a wedding runs through it

rockify your cake

2011-08-09T12:15:00.001-04:00

Oh wedding blog, how I have neglected you! To any of you who have checked by in the past two and a half months, my apologies for letting that cheesy anniversary card photo stay at the top of the page for so long. Today I'm replacing it with something completely awesome. You can thank me later.

I posted a long time ago about cake toppers both ridiculous and lovely. This one falls under a different category entirely, namely: KICKASS.

via John Arcara Photography's facebook page/a highschoolmate's wedding photos

For the uninitiated among you, that is a custom Pearl Jam stickman wedding cake topper! I like how they added flowers and a veil and removed the goatee/soul patch situation (duh) for the bride. If only I'd thought of this! I'm pretty sure Jon wouldn't have let me follow through with it -- he's not as crazy about PJ as I am -- but this is still the coolest idea ever. Well done, former schoolmate! Go 'Cats!

Anniversary recap!

2011-05-24T10:30:00.001-04:00

If you're sticking with tradition, you're supposed to exchange gifts of paper on your first anniversary. (If you want to go the more modern route, I think year one is clocks.) My gift from Jon began with this delightful, schmaltzy card -- when you open it, it plays Unchained Melody. "Wooooohhh ma-ah-ahahay luhuhuve..." (Too bad he couldn't find a Tony! Toni! Toné! card. Man!)

The paper part of the gift really ended there -- though Jon found himself a loophole by printing out information about the other gift-parts on paper. So clever. (While my present for Jon is strictly paper, it's... not here yet. Oops. So he totally gets a pass for skimping on the paper. At least his gift was on time!)

Anyway, Jon gave me the card and accompanying printouts after work on Friday, because some of our anniversary activity would be taking place the next day. Jon had planned a wee getaway for Saturday night, followed by lunch Sunday at a lovely restaurant south of town I'd expressed interest in. As a late-breaking bonus, he'd gotten offer for day-long press passes to the inaugural Atlanta Food & Wine Festival -- a random perk of being on someone's media list.

So Saturday morning we picked up our passes by 9 a.m. and attended some of the morning sessions -- one on charcuterie, one on pairings of local beer and cheese (pictured below) and one on cocktails made with Coca-Cola (but like way better than anything you've ever had. Go to the bar at Holeman + Finch and ask for 'The Pause that Refreshes' -- holy crap!).

After the sessions we hit the tasting tents, where we were overwhelmed with samples of delicious food and booze. All free with our passes! Yes please.

From there we went home to recover from our gluttonous/boozy morning/early afternoon, then we gathered our overnight things and packed Otto in the car to take him to the doggie motel. (I had to include this shot of windblown Otto.)

And we were off! We went to a place called Historic Banning Mills, about an hour or so south and west of town:

After a short time there, Jon allowed that he probably could have vetted the place more thoroughly. The accommodations were fine -- nothing special -- but the food was truly abysmal. Having been to the F&W Festival that morning didn't do it any favors, but even without that comparison, it was awful.

We decided that this place was probably better for a corporate/team-building retreat (if you're into that sort of thing) than for a romantic getaway. After all, it has Georgia's best zip line canopy tour -- and it goes right over your cabin!

We did avail ourselves of the putt-putt course on the grounds, which I'll grant was a nice activity to have around, even if it wasn't a super exciting course:

After our terrible dinner -- salvaged by the really nice bottle of wine Jon's parents had given us for our wedding last year (though I felt a little guilty pairing it with such dismal food) -- we hiked around the creek, which was quite lovely:

Lunch the next day definitely made up for our dinner on Saturday. We went to the Farmhouse at Serenbe, a lovely, farm-focused community for wealthy hippies (more or less), and enjoyed a lunch of fried chicken and vegetables picked from the garden on-site with refreshing southern cocktails.

