a backyard wedding

Joyfull Wedding

2010-10-11T15:56:00.001-07:00

Two of my good friends are getting married next year. While I am not a photographer, I sometimes pretend to be, so I was happy (though nervous), to take engagement pictures for them.

They live in San Francisco, so we walked around their neighborhood (Castro & the Mission...lucky bums) taking pictures in random alleys, driveways, and of course, Delores Park

The lovely Ms Becca has started her own wedding blog, Joyfull Wedding, so I thought I'd send y'all over there if you are looking for new inspiration in your wedding planning (I obviously don't post much here anymore!).

Cute bridesmaid dresses

2010-09-22T08:25:00.000-07:00

I thought these dresses were really cute, and since bridesmaid dresses are near impossible to find I thought I'd point out that Vivat Veritas is making some adorable dresses (and will custom make them for bridesmaids).

Many of them have really cute backs, like so:

They're all around $75 which seems pretty reasonable for a custom dress that (at least in my opinion is re-wearable).

Grosgrain is giving away a gift certificate for $50 towards the store, so head on over there and maybe you can cut down the cost even more!

You've Won!

2010-03-20T00:25:00.000-07:00

Thank you all for entering the Offbeat Bride giveaway!

Random.org has spoken, and Nicole, you are our winner! Please contact me with your contact info!

Nicole writes, "My wedding is in July and I would love to have this book as I cram for a backyard, indie bride, DIY wedding!"

I hear ya on the cramming! Hope this helps!

For those of you who didn't win, you can purchase a copy of the book here.

Giveaway: Offbeat Bride

2010-03-11T17:29:00.000-08:00

When I was planning my wedding, I was given and (stupidly) purchased several books that ended up being a huge waste. I didn't really need someone to tell me that I was a horrible person registering for my honeymoon or how to match my flower girl's dresses to my man's tie to my bridesmaid's underwear so everything would be exactly perfect for the big day. Although I'm sure plenty of people think the folks who read Offbeat Bride are pretty weird, for me it was one of those blips of normalcy among all the wedding madness.

So, I'm very excited to be giving away a copy of Ariel Meadow Stallings' freshly updated Offbeat Bride: Creative Alternatives for Independent Brides.

If you'd like to enter to win a copy, post a comment here. One entry per person. Entries will close at 11:59pm on Friday March 19th, 2010. I am able to ship to the US or Canada.

Entries are now closed! Thank you for entering!

Giveaway coming soon!

2010-03-05T17:00:00.000-08:00

Stay tuned! A Backyard Wedding is going to be hosting a giveaway!

Reader Question: The Fascinator

2010-02-21T20:36:00.000-08:00

Reader Question: My question for you is specifically about your fascinator flower and veil. I love it! I'd seen and saved the image months ago but could never find where it was from. Did you make it/buy it? Do you have any advice about how I could make or buy the same?

---------

I made my fascinator and intended to do a tutorial ages ago, but after attempts to make fascinators for a few friends I realized I couldn't recreate what I did well enough to feel comfortable sharing my methods. But, with the help of a few other tutorials, I'm going to do a quick write up of what I did here.

To start with, this tutorial seems pretty good, as does this one. If what I'm writing makes no sense, maybe try one of those?

Both are similar to what I did, in that i started with a felt base (mine was two layers glued together). I then glued my first layer of feathers down and waited for them to dry, then my second layer of feathers and let them dry.

For the flower I took apart a fake flower I liked the shape of and used it as a template to cut out new "petals" from raw silk I owned (you could just use a pre-made flower, but I liked the color/texture of the silk I had). I sewed and used a tiny bit of glue to attach the longer feathers to the center of the flower, and then sewed the stones I used (they were actually stone beads) through the center of the petals to stick them all together. I wrapped ribbon around the top of a hair comb and sewed that to the felt on the bottom of the fascinator.

The veil was actually entirely separate. For that I removed a piece of vintage veiling from one of the way too many vintage hats I own. I scrunched up one side of it until I liked the shape, sewed that together with white thread, and then attached it to my hair using bobby pins!

I did base my fascinator design on the ones made by k. autumn, so she'd be a good place to start if all of this looks totally overwhelming. One of my friends had a k. autumn fascinator and loved it. I will say it might be worth trying to do it yourself first if you are on a budget. I spent a total of about $15 making mine, and I know the pre-made ones run at least $100. Hope that helps!

San Telmo Loft has a website!

2010-01-02T18:01:00.000-08:00

I've sung the praises of the apartment we stayed at in Buenos Aires before, but they've recently started up a website for their rentals so I thought I'd give them another shout out. They are now located at http://santelmoloft.com.

Staying at the loft was a different experience than any other vacation rental or hotel I've ever stayed at. I think there is always a concern when you stay at a rental on vacation that you might be sacrificing quality or the helpful advice of hotel staff. Not so with San Telmo Loft. Best concierge service ever! (Although it feels funny to call what they provided a "service," as I now think of Angela as a friend). While the plane fare makes it hard to get back down to South America, it will happen sometime soon enough, and when it does we will absolutely stay with them again!

This would make an adorable wedding dress

2009-11-27T11:55:00.001-08:00

One of the weddings that was most influential to me in planning my backyard wedding was that of Sarai of Sweet Sassafras. She now makes the most beautiful patterns, and one of her recent would make a darling wedding dress. In fact, I suspect that she knows it considering the styling.

Anniversary and research

2009-09-28T12:49:00.001-07:00

P and I celebrated our first anniversary last week while camping in the Southwest.

It was a fun week, particularly since I'd been working in Texas for over a month so we hadn't seen each other since early August!

In other news, I got an email today from a grad student looking for engaged couples to participate in a research study. I'm not totally sure what the study is about, but I thought I'd help her out an pass along the message. If anyone contacts her and it ends up being something totally crazy, let me know and I'll pull this.

"Engaged volunteers needed!

I am looking for volunteers for a study of attitudes towards marriage and parenthood among engaged couples. The study consists of a 25-30 minute online survey. To qualify for the study, you must be 20-35 years old, live in the U.S., and plan to marry or have a commitment ceremony within the next 365 days. You and your romantic partner must not have children, and this must be the first marriage for both of you.

You can:

-Help a doctoral candidate;
-Increase the pool of scientific knowledge;
-Support research on marriage and families; and
-Spend some time thinking about your relationship!

I am working with Dr. Charlotte J. Patterson, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. This study has been approved by the University of Virginia Institutional Review Board #2009025800.

If you and/or your romantic partner are interested in participating or want further information, please email me at surveycouples@gmail.com. I will send you a link that you can use to access the study.

Thanks!

Cristina Reitz-Krueger
Doctoral Student
University of Virginia
(434) 243-8558
survey.couples@gmail.com"

Reader Question: Wedding Day Timeline

2009-07-22T19:10:00.001-07:00

Reader Question: I was wondering if you could post a timeline of the days leading up to the wedding. I am especially in search of one for the wedding day.

I'll have to work on a lead-up to the wedding timeline (I have one, but I want to fiddle with it a bit so it more accurately depicts what actually happened). So, for now, here is our wedding day timeline (including stuff other people were doing and stuff we (P and me) were doing). I've given the timeline that we thought we'd go by and made a note if that thing actually ended up happening at a later time.

An Illustrated Wedding Day Timeline

8:00 am - Breakfast at the B&B (Wedding party plus P & me)
9:30 am Meet at house to continue set up -Menfolk, plus my parents and some assorted family
9:30 am Women at B&B for hair, getting ready, finishing up flowers w/photographer (we had our hair person come to us, which was just as cheap as us going there because she didn't have to pay for her stall rental).

11:00 am Prep salads & apps - Mom and assorted friends and family at the house
12:00 pm Men get ready for pictures at the house - Groomsmen plus P

1:o0 pm Meet for pictures at the B&B (Wedding party plus us)

3:30 pm Back to house for family pictures - Us, wedding party, family
4:15 pm Set up apps & drinks in backyard and water in front - Designated friend helpers
4:30 pm People arrive, greet people - Everyone

5:00 pm Ceremony starts - We based this on when we thought it would start cooling down.

6:00 pm Drinks, apps, and fun

6:45 pm Buffet starts (Actually ended up starting around 7:15 pm)

7:30 pm Cut pie (Dinner actually ended up taking longer than we thought so this actually happened around 8:30)

7:30 pm Dancing music (Actually ended up starting a bit after 8:30--immediately after cake/pie).

We wrapped up just around midnight, though most folks were gone by then and it was mostly the people were were spending the night there after about eleven or so.

Reader Question: How many toilets is enough?

2009-06-21T14:43:00.000-07:00

A version of a question I'm commonly asked by readers:

Question:
I am planning on having my wedding ceremony and reception in my parent's backyard. I was wondering if you have any advice on bathrooms. We are planning on having about 150 guests and my parents only have 1 restroom. Rather than having all the guests go all over the house looking for a bathroom, we were wondering if you had any suggestions or if 1 bathroom would suffice.

My answer:

We had this debate as well. My parent's bathroom is sort of tempermental so we ended up renting a toilet. It actually wasn't gross at all (it was the rental company's special "wedding toilet") and one was plenty for the 100 guests we had. I was just at another wedding that had around 120 guests and their 1 toilet was a lot busier than ours seemed, but the line was never too long (maybe 2 people at most). I'd say you could probably get by with one if you trust your plumbing!

Wildflower Weddings

2009-05-31T12:51:00.000-07:00

I don't normally pimp particular companies on this blog, but I'm looking into covering my front yard with self-seeding wildflowers and came across American Meadows, a company that sells regional wildflower seed (including organic and native seed mixes).

On their website they have a whole section dedicated to including wildflowers in your wedding--throwing wildflower seeds instead of bird seed, rice, confetti or giving them as favors. Wildflowers are really easy to grow, so basically, throwing some seeds on the ground in the fall or spring (prime wedding season) could be enough to grow a meadow of wildflowers.

While I don't really condone wedding-specific marketing and we didn't include throwing things or favors in our wedding, I actually think that in our situation throwing wildflower seeds in my parents orchard could have been really nice and would have been a nice reminder of the wedding orchard for years to come.

Have any of you used wildflower seeds in your wedding in this way?

How to let your friends know you are having a quaker ceremony...

2009-05-20T11:56:00.000-07:00

Why hello again...

I've sort of been out of the wedding blogging loop for a bit now, but since wedding season is upon us, and I have some things to post from a wedding I attended last weekend, I thought I'd answer a few questions that people have been pestering me about!

(Just kidding, the pestering is a welcome thing!)

I get a lot of emails asking me how we let our friends & family know our ceremony would be open to (and really depend on) their public comment. For the most part our guests have internet and were looking at our wedding website for information about our wedding, so the first thing we did was to post this page on our website:

While we are not Quakers, we will be holding our wedding ceremony as an edited version of a Quaker Friends Meeting, or Quaker ceremony. After we say our promises to each other, our guests will have an opportunity to say something nice before we exchange rings. Heartfelt toasts or excerpts from texts are examples of what you might prepare for the ceremony. Messages may be literal or metaphorical, and about anything appropriate to the joy and solemnity of the occasion—love, family, marriage, life, or what you will.

Please keep your message relatively short (no more than a few minutes) so that all those who would like to speak will have a chance to do so without the ceremony going on for hours!

Wikipedia says this about Quaker ceremonies:

Since traditionally Friends have no clergy, there is no one person to “marry” them. Instead they declare themselves married before God and those gathered. Usually, there are no bridesmaids or other special roles in the wedding other than that of bride and groom.

The couple then signs the Quaker wedding certificate which, for the purposes of the meeting, means they are now married. All those present are invited to share messages with the gathered meeting as they feel led (as in any other Meeting for Worship, see main article on the Society of Friends). At the close of worship all those present at the meeting are asked to sign the wedding certificate as witnesses. Often the certificate is hung prominently in the home of the couple as a reminder of the promises they made, and of the people with whom they shared that moment of their lives.

Since some of our guests don't have internet, we also casually spread the word to our friends and family and asked that they pass the message along to other family members and friends. We didn't really go out of our way to push this, but we knew the word was getting around a bit.

Finally, at the ceremony we had our officiant/friend say this:

At the beginning of the ceremony, the bride and groom will stand and exchange vows. After this, anyone may stand and speak if so moved. While messages are welcome, periods of silence are expected and are a time for reflection.

If you would like to speak, please stand as the last person finishes. Messages may be literal or metaphorical, and about anything appropriate to the joy and solemnity of the occasion—love, family, marriage, life, or what you will.

A few people who hadn't prepared anything did stand at this time to say something quick. Some of these spontaneous speeches were some of the best, so I'm happy to report that even if people don't get the message to speak, they might do so anyway! I think a key part of this working was mentioning that periods of silence are part of the process. There weren't any super long pauses, but it allowed for pause without that signaling the end of the ceremony, giving people a bit of time to reflect and build up the courage to talk.

I went to a wedding over the weekend that had an open component to the ceremony and while it was lovely, it didn't work quite as well as it did at P and my wedding. I have a few thoughts on why that might be that I thought I'd share for the sake of future quaker weddings:

First, they had a very substantial ceremony surrounding the open part that was powerful all on it's own. Our ceremony really was the quaker component, so people hadn't been sitting for more than a few minutes before we opened it up. So if you want to make your wedding open, either keep the rest of the ceremony relatively short or do the open part in the beginning.

Their wedding day was also blazing hot so I think people were uncomfortable sitting in the sun. They couldn't have done much about that, but a shady, or otherwise comfortable area for the ceremony (if it's outdoors) probably would be best for this type of ceremony.

Finally, I don't know that people were prepared for the pauses that happen in a quaker ceremony. People seemed uncomfortable when nobody was talking, so that may have led to a premature end to the open speaking.

Despite all that, people did speak at their wedding and said some amazing things. I just know there were people in attendance who might have said something more if they'd been more comfortable.

Hope that helps and feel free to keep the questions coming!

Honeymoon Recap: Tigre

2009-03-25T06:53:00.001-07:00

While Tigre isn't really in Buenos Aires city, it's in the BA province and you'll most likely go as a day trip. It wasn't actually on the top of our list of places to visit, but after all the stress of the first few days of our honeymoon we needed something relaxing, where I wasn't looking over my shoulder every five seconds. So we decided that a day trip to Tigre would fit the bill, and it ended up being one of our favorite days in Argentina.

To get there, I recommend taking the subway to the Retiro station. When you get to Retiro follow the signs from the subway station to the train station and buy a train ticket to Tigre. The train ride takes around a half hour and is very interesting if you like seeing how people live in the suburbs. It's actually a fascinating mix of shacks, old mansions, and regular people houses. You'll get to see lots of graffiti art as well, if you're into that sort of thing (which we are).

When you arrive at the Tigre station (the last stop on the line), if you walk straight out of the station and down the street you will see the boat docks on your left. There are many boat options in Tigre including catamaran eco-tours, not so eco-tours, kayak rentals, and the water taxi. If you go into the tourist center they will help you pick a tour and figure out when they run. The problem with the tours (for us) is that while they may go further into the delta they don't actually stop at any of the islands. So for something like 50cents each we decided to just hop on one of the water taxis.
I actually assumed that the really amazing old wood boats must be tour boats, and that the water taxis would be something ugly, but the wood ones are the taxis. That made me really really happy. Because the taxis are mainly stopping at private islands, you want to make sure and get on one that will take you to a place you can get off. We decided on Tres Bocas, because it seemed the easiest. But that taxi wasn't leaving for an hour so we walked around Tigre a bit.

The actual town of Tigre didn't really excite me. It seemed to be mostly tourist shops and then the amusement park and casino. The Tigre Market is similarly packed with shops selling nicknack's and not a whole lot of food or other things you might want at a market if you actually lived there.

When we got back to the dock it was really hard to tell exactly what boat we were getting on. I recommend annoying the hell out of the man who works on the dock by asking him every time a boat pull up if it's yours. Unless you are smarter than us and can figure out a way to tell what boat is going where.

The views from the taxi were amazing. There are stunningly beautiful old rowing clubs lining the river, funny campgrounds that we promised we'd spend a night at if we ever go back to Argentina, and lots of funky old river houses. The taxi stops frequently, but you'll know when you get to Tres Bocas (it's where the other tourists get off). Once you are there, you can eat at one of the few places to grab a bite. We went to the place right off the boat, because we wanted to eat on the water. While the food wasn't amazing, it was nice to be able to hang out and watch people on the river. Plus there were cute puppies running around that took a liking to me.

I may or may not have lured them all under my table with french fries. Paul was pretty sure I got diseases from them, but I seem to be doing okay.

After we ate we walked around the island. Which is basically all there is to do here. No shopping, no museums, just walking.
It's pretty swampy in the delta, so wear shoes you don't mind getting muddy.

