Weddingbee Blog

A couple of weeks ago, while making my long commute to work, I was listening to the news on the radio when they delivered the story that might be one of the worst wedding nightmares for a bride: a local wedding cottage, with dozens of weddings booked for the upcoming year, abruptly shuts down, leaving no trace of the owners and no explanation to the customers.

What was more surprising, for me, was that the Wedding Cottage was located in my hometown, outside of Dallas, and I had even attended a few weddings there while growing up. The Wedding Cottage was one amongst a cute little cluster of yellow cottages that, for years, had art galleries, stores, antiques, etc. I have fond memories of having tea with my mom at the tea room that once existed in the cottages. In the past ten years or so, the growing city, and need to expand the roads, has led half of the cottages to be torn down and the remaining ones not in the best of shape.

(photo from: www.chapels.com)

Read more…

Seeing that every weekend these days is full of things to do, I sometimes forget to check my e-mail. When I opened up my inbox this morning, I received a nice surprise - a wedding gift had been purchased off our registry!

While it’s not our first gift (we received a few gifts at our engagement party back in October), it is the first from a distant relative and completely unexpected at such an early date from the wedding!

As much as I would like to say I am going to wait until the box arrives, I went to check our registry and found out that this is the item that we are receiving:

Read more…

Last night, Mom H met up with her lovely friends to plan a date for my first wedding shower! My mom and her friends, who like to call themselves the Ya-Yas, have traditionally given wedding and baby showers to each of their daughters/daughters-in-law in the past.  So they gathered, wine glasses in hand, to plan the date for sometime in July!

I was going to possibly give the ladies homemade aprons, but have now decided to give each of them one nice item, still undecided, and this:

Read more…

A while back, Miss Canary wrote about what she has faced from both her family and others about dating outside of her race. It’s always interesting for me to learn how others are dealing with stereotypes when you aren’t dating (or are engaged, or married to) someone who has the same skin color as yourself.

Until Mr. Hydrangea, I had always dated white men. There was no major reason for this, it is just what I always gravitated towards. My family and I never discussed anything about me dating outside of my race because it was a non-issue. When Mr. Hydrangea (who is Hispanic) and I started dating, my parents weren’t concerned at all… at first. Boys never tended to stick around long so they didn’t think much of it. Once they knew that we were really getting serious, a few concerns came to fruition. None of these, however, had to do with the color of Mr. Hydrangea’s skin, but more about the differences in both our cultures and our upbringings.

Here are a few that we’ve had to deal with:
Read more…

Due to the oh so awesome post of Miss Shortcake, I’ve really become a little obsessed over birdcage veils. While I won’t be wearing one for my wedding (my veil was purchased long ago), I have been playing around with the idea of a second dress.

I want the second outfit to be white, a little bit funky, and short, since we are most likely going to be going to a little after party shindig and I don’t want to be wearing my actual wedding dress to that. While perusing Castle Bride one day, I came upon this cute little piece (called Samantha) for your hair that I thought would be just awesome for my second outfit:

Read more…

Several weeks ago, after our first bakery trial wasn’t a 100% go in our book, we went to visit another. I decided to stray from the norm and I went to a local bakery that I knew made some really awesome cakes.

We arrived at Lakeview Bakery on a Friday afternoon and were happy to see some amazing samples in the show room and a comfy couch to sit on while we sampled these:

Read more…

I recently went to check out the rooms at The W to get an idea of how big they would be for getting ready. While there, Ann, who is helping us with our wedding, mentioned a bridal event that they would be having soon. I received an invite in the mail, but was unsure if it was open for everyone. Today, when I was checking e-mail, I saw this in my Modern Luxury weekly event newsletter:

Read more…

The date that is! We finally got our Save the Dates out the day before yesterday, hence my lack of posting this week. I went back and forth for weeks over the design, and, finally, settled with a simple monogram and a simple Save the Date. The monogram will be constant throughout the wedding. I decided that less is more and wanted to keep it simple, classic, but still have a personal touch to all of the paper for our wedding.

Read more…

In my previous post, or confession you might say, about my assistance in finding my own engagement ring, I left you hanging with what I ended up with. In the end, Mr. H and I became so frustrated with trying to find the three stone ring that I wanted. It seemed as though the quality and size we wanted just weren’t fitting in our price range. We began to feel like we were dealing with used car salesmen and the whole ring hunt was leaving a sour taste in our mouths.

Mr. H and I decided to hold off for a few weeks and start again, fresh. We walked back into Tiffany and, funny enough, Barry, the same salesman that we had talked to months before, offered to assist us again. This was about the time that the new Tiffany Novo ring came out, so I thought I might want to try that one as well. But I still went back to the very first ring that I had ever placed on my finger when we began to talk about forever.

