Weddingbee Blog

I’ve been dreading writing this post. You can probably tell from my sporadic blogging that I’m trying desperately to hold on, but it’s time to let go. About two years ago, when I began planning my wedding, I typed these fateful words into my Google search bar—”wedding blog.” I was hoping to get a few ideas here and there, some inspiration and nab a few great wedding vendors. Little did I know, clicking on that catchy title “Weddingbee” would spark a nearly two year obsession. I applied to be a bee not really thinking I’d be accepted. I think that’s how most bee bloggers feel when they submit their application to Weddingbee. Who’d want to read MY writing? What great ideas do I have? But Weddingbee is about much more than just getting good ideas. It’s a community.

Oh hive, you listened to me gripe, worry, stress and celebrate. My DIY projects, my indecision, my (not-so-helpful) tips. How can I leave you?! If you read my last post, you know that I’m still addicted to the wedding world and I don’t want to let go, but every season must end before a new one begins.
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It’s been just short of 9 months since the wedding and I have a bad case of wedding withdrawal. I reluctantly began selling all of my wedding stuff on the Weddingbee Classifieds, but I refused to unsubscribe from my wedding blogs and still shamelessly read them even though I am no longer planning a wedding. I still often look through my wedding photos, album, and engagement photos so I can remember our wedding day.

It’s funny—the roller coaster of emotions that come from wedding planning. At first you are ridiculously excited, then completely overwhelmed, then determined to finish all your planning, then resigned to the fact that you may not finish every DIY project you wanted to do, then nervous as the day approaches, then stressed the week of as you hammer out the last details, then unbelievably happy on the day of the wedding, then relieved as you close the books on that big wedding day you’ve been planning for x amount of months (or years).

You go on your honeymoon and think, “Phew! I’m so glad I’m done wedding planning!” Then, if you’re at all like me, you slowly…incredulously…begin…to miss wedding planning! Yes, it’s true!
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I hope that you enjoyed the photos from the wedding. The day went by so fast. Before I knew it, the party was ending and it was time to go home! I’ll be honest and tell you that I miss our wedding. I miss the flowers, being drowned in wedding details, researching vendors and spreadsheets galore. I was so happy with how things went and if there WERE any problems, I was completely oblivious because my fantastic vendors and coordinators handled everything. It seemed like it went off without a hitch.

So, now that the wedding (and the recaps) are over, here are my lessons for your day of from the other side. I tend to be the kind of person that is far too prepared for things…probably annoyingly so to others around me. Here are a random assortment of things I was so glad I over-prepared for!

1. Bridal Kit - My makeup artist gave me a touch up kit, but I packed my makeup bag with EVERYTHING in it just in case. I also made these for the bridesmaids and myself:

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I only titled this post “I Should Tell Your Momma” because when we got a disc of photobooth photos from Snappy Joe, I saw my friends and family do things I’ve never seen them do before. Since some of these friends and family follow my blog and Facebook, which are both linked together, I decided I shouldn’t post them lest I embarrass them. However, we had a mom wear a bandana around her head like Tupac, people kissing and touching of body parts that would prompt you to shout out, “stranger danger!”

Anyway, here are a few highlights courtesy of Snappy Joe Photography!

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In many Chinese-American weddings, brides change into a traditional Chinese dress called a qi pao (pronounced chi-pow). First off, it’s a beautiful, but unforgiving dress. Here are a few images I found on the web:

(source)

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My title is a bit of an oxymoron, I know. How can something be a surprise, yet a regular tradition? Well, let me explain.

Surprise #1: Mr. Lace’s family always does a family dance for the bride and groom. We’ve done ’80s songs, ’90s songs and more recently Grease! So, Mr. Lace and I knew they’d plan a dance for us, but we just didn’t know what songs they’d be dancing to. We were so lucky because we’ve had the longest, most complicated dance thus far! All photos courtesy of Hanssie Trainor.

Put your hands up!
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…*blush* sorry…I know, it’s been a long time. Between the holiday program at our school, the holiday season, and SIL Lace getting married, I haven’t had time to sit down and blog! But, thank goodness for a chance to breathe with the MLK holiday!

So, let’s see, where did we leave off? Oh yes, the wedding reception! We had planned to have the traditional best man and maid of honor speeches, but my brother asked if he could give a toast when I told him I was engaged and of course, I said yes. Then, bridesmaid M, who introduced Mr. Lace and I way back in 2000, surprised us with toasts.

So, here are a few snippets—the laughs, the tears, and everything in between!

All photos courtesy of Hanssie Trainor

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There are so many things to manage when you are planning a wedding. After you’ve nailed down all the big things like venues and vendors, you have a million little details to take care of.  And if you’re like me, you were involved in every little detail whether it mattered or not.  I styled and DIY’ed my own wedding, as many of you are doing.  It meant I had to search for ideas, find the best deals, and craft everything on my own.  But, being a type-A, detail-oriented kinda gal, you can imagine how much FUN I had doing all of this…at first.  Do you know what I’m talking about? I’d be super excited when I was inspired with a new idea, but as I started getting into the thick of the project, I’d want to hurry up and finish it. And of course, you never have one project at a time whilst wedding planning. There are always seventy things going on at once. There were many times where I felt like abandoning projects, but let me encourage you—if you are in the thick of wedding planning, hang in there! It’ll all be worth it in the end!