I loved all the houses. Each one was totally different in its own funky way. And there were flowers everywhere. I kind of went insane sniffing them all.

Those red roses were my favorite. I'm not normally a rose person, but those are the best smelling roses I've ever laid my nose on. Mmmm. I spent a good long time trying to figure out if I could propagate a clipping while traveling through Argentina. The answer to that is no--so now I have a lovely dried clipping of the rose.

When you are ready to leave the island head back to the dock. They will give you a schedule of when the taxis back to Tigre happen, but it didn't seem to us that they were actually on time. You might have to wait a bit at the dock, but again, it's pretty so it doesn't seem like such a hardship.
When you get back to Tigre, just head back to the station and do the reverse of how you got there. Again, Retrio is the end of the line on the way back, so if you fall asleep, they'll likely kick you off when you get there. Then again, if you fall asleep you may not have your bag anymore, so I'd force yourself to stay awake, though it can be difficult after a day on the river.

Honeymoon Recap: San Telmo, BA

2009-03-19T09:50:00.000-07:00

I'm not really sure what the best way to go about explaining our honeymoon is. We were gone for three weeks, so a lot happened and my memory of the trip is sort of blurry (due to the traumatic events that started it off and my subsequent fear of taking pictures in public).

So...I think I'll just pick places we went and do a quick write-up of each area.

First off--San Telmo. The loft we stayed in (the one I gushed about in my previous post) was located in San Telmo. We stayed there a week, so we spent a lot of time walking around the neighborhood.

San Telmo is one of the older neighborhoods in Buenos Aires. It's supposedly the home of tango, but there is a lot more going on there than just dancing. In fact, one of the things that we didn't due in Argentina was go tango dancing.

Have I mentioned that I was sort of paranoid about going out at night after being robbed our first night? I should point out that while San Telmo sort of gets a bad rap in terms of pickpocketing and other crime, I did not get robbed in San Telmo. I was robbed in Palermo SoHo--the fancy schmancy neighborhood! But walking around San Telmo at night actually felt relatively safe--on par with walking around San Francisco at night.

Our Picks in San Telmo

Food

Cafe San Juan- Cafe San Juan is a family-run, family-friendly restaurant that serves very high-quality food in a relaxed atmosphere. The restaurant is open to the kitchen so you can see the skate bumper stickers all over the fridge and the cooks wearing backwards baseball caps while they cook your amazingly delicious rabbit (or whatever you decide to order). They are cash only, which we didn't realize until we arrived, and since there isn't an ATM nearby we didn't go all out here and ended up sharing an entree to make sure we had enough money to pay for our meal. We had a momentary panic when our shared entree came out with two full portions of the rabbit (we spent a good five minutes freaking out, trying to decide whether something we said in our broken Spanish could have been interpreted as us both ordering the same thing). Turns out they just split their portions very, very generously!
Highly recommend!

Don Ernesto-A casual, but super high-energy, parrilla that seems to cater to both locals and tourists. For the quality of the food, the prices here are amazing. The steak, sausage, salad, and potatoes we ordered here totaled around $30 US, with wine. It's nothing fancy, but it's a steak house, so that's kind of refreshing.

The best $5 Steak I've ever had.

Los Loros-We had our first meal in Argentina at Los Loros--pre-robbery--so I had a wonderful time here. It's a nicer restaurant with prices that match (but will still seem insanely reasonable compared to US prices). The food is elegant and fresh. I'd imagine that if this were in the US they'd be selling it as a seasonal food sort of place. It's got a nice bistro feel and the atmosphere is upscale without seeming at all stuffy. You could show up in jeans and a tee-shirt and nobody would bat an eye.

Outside Origen on a beautiful night

Origen-This is my favorite lunch and light meal stop in San Telmo. The pizzas and salads are highly recommended. And the food is organic. Very casual with outdoor seating that's kind of wonderful on a spring night.

Pride Cafe-We ate breakfast at Pride Cafe several times while in San Telmo. People in Argentina don't seem to eat breakfast. And they don't take their coffee to go. So knowing about tiny little Pride Cafe was essential to us not having to cook or eat medialunas for breakfast every morning. The food is good, the coffee is excellent, and the staff is really nice. Also, if it's not obvious, they are a GLBT shop so if you are looking for local info on that scene, this is a great resource.

Drink

El Federal-This seems to be the go-to place for a beer and a snack in San Telmo. Every guidebook talks about it and it always seemed busy. While I liked the look of the place--it's old and funky--the food was boring and the service was terrible. People all around us were having trouble getting the waiter's attention after sitting for very very long periods of time. And while I don't assume that every waiter in Argentina should know English, this place caters to tourists and this guy seemed annoyed as get-out that we were struggling with the menu. I'd go with a group for a beer or something.

This is why people love El Federal.

Gibraltar-I love this place. Yes, after getting robbed I was seeking out people I could talk to--and loads of people here speak English (including the Englishman owner). But it's also just a nice, fun pub. Great selection of beer, fun atmosphere, and great pub food.

Other

Mercado De San Telmo-While the Sunday market is a big to-do, the permanent market in the center of San Telmo is also worth visiting. There are several antique stands up daily, lots of food stalls, and other odds & ends. I bought antique buttons here. Lots and lots of buttons.

Feria De San Telmo-The Sunday market is like a craft fair, an antique fair, a market, a series of parades and a music festival all combined into one event. It's amazing. Start early, go all day. I didn't want to leave. It seemed like every time we got tired a new drum group went past and lured us in. Or we found another street of stalls and music we hadn't walked down.

I wish I knew how to get the video I took of this guy off my camera and onto my computer (it's still on there). His marionette show was fabulous and hilarious.

Plaza Dorrego-If you want to see Tango just hang out near the Plaza Dorrego in San Telmo. People perform almost all day long and offer lessons. The woman we rented the apartment from also recommended Torquato Tasso for Tango in San Telmo.

The street art in San Telmo is amazing. One of our favorite things to do was to just walk around looking at it. Though I was mostly afraid to take pictures, as taking a picture of street art is how I got us robbed at gunpoint (did I mention that we were robbed?).

So that's about that. There is a ton of shopping to be done in San Telmo (both at the markets and in shops), but I imagine that you know your own style better than me, so I'm not going to name names. Lots of antique shops, artsy housewares type places, and all sorts of clothing stores. Oh, and stores that sell baby deer chairs.

I kind of love them because I'm a bad, bad person.

The Honeymoon Returns

2009-03-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

While I normally consider myself somewhat of a homebody, I've been having major wanderlust lately. Actually, I kind of blame the start of my wanderlust on the last day of our honeymoon. While we were waiting for our plane back to the states, we hung out with a newfound friend in Buenos Aires--watched a polo game from her roof, ate good food, and mingled with lots of expats and another young couple who spend half their year traveling.

While the reality of me living internationally is that after a few months I'd be crying on a daily basis needing to see my family, I have to admit I'm a little jealous of the expats and the perpetually traveling couple. It hasn't helped that I became Facebook friends with several of the people involved and have spent the las four months watching them explore Argentina. I want to go somewhere. Dang house and dog.

So, as a way to put to good use the moping and dreaming that I've been doing about wanting to go somewhere (but not being able to), I figured I'd post a bit more about our honeymoon.

So to start with, I already posted a bit about our stay in Buenos Aires and Iguazu. I'll write more, but that's a place to start if you haven't already read those posts.
One thing I've had several questions about is the loft we rented in Buenos Aires. I don't blame you guys--it was amazing. The building is beautiful. It's in a great location. The loft itself is funky and comfortable. It's a great deal. And the people who rent it will quickly become your friends (if you want that). Who do you think we hung out with the last day we were in Argentina?

So here you all go.

I feel strangely territorial about it. Which I think is testament to the fact that as soon as you walk in the door it feels like home. That explains why the traveling couple I wrote about spent the last four months living there (they moved in right after we left), although I think they planned on staying about half that much time.

If the loft is booked, they also have a new pad in the same building. It looks wonderful and is slightly larger than the loft.

Both are $400 US/week (I think), a great deal when you price out how much a nice hotel would cost.

So scram! Go! Book the loft!

(me making a sad face)

And tell Angela that Paul and Katie said Hi!

Playing with Pictures

2009-03-15T19:35:00.000-07:00

Paul and I are sick this weekend, so we've been moping around, taking turns trying to get stuff done around the house.

In between all of the being sick and the moping, I've discovered Photoshop actions (mostly compliments of Pioneer Woman).

So using her "heartland" action, this photo of Paul, became this:

And this picture of us in front of the steel mill, was done up in Seventies style.

And one of the pictures of us in front of an old hotel, that I didn't really like, is much improved with a seventies action.

I'm sure you can do something similar on Flickr, using Picnik, but if you don't want to spring for that, and you already own Photoshop, this is an easy way to edit photos without having to pay anything extra.

Doing dishes

2009-03-11T20:39:00.000-07:00

My favorite bit of wedding planning was spending weekends gathering the mismatched dishes we used for our dinner and dessert. I won't say it wasn't a ton of work, we literally spent almost a year of weekends working on it, but since Paul and I both love going thrift store and garage sale shopping, it was worth the extra effort for us.

Since we were inviting 130 or so people to the wedding, we collected enough dishes for roughly that many folks. That meant 130 dinner plates, 200 or so small plates for dessert and appetizers (we figured not everyone would take their own plate), 130 dinner forks, dessert forks, and knives, some spoons for sugar & coffee stirring, 100 or so coffee cups, and around 250 glasses for water and wine. Crazy!

Collecting the Dishes

We probably could have collected the dishes faster but we had a few rules for ourselves.

First, while we originally wanted just china, after realizing the limitations of that, we expanded our search to dishes that primarily included white, brown, green, and yellow in their patterns. We wanted things that looked vintage, so we mostly avoided things that looked like they'd been created in the last few years.

Second, we rarely bought something that cost more than it would have cost to rent that dish. So that generally meant buying things on sale. Luckily our local thrift stores have frequent sales and color tag 50% of sales daily, so we were able to do this without too much problem. If you are just doing this for aesthetic reasons, you could probably pick up your dishes much faster than if you are also doing it to help your budget. We did sell most of our dishes after the wedding so we made up some of the money that way as well.

Third, we tried to get some of the dishes on Freecycle (for free). That meant driving around town picking things up. Again, if you aren't concerned about cost, you could eliminate this and save time.

Preparing the Dishes for the Wedding

Before the wedding, we had to wash all of the dishes. This took two full days. At home, we soaked all of the dishes in big tubs on our lawn. Neighbors thought we were insane hosing off dishes on our lawn, but we found that the sooner we got the price tag stickers off the dishes, the easier it was and our kitchen was too small to unload that many dishes.

Of course you can't really get dishes clean on the lawn, so after a quick rinse and removing the sticker, we would box them up. We drove all the boxes up to my parent's house (where the wedding was held) and a few weeks before the wedding we spent almost a full day running them all through their dish washer before separating them into boxes for each table. You can see pictures of the boxes piled high on the post I wrote about it.

Setting up Mismatched Dishes

One of the challenges of using mismatched dishes is how to actually use them at the wedding. While I've seen people use one pattern at each table, we decided to mix it up more than that. But we found that it looked not as good (to us) to use both china and stoneware on one table. So we stuck with mismatched china on certain tables and mismatched stoneware on others.
I actually handpicked the specific dishes for each table based on who would be sitting there. Again, crazy.

Cleaning Up

Edit to Add: After people ate we had a few wood crates (purchased for cheap from JoAnn's Fabric), set out next to the trash cans. A few people were in the know about this ahead of time and set the tone for others to do the same. Some people left their dishes on the tables, which we just picked up the next morning during clean-up.

One of the hardest parts of doing your own dishes is that you actually have to do your own dishes after the wedding. We could have hired someone to do it, but we decided to take matters into our own hands. So on Sunday, after most people had left, we spent the afternoon rinsing off all the dishes, throwing out the broken ones, and sorting them into piles (garage sale, keep, give to friends). Honestly, we didn't wash them that well. We basically rinsed in soapy water, hosed off (yup, the hose again), and dried them in the sun.

We actually use the dishes from our wedding as our house dishes now (and we have some of our favorites of the china saved for dinner parties). It's kind of a nice, daily reminder of the wedding.

And one final note...If we had to do it over we'd rent the silverware. There are 20 knives at every thrift store for every 1 fork. And thrift store silverware isn't cheap and is often kind of gross. Also, some thrift stores package the silverware so you are forced to buy a big bag of knives to get three or four forks. Annoying!

No bugs were invited to my wedding

2009-03-09T10:53:00.000-07:00

There could be no bugs around and a mosquito will find me. There will be twenty people standing around with not a single bug bite, and I'll have a mosquito bite for every one of them. I do not like bugs.

So when you asked if we had a plan for how to keep bugs off our guests, I think my first thought was that I'm the best bug repellent anyone could ask for. They all fill up on me and leave others alone. But obviously we needed a better plan than that, particularly since my parent's have a creek in their backyard that creates a larger than normal mosquito population.
The first thing we did was to have the torches we used to light the yard contain citronella oil. Not the most pleasant smell, but it served its purpose. Second we set up a small table of bathroom supplies near our toilet (tampons, lotion, condoms, and...bug spray). We bought a natural, non-cancer causing, reproductive-harm-inducing, spray from our natural food co-op.

I've tried several natural bug repellents and All Terrain Herbal Armor is the best that I've found. I even took it with me when I went to the jungle on my honeymoon and stayed (mostly) mosquito bite free.

So that's what we did to keep the bugs out. And for the most part it seemed to work. I didn't get a single bug bite all night!

On my feet

2009-03-04T16:27:00.000-08:00

By far the most frequently asked question I've received from readers about my wedding is where I found my red shoes.

The shoes don't say on them and since the box is long gone I wasn't really sure. Until person number one-hundred or so asked me today and I realized I should stop sending y'all to Anthropologie, begging them to sell you shoes that I'm sure they haven't had in months. So I got my act together and realized they came with a cloth bag that I was sure I didn't toss. I dug around a bit, and Ta Da! I have answers...

The shoes are by UK designer Miss L Fire. And while I didn't see my particular shoes on the website, she makes some other dang cute shoes.

Hope that helps!

I'm Practical

2009-03-04T08:31:00.000-08:00

Lovely, smart, funny Meg of A Practical Wedding is featuring Paul and me today as one of her wedding graduates!

Of the blogs I went to for inspiration and motivation to keep going before our wedding, Meg ranks pretty high up there.

Thanks for the love!

PS-I've been blown away by the response to the last post. Thanks for saying hi!

oh dear!

2009-03-02T22:36:00.001-08:00

I added my own blog to my Google reader today to see how it looks there, and Google says that there are over 200 people subscribed to this blog. Really? Are there 200 of you out there hiding, not commenting, reading about my wedding?!

That makes me feel kinda shy.

Love,

Katie

DIY: Polaroid Photobooth

2009-02-27T16:46:00.000-08:00

Like many who have come before us, we really wanted a photobooth at our wedding. But, the cost of renting a "real" booth was far too high, so we went diy.

We wanted people to take pictures for us to keep, but also be able to take some home, so we decided to go the Polaroid route. We already had the camera (we found it by the side of the road, in a junk pile, right after we started dating).

Of course this came right around when they decided to take the film off the market, so the price of Polaroid film shot way up. We bought some of the film before the crisis, but we ended up scavenging eBay for most of it. All in all I believe we purchased around 200 shots worth of film for 100 people (we didn't use all of it). I've also heard that Fuji is now making Polaroid 600 film, so that should make it easier for those of you who want to try this.
While some people have a designated picture taker, we knew our friends would be all over taking Polaroids so we figured they could switch off being picture taker and model. That worked out just fine and the booth was literally full all day while people were setting up, all night, and into the next day as we were cleaning up!
To make the backdrop for the photobooth we purchased two sheets of fabric (three yards of each). One was a regular sized fabric, and the other was upholstery fabric from Ikea. I'd recommend upholstery fabric because the heavier weight hangs better and the extended width allows more people to stand in front of it.

To our advantage, we were able to just tack our fabric to my parent's deck and use their porch lights to light it. You could also make a wood frame to attach the fabric to, hang a line from trees and attach the fabric to that, or nail it to a wall.

On the deck we put a table with the film, a board for people to post pictures on, and several costume items. For the costumes we used things I had lying around my house, plus a few purchased pairs of crazy $1 glasses. And yes, I have hats and fur coats and eye patches just lying around. The felt mustaches I made.

And of course, as some of these pictures exhibit, our photographer couldn't help but snap a few pictures of people using the booth as well. They loved it!

DIY: Gocco Invitations

2009-02-26T14:48:00.000-08:00

How did I not write about our invitations? Perhaps I blocked them out because they were so. much work. After they left my house I was happy to have them out of sight, out of mind.

