Weddingbee Blog

I first discovered Felix Doolittle’s charming stationery line years ago, and finally got around to ordering some of my very own.  My new address labels arrived in this adorable packaging…

There are tons of motifs to choose from, all equally adorable.
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“I would love a link that would take you back post by post for a certain bee. Maybe next to the “older” “newer” links there could be “older by this bee” links?” - Mrs. Tiramisu

Last week, Mrs. Tiramisu suggested we add an “older by this bee” link. We’ve always wanted to do this… but never knew where to put those links.

Then last week when we were coding the new Weddingbee photo gallery, we added navigation links on top of each photo. You can check ‘em out on top of Mrs. Toucan’s awesome groom’s cake of Nintendo’s Super Mario!

That gave us the idea to try something similar out on the blog. It would let you go to the first/oldest post by a particular Bee… and then click “next” until you’ve read every post by that particular Bee!  

This has been a long time feature request, and we’re so excited to have found a home for the feature at the top of each page.

You can check it out in action in these awesome posts by older I mean, more mature Bees:

• Mrs. Eggplant’s epic slideshow
• Mrs. Pomegranate’s awesome DIY CD favors

Just click “oldest”, and you can read all of their posts from the beginning.

I hope you guys enjoy this feature as much as we do. Let us know what you think!

Some of the Bees mentioned that it’d be nice to have Weddingbee business cards, so we had a bunch printed up through Overnight Prints!  Many a Bee has used Overnight Prints including Miss Stiletto and Miss Blush for their save the date postcards, Mrs. Emerald for her invitations and thank you postcards, and I’m sure there are many more.  

They were super affordable — $178 for 5000 business cards and 100 magnets with one of their frequent coupons — and they turned out great.  Big props to Mrs. Cupcake for designing these cards!  

Overnight Prints is offering a 10% discount on greeting cards for Weddingbee readers if you go here and use discount code 104WED through April 30th.

Let us know if you spot a Weddingbee business card floating around somewhere!

Please click on over to Weddingbee PRO and help us give a warm hive welcome to the wonderfully talented letterpress designer Kimberly of Blue Ribbon Design!  

I wanted to give you guys a little update on Weddingbee PRO.  We’re going to be adding more PROS in the coming weeks, but we’re also going to be moving towards adding a guest post component. That way we can showcase a wider variety of work and voices from PROS who may not be able to make the commitment to blog regularly.

I have to admit that PRO has been a much bigger challenge than I anticipated, and it’s experienced its share of growing pains.  Vendors are completely different from brides, and we’re still trying to figure the formula out.  But as with every blog, including Weddingbee, it’ll take a little time to find its voice.  I’ve been blogging over there if you want to check it out!  I promise we have some cool things in store, so please stay tuned.

If you’re a vendor and would like to submit a guest blog to Weddingbee PRO — whether it’s tips/how-to’s, behind the scenes glimpses into the wedding industry, gorgeous pictures, or more, please go here! Have a wonderful night everyone!

I’m a guest judge for the big DIY contest over on our sister site Project Wedding!  The entries were divided between the 5 judges (me, Design Sponge, Kenzie Kate, Once Wed and Hostess with the Mostess), and each of us selected our favorite project.

There were so many amazing entries, but this Panel Pocketfold Invitation was my number one choice amongst the projects I evaluated.  I was really impressed by how professional the invites looked, and the detailed instructions make it easy for brides to replicate.

Click on over to Project Wedding to check out all the finalists, and to vote for your favorite!

We’ve featured so many beautiful and inspirational wedding pictures over the years, and we’ve always wanted to create a way to highlight even more.  Then we had a bit of an epiphany last week and realized that we could adapt our message board software to power a picture gallery!

• http://gallery.weddingbee.com

You can upload each photo into categories, like Pengy and a bunch of the Bees did for their wedding dresses, bouquets and rings:

• http://gallery.weddingbee.com/gallery/wedding-dress
• http://gallery.weddingbee.com/gallery/bouquets
• http://gallery.weddingbee.com/gallery/rings

The feature is still in beta, so we would love your feedback!  Please give it a whirl, and upload some photos?  Thanks!

• http://gallery.weddingbee.com

Let us know what you think!

I know you guys are really sick of my mug, but I recently had my makeup done for a press video (that I’ll blog about later) by Sachiko Yanase (who did Mrs. Orange’s wedding day hair and makeup).  Sachiko was an absolute doll to work with.  I learned some great tips from her, so I had to share!

I asked her for a very natural look, and these are the products she used:
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Hello Hive!

We’re very excited to welcome Maine photographer Emilie Sommer to the hive!  Emilie is not only a photojournalistic photographer that has worked at USA Today and the Washington Post, but she’s also a bride to bee!  I had the pleasure of meeting Emilie at Engage08 – she is so sweet and I can’t wait to follow along on her photography and wedding planning adventures!  Please click on over to Weddingbee PRO and help me give her a warm hive welcome! :)

We’re excited to welcome the latest PROS to join the hive, Bella Figura!  Bella Figura is known not only for their beautiful letterpress stationery, but also for their big commitment to being green.  Please click on over to Weddingbee PRO and help us give them a warm hive welcome!

I just got back from a Modern Bride charity event called Project Bridesmaids — a collaboration between Modern Bride Magazine and Planet Hope to collect gently worn dresses for underprivileged girls to wear to prom across the US.  They’re going to be collecting dresses from noon to 5pm tomorrow at the Hammerstein Ballroom in Manhattan (311 W. 34th Street & 8th Avenue).  Anyone who donates a dress gets free admission into the event featuring makeovers, a runway show, food and drink, deluxe gift bags and much more.  I’m going to drop off a bunch of dresses that I no longer wear, so I hope to see you there!

