Vendors, or lack of! (8/14)

Let's start by saying, the resort needed a list of all my vendors.  Vendors? Huh?
We didn't have any.  A first for them!

You already know so much about how we accomplished this, but what you'll soon find out is that our desserts were potluck, our music was i-pod playlists, family and friends took some video and that my amazingly talented brother was our photographer!

Looking at traditional wedding albums, there were always the same type of photos, and who knows what kind of arm and leg people pay for them. I wanted the artsy photos I was attracted to, the kind my brother took!  First I had to make sure he wanted that job, cause it meant he couldn't just kick back at his sister's wedding.

Well, needless to say he was into it, and so were we!  As you can tell from most of the wedding pictures herein, he did an aaaammmazzzing job!  Unique, thoughtful, and taken with love.  He also bought us a Flicker account, and we told our guests taking their own photos, to upload them.  This gave us a number of different view points, which was great!

Something else that happened organically, that I could not have been happier with, was the colors that our guests brought to the wedding!  By coincidence, which I loved, both moms had on bright pink!  Other guests had on bright blue, purple, red, green, turquoise, magenta and orange. It was so vibrant and cheery! This made for great pictures!  ..What a colorful wedding!

I will always be grateful to everyone who participated in some way, and to my brother, the photographer.

the Ceremony (7/14)

In the end, the ceremony was my favorite part of our wedding!  I remember listening to the sounds of water rolling and birds chirping as we looked into each others eyes.  Oh, how magical it was! 

The ceremony was in front of a stream in the middle of the woods, and the weather was beautiful.  You had to walk a ways to get there  (golf cart option for the elderly) and you were led by the most beautiful music.

The procession was small, including his parents, our brothers, the groom and then came my mother and I. It was a very special moment when I asked my mom to walk me down the aisle. I will always remember that moment and, of course, the moment when it actually happened.

The beautiful music was played by a group of my dear friends.  Although a lot of my friends are musicians, not all of these lovely ladies were.  They learned especially for us! (How ridiculously special!) My talented friend Sheila was leading a Xylophone ensemble with the middle school students in March.  That was the moment I knew the xylophones must be played at our wedding!  It was the most magical sound, and it filled the space with such a joyous and happy feeling.

Sheila became the teacher of two xylophone numbers for seven lovely ladies, while another friend, Rachel, played the clarinet when I walked down the aisle. I could never have imagined how wonderfully perfect these instruments would sound filling the natural environment!

These ladies were rock stars, practicing at lunch and after school.  I would sometimes sneak by the music room door to hear!  It was amazing.

For the ceremony itself, we wanted to have family and friends involved as much as possible.

My husband's cousin is a judge, and was able to marry us.  We had traditional marriage vows read, and we also had our own vows that were read directly after.

Now, you may have heard me call my husband, wonderfully poetic, and that's because he is!  He was a creative writing major in college when we met. (and wooed me with poems very early on!)   Two of his best friends read poems during the ceremony.

Pamela read an original poem and Damian read an excerpt from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass...both of them did an amazing job!  In between the readings, the xylophone ensemble played a little ditty, and Shelia sang a traditional love song that brought me to tears.




Speaking of my love for color and magic, I have also always loved bubbles!  (I'm a big kid really.) I wanted us to be showered with bubbles when we exit.  That summer AC Moore had a bubble sale (.25 each) and we bought out all the purple bottles.  To make those bubbles special we took off the existing label and used sticker paper to attach an image of one of my paintings. The painting is called Love Setting. 

Choosing this painting fit perfectly, as when I began this painting in college my hubby and I were just friends, and by the time Love Setting was complete, we were a couple!

Bubbles sat on each chair as our guests arrived.

Magical sights.
Magical sounds.
Magical feeling.
Magical moment.
Magical memories.
Magical LOVE.

the Flowers (6/14)

I love flowers!  I have mentioned this before.  Flowers have always inspired my art, stood as metaphors in my work, been the focus of papers I have written and was even the theme of the bridal shower my friend Andrea threw me.

Flower Scape Installation

There was no way I was paying someone tons of money to arrange flowers for me.  I knew this. I also knew as I perused those wedding blogs, I was drawn to the arrangements in simple mason jars.  And anyone who knows me or has seen my art work, knows I love love love color!

One day I sent an email to my family, friends and co-workers asking them for interesting jars..just as an experiment to see what I would get.  That week I had an incredible amount of jars finding their way to my desk.  Large and small mason jars, jam and jelly jars, sauce jars, even some interesting bottles.  Light bulb moment!

That's when I came up with the idea to use a variety of recycled jars and bottles to create a Flower Scape.  This flower scape would serve as a changing installation, your table card, a take away and the centerpiece created by the people at your table. Phew! (I would also have one larger jar of flowers on the table with the table number, and some throughout the resort.) 

 Jar Organization and Storage

I spent a lot of time washing and sorting jars that summer.  Once I had my sets complete I created labels using old cereal boxes and yarn.  The cereal box was a great component because my man and I heart cereal, it was again a recycled element and it added another bit of color to the mix. To attach the names and numbers I used the leftover mailing labels from the invitations and the fancy invitation font. All of this was done in advance and stored in sturdy boxes I had gotten from work.

I bought the flowers whole sale, (planned in advance, picked up the day before) and because I wanted so much color, I chose a lovely variety of flowers including: Red Hypericum Berries, Red Alstromeria, Red Spray Carnations, Orange Montbrethia, Orange Spray Roses, Yellow Solidago, Small Sunflowers, Yellow Button Mums, Green Hypericum, Green Buttons, Bells of Ireland, Purple Buttons, Purple Veronica and Limonium.