Our invites were entirely designed and created by little ol' me (using purchased art...I'm not an artist!). P. bought me a gocco for my birthday so the invites were really my first project using the gocco. I highly recommend practicing a bit more before you create your invites. The gocco isn't hard to use once you get the hang of it, but we burned through several frames and lots o' ink before we figured out how to burn the screens to create clean, crisp pictures on the other side.

Gocco, straight out of the box, with computer tutorial.

There were papers everywhere. Everywhere.

Our invitations had four components. The actual invite, the response card, an info sheet, and the envelope.
This image is probably the closest to the actual color of the paper (which came from Paper Source). For the envelope I handwrote a screen using the gocco pen and then printed them so we wouldn't have to handwrite a return address on each envelope. As a sidenote, we no longer live at that address so good luck stalking me there :)

While I wanted to use vintage stamps, that ended up being a cost that I couldn't justify. My way of getting around using the flag stamps (the only stamps available when I was sending out invites), was to use a variety of smaller amount stamps. This involved running around to four post offices who looked at me like I was a crazy person for buying hundreds of 5cent stamps.

Our invitations were simple, using an image from Nikki McClure, one of my absolute favorite artists. The text is in a dark brown color, with gold ink for the image.

Our info cards used two screens: one for the image done in gold ink and another for the text, done in a raspberry color. We intended to have driving directions on the back of this sheet, but for some reason could not get the screen to print clearly so after several ruined screens we just scrapped the idea and stuck directions on the website.

You may notice that on our reply card we didn't really make it clear that people should still write their name if they weren't planning on attending. Several people responded with "no" responses and no names. We had to guess based on postage and process of elimination who those people were. Kind of a pain.

So all in all I really liked how they turned out. They aren't professional. They aren't letter pressed. But they were fairly cheap. For save the dates, all the gocco supplies, paper, and stamps we spent a total of $310.

And, since I'm sure someone will ask, here is our save the date. We made my sister take the pictures of us lying under my parent's apple trees holding blank pieces of paper, but wouldn't tell her why. She thought we were crazy. I added in the text after the fact. We printed them using VistaPrint, with a discount code, and I think we paid around $15 total.

Thanks for all the questions! Keep them coming!

BYOB Drinks

2009-02-25T13:01:00.000-08:00

A few people have asked about what we did for drinks, so y'all get another post. Actually, you can keep having posts if you keep asking questions! Ask and you shall receive.

Since we were not hiring someone to watch the drinks, we didn't want to make them too complicated. We decided to do bottled drinks for non-booze drinkers, and beer, wine, and one special drink for those who wanted to get a bit crazier.

We actually had plans to use wine we'd made ourselves for the wedding. They even had cute, custom labels just for us, but it wasn't quite done in time. We put a few bottles out, but they are pretty horrid and headache inducing. So instead we made a last minute run to Trader Joe's where we picked up four cases of red wine and one case of white. We didn't do the Two Buck stuff, although I don't think it's a bad option if your guests don't really care about wine. Ours were all around $5-7/bottle, which seems to buy you decent wine if you are on a budget.

We had a few people bring their own, fancier bottles of wine to share at their tables. Our table had a few bottles of expensive wine that I'd saved for the wedding, though we also ended up drinking some of the cheap TJ's stuff (it wasn't bad).

The rest of the wine was set up on our drinks table, with all the cups and a few bottle openers. The kegs were in buckets next to the table (we had two pony kegs of local microbrews), and the non-alcoholic drinks were in a steel bucket on the ground next to the table as well.
For our extra drink we made vodka spiked sangria. All of our friends are big sangria drinkers so we knew it would go over well. Plus it's incredible easy to make. We threw several of the big juice bottles from Trader Joe's into a punch bowl with boxed wine, several glugs of vodka, and some frozen fruit. There was no particular science to it. One of my brideswomen made it pre-ceremony by tasting it as she went along until it seemed right. I did do some research before buying the boxed wine to find the good stuff.

For non-alocholic drinks we accompanied my mom and her CostCo card to CostCo to buy bulk Mexican Cokes, sparkling water, and Izze sparkling juices.

We also did regular and decaf coffee with dinner which we made in two regular drip coffee makers (my parent's and a borrowed one) and then put in the pretty press pots seen in the far corner of the picture below.
You can see in this picture that we had a box under the table for people to put empties in for later recycling. For the most part people were good about keeping the table clean, putting empty bottles down below, and generally keeping things nice.

Any other questions about drinks? Let me know!

I ran out of things to talk about!

2009-02-24T16:27:00.000-08:00

If anyone has questions, I'll write up more posts to answer them. And I might occasionally post about friend's weddings or other things I think up. But I'm really not sure what else to write about.

But, you are more than welcome to head on over to my regular blog to see what I'm up to.

DIY: Making Mason Jar Lamps

2009-02-04T09:04:00.000-08:00

Several people have asked how we created the mason jar candle holders. While I don't have the tools here to do a good step-by-step with pictures, here's what I've got using one of the already made holders.

Tools:
-Empty jars with labels removed
-Sand
-Tealights
-Wire (I *think* the wire we used was mostly 20 gage...we found two different spools of wire in my parent's garage, so we used that.)
-Wire cutters or planting sheers (something that will cut through the wire you have).
-Needlenose pliers

1. Wrap the wire around the jar, under the lip, leaving about an inch of slack in the wire and cut.
2. Twist the wire together to close the loop, but still make sure that the wire is a bit slack.

3. Cut another length of wire to use as the "hanger." Mine were all around a foot long, maybe a bit longer. We did different lengths so they'd hang at different levels. Bend the wire into a big "u" shape.

4. Twist the ends of the hanger wire so that they form a "u" facing out. The pictures show the ends closed already. I felt like having the hooks face out made them more securely attached to the lip wire, but maybe I was being crazy.

4. Hook the hanger wire onto the wire around the lip of the jar (this can be slightly tricky if you don't leave enough slack in the wire around the jar).

5. Tighten the lip wire by twisting it more with the pliers until it feels securely on there.
6. Close the hooks on the hanger wire with the pliers (the pictures show this step already done).

7. Fill with about an inch of sand and stick in a candle!

Let me know what questions you have. We used one of the long lighters to light everything so we could put the candles in ahead of time, but if you don't want to buy one of those you could just stick the candles in as you light them at the wedding.

Q&A: How do you light a backyard?

2009-02-03T09:57:00.000-08:00

The variety of ways we lit the yard are some of my more favorite design elements from our wedding. It's kind of scary to think about lighting a large yard, but it ended up being fairly easy and cheap.

Because we were trying to conserve power for the DJ equipment, we knew we couldn't go overboard with electric lights. So we started with candles. Each dinner table had three candles in jars or other assorted vintage glassware. The dessert table was filled up with candles as well.

Since we were trying to keep people from wandering off into the depths of my parent's yard we created a border around the lawn by hanging candles in mason jars from sheperd's hooks. The mason jars were acquired off of Freecycle, but they were basically used peanut butter and pasta sauce jars. And we found shepherd's hooks at JoAnns Fabric for really cheap last summer (they were something like 75% off). We're going to use both the hooks and the candle jars in our yard this summer.
Since we figured most people would be on or near the dancefloor by the time it was really dark, that was lit a few ways. First, we had torches around the edge of the pool & seating area. In a big tree that overhangs the dance floor we hung up more of the mason jars with candles in them.
My parents already had lights strung up around their patio and around the hot tub deck/DJ area so we turned those on as well. And of course we had the floating candles in the pool and the fire pit, which I'm still on a quest for a picture of!

For the main part of the yard, we rented white lights. We were originally going to buy lights, but renting long strands cost us around $2/strand, which was cheaper than anywhere we could purchase them.

My cousin and P. dug small holes in the lawn and stuck posts in the ground. I've seen people use buckets with sand or some other thing to weight down the posts, but digging holes seemed more secure. He attached the lights to the poles and the house and that was it! I think we rented four strands for the yard. Each strand was attached in three places (two posts and the house).

This last picture really seems to show most of the different lighting elements we used. Nothing was glaringly bright, but it had a nice glow to it.

Q&A: Did you have a backup plan for rain?

2009-02-02T08:32:00.001-08:00

I've had a few people ask if we had a backup plan for rain, considering our entirely outdoor wedding.

Those of you who have been around since the pre-wedding days will remember that no, we did not have a rain backup plan. Which in hindsight was kind of crazy. Really my only huge wedding panic was when I checked the ten day forecast and saw a 30% chance of rain on both Friday and Saturday. And it wasn't a small panic. It was a full-blown panic where I cried on the couch while my husband and mom tried to call every indoor venue in town to get them to agree to be backup and put a tent on hold kind of panic.

But I did learn a few things from the experience:

1) If you pick your wedding day specifically because it has never historically rained on that day (like me), keep in mind that global warming is making everything funky and still plan a backup. But chances are that it's not going to rain. In fact we were much more worried (and prepared) for a glaringly hot day, but the rain on Friday (it did rain a bit), cooled everything down so it actually ended up perfect.

2) The first tent rental company we called quoted us $3187 and wouldn't hold a tent without a deposit. That created more panic since our total wedding budget was $10k. My mom called our port-o-potty rental company because they'd been really nice and asked them if they knew of anyone else in town who rented tents. They gave us the number of a mom and pop tent rental company who quoted us $1000 for the same tent and told us that they were sure it wasn't going to rain so they'd hold the tent for me up until the day before the wedding for free (at which point they called me to congratulate me and my lack of rain). So call around. I know tents are usually insanely expensive, but sometimes going through referrals from other vendors works.

3) Finding an indoor venue to hold a space for you last minute is near impossible. Nobody who we got in touch with had room (or would admit to it).

If we had needed to, in a pinch we could have fit everyone into my parent's house (we would have put the furniture in the garage). It wouldn't have been the most comfortable wedding ever, but it would have worked.

So the bottom line is that I probably should have had some sort of backup plan, but that ultimately if there is a 2% chance of rain on your wedding day, it's probably not going to rain and you, like me, can probably squeak by without a backup.

Funny enough one of the most memorable things that was said at our ceremony was when our friend remarked that she'd been to several themed weddings that summer and that while our wedding didn't have a theme, if it did she'd say it was the glow of sunshine.

We've been married a year!

2009-01-29T10:18:00.000-08:00

Technically speaking anyway, yesterday was our one year anniversary. I've mentioned before that we were married before our wedding so that I could hop on P's health insurance. It also made other stuff that we did last year easier--like buying a house and generally combining finances.
While getting married at the courthouse in Sacramento is a very anticlimactic occasion (lots of filling out forms and listening to them talk about STI's and genetic defects in children), we still took some pictures and dressed up a bit.

My parents got married in the same spot when I was a baby (so they could get into family student housing...we're a very practical family), so they came along to be our witnesses. Did you know that you have to pay to have a witness if you don't bring your own?!? Sort of crazy.

Actually, I think that the hearts everywhere were just up because it was close to Valentine's Day, not for general wedding decor. When we went in I was sort of nervous that they'd think we were crazy for dressing up, but there were several other couples there and a few of them were in wedding gear. One woman even had this giant poofy 1980s wedding dress on!

While my parents took us out to dinner last year, we're feeling the whole recession thing right now so we stayed in last night, made dinner, and drank a bottle of nice wine that someone gave us as a wedding gift. Not a bad first anniversary (and we get another one in September!).

Parking

2009-01-22T14:11:00.000-08:00

Because our wedding was at a home, we had limited space for parking on site. One of the many dilemmas of having a backyard wedding.

Since shuttles from hotels weren't in our budget, we decided to ask the elementary school just down the street from my parent's home if people could park there. Honestly, I wasn't very hopeful. I can't imagine that it's great for liability to have a bunch of people parking on school grounds who will be attending a big party. But my mom asked, and surprisingly they were totally fine with it. They even put it on their office calendar in case any teachers showed up that day and were alarmed by the number of cars in the lot.

(School bus photo via Elizabeth Anne Designs)

When we sent out the invitations they included a quick note about where to park and mentioned that those who couldn't make the short walk were welcome to park in my parent's driveway.

All in all this worked out well, and might be a good option for some of you having an at-home wedding (or really any wedding with no on-site parking and a large parking lot nearby that you know will be empty on weekends).

Budget Dessert without Compromising Quality

2009-01-20T18:43:00.000-08:00

I posted before the wedding about our decision to serve both cake and pie at our wedding, but thought I'd do a quick recap of how we vastly over-ordered on dessert and still felt like we got a great deal.

First, you probably won't need near as much dessert as wedding websites and cake bakers would like you to believe. We had 100 people, and we kept hearing that six 8-inch cakes and six pies wasn't going to be enough.

I hid one pie for the next day, but we ended up having two full cakes left, and most of another pie. Our caterer cut everything up into those tiny slices and people didn't realize they could take more than one of them so that didn't help the matter much.

But I can't say I really minded having leftover cake and pie, so go ahead and over-order if you're like me! Do keep in mind that some venues won't let you take your leftovers home. It has to do with liability and often isn't negotiable, as my cousin found out when they dumped half her wedding cake.

But even with rampant over-ordering, having lots of individual desserts was much cheaper than ordering a wedding cake (even a simple one). Twelve desserts ended up costing at total of $270. And they weren't discount desserts either. The cakes we had are from the best bakery in Sacramento. I was afraid to even ask what their wedding cakes cost--I'm pretty sure they are at least $500 and up for the number of guests we had. Which really makes no sense if you consider the amount of cake we had. And all we sacrificed was the appearance of a big custom cake! And the pies were special ordered from a woman who used to bake for Chez Panisse, and made with fresh, local ingredients.

I'd highly recommend going this route if you are on a budget and looking for quality cakes. Just keep in mind that you might end up eating cake and pie every meal for a week afterward!

Details: Creating an outdoor seating area

2009-01-20T10:43:00.000-08:00

Paul and I had a very lazy weekend. He's been busy lately so he swore off work for all of Saturday AND Sunday. No work emails, no checking his blackberry, nothing. I was pretty impressed that he pulled it off. We spent the time going on a hike, cooking semi-elaborate meals, having friends over, and other odds and ends.

None of that is at all relevant to what I'm about to post, except for to say, that I've had a good excuse for not posting in a few days!

So one of the things that I knew I wanted at our wedding was an outdoor seating area. Couches, floor pillows, a fire pit, the works. Since our wedding was in my parent's yard, they offered to let me drag their living room furniture outside. Have I mentioned that I love how flexible my parents are?

I was given a Crate & Barrel gift card from my old office as an early wedding present, so I used that to buy a rug and some floor pillows that I knew we'd reuse in our house. And I lugged up a big chair I love, because I thought it would look cute in pictures (and I'm going to admit that is a crazy reason to bring a hundred pound chair anywhere).

We set the lounge up on the pool deck, which was located just close enough to the dance floor to be a good place to take a break and people watch, but just far enough away from the DJ to carry on a conversation.
After dark we lit torches all around the patio and floating candles in the pool, got the fire pit going, and people sat around on the couches and curled up in quilts on the rug. One of the great mysteries of our wedding is how there isn't a single picture of it! I've put out a request to my friends in hope someone has one that they've been hiding from me, so if something shows up I'll be sure and post it here.

Having the seating area was a great, super easy addition to the wedding (particularly since we could use stuff we already had on site). People don't really want to sit at tables after they are done eating, and it gave them somewhere to be if they didn't want to dance. I have no idea how much this would cost, but I was at a wedding recently where they primarily rented couches instead of tables and chairs. They did have a few tables for those who needed or wanted them, but in general it was perfectly fine, and a lot more comfortable for seating once people were done with their food.

My brother-in-law & his girlfriend at the couch-seating wedding.

Since I'm done recapping...

2009-01-15T11:26:00.000-08:00

Now that I've got the general recap posts out of the way I have a bit more space to write about the details of the wedding, the diy projects, and some other odds and ends.

I can also respond to M&M's post tagging me (though I'm not going to tag anyone else).

Rules - List 5 Obsessions/Addictions that you have, and tag back to the person(s) that gave you the award. Post the rules and tag and additional 5 people.

1. Taking pictures. After my nice camera was taken in Argentina, I've been living with a camera that runs on AA batteries. It's not my favorite, but I'm dealing since we can't afford to buy me a dSLR right now and I'm holding out for that.

2. Blogs. Obviously, I guess. I've had one since I was in high school. That's about ten years of blogging now. Pretty wild. I blog about my life outside my wedding here.

3. Traveling, but particularly hotels. Not necessarily swanky hotels, but I love seeing how different hotels, b&b's, hostels are run, who stays there, etc. My obsession grew when I worked as an innkeeper.

