Weddingbee Blog

Our friend Margaret from the new travel site Enrout is back this week to share with us her ideas for Miss Honey’s dream honeymoon! Revisit Margaret’s great honeymoon series on Weddingbee here. Also, check out Enrout’s $500 Home for the Holidays Giveaway! It’s free to enter!

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Greetings, everyone! We’re back with another great honeymoon, this time for Mr. and Miss Honey. The Honeys requested a trip to a beach in Florida with a budget of $2,000. I guess they want to head somewhere warm after their winter wedding! South Beach in Miami sounds like the perfect destination. There’s no shortage of awesome stuff to do in Miami, so I hope this trip satisfies their thirst for adventure.

Where To Go

Since Mr. Honey likes to ride motorcycles, I think a fantastic way to get to know the city would be to take a motorcycle tour. The tours come with one Harley motorcycle and two helmets and take place around the city at day or night, or you can even zoom along the beach.

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Our friend Margaret from the new travel site Enrout is back this week to share with us her ideas for Miss Doily’s dream honeymoon! Revisit Margaret’s great honeymoon series on Weddingbee here.

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Gumbo. Crawfish. Jazz. New Orleans is a city bursting with culture and will make a fantastic honeymoon destination for Mr. D and Miss Doily. The weather will be perfect in March after her wedding, with temperatures in the 70s. I’m really excited to share a $2000, five day tour of New Orleans with you all!

Where to Go

New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz so one must sample the jazz scene. Preservation Hall is a venue where you can experience jazz in its original form. There are also two festivals happening around Miss Doily’s honeymoon timeframe: the French Quarter Festival (April 7 - 10) featuring local musicians and the New Orleans Jazz Festival (April 27 - May 6) featuring the best of New Orleans jazz.

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Margaret from the new travel site Enrout is back this week to share with us her ideas for Miss Seal’s upcoming mini-moon in LA! Revisit Margaret’s great honeymoon series on Weddingbee here.

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Let me tell you about the spectacular Miss Seal. She has a lots of heart, is incredibly wise, and I personally find her to be inspiring. The Seals are planning a four-night mini-moon to Disneyland with a $1,000 budget. Here’s my take on a honeymoon that will match their sparkling style and personalities!

Photo by Root Photography

Los Angeles - What To Do

Miss Seal couldn’t have picked a better spot than Disneyland for some giddy newlywed fun! As with any trip, one should definitely take advantage of the fast pass so that you can spend less time in line and more time holding hands during the fireworks. I think it would be lovely to purchase one special item on their trip, like a beautiful ornament to remind them of their engagement and honeymoon every Christmas, or a delicate hand-cut paper silhouette on Main Street…
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Today Margaret from the revolutionary new travel site Enrout shares Part II of Miss Snapdragon’s and Bossyboots’ potential Hawaiian honeymoon, including a budget breakdown! Check out Part I here! Margaret will continue to bring us great honeymoon suggestions in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

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Kauai - What to Do

After five days of Maui bliss, the Snapdragons will take a short flight over to the island of Kauai. The couple can head over to Ha’ena State Park to Ke’e beach, a crystal blue cove filled with tropical fish and sea turtles, and tons of caves to explore…

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Hi hive! We’re kicking off a guest series this week with an extra special guest blogger, Margaret Wong from Enrout! You may know Margaret as the co-founder of Project Wedding. Since then, she and her husband Joe have gone off to launch their new site Enrout, a revolutionary website where you can discover charming lodging selections and fabulous new places off the beaten path. Enrout covers everything from charming Parisian apartments with huge windows overlooking the Eiffel Tower, to San Francisco Victorian homes complete with hardwood floors, fresh produce, and a cozy armchair for reading Hemingway at night. You can read more about Margaret at the bottom of this post!

Margaret has reached out to our unmarried blogging bees that haven’t quite decided on their honeymoon yet. They’ve set a budget and a few destination parameters, and have set her off to plan their dream honeymoon based on their personalities (Margaret’s an avid Weddingbee reader!) and budget.

We present to you, the Snapdragon honeymoon in Hawaii!

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The honeymoon takes place during the first days of marriage, days that are going to be remembered forever as some of the happiest days of your life. So when I was asked to design a honeymoon to Maui and Kauai for our beloved Snapdragons, I knew it had to be special.

Miss Snapdragon is a professional and a city gal, and loves a mixture of relaxation and adventure. Since their wedding venue theme is “Food and Booze,” there has to be some amazing food planned for this unforgettable trip. She also blogged about having a mix of guided tours and exploring on your own so you have a balance between relaxing during activities and doing exactly what you want.. With a ten-day honeymoon in Hawaii (5 days in Maui and 5 days in Kauai) and a $6,000 budget, the Snapdragons are in for a special treat.  Here we go!

