Weddingbee Blog

Some of you may know that I’m a Spanish speaker and I’ve never had real English classes. So I’ve learned from music, movies and the internet. Back in 2006, I knew only some words and the basics, like “where’s the bathroom” and “can I have one?” to survive in California.

My goal for getting into the exchange program then was to learn English the tough way; to just go there all by myself and live the experience . I never thought I would find the love of my life there… yay!

I’ve managed to learn enough to understand everything people say to me and start conversations, BUT it was really hard for me to not do the “translate everything in my head” process before speaking or writing.

Because I lack all the English grammar lessons, and because sometimes it’s REALLY different than the way we normally do it in Spanish, I was really scared about actually working in California and communicating ALL DAY in English (I even had nightmares ). Read more…

I’m armed with professional photos and finally ready to share the story of our wedding celebration: the mehndi, the wedding, our minimoon, the valima, and our honeymoon! I’m going to start with the story of our mehndi the night before the wedding. All mehndi photos were taken by family and friends.
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Our wedding celebration was to begin the Friday before the wedding with a mehndi at my parents’ house in Los Angeles. The Thursday before, I met my coordinator Angel for lunch and a pre-nuptial pow-wow. We laughed and chatted, but I barely touched my entree, which I chalked up to jitters. On the drive home, however, I started to feel extremely nauseated and I had to pull over. By the time I reached my parents’ home, I’d developed a high fever and spent the rest of the night alternating between my bed and the bathroom floor.

At this point, my parents were in a full-fledged panic. As they frantically wondered if they should somehow cancel or postpone the wedding events, they heard from my father-in-law, who is a physician. He wrote me a prescription for antibiotics, which quickly brought the fever down and appeased the nausea. I woke up the morning of my mehndi completely exhausted and weak, but at least I was keeping crackers and 7-UP down.

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…