4. Food, but particularly cooking people breakfast. After working as an innkeeper, I became an expert breakfast food cook. I love having breakfast parties and cooking for groups of friends. I'm learning to become more confident cooking non-breakfast foods. Food is also very political for me. We try and eat locally as much as possible and I've cut back my meat consumption to just grass-fed, free range stuff.

5. California. I've never lived anywhere else and it's really hard to imagine doing so. It's diverse in every way--the climate, the politics, the landscape. We've got big cities and wide open spaces. Very conservative areas and San Francisco. It's endlessly fascinating.

Can big be done on a budget?

2009-01-14T12:49:00.000-08:00

Someone emailed me recently to ask how big my wedding was, hoping that I wasn't saying I'd planned a 10k wedding for fifty people.

Nope. We had just around 100 people there. And we'd actually invited around 130 and budgeted for 115, knowing that some people wouldn't show up. And, going against all wedding advice, we did tell some people that they could come, but that they wouldn't necessarily get chairs and that we might put them to work. They were friends of my sisters, and we wouldn't have been able to invite them otherwise, so they understood and it ended up working out so they could even eat :)

We ended up having a bit of extra money because a few less people came than our budget allowed for, which we used to help pay for the B&B we stayed at with our wedding party as a thank you to them.

Edited to add a link to our budget (per a request).

Recap: They've got moves

2009-01-13T17:08:00.000-08:00

Paul and I love to dance, so having good dance music at our wedding was very important to us. While we originally thought that having a band was a priority for us, as we thought about it more we realized that with our budget and our mixed group of friends, having a DJ who could play a diverse selection of music would be a better idea.

Luckily, when Paul was in college he spent a year managing his college radio station. One of the perks of him basically living in the radio station basement for a year, is that he can forever use the DJ equipment and pull from the radio station stacks. We put together a list of suggestions for his friend (who also DJ'd at the radio station with him) and then left the rest to him. What he came up with was an awesome selection of music--from funk and soul to hip hop to electronica pop dancy stuff. It was a good time.

Starting out the night. We didn't do a first dance because nobody needs to watch me sway around with P. for two minutes. We had the DJ set up on my parent's hot tub deck, which doubled as a way to mask the hot tub from looking ugly.

The jacket came off pretty fast, and I'm already not wearing shoes.

We had some amazing kids at our wedding. I couldn't imagine not having young folks there. Their parents were all ready to leave way before they were!

After a bit of dancing, and I think for a lot of people, more of the sangria, the dancing got a little crazy (and hilarious).

There was apparently an unofficial, off the dance floor party, going on as well.

My husband's step-sister isn't near old enough to drink sangria, but she had insane moves. She challenged my sister's boyfriend to a dance-off, which turned into several of our friends and relatives break dancing (which, unfortunately, nobody really got a great picture of).

I think P. is pretty dang sexy when he dances. I, on the other hand, look like a crazy fool...
My dress kept coming unbustled, so I tied it in a knot.

Our friends changed into their jeans and converse, because why not?

And my hair came down...
And suddenly it was a good idea to get down on the floor to take a picture.
And I don't even know what happened here...

My friends are going to love me for posting these pictures on the internet!

The night ended around midnight or so. In part because some of our guests were camping in my parent's yard and had started to go to bed, and in part because I was really, really tired. We'd thought about going to a bar to after party, but we ended up just heading back to the B&B for sleep.

Details: Food (yum!)

2009-01-12T03:34:00.000-08:00

I've been so unmotivated to post the last few days that I've actually had this post written and just didn't log in to stick in the pictures and hit the post button! But I have a few posts half written and the husband is out of town this week, so I'm sure I'll be posting more than usual.

Before the wedding we went back and forth about having our wedding catered versus doing it ourselves. I know many, many people who love to cook (myself included) so I knew that we could pull off a home cooked meal. However, I wanted my parents to be able to enjoy some of our wedding reception. And since the wedding was at their house, I knew if all the food was on them, they would be occupied a whole lot more than they needed to be.

Our compromise was to have the main dish done by a caterer while a group of us did the appetizers and sides ourselves. Finding a caterer to do that was actually much easier than I thought it would be. There aren't many caterers in Redding, so we ended up going with Roots Catering, out of Chico, CA. They use local foods as much as possible, they are family run, and they were cheap.

For appetizers we decided to go relatively simple. I ordered goat cheese from a local goat farm, we bought fruit from a farm stand near my parent's house, and crackers, nuts, olives, and dried fruit from Trader Joe's. I roasted some of the almonds with sugar and lavender, but everything else was just as we bought it. The day before the wedding we put most of the food in the bowls and covered them for the night. And right before the ceremony, my younger sister and mom set everything up on the table in just a few minutes. It was plenty of food, easy to do, and cheap.

For dinner, we had our caterers do two simple main dishes--Mediterranean chicken and mushroom polenta--and then a side of grilled vegetables. Again, we wanted to do something quick and easy to prepare, so the two salads we made were a caprese salad and a simple mixed green salad.

For the caprese we combined cherry tomatoes in a variety of colors from the same farm stand as the fruit (she gave us a deal for buying several flats of them), the small mozzarella balls from Trader Joe's (no need to even cut them up!), basil from my parent's garden, chopped garlic, and olive oil.

The green salad was going to just be mixed greens, pecans, dried cranberries, and goat cheese with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and lemon juice over the top, but in throwing everything together in the kitchen, some tomatoes were put in too.

The salads were prepared by my mom, with help from my sister, and my best friend's mom and sister. I think it took them about twenty minutes to put them together (most of that was spent realizing they couldn't find the dishes I'd set out to put them in and scrambling through my parent's kitchen to find bowls).

We also purchased bread from Trader Joe's and served that with butter that my little sister obsessively pre-sliced for people.

In total we spent $1700 on food ($17/person) for excellent, mostly local, organic food. From what I priced other caterers in California to be, I think that's a pretty good deal. The caterer charged us $10/person for what they did (including tip), and our food came out to $700 total. And we did have a ton of food leftover, including about $100 worth of goat cheese that we happily ate for about a month afterward and enough dried fruit that we are still working on it.

Some things that made doing our own food easier included:

-Being flexible. We showed up at the farm stand on Thursday before the wedding and basically bought the fruit and veggies they had. That saved us money and we were able to support a local business.
-Using Trader Joe's. I originally wanted only local food. When I realized that it was going to be cost prohibitive, I settled for Trader Joe's organic. Which isn't really a bad thing to settle for all things considered.
-Not doing anything too crazy. Originally we wanted to make this awesome corn salad, but after thinking about how much work it would be, went with the caprese salad. And nobody missed the corn salad they didn't know they'd missed! Doing simple food for appetizers was also a huge time saver. The most complicated thing we did for that was to cut up the plums.
-Setting up all the dishes ahead of time. I made a box for each portion of the meal (salads, bread, appetizers, etc), with all the serving dishes and utensils in it and directions for each dish. Although the salad box apparently went missing, in general the system worked and I didn't have to worry about setting anything up on my wedding day.

Let me know if you have questions about the food or doing your own food for the wedding. It was a great experience for us, and I'm really happy with the way it all turned out. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Wedding Recap: Dinner & Dessert

2009-01-09T09:08:00.000-08:00

On our budget, a day of coordinator wasn't going to happen. Our dj was also a friend of ours, and while he's a great dj, didn't also want to play MC and boss everyone around. That meant that once the reception started, things happened when they happened. No dinner exactly at six or cake cutting at seven on the dot. Things just happened.

I'm going to do a detailed food post later, but our dinner was a combination of do it yourself and a very flexible caterer.
At one point before dinner I walked into my parent's kitchen and found my mom, my sister, my best friend/brideswoman, her mom, and her sister all making salads. While some of you are probably thinking that I shouldn't have had to go in the kitchen, that we all should have been out enjoying the party, I promise that all of these women were more than happy to take a few minutes for the sake of salad. We had a strict, nobody is obligated to help, but we know we have enough friends who will want something to do to make it work, policy.

We served dinner buffet style. There was some attempt to have people go by table, but as soon as people saw the buffet line, they were in it. Unfortunately, that meant that people at the same table, didn't necessarily have their food at the same time, and didn't necessarily eat together.

Although part of the joy of having a very casual wedding was that people who showed up to an empty table just went and sat with another group. Problem solved!

I had no sense of time all day, so I'm not actually sure how long dinner took. I do know, based on our iPod playlists, that we ran out of our two hour and twenty minutes of music (from the end of the ceremony) sometime around the middle-end of dinner. One of our friends ran up and stuck his iPod in for the rest of dinner so our dj could finish eating. I wouldn't have realized that happened except that he was sitting at my table. People are stealthily helpful.

In planning the wedding, P. and I had decided that we wouldn't make a big deal about cutting the cake and pie we had for dessert. But since we'd both been busy mingling for most of the reception to that point, and it felt like we hadn't even really seen each other, we decided to cut the pie together instead of just having the caterer do it. We didn't really make (or even encourage) people to watch us, though it ended up happening a bit. The kids at our wedding were particularly interested in the whole bit--mostly because they were trying to scope out the different flavors we had available.

Since our dinner playlist (that I'd carefully selected to end with dessert music) was long since gone, our friend switched up his iPod to Devotchka for pie cutting & dessert. I highly recommend Devotchka for cake/pie cutting music. I can't tell you how many people came up to us to ask who it was (or if it was Devotchka). Even our photographer was excited. And if you don't know who Devotchka is--for shame! Go listen now!

Since we'd had our pie first, while people were finishing up their dessert, we got the dancing started.

Up next in recaps: Break dancing, I get down on the ground, my dress gets tied in a knot, and other legit and non-legit behavior...

DIY: Dying a Petticoat

2009-01-07T18:56:00.001-08:00

Someone asked, so I thought I'd write a quick post on dying a petticoat. You can occasionally find them online, but it was so cheap and easy to make one, you should just go for it.

Step One: Find a white petticoat. Mine was $5 at the antique mall near my house. There are used ones at thrift stores all over the place. They also sell them various places online and I'm sure bridal shops will sell you one for an insane price.
Step Two: Find dye in your preferred brand/color. I used Rit, because I did the dying on a whim and just walked down the street to my local drugstore and that's what they had.

Step Three: Follow the directions on the box. Seriously. I assume they must be different for every brand. Mine basically told me to wash the item in the washing machine with the dye. You let it sit for a bit at the beginning of the wash cycle. Watch the color in that part--that's where you have control over how intense it gets.

When the petticoat is washing, stop it occasionally to untwist it. Wear gloves or you'll end up with colored hands like I did! If you don't untwist it you'll have a crazy, swirled petticoat.
Step Four: Take the petticoat out and dry it. I dried mine in the drier on a low heat with a towel I didn't care about (in case it was leaking dye at all).

After it was dry, I washed the towel in the washing machine to soak up any remaining dye in the washer.
Initially I was concerned that since most petticoats are polyester, the dye wouldn't take. I actually left it sitting in the dye longer than the box said because of that. And I ended up with a super saturated yellow colored petticoat! So surprisingly (to me at least), Rit will dye cheap poly fabric and netting. The only part that didn't take the dye was the lace at the bottom and the elastic at the waist.

Wedding Recap: Reception, Part 1

2009-01-07T11:24:00.000-08:00

Very continently, our ceremony was in my parent's front yard and our reception was on their back lawn. They call it their mullet house (business in the front, party in the back). So after the ceremony everyone signed the wedding certificate and helped us move the chairs to the backyard (an easy way to save $100 or so--only rent one set of chairs).

P. and I ended up getting stuck at the fence between the front and back saying hi to people in an impromptu receiving line. I can't really say I particularly enjoyed that part of the night. Taking pictures with an endless stream of people wasn't that fun and we didn't really get any time to ourselves after the ceremony. While it did give us a chance to say hi to some people I didn't talk to again during the reception, in hind site I wish we had ducked into the reception and not waited out there.

(As an aside, I made that path by deconstructing a wood pile my dad was going to get rid of, placing the logs in a path, and then raking the middle. It was very easy, free, and a good way to get people where we wanted them.)

While we were out doing the meet & greet, people were out back having a good time drinking, eating appetizers, and playing with the photobooth.

At some point we made our way into the reception, and I went straight for the food...
My mom arranged the appetizers. She had been insisting she could do it herself, but I was happy to see that some friends stepped in to help set them up and keep them filled and let her enjoy the party too.

That happened with a lot of things at our reception... Since we hadn't hired many official vendors, friends and family were doing a lot of the work. It was nice to see other people step in to help them or relieve them so everyone could enjoy the party.

During appetizers and dinner we'd set up a play list on our iPod so our DJ/friend could hang out with us and eat. That turned out really well and I'd highly recommend the iPod as background music.

I have two younger sisters. While the middle one really wanted to be a bridesmaid (it was the first thing she said when I told her I was getting married), the younger one did not want any part of it. I was sort of sad to not have her around most of the day while we were taking pictures, so we spent some time together at the reception (and you'll see later that I made her dance for the first time in her life...she's a shy one).

While we were all playing in the backyard, the puppies where playing and getting love from our friends...

Hazel (our puppy) doesn't normally look so chubby, but she was getting fed people food left and right that weekend. By Monday morning her poor stomach looked like it was going to explode. She seemed perfectly happy though.

Up next...what we ate.

Wedding Recap: A Marriage by Friends

2009-01-04T19:51:00.000-08:00

While I already did a detailed post of our wedding ceremony here (including the text of the ceremony), to continue in order I thought I'd go on with another ceremony recap here. I meant for it it be short, but somehow it's the longest recap post yet! I really loved our ceremony. It takes the cake for my favorite part of our wedding. That surprised me because I really didn't care that much about it prior to the wedding. I kind of thought that it was something to get through to get to the party fun part. But, it's also the part of the wedding I've gotten the most positive feedback about. People loved it.

First, a bit of background. Since neither of us are religious, we knew we didn't want a religious ceremony. But we also didn't want to pay some random person to officiate a ceremony for us. It just seemed too impersonal for something so personal. So we asked around to our friends, and finally came up with the idea to have a quaker-style ceremony. Basically we had one of our friends M.C. the ceremony (our program called her the "Ringmaster") and we opened it up to others to speak.

We spread the word before the wedding that we'd be doing that--we posted something on our wedding website and then made sure to pass the word along to people we didn't think were checking there. I have to admit that I was nervous about enough people speaking, but honestly, even a few of the things that were said would have been enough. Everything was so touching. And as it turns out a ton of people spoke!

P. & our ringmaster (Susan) head up to the front for the start of the ceremony. Apparently P was very concerned that they'd brought water up to the front because he thought I'd be upset that it was in the pictures. I actually didn't notice until he told me.

We literally didn't figure out how we were all going to get to the front until about ten minutes before the ceremony. At that point it was decided that the easiest way would be for P. and Susan to go to the front first and then have the rest of the bridal party walk down the aisle. Then my dad and I followed. Apparently we were cracking up the whole way. I think it was because we both realized we were walking insanely fast and were going to get to the front about two minutes before the song ended. Or maybe just because we are both dorks.
Once we were all up front we stood up there for a bit while the song played and we tried to get the attention of our DJ to cut it (seriously it had about two minutes left).
I think this picture is right after I walked partway up the aisle where he could see me and made a big "cut" sign to the dj. I'm classy.
The wedding party stood for the first part of the ceremony, where Susan explained a quaker ceremony and we said our vows, which we'd written for each other and kept secret. They actually ended up being almost identical, which was pretty sweet.
There were a lot of funny moments in our ceremony. We were all really nervous so that helped.
Paul read his vows first. They were very sweet and kind of funny...
I went next. I was very, very nervous. I hate speaking in front of people, and I tend to do this rocking back and forth thing (uh, sort of like I have a tick or something), so I was trying to focus on not doing that while still being in the moment.
After we said our vows, we all sat down and Susan opened it up to others to speak. I won't go into details about what all was said, but there was everything from poetry, to political rants (his brother), to Darwin (my dad), to stories about our childhoods, to mocking my ex-boyfriends (from my best friend's dad).

His dad played us a song he wrote while his step-sister sang...
There was a lot of hugging...

After everyone had spoken who wanted to do so, P's friend read our wedding certificate and we signed it. After the ceremony everyone else signed it (including some people multiple times).
Then Susan took over again and read a bit about our hands and how we use them in affection and work and looking at our rings on them reminds us of our love. We asked everyone to hold hands for this bit. Pictures of people holding hands make me happy.
I'm really bad at right and left. Something that slipped through the cracks during my homeschooling youth. Anyway, I couldn't remember what hand I was suppose to put P's ring on so I had to do that trick where you make an "L" shape with your fingers to tell which hand is left (your left hand makes an L, your right makes a backwards L). Here's me doing that...
People laughed at me. It was fine :)

Then Susan said something like "Since I assume you're moved to do so, you should go ahead and kiss!" So we did. Only we looked really funny so there are no good pictures of it. I swear. In hind site, the problem with us kissing is that we were standing too far apart so we were leaning in like crazy to try and kiss. Stand close to your partner!
There were horses running around in the background while we walked up the aisle. They were excited too.

