they say their vows and is taken off just before the end of the ceremony. A prayer and/or reading usually accompanies the lasso portion of the ceremony.
Read more…

This past weekend, I traveled to Fredericksburg with my father and sister to visit my Opa and Oma (German for grandfather and grandmother). Although the main purpose of the visit was to celebrate Opa’s birthday, I secretly had other intentions.

Before my mom passed away, we had talked about what kind of jewelry I would wear with my dress. We talked about me wearing the same jewelry she wore on her wedding day. One of the items she wore was a bracelet, which she borrowed from her FMIL, the Oma I visited this weekend. So, as we sat outside Sunday afternoon, I asked Oma if she still had the bracelet that my mom wore a little over thirty-two years ago. She did, and she was happy to let me borrow it for the wedding. She told me it was originally her mother’s bracelet, but she wasn’t sure how her mother came into possession of it. She even had the original box it came in. I love the picture that was shown on the inside of the box top:

Read more…

With time flying by, we are rushing to get all the details for our wedding day lined up and in order. At this point, we are still trying to figure out what we want to do after the reception. We will be making our grand exit around 10:30, so it won’t be too late. At this point, we have no set plans for a day-after brunch and we won’t be leaving for our honeymoon until the following week. Taking all this in to consideration, I’m wondering how tired we are going to be, and whether we want to hang out with each other or enjoy the company of our friends and family from out of town. Then, if we do plan a little “after party”, where do we have it?

Mr. Beagle and I are pretty laid back, so I think we can pretty much agree that the downtown scene is out, but I wouldn’t mind have a little gathering at our home or the neighborhood bar. A casual, relaxed atmosphere seems fitting.

Then, today, I read this excerpt from A Practical Wedding, about the pros of having a morning wedding:

Afterwards. The strange thing is that when people voice concern about morning weddings, they normally ask you, “Well, what did you do afterwards?” Here is the scoop. Afterwards is *the best part.* We drove away from our venue, waving like crazy, at 2:45 pm. You know what we did? We went back to the hotel room we’d splurged on. We lounged around. We talked about the wedding. We giggled. We looked at our wedding rings. We blissed out. We went shopping at a used bookstore and bought books for our honeymoon flight. We went out to a really nice dinner, and I wore my wedding hair flower. We drank mojitos. We went to sleep. We woke up not-hung over. The after-the-wedding is the best part of getting married in the morning. Think about it this way: you’re marrying your partner because you like spending time with them. Morning weddings give you lots of time to hang out together, married, on your wedding day. And then you wake up sober and happy. What could feel better than that?

Read more…

Or I guess it would be four, if you count my other ring.

About a month or so ago, Mr. Beagle and I finally completed our shopping for wedding rings. His requests were simple: inexpensive, no diamonds. We browsed through some jewelry stores, but the white gold rings were more than he wanted to spend, and the tungsten/titanium rings seemed overpriced. After I saw Miss Lab’s post on online ring shopping, I decided to peek around on Amazon to see what I could find. Finally, after an hour of searching, I placed an order for a titanium ring. A few days later, Mr. Beagle’s (<$100) wedding ring arrived in the mail.

Unfortunately for Mr. Beagle, shopping for my wedding ring was a little more involved. I wanted a white gold ring to match my engagement ring. I was really unsure about what other requirements I was looking for in a ring. After many trips to jewelry stores, we finally ended up at the same store where we bought my engagement ring. An hour later, we left with my ring, and by the time we got in the car to drive home, I was pleading with Mr. Beagle to let me wear it. Alas, he said no.

And now for some pictures:
Read more…

As I write this post, our invitations are on their merry way to our guests, anxiously waiting to be opened (or maybe that’s just me that is anxious). In the meantime, I thought I would fill you in on our invitation deets:

I ordered the invitations and RSVP cards, and respective envelopes, from the White Aisle. Rebecca was really sweet and was super easy to work with. I’m extremely happy with the way they turned out. To save some $$, I decided to make the remaining enclosures… and this is where my problems began.