Maui - What To Do

The first five days of the honeymoon will be in the drop-dead-gorgeous island of Maui. When Miss Snapdragon went on her Sistamoon, one of her tips was to wake up early to watch the sunrise over the coastline, so this bike tour to watch the sun rise over at the summit of Mount Haleakala seems absolutely perfect…

Since the Snapdragons are adventurous, a zipline tour of Maui or a hike through the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park would be a red-hot way to spend the day…
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The Atlanta bees got together for a big day out, and hivemember ktisthatbees is sharing their day with us! Take it away, ktisthatbees!

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Last Thursday, we had an Atlanta Weddingbee meet up at All Fired Up! paint your own pottery studio in the Virginia Highlands! We had a fantastic turnout of Georgia bees from near and far—even the recently married Mrs. Lioness was there to chat and get creative!

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Miss Lioness here! I really wanted to write a post about planning my shower, but I’m not the one planning it! I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for a guest post. Allow me to introduce you to someone much more qualified to talk about the Lioness shower: Sister Lioness!

Why hello there, Hive! I’m a long-time lurker, and I’m beyond happy to be here!

I’ve always loved event planning (I’ve been throwing themed birthday parties since middle school), so you would think planning this shower would be a snap. But when Miss Lioness got engaged and I actually had to think about this kind of stuff, I realized I had nothing up my sleeve. I sort of panicked. All of the fun, modern, themed showers sounded really fun to plan, but they were NOT Miss Lioness. She is traditional and classic, but she has her quirks. She needed something that suited her personality.

The Lioness Shower will be an Alice in Wonderland-themed tea party, but it will be nothing like either of the movies (for once we are shunning our Disney roots). It will be literary, whimsical, and vintage…but most of all, it will be fun.

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Yesterday, Hey Mister DJ Lee Dyson shared tips with Weddingbee on fostering an environment at your wedding that makes your guests want to dance all night long!  Read the first post here, and check out DJ Lee’s additional tips below!

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Additional tips for a successful dance floor

If the cocktail hour is located in a separate area from the reception/dinner area and is accessible for the entire night, make sure to have the venue move a 2^nd satellite bar into the actual reception area so you don’t keep losing guests out of the dinner area. Even the best DJ can’t compete with open bar in a different room!

If this isn’t possible, then spend the money to have the DJ run an extra speaker to the separate cocktail area so people are still musically connected to the environment and can hear announcements when it’s time to pull them all back in for toasts, the first dance, etc.

The bride and groom can really set the tone for the evening!
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Hi hive! Mrs. Penguin here! I’ve heard from many brides how delighted they’ve been to have a roomful of dancing guests, and how sad others have been that no one took the dance floor. I’ve heard many DJs say that a lot goes into fostering a comfortable environment for guests to dance—it doesn’t always just depend on the crowd itself. So, we’ve asked Hey Mister DJ Lee Dyson out of LA to give us some tips on how he makes sure dance floors are always packed at events he spins!

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One of the most overlooked areas in the floor plan of an event is how to setup the dance floor so it is an inviting and comfortable place to be. Size, location in relation to the room, and proper lighting all can dramatically affect how busy the dance floor becomes after dinner. Every event has some (if not many) guests that are uncomfortable being watched or dancing in public, so it’s important to create an environment that helps ease this anxiety and loosen people up.

The aesthetics of the room can have a large impact on the DJ’s ability to do their job.

If a room isn’t comfortable, then sometimes it doesn’t matter how perfect the DJ is at selecting songs. People can be far less likely to dance, as room layout, room temperature, and lighting levels can all affect the emotional and physical comfort level of your guests.
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Miss Lobster here!

A couple weekends ago my bridesmaids threw me a bridal shower. It was on the exact anniversary of Mr. Lobster’s and my engagement. So while I was being showered with gifts and treats, Mr. Lobster was living it up Austin for his bachelor party shenanigans. Hm, it was quite different than the day he proposed. There were so many lovely details, I’ll let the party planners (my sisters / Maids of Honor) do the talking:

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My sister and I planned Lobster’s bridal shower on the anniversary of their engagement. While it just happened that way, I took it as a sign from the bridal shower fairies.

We wanted the bridal shower to be P-E-R-F-E-C-T, but with a bit of a late start, we needed to catch up fast. Lobster had sent us a link from Amy Adams for inspiration for a shower theme - love birds peppered with red and pink polka dots. It was lovely.
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Hello! Miss Sewing here. Mr. Sew’s been bugging me about posting his project for a while, and I, being lazy, told him the only way it was going on a blog was if he wrote it. And well, he did. His first-ever-wedding post is below.**

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Hello, this is Mr. Sew. Since the table numbers are making Miss Sewing run about without her head attached, I have decided to write about our cake topper.

