Meet Reverend Ronald David Beams


Last Friday night. We were both a little tired from a long work week. Matt picked me up from work and we headed out to La Crescenta to meet Reverend Ronald David Beams in person. We were hopeful yet at the same time didn't want to get our hopes up. He sounded nice and warm over the phone.


But only a week earlier we had contacted another officiant up in the Santa Barbara area. We had heard good things about him and his reviews online were very positive. But when we finally talked to him on the phone he was short, not warm, and was even rude to us a couple times. He seemed to just want a deposit from us before he would go too much in detail of what he would do. His pricing seemed high too. He suggested a way to save money with him...that we not waste an hour meeting in person! If he just spoke to us over the phone and met us on the day of the wedding we could cut costs. In our opinion that shouldn't even be an option! How can you connect with the person marrying you if you don't even meet him?! He also bragged about marrying some famous people which doesn't matter to us at all (unless he can get them to come to our wedding! haha!). He seemed like it was all business and about making money. We hung up the phone really disappointed. We definitely hadn't thought it would be a challenge finding someone to marry us. Weren't all priests/pastors supposed to be super nice?

So it was with that experience fresh in our memory that we headed to La Crescenta.

I happened upon Reverend Ronald David Beams on a photography blog site where he officiated a recent wedding at the Smog Shoppe. I googled him and was led to his Project Wedding site. A small handful of really good reviews. Not giving that too much weight because the first reverend also had good reviews, we decided to give him a shot and booked a meeting. He invited us to his house for that Friday evening.

His house was the cutest on his street. Modest but nicely landscaped. There was a cute little fountain and walkway with stone hearts in his front yard. A little wooden bench sat across from the fountain and I imagine he and his wife sit there in the evenings.

As we walk up the front yard we're greeted by him through a screen window. His voice is warm, like a Grandpa. He jokes to us that if we go into the door we're headed to, we'll walk into the laundry room. We double back and meet him at the front door where he eagerly tells us to ring an old fashioned real door bell. How darling!

He greets us with warmth as we walk into his home. His dog runs around happily. He directs us to his living room. The room was filled with what looked like a life long collection of cowboy artifacts, good enough for a small museum. He was not kidding when he told us over the phone he would love Saddlerock Ranch because he was into horses.

He asks us all the right questions and really wants to get to know us. He wants to know how we met, how are families interact, how we interact, how we make each other better. And it's all from the heart, sincere, and completely genuine. Plus he has a good sense of humor. He shares with us his past and how he came to be where he is now. It is a truly heartwarming story and I'm amazed he is so open about his past.

An hour or so goes by and he walks away to get his examples of how the timeline of the ceremony will go. Matt and I look at each other and are both in total agreement. We have to book him. He's amazing. He's everything we were looking for in the person who would marry us. We want to feel totally at ease and filled with love while we're up there saying our vows to each other. It is very important to us to feel joy and positive energy from all angles - from our family, friends, and especially our officiant.

So we booked him!

To top it off his pricing was a third the cost of the first guy! I think he does this because he truly loves doing it. He also suggested a book for us to read. He said he had read through many marriage books and had narrowed it down to Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts. We bought the book from him and are considering taking his private premarital classes which are based on the book. It can't hurt and can only make our future life together better!

We couldn't feel more happy about our choice!







We have a wedding planner!

We finally have a wedding planner! We brought Nancy Park of So Happi Together onboard several weeks ago and she has been great so far! MrLovebird and I debated long and hard on whether we needed one for the entire year or just needed one for the day of. Our venue requires that we have one at least for the day of the wedding. We seriously interviewed no less than 6 planners. Some didn't offer enough evidence or photos of their past work, a couple were great but priced for the superstars, and still another that we were really excited to meet turned out to dissapoint us with her lack of quick communication and unimpressive first meeting.


Enter Nancy. I came across her via a blog post on StyleMePretty about her own wedding. She had planned basically her entire wedding (with a wedding planner for the day of). She had incorporated the most beautiful DIY elements into her wedding including hand made invitations. She was also so gracious and offered her designs she and her husband made to the StyleMePretty community. I was impressed and when I found out she had switched careers to become a wedding planner, I wanted to meet her! I emailed her around 1am and she literally emailed me a hour or so later around 2 or 3AM! Love it! (Since then her response time via email has always been super fast)!

We met her at a local coffee bar on a Wednesday night. She had driven from Orange County to Los Angeles and had just started to get sick from a wedding she did the weekend before. Despite all that, she was a breath of fresh air. She was sweet and warm and genuinely wanted to get to know us. We were a little apprehensive at first since she was fairly new and our venue is rather complicated because we have to bring in every single vendor, but she exudes a confidence and a calm strong presence that put us to ease. The latter also gives me confidence that she will not freak out if something goes wrong on the day of the wedding. She had about 5 weddings under her belt but over 20 more booked before our wedding next June. We figured by then she would have done so many there would be nothing to worry about.

We left the meeting excited. I really wanted to book her then and there. But we had one more meeting with another planner. Needless to say, after that meeting we knew Nancy was the one. We were so excited to realize we had found the planner that would be perfect for us. The next day Mr.Lovebird and I called her together to let her know and she was excited!

