Beehive and Boards
July 11th, 2007 @ 5:45 pm by Mrs. Bee
Hi everyone!
As you can see below, our beehives have been getting out of control lately. It’s a lot of work for Miss Lovebug and I, and we also get a ton of emails from users. So we’re considering launching a board as an experiment - kind of like a larger beehive. We’ve talked about boards before and got feedback from readers worrying that they’d devolve into unmoderated attack boards. But we’d work with the community to create and enforce a boards policy, similar to how we’ve been doing it for weddingbee.
Do you think boards are inherently abusive? Or do you think we can make boards work, if we work together?
Update: Real Reader Budgets - Show Me The Money!
July 10th, 2007 @ 12:15 pm by Mrs. Lovebug
Greetings, hive!
Just wanted to let you know that we’re going through the budgets that everyone has so generously submitted, and setting up posts to include some pictures of actual weddings like this one. As one brilliant reader pointed out, it’s great way to show how different brides got the most bang for their bucks. (We’ll still be posting budgets, without pics, as well.)
If you’d like to contribute your budget (photo-illustrated or not), see here.
So stay tuned, and we’ll show you the money!
Reader Budgets On the Way!
July 2nd, 2007 @ 5:10 pm by Mrs. Lovebug
Hey everyone! Miss Lovebug here, popping in to let you know that we’ve got a nice fat folder of reader budgets that we’re busily getting organized. So stay tuned; we’ll be ready to post them starting tomorrow!
And thanks to everyone who shared their info with us. 
Read More Right Here Update
July 2nd, 2007 @ 3:30 pm by Mrs. Bee
We tried an experiment this past weekend where we temporarily removed the “read more right here” option. That option forces our frontpage to have a lot more HTML than it needs to have. As a result, the frontpage takes a lot longer to load - it’s not only loading the HTML you can see, it’s also loading the HTML you can’t see behind the “read more right here” links.
Removing the “read more right here” option resulted in a big increase in first time visitors to the frontpage! We saw 20% more unique visitors overall, which reflected the fact that the frontpage loaded faster and so more people were able to view it before hitting backspace. That was pretty amazing.
At the same time, we saw a 100% increase in pageviews. This was partially due to the extra pageviews from readers clicking “read more” instead of “read more right here”. From a business perspective, this is great for Weddingbee, after all, we’re probably the only large blog that offers the “read more right here option”. But from a reader perspective, it’s definitely more convenient to click “read more right here”. So after all your feedback, we changed it back at midnight last night.
Please Help Us Decide!
July 1st, 2007 @ 12:58 am by Mrs. Bee
You guys had so many great suggestions for our next batch of flower characters, it was too difficult for us to narrow them down! We’re definitely gonna have a peony (there’ll be an all out war for that one), but we need to choose nine more. So please tell us which 9 out of the 17 flowers below we should choose.
Please keep in mind that we’re looking for the following variables: 1) a variety of color, 2) flowers that don’t look similar to one another, and 3) flowers that you think will be popular as characters.
Here are the choices:
Peony & Cherry Blossom
(via greenhem & artcatcher)
Help Us “Pick” Our Flowers!
June 20th, 2007 @ 4:51 pm by Mrs. Lovebug
We’re super excited about our latest and “sweetest” additions to the hive. But we have so many brides leaving us this summer that we already need to be thinking about our next batch of characters! We’ve decided to do another round of flowers (bees + flowers = a match made in hive-n, right?), and we’d like you to help us choose them!
So far, we’ve had:
Bird of Paradise
Bluebell
Daisy
Hibiscus
Lily
Orchid
Plumeria
Poppy
Rose
Sunflower
Violet Read more…
New Bees! New Characters!
June 15th, 2007 @ 4:20 pm by Mrs. Lovebug
Big news in Weddingbeeville: as I mentioned earlier today, we’ve just crowned not one, not two, not three, but FOUR new bees! With summer robbing us of a full TEN bees, we have no choice but to bring on a whole new swarm!
On Monday, we’ll start introducing our latest bloggers (along with their shiny new icons), but in the meantime, here’s a sneak peek at the brand new candy lineup:
Rejection Letter Blues
June 15th, 2007 @ 12:25 pm by Mrs. Lovebug
Dear Blogary,
Boy, are my antennae twisted. Sometimes being Editor Lovebug is the most fantastic thing ever. And sometimes, it sucks hornet stingers. 
Take yesterday for example. I got to write acceptance letters to some new bees! That’s my favorite thing ever! But just last night, I had to write about a dozen rejection letters, too. I HATE having to do that. I feel just awful for the wannabees who we don’t have room for. How can I make them see that even though they can’t all be bees, their blogs are still fantastic? I don’t want *anyone’s* feelers to be hurt–I’m a LOVEbug for cryin’ out loud…but we only have spots for about five percent of our applicants! It’s easier to get on The Price Is Right than it is to blog for Weddingbee!…
In all seriousness, Mrs. Bee and I want everyone to know how much we appreciate all of our applicants. We’re super sorry to have to turn anyone down! You guys are smart, funny, and so creative…we’re honored you’ve shared your ideas with us.
So, thanks to everyone who takes the time and initiative to apply. We think you’re the bees’ knees!
Comment Policy - Vendor Rants
June 8th, 2007 @ 3:25 pm by Mrs. Bee
On Wednesday, I received the following email from a photographer:
I would appreciate if you would remove the negative feedback ASAP about my studio on your blog web site.
It was written by a person who was never a client and this type of negative commentary is VERY damaging to my long standiong reputation.
You should think about taking a more responsible position with your weddingbee web site. The fact that you allow this type of slanderous commentary means that you also support the lies and misrepresentations of anyone who has an agenda.
NOT COOL AT ALL JUST TO PUT A FEW BUCKS IN YOUR POCKET….VERY IRRESPONSIBLE MRS. B!!!!!
Because I was working on our comment policy, I thought it’d be interesting to get reader and vendor feedback on how we should deal with negative vendor reviews/comments by readers.
Weddingbee Diversity
May 31st, 2007 @ 3:13 pm by Mrs. Bee
On yesterday’s candy characters post, reader mee!! left the following comment:
maybe for this new batch of bees you could have certain requirements so that there is more diversity on the site. i.e., a bride incorporating african-american traditions such as jumping the broom, a jewish bride (or a bride having a traditional jewish ceremony), a south asian bride having a traditional hindu ceremony, or even a bride hosting a traditional christian/catholic ceremony. i love weddingbee as a resource for wedding ideas, but i also view it as a place to learn about the wedding traditions of other cultures. it seems all the focus is on chinese/korean/vietnamese/japanese traditions. there are 22 asian bees on the site, and while they are all quality bloggers who have shared a wealth of information and knowledge that could work for any bride, i think this site could serve it readers better if there was a bit more diversity. just something to think about. keep up the good work!!!
This is something we’ve always thought a lot about here at Weddingbee. So I went back and counted: so far, we’ve had 20 Asian brides and 18 non-Asian brides on weddingbee. Based on our recent reader demographic poll, 59% of our readers are Caucasian, 33% are Asian, 3% are Hispanic, 3% are other, and 2% are African American.
If the majority of our readers are not Asian, why are there so many Asian bees?
