Weddingbee Blog

After spending our flight back to SFO making pro and con lists for each venue and talking about the possibility of going with the first caterer we met with, we had some decisions…

Our reception would include good beer and a great view of Kansas City! Check out these pictures:

Image via Erica May / Photo by Erica May / Event: Kate & Justin’s Wedding

Read more…

…sisters, that is! (Forewarning: this post is pic heavy.)

Sweetie Scone’s family goes on a canoe trip just about every July in the Ozarks, and in 2010 we were able to head east to join in on the fun. The whole family was going to be there, including my FSIL. She was still head over heals in love—she and her boyfriend were starting to plan for their Kansas City wedding (pre-engagement) while they were in town, so we decided to do a little multitasking and we checked out venues together with my FFIL.

Now to get the proper idea of what the weekend entailed, there was some drinking on the river, some playing on the river, some more drinking on the river, a quick trip to a beautiful national park, and did I say drinking on the river? Oh yeah, floating in inner tubes and playing in canoes…we also had a couple hours driving down and back. Wanna see?

Read more…

When we got unengaged it was a couple of weeks before I started a masters program, and we had a long list of things we wanted to accomplish prior to making it official.

Here are the big-ticket items:

• Both of us had to pay all of our credit cards off.
• I needed to sell my condo in Portland.
• We needed to get blessings for our union from the parents.

We both had racked up some stiff credit card bills, and neither of us wanted to carry those into our engagement, let alone our marriage. We created a repayment plan to have them paid off in about one year. One of the ways we did that was to live in a little cracker-box-sized apartment that was super affordable and REALLY pushed us to communicate and live together well. (Seriously, the first time my mom saw our bathroom all we could hear was laughter because “it feels like I am on an airplane.”)

When I was pretty young I had purchased a two-bedroom condo in Portland, and my tenants had just moved out. After a huge fiasco with tenants, which included them changing my contact information with the HOA (so not an OK thing), mass destruction of the condo, and a serious flea infestation, we were rehabbing the property to get it on the market.

Read more…

You know that question…so how did they ask you? Tell me how it happened…

That question is kind of complicated for me because, while she officially asked me way back in August of 2009, we both agreed we had goals we wanted to achieve before making it official. After spilling the beans a bit in my last post, I will break it down a smidge more…

On a lovely hike in Yosemite, Sweetie Scone pulled me to the side of the path overlooking Vernal Falls and gave me a beautiful box (that our wedding bands will reside in until our wedding). We had already been talking about our pre-reqs and our plans to get married and build a life together, but that day really set things in motion and we firmly created the pre-reqs.

Pre-reqs were done, we moved out of the cracker box into a cute standalone cottage, and after waiting for more than a month the rings were ready. We headed to Walnut Creek to pick those babies up on our way to SFO.

Personal picture / In the lobby of the jewelry store a split second after picking up the rings

Read more…

As we dove head first into wedding planning, we started looking for inspiration and we got caught up. We couldn’t really pin down a theme or a color scheme. (It’s rhyme time.) Instead of getting bogged down in the ideas that we were “supposed” to do, we decided to talk about the feeling we wanted our wedding to have.

It had to be fun, full of warmth and joy. It needed to be about our family. We both come from tight-knit families, and we really want people to feel like they were being cared for. We want our wedding to feel like one big family is joining together because, well, it is. It absopositively had to be kid friendly (they make up at least 25% of the guest list, and at the rate of reproduction among our family and friends that percentage could climb before the wedding), and really it should reflect our love. Oooh, and we want color!

Sounds like a jumbled up mess when I write it out.

Image via Dina Wakely Ponderings / by Dina Wakely

But when we boiled all of that down we ended up with ideas like “young at heart” and “forever young.” That seemed much more theme-like to us but was really based off of feelings.

Read more…

Jumping head first into planning, we actually had some basic requirements to even reach out to vendors, let alone sign contracts with them. The requirements morphed as time progressed, but let’s talk a bit about our requirements…

A little background in case you haven’t picked up on it—we are a lesbian couple from California getting married in Kansas City, Missouri, which is definitely a more conservative/family-values kind of place. Some of these vendors may not be too excited about a same-sex wedding. We 100% feel that our vendors need to support marriage equality and they need to be interested in working with us as a couple and with any other vendors we hire. So we created rules that automatically eliminated vendors:

1. We had to like their work.
2. Their reviews on WeddingWire and Yelp (if appropriate) had to be in the 4/5 range or higher.
3. They could not mention G-d on their website.
4. When they met with us they had to look us in the eyes.
5. They had to be genuinely interested in us, our wedding, and our guests.
6. They needed to put forth a little effort in preparing for our first meeting.
7. If they had questions about us we wanted them to ask us directly—no beating around the bush here.
8. After meeting with them we had to want to have a drink/hang out with them (the coolness factor).
9. They must play well with others (team work what???).
10. They needed to be OK with kids running around.

Why #3, right?
Read more…

Did I mention we met in February 2009, got unengaged in August 2009, got officially engaged in April 2010, and chose to wait until July 2012 to get hitched? Unengagement to wedding = 35 months. Official engagement to wedding = 27 months…

Just a bit of a heads up—we willingly made that decision. I started a full-time grad program in September 2009 while working full time, and we had no desire to make life hard and plan the whole shindig while I was getting edumacated.

