Weddingbee bios

I'm a tall glass of water working in the TV world and he's a lanky guy working out doors. There's nothing we love more than sitting on the floor eating nachos and watching a movie together. His favorite past times include looking for snakes and working on cars while I spend my time avoiding snakes and gettin' crafty. We've been together a little over 2 years and they really have been the best. When you find the right person everything becomes so easy.

 

      In this age of technology everything is on the internet, including my surprise proposal. My fiance and I had been dating for a year and a half and he decided to propose on my birthday, and totally shock me. You have never seen a guy so nervous. Heck, I get nervous just watching it.

   It really is a very romantic and thoughtful proposal and I won't build it up any more because you can see for yourself. It is a little long running at 10 minutes, but sit back and take a little break and enjoy.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wufPR02hcXE&NR=1

So I am sure it came as a big surprise to most of you when your Fiancé was not super thrilled to have his picture taken by a photographer. The look of disgust that came across Mr. Betty's face when I broke the news to him was priceless. We had to have a serious talk where I expressed how much I wanted to have an engagement shoot and how he would need to find a better attitude about it.

     My brilliant idea was to put him in charge of the vision. I told him we could do whatever he wanted so that he'd be comfortable and natural in the pics. He took on the challenge and immediately went to what he knows, his 1979 RX 7. He's had this car since high school. He used to wake up early everyday before school to wash it down and dry it off with a cloth diaper. Then it spent a few years living in a back yard only to be once again resurrected. His idea was that we'd be "broken down" on a back road somewhere in a high fashion kind of photo shoot. He then began to scout locations on his way home from work and stumbled upon an old farm road near a railroad track. Yahtzee!

It wasn't all smooth sailing though. Even though Mr. Betty had a timeline of the shoot in his blackberry there were some bumps in the road. The main one being that our photog was 15 minutes late. Now 15 doesn't sound like a lot, but when it's 4 pm in November and the sun is beginning to set and you have a tense fiance whose smile is fading by the moment it's a big deal. I could tell he was getting tense and it was the longest 15 minute wait in the history of time.

Photog finally arrives and then has to get his stuff out and ready. I was doing all that I could to make the best out of the already awkward situation. The first few photos were very stiff and weird feeling. You def. have to get used to the feeling of having a professional take pictures of you. I think part of it was that our photog's style is a more journalistic approach. He didn't want to direct us but rather just catch moments as they happen. Leaving me feeling pressured to hurry up and create some moments.

Overall, it all worked out. We have some beautiful pictures that we can be proud to hang on our wall. We went for a different feel and I think we achieved getting our personalities on film (or disk).

Did anybody else have to coach their man through photos much to their shagrin? How did you feel in front of the camera?

 

As soon as your friends know you're engaged when all the squealing and crying stops they want to know if they made the team. I tried to stave off this responsibility at first saying I wasn't planning yet and I was just enjoying my engagement, but I could only hold out for so long. They were like sharks circling their prey. They started to ask how big a bridal party I wanted and what I was thinking about for dress colors just "hypothetically speaking".

   At first I didn't want a bridal party. I wanted to keep the ceremony really small and just have me and Mr. B do our thing and then go on to dinner and dancing. Plenty of people do this nowadays with more intimate weddings. I think I did feel a bit pressured to make the decision to include a bridal party, but once I did the picking was easy.

    I realized that people were crafting some pretty cute cards asking their girls to join the bridal team and wanted to do the same. I thought cute and funny was the way to go, nothing stuffy or formal. I googled pictures of 80's bridesmaid dresses and printed them all out on one sheet. Then I printed out some pics or my friends and began to mix and match some heads and bodies. Now I understand that I could have done this all on the computer but I think I'm much faster with a pair of scissors and I didn't have to worry about resizing images and what not.

    I then glued my little bodies (heads and all) to some card stock I already had (cut to fit an envelope I also already had) and printed out the "will you..." part.

 

    All and all I think they turned out pretty cute and I've seen them hanging up on fridges so they were a great success. Any body else get a little creative with their bridesmaid cards? Or have second thoughts about having a bridal party?

 

     The strawberry season is almost upon us. How do I know this? I’m a Florida girl and I live not too far away from Plant City, a mecca of strawberries.  In honor of those tasty berries I decided to put together a little inspiration board. Even though I’m not a spring bride I can still appreciate the idea of a fresh, bright wedding with beautiful springy reception. After I compiled this “board” I realized it’s mostly food. I must have been hungry!