(image from www.tiffany.com)
Read more…

I realized that I never really talked much about my engagement ring to the Hive, and I feel the need to share because I was not the girl who was completely shocked when I received my ring. In fact, I knew when it was bought, where it was hidden and (this might cause a heart attack for some) I tried it on at home even before Mr. H proposed… with his permission, of course.

Some girls are embarrassed to say that they were very involved with the process of picking out their e-ring, some are completely against being a part of that process, but for myself and Mr. H, it was the most practical thing to do. We already shared finances, so I would have noticed the depletion in our account, and we have very different tastes so Mr. H was nervous to go at it alone.

Since Mr. H and I had been talking marriage for quite a while before he actually got down on one knee (and he did actually bend on one knee), we would occasionally pop into a jewelry store to gaze at the rings for fun. Our first trip, in the very preliminary talks of marriage, was to Tiffany & Co. Mainly for fun, not for serious buying, and because hey, sometimes a girl just has to go into Tiffany to oogle, gawk, stare, and, if we’re lucky, try on a few bobbles. I tried on a few rings while Barry, the salesman at Tiffany’s Northpark store, showed us all that they had to offer. The first ring I fell in love with was this:
Read more…

For a Bible.

As part of the Hispanic traditions that we are incorporating into our wedding ceremony, we will be presented with a Bible and Rosary. The catch is that I don’t want your ordinary, plain leather Bible that you find at your local Christian store. I want something intricate that shouts, “Hey this is our Family Bible!” Something that we will display in our home and, when people ask what it is, we can explain how we received in on our wedding day. Something that our children can always look at and read through, knowing that one day it will be their Bible and their children’s Bible, etc.

Read more…

While I was browsing through the Paper Source website to see if they post the actual RGB or CMYK colors of their envelopes (if anyone knows, I’m searching for the exact color of their Strawberry envelopes), I stumbled upon their employment section and noticed that they are in the works to bring a store to my favorite mall in the whole world, Northpark!

(Image via Paper Source)

All you Dallas brides (and DIY enthusiasts) get ready, because it looks like we are going to be as lucky as some of the other Bees in the very near future! I didn’t see an official date posted, but they are searching for employees for the location already.

About four o’clock this morning, I woke up feeling like someone took a hammer to my face. I have had the mix of allergies and a cold for the past week and a half now, and today I had to take my second day off of work in two weeks. I’m not the type to miss work, I just feel guilty when I do, but it also brought up another issue other then being absent: PTO.

Ever since we got engaged, I’ve been carefully eyeing my paid time off to make sure that I have enough for a few days before the wedding, the honeymoon and one day to recover after we return. The extra days I had would be utilized for wedding meetings, portrait sessions, etc. That was until the past couple of weeks when I had to miss work because the unpredictable and oh so ever-changing Texas weather (snowing one day, 80 degrees the next, no lie) decided to work a number on my sinuses.

I should still be ok in the long run, timewise, but I never realized just how much weddings can impact every aspect of your life!
Read more…

As I previously mentioned, Mr. H and I will be having a Catholic Mass with some of the traditional Hispanic traditions involved. One of these items are the arras, the 13 coins that will be handed to Mr. H and then to me during the ceremony.

Many families have arras that they pass down through generations, but Mr. H’s family does not, so we began to search around for what kind of coins we wanted to use for the wedding. The only thing I was really picky on was that I wanted them to be silver (or at least a silver tone).

My immediate reaction was to start looking on the Internet. After Google searches galore, I realized that there seemed to be one particular vendor that dominated the arras world, J. McKinley. Each and every site that I clicked on seemed to only sell these brands of arras. Most of them were simple and it was hard to find silver ones as well.

We also thought about visiting local Hispanic Bazaars for coins, but after speaking with Mr. H’s mom and some of the Hispanic women at work, they didn’t think that I would find anything similar to what I was searching for (particularly when it came to quality).
Read more…

This weekend marks the one year anniversary of something very special to myself, and to Mr. Hydrangea. A year ago from Saturday I converted to Catholicism.

Changing religions can be a controversial topic, and I’m not here to preach. I just wanted to share my experiences with all of you, as marriage often brings up the issue of religion.

I grew up in a small, southern and religious town, yet I never was a regular church attendee. I was never baptised, never a member of a church, but I was always curious. My parents raised us with morals and values, but we never went to church and we never really spoke of it much throughout my life. I believe my parents had some issues with religion in the past, so they raised us to be open-minded and never really set any guidelines when it came to religion.
Read more…