Weddingbee Blog

I’m not really a daddy’s girl. When I need advice about life, I turn to my mother - she has truly been my rock growing up. To be painfully honest, I don’t even really have much of a relationship with my dad. I love him, and he loves me, but we’re two very different people, and we know it. Thankfully, the relationship that we do have is good - we respect each other, and when we do talk, we speak fondly to each other, and try to catch up on the other’s life in any little way we can.

While I’m (sadly) not very close with my dad, I do wish to dance with him at my wedding. I try not to rock the boat too much with him, or be too demanding, so I told him I would dance with him to any song he wants (the proverbial apple has already fallen far enough from the tree).

I would have loved to have a song that was special to my dad and me, like Mr. Bear Cub and his mother. I didn’t really think it would be possible - we’re so different, my dad and I.

Last night, he sent me this song. I nearly cried.
Read more…

Mr. Bear Cub was the easy one to outfit. Typically, when someone’s a groom, I guess what they do is send measurements to Men’s Wearhouse for a tuxedo, and then pick it up a few days before the wedding, right? Well… Mr. BC isn’t going to wear a tux, so having his dudes wear tuxes would be a little odd.

If you recall what Mr. BC is going to wear, I think the groomsdudes would look nice in lighter brown sport coats like this:

Read more…

Over the past few weeks, I’ve gained a new skill. Marketing reps should be quite proud of me; I now have plenty experience with cold calling friends, family, and strangers about our wedding.

source

Our invites were sent out a few weeks ago, and the RSVP date was this past weekend (I promise I’ll share the details on our invites soon!). Out of the 175 people we invited, only 25 have actually RSVPed, be it yes or no. The calling game has begun, and it’s not fun.
Read more…

Mr. Bear Cub isn’t exactly a tuxedo kind of man. And that’s OK - I love him for it! I want him to be comfortable on his wedding day; I want him to take pride in what he wears. You know, just so long as it’s nice. He usually wears whatever he grabs first out of his drawer (of crumpled t-shirts), and usually the clothes that fill the drawer were bought by either his mom (several years ago) or me (now). He just can’t be bothered with shopping for himself, unless it involves Gore-Tex or eVent material, high-performance wool, or anything found for a steal at an REI scratch-and-dent sale. That’s Mr. Bear Cub’s style, and I love him! That makes it a lot easier for me to find his wedding day attire. He’s a practical guy - being able to wear these clothes after the big day is important.

At first I imagined him in a dark brown suit for the wedding, but then I saw this:

Read more…

One of the things Mr. Bear Cub absolutely wanted at our wedding was a live band. Mr. BC plays guitar, has many friends that have been signed to labels, and always loved going to the Northwest Folklife festival while in college at UW. For him, our event wouldn’t be the same without a live band, namely a great folk band.

I really don’t know how you’re “supposed” to find a band for a wedding. The odds of finding the right band, at the right price, in the right place seem ridiculously stacked against you. But somehow we found a band that fit us just right. We started looking several months ago on the MySpace music page for bands that fit into the criteria of “Americana”, “bluegrass”, and “folk”. Hopefully with a bit of an Irish flair, and specifically with a mandolin (we’d love to have Nickel Creek play our wedding, but that’s just not going to happen). After several weeks of listening to bands in the Portland area, we discovered a lot of great new artists to listen to at home - but no band to sign for our wedding. We emailed a handful of bands, but few of them wanted to make the drive to the Oregon coast for a Sunday wedding. Boo. If you’re in the Eugene area, go check out this band - I wish we could have booked them!

We were looking for a band similar to Mrs. Cherry Pie’s and Miss Cowboy Boot’s - folksy, bluegrass, chill, and altogether awesome.

Then I followed Mrs. Joey’s sage advice - I listed an ad on Craigslist for a band.
Read more…

Hi hive!

Remember me? Lil’ Miss Bear Cub? I feel awful for being so MIA recently. It’s amazing how much gets piled on your plate at one and a half months out!

The primary reason I’ve been gone for so long is because this past weekend, I went to my best friend’s wedding. I didn’t date my best friend (à la Julia Roberts), but I did date her husband’s brother for 3.5 years. My best friend - my own MOH “E” - got engaged while I was still dating him! I think they’ve been together for a cumulative of 11 years now. Some of the best things come with time. The bride & groom - E+E - had one of the most amazing weddings I’ve ever seen. I didn’t take any pictures myself, but I didn’t need to. Everyone else in attendance was a photographer there! I plan to post a recap on her wedding when I can get my hands on some pics.

You want to know what it’s like to go to a wedding at your ex-boyfriend’s parents home?

It’s awkward. Very, very awkward.
Read more…

I saw this earlier, and thought, ‘WOW…

source

… BEAUTIFUL!’

Maybe it just looks like a bunch of yarn to you, but to me, that looks like soft, supple, delectably cozy wedding-wear to me! So, I did what any bride drunk off the crazy juice does. I spent time thinking about it.