So concluded my multi-stage anniversary present, and back to Atlanta we went. But, of course, the celebration wasn't over yet -- we still had to have cake! And before cake, we had agreed that we would recreate one of our favorite treats from our French-Canadian honeymoon, poutine. It's not the prettiest dish, but don't knock it 'til you've tried it. It's delicious! What could be bad about french fries smothered in cheese curds and gravy? Really not much.

We finished out the night (and weekend) with our year-old wedding cake. It held up just fine in the freezer, though it got a bit squished in the storage process. (It also looks like the florist tried to put a floral topper on it before she remembered we had a topper: when I first lifted the cake out of the foil trays it had been sandwiched between, I was worried that those colored spots were mold or something -- nope, just smooshed flower petals and leaves.)

Much to my great delight, the red velvet cake was every bit as delicious as it had been last May 22 -- and this time I think I got to eat more!

All things considered, we had a fun and (mostly) delicious first anniversary. I only wish we got to take a week off work now to commemorate our honeymoon!

happy anniversary to us!

2011-05-22T12:00:00.004-04:00

my calendar from 2010

Hello out there! For those of you who didn't jump with me to my new, non-wedding blog, I pulled together some photo highlights to post over there in honor of our first anniversary today. More to come later this week! In the meantime, enjoy. For those of you who have seen these already, I would apologize for the redundancy but they're so pretty I don't think I need to. What a beautiful day it was...

If you want to see more/read all about it, visit the recap section on this blog. All photos here copyright Our Labor of Love.

our famous photographers

2011-05-19T23:24:00.003-04:00

The cover story for the May/June issue of American Photo magazine (for which I can't find a website?) catalogs the top 10 wedding photographers in the world:

source

So, imagine my delight when I saw (via the blogs) that Jesse & Whitney of Our Labor of Love -- our wedding photographers -- were among those honored! Of course, I'm not surprised in the least. How could there be anyone else? They're the best! (And they attract the best of the rest to work with them.) Click over to their blog to read their reaction and see how they reimagined the cover photo... Congrats, Jesse & Whit!

A prelude to end all preludes (and much, much more)

2011-04-28T11:03:00.010-04:00

So, as we all know, The Royal Wedding is happening tomorrow. (Photo at left from Brides.com) One of my musician friends just shared on facebook an update to the Royal Wedding Website -- there are lots of unnecessary caps in these matters -- announcing what the Music for the Wedding Service will be. Traditional brides, take note! There are surely some good ideas in here for your organist -- or your full orchestra, should you have one on hand for your wedding.

The prelude will kick off with four pieces for organ, followed by seven -- seven! -- orchestral works. (That right there is a full-length recital in itself.) Then follows a Fanfare and three Processionals (for the Queen, the Clergy and the Bride); three Hymns during the service; a choral Anthem and Motet; the National Anthem; another choral piece while Kate and Wills sign the Register; and another Fanfare from the Fanfare Team (I did not make that up, I promise). Finally, a recessional for the happy couple and a postlude of two pieces, concluding with everyone's favorite interminable commencement ditty, Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance.

Yowza. If you're curious about the specifics (that's you, future brides looking for music ideas), allow me to refer you to this background page on ye olde Royal Wedding Website. All kidding aside, I like to see a service that incorporates so much music -- not that it could have been any other way -- even if it is all quite conventional and expected. They've balanced out the obviousness of the selections by adding in a recent premiere and a couple of pieces commissioned just for the occasion. (We should all be so lucky!)

I'm looking forward to hearing all of the service music, especially the new works -- I'm definitely not going to catch much of the prelude, which probably starts at 5 a.m. or so over here. (And I obviously am excited to see Kate's Royal Wedding Dress and the sure-to-be whimsical millinery in the congregation.) I just hope the wedding wraps up before I have to leave for work! Can't we get the day off too?

Wedding Spectator: Memphis nuptials!