       There’s the obvious strawberry short cake but my picture of it is in a shooter ( they’ll make a shooter out of anything these days). Let’s think out of the box and have our strawberries in a salad at the beginning of the meal with a little lemon poppy seed dressing.

       For some favor ideas I found a cute little basket with strawberries and a biscuit in it so your guests can take home some delicious short cake (thanks Martha Stewart, again!) Then I thought of sending them home with some strawberry soda, maybe for a mod wedding.

      It gets wrapped all up in a nice package with a strawberry invitation, a berry bouquet, and even some cute nails. Where’s some short cake when you need it?

For those of you who don't know (which is everyone) I'm having a classy Halloween wedding. Two things that aren't invited are the word Orange and the word Gothic. This is going to be a slightly swanky event more to the tune of Sleepy Hollow with perhaps some burlesque twists.

   Since I have a tight budget I've been getting away from the idea of having flowers and looking for some good alternatives. One thought I had was to make the theme sort of a Haunted Mansion deal and include old tea pots, books, and all the other vintage stuff that is so popular right now.

   With that in mind I trolled the Martha Stewart website for classy Halloween inspiration. You know that Martha, she's so classy. I found a DIY paper lantern that would fit the bill as an inexpensive center piece.

 

                   photo from Martha Stewart website

   I made some of my own changes to it. I used regular vellum instead of orange and found my own clip art because I felt hers was too Halloween party and not Haunted Mansion wedding. I got my clip art from http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/index.htm

    It's a great site with tons of interesting and vintage images in a variety of sizes. I followed Martha’s directions for construction from the website. She provided a stencil that you print out and cut out. On my first one I used glue to put the vellum in place but it caused the vellum to curl up and I had to hold it down until it dried more. For the rest I went with Tape and no one will ever know the difference. My one regret is that I used regular black card stock which made more work for me because I had to cut out four panels and then tape them all together. If I had gotten larger card stock I wouldn't have had to do so much cutting and taping.

 

 

Here's a panel with the stencil that I printed and cut.

I have two sides with an image and then two blank sides.

This is all four panels taped together getting ready to form a cube.

Finished product! Thses are all personal pictures.

    I'd say each lantern took about a half hour to make, although I was watching TV at the time so who knows how much faster I could have gone with out the distractions. I'm really pleased with how they turned out and some of my family thought they were store bought! Those are the battery operated tea lights inside so as not to cause a fire. Since the wedding is still 9 months away I'm not sure yet whether I'll make more or just use those as my house hold decor.

Anyone have any other ideas for a spooky Haunted Mansion themed wedding? You could even make these in white with dif. clip art and use them for a spring time wedding, the possibilities are endless!

 

 

When I first thought about making a Save the Date I wanted to make a video. I thought it would be personal and also FREE. I started looking on you tube at all the ones some very creative people made and then realized my computer is not currently up to the task. That was discouraging. I also thought about our guests that aren't so tech savvy and may not be able to access you tube or open a video in their e-mail, it’d be better to go with a more traditional media.

    Then I went on to find the next cheapest route to go, a post card. I found out about VistaPrint from that other wedding website and was excited about all their deals and free B's. So I planned on taking some pictures during our engagement shoot that would be suitable for a STD. I had seen some other couples do a lot of cute things like holding up signs, or writing in the sand, and all kinds of stuff. Whatever I was going to do I wanted to make sure I put my own spin on it.

    Since I'm having a spooky wedding I hit up the after Halloween sales at the craft stores. The whole time I was trying to be mindful that I'm having a wedding not a child’s party so I was being very picky and choosey. I came across a wooden sign that was a skull and cross bones cut out attached to a little wooden banner. Side Note: I have a serious thing for skull and cross bones, I don't know what it is but I'm drawn to them like a moth to a flame.

   After getting it home I decided to paint it and put our wedding date on it. We would hold it as a little sign in our pics. Since this is the first thing that people will see in regards to our wedding I think it gives them fair warning of what they can expect of the big day.

It didn’t turn out as cheap as I would have liked but then again I wouldn’t change them.

Wooden sign- $1

Paints and glitter- $5

100 Post cards from VP- $12 (includes shipping)

Postage- $13, stamps cost more than the postcards, stupid stamps!

I incurred a little extra cost from VP by putting writing on the back of the post card. If you designed yours so you would have all the info on the front you wouldn’t have the extra printing cost.