Wedding Recap: we arrive at the wedding!

2009-01-02T07:53:00.000-08:00

After running around town, we headed back to my parent's house (aka the wedding site) to get ready and take some family pictures. We planned on walking around the countryside to get a few more country shots of us, but we all got caught up in talking to people and working out details of the wedding so that didn't happen, and it's fine.
Once we were at the wedding, we made no attempt to have people not see me in my dress. I'm not sure if it struck people as odd that the bride was hanging out, greeting people as they arrived. Regardless, it made me feel a whole lot less nervous about being up in front of everyone during the ceremony and I got a chance to meet some of P's people I didn't already know.
We really didn't think we wanted a "jump shot." Actually we'd kind of joked about it prior to the wedding. But then some of our wedding party got a little tipsy while we were walking around downtown and requested one.
I'm kind of glad we have it now. The two who really wanted to do it (can you tell which two that might be) are hilarious. Here's another one just in case you couldn't tell from the last.
P. was really excited to hold everyone's flowers while I took a few pictures without them. Did I mention how much I HATED carrying them around all day? I kept suggesting pictures where I wouldn't have to hold them.
While we didn't end up having a flower girl, the girl who would have been our flower girl (my cousin's daughter) took a few pictures with us and our puppy--we made her our official puppy watcher instead of flower girl. She was very happy to have a role.

In between all the picture taking, I was running around figuring out last minute details--like we had no idea how we were all going to walk into the ceremony and hadn't practiced at all, and my officiant needed something to stick the ceremony printout in so she didn't have to stand up in front holding pieces of computer paper, and realizing our guestbook didn't have a sign to explain it (I hand wrote one quickly)...
Actually the whole welcome table was a bit...underdressed. We wanted to give people something to drink during the ceremony since it was warm outside and people were going to be talking. But, we are fairly anti-plastic bottled water, so we knew we wanted to get something to put the water in. At that point our budget was pretty tight and we couldn't find anything at Target, so we just went with the big blue water dispenser my mom uses for the track meets she coaches.
Actually, with the bright table cloth, the whole thing looks pretty cheerful, even if Martha Stewart would disapprove like crazy.

P. and officiant friend plotting their entry. Notice that S. found a lovely folder in my dad's office that we dumped everything out of and filled with ceremony.

Up next, the ceremony begins!

Wedding Recap: Riding the Rails

2009-01-01T20:23:00.000-08:00

After climbing on tractors I had no fear about getting my dress dirty so we decided to take a walk down the street to the railroad tracks.

On the way we stopped to take this picture in front of the Sacramento street sign (we live in Sacramento).
I love it. I love the shadows and the composition and the dumpers in the background. I'm easy to please.

The train tracks pictures are some of my favorite. I have to admit that I arranged myself is such a way that my yellow crinoline was showing. I didn't spend a week with yellow hands from dying it for nothing!

An all important shoe shot. Notice that one of my flowers fell off my shoe. We tried gluing it back on with super glue but it fell off again. Ce la vie. It's still a cool picture.

We took turns walking on the tracks and helping each other. We work well together.

If it looks like all we did all day was take pictures, up next in recaps, we actually arrive at the wedding, take some more pictures (this is how you end up with over 1200 pictures), and get married.

Wedding Recap: The Trash Your Dress Before the Wedding Part

2008-12-29T07:51:00.000-08:00

So after we took a bunch of nice portraits by the old motels and theaters, P really wanted a few shots by the brick of the old steel mill. As we walked down the street to get there, we were passed by a group of guys skateboarding.
The first few started out all innocent and clean...
But then P. spotted the forklift. At which point I had to make the decision every bride has to make at some point on her wedding day...do I care if my dress is covered in grease and exhaust stains before the ceremony even starts?

We were all a little bit starving and loopy at that point, so the answer was no, I didn't care. So onto the forklift it was...

It's amazing how photogenic heavy machinery is.

Then someone suggested we all hop into this big metal bin that was sitting outside. Again, not the cleanest place to be in a big white dress.
My dress stayed surprisingly unharmed in this process, though getting out of the bin was an interesting moment. I'm really short and the bin was fairly tall, so P. was attempting to help me out.
From that angle, not so bad. It looks like he's trying to grab my butt a little, but nothing seriously ridiculous.

And then there's this...
Not only does it look a bit...dirty (or something0...he also looks like he's going to drop me.

See. Ridiculous!

Up next, we ride the rails...

Thanks!

2008-12-20T11:04:00.000-08:00

A big thank you hug to Green Wedding Shoes for featuring our wedding today!

rings

2008-12-19T08:35:00.000-08:00

Due to the cold weather, my rings are not fitting quite right these days. I think I need to eat more holiday cookies and things to make up for the cold weather shrinkage, because last night my engagement ring was lost in a pile of fabric I'd been digging through while I frantically ran around the house searching for it.

That got me to thinking that I never posted anything about our rings.

My engagement ring was a collaborative effort. Our engagement wasn't a big surprise, so while we originally tired to have him pick out the ring without me, after a few weeks of him in a confused panic, I assured him that I didn't care and we worked on it together. Our budget for my ring was along the lines of the lower the better. No more than $1000. Which doesn't get you a whole lot in terms of traditional e-rings. I knew I wanted vintage, both for the looks and because I didn't want any new Congolese to loose their hands over my ring.

After searching far and wide we finally found my ring in a watch repair shop. It was $250, white gold with a few diamonds, and I've since learned was essentially mass produced during WWII so that army men could propose before leaving for war.
I'm not generally into the army or mass production, but as part of the storyline of my vintage ring it's sort of romantic and sweet.

I really liked the floral shape of the top.

Finding a vintage band to match my ring turned out to be an ordeal. It seems that most of these rings were fused to the band after the wedding, and I couldn't hardly any that were separate, reasonably priced, and looked like what I was going for.

In the meantime, finding my husband's band was easy. After a few searches around Etsy, we found Ash Hilton. Ash is the sweetest, most helpful, charming, lovely artist I've worked with on Etsy. I almost gave up vintage and matching had him make me a band too, but I have short tiny fingers and his designs don't really work on a thin band.

His work is made with ethical metals, his designs are based on the plants of New Zealand (though he will work with plants you love if you have an idea, and have I mentioned that he's really nice? He originally shipped us the wrong ring, and we almost considered keeping it because the design was so amazing. But we sent it back and got P's ring, which he loves.

It's two curly plants loving on each other.

Following in family tradition, his ring is sterling silver. All the men in both of our families wear sterling silver rings so they get all scratched and beat up looking. I think his ring ended up being somewhere around $100-150.

Ultimately my wedding band was purchased out of laziness and reaching the end of my rope with wedding planning. I like it, but I have to admit that it's not all that comfortable, so I can't say I love it. I had it designed by Ellie at Greenlake Jewelry Works based out of Seattle. They have a great online design process where you show them things you like and they create sketches and work with you to find something you like. They also use ethical stones.

Like I said, I like it. I don't love it. And it wasn't cheap (around $900). If I hadn't been so stressed out about finding a ring before the wedding (along with the 100 other things I had to do before the wedding) I probably would have waited. In a moment of stress I actually almost bought a $2000+ Van Craeynest ring, but when I called they were so mean that I backed out (thank god).

The moral of this story is that while I love beautiful vintage engagement rings, and could have easily spent thousands of dollars on fancy sparkly things, you work with your budget, figure out what makes sense for your situation, and that ultimately our cheap rings are our favorites.

Wedding Recap: the arts

2008-12-18T19:09:00.000-08:00

After walking by the old motels, we went further downtown to the area Redding is actively trying to revitalize.

Here I am trying to emulate the crazy dance moves Shiva is doing in front of the Redding Arts building...
For those of you wondering why Siva only has 2 arms, it's because people in Redding can be idiots. They decided that a multi-limbed Hindu statue violated separation of church and state lopped off her extra arms.

Then we went on to the Cascade. When I was in high school this was the budget movie theater, but it was since purchased by Jefferson Public Radio (NPR) and now has great acts come through it.

They were setting up for the annual beer & wine festival on the street so there were people everywhere staring at us.

I love this picture of all of us...

Hanging out while other people are taking pictures...

Confession

2008-12-11T14:24:00.000-08:00

This is sort of embarrassing, but P. and I haven't done our thank you cards yet. We have excuses, but really there is no excuse. Even more embarrassing, is that we are now combining our thank you's with our holiday cards. Miss Manners would not approve.

The next two days are packed, but Saturday is sit down and write the damn things day. We have a holiday party to go to that night, and I'm banning myself from attendance unless I get the things done.

Wedding Recap: Hotel, Motel...

2008-12-10T17:27:00.000-08:00

After we'd gotten a good look at each other, our whole crew of people walked around downtown Redding. For those of you not familiar with Redding, the downtown is a little...slow. It's picking up, but it's had a dry spell for the last fifty years or so, leaving some old motels P. and I love (to look at. We're too afraid to actually stay in one).

We started out at the Stardust Motel...

And then went down the strip, which produced some of these gems...

Who doesn't want a safety cone wedding picture? Add it to your must take list.

Our entourage. Looking very badass.

The music video shot.

This last one isn't that exciting of a picture, but the sign is just too amazing to leave out...

While there were more posed pictures in these locations, the real fun of this was just walking around. Having people honk at and congratulate us. Since our wedding was in a relatively rural location, this was our version of getting to do a parade-like walk from the ceremony to reception.

Wedding Recap: How Revealing

2008-12-09T10:16:00.000-08:00

While not a whole lot of wedding tradition was important to P. and me, at some point we decided that P. would not see my dress before the wedding. Actually, while I was changing my mind about it on a weekly basis I attempted to show him, to get his opinion, and he wanted nothing to do with it.

But, since we knew we were going to see each other before the actual ceremony, our photographer suggested we do a reveal shot. Prior to that day we had big plans for doing it somewhere more exciting, but since the men were running late we got lazy and just went out front of the B&B.

What you can't see in this picture is that our friends were standing off to the left of the camera, laughing at us.

Sneaking up on him (though not really...I'm a very noisy walker).

At that point we basically started making out.

I think our photographer said something like "Don't you want to check each other out?" Oh, right.

Examining the eBay purchased suspenders that I ordered but didn't arrive until that day!

And then back to lovey eyes and making out...

Up next: We all romp around town in our wedding gear.

mustached.

2008-12-08T11:31:00.000-08:00

Recently Ariel on Offbeat Bride wrote about the fake mustache trend at weddings. I have to say that I fell victim to it. Although, at the time I didn't know it was a wedding trend. I just saw a fake mustache on etsy and thought "Hey, I can make that and wouldn't they be cute at the wedding." Plus, we were doing a photobooth with costumes, so I assumed they'd be put to good use there. In fact, I'd bet that the fake mustache trend is pretty in sync with the photobooth trend. But who cares? They're both fun and I don't regret either one.

My sister twirling the tips of one of the mustaches I made.

I also ended up buying a few cheap mustaches from a local party store. They were under $1 each, and while you had to stick them in your nose to wear them, people weren't as grossed out about that as I assumed they would be.

My husband in one of the handmade ones, and me with a mustache stuck in my nose.

So maybe I'm trendy and unoriginal. But people had fun with their faux facial hair at my wedding, and years from now I bet nobody will remember that mustaches at weddings were marginally trendy for some period of time.

More mustache pictures here.

Wedding Recap: Getting ready.

2008-12-08T09:51:00.000-08:00

If you'd like to refresh your memory (since it's been about two months), I started my recap back here.

For a variety of reasons, my husband and I decided to stay together the night before our wedding. We live together, our friends were staying in the same B&B with us, I can't really sleep without him, etc. So the morning of our wedding, we woke up together and went downstairs to the amazing breakfast our innkeeper had prepared. Our friends were already chowing down on bread pudding, bacon, and other treats, so we joined them and fueled up. As much as I tried, I didn't really eat much the rest of the day, so the huge breakfast was a very, very good thing.

After breakfast Summer, our mistress of hair, arrived. Not soon after, our photographers, Bradford & Mia Shepherd, came in and started snapping away.

Prior to these guys showing up I don't think it had really hit me that it was The Day. But having people fawn over you and take pictures of everything you do is really out of my norm, and while I wasn't nervous, it took me to a more serious place. At least until we broke out the champagne.

Don't knock canned champagne until you've tried it. They are like juice boxes for grown ups. And the champagne/sparkling wine in them isn't bad.

My brideswomen drank it up, while I sat around looking serious. I was mostly nervous about my vows. I'm terrified of public speaking, and I didn't particularly want to read something personal I'd written in front of a large group of people. On the other hand, I wanted to hear P. to say nice things about me. So this is me trying to focus on deep breathing and not being stressed about it all day.

I swear this picture wasn't set up. Our friend pulled it off the bed and stuck it there the night before. I didn't realize it was still there until I saw this picture. It's fitting though!
Once the booze kicked in we decided to start with our makeup. The downstairs room we were using for hair was deemed unfit due to bad lighting, so my officiant/brideswoman/best friend snagged the downstairs mirror and we went upstairs to the workout room.

Instead of paying someone to do our makeup, we all brought what makeup we own and did each other. It worked fine, and the concern about not knowing how to do makeup for the camera was alleviated when we figured out that we could just have the photographer take pictures as we went.

Also, while none of us are really girly girls, I have to say that the time we spent hanging out that morning, doing our makeup, was one of my favorite parts of my wedding day. Actually being able to focus on the people around me was nice (and not totally possible the rest of the day).

At some point it was decided that it was time for me to get into my dress. I'd taken it on and off myself about 100 times, since I'd had it at home for months and I was constantly changing my mind about it, but it seemed right to have my little sister help me with the official putting on of the dress.

It looks like I'm wearing bright yellow jockey underwear in this picture. Not true.

Then we all sat around and took more pictures for ages, while we waited for the menfolk to show up. They were back at the house/wedding location helping set up and getting ready. Apparently they also ate lunch and forgot that practically every one of us womenfolk is a vegetarian when they brought us back a bunch of beef tamales (oops).

A good shot of the facinator/veil I made. I was getting a bit nervous about seeing P. at that point, and I almost forgot to put it on!

When the men finally got there, we were downstairs and I had to dash into the kitchen to hide (we were doing a "reveal" type shot). Only they didn't know we were waiting in the kitchen (they thought we were still getting ready), so we were there FOREVER. Finally my friend's boyfriend wandered in and we let him know what was up.
One of the inside the kitchen pictures, taken by one of the brideswomen. And just to clarify, we were holding the bananas because we were going to take them with us for snacking. We weren't just posing with them!

Up next, the reveal (which sounds much more dramatic than it was).

All pictures (except the last one) by Bradford & Mia Shepherd.

1245

2008-12-07T13:49:00.000-08:00

1245. That's how many pictures I'm currently sorting through from our wedding photographer.

While we've had them on Pictage for awhile, I've grown to hate Pictage. I totally understand why they won't let me snag pictures from their website, but digital pictures are really all I work with. So I'm taking the three disks of pictures our photographer gave us and putting them all on flickr. I've got plans for making a blurb book and some other things with them. Along with finally doing my wedding recaps here, of course.

Here's one of my favorites for now...

marriage and midwifery

2008-12-03T09:56:00.000-08:00

This post is partially about marriage and partially a rant about midwifery politics. And while I'm sure most of you aren't midwives, you may use one someday, so it's probably not bad information to have.

I never thought I'd be the kind of women to make choices about my job based on my husband or my marriage. But, it’s funny to me how actually being married does subtly change the way I think about things. I’ve made an effort to make my work about me and not let my husband influence my decisions surrounding it (aside from his financial support while i'm in school and undying love, of course). Now that we are married it suddenly seems very unrealistic to expect him to have me running out at all hours of the night, never able to leave town (really...never, ever). Like of course he could do that for months at a time. But for the rest of our lives??? And even if he would, do I really want to be married to someone who doesn’t care if they ever do things with me or see me? It’s a challenge for many midwives–the balance between family and supporting clients the way they want to be supported.

I brought this up at our regional midwifery meeting last night, and the midwives seemed deeply concerned. What would it mean for midwifery if there was even more of a shift in the midwife-client relationship towards midwife as health care provider and client as patient, versus midwife as a community member, friend, confidant?