2011-03-16T16:01:00.007-04:00

For those of you who don't follow my non-wedding blog, I thought I'd post this very weddingy write-up over here as well and drop it into my much neglected "wedding spectator" series. This was my first Jewish wedding (though I've been to numerous mitzvahs and other services) -- the service was lovely and the reception was a ton of fun. Enjoy!

Jessica and Adam, both college classmates of mine, were married last weekend in the synagogue Jessica grew up attending in Memphis. My best friend Abby's mom, with whom I sat, told me that the sanctuary was designed in a bowl-like shape so that the congregation would feel as though it was being held in the cupped hands of God. I liked that concept -- and I especially liked that it entailed raked floors, which meant that I didn't have to strain to see over or around anyone. Hooray for short-person-friendly spaces! Isn't the sanctuary gorgeous? I love the elaborate carved doors on the ark. Not to mention the chuppah:

Normally I'm not one for incorporating popular music into anything at a house of worship, but I really loved what Jessica and Adam chose for their processional pieces. A string quartet played My Favorite Things as the grandparents came in; the wedding party processed to What a Wonderful World; and the bride and her mother made their entrance to Can't Help Falling in Love. (An Elvis tune! In Memphis!) The music was sweet and utterly charming.

In a Jewish ceremony (as some of you may know), the parents of the couple stand up front with them in addition to the bridesmaids and groomsmen. The bride and groom also generally walk down the aisle with both of their parents in the Jewish tradition. There's a strong sense of family about the ceremony. The service incorporated lots of singing by the rabbis, a lovely homily and a few special rituals that were explained in the program. After they said their vows in Hebrew and English, Adam stomped on the glass, he and Jessica kissed and we all shouted "Mazel tov!"

From there, we didn't have far to go. The whole shindig took place at the synagogue, so the cocktail hour was just outside the vestibule in the foyer/lobby area. The reception was in the social hall, which was really, really nice. You definitely can't have awesome parties like this in the church where I got married or the one I grew up in (or in many Protestant churches, I'd reckon), because they don't allow booze of any sort. (I'm sure there are curfews and decoration rules to deal with as well, but there wasn't any point looking into that stuff for our wedding, since we wanted a dance party with adult beverages.) This felt like a swanky hotel reception, without the hassle of having to get into a car and go somewhere else! Well played indeed.

Here are Jessica and Adam taking their first spin around the dance floor as husband and wife:

And below we have the early stages of the hora, before the bride and groom (and others) get hoisted up above the crowd in chairs by the burly men. One of the bridesmaid's husbands, who quickly became one of my favorite people, started talking about how excited he was for the hora as soon as the service was over. I also heard a few hilarious hora horror stories. Fortunately all went well with this one, though I think Jessica wouldn't have minded if it had wrapped up sooner. Aside from the hora, we boogied all night long to the sounds of the SoulSations.

Last but certainly not least, I know I promised I'd report back about the wedding cake. Well, there wasn't any -- there were cupcakes and doughnuts instead! (I'm told this was a major victory for the bride during the planning process.) I sampled two flavors of mini cupcake and, alas, just one kind of doughnut. All were delicious. I really just love the tower o' doughnuts. NOM.

Did I mention I enjoyed the doughnuts?

above photo courtesy of the studio j photobooth (via abby)

Wedding Day Hooray!

2011-02-25T11:00:00.005-05:00

I just got an email from the folks behind Atlanta's Indie Craft Experience announcing three markets for 2011, one of which is focused exclusively on handmade crafts for your wedding. Huzzah! I'm sure this will be a huge hit (as the regular markets are), and I might even check it out, even though I don't have a pressing need for wedding tchotchkes these days. (Coincidentally, the Wedding Day Hooray takes place on the weekend of our first anniversary, May 21-22. Aww.)

So, Atlanta-area brides, mark your calendars! For more information and updates on these markets, check out the Wedding Day Hooray and Indie Craft Experience websites.