Since then, Nancy has come through with a list of photographers that are more within our budget, has received a fabulous quote from a caterer we would have never thought of, has come with us to do a site visit (and offered great ideas while we were there), re-evaluated and revised our budget, negotiated with videographers, and given us a timeline to follow.

So far we are very "happi"!

Your very own wedding movie

The thought of watching someone's wedding video is enough to make one run in the opposite direction. Who enjoys watching long drawn out footage, long speeches, and choppy camera motions? We were not even that into getting a videographer initially. Needless to say, I have been scouring tons of videographer's websites and vimeo pages in the past month. I think I must have looked into over 40 videographers and watched over 100 videos (although some only lasted 3 seconds in)! In the process, I've completely forgotten about this blog in the past month. All we've been focusing on is booking the videographer before they get booked by someone else.

The quality of some of these filmmakers is so amazing that I don't even mind that the videos are of people that I don't even know. With Canon's delivery of the 5D and 7Ds, videographers can now film some awesome footage with a small and lightweight camera making it much easier to incorporate glidecams and steadycams into their footage. Plus they can switch in and out lenses so easily allowing the ability to switch from zoom lenses to super fast lenses in the dark. The final result seriously resembles movie footage.

I think MrLovebird is happy that my search has finally narrowed down and he doesn't have to sit through too many more videos. Here's the list of our favorites.


Our favorite one so far is Joe Simon. This guy is a BMX rider turned BMX film maker turned wedding film maker. What a cool story! I love his work! He is fantastic at storytelling, his composition is perfect, and his timelapses are amazing! Videography wasn't in our original budget so we're looking at ways to reallocate other items so we can hire him. Hopefully we can make it happen before he gets booked by someone else. But hey, this and photographs is what you can still hold onto 30 years from today. Our kids will watch this video and have a glimpse into the lives of their parents on one of their most special days of their lives. Take a look at this and you will see how awesome he is. This has got to be one of my faves.

Birthday Week


Mr Lovebird and I celebrated our birthdays last week. He is 3 days older than me and I love it. It means we usually get to celebrate for over a week between friends and family. This year I took Mr Lovebird to the Viceroy in Santa Monica for dinner. He had asked for something low key and not a big birthday dinner. OK, so no birthday dinner. But I arranged for 15 friends of ours to meet us at the bar after dinner. I successfully surprised him as I suggested we check out the bar before going home. We had a great time with friends in his celebration.








The next morning we were definitely not 100% but we made our way to Universal Citywalk. My dad had bought both of us a stimulated skydiving experience for our birthdays. It was definitely fun, but probably best experienced when you're feeling in good shape. I'd definitely do it again though! MrLovebirds's parents treated us all out to dinner that night.





Fast forward a week. My mom sent me the most beautiful flowers. It was an arrangement of 12 roses Honk Kong style. Now if you haven't seen flowers done up this way you'll be impressed the first time you see it. Each rose is individually wrapped. This is a picture of only half a dozen. The one my mom sent me is a full dozen so you can imagine how enormous it is. (I lost my camera as you will find out, so I don't have a picture of it). My mom is the sweetest and I'm so lucky to have her as my mom!





That night I had dinner with some girlfriends at the Penthouse in the Huntley Hotel. A handful of friends met up at the bar afterwards but it was definitely much tamer than the weekend prior. Unfortunately, in the frenzy of my camera being passed around, it disappeared somewhere throughout the evening and it held all the pics from both our birthdays. =(








The next morning Mr Lovebird suggested I get a massage. I came back an hour later relaxed but he wasn't home. Then I heard knocking on the door. It was my sweetheart and to my surprise I opened the door and was greeted with yellow tulips, Kiss My Bundt mini bundts, some little cookies, and the sweetest card. How sweet is he?!? I had been craving the delicious sandwiches at Banh Mi My Tho so we headed there for lunch. Afterwards as we were driving he distracted me by asking me to read reviews of wedding vendors off my phone. I took a break from reading and realized we were heading south instead of going home. Where were we going?










We ended up in San Diego! MrLovebird surprised me with a little getaway at the Estancia La Jolla! He had packed all my stuff while I was at the massage and put it in the car. He packed about a weeks worth of clothes for one night cuz he didn't know what I wanted to wear or what went together. Plus he packed almost my whole underwear drawer, a handful of random jewelry, and almost our entire bathroom. It was the cutest thing and I couldn't stop laughing. Luckily I had at least 1 matching outfit from his random pull. Hahahaha! He is sooo sweet! =) We had dinner at George's at the Cove and went to the beach the next morning. It was a much needed getaway since we're in the middle of moving and our place looks like a hurricane passed through it.












So that was our week! Another year for the next birthday week celebration!

Top 25 wedding blogs

There is a whole world of wedding blogs filled with inspiration. It's great because there's tons of real weddings posted with great ideas but at the same time every time I see a beautiful wedding, my vision for my own wedding changes. That being said, Austin Wedding Blog has produced a list of the top 25 wedding blogs. There are tons that I haven't heard of before that I will need to check out.


Three Potato Four - Wedding Decor

Love these items from Three Potato Four. I'm invisioning them used for the sign in table, refreshment table, or the escort card table.





























Caligraphy Stamps

How cool are these stamps and stationary from Primele. The font is darling. How I wish I could write like this. I have a year to practice! =)