The problem is, the number of midwives currently out there can’t meet the demand. And there aren’t enough women out there who want to entirely self-sacrifice to become midwives. So there has to be a middle ground. Some point at which women can still have safe, intervention-free births, in their home with a midwife. But it may not be a midwife they’ve spent fifteen hour-long appointments getting to know. It may be that the midwives who arrive at their birth are two of four midwives in a practice they’ve met just a few times during their pregnancy. And while that may be a dilute version of midwifery, it may very well be the only way to make midwifery a sustainable, healthy profession. One where more women can have homebirths as a foundation for a healthy family, and the midwives they work with can also take care of themselves and their families.

Home birth is too important to let it fizzle out because we burn out the women making it possible. And women interested in midwifery as a profession (not as the be all and end all of their life) need to see that there is support from the community for midwives to practice in a variety of ways.

And I need to be able to see my husband. And take my future, yet-unborn children to the beach on the occasional weekend.

Igauzu Falls

2008-11-30T18:08:00.000-08:00

After our first week in Buenos Aires we spent two nights (and essentially three full days) in Igauzu. Due to its far northern location on the border with Brasil and Paraguay we flew up there. Since we were flying, and the flights weren't cheap, we stayed longer than we should have. For those of you considering going, save money on food & lodging and just go for one night. I promise that you can do everything that you'll want to do in no more than a day and a half. Also, the town is about twice as expensive as everything else in Argentina.

We did love the place we stayed. John, at Secret Garden Igauzu, is an amazing host. The breakfast (toast and homemade jams) was awesome, the coffee was great, and the nightly (required) chats over drinks and apps were lively.

The falls were also beautiful, though crowded and had bad food. Go early in the day, pack a lunch, and do the boat ride under the falls. It's short, but fun. And you do get soaking wet. Wear a swimsuit!

One of my favorite things about the falls was the amazing variety of butterflies. Also, they were very tame and willing to hop on for a photo op...
One thing that we didn't do in the area is to see the falls from the Brasilian side. Americans need a visa to go, and you have to get it in advance. We actually tried to sneak over with a driver we trusted but were denied and our poor driver got questioned at the border! Apparently going renegade style usually works, but not so much for us.

Buenos Aires

2008-11-26T10:15:00.000-08:00

I was asked if, despite all that went wrong, I'd still recommend Argentina as a honeymoon destination. And the answer is yes. In fact, I'd love to go back. I read somewhere that Buenos Aires isn't like New York or Paris where the reasons to fall in love are obvious and being spoon fed to you. That was true for me. As I became more comfortable with the city, got my bearings and such, I really started to warm up to it.

In the nine days we were there were did some amazing things. And ate a whole lot of amazing food. For the first week we were there we rented a loft that I could not recommend more highly. It was in San Telmo, which we found to be full of things to do and some amazing food--we loved Los Loros and Cafe San Juan in particular.

If you are in town on a Sunday, both the San Telmo Antique Fair and the Feria de Mataderos are worth checking out.

Day trips to Tigre (up the delta) and San Antonio de Areco were also fun, though it should be noted somewhere, before you make the two hour bus trip, that nothing in San Antonio is open on Tuesdays (not in the guidebooks or on their tourist website). It was still pretty to walk around though. And Tigre was one of our favorite parts of the whole trip.

The last two days we spent in BA at Home Hotel in Palermo. It was great. Great food, great dj on Friday nights, great garden/pool area (they were showing Totero on the wall behind the pool when the dj was playing!). We loved it and would highly recommend it as a place to stay or brunch.

Lots more pictures on flickr, for those of you interested.

Happy to be home

2008-11-24T07:30:00.000-08:00

We arrived back in the states last night, and while there is some part of me that still wants to be on vacation mode, I am actually really happy to be back.

Let's just get all the crazy things that happened on our honeymoon out of the way first, so I can tell you all the cool things we did and how much I love my husband...

-The first night we were there, we decided to go out, but it turned out that the club we were trying to go to had changed nights. We were walking to get another cab and were robbed at GUNPOINT by three 12 or 13 year olds. They took my camera, some money, and P's cards (which was an issue because my cards have no money on them and are basically useless).
-The robbery led to me being slightly panicked when we were out at nighttime and so we didn't end up going to any clubs or out dancing, which I'm actually okay with, but was a huge reason we went to Argentina in the first place!
-Unlike everything else in Argentina, cameras cost about three times as much as they cost in the states (really...no exaggeration). Buying a new one was important to us, but ate up a lot of the money we planned on using for other things, especially since we were down to my money at that point.
-We kept trying to go to things only to find out we'd gone on a not so ideal day (like the time we took a bus two hours to a town we really wanted to visit only to find out that the town is basically shut down on Tuesdays). Guidebooks should really mention that sort of thing.
-I was hit by a relatively fast moving car while standing at a corner. It wasn't bad--they hit my arm and dinged my leg--and I walked away with bruises but not anything worse, but it was scary.
-We were in Iguazu way way longer than we needed to be and couldn't get an earlier flight back. We tried to sneak into Brazil or Paraguay to give us something new to do, but were rejected.
-P got sick right as we were leaving. He didn't feel good when we got on the flight from Argentina to Houston, but as soon as the plane was in the air he tried to go to the bathroom and throw up. They wouldn't let him, so he came back to the seat and as I was trying to find him a barf bag, he threw up all over me and my stuff and his pants and everywhere! Seriously it was splattered across the window and in the seatback pockets and all over the place. And then we on the plane for 10 hours with it like that and my bag still smells a bit barfy. Fun!

There were other little things, but that about sums up the craziness that happened on our honeymoon.

Oh! Except that it could have been worse. A few days after we left the loft in San Telmo, the apartment next door burned to a crisp! The girl living in it had covered the entire inside of her apartment with paper (which explains the constant taping noises we heard through the walls) for an instillation art project and she stupidly decided to use her paper covered stove. So the people currently staying in the apartment are having to sleep on the floor of the apartment owners (which isn’t really so bad as they are great people). But happy it didn’t happen to us!

Go vote while I'm on a plane!

2008-11-03T16:48:00.000-08:00

We leave for Argentina tomorrow (don't worry--we absentee voted a few weeks ago--Go Obama!). I am crazy scared of flying, and this is not a short flight (4 hours to Houston and then 10.5 to Buenos Aires). But, I've got drugs and my very supportive husband, so hopefully everything will go swimmingly.

I'm very, very excited to spend a few weeks exploring. We are going a few different places...9 nights total in Buenos Aires (staying here and here), 2 days in Igauzu (staying here), and 4 nights in Mendoza (here, plus two nights on the overnight bus which is fancy and totally unlike American buses).

The people who own the loft we are staying at our first week in Buenos Aires have been extremely helpful in suggesting things to do and are going to meet us on Wednesday to give us a tour of the neighborhood with a personalized list of stuff they think we might like to do.

I'm taking my camera and an extra memory card so I'll post tons of pictures when I get back (and I'll resume my wedding recap).

Have a lovely few weeks!

I am so in love with my friends right now

2008-10-29T21:41:00.000-07:00

One of the things that didn't make it into our wedding budget was a videographer. While I understand that wedding videos probably never get watched more than a few times, and it really isn't worth the expense (and they are expensive...whoo boy), after our AMAZING and totally unscripted ceremony, I was feeling very bummed out about not having captured it. A few people responded to my request to send me what they said, but several just spoke from the heart and didn't have it memorized or written down.

So, I was beyond thrilled when I was handed a dvd of about an hours worth of wedding footage today! Apparently one of my friend's husbands videotaped most of the ceremony and a few other snippets of the wedding with their digital camera. Because it was taken with a digital camera, it isn't the best quality video ever, but he did a great job putting it together, and the footage of our ceremony is so precious. Both my husband and I were practically in tears watching it again.

Bottom line...Our friends continue to amaze me with their awesomeness and how much they pulled together to help make our wedding happen.

And if you think you might regret not having video, find someone to take footage with their digital camera or their phone or whatever. This was one of my few wedding regrets and I am so, so happy to have this video.

The Budget: The Details, Take 2

2008-10-27T18:50:00.000-07:00

Since I've been using Grab for everything else, I realized I could take a screen shot of the budget and post that. I know these don't totally equal out, but they will give you a general idea. Also, one of the things I let go of in the last few days before the wedding was entering my receipts. Because really, at that point, who cares? And I know I didn't spend more than a few hundred in the last week pre-wedding.

**Since we were looking good on our budget, we ended up helping pay for the hotel for our friends who stayed with us since we are all poor and we made them stay in an expensive B&B with us.

Budget: The Details

2008-10-27T10:21:00.001-07:00

I cannot for the life of me, figure out how to post a table on blogger. The table posts, but with a giant space before it (about the size of the table). Odd and frustrating. Anyway, the table I was going to post contains the details of our budget. What we actually spent where, and all that. So if anyone would like to see that (or can tell me how to post a chart/table) I'd be more than happy to share!

Wedding Recap: Pre-Wedding Week

2008-10-26T19:37:00.000-07:00

Since I have word that I'll have the rest of my professional pictures next week I thought I'd start writing up my recap of the wedding week.

Our wedding was at my parent's home in Palo Cedro, California (the far Northern part of the state). We live in Sacramento so I went up there on Wednesday to start working on things. I initially thought that was way too much time, but it ended up being necessary to get stuff done in a relaxed way.

On Thursday my mom and I drove around buying food supplies. We also stopped at a few farm stands to pick up produce for the salads she was making for the wedding. This was also the day I'd planned on picking up the free flowers we'd been offered, but lost the address.
My best friend, and one of my brideswomen came into town on Thursday afternoon so we spent the afternoon working on finishing up DIY projects with my sister (who made those signs with wood we found in my parent's burn pile) and setting up the yard as much as possible. It was so, absolutely wonderful to have her there. We've been friends since we were toddlers and she's such a relaxing person for me. My husband's mom and stepdad arrived on Thursday evening so my parents had them over for dinner and we all hung out for a bit until they got tired and went back to their b&b. A short while after that the husband-to-be got into town (he had to pick up the dj equipment from his old college radio station and that was the earliest he could get it). We all went to the bar near my parents house and played a few rounds of pool. For some reason my friend and I, normally horrible pool players, rocked the table that night.
On Friday morning we had the port o' potty, rental tables, chairs, and dance floor delivered. It was due to rain on Friday afternoon so we avoided setting stuff up for as long as possible. We spent a lot of the morning prepping the flowers while my parents worked on their yard.

Friday afternoon my friend and I disappeared for a few hours to get our nails done. Totally unnecessary, but it was REALLY REALLY nice to just SIT for an hour or so and not have to think about wedding stuff. People kept calling me to ask me silly questions (Like where my dad should put the pots of flowers he'd purchased, that I had no idea he'd purchased). I basically decided from that point on that I did not care how things happened and let go of being hung up on any details. It felt really awesome to do that.

Friday night we did a really informal dinner at my parents house. While I'd originally wanted to do a more formal rehearsal dinner, I realized a few weeks before the wedding that there was going to be enough left to be done Friday afternoon, that leaving the house would be stressful. My parents bought a bunch of tamales from farmer's market and we had people bring beer, chips, salsa, etc. People who came over helped set things up and I didn't feel bad for hiding out with my sister and friend finishing up flowers while other people kept themselves busy.
After dinner we drove to the B&B we were staying at and met the rest of our wedding party friends (who were driving up from far away places and missed dinner). We all hung out in our bedroom, amazing wine, and wrote ridiculous journal entries in the hotel room journal for a few hours before heading to bed.

I hate the way I look with makeup on...

2008-10-24T11:23:00.000-07:00

I almost never wear makeup. Occasionally, if I'm going out in a city larger than my own, I'll throw on some mascara and colored lipgloss. But those occasions are few and far between and I tend to feel gross if I add anything extra like eyeshadow or foundations.

My sister, on the other hand, loves makeup. She's one of those people with a giant case of Mac shadows and knowledge of pigments and stuff that I don't even comprehend. So my basic wedding makeup plan was to take her to Sephora with me, have her help me pick out makeup, and then have her do the makeup day of. We ended up scheduling a makeup consult at Sephora. They are free and while there is pressure to buy something at the end of it, you wouldn't have to. My sister ended up buying some eyeshadow foundation for herself and I bought the foundation she showed me because I didn't hate it (which is rare), and that was about it. For the cheap folks out there she also gave me little shaving size samples of the lipstick I liked so I could try them on and decide between them. I actually intended to go back and buy one of them, but never got around to it and ended up using a combo of the samples on our wedding day.

Since I never ended up purchasing all the kinds of makeup I needed, and I knew I wouldn't use a lot of it again, I had my brideswomen bring their makeup and we kind of mixed and matched stuff.

I used...Smashbox photo finish primer (purchased from Costco a few days before the wedding for much cheaper than i saw it elsewhere), Cargo oil-free foundation, Urban Decay eyeshadow primer. All of those were applied with my fingers despite the Sephora lady saying I needed special brushes.

My blush was Besame in warm. I applied it with a blush brush. I used a tiny bit of Besame loose translucent powder on my forehead and nose with a powder brush.

My lips had my facial foundation rubbed over them and then mystery Benefit lipstick from the samples the lady gave me.
I borrowed eyeshadow from my friend and can't remember the exact brand, but it was shades of brown. Mascara was Smashbox in black (it came with the primer).
The best makeup tip I figured out that day was to have a camera on hand while you are getting ready. The one that will be taking pictures of you all day, if you can. I had my photographer there while I was taking pictures so I just had him show me what I looked like as I was going. That way I could adjust according to what I thought looked good in person and what was showing up on camera. I highly recommend that if you can.

diy flowers: the process

2008-10-22T14:06:00.000-07:00

I knew from the start that we weren't going to be paying anyone to do flowers for our wedding. While I love flowers (love them), professional arrangements just weren't in our budget. And on top of that I'm married to an anti-pesticide activist who really wanted to avoid having tables full of chemically treated flowers.

In the end our budget, my crappy planning, and poor service & selection from California Organic Flowers ended up winning out over totally green flowers. A few weeks before the wedding I posted an ad on Craig's List asking if anyone in the area had local roses they would let us pick. I thought it was a long shot, but a woman who grows roses and other flowers for floral arranging competitions responded and said we could pick whatever we wanted from her yard! She was going to be on vacation, but she left out buckets and clippers and everything for us. Unfortunately, I'm a spaz and lost her address. And since she was on vacation I couldn't get in touch with her. Seriously. So it was a good thing I'd already ordered backup flowers from The Flower Exchange. The flowers we ordered from them held up beautifully and were very affordable. To make up for the flowers we didn't get from the nice CL lady, the rest we bought from a farm stand down the street from my parents for almost nothing (both pesticide free & local).

We stripped the stems of all the flowers, cut the bottoms under running water (apparently that is important) and stuck them in big buckets from the hardware store. We stored them in my sister's freezing cold bathroom. I did not put any sort of plant food in with them and they sat in the buckets from Wednesday - Friday night with no problems. And they still looked great on Saturday and Sunday and Monday and about a whole week after that.
Friday night (the night before the wedding) my sister made the bouquets and my friend and I stuck flowers in vases for the tables. Here we are working on my bouquet and looking overly excited.

We used the French spiral method for my bouquet, and wired three pretty flowers together for each of the brideswomen. Later in the night, over a glass of wine I wrapped the stems in ribbon I bought from The Ribbon Jar.

We left the stems long overnight so they could sit in water and I cut them short the next morning, as we were getting ready.
My bouquet...

And the other three all together...

While our hodgepodge way of acquiring flowers did not lend itself to me having exactly the flowers I'd always dreamed about (though I was never sure exactly what that would have looked like), I was very happy with the results. In total everything was about $200 including all the flowers, floral supplies, and ribbon, though not including the vases. And we had a great time working on them!

One thing I realized after the wedding (and after looking at the pictures today) is that I really could have done without bouquets at all. I hate holding things. I'm the kind of girl who orders gimlets when we go out drinking, not because they are my favorite drink, but because I can drink them quickly and then not have to hold anything anymore. Carrying around a bouquet all day got really old, and I can tell from the pictures that I felt awkward holding it. Just a thought for those of you considering going without.

pictures are here!

2008-10-22T12:00:00.000-07:00

The first batch of our pro-pictures were posted on Pictage this morning! There are 506 of them and they aren't even up to the ceremony yet. Overwhelming but awesome!

Pictage doesn't really like you downloading their pictures, but with my handy Grab application I've snagged a few really poor quality screen shots for y'all until I get the disk of pictures from my photographer.

These are all from our walk around the old motels in downtown Redding.

Our friends/wedding party

Us, at the Stardust

Walking past the Americana Lodge

I am so happy that we ended up just walking around downtown instead of taking the car from place to place. The pictures of us just walking and hanging out are some of my favorites.

What do you want to know?

2008-10-15T15:09:00.000-07:00

While I'm getting back pictures next week, and will do more detailed wedding day recaps then, does anyone have specific questions they'd like answered about my wedding projects?

