Weddingbee

I am very thankful to have been blessed with fairly good skin. Aside from the year or so at the start of puberty when my forehead didn’t know how to deal with the influx of hormones and newfound oil glands, I rarely have break-outs.

However, with the big day approaching and my stress level rising inversely in proportion to the number of days left as a single woman, my skin started to revert back to its puberty days.

And it wasn’t pretty.

In my desperate hour, I stumbled into Saks and made a beeline for the myriad of cosmetics counters. I needed coverage, and I needed it fast.

My furiously wandering gaze stopped when I saw a display for La Mer Skincolor. Color? I thought La Mer was a skincare company, whose Crème de la Mer supposedly works miracles and has a fanbase that consists of Hollywood’s elite as well as middle-class housewives who idolize the stuff and use it only for the rarest, most special occasions.
Read more…

Once again, I must apologize for my absence. Last-minute repairs for our condo has been keeping us very busy, and with only three weeks left until the wedding, both Mr. Peony and I have been on full overload. When we’re not at work, we’re at pre-marital counseling, dance lessons, vendor appointments, or working on our new home so whenever we do get a bit of free time we just want to do anything NOT wedding or home related.

We finally had our last meeting with Christine Viola (my day-of-coordinator) yesterday and I handed over all the paperwork…I feel like a giant weight has been lifted from my shoulders!

However, posting will continue to be light since I seriously need to start packing for the big move-in. I promise I’ll write about all the details when the madness dies down and I don’t start cringing at the mention of anything wedding-related.

As promised, here are pictures of my tri-lingual invitations. They are far from perfect, but they represent the merging of two families and three cultures… and I hope that our non-English speaking guests will feel extra welcome to receive the invitations in their native language.

The outer envelope. The labels were created on QuarkXpress, then printed on 8.5″x11″ full label paper from Staples, then cut.

Read more…

I think…

I may…

I’m not sure about this but…

I hate my invitations!

There. I’ve said it.

When I first got engaged the invitations were the part of the wedding planning process that excited me the most. Not my dress, not my venue, not my flowers. THE INVITATIONS.

To me, a well-made invitation sets the mood of the event, as well as giving the guests a taste of what to expect… get them salivating and keep them wanting more. So as a paper-lover and a designer, the invitations meant the world to me… and I so looked forward to designing and making them myself.

Read more…

When I first got engaged, I couldn’t help but be like many other girls (including Mrs. Snow Pea ) and stare at my ring for hours. I have never been a jewelry lover… heck I don’t even have my ears pierced! But something about the little shiny piece of rock on my finger made me love my ring.

I especially love my center stone, which is an oval. I love how well-cut ovals are difficult to find but that my stone sparkles like crazy with no discernible bowtie. I have also never met anyone else in real life who has an oval diamond ring and I love how it’s classic yet unique.

I knew that I could never upgrade my diamond because I’m a very sentimental person and I already love it so much! However, I knew that I would probably change my setting later down the road from 18k white gold to platinum for the durability. But when it came time to purchase our wedding rings, I realized that “later down the road” may come sooner than I thought…

This is the ring Mr Peony proposed with - an oval with pear sidestones:

Read more…

As promised, here is second half of my DIY Illustrator Map Tutorial. You can view the original here, where we left off with this image:

Read more…

Hello Weddingbee readers! I know it’s been a while and I admit that I’ve been a very bad blogger.  I know, please feel free to chastise me. The truth of the matter is, I needed a break from all things wedding-related. Actually, scratch that. I needed a break from my life.

During the past month or so, I haven’t been too well, both mentally and physically. I started to have mini panic attacks spurred by cold feet (I’m so young! Am I ready to settle down? Is Mr Peony THE ONE? A marriage is FOREVER)…and for some reason I felt like the only bride ever who has had these feelings. Both Mr Peony and I were going bananas trying to close on our condo because our bank was being very flaky and uncooperative (luckily that worked out and we’re now homeowners!). Add to that a bunch of other personal matters and….well, you get the idea.

My life was going through some major changes and I was plain scared and freaking out about it. I constantly had migraine headaches, which I’ve never had before. Insomnia would plague me through the night and I would walk around like a zombie during the day. I would avoid the half-finished wedding invitations that vomited all over the basement of my parents’ house because I just didn’t want to deal with it.

Read more…

Mrs Hibiscus had written a wonderful DIY map tutorial using Powerpoint. Her beautiful map gave me tons of ideas, but I ended up using Adobe Illustrator to draw my own map. Illustrator is a very powerful tool with loads of features, some of which are downright difficult to master, but a basic map can be pretty simple. So I’ve decided to write a step-by-step tutorial for the Weddingbee community.

Before I start, I want to let you know that I am creating this tutorial on Illustrator CS2 on Mac OS X. Therefore there may be small discrepancies if you’re following along on a different version of Illustrator or using Windows, but the basic idea should be the same.

Here is the map image that is included in our invitations:

Read more…

I’ve been MIA for a good reason - working on my massive, tri-lingual invites! I promise I’ll write about them after they have been mailed. In the meantime, I wanted to share information on the component of the invite that required the most research: accommodations.

With the average rate of hotels at about $300/night, finding affordable accommodations for our guests in Manhattan is no easy task. Although our wedding and reception will be held in Westchester County (which is 20 minutes northwest of Manhattan), the majority of our out-of-town guests will be visiting for the duration of the weekend and so prefer to stay in Manhattan for all its attractions.

Of course, there are inexpensive options for your stay in Manhattan, such as the New York Youth Hostel located in the upper west side. At about $30 a night this is probably the most economical way to go, aside from crashing at a friend’s or relative’s. You do not have to be a youth to use it, but you do have to be a member of Hostelling International or the American Youth Hostel Association.

Read more…

Ever since my parents graciously offered to help pay for our honeymoon, I had been talking with various travel agencies. In addition, I exchanged several emails with Weddingbee reader Alys who gave us so much great information and recommendations (thank you!).

Because I had been dreaming of this vacation for so long, I really wanted to visit at least three islands, which meant at least a week-long trip. With the weak dollar and rising fuel costs, it was a bit tough. A couple of travel agencies flat out told me that they couldn’t work with our budget and suggested other places. There were some that completely ignored the budget and presented us with itineraries that were $2,000 more . To be honest, I was really surprised that so many agencies would ignore our parameters regarding the budget, length of stay, hotels, etc….. how do they stay in business?

In the end, we decided to go with Homeric Tours who not only created a custom itinerary for just slightly under our budget, but also met each and every one of our requests.

Here’s my dream honeymoon!!!

Read more…