I thought it would be a low key event — I think I make that assumption about every event for some reason.   When I arrived, there was a red carpet and a bunch of photographers taking pictures of everyone who walked in. (Ok I admit I took this picture as I left.)

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I posted Part 6 of The Story of Mr. and Mrs. Bee over on PRO last night.

According to the American Kennel Club, these are the top 13 most popular dog breeds in America.  I’ve listed 13 since we’ll only select either the lab or the golden, and shih tzus and miniature schnauzers didn’t really come up as suggestions from you guys.

1. labrador retriever
2. yorkie
3. german sheperd
4. golden retriever
5. beagle
6. boxer
7. dachshund
8. bulldog (or french bulldog)
9. poodle
10. shih tzu
11. miniature schnauzer
12. chihuahua
13. pomeranian

In addition to the breeds listed above, here are some more popular suggestions you made:
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We often get questions about how we decide on new Weddingbee generations, so I thought I’d go into how it all started.

We first started with the insect generation since I’m a bee.  When we started to think about future generations, we tried to keep these general rules in mind:

• variety of color/design so the characters are easy to differentiate (herbs and leaves for example would be confusing)
• categories where we could have at least 10 characters
• characters that we think users would want to be
• characters that are somewhat wedding related (we finally broke this rule with the most recent generation of baby animals)

With that in mind, generations following the bugs included: flowers, fruits, gemstones, vegetables, candy, birds, desserts, tropical/exotic fruits, beverages, hors d’oeuvres, shoes, makeup, and baby animals.

In the past, we thought Bees selected specific characters because they were cute.  Based on the feedback we received on the shoe and makeup characters, we thought they would be wildly popular.  But Bees that weren’t super into shoes or makeup opted to choose characters from the previous beverage and hors d’oeuvres generations instead.  I absolutely loved the stiletto character and was surprised that it took so long to be snatched up.  But when I thought about it, I’m definitely not fierce enough to be a Miss Stiletto, so I realized that Bees were selecting characters based on how they could identify with them personally.   
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I’ve been a fan of Weddingbee PROS Still Motion since Mrs. Emerald first posted about them 2 years ago. And after I saw the stunning trash the dress session they did with Mrs. Milkshake, I was convinced that I absolutely needed to do a TTD session with them. 

Guess what?!  We just set a tentative date in mid May! Woohoo!

There is so much I need to plan, and I need your help hive!

1) What should I wear?  I’d love to wear a short, vintage style dress, but I definitely don’t want to spend a lot of money on it.  I’ll probably give my dress away to a Weddingbee reader after the session!

2) What kind of shoes should I wear?

3) Should I wear a traditional veil?  A birdcage veil?  A hair accessory from Oh My Deer?  

4) Should I have a bouquet?

5) Where in Manhattan should we shoot?

Mr. Bee and I have virtually no pictures together other than our wedding pictures, so we’re going to take “married pictures” and do this TTD before I get old and decrepit.  Ack I’m so excited and nervous at the same time because I hate taking pictures, and I hate being on video even more.

Please feel free to give me any suggestions you have, no matter how wacky they may be.  I want this to be super fun and creative!

I promised my classmates that I’d write a post about the flower arranging class we took last night, but I just got back from a bridal shower and am too pooped to edit the pictures. I already uploaded the pics for the following post though, so here goes!

Mrs. Caramel used to do freelance hair and makeup in LA with her cousin, so her cousin did my makeup for a wedding I attended last summer.  I’m sorry I don’t have a better picture — my pc with all my pictures died!

Mrs. Caramel has since moved to New York, and is starting up her freelance business here with a lovely makeup artist named Jina. So Mrs. Caramel and Jina came over early and did my and Mrs. Penguin’s hair and makeup for the recent Bee Party!
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On one particular day this past week, I received two emails from readers asking why we don’t have any African American Bees.  That same day, I received another email asking why there were so many Asian and Caucasian bloggers on Weddingbee.  We get a lot of emails from readers requesting that we feature bloggers of a certain ethnicity, geographic region, budget, religion or gender.  We haven’t blogged about diversity and the hive since May 2007, so I thought it was about time to revisit the topic.

While we’d love to have the most diverse hive possible, we can really only select bloggers from our pool of applicants, so our Bees are indicative of the type of applications we receive. In the past, we’ve encouraged bloggers of all different backgrounds to apply, but other than that, we don’t have too much control over the types of brides (and grooms) that apply.

So how do we decide who becomes a Bee?  Well the Bees help us decide — they know what it’s like to be a Weddingbee blogger better than anyone.

While we do look at many different factors when evaluating applications, ultimately it comes down to the quality of the blog.  We’re not going to turn a blogger away because their demographic is already represented on Weddingbee.  And we’re also not going to accept a blogger who has a weak blog for the sake of diversity.  Do you think this is a good policy?

We’ve had Caucasian, Asian, Southeast Asian, African American, Hispanic, groom, lesbian, bisexual, plus-size, Jewish, Christian, Catholic, Mormon, British, Canadian, encore brides, brides with children, big budget and small budget bloggers on Weddingbee.  I hope that we’ve made it clear that potential Bees of any and every background always have been and always will be welcome!

Is the diversity of the Weddingbee bloggers something you think about?  Do you think we need to be taking specific steps to make the hive more diverse?  If so, what?  We’d love to hear your thoughts!