Lesson #1:
Originally, I had planned on drawing a cutesy map like one of these:

Laura Hooper

Read more…

Confession: I have a really hard time asking for help. I think I can do everything on my own (and by “everything”, I mean everything) and even when help is offered, I usually (politely) turn it down. I would like to think that this is because I don’t want to burden anyone with mindless wedding tasks that I’m scrambling to get done (thank you, procrastination). However, I think the underlying issue is this: somehow I think that my projects will only get done “right” if I do them myself. All by myself. Alone. (Now that I’ve put that out there, I’ll admit, I feel a tad bit embarrassed.)

Maybe I think they’ll be less DIY if I don’t actually do them alone; maybe it’s genetics (hehe… I’ve noticed Papa Beagle has the same tendencies ), either way, if I don’t learn to “let go” ASAP, I’m going to enjoy many sleepless nights over the next 6 weeks. I’m working to get over the fact that not everything may come out perfectly (or at least, perfectly in my mind) because these people that are offering to help, my friends and my family, actually want to be a part of this big party we’re throwing next month. And when I think about it that way, it kind of softens my heart a little; it makes it just a tiny bit easier to hand over a project to someone else.
Read more…

source

Cabo, here we come (in 8 weeks)!

Mr. Beagle’s parents (my future in-laws!!!) have graciously gifted us use of their timeshare. After the mister and I browsed through a few different locations, we decided on the timeshare in Cabo. Mr. Beagle expressed interest in going somewhere outside the U.S. and somewhere with beaches, so this seemed to fit the bill. Although I have been yearning to visit New England, or somewhere with mountains, or the entire state of Washington, I’m compromising on this one.
Read more…

I went in for a second trial and Jeanie was as lovely as ever. On the actual day of, the curls will be set longer so that everything doesn’t just fall out as soon as I take my hair down (which was kind of the case after the trial, thanks to Texas weather). Please note, it is really hard to take pictures of the back of your own head.

I’m going to play around with it a bit between now and the wedding to figure out if I want it all down or if I want some up/some down. (I figured I could just throw in some curlers and try out a few different styles… it won’t be perfect, but it’s better than paying for a third hair trial). Jeanie also suggested that if I decide to trim my hair between now and then, to also add in more layers because it will accentuate the curls.

Remember that hairpiece I was going to work on? This is what it looks like (hmmm, that pomander looks familiar ):
Read more…

I’ll warn you ahead of time, this post is filled with lots of pictures of moi. Last Friday, I had my hair/makeup trial. Even though I had plenty of time to prep for this, I went in uncertain of exactly what I wanted. I showed Jeanie my inspiration pictures and after a few minutes of deliberating (and taking in to account factors such as the Texas humidity), I decided to go with an up-do.

Obligatory “before” picture sans makeup and hairstyle:

Read more…

My Introduction to the Weblog:
Until 2007, (like many of the bees) the only internet related reading I did was news headlines and stories on the BBC. I had no idea that such an expansive world of internet literature covering anything from cooking to politics existed. Enter Etsy. I believe I was searching the internet realm for information on Lupus when I came across an Etsy seller who was donating proceeds from her shop to the LFA. I was immediately hooked. From that point, I was introduced to the blog. Many of the first blogs I started reading on a regular basis were by Etsy sellers. I loved following other people’s creative ventures, learning tidbits here and there about their lives, and diving further into the realm of the internet world as I was introduced to more and more new blogs to read.

Finding What I Wasn’t Looking For:
In late 2007/early 2008, Mr. Beagle and I began seriously discussing a marriage and a wedding. Even though we didn’t have an official engagement, I started browsing for wedding inspiration online. I came across the Knot, but it just didn’t seem to fit me. One day, while randomly searching for wedding venues in Austin, I came across the Weddingbee site. Much like my experience with Etsy, I was immediately hooked. I secretly followed the blogs of Cupcake, Lovebug, Onion, Tiramisu, Cookie, Jasmine (I could probably go on and on…) and went through the archives with utter amazement at the weddings the bloggers produced. I loved the details, the DIY, and, most of all, the community that was so friendly, welcoming, and supportive.
Read more…