Weddingbee Blog

I’ve waited 2 1/2 years to write this post.  I’m officially 19 weeks pregnant with a baby boy!

This entire pregnancy has been fraught with worry, and I prepared myself for the possibility that I could miscarry at any time. I haven’t dared plan a single thing lest I jinx the pregnancy. But we’ve miraculously made it to 19 weeks. We had an incredible full anatomy scan today, and everything is 100% healthy!

(It’s not my SS# above. )

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve thought about what I’d say in this post many, many times, but I didn’t allow myself to type out any actual words until after my doctor’s appointment today.

Some of you know that it has been a long journey for me getting here. I miscarried at 6 weeks with my first pregnancy. After several rounds of clomid and IUI’s, I got pregnant a second time, but miscarried again at 9 weeks — even after we’d heard the heartbeat during three different ultrasounds. We saw a reproductive endocrinologist, we had genetic testing done, we had an autopsy done to try to find out what could possibly be wrong with us (although I always believed that the problem was me).

In the end, we got pregnant after a bottle (or two) of wine when we weren’t trying. It always seems to happen that way doesn’t it?

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I’ve been looking for the perfect initial necklace forever because my first name is, well, an initial.  While catching up on my blogs recently, I saw it on Oh Joy! and instantly knew that I had found the one.

(J&B are Mr. Bee and my initials.)

Each of these delicate initial, number, symbol and chains from Albeit are made of 14k gold.  It’s amazing how the unique positioning of the pendant gives such a different feel to the piece.  It’s definitely the most I’ve ever paid for a piece of jewelry, but I know that it will get tons of daily wear, and they’re offering 20% off through the end of July.

Perhaps a gift for your stylish maid of honor?  Or a gift to yourself with your new last name initial?

UPDATE #2: Someone submitted this post to The Consumerist!

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UPDATE: The owner of Urban Expressions responded to my email shortly after this post went up earlier today. This is what he or she said:

if the customer responds to me with several foul mouthed emails, they get foul mouthed replys right back. i figured if “fucks” and “shits” and “bitches” was her preferred tongue, I’d speak her language.

by the way i sold this company and all rights to its 1.7 million in inventory as of last week. it now operates under a new name, and at a new address as soon as they are done moving..
so you are wasting your time bashing it, but feel free. I have my money in my hand now.. so bash away ok..

have a nice day, and have fun being an E-warrior hiding in the depths of the anonymus internet blogs that no one reads..

But Mrs. Martini’s friend only wrote that one email below. Her fiance did write an angry email to Urban Expressions without her knowledge, but that was only in response to the owner’s comments below. I believe that it was not a customer service agent that left those comments, as it appears to be a very small company, but the owner him/herself?!

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Mrs. Martini was supposed to help a friend create her escort cards over a recent weekend, and they had been waiting on a craft punch to arrive in the mail. When the website where the punch was purchased showed that it hadn’t been shipped some time after the order had been placed, Mrs. Martini’s friend wrote them the following email:

I ordered this over a week ago and it still has not been shipped!! Your shipping policy states that most items will be shipped within 48 hours unless otherwise specified - you guys did not specify otherwise! When will this item be shipped out?? I would like some kind of compensation for the delay. Sincerely, *****

Since I answer most of the customer service emails at Weddingbee and get all kinds of emails from users, I can understand that the tone of the email might have irked the person who responded. However, this was the response she received:

All I have to say is WOW.

I don’t know whether the person who sent this email intended for those comments to be included, but I contacted the company to see if they wanted to make a statement, and never heard back.

If this happened to you, would you take any type of action?

Please note that comments are hosted here.  This post is in reference to Urban Expressions the craft supply store hosted at eCrater, and not Urban Expressions the handbag store.
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I’d always been enamored with the Daily Candy illustrations because they were so iconic — as soon as you saw them, you instantly thought Daily Candy.  I wanted similarly iconic graphics for Weddingbee, so I scoured the net for a graphic designer until I came across the work of Paige Pooler, whose cheery, girly work instantly resonated with me. We worked together on the bride illustration until it had that perfect fun, friendly vibe that I envisioned for Weddingbee.

With the bride ready to go, I came up with an idea that I think has largely shaped Weddingbee’s brand to date. Instead of using our bloggers’ actual names, I decided that each author would blog under a character handle. Since my name is Bee, I would be Mrs. Bee, and our initial authors would select another character within the bug generation.

