High Five For Friday!

Oh, hello {beautiful} Friday! With the cooler temps this AM & clear skies for miles, we were both reminded of the lives we recently lived outside of Florida. Yes, aside from the rain in Tacoma and the snow storms in NYC, we did get to enjoy a handful of picturesque days. Those are the times we miss most...

None the less, its Friday & we wanted to share our highlights of the week. {Two in one week! We're on a roll!}

Don't worry though, we have more content we plan to share with you; we just have to get used to this whole blogging thing. ;)

1. Friday, we celebrated with family & friends as Jenna's husband Nicholas graduated from the Police Academy. The room was decorated with vintage police photographs of Nick's grandfather & a custom mug shot wall for Instabooth shots. We sang "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow" & spent quality time with good friends reminiscing about the past & getting to know new ones! Again, Nicholas we are so beyond proud of you & are so excited for this journey of yours!

{a more detailed post coming soon!}

2. Saturday officially kicked off wedding & event season for us! We were honored to be a part of Matt & Ciara's wedding at The Rosen Shingle Creek. We also had the opportunity to partner with another local wedding planning company, Pearl White Events, & were blown away by their professionalism. It's amazing what can be accomplished when you work with professionals willing to go above & beyond for a client. All hands were certainly on deck!

{a more detailed post coming soon!}


3. Sometimes the best parties are those that consist of no decorations, yummy cake, & great laughs. On Sunday, Cohban & Madison were dedicated at Faith Outreach Church. I believe one of the greatest ways to experience God's love is through the gift of your children. Life before my two little one's is hard to remember, & I'd rather not. God created Coh & Maddie Lu in His perfect image & I was so overjoyed to watch them be dedicated back to Him. Afterwards, we shared some good quality time with our immediate family looking at pictures of the kids over the years, and enjoying quality time with them.

{from the desk of Jenna}

4. Have you ever met someone & knew immediately how genuine they were? That's exactly how we felt after meeting with Ali of Ali Lee Artistry on Tuesday. We love everything she stands for and everything she has planned for the future. Not to mention, her makeup was flawless & had us wondering if she noticed how quickly we had applied ours that morning. We are looking forward to working with her in the very near future and highly recommend her services if you're in need.

5. We were excited as we hit the send button to a good friend of ours, Kristin. She met with us not too long ago & told us about her amazing news of planning to launch an Event Planning company as well. We worked closely with her trying to create a brand that brought all her dreams to life- & we were so excited to do just that this week! We will let her do the honors of sharing her new logo & launch of her new company. Congratulations Kristin, we are so excited for you!

Better Late Than Never ?

Confession: This post was intended for last Friday {as in the 21st of February}. Needless to say, we had quite the week & when it came down to event time, we had to prioritize. The best part? We had this written in time but never got around to actually posting it. And now it's after 10pm on the following Monday. Guess we can't do it all, after all.

So here it is {minus a few lines that are now irrelevant} ... our High Five For Friday! <<original post title

....Because we are firm believers in ending the week on a high note, we decided to link up with The Lauren Elizabeth & share our top five highlights of the week. Don’t be afraid to join the party!

1.       We launched our website one week ago today! Not only is this #1 on our list for the week, it’s #1 for our accomplishments thus far. If only it could truly tell you the story from thought process to fruition. By any means, it was not any easy task. It’s not much help either when you’re dealing with two women who know exactly what they want & aren’t willing to settle. {Where there’s a will, there’s a way.} Even if it means having an impromptu sleepover & staying up until 2am the morning of the launch to make sure it all goes according to plan.

Thank you, again, to all our supporters! You make our hearts smile & motivate us to keep doing what we’re doing.

 

oh! and it seems our Valentines finally made their way to their recipients {only a couple days late}!

 

2.       We spotted our latest Valentine’s Day {Bee in a Box} at Ashley Brooke Designs ice cream social she hosted for all her ABD gals on Valentine's Day. She had us wishing we had planned a Gal-entine's Day with our beloved ladies so we guess we'll have to do so next year!