Also, it feels pretty crazy to see yourself on someone's blog who isn't related by blood or close friendship.

my dress

2008-10-15T14:47:00.000-07:00

Several people have asked, so I thought I'd make a general post about it instead of emailing individually. My dress is Casablanca # 1816. I bought it in champagne.

Here it is on the scary model:

I'll be selling mine in the next few weeks (once I get it cleaned), so if you are interested let me know. I'm 5'1" and around a street size 2.

I also found out yesterday (from my friend who has recently hired my photographer), that I'm getting my pictures next week! So I'll post more pictures then.

the budget

2008-10-13T21:50:00.000-07:00

We had a $10,000 budget for our wedding, and I'm pretty sure that we stuck to that, within a few hundred dollars. I am certain that we were no more than $200 over due to the set amount of money in our wedding account. While I started out wedding planning with $30,000 set aside, during our engagement we decided that our priorities did not include having a typical, blow out wedding. We paid for my midwifery program with some of the money. A few months before the wedding we bought a house. And next month we will use some of our money to take a much needed three week vacation in Argentina.

That being said, we tried not to feel like we were being limited by our budget when planning. We made our big choices count: having our wedding in my parents backyard instead of the barn we'd originally planned on renting, picking a photographer who could work with us on pricing, and doing some of the catering ourselves. I also bought my dress used, I made things that I'd originally planned on buying (like my hair piece modeled after the lovely k.autumn), and we asked friends and family to help with things like flowers and music.

Being smart about the big things allowed us the freedom to splurge in some areas. For example, we bought all the dishes we used at the wedding from thrift shops. While I had a rule that each dish had to cost less than it would cost to rent it, I occasionally bought things that were more expensive--particularly since I knew those pieces would end up being used in our house. My husband also had his suit made after months of trying to find one in thrift shops, but we still came in on budget and we know he'll use it for years to come.

what was happening with the shoes?

2008-10-06T10:12:00.001-07:00

I have no memory of what I might have been doing in this picture (during the ceremony). It's funny how that happens.

Escort Cards

2008-10-06T09:47:00.000-07:00

While we had originally thought that we'd do the relaxed thing and avoid assigned tables, after a quick poll of our friends we realized that most people would prefer being told where to sit. So we ended up with assigned tables, though not assigned seats.

This added an additional project at the last minute--figuring out how to let people know what table they were seated at. I decided right away that names were going to be on leaves. I bought appropriately colored paper from an art store and cut out two leaf shaped patterns from cardboard. I enlisted the help of a bridesmaid who traced the leaves, cut them out, and wrote names on the front and tables on the back.

My original thought was to have them hanging from a branch, but after realizing that would involve more work than I was prepared to dedicate to this project, I looked around for an alternative. I'd already requested that people collect acorns for me (they were originally going to be scattered on the tables) so I dumped all the acorns in a basket I found in my parent's laundry room, stuck in a few mushrooms I had lying around from Small Stump, and used the acorns to prop up the leaves.

Ta da! Project done in less than 2 hours. Total cost: $5 for the paper.

counting cards

2008-10-01T20:15:00.000-07:00

I was browsing around crafting websites today and came across these adorable counting cards on eeBoo. They are meant for kid's rooms, but if you had 10 or less tables, they would also make great table numbers. The animal and bird sets seem most wedding appropriate, but they also have trains if that's your thing.

how unprofessional

2008-09-28T20:03:00.000-07:00

As much as I'm looking forward to seeing our professional pictures, and know they will be lovely, I'm really loving seeing the bad pictures of our wedding. The ones where we are making weird faces or staring off into space.

Or ones where my husband dances all crazy and my sister's boyfriend makes eyes at the camera....

Or the ones where I'm lying on the dance floor...

And I'd like to state, for the record, that I'd only had one glass of sangria prior to these pictures being taken.

having your friends and family marry you

2008-09-26T13:42:00.000-07:00

I mentioned this a ways back, but legally we got our marriage certificate back in January so that I could hop onto P's health insurance. Doing that opened up some possibilities for our ceremony since we didn't need to have someone legally marry us. We put the word out to our friends and family that we were looking for someone who wouldn't mind officiating. And after not hearing anything back (except that people felt that it was too much responsibility to be in charge of actually marrying us), I begged/conned one of our good friends into doing it, with the agreement that we'd have a quaker ceremony and that it wouldn't require her to actually do much. Secretly I'd always thought she'd do an amazing job though and we'd been kind of pulling for her to do it all along.

While P and I aren't quaker (we aren't anything, actually), we liked the idea that instead of one person proclaiming you to be married, that your community comes together to support your union. I'm going to post the text of our ceremony (which we lifted from indiebride and then edited to fit our needs), so you can see how the whole thing worked.
---------
(We walked in to "Every Morning" by Keb Mo, which is beautiful, but since we never practiced anything before the actual ceremony was about three minutes longer than the 30 seconds it took us all to gather in the front. That ended with me making a big "cut" sign to our friend in charge of music and everyone laughing at the endless music. Silly things like that, my dogs deciding that they needed to hang out with us during the ceremony and my little cousin having to run up and grab my puppy who was attacking my dress, and horses making horse noises in the background really made our ceremony personal for us.)

(Officiant Friend):
We are gathered here to celebrate the wedding of Paul and Katie. Our ceremony today will be conducted in the manner of a Meeting of Friends, or Quaker Meeting.

At the beginning of the ceremony, the bride and groom will stand and exchange vows. After this, anyone may stand and speak if so moved. While messages are welcome, periods of silence are expected and are a time for reflection.

If you would like to speak, please stand as the last person finishes. Messages may be literal or metaphorical, and about anything appropriate to the joy and solemnity of the occasion—love, family, marriage, life, or what you will.

After a short time we will read the marriage certificate and Katie and Paul will sign it and exchange rings. Following this, everyone is invited to sign the marriage certificate in confirmation of your support of the union.

(P said his vows here, which were lovely and basically exactly like mine even though we hadn't seen each other's before).

(Then I said my vows, after remarking that "I think we wrote the exact same vows!")

(Officiant Friend)
Now if anyone would like to speak, please feel free to stand and do so.

(Open talking time - We sat for this part, which was AMAZING. We knew there were a few people who were going to talk, but so many people surprised us and said something. And what people said was so, so powerful and awesome. People read poems, blessings, told stories about us as individuals and as a couple, his dad and stepsister sang/played a song that his dad had written. It really was one of the best 45 minutes of my life.)

(Officiant friend)
Thank people for sharing. Now we will hear the reading of the marriage certificate.

(Best man)

On this the twentieth day of September in the year
Two thousand and eight
In the town of Palo Cedro, California

Katherine XXXXX &
Paul XXXXXXX

Took each other by the hand and joyfully declared themselves married, promising to be loving and equal partners as long as they both shall live.

As confirmation and celebration of this commitment we set our hands.

And we, as members of their loving community, set our hands in witness and pledge to celebrate and support this union.
(Katie & P Sign certificate)

(Officiant friend)
Now, take hands. And all of you who love each other, please take each others' hands as well. To reach out to someone and be acknowledged and loved is a human need. Taking the hand of one who loves you is a powerful symbol of that unspoken bond.

Your hands are also the part of you that you use the most. As you go about your daily work and play, your ring is a tangible reminder of the promises you’ve made to each other. It will always be with you, visible, worn openly and with pride.

As you exchange rings, declare your commitment to one another.

(Me)
I give you this ring as a symbol of my commitment to you and our family.

(P)
I give you this ring as a symbol of my commitment to you and our family.

(Officiant friend)
And now, assuming you are moved to do so, you can go ahead and kiss!

(At that point music was suppose to start playing again but we had some technically difficulties so officiant friend said something like "This sort of occasion calls for some music!" to prompt music friend to start playing the song, not realizing that he was just having tech difficulties. So we all kind of stood around and smiled for a minute until he started the music.)

--------

(pictures taken by my cousin during and immediately after the ceremony)

first glance

2008-09-23T21:31:00.000-07:00

The husband and I spent the night together before the wedding, had a wonderful wedding morning breakfast together with our friends, but got ready separately (mostly so they could finish up setting things up at the house while I could get my hair done with my friends). Then we met back up at the B&B before the wedding to take pictures. I think it was perfect for us. I couldn't have imagined not spending the night with him (particularly since we live together) or not taking pictures before the wedding (such a huge time saver), but it was nice to have alone time with my friends before the wedding.

My friend took this picture of us seeing each other for the first time, in costume. While my dress has been in our house for months now, he'd never seen it.

PS- Since a few people have mentioned it, we are actually going on our honeymoon in November (Argentina!). More about that later, but I'll be around posting for the next month or so until then!

Another teaser picture

2008-09-22T12:37:00.001-07:00

we're back!

2008-09-22T09:12:00.000-07:00

Actually, we're still at my parent's house but we're married and all that good stuff. The wedding was perfect. A flawed perfection in certain ways (there were a few timing mishaps), but perfect. Our guests keep telling us they had fun, we had fun, there was a lot of dancing, the food was great, and the day was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

I am in love with my wedding and my wonderful husband.

Ceremony shot stolen from my friend's facebook. I have no idea what I'm doing with my arms here, but you get the idea. And I was pleasantly surprised to see that the horses ARE in the background! I wonder if someone threw carrots over the fence for them :)

eek!

2008-09-16T13:11:00.000-07:00

Today is my last day in town before I head up to my parent's house tomorrow morning. We are meeting with our photographer tonight to go over last minute details. And then tomorrow morning I'm packing up the rest of the wedding stuff in our house to drive up there. The boy is picking up our DJ equipment on Thursday afternoon so he'll be driving up then.

Crazy!

playlists

2008-09-15T16:26:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks the boy and I have been working on our wedding playlists (with the help of his ethnomusicologist best freind). He used to manage a college radio station so one of his friends from the station is going to dj the dancing part of our wedding using their mobile DJ unit, but we set up music to play before the ceremony, during cocktail hour, and during dinner. These will probably be switched up a bit before the wedding, but here's what we've got so far.

Pre-Wedding List (about a half hour)

Cocktail Hour (1 hour)

Dinner (1 hour 15 min)

take a break

2008-09-15T09:14:00.001-07:00

We're five days out!

Yesterday was spent avoiding all wedding related nonsense. We woke up early, picked up some picnic fixings, and met two of our good friends for a day of wine tasting and food.

Having spent months with almost every weekend dedicated at least in part to working on the wedding, it was nice to have a sneak preview of what a weddingless life will look like.

I highly recommend taking a mini-break like this the week before the wedding. We came back last night so much happier and more excited about the wedding than we've been in a long time.

(Image Source: Jason Tinacci / NVV)

let them eat cake (and pie!)

2008-09-12T19:40:00.000-07:00

I am a dessert fiend. I love the way desserts look, the way they smell, the way they taste. I like eating them and making them. If I weren't studying midwifery, maybe I'd become a pastry chef. Seriously, the thought has crossed my mind.

Many, many months ago. Maybe even before we were officially engaged my soon to be and I decided that were were going to have pie at our wedding. At the time, there was an amazing pie shop in town, run by a Chez Panisse alum. She made her pie using local, seasonal fruits, and a chalkboard in the shop provided contact info for the farmers, should you want to chat with them. She is my hero. And then, because she was too popular (seriously, the place was always packed), and her little kids were missing their mom, she closed the shop down.

So for months the backup plan was to order cake from a local bakery that has supplied the majority of the birthday cakes I've eaten in my life. Since wedding cakes from them are crazy expensive, the plan was to order a variety of their regular cakes.

But I had this nagging desire for pie. So one day I emailed the pie woman with my plea for pie (even just a few pies). And she emailed me back! Because she doesn't have a commercial kitchen, she's only able to make six pies. But any pie from her is worth its weight in gold, so we are doing three blackberry-peach pies and three apple-pear. I cannot wait!

To supplement that we are still ordering a few cakes from the bake shop I decided was going to make my wedding cake when I was about five years old. When we went to place the order today they even gave us free cake and coffee. Brilliant! I was not expecting free dessert with my piddly little cake order.

I'm really looking forward to next weekend.

here is why you can't look so far out

2008-09-11T08:12:00.000-07:00

So what does weather.com have to say today (after we spent hours yesterday creating a backup). Sunny. 90 degrees. Zero percent chance of rain. On Friday and Saturday.

Let's keep it that way.

And good luck to the other Northern California brides who I know are dealing with this right now!

do not check the 10 day forecast

2008-09-10T09:57:00.000-07:00

For those of you not here yet, I am warning you. Do not check the 10 day forecast. Mine is up to the day before the wedding, and it's not looking pretty. In a sea of 95+ degree days of pure sunshine, Friday is scheduled to be 80 and rainy. I mean, it hasn't rained in months. And historically it hasn't rained much that weekend (there was about a 5% chance). But seeing "thunderstorms" on the little chart this morning made me go into panic mode.

We are having an outdoor wedding. Basically on the dirt. Which will quickly turn into muddy mud if we get our first rain of the fall that weekend. We would have a very difficult time cramming 100 people into my parent's small house, so today I called a tent company (the one tent company near my parent's house), just to see.

$3187. For a tent. For real.

So that's kind of out the window. I'm kind of wishing I could just pretend I didn't see the little thunderstorm graphic, but part of me feels like the adult thing to do is to call around and figure out an indoor option. Just in case.

holy mother of mixers

2008-09-07T21:16:00.001-07:00

This is really, absolutely insane of me, but I'm about to start crying y'all. Our KitchenAid stand mixer was just reserved on our wishpot registry list. I've been wanting a stand mixer since I was a little kid. And really didn't think the chances of someone buying a more spendy thing off the registry were likely. I'm just blown away by how generous people are.

Yay!

check!

2008-09-05T16:17:00.000-07:00

Another thing done! I went to my hair trial today and I loved it. And after showing you those two pictures this morning, I searched around online and ended up showing her two totally different images. Of course. So inspiration was a combination of low bun in the back and poof in the front:

source

I have a TON of hair. Even with massive thinning the first thing any hair stylist tells me is that I've got thick hair. They say it in a semi-horrified voice. So she started by trying to replicate style #1 above. It ended up something like this:

poof! So much poof. And hair. I've got a lot of hair people.

Neither of us liked it, and the weight of it was weird felt like it was going to pull it out, so she took it all down and we moved on. What she came up with was this:

I loved it. Everyone in the salon loved it (there were about five other women checking it out). It's comfortable and feels securely stuck to my head. Also I look like I have about half as much hair as in the previous style. Some pictures my sister took just now (a few hours later).

I'll be wearing it with the veil for the ceremony and pictures before, and then taking the veil off and just wearing the fascinator for the reception.

Also, I need to work on actually smiling in pictures and taking front facing pictures for the wedding!

And on a non-wedding related note, here is my sister and my puppy for added cuteness.

hair trial

2008-09-05T09:09:00.001-07:00

We're back up at my parent's house this weekend, in part to help work on the yard, but also because I have my long awaited hair trial today.

I've been kind of dreading the hair trial. I don't totally know what I want done with my hair. And I have a lot of it. It's thick and wavy and extra-prone to tangles. My normal hair stylist jokes that I could have dreads in days (and it's true). Also I sort of forgot to ever schedule an appointment with my regular hair stylist to get my bangs trimmed so they are currently longer than I'd like.

I'd like them to be sort of like this picture of the lovely miss zooey.
But possible slightly more refined in the back (just so it sticks).
Wish me luck!

the crazy inside my head

2008-09-04T09:05:00.000-07:00

My big-decision, decision making process goes something like this. Have large, stressful decision to make. Do a ton of internet research and decide on what you want and what is possible. Fixate on the thing that is within reach to avoid feelings of sadness about the thing that is wanted but not possible (due to budget, proximity, etc). Commit to item within reach. Fixate on what was actually wanted and second guess decision to settle.

So you can imagine that my wedding planning process has been a lot of fun for my psyche. The perfect example of this is my wedding dress. It was the first dress I tried on, and I bought it because it came in petite, it was enough like the dress I really wanted that I liked it, and it was really cheap. Practical, yes, in theory. So now I've spent months second guessing, buying other random cheap dresses for the reception to make myself feel better about my original purchase, and secretly lusting over the dress I really want in an ideal world.

I had a dream about the ideal dress last night. Which makes me want to barf a little bit. My dress is perfectly fine. And ideal dress, even used, is several GRAND more. In fact, ideal dress used would cost about a 1/3 of our wedding budget. So there you go.

Our wedding is not about a dress. I love the person I'm marrying, and he will love me back even if I think the dress I'm wearing has flaws. And yet something has been set up where I honestly feel like I will regret not having ideal dress on my wedding day.

I could blab on about my irrationality for days, so instead I'm asking you to tell me that you've also felt something totally irrational in this process.