Bad idea. I like it. It’s pretty. Here, this might help you visualize -
Read more…

What do a baby bear…
… and a cutie-patootie poodle have in common?
Se hablan español, they love weddings, and they want to spend Saturday evening with YOU!
Read more…

Sometimes I think I’m crazy. What was I thinking when I decided it’d be “great” to sign up for a marathon? While planning a wedding??

Oh right. I wanted to look like this.

Kara Goucher: H-O-T

Last weekend our long run was 14 miles. Let me tell you, that’s a lot of running. So. Much. Running. Every day - running. Get home from work - running. Plan some wedding on Saturday? Running. It really feels like I’m planning two marathons. Or running two weddings. I can’t remember.

The good news, though, is that we’re still chugging away!
Read more…

There’s one picture I left out of the virtual venue visit the other day. Although I won’t experience it until the wedding weekend, I’m 100% confident the food at Westwind will be delicious.

source

Mmmmm…. Three types of heirloom tomatoes with fresh (buffalo, I hope?) mozzarella make quite the delectable Caprese Salad!

The best part (which I’ve mentioned before) is that everyone I’ve spoken to says the food is incredibly good!
Read more…

As I touched on the other day, a large majority of our wedding plans feel to be theoretical right now. Ninety percent of our planning gets done via emails, and I won’t see the final product until a week (!!!) before the wedding day.

Immediately after moving to Chile in October 2008, I started to get withdrawal anxiety over our beautiful wedding venue. How would I know if I still loved it just as much a year from booking it? Would I forget what it looked like when I was there?

Like a good little bridal blogger, I set out to find pictures of Westwind. Specifically, I wanted to find pictures of past weddings at Westwind. Technically I’m supposed to do a visit with our venue at about 2 months before the wedding, but that’s not realistic. I’ll do an in-person visit as soon as I get in town - a week before the wedding.

‘Til then, I’ve been lucky to find several different weddings that have taken place at Westwind. Thanks to the power of pictures, I’m just as enamored with our venue as ever. It feels like a little bite of reality to see our  venue all dolled up for weddings.

Would you like the virtual tour of Westwind, on a wedding day?

source

Read more…

This is not the easiest post for me to write. It means I need to be honest with you about myself - honest about my faults.

With less than two months before Mr. Bear Cub and I are back in Portland, I feel like I don’t know what to do. Oh yes, I know there are tasks that need to be taken care of - check up on the finalization of the invites, write our ceremony, learn our dance, pick some more key songs, do something substantial about the tables, pin down the menu… It just doesn’t feel like I’m getting anywhere with anything. As much as I try to fight it, I have one incredibly awful quality to my character. I crumble under stress.

It’s worse when the list of to-dos is longer. I physically can’t function with the thought of an insurmountable task list. And if I don’t know how to do some of the things on the list? (Um, hello, white vs. ivory??) My motor skills begin to shut down. The only way I’ve found to “reboot” from this mess is to take a nap. Everything’s always better when you have a new day to attack things, right? I’m well aware that this is not a productive way to deal with my stress. It’s just a Band-Aid, and it’s not helping me take care of wedding tasks.

The killer in this vicious cycle is I don’t actually know what I can cross off the list at this point.
Read more…

Tomorrow night at 7:30pm EST, I’ll be broadcasting on BeeTV! With a glass of Chilean wine in hand, and maybe an empanada in my belly, I’ll be ready to chat the night away! Mr. Bear Cub will be gone on his adventurous bachelor “party” - keep me company!

Spend your Friday night with me on BeeTV at 7:30pm EST!

Mr. Bear Cub and I have been busying ourselves with quite a lot of wedding tasks recently—one of which is dance lessons! We’re making some headway on our fancy footwork, but I’ll save the details for another post. Right now, our lovely dance instructor is helping us choreograph our first dance. You need a song to be able to choreograph, so we’ve been pondering the “first dance” song pretty heavily!

Last weekend when while Mr. Cubbie and I were on a 10-mile run (marathon training full steam ahead!), one of my favorite songs played in my iPod.

The song, Somebody Loved, is by The Weepies. Even though their name is a bit of a downer, they play some of the happiest, upbeat music ever! It’s great running music! This song is one of their slower ones, but I think it’s so beautiful. If you have a minute, you should read the lyrics along with the song (linked here).

Read more…

While my plans for dressing up the dinner tables are slowly coming together (thanks to you guys! ), I have a solid idea of how I want to decorate the tops of the tables. Like a lot of you, I swoon over aqua-blue mason jars.

source via twobrides

Since our venue doesn’t allow open flames, I plan on filling our mason jars with pretty vegetables and flowers. I’d love to have that glow-y effect of the flickering candlelight behind aqua glass, but it’s just not in the cards. I need the aqua jars, though. Need them.

Seeing as how I’m a whole hemisphere away from my venue (and my family), I can’t exactly troll through antique stores and Goodwill at my leisure.
Read more…