Working with a very limited budget at the time, I purchased the following illustrations off istockphoto for about $2 each.

Using characters like Miss Ladybug and Miss Caterpillar has served many purposes: 1) it allows bloggers to maintain some anonymity because they don’t use their real names, 2) it’s much easier for our readers to remember Miss Ant rather than Jane, especially when you have 25+ bloggers at any given time, 3) our bloggers really identify with the character they select, and 4) it adds to the fun Weddingbee brand.
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I shared some of my favorite makeup products in a post last year, and since so many brides are diy-ing their makeup nowadays, I thought I’d share a couple of my recent favorite finds!

For someone who probably wears makeup around three times a month, I sure have a lot of it.  I’m so lazy about putting it on, but I do love makeup!

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I’ve mentioned Rebecca Grinnals several times in past posts on Weddingbee, but she really has been like my wedding fairy godmother. I met a very enthusiastic Rebecca very shortly after we launched — she just “got” Weddingbee right away, and has been a champion of the site ever since. I’m extremely introverted and hate networking, so Rebecca introduced me to everyone in the industry when I was just starting out. She also encouraged me to speak at all three of her Engage conferences, and despite being terrified of public speaking, there was no way I could say no! She is warm, genuine, and one of the savviest people in the wedding industry today. You will never meet anyone who has a negative word to say about her — which is how she was able to get such a superstar line-up of speakers at Engage! 09 Something Blue! Thank you Rebecca for everything you’ve done for me and Weddingbee. I’m honored to call you my friend!

So without further ado, here is my monster recap of this legendary event!

The “Something Blue” theme was carried throughout the entire conference. All images are by the talented Stacey Kane unless otherwise noted.

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There has been a lot of discussion about day of coordinators on Weddingbee recently, so I want to differentiate between what I call the true DOC (an emerging trend in recent years) and the DOC+.

When I got married four years ago, I hired a coordinator about 2 months out before my wedding. While the services were called day of coordination, they would probably be more appropriately named month of coordination, or day of coordination plus. Not only did my planners oversee the entire wedding day, they referred several of my last minute vendors, accompanied me to meetings, managed all contracts and vendor communication, and most importantly they were prepared to tackle all the unexpected emergencies that arose that day. Traditionally, these services were within the scope of day of coordination packages.

What we’ve been seeing lately is brides who act as their own planners, researching, diy-ing, designing, and planning every aspect of their weddings. But because they’ll be busy on their wedding day getting married, they want someone there to execute and oversee all their hard work on the day of. Many brides these days are looking for a true day of only coordinator, often on a small budget.

I know this can be a contentious topic amongst professional wedding planners because there is no shortage of newcomers to the industry who charge very little and have commensurate experience.
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One of the most important things we edit in posts and look for in our bloggers, is the Weddingbee tone. Because of my experience with not-so-nice sites when I was planning my own wedding, it has always been my goal to create a friendly, snark-free wedding community. Inflection doesn’t translate over the world wide web like it does in person, so I’m always hyper vigilant when it comes to tone on our sites. Basically whenever a statement is questionable, I ask myself, “Is this annoying in any way?”

With our Bee bloggers, the two biggest areas we try to be careful around are money and weight. For instance, we would never publish the following statements:

• I can barely purchase anything with this $30,000 flower budget!
• A size 2 girl says, “I’ve put on 3 pounds and I’m so fat I’ll never fit in my wedding dress!”

Of course these are exaggerated, but we’re careful about these topics because they often elicit emotional responses from readers.

When it comes to our PRO bloggers, we try to avoid the expert tone that you typically see in magazines. While it tends to work well for magazines, blogs are interactive so I like to relate to our audience on a much more personal level. I don’t like talking down to our super savvy readers in any way.

The point of this post is that running Weddingbee has permanently altered the way I perceive tone in everything. For instance…
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My friends Sophia and Mike are an artistic couple, so I’ve been trying to think of things that I can send them that reflect their fun, laid back style.  Then I remembered these super fun mustaches on a stick photographed recently by Carl Zoch – how fun would these be for a photobooth?!