(image from brides)

diy flowers trial

2008-09-02T21:09:00.000-07:00

Another project this weekend was for my sister to learn how to make bouquets, since she is going to be doing that the day before the wedding. This actually led to another discovery. Right down the street from my parents is a farm that carries zinnias in a variety of colors. We went there to pick up some flowers for my sister to practice with, but FH decided that he was going to give them a call and see if they had enough flowers that they could be a potential supplier for the wedding. And the woman was thrilled to work with us! She's selling us bouquets of 15 stems for $5. That is literally less than half of what our other supplier is charging. So huge score.

My sister used the domino french spiral youtube video to get the basic idea. She ended up with this lovely bouquet. not the colors or flowers we are going to use for my bouquet, but she said it really helped her to see what she is going to need to do for the real ones.

A few things she noticed...zinnias are really small. We are going to use dahlias as the base for the real thing because this bouquet, which is tiny, took around 30 stems. She also realized that with zinnias at least, it was necessary to wire every, single stem. No question. They were flopping all over the place otherwise.

Overall we were both really happy with the result, and she is glad I talked her into doing this trial before the wedding.

dish washing, part deux

2008-09-02T20:45:00.000-07:00

We spent the weekend up at my parents house working on the wedding, and I've got to tell you...having the majority of the wedding stuff out of our house, up there, makes it seem soooo soon!

We took all the dishes we've collected out of their boxes and gave them a proper washing in the dishwasher (as opposed to the lawn washing they previously received). The picture on the left is some, but not all, of the boxes we piled up in their kitchen. In the living room we stuck 13 boxes for our 13 tables (ooo...scary...13 tables...think my marriage is doomed?). In each box went the correct number of plates, napkins, water glasses, three random vases, and a mason jar filled with silverware.

I have no idea how I missed taking a picture of that assembly line, but after everything went into the "shed" which is really my parents old garden shed that my dad, sister,and I converted into my sister and my bedroom in high school. It's now in the process of becoming my dad's office, but in the meantime is the wedding storage room.
My dad covered it all with a painting tarp so it wouldn't get dusty.

As much as my inner control freak feels a little weird about my stuff not being here, it's nice to let go of this project and call it done. There is no reason why I'd need to recount the forks before the wedding. No reason at all.

amature floral design

2008-08-28T12:30:00.000-07:00

I posted a few months ago about our decision to forgo the florist and do our flowers ourselves--organic and local. Now that its down to crunch time I actually need to place my order from the flower farm. I'm having a horrible time making a decision about what to actually order, and my selection is somewhat limited due to ordering from one smallish farm.

Here is where this post turns into a dumping ground for my floral inspiration collection.

It seems to me that the flowers I've liked, that might possible work, are still pretty diverse. I like the wildflower, carefree look. But I also like a more polished bouquet. Too many decisions to make! If only there was an organic, local peony and sweetpea farm, growing those springtime flowers in late summer in my area, the decision would be easy. But you work with what you've got!

Here's what my flower farm should have in late September:

Overwhelming. We don't really have wedding colors, though stuff has generally been in the yellow, cream, dark red, olive green range. Which doesn't really limit our choice here tremendously.

I'm thinking about doing a combination of these. With the statice in just the yellow, not purple. And the dahlias in the pink-yellow and dark red color. Not sure on that.

Table flowers are going to be in a combination of thrifted vases, mason jars, and glass milk jars. Too country? Just enough?

the dresses are multiplying

2008-08-27T18:10:00.000-07:00

I'm a three dress bride. This buying dresses thing is a bad habit, and I'm aware of that. Good thing it's only three weeks until the wedding :)

I'm set for my actual wedding dress, but seeing how it's long, hot, and our wedding day seems like it's going to be in the 80s+, I wanted something shorter and cooler for dancing.

Excuse the mess..we just moved in and this is my wedding dumping ground. Also ignore my weird faces. And the multiple shoe and hat changes, unless you'd also like to comment on those!

Option 1 is a short j.crew dress I found at a thrift store. It isn't exactly the right size (it's a 4, I'm a 2p in their sizes), but it was cheap (really cheap) and I could hem up the shoulders a tiny bit to make it work. I bought it to wear to an event that required white attire, but didn't end up wearing it. It's kind of boring, but also fairly flattering (i think).

Option 2 is a Katie Jean dress I had custom made on etsy with the idea that I could wear it both at the reception and then take it with me on my honeymoon and that kind of thing. In theory I love the ruffles. I love that it's fun. The thing is that it feels too big on me and I have no idea how I'd take it in myself. I feel like the ruffles make me look very..round? More pictures of this one because i feel like the different angles make a difference in how much i like it...

Thoughts?

PS-I would like to add that my dress total still falls under the $600 range for all three dresses combined.

to-do and done

2008-08-19T08:54:00.000-07:00

I'm a big fan of lists (not thekn*t evil ones, but ones of my own creation). They are rarely complete and in the case of the wedding often embellished or stretched to make me feel better about myself, but nevertheless they seem useful.

Here is my most recent, vastly incomplete, list of things done and to-do for the wedding:

Done

-Groom
-Figure out my pie/cake situation (and oh lord are they going to be good--I have an ex-Chez Panisse pastry chef making me seasonal, local pie).
-Get sexy shoes and a variety of wedding dresses
-Made a birdcage veil and facinator*. Also realized that old bright red hat I have matches new bright red shoes and should be worn for reception with newly acquired bright red lipstick.
-Groom finally bought a suit. And bought pants and suspenders for his groomsmen.
-Made table runners. Thrifted enough vases to have flowers at like three weddings simultaneously. Got other people collecting acorns to put on the tables and my sisters making super cute felted acorns.
-Finally have enough thrifted dishes so that everyone can eat.
-Did the do-it-yourself makeup thing at Sephora. Realized I hate smoky eyes on me and that my right eyelid is saggy. But also feel more confident that I can do my own makeup and not look whorish or frumpy.
-Conned a bridesmaid into facilitating our ceremony.
-Put my parents on a schedule for cleaning up their yard before the wedding (which is in their yard).
-Reserved toilets, tables, and all the essential things.
-Bought my custom wedding band from Green Lake Jewelers. Am slightly nervous that i waited too long and it may not be here before the wedding.
-Made mustaches.

To Do

-Help bridesmaid write ceremony
-Finish making decor (things that hang from trees)
-Reserve kegs
-Reserve flowers to be picked up from farm.
-Harass our lazy guests to be into actually rsvping.
-Create must-take photo list
-Make programs that explain quaker ceremony and direction cards for hotel room.
-Hair trial (scheduled for first week of Sept)
-Finish must-play song list.
-Create seating chart.Make place cards and table numbers.
-Buy fun photo booth props.
-Reserve cakes.
-Do all the last minute stuff like set up the yard, etc.

*My spell check would really like me to change facinator to hallucinatory.
**This list was lifted on an IndieBride post because I'm lazy.

(Image)

the naming of things

2008-08-13T08:07:00.000-07:00

When I was growing up, my parents had different last names (Big deal, right. Everyone has different names these days). My sisters and I took our dad's name while our mom kept with her maiden name for years. I actually don't know why she didn't change it--I suspect it wasn't political as she did do so after about 20 years of marriage. Regardless, and as silly as it sounds, I always hated that my mom and I had different last names. I secretly planned on changing my last name to hers (that is until she changed it) and then secretly hoped that when I got married some day that my future husband and I would take her last name. I am a tried and true mama's girl.

So now I'm getting married. And the guy and I would really like the same last name. We'd like it for us, and we'd like it for our future kids. We know it doesn't really matter. There were three last names in his house growing up and he didn't implode or anything. But it's what we want.

And thus begins the trouble. How on earth do you decide what name to take?

Being very PC, neither of us wants the other to have to take their name. It seems too one-sided. Plus, his last name, quite frankly, makes me shudder every time I have to say it. My mouth does not easily make those sounds. And my last name is boring. Not common or anything, just boring. Although him saying that he felt uncomfortable taking my name because, very unfortunately, politicians he works with would consider him "whipped" made me immediately decide that we NEED to take my name. I can be a little reactionary. And isn't that messed up? But probably, unfortunately, true.

We've considered other family names, but that too feels like picking sides. We've considered combinations of our names, but it seems like Irish and Polish last names don't play nice together. We've considered coming up with a new name entirely, but can't find anything that seems meaningful enough to have it stick.

I can see why people have developed systems for things like this (patronymic, matonymic, family name, etc). Picking a name is a loaded task, and one that doesn't lend itself to settling or easy compromise.

(Tree via PBS.com)

Legal marriage vs community marriage

2008-08-08T17:20:00.000-07:00

I may be outing myself to some friends & family lurkers, but P and I: already married. Earlier this year we made the decision that I would go back to school to pursue midwifery. Being on call all the time, I couldn't really work and P's insurance wouldn't cover us as domestic partners in California, since our state doesn't recognize opposite-sex domestic partners. So, we decided that it wasn't worth the worry of me not having any health insurance, knowing we were going to get married anyway, and got hitched at city hall. My parents and sister were there as witnesses. And since we've told a few other people. But this whole time we've been planning this other wedding. What we now refer to as the "fake-real" wedding.

And really, while I like the legal benefits that have come from being married (the health insurance and the easily buying a home together) for most purposes we don't feel married. Since the people around us don't know that we are, nobody treats us like we are.

I was browsing through Wedding Bee the other day and came across the Our United State post on the point of marriage. I loved this section:

We need other people to survive. If something happens to one of us, we are not living in a vacuum, a happy unit of two charging against the world. I no longer only have the support of my family, but his family as well, which is, of course, no longer my family and his family but our family. And that support is not really optional. Families, unlike knitting clubs and drinking buddies, have a binding responsibility for one another.

That is how I view marriage. Marriage is responsibility. And not just for us to be responsible for each other but for society to be responsible for us.

...we are getting married because we are asking for you to be responsible for our union. And that's an intuitive thing. If your best friend tells you he's breaking up with his girlfriend, you'd be curious and maybe a little concerned but it's his life and it isn't working out. But if he tells you he's thinking of divorcing his wife? He better have a damn good reason. Emerson is not my boyfriend. And we want you to know that.

Does legal marriage have its perks? Yup. And everyone should be able to benefit from those. But does having a piece of paper from the state make me feel married? Not really. For that, I think I need my community to share in the process and take responsibility for us as a couple.

This is really all a lead in to why on earth we've decided, as non-quaker, non-religious folks, to have a quaker wedding ceremony at our fake-real wedding. But that post will have to wait, as my half-husband and I are off to dinner.

Give and Take

2008-07-09T22:30:00.001-07:00

Planning a wedding should not be the most stressful thing you've ever done. It really shouldn't. Though that becomes increasing difficult when it is easily the most money I've ever spent on anything (and I'm not spending that much, comparatively). And it's also the largest event I've ever planned. So I've finally decided that some give and take on my projects and wedding goals needed to be allowed for.

Things I've given up on altogether:
- There will be no cute, handmade felt acorns at every table. Making felt acorns hurts my hands and is boring. Though they do look cute when done, it is not a priority and nobody will miss them.
- I am not making my own cake. I keep wanting to and then trying to picture myself having time to do it in the days before my wedding, and it just isn't happening.
- I am not going to worry that directions to the wedding didn't get in the wedding invite. People can get them on the website. Or they can call one of us. It wasn't worth another wasted gocco screen to try and figure out why that image wasn't working (for the third time).
- I'm not going to make an acorn shaped pinata or spend hours online trying to find a squirrel pinata either. In fact, I'm not going to worry about trying to find one at all. (As an aside, we were going to do a pinata beating instead of a garter toss/bouquet throw).

Things I am still doing but need to find the motivation to work on:
- Making ribbon mobiles to hang from trees.
- Making wire contraptions to hang jars filled with candles from.
- Figuring out who will make my wedding cake/cakes/pie? instead of me.
- Making some sort of leaf shaped place card/seating chart thing.
- Making blackboard signs to put around wedding site.

(Image source acorns. Image source ribbons.)

i'm a post office junkie

2008-07-07T16:07:00.000-07:00

I am crazy. In the spirit of full disclosure, I have been to the post office 4 times today. Three times to try and get enough stamps to do my budget version of the vintage stamp thing, because I didn't like the 42c options.

And then once to get them dropped off. Although that almost turned into another visit when a super pushy older (homeless?) woman wouldn't let me get out of my car because she wanted me to walk down the street with her to see her kids so i would give her money. I ended up leaving, deciding I really didn't want to visit a 5th post office today, and circling back around to the other side of the post office to drop them off.

Gocco Take 2

2008-07-07T07:19:00.000-07:00

We finally finished our wedding invitations last weekend. It was a long process involving running out of supplies multiple times, frantically ordering new ones, mistakenly having them sent to my parent's house due to paypal address confusion, and then giving up on certain parts of the invitations that just weren't working.

Making your own invites can be a hassle, but it definitely saved us money (in comparison to letterpress at least). And they look homemade--but I think in a sweet, fun way.

Plus, I'm pretty impressed that with my total lack of design skills, I was able to pull this off.

This picture has the best representation of the colors (if you click on it you can see a larger view).

The actual invitation part--the image is in a gold, shimmery ink that we also used in a few other parts of the invitation (the ink color doesn't show up very well in pictures).

I'm knitting the artists son red mittens in exchange for using the image.

The front & back of the reply postcard. Our initials carved in the tree have to be one of my favorite elements of the design, and totally last minute.

If I can get myself to the post office today to find stamps, they should be in the mail by this afternoon. It makes the whole wedding thing seem more real, to know that people will actually be able to RSVP soon.

Back from my bachelorette...

2008-07-02T09:07:00.000-07:00

I've come back from a weekend of wine tasting with my best friends really inspired to keep going with this whole wedding planning bit, despite my last grinchy post.

I've been thinking a lot about photography lately. Our photographer is a friend of a family member and is giving us an amazing package for a great price. His work is really lovely--bright, photo-journalistic, sweet. The more I look at his work (and I'll bet they think they have a stalker if they look at their web hits, because I'm on their site a lot), the more I like it.

But, since their site doesn't let me grab images, I present a few of my photo inspiration pictures.

Ranting

2008-06-24T08:54:00.000-07:00

In a moment of self-loathing about all the things that need to get done for the wedding, I made the very bad mistake of opening my to-do list on theknot yesterday. Not only does it include about 100 things that I am behind on (groom's attire, floral arrangements, officiant, etc) but this month they would like me to "Start taking better care of yourself (eat right, exercise) so you look and feel great on your wedding day." I mean, yes, it's a good idea to eat right and exercise. But I kind of resent them telling me to do that for my wedding day. Like I have the rest of my life to turn in to a pig, but for my wedding, I should look skinny and pretty. So that's rant number one.

Rant number two is that I'm really sick of people acting like I'm being a control freak about the wedding. Yes, I am normally a planner. I like to plan things. And I'm not that good a group projects. But in this case, a wedding is a huge event. And I'm doing everything 100% by myself. Not because I want to, but because every time I try to delegate something to someone else (primarily my parents who actually live where the wedding is being held), they ignore my question for months until they finally get sick of me asking. But then their response is surrounded by this whole "She's always been like this...so controlling. I think this might be her inner bridezilla coming out." I think they think it's funny. But I'm a little bit over my parents calling me the b-word that might as well be the other b-word.

There is something so wrong with women getting forced into this role. Everyone expects the wedding to be big and fun, nobody wants to help with the planning stages. So essentially they expect you to show up after months of planning in secret so as not to disturb anyone or look like a bridezilla, and look like the skinny, hot, princess bride for a day. It's not right.

Bubbles!

2008-06-21T11:49:00.000-07:00

Snippet & Ink had a picture of a bubble station at the wedding she's featuring today. Add bubbles to the list of random, little-kid, birthday party things I'd love to have at my wedding. Sometimes I think I'm overcompensating for the years of small/no birthday parties I had as a kid (not because of my parent's--I just didn't want them at the time).

(I'm thinking something with more variety in bubble wands than this though).

There will probably be around 10 kids at our wedding, but I think some of the adults would have fun with it to.

Would you play with a bubble station at an outdoor, backyard, end of summer wedding?

A Joyous Day!

2008-06-16T10:03:00.000-07:00

When I was younger and thinking about getting married way off in the future, I said I'd never do it, unless our state or country came around and allowed ANYONE to get married. None of this marriage equals a man and a woman nonsense. This is particularly personal to me, as my best friend since childhood is in a long-term, very loving, same-sex relationship. And as the most functional, sweet couple I know, they sure as hell should have the right to get married if I do!

And so, it is with absolutely joy that I write that starting today, in the state of California (where we all live), if they wanted to, they could! In fact, their county, along with a few others, will be among the first to start issuing them today (the rest will start tomorrow).