There was the heart-wrenching Prop 8 passage that happened months before we met, but there is still hope. Prop 8 has been in legal limbo and is moving (albeit at a snail’s pace) toward the US Supreme Court, where it might be repealed and set precedence to change marriage laws nationwide. We were hopeful that this case would be decided on before July 2012. We are getting a skosh less hopeful that things will change before we get hitched…but we have some backup plans that I will talk about later.

Read more…

Our friends invited us along for a last-minute trip to Yosemite. I had never been even though I grew up in northern California. It was sacrilegious that I had never been, and a low-cost getaway with friends sounded like music to our ears. We loaded up the car and bolted on a Friday after work. Hiking was on the agenda for Saturday. Six of us got up and ready to roll in the morning. We decided Vernal Falls was the best route to take. Now I don’t know about you, but when I imagine hiking I envision being one with nature, not feeling like I am at an amusement park. The drive into Yosemite took my breath away; the first part of the hike was a refreshing way to stretch our legs. As we got closer to Vernal Falls and approached the stairs, it felt like we were at Disneyland.

Image via Bill Edwards Photography / Photo by Bill Edwards

Doesn’t that look peaceful and beautiful? Well, word to the wise, on a Saturday in August it is a bit more like this:

Read more…

So I told you a smidge about our first date, and that I was never really into dating, but I didn’t tell you about knowing she was the one. We fit together instantly like puzzle pieces, which was incredibly scary and exhilarating at the same time. After two months of dating we bought plane tickets five months out to visit Sweetie Scone’s family. After knowing her for two months, I committed to a relationship of seven months, good, bad, or indifferent. SEVEN MONTHS! That was huge—just putting it out there.

This act alone was absolutely out of character for me. I am the girl who hadn’t held a relationship past four months. I actively pushed people away when things started getting too real. In buying those plane tickets, I knew that she had made it into my heart; she had a grasp on me that I couldn’t shake.

After that moment I let her in more and more. Shortly after that we started talking about marriage unofficially…

Read more…

Once we had decided on our intentions (marriage, even if it’s not yet legal), we started hunting around to find rings we liked. At first we were looking for different rings; Sweetie Scone isn’t so much a girly girl, and I like a little sparkle on my hand. I have always loved that my parents have matching unique bands. After some discussion we decided to try and find a happy medium…

I really liked these from Etsy. I loved that you could wear them in different ways.

First interest / Image via Etsy / By Kate Szabone

We both really liked these bands from Etsy. If we can figure out a way to have that done on our rings we would be enamored with the jeweler!

Read more…

I would like to preface this with a little background about me. I have never been one to date regularly or become overly attached to my romantic relationships. After ending the most serious relationship I had been, in I took 1.5 years off from dating and relationships altogether; I needed to get my head back on and evaluate my goals. I was also traveling regularly for work so I was never in one place for very long. After determining that dating could be fun again, I started trying to connect with people. My friends are scattered all over and all seemed to be enjoying coupledom, so I turned to the web for the first time in my life to meet new people.

After about a week or two of looking I ran across a posting where the person definitely did not seem like they were looking for a hookup or a booty call and seemed pretty real but not overly focused on getting into a long-term relationship. Sounded pretty good to me, so I emailed her. For just over a week we emailed back and forth. It seemed like things were going pretty well, so we scheduled a lunch date on Super Bowl Sunday 2009…
Read more…

Howdy!!! I am so very excited to meet you! Forgive my gratuitous puns, but seriously it is scooooone nice to meet you! After obsessively checking my email and trying my hardest to be patient, one morning I received an email from Pengy and I thought I read the email wrong. I had to re-read it a few times in disbelief because it was way too exciting. Then I had to announce it in my office and call my better half…ahhh!!!

I am sooo very excited to be baking up some fun in the hive as Miss Scone! Why Miss Scone? Scones are one of my favorite breakfast treats, they are also one of my favorite things to bake (favorite recipe is below just in case you are tempted!). While I am not baking anything for the wedding, it is one of my favorite things to do…

Here’s a bit about us:

I grew up between Oregon and Northern California (think five hours north of San Francisco—what up Eureka and hey Eugene!), fled the West Coast for college (howdy Mount Holyoke!), decided snow wasn’t for me so I bounced between Oregon, Washington, and California until I finally settled in Napa. I am someone who must have projects on my plate (not one, sometimes two, usually three or more…), I love baking from scratch (bread, cake, SCONES, cookies, pies, etc.). Family is super important to both of us, and we know how to have a good time. Whenever I have the chance, I try to head outside to enjoy the beautiful area I live in, and I am actively trying to re-learn to like running…

(Personal photo)

Read more…

Kristy Cummings Photography–F.

I got married nearly four months ago, and I admittedly haven’t put up many vendor reviews yet.

That’s because all my wedding and vendor-related energy has been dedicated toward a problem of massive proportions: my wedding photographer.

Here’s a super-condensed version of what has transpired:

In August 2006 we hired Kristy Cummings to shoot our wedding. Leading up to the wedding, I had no problems communicating with her via either email or phone. She also showed up at the wedding, stayed for the allotted time, etc. No problems there. However, immediately after the wedding I had great difficulty contacting her. She’d told us that our photos would be ready ‘two or three weeks’ after the wedding and that deadline came and went–no photos.

Read more…

All photos by Kristy Cummings.

Read more…

My new in-laws!

Read more…