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I love hanging dress shots, but I don’t love gorgeous dresses hanging on ugly plastic or wire hangers. So in addition to the emergency kit and bathroom basket I made for my friend Sophia, I also purchased this nice padded hanger from the Container Store for her to hang her wedding dress in style.

I also snagged this Foot Petals Bridal Stiletto Style Kit in a gift bag from a recent bridal event that I included in my care package to her.  It has 6 different types of foot petals, so Sophia can dance the night away in comfort!

I’ve learned so much about weddings through Weddingbee, it’s fun planning a wedding again!

My very dear friend Sophia is planning her entire Los Angeles wedding in only 3 months.  I’m devastated I won’t be able to attend, so I’m trying to help her plan as much as I can from afar by sending her inspiration pictures and vendor referrals, calling in favors from peeps I know in the industry, and taking care of the little details so she won’t have to worry about them at all.

This past weekend I created a care package for her that included an emergency kit and bathroom basket.  Though there is a lot of product overlap, the bathroom basket may be at the venue ahead of time while Sophia is getting ready at a hotel room, so I thought I’d cover my bases and get doubles of most things.  I’ve only included pricing once when I divided products up, and items without prices are things I had around our apartment.  Here’s a breakdown of exactly what I included and what everything cost!

Emergency Kit

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Engage 09 in the Cayman Islands was, in one word, LEGENDARY. You can catch up on all the tweets about it here – most of us came back on Wednesday, but there are some party peeps still on the island! While I gather pictures from some of the many fabulous photographers that were there, I thought I’d share a video clip from a party on the last night of the conference.

Two of my favorite people in the wedding industry - 79 years young Sylvia Weinstock and Kleinfeld/Say Yes to the Dress’ Randy Fenoli — showed us all how to bust a move!

Engage 09 Party Time! from Weddingbee on Vimeo.
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I arrived at the Ritz Carlton Cayman Islands around noon yesterday, worked by the pool until I got too hot (but I don’t miss that rainy NY weather), and enjoyed a fantastic welcome party on the beach designed by Michelle Rago, complete with fireworks!

Engage09 officially begun 30 minutes ago, and I’ll be live blogging throughout the day.

Cayman Islands time (1 hour ahead of EST)

8:45am - Rebecca Grinnals, the mastermind behind Engaging Concepts and the Engage conferences, gave her intro.

9:05am - Carley Roney of theknot is doing a presentation on wedding statistics based on a study they conducted in 2008. Some interesting facts: the younger the bride the bigger the wedding. 2/3 of couples have at least one signature element. Biggest area brides are cutting back in this economy: videographers and wedding planners in this economy. 15% use a wedding planner - almost half used “day of” only. 20% of couples have destination weddings (200 miles or more away).
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I was watching Neil Patrick Harris on Conan O’Brien recently, and he mentioned a scavenger hunt/mystery tour that he did called Accomplice New York.  He loved it so much that he helped the founders open a Los Angeles chapter called Accomplice Hollywood.  If Barney thought this tour was legendary enough to invest in it himself, I knew it would be awesome and I had to check it out.

This past Sunday, my friends and I took Mrs. Butterfly on the downtown tour (there is also one in the Village) for her 30th birthday.  The day before the tour, you get a cryptic call telling you a place to meet.  Twists and unexpected turns ensue over the next three hours.  The New York Times says that Accomplice New York is like being in the movie ‘The Game’” — I couldn’t have said it better myself!  I wish I could share pictures and tell you more about it, but trust me — the less you know the better.

All of us had the most amazing time, and I can’t recommend Accomplice highly enough as an alternative to the traditional bridal shower or bachelorette party, because it’s being in a group that makes this so much more fun.  I hear that they’re opening a chapter in San Francisco on August 1st, and perhaps one in Austin as well!  Whenever I discover something I love, I try to spread the word as far and wide as I can, and this is something that I know you will love.

Wear comfortable shoes, be prepared to walk a lot, and get ready for the time of your life.

Since brides are always looking for cute stamps for their invitations and save the dates, I thought I’d share an invitation I received the other day that had these adorable King and Queen of Hearts stamps on it.

I’ve been using these fun Simpsons stamps on all my correspondence lately, but I love these King and Queen of Heart stamps best for wedding themed correspondence.

Are you putting a ridiculous amount of thought into the little details like stamps?  Don’t worry — we’ve all been there!