To the Mirthmobile! (announcement & thanks)

2011-02-09T22:22:00.000-05:00

I don't need to tell y'all I've been a bad blogger lately. The truth is, it's getting to be that time for me: that time that seems to come in every wedding blogger's life when one desires to share with one's readers things that are not part of the wedding world. To that end, I've launched a new general hodgepodge blogging venture -- the mirthmobile -- and I hope you'll come check it out!

Of course, I'm not ready to leave weddings behind altogether. They've actually kept quite a hold on me, much to my surprise. And who knows, there may be something to that... time will tell. At any rate, I've got some unfinished business still to attend to (vendors to review, to be specific). I'll continue to post here, but only occasionally, as has been the case for the past couple months.

I just wanted to give y'all the heads up that things will probably stay slow here (though you never know, with wedding season ramping up) and that I've got new digs on the web. I also wanted to extend my most heartfelt thanks to all of you who have followed along and supported me by reading and commenting. I started this blog as a way to keep my ideas organized and to save my family and friends from constant wedding talk; I had no idea it would introduce me to so many thoughtful, wonderful people whose writing would inspire, challenge and amuse me. Thank you for being brilliant!

What's that? You want the new blog address one more time? But of course! You can find me at themirthmobile.com. See you there!

it's my dress in a box! (...in a bag, in a bag, in a bag)

2011-01-23T16:49:00.018-05:00

Yesterday, eight months from the first and last time I wore it, I finally picked up my wedding dress from the cleaners/dress preservation place. I dropped it off there July 17 -- took them long enough! Not that I needed the dress for anything, but I was still happy to get a call from them last week telling me it was ready for pickup and hadn't been lost or destroyed in some freak preservation accident. (Apparently the boxes were on backorder, hence the delay.)

Picking up the dress took about 20 minutes because the sweet old lady at the cleaners wanted to unpack and show me the dress and then verrrry carefully seal it all up again. She even used a vacuum thingy to suck the air out of the second plastic bag and a flat iron to (sorta) seal it shut before she handed over the box. Intense!

When I got home, I opened it all up once more to take a better look at it -- and also so I could share it with y'all. I didn't really have any idea what preservation entailed (and I still don't entirely) when I got talked into it, but I figured I should do my part to protect the investment my parents made in buying my lovely dress. All I know is that it's nice and clean now, and that it won't turn yellow.

Now my dress lies cushioned with acid-free tissue paper in a presumably acid-free zippy bag in a box made from a special kind of plastic. Some boxes have a little display window, I hear, but mine doesn't. The cleaners wrapped all that up in three bags -- muslin, heavy plastic and one that felt like a normal dry-cleaner bag -- though I don't think I need to keep all of them.

one, two, three bags

box in a bag

Once I got through all those outer layers and opened the box, I found a pair of white cotton gloves inside the zippy bag. If you're going to touch your dress, you have to put these on so you don't get any body oils on the dress that might oxidize over time and cause stains. Again: Intense!

safety gloves!

After a full five minutes of dealing with all this packaging, I made it to the dress. It's beautiful, even all folded up! The veil is rolled up in tissue paper (helpfully labeled "Veil"), and the dress is folded over on itself probably two times under there. There's a lot of skirt to deal with! Although, the fact that they removed the crinoline in order to preserve the dress (which I'm assured will only be like $25 to add back, should the dress be put to future use) certainly means there's a lot less dress to fit into the box.

There were some stains that the cleaners couldn't get out, but those were mainly at the bottom of the skirts -- no surprise there, especially since I didn't have a bustle and just swept the ground behind me all day and night. Happily, I didn't spill any Cheerwine on myself while dancing, which would have been disastrous. Other than the stains at the hem, I know there was a tear or two in the lining of the skirt (one of which I remember happening during the ceremony) and I'm sure there must have been a snag or two in the tulle from the twigs my skirt kept picking up while we were taking pictures during the cocktail hour. Of course, I won't ever see these things unless I take the whole dress out of the box, which probably won't happen until I have someone else who wants to wear it (friend, daughter or other) because lord knows it would be smooshed back into the box all covered in cat hair.

