Weddingbee Blog

I needed a PWC big time. I was one of those girls that diligently grew out her hair for the wedding, so my hair was way too long and was falling out in the shower from being too heavy. I chose to donate to Pantene’s Beautiful Lengths program because their free wigs go to cancer patients.

To donate, I needed to tie my hair back with an elastic band and bring in a Ziploc bag to put the hair in once it was cut. I was really worried about cutting my hair short because I have a lot of thick, frizzy, out of control wavy hair. When I cut my hair short it tends to poof out at the bottom and I turn into a triangle head.

(source)

For Beautiful Lengths, I needed to cut off 8 inches. I made sure my hair was freshly washed, fully dry, and free of product and got the big chop.

Before:

Read more…

We got married eons ago, but look at the gorgeous surprise that arrived at our door this week: our wedding album!

Our wonderful photographer, Leigh Miller, created so many beautiful images of our wedding weekend that it took Mr. ADD and Ms. Procrastinator forever to choose the photos for the album. I must say, though, that it’s actually kind of fun to have the album come so many months after the wedding. Not only were we wedding’d out for a while, we were also so saturated with media from the weekend that I don’t think we would have appreciated the album quite as much. Now that some time has passed, it’s lovely to have a chance to reminisce about the wedding itself (and to curse the pounds we’ve put on since).

Leigh uses Cypress for her albums. The company’s bookbinding and matting work is meticulous, and their album designs are timeless and beautiful.
Read more…

After the backyard was set, it was time to get ready. Right around the time people started coming over, I realized I’d need to stick to my golden rule when I taught toddlers: Have a plan. Be ready to trash the plan. I couldn’t control people, so I just let everyone do their thing. With everyone working on their assigned tasks, I had to hope that everything else would fall into place—and my family and friends came through big time!

A hairstylist and MUA definitely weren’t in the budget so my friends brought all their makeup and curling irons to help me out. (Also: we didn’t have a pro photographer for a lot of the getting ready bit. I think you can tell.) We curled my hair and poured margaritas!

(guest photo)

Read more…

How did I find Weddingbee?

To be honest, I don’t remember. I think I was so confused about this whole wedding thing that I Googled “how to plan a wedding” or “wedding planning” or something along those lines and ran into it that way. I remember the forums being really helpful for figuring out big things (”What’s a save the date?”), while the blog became useful for inspiration and motivation.

My application story

I’ve always loved to write and already had a blog about my ex-pat adventures in Japan to keep my friends and family updated. Writing a wedding planning blog was a whole new ball game! At first it was just a collection of thoughts and random musings, but as plans became solidified I started writing cohesive posts focusing on one aspect at a time—here’s our venue, I’d like these flowers, etc. I tried my hardest to write for an audience and shy away from the diary-like tone I had used for my ex-pat blog. I thought I had a pretty good collection of wedding posts and I had met all the requirements so I applied. After a few weeks of anxiety I got an email from Pengy and held my breath… I was rejected.
Read more…

There’s not much to say about me in high school. I was rather unremarkable. I was in a few clubs but for the most part I blended in to the crowd. I was a little weird and awkward, but not in a I’m-different-and-proud kind of way.

(source)

For the most part, my besties and I kept to ourselves. I was all about my part-time job, shopping, going to the movies and the beach with my girlfriends. I had crushes and a few dates, but nothing ever panned out and I went my whole high school career without a boyfriend. I wasn’t too interested in having a boyfriend; I just wanted to survive school.
Read more…

Allow me to take a brief interlude from recaps to vent some rage. I have been, and always will be, keeping it real with the hive. While our wedding day was fabulous, fun, amazing, etc. there was some truly awful behavior demonstrated by our guests. I want to talk about how to be a good guest in the realest way possible so that (hopefully) future brides will be prepared for what to expect. Now when I say you, you know I don’t mean you, right? I mean the heinous people that might potentially pull these faux pas, and yes, some of our  guests. Not you. You’re lovely.

So you’ve sent in your RSVP (promptly, of course) and now your etiquette duties are over, right? Nope! First of all, don’t bother the bride and groom close to the wedding. I cannot tell you how many needy phone calls I got the days leading up to the wedding.
Read more…

I would like to start this post out by letting it be known that Mr. Moonbeam did enjoy himself, see proof below. He may “hate” dancing, but that smile on his face makes me think otherwise.

Read more…

Early on the Saturday morning of our wedding, my eyes snapped open. As I lay in bed in my parents’ house, I listened closely to the sound of Mr. G snoring quietly next to me, birds chirping, and not much else. I got up and opened the blinds quickly…beautiful blue skies! The storm that had passed over Los Angeles in the night was gone quicker than those silly weather people had predicted. I ran downstairs to the backyard, still in my pajamas, and pulled off all of the garbage bags that had been protecting the rented tables, chairs, and chafing dishes from the rain.

Mr. G joined me in cleaning up the garbage bags eventually. I knew that we had a lot of work to do before the wedding—more than expected because we hadn’t been able to set up a lot the night before due to the storm.

I hit up Target in a last-minute dash for supplies with my girlfriends from England that were staying at the house. While we were doing that, Mr. G and my dad were doing the grunt work—setting up lights and bringing the heavier things from the garage.

Read more…

LA has so much to offer (including the sunny weather!) it would make an amazing honeymoon-or minimoon for those of you within easy driving distance!

Mr. Cheetah and I love to play hosts to guests from near and far, so here’s a sample of some of the things we might take you to do if you came to visit LaLa land for a week.