As we have mentioned earlier, our cake will have power poles going up the side with a street lamp lighting up the happy couple…. and what could go better with the model train power poles, then some model train streetlights? All I need to do is switch out the wall plug with some batteries and we’re good to go, right?

This is easier said than done, apparently. While they look nice, they were notoriously inefficient… and needed a whole 8-pack of AAs to light up, which looked kind of silly. So I had to do a few things to salvage improve the design.

First I swapped out the old bulb with three LED bulbs which were brighter and took less power.

Everyone loves LEDs.

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Today’s guest post comes to us from Lien Sanchez, the Owner and principal Cake Artist at the Crazy Cake Company, a specialty cake boutique in Davis, California. She creates custom wedding cakes and sculpted celebration cakes, including Mrs. Penguin’s and Mrs. Cherry Blossom’s wedding and groom’s cakes for their weddings.

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Why, where, how, when, and who came up with the idea to save a perishable product, namely the top tier of your wedding cake, to eat on a couple’s one-year anniversary? Was it custom, a secret initiation, or perhaps a practical joke?  More importantly, since cakes are best enjoyed fresh, how can you partake in this tradition without putting your stomach at risk? Read on…

This tradition, like most others, is an evolution of a practice that was actually quite simple and practical.  In earlier times when it was expected that a baby would soon follow a couple’s wedding, the wedding celebration and a christening were often less than a year apart.  Cakes were originally made to celebrate both occasions; however these cakes were usually simple single-tiered creations.

When more elaborate three-tiered wedding cakes became popular in the late 19^th century, the bottom tier was served during the reception, the middle tier was sent home with guests to place under their pillows (to promote fertility), and the top tier was often left over. This gave rise to the idea of saving the top tier to be served at the inevitable christening.  Over time however, the association between weddings and babies waned and the tradition evolved to what we know today, a sweet remembrance to be enjoyed on a couple’s one-year anniversary.

If you’re like me, you may be wondering how folks were able to keep their cakes from spoiling when refrigeration units weren’t even available for the masses ‘til the 20^th century.
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Miss Pug here!

As I mentioned, my sister developed an immutable ambition to create the following for our wedding as favors:

Source

We’re not sure yet whether the wedding cake cookie towers (WCCTs) will work out, but even if they don’t, she is trying a bunch of cookie recipes along the way, as well as testing their freezing power. If the WCCTs don’t work out, at least we will still have a cookie recipe to use for plain ol’, non WCCT favors.

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Hi, y’all! I am 3pugmama, the magnificent, the marvelous, the sister of the mostest Miss Pug! She asked me to write a ‘guest post’ re: the Making Of The Favor Bag Cookies. Since I am, well, DOING ALL OF THE WORK.

To begin.
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Our guest blogger today is Cyd. Cyd’s Matron of Honor/FSIL had entered her into our Bella Figura Letterpress STD/Invitation contest about a year ago, and won! Cyd not only got letterpress invites, but had the opportunity to tour Bella Figura. Today she’s sharing an inside look at the letterpress shop with us!

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One of my favorite 2009 Bella Figura designs, Lexington.

Photo from Bella Figura’s Flickr Photostream

A little over six months or so ago now, I was home one night in the middle of the week carrying on with life as usual. My then roommate and I had a thing for watching Antiques Roadshow and taking long walks with our adopted dogs, a rescued greyhound and a frisky black lab, so I imagine our evening likely involved some of both. At some point in the evening my phone rang. It was my best friend/Matron of Honor/future sister in-law calling, presumably to talk about our upcoming plans for that weekend. However, instead of rambling on about dinner that Saturday night, she promptly asked me if I was sitting down.

Why, no. No, I was not. Should I have been?

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Today’s behind the scenes at Bridal Guide Magazine post comes to us from Associate Home Design Editor, Aimée Morgan.

Good day Weddingbee’ers! Has it really been 4 months since we last caught up??? Well, I’m guessing your wedding plans are rockin’, your mom (or m-in-law) is potentially driving you crazy and you would love to indulge in some bridal R&R… aka… my life! Last time, I gave you a sneak peek into my ridiculously-small-but-typically-norm NYC apartment and my chaotically organized office space (yes, there is such a thing!). Now, before I got my foot in the door, I always wondered, “What do they actually do?” Of course, I had visions of chic women… sort of a mix between Kate Hudson in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada… that magically produced drool-worthy spreads while hardly breaking a sweat; power lunches, easy deadlines and fetching assistants. HA! I definitely watch too much TV. Take a tour with me and I’ll show you the real deal.
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