Weddingbee PRO

I recently wrote a 5 part series on how Mr. Bee and I met on Weddingbee.  Our story isn’t really complete until I talk about how I started Weddingbee, since it was our engagement that lead to the eventual launch of the site!

I started Weddingbee as a separate blog on xanga because I didn’t want to force the male readers of my personal blog to read about every aspect of our wedding.  I had just moved to New York and didn’t really have any friends that could help me plan, so my wedding blog became my best planning friend.

People always ask me if I intended Weddingbee to turn into a full blown business. The answer is yes and no.  When I first moved to New York, I’d been planning on launching a blog-based site geared towards Asian Americans because there wasn’t (and still isn’t!) any great media targeted to Asian Americans.  But when my little wedding blog started getting popular, I decided that it made more sense to start a wedding site because that’s what I was completely immersed in at the time.  I blog best about whatever I’m obsessed with, as evidenced by my numerous other blogs: my personal blog, Korean cooking blog, decorating/newlywed blog, and animal blog.

After Mr. Bee and I got married, I updated my wedding blog, personal blog, newlywed blog and cooking blog daily.  I was in blog training mode.  In his recent book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell says you need to have 10,000 hours of experience in something before you can master it, and I’ve definitely put in my 10,000 hours.  I also took photography and photoshop classes at FIT, because they’re definitely helpful skills when it comes to blogging.  I set up Busy Bee Blogs LLC through our accountant, purchased weddingbee.com for $1500, commissioned the bride illustration from artist Paige Pooler, had a friend design the site (in a couple hours), and launched Weddingbee using Wordpress.  Setting up the business cost me about $3000.

Initially the Weddingbee concept was to pair bloggers with planners since we were New York based, and I thought bloggers would need an incentive to join the site.  I met with a ton of planners who were all on board, but eventually killed that idea.  Instead I asked a couple of “blog friends” who already had wedding blogs to join Weddingbee, and I was ready.

I launched Weddingbee in January 2006, 10 months after we got married.  I definitely could have launched the site sooner, but my perfectionistic tendencies and fear of failure held me back.  Everything had to be perfect.  What if I launched the site and no one visited?  What if the site failed miserably and I had to shut it down?

I’m not going to lie — it hasn’t been easy getting Weddingbee to where it is today.  But that first step was definitely the hardest step.