 

      On a side note, we’re glad the rain last week didn’t hold us back from taking the opportunity to finally meet the lovely Ashley Brooke in person during her pop up shoppe at West Elm Orlando. She is as sweet as can be {& the items in her shop are too cute for words}.

3.     Tuesday was another GORGEOUS day here in Orlando. Bright blue skies & enough sunshine to make you never want to leave the state. To top it off, we had the opportunity to meet with Alexandra Calvet of Calvet Couture Bridal in College Park. We arrived a few minutes early & took the liberty to do a little window shopping. From the romantic & fresh styles of Kelly Faetanini to the contemporary designs from Jenny Packham & the edgy yet feminine styles of Hayley Paige, we were trying to come up with any plausible excuse to try on wedding dresses. Not sure what our husbands would think…

All in all, if you’re still in search of The Dress, make some time {& an appointment} to see the collection first hand. You won’t be disappointed.

4.     On Wednesday we shared great conversation {& a few good laughs} with Bumby Photography & kicked off the start of an exciting project! We don't want to give away too many details but we can assure you it'll be GOOD! We know we'll make a great team with Bumby considering it took all three of us only about 10 minutes to sign onto Google Chat to meet!

The best part about working with Bumby? Her energy. It’s contagious! We love it & we love her.

 

5.     And finally but certainly not least, we celebrated with family as Jenna's husband Nicholas graduated from the Police Academy. We are so incredibly proud of his accomplishment & know great things are in store for his future. We cannot thank him enough for his continued sacrifices for our country, our community & our family.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Beautiful Mess

Thanks for stopping by! We can’t even begin to explain the assortment of emotions pouring out of our hearts and onto this screen as we prepare to invite you in & share a piece of our world with you.

 

If we had to guess, you have a few questions on your mind that sound something like “What’s The Busy Bee all about and how did you all get started”? Quite frankly, the more and more we’ve been asked that question, it really got us thinking, “how’d we wind up here anyway’?

 

It’s funny because it all truly started a long, long time ago when we were both under four feet tall, adorning matching outfits and rocking our lifelike baby dolls to sleep. {We’ll be honest, we’ve been blessed by many of God’s good graces and one of the greatest of those is Sisterhood.} So, we’ve been through a lot together; including enduring those anguishing teenage years and unsightly fashion statements. But lucky for us, we survived {and grew to be exceptionally close & like-minded}.

 

It didn’t really occur to us until recent years that we were destined to do this all along. Our family and some of our closest friends will attest to our creative nature and vast imaginations. We could transform a space {i.e. their living & dining rooms} into anything, really. Whether it was a restaurant, newsroom, shoe store, classroom or theatre, we didn’t miss a single detail. And Birthday parties? Forget it. Armed with a roll of streamers, a bag of balloons and a store bought banner {because that’s all we had to work with back then}, we worked our magic.

Fast forward to many years later and we began asking ourselves what career path we were passionate about AND could enjoy together {because we just can’t get enough of one another. oh, our poor husbands!}. And wouldn’t you know, the answer was sitting right under our noses. It wasn’t clear as day when we began our discussion but luckily we looked past our very first business venture, Sterling Silver Sisters- a house cleaning service. Ha! We can barely keep our own houses in order these days so we’ll just leave that {brilliant} idea to the younger versions of ourselves and smile at the fact that we were entrepreneurs at such a young age.

And then one day, in early 2013, it came to us. It was something we’d been doing all our lives; something we were in the middle of doing right then- planning one of our very owns’ wedding. When we nonchalantly mentioned the idea to close family, we were overwhelmed with encouragement and support and so, we began generating our business plan.

A few months later, Shannon said “goodbye” to the corporate world, Jenna bought a few new blazers and The Busy Bee Events & Design, LLC was born! With drive in our hearts and passion in our souls, we welcome you to take a peek inside and join us on our {long awaited} journey.

Through it all, we expect many laughs and quite a bit of hard work, sweat and {happy} tears. We expect countless ups and we expect a few downs. But really, we expect nothing at all. For, wherever this journey may take us, we expect nothing less than a beautiful mess.