 I decided on a rainbow hand-tied bouquet, using the same flowers that would make up the flower scape. Doesn't a rainbow bouquet sound so beautiful?  Oh it was!  Different from all sides, bursting with color! The beautiful mothers and a few other important ladies wore a sunflower corsage, and the gentleman wore herb boutonnieres made of sage, rosemary, thyme and lavender. The groom had dried blueberries too!

The day before the wedding my two closest friends came with me to pick up the flowers and we went to town filling those jars!  It was so fun to play with so many colorful and beautiful flowers!  When all was said and done, we packed them in boxes and were ready for sleep!

Making the arrangements!

The next morning when we arrived at Full Moon,  Mary Jo set up the flower scape.

Lovely.

Papercranes (5/14)

Beginnings of the Paper Crane Collection

The decision to make origami paper cranes came early on. I frequented creative wedding blogs just to look at the visuals, and found myself attracted to paper cranes.  I had never made one before, but loved the beauty and delicacy they created, the color they added, and their symbolism.


Traditionally, in Japan, one thousand origami paper cranes were given as a wedding gift to wish the couple a thousand years of happiness and prosperity. Now, I didn't make a thousand, (a few hundred) but believe it still brought a magical beauty and happiness to our marriage. (and wedding!)

I worked at an art store for years, and they graciously gave me lots of origami paper..in all colors, and my favorite, glow in the dark!  Then my lovely friend Mary Jo taught me to make the paper crane during a sleepover party!  It took a few times, and I never felt they were perfect, but I began to get the hang of it.

Ruby loves the cranes!

For a few months I made paper cranes.  I made them during the day... and I made them at night.  It was actually really fun! Listening to music, watching television, hanging with friends...I would make paper cranes. I would make them and toss them in a box.


When the second box began to fill up I started to play around with how I would hang them.  That's when I realized making them was the easy part...hanging them proved a bit more challenging.  In the end I used a needle and fishing line and tied a little knot where I wanted the crane to rest. As each strand was complete I would tape them on the arch to our living room entrance way.










Now if I thought hanging them was challenging, getting them safely transported 3 hours away and hung in time for the wedding...now that was the real challenge!  I wound up tying beads to the bottom, hanging a few at a time from canvas bars and attaching those to hangers.  We covered them in huge plastic bags (carefully!) and hung the hangers in the back of the car.

The morning of the wedding I helped remove them and hang them all over the landscape.  Many of them were in the trees in the entrance.  Some were in the dinner tent, some were in the woods where we had the ceremony, and others were in trees throughout the fields.  We also placed some on tables throughout the resort, like the check-in desk and the dessert table.

After the wedding many strands came home with me and some went home with friends and family.  A number of them are in our wedding memory box, and a number of them are hung throughout our house!  The glow in the dark strand still wins me over, but I love them all!  The legend says, "hanging them in one's home is thought to be a powerfully lucky and benevolent charm."  I sure feel lucky.

Happy Birthday Mom!

 

I love this beautiful woman dearly!

the Dress and the Suit (4/14)

From what I hear, lots of women dream of their wedding dress since they are knee high.  I was not one of those girls.  The thought of a dress haunted me.  I did not want a huge gown.  Nor did I want to spend a fortune on a dress I would wear once.  Finally, I did not want to be hot, heavy and uncomfortable on my wedding day.

Luckily, the dress (and accessories) came together pretty organically.  I was shopping with my friend Lindsay after work at the huge 34th street Macy's.  She was getting married that March and was looking for a dress for her honeymoon.  She convinced me to try on some dresses too.  I tried on about six dresses and bought one that I kept putting back on and thinking about.  It had beautiful pleats throughout the dress, a detailed swirly pattern sewn into the bottom and a fitted waist.  It was tea length, which I had been attracted to, unique, and in my eyes had many possibilities.

I still went to different places and tried on different dresses with my mom, but none that really felt as right as this first dress from Macy's.  And even though I knew I didn't want a big gown, there were some moments I felt like I was doing something wrong for not following the "gown" crowd.  I needed to remind myself, this was my wedding, and whatever dress I chose was the right one for me.

I brought the dress to a tailor who helped bring my vision to life. She took it in to be fitted to my body, added a lovely pearl detail around the waist, some tulle to fluff up the bottom, and a few other details to make the dress extra special.  Because of the pearl elements, the accessories became pretty clear.

I wore his grandmother's pearls as a bracelet, pearl bobby pins from anthropology for my hair, and cluster pearl earrings I randomly found at Kohls.











As for the shoes, I had a pair of gold flats with flowers on the toe from Target until about a week before.  That's when a pair of peachy flats with a cluster of pearls at the top showed up on my doorstep.

The only other question was, what if it was cold?  The wedding was in early September, it could go either way.  I needed to have some kind of shawl.  I bought a simple cream cardigan from H&M just in case.  Then by chance, a week before the wedding, as I was leaving the mall, I was drawn into this totally random store.  In the back there was this absolutely beautiful, delicate scarf with swirls, flowers and hints of light blue. (something blue!) The only one like it..just hanging there..and it was perfect!  Honestly, it brought the whole thing together!  I wore it almost the entire time after the ceremony, and I also wore that H&M cardigan to the bon-fire with a pair of leggings under my dress. 


I think my soon to be had it a bit easier.  We went into Hugo Boss and he found a hot three-piece suit.  Sold!  He had his black cowboy hat that he always wore..and in DSW he found an amazing pair of boots he still rocks all the time!

After all was said and done, all our gear came together.  We didn't break the bank, we were totally comfortable the entire time and stayed true to who we are!