I was very late to blogs. Why lie? I'm really slow with technology in general. We've only recently (like a day ago) ordered an iphone and I think Mr. Joey was the last person in the world to join Facebook (2 days ago - seriously). I never heard about blogs that I thought sounded interesting. People always told me about blogs that sounded weird. I passed on the blog about a cats that looked like famous people.
I found blogs by accident really. I was looking for ideas of what to make people for Christmas 2007. I had this idea earlier that year that half of all the Christmas presents we were going to give during the holidays would be homemade. That's when I did it, I found blogs -- crafting blogs to be specific. There were so many; it made my head spin. Crafting blogs turned into design blogs and I was instantly hooked on
Design*Sponge. But that's it. My blog reading stopped there apart from a few visits to food blogs like
Chocolate and Zucchini. It's not that I didn't like blogs, it was that I hated sitting in front of my computer when I wasn't at work.
When we got engaged, I knew I wanted to do something different. All the weddings I had been to had all blurred together. I didn't want mine to be one of those. I started with the library (I know, very 1989 of me) for ideas. I didn't find much, just more of the same. About 3 weeks after getting engaged, I found myself in Addis Ababa on a work trip. It was the middle of the night and I couldn't sleep, so I turned on my computer and typed in "Wedding Blogs." I think Google exploded. There were so many. I started with
Snippet & Ink. I still love that site. My only complaint about the blogs I found were that you didn't really see how these beautiful weddings came together. I needed to see not just the beautiful outcome, but the planning process. I did find alot of personal blogs I liked but I wasn't sure I could commit to reading so many. Through a series of clicks, I found Weddingbee. I remember finding a post by
Mrs. Pineapple and feeling like I found the pot at the end of the rainbow. Then I was catching up with
Mrs. Penguin,
Mrs. Avocado,
Mrs. Cupcake and
Mrs. Cherry Pie. I love that their weddings were all beautiful, all different and all in one place.
I hadn't thought about blogging myself until 10 months ago. I don't know what possessed me to do it. I felt weird and awkward about it. After a few posts, I gave up. Why would anyone care what I thought about random stuff? That was my problem. It was totally random. I had no direction. A few weeks later, a friend casually suggested that I think about applying to be a Bee. I had just sent her a very lengthy description of my latest wedding project and about 6 versions of our poster invite to look over. I dismissed it at first. No way was I as creative as the Bees I followed. I wasn't an artist of any kind. But then I realized that it wasn't artistic talents that made me creative. It was my thinking out of the box in general -- particularly with budgets -- that could make me stand out. Maybe I could be
that Bee.
Like Mrs. Cupcake, I blogged just for Weddingbee. I wrote about projects I had completed over the first 6 months of being engaged and few the purchases I going back and forth with. When I got to about 15 posts or so, I applied. I was rejected. I looked back through those first few posts and they were awful. They had no life. No spark. Where were my corny jokes? Where was my sarcasm? Where was my booty shaking self? I went back through and revised them so they read more like I talk (or sound in emails to friends). With a few more posts under my belt I applied about 6 weeks later and was accepted.
I generally write a few posts in one sitting. I jot down post ideas when I think of them and then write during the bus ride to work, business trips or during the very early teleconferences I have to be on. I don't usually have anything to say during those, it just that someone needs to "represent." Writing the posts keep me awake and listening.
I probably won't go back to my random blogging. I think I'm not a very good blogger without a defined direction. Luckily, the whole house building thing has given
US direction. Mr. Joey and I now blog together. We started a blog,
Forty Twenty Four, to document the building of our house. Of course as soon as we started the blog, we found
a great blog about another young couple who documented the remodeling of their house. No biggie. The original purpose of the blog was to keep all our friends and family updated but then we realized we maybe other people out there would be interested in the different stages of building (and decorating) a house on a budget. Forty Twenty Four isn't Weddingbee, but it's still fun. I'm designing our kitchen now!
Applying a second time to Weddingbee was one of the best decisions I ever made. I don't do well with rejection and applying again was hard for me. When I wasn't accepted the first time, I thought it wasn't because I wasn't artistic or because my wedding didn't seem as glamorous as the ones I followed on Weddingbee. Thankfully, I read through my posts and realized revisions were needed. My advice about applying to Weddingbee are for those who didn't get accepted the first time. Don't give up. Reread your posts. Maybe you need a little spark. :) And don't be afraid to be a character. Be witty, be strange, be whatever you are but on virtual paper.