Hooray for Hollywood!

Day 1: The Entertainment Capital of the World

When in LA you have to see Hollywood and experience some of the entertainment industry.
Read more…

Greetings, Hive! Mrs. Peppermint here. Long time no…type. As some of you may remember I got married in Palm Springs in December 2007, almost three years ago (!). I’m excited to write to you all again as part of the Best of the ’Bee Series, especially because I’ve been meaning to do a final wrap up on all our vendors. I’m eager to get that underway, but until then let me remind you about our wedding…

We were inspired by themes of travel and old Hollywood—after all, Mr. Pepp and I both work in entertainment. Our wedding had a lot of personal details including many Gocco projects for all things paper, tables named after our favorite Hitchcock movies (we met in a college Hitchcock class!), a family wedding photo display and a travel-themed guestbook. I wanted to share the guestbook with you today. Enjoy!!

~~~

First off, hello hive!! I’ve missed you! I know it’s been a long time since I last posted, but I’m back…

I thought I’d kick it off with a post about our guest book. To remind you, we got married in Palm Springs last December. While neither Mr. Peppermint nor I are from there, it had long been a special getaway for us. We had family coming from all parts of California as well as Virginia, Minnesota, Wisconsin and New York. We wanted our guest book to reflect this travel theme, so we settled on postcards! Basically, the week before the wedding when we were out in Palm Springs getting ready, we went to tourist gift shops, antique stores and anywhere we could find postcards (new and vintage) of Palm Springs and the outlying areas. During the reception, we had guests fill them out and drop them off in a caddy that also doubled as a pen holder. Originally, I was going to find a mailbox, but couldn’t find one that was just the right size.

Here is how it was set up at the reception:
Read more…

Well, this post is my favorite because it was the most honest thing I could have written, and I hope it helped a lot of brides get over their fears of their size and keep searching for that dress—THE dress. I had hoped my misery would help others. Of course, now that it’s been three years, I do love it, but it’s still just a dress. It’s not something I wish I could wear again.

~~~

I have a confession to make: I wasn’t too fond of my wedding dress. From day one I was hesitant to shop for the dress, not longing to see how I’d look in the sample that was made a few sizes smaller than I was. It was hard for me to picture how it would look on me later, when it actually zipped up. This is why I went shopping for just one day, possibly an hour (maybe less) with just my mom and I.

It could have been the cream puff I ate at Beard Papa’s beforehand, it could have just been pure hatred for having to wear a fancy dress that wouldn’t look as good on me as it would on someone smaller (all my own PERSONAL opinion), or it could have been all the people reminding me that I had to get my dress ASAP - could be any or all of these excuses that made me buy the first dress that looked okay.

I didn’t get the “this is the one!” feeling I had heard/read about.
Read more…

This was a very difficult post to write, and I still wish I could have said it better. But it’s one of my favorite posts because I don’t think there was anywhere outside of this community where I had a chance to voice some of the ambivalence I felt about “getting married.” There was no doubt that I wanted to commit to spending the rest of my life with my husband. But confronting the prospect of “being married” still gave me pause for thought.

~~~

It was an exciting day in the Spaniel household when we finally got our wedding invitations in the mail! I didn’t take any pictures—our focus was on staying dry during the latest torrential downpour—but oh, the relief! I carried them all in a plastic bag inside a plastic tub to keep them dry on the way to the post office, and only managed to drop one into a big dirty puddle on the sidewalk. Luckily, that invite was headed to New Zealand, so I can blame the vagaries of international mail delivery for that one, and no one will be the wiser!

In addition to excitement, though, I feel a little bit of… alarm?
Read more…

One of my favorite projects was our invites. It took me a while and many discarded design ideas to get to the end result, but I was really happy with them. We got tons of compliments from recipients and I like that they are very us (or at least very me, I don’t think Mr. MB cared one bit). They were also the thing I had the most control over, go figure. Hope you like ’em.

~~~

They all went out in the mail Saturday, and it’s such a great weight off my shoulders.
Read more…

Our first anniversary is this Sunday, and while it doesn’t look like I’ll finish my recaps by then, I am close and I’m really happy my favorite part of the night is up next in the recaps. It’s been quite a year and I’m really glad to look back on this extremely fun half hour.

I have a feeling ’The Grand March’ changes itself up for various cultures around the globe, but Mr. Moonbeam is part Czech and it’s that part of his family that partakes in this fantastic tradition.

Mr. MB’s Aunt and Uncle led everybody throughout the dance.
Read more…

I’ve been wanting to write A Bee’s Life post pretty much since I became a bee, so it seems appropriate that I should finish my tenure here with my contribution to this series.

How did I find Weddingbee?

A few months after getting engaged, I started to think more about the cultural traditions that I hoped to incorporate into our wedding. You already know I had a non-traditional mehndi, but you have to know the rules to break them! So I did some Googling on mehndis and came across this archived post by Mrs. Jasmine. Jasmine and I go way back—to high school and college, so when I saw her picture on the blog, I got curious! (Fun fact: when I saw her picture and occupation on the side of the blog, I thought an impostor blogger was pretending to be Jasmine. Who knew I was so suspicious?!) I read through a few of her posts and some of the newer bloggers’ posts, and got hooked!

Before finding Weddingbee I garnered most of my wedding inspiration from sites like Style Me Pretty and Green Wedding Shoes, which I still love. Our wedding had a different aesthetic, though, and seeing the great variety of bloggers here made Weddingbee my go-to site pretty quickly.

My application story
Read more…