Weddingbee PRO

Inspired by Megan of Princess Laserton’s post on her typical day, I thought I’d share what my typical weekday is like!

10:30 - 11:00 am - Wake up.  This means that I’m probably sleeping right now, and that this post was scheduled to go live.  Luckily it’s only 8am on the West Coast!

11 - 11:20 am - I sleep with my laptop next to my head so I can check my work email, personal email, Weddingbee, Weddingbee PRO, Bloglines and Xanga as soon as I wake up without having to get out of bed.

11:20 am - Feed our two cats.  Sparky the cat has probably tried to wake me up several times at this point because she’s hungry, by “kneading” my body like I’m a piece of dough.

Sparky is truly the sweetest cat ever, but she unfortunately has cancer.  This picture was taken after a chemo treatment last year. You can see the side of her face is shaved (the cancer site).
Read more…

John Edgar is no longer at Still Motion (bye John we’ll miss you!), so the lovely Amina will be taking his place. She’s a super talented photographer, and we’re very excited to have her on board!  She’ll be introducing herself shortly, but in the meantime, check out these stunning pictures she took at a recent wedding in Jaimaica!  Welcome Amina — we’re glad to have you on team Weddingbee!

Read more…

We’re very excited to introduce the newest member of the Weddingbee PRO family, William Gaff of Human Story Films! William creates documentary style wedding films, and his work is fresh, unique and definitely different than what’s out there today. When I was looking through some of his work, I started tearing up — that’s a testament to how well he captures the relationships and feelings behind each wedding story.

He’ll be introducing himself later today, but in the meantime, please check out an example of his fabulous work below!

Welcome William — we’re so happy to have you here!

Saturn Return from William Gaff on Vimeo.

We’re going to try to bring you some more behind the scenes glimpses of the mysterious lives of wedding vendors here on PRO. I’m not exactly sure where I fall because I’m lucky enough to work with both brides and vendors, but from now on, I’d love to share a bit more about what goes into running Weddingbee and Weddingbee PRO.

I wanted to talk about a new day planner that I’ve been using lately to help keep me organized.  Although I use Google Calendar to keep track of my appointments, my daily life is actually more a series of to do lists (a feature that Google Calendar is lacking!).  I haven’t found an online to-do list program that I love, and for some reason I still like writing out my to-do’s.  So after doing a bit of research online, I recently purchased a day planner called the Planner Pad.

This planner is laid out differently than your traditional day planner.  Two pages are devoted to each week, and it works like a funnel to help you categorize, prioritize, and schedule all your business and personal to-dos.

In the top section, you create lists based on categories.  For instance my categories/projects for this week include: Email, Call/Personal, Things to do (for my assistant), Things to do (for my intern), Posts to Write, Weddingbee, and Weddingbee PRO.  I previously used Excel or Notepad to track my to-do’s, but I had so many different lists that each had projects with varying deadlines, categorizing them solely by category wasn’t very effective. Being able to see all of my to-do’s like this in one place has been so helpful and much more efficient.

The middle section is where I list things that I absolutely must do that day.  And the bottom section is where I list my appointments.

Because I’m often juggling so many things at once that require multiple to-do lists, this planner really works for me.  What programs or tools do you use to stay organized?

sta⋅tion⋅ar⋅y –adjective
1.    standing still; not moving.

sta⋅tion⋅er⋅y –noun
1.    writing paper.

(via dictionary.com)

I regularly get emails from stationery vendors and pr firms that represent stationery companies, where the word “stationery” is misspelled.  When I click over to their website, I usually find that it’s also misspelled there too.  Even though I feel bad, I always let them know because I figure I’d want to know if I were them?

If you’ve been spelling it wrong all this time, don’t feel bad… I did too before Weddingbee!

When we first started approaching inaugural bloggers for Weddingbee PRO, Hello! Lucky’s name came up several times because they have a fabulous blog (and fabulous products too!).  But because they’ve already received so much press, they didn’t really fit into our philosophy of showcasing up and coming talent, and we decided not to approach them.

Then we came up with the Saturday Night Live model where regular cast members blog for 3-6 months, and guest stars pop in for shorter stays.  So when Hello! Lucky applied to be a PRO, we thought that they’d make a great guest star!  They’ll be contributing their best ideas, tips, and inspiration to Weddingbee PRO over the next month, so stay tuned!  I’m also having coffee with one of the founders, Sabrina, tomorrow because she’s in town week for the National Gift Show. It’s always a treat for me to meet our vendors, Bees, and readers!

They’ll be popping in later today to say their official hello.  In the meantime, please check out some of their gorgeous custom letterpress work below!  (Of course I couldn’t resist the bee invitation. )

Read more…

When I spoke at the Engage 08 Conference, I mentioned that vendors shouldn’t spam blogs and boards and leave their urls at the end of every comment they leave.  A lot of vendors came up to me after I spoke, and admitted that they were totally guilty of this, and were just trying to build their business.  I realized that what may totally obvious to a bride may not necessarily be obvious to a vendor!

So I thought I’d write a series on how vendors should and shouldn’t participate on blogs and boards, and how they should and shouldn’t go about contacting the people who run these type of sites.  I hope it proves to be helpful to any vendors out there who are trying to navigate the online bridal world. 

These are the topics that I have in mind:

• Part I: As a vendor, how do I participate on wedding blogs and messageboards?
• Part II: What do I do when there is a negative review of my business online?
• Part III: Should I be blogging?

Before I get started, thought I’d check in with the vendors and brides out there.  Do you have any questions about marketing to brides that you’d like to see addressed?

We’re very excited to welcome the newest PRO to join the hive, the lovely and talented calligrapher Laura Hooper!  Laura is an amazing blogger, and we’re sure that she’s going to be a wealth of information and inspiration.  She’ll be popping in later today to officially introduce herself, so please help extend her a very warm welcome!

I know we promised to get back to everyone last week, but the past two weeks have been a little-extra-super crazy here in hive central. It’s taking us a little more time to get through the photography applications because we’ve received so many, and there are so many talented folks out there!

We’re really sorry for the delay, and thank you so much for your patience and understanding. We’ve responded to about 60% of all the applications, and we’re working feverishly to get through them all this week.

We have a couple of new PROS in the queue, so please stay tuned!

Earlier today I had lunch at Christaki’s in Tustin with the Los Angeles/OC area Weddingbee PROS!  The food was delicious (especially if you love their super garlicky hummus like I did!).

Pictured above is  Angel, Kristin, Courtney, me and our newest PRO to join the hive… Amelia Lyon!  She’ll be popping in to say her official hello tomorrow!

It was so much fun hanging out with this fabulously talented group.  We could have talked about weddings all day long!  By the way — doesn’t Angel look like she’s 6 feet tall in this picture?

Thanks so much for the great food and great conversation ladies!