Weddingbee

As I said in my last post, I was definitely on the fence about whether or not to stay as a blogger on Weddingbee after its sale to eHarmony. That post was actually written quite awhile ago, and I’ve had a lot of time to reflect—as you’ve noticed, I posted one of my wedding recap posts, and then kinda disappeared off the face of the Earth.

I’ve decided not to blog on Weddingbee any longer. I cannot begin to express how thankful I am for the support shown to me and the other bees who have spoken out about this today, and the respect given by those who disagree. I would love to share the rest of my wedding with you (the posts have been ready to go for days!), in addition to my non-wedding-related craftiness.
Read more…

This post was originally published here, along with posts by Mrs. Bee, Mrs. Gingerbread, and Miss Sweet Tea.  The comments on all those posts can be found at the link above.

When Bee first shared with me that she had sold Weddingbee, I was thrilled for her.  She has worked long nights for years, making this site into what it is today, and I totally support her decision to sell.  After all, more resources mean more cool features for you guys and more personal time for Bee and Mr. Bee, which I think we can all agree is a good thing!  When I heard that Weddingbee had been sold to eHarmony, though, I was very concerned.

I don’t remember when I first heard about eHarmony’s Christian roots; it was many years ago, I know that.  Although I knew that the website matched non-Christian couples (heck, one of my bridesmaids met her husband through eHarmony!), I’ll admit that I figured they were still contributing financially to Focus on the Family.  Why did I think that?  After all these years, eHarmony still excludes gay people from their matching, and show no sign of supporting them in the future (see the last paragraph on the last page of this article, which gives a quote from eHarmony’s CEO: “…We have a lot of things to go after and the gay community is not a market we’re going to pursue and that’s it.”).  Although it seems clear that eHarmony is trying to move away from the Christian sector and appeal to heterosexual people of all religious backgrounds, their lack of support for the LGBTQ community is a deal-breaker for me.  No matter what their reasoning, excluding a group of people from their website is discrimination.  Until eHarmony provides equal matching for the LGBTQ community, I will feel that the company as a whole is discriminatory. Read more…

Guess what?! We finally got our professional pictures back!! I love them soooo much. I love our photographer soooo much. So, people, let’s get started!

The first part of our day was the Chinese tea ceremony, and the only person who knew what was going on was my MIL, who was late (ha ha). For awhile we just chatted with Mr. Cream Puff’s family, who were beginning to trickle in. I will say, it was very surreal to realize that the tea ceremony was about to begin. I had to remind myself, “hey, this is it. This is the tea ceremony!”

Read more…

On my last post, a reader named Kelly made a comment that got me thinking: she said we’d chosen a less-than-ideal spot for our wedding, because it was a public park and strangers were talking. It’s true–it wasn’t ideal in a few ways. The park service was really difficult to coordinate with, and there weren’t any good bathrooms. However, Mr. Cream Puff and I haven’t regretted getting married at Crissy Field at all, not even for a moment. Yes, there were strangers talking, but quite frankly, we couldn’t care less. For those of you getting married at a public park (or those of you who are interested), here’s a list of the pros and cons of getting married at a public park. Some of the reasons are specific to our location and to us, so they might not apply to you.

The Cons:

- The logistics of it were a pain in the neck: we had a horrible time trying to get the permit for the spot because the park service is really slow. They also charge a premium for the permit, just because it’s a wedding (I believe they are now charging $600, vs. $59 for a picnic in the same place).
- We couldn’t have amplified sound because birds nest close to the amphitheater. This, combined with a few strangers talking around the ceremony site, made it kind of difficult for a few guests to hear. Oops.
- There will be strangers around, and they might not do what you want (this really wasn’t too much of an issue for us).
Read more…

It would be foolish to expect your wedding to be 100% perfect, and I’m no fool. I expected that a few things would go wrong. Little things. You know, the groomsmen are a little bit late, the frosting on the cake is off-white instead of white, things like that. I truly didn’t think anything big would go wrong. In a way, I think we expected that things would go a lot more smoothly, just because I was so organized. In some ways, that was totally true. But in other ways… well, not so much.

Although I would love to tell you that everything about our day was all sparkles and rainbows, I can’t. And you know what? I don’t want to. When I started blogging on Weddingbee, I didn’t want to pretend like wedding planning was 100% fun, 100% of the time. It can be stressful! I had weird dreams. I made a mistake booking a vendor. I had a meltdown in a shoe shop (ha ha). They’re all memories, and they’re actually pretty funny now. But to me, blogging about these issues is what makes it real. It’s what makes blogging worthwhile. And you know what? Our wedding wasn’t 100% perfect, either, so I’m not going to pretend like it was. I’m going to share the nitty-gritty, in addition to the wonderful, sparkly, rainbow-y stuff. I’ll share with you the good things, and the bad things. Because that’s life, and your wedding may be no different.

So as I was saying, we expected little things to go wrong, and had already decided not to pay any attention to the things that no one else would notice. Unfortunately for us, we had some really big things go wrong:
Read more…

As you may recall, I was about a quarter of the way through our programs when I accidentally jammed my sewing machine and production STOPPED. You may also recall that our solution to this problem was to have a cobbler sew the rest of them, but that they were sewn with the wrong color of thread, prompting my major wedding meltdown (even though it really wasn’t that big of a deal).

Well, my friends, I realized this morning that I never showed you the final product! So here they are! This is a programs as they were supposed to be: zig-zag stitch with black thread:

Read more…

A couple of days ago, we FINALLY received the CD of our photobooth pictures from the wedding. This means two things: First, I can share them with you, and second, I can make our guestbook! We had 105 different photobooth pictures, and they were all pretty great, for various reasons. We seemed to have three main themes: boob grabbing, strangling and kissing. I’d really like to post the photos here, but I don’t want to offend any of our guests who might not be wild about having their faces on the internets. Instead, here’s one of me and Mr. Cream Puff:

Read more…

Part 1, Part 2

I have officially been MIA for over a week, and here is why: I didn’t feel good. I think I’m doing better now though, so I have no excuse not to get off my lazy bum and write our last honeymoon post! This one’s about our excursions. We went on two.

Excursion #1 was to Tulum, where we swam in a cenote, experienced a Mayan ritual, explored Tulum, went zip-lining and swam in the Caribbean.

Here’s us inside the cenote. Basically, we descended into an underground cave filled with stagnant water and swam in it. It was a little icky, but mostly kinda cool. There were stalagmites and stalactites, which was exciting.

Read more…

Just a reminder! There’s going to be a BEE MEETUP in the bay area tonight! Here’s the deal: a bunch of local gals thought it would be fun to meet and hang out, so they decided to plan a get-together (thanks, guys!). They’ve planned the meetup for:

Thanks for your support regarding my sickness, guys! I went to the doctor yesterday and was given Cipro (an antibiotic). They seem to think that I have E. Coli. YAY. Such a joy. I am pretty much living off of Gatorade and saltine crackers. This is an annoying diet when regular food actually looks kinda tasty (kinda). Usually I eat this stuff when I’m nauseous and can’t stand the idea of a regular meal.

But alas, we are done talking about The Sick. Today, we are going to talk about the good stuff.

Our honeymoon was at the Royal Resort in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. We got a really good deal on an all-inclusive package, so we had some money left over in our honeymoon budget for some extra activities. Mostly, however, we just laid around. After all, I am convinced that the point of the honeymoon is to relax. And relax we did, especially with such great scenery. Here’s the view from our room:

Read more…