So after I nailed down my vision, a vintage-juxtaposed-with-modern, simple, school-themed reception (hmm when do I have “too much” theme going on?), I began looking for vintage-y decor and designing my own paper goods. Everything had a simple, clean look.

So, let me show and explain all of our reception details. Ready?

This was our guest sign-in table. I made these programs on my computer and printed them out on my printer. Fancy, I know.

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As if we hadn’t taken enough photos of ourselves, Mr. Lace and I scheduled in a little sunset portrait time at the suggestion of our photographer. During our engagement session, it was kind of gloomy so we didn’t get that romantic flattering sunlight. Our photog suggested some sunset portraits during our wedding since we had a pocket of time during cocktails. So, we skipped out on cocktails to take advantage of the setting sun.

Some of my favorite wedding photos came out of this one hour session.

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It’s the part that always gets me at every wedding: recognizing the parents. More than the bride walking down the aisle, the vows, the first kiss—it’s when the newlywed couple thanks their parents for all their love, support and sacrifice that turns on the waterworks for me.
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I don’t mean it as a put down, but Mr. Lace is not a writer. It’s just not his thing. He’s magical when it comes to math, science, engineering and such, but he’s never loved writing. You can imagine my surprise when I (half) jokingly suggested having personal vows in our ceremony and he heartily agreed. The conversation went like this:

Me: You know, I was thinking, we should write personal vows in addition to our traditional vows. It will make our ceremony more personal and we’d get to say what we want to say to each other on our wedding day.

Mr. Lace: You’re right. That’s a good idea.

Me: (Blinking) You know you have to write them yourself.

Mr. Lace: Yeah.

Me: And then you have to read them out loud in front of everyone.

Mr. Lace: Yeah.

Me: And you still want to do it?

Mr. Lace: Yeah.

Me: (Thinking) Can I get this in writing?

Seriously, I was so happy that he agreed and made him promise not to back out.
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We put a lot of time and energy into planning our wedding, but we knew that the most important part for us was our wedding ceremony. Hive, it’s time to share the most important part of our wedding day with you. Since this post was kind of picture heavy, I took some of the photos and put them together as little collages so you wouldn’t have to scroll through fifty pictures. Now you only have to scroll through forty. Just kiddin’.

All photos are courtesy of the wonderful Hanssie Trainor.

My husband-to-be walking in with the pastor and groomsmen.
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Sorry for the hiatus. Life has been busy and I have struggled to find a nice block of time to sit down and blog. I am stealing time away from something right now so I can tell you all about our wedding ceremony.

Mr. Lace and I actually put a lot of thought into each aspect of our wedding ceremony. It took us several months to choose the songs involved in our ceremony. We spent an entire day on our ceremony schedule. Most importantly, we spent hours upon excruciating hours writing personal vows.

Let’s focus today on music.

We hired a great DJ named Eugene Ng through Zuno Productions. He met with us several times to find out about our musical tastes, to get a feel for our wedding crowd and answered all my emails in a timely fashion. I was really annoying because our wedding site didn’t have ANY sound equipment so I’d email him once to see if he had 2 microphones for our wedding musicians and pastor, another time to find out if he had music stands, another time to see if he could be in charge of our slideshow, and about a billion times in between.

With our DJ in place, Mr. Lace and I sat down on a Saturday to choose all of the music, from the processional to the bouquet toss.
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After a morning of pressing and primping, Mr. Lace and I were off! Mr. Lace, the photog, my MOH C, and I drove off to the Lab to take some photos. We chose to go to the Lab because we took half of our engagement photos there and it was down the street from our venue. Since a lot of our photos took place in public places, we got a lot of oohs and aahs and well wishes from people who saw us walking around. Everyone was really sweet and they made me feel pretty darn good about how I looked! Taking photos totally helped me feel more relaxed because we were busy and I didn’t have to think about walking down the aisle with people looking at us.

So, now it’s tip time from the other side of the wedding.

1. Photos before, between or after?

Couples do their weddings in many different ways. Some people opt to take their photos before the ceremony so that they’re all out of the way. Some people choose to take them between the ceremony and reception so that they don’t break tradition and see each other before the ceremony. Some take them after all the partying is done. I suppose it depends on what time your ceremony is, but Mr. Lace and I took our photos before the ceremony and then took another set of photos after the ceremony with our bridal party. We split our photos into two sessions mainly because we HAD to have a cocktail hour (for the venue to change the ceremony location into a reception location) and we didn’t want our bridal party to show up four hours beforehand and follow us around to take photos.
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The morning of our wedding was a whirlwind. I spent about four or five hours getting ready and all of a sudden, it was time to go downstairs to see Mr. Lace. It all happened so fast and I was about to partake in the part of our  wedding day that we totally didn’t plan. That’s right. We didn’t plan our first look. Well, that’s not completely true. Mr. Lace and I knew what time we’d meet and that we’d meet at the hotel that I was getting ready at, but that’s all. After Mr. Lace arrived, he spoke to MOH C and then Hanssie did the rest. Hanssie went to find Mr. L. Her second shooter, Michelle, stayed with me. I walked when she told me to walk. I waited when she told me to wait. I had no clue what was going on with Mr. Lace, but our photogs had everything under control. All of a sudden, Michelle had me walk out and after a brief pause she said, “Okay, in a second I’m going to have you turn around and you’re going to walk to Mr. Lace and tap him on the shoulder.”

I had no clue how close or far he was from me.
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