So anyway, I don't know if any of you ever wondered what the dress preservation/storage situation was, but hopefully this post tells you a little bit about it. Regardless, it was nice to see my pretty pretty dress again in real life, as opposed to just in photos. Such lovely memories!

It's raining weddings

2011-01-17T22:37:00.007-05:00

There comes a time in every twentysomething's life when everyone and their mother is getting married. The lots-of-weddings era officially began for me in 2008, when I was a bridesmaid in one of my best friends' weddings. As it happened, that year in weddings was actually kicked off by that bride's mother -- seriously -- who got remarried.

I had three other weddings that year, bringing the total to five between April and the first weekend in October. 2009 was even more packed, with six weddings* from mid-May to mid-October. By the midpoint of our own wedding planning, we only had two weddings -- ours and my Bride Buddy's, the week before ours -- for 2010; after the holidays, though, two more were added to the docket. Still, only four weddings from April to August in 2010 was a comparatively light load. (Since one of them was my own, I'm very thankful for that.)

2011 is shaping up to be another crazy, crazy year o' weddings. As of tonight, I've got seven weddings on my calendar from mid-February to mid-June. Three weekends in May are wedding weekends, and the non-wedding weekend falls on our anniversary. (Convenient!) The last couple to get married of the current 2011 bunch has been engaged since June 2009; my friend who just announced her Memorial Day nuptials got engaged last weekend. So, who knows -- my year in weddings could get busier still!

While it's definitely easier to attend a wedding than plan one, I want to make sure I budget my vacation time and attire/travel/gift expenses for these events wisely. I've already bought one present (in an attempt to spread out the credit card charges) and signed up for that Williams-Sonoma Reserve hooha where you pay $30 to get free shipping for a year -- I'm already certain that was a good investment. Now I just need to drop some of the extra pounds I put on over the holidays by the time May and June roll around so I can put my rehearsal dinner dress to use again...

*although I tend to have a good memory for this sort of thing, like any good packrat I actually have a scrapbook that serves as a record of all the friend and family weddings I've been to since 2005, when the first of my high school buddies got married. It was actually a great resource to have on hand when I was figuring out my own ceremony and invitations.

snow days

2011-01-12T21:02:00.013-05:00

obligatory snowman - good one, huh?

Depending on where you are in the world and what/who you pay attention to in the media/on Twitter, you may or may not know that Atlanta got hit with about six inches of snow Sunday night. Snowlanta! Snowpocalypse! Snowmageddon! SnOMG! Schools and lots of offices (among other things) have been closed all week because the roads are covered in ice and Atlanta has like eight trucks for salting and/or plowing. The joys of living in the South!

Although the archetypal snow day is a thing of the past thanks to telecommuting, Jon and I managed make time for playing in the snow a bit while working from home the past few days. I mean, the dog has to go out, right? Here are a few snapshots of the snowy scene in and around our neighborhood (which is apparently a quaint ski village, if that fourth photo below is to be believed):

It's been nice to be at home these last few days, especially when home is in one of Atlanta's most walkable neighborhoods. Even if we can't drive anywhere, there's a lot of fun and tasty stuff we've been able to get to on foot. We'll be back to the grind tomorrow once the ice melts, but at least the weekend is near!

I'm dreaming of a Blurb Christmas

2011-01-05T23:12:00.004-05:00

In a highly original and utterly predictable move, Jon and I gave our parents Blurb-made wedding photo books for Christmas. (It seems like all newlyweds do something like this, doesn't it? It's practically inevitable. But hey, wedding photos make for lovely mementos.) Our wedding was early enough in the year that our parents could have easily pulled together their own photo albums before the holidays, but I held our discs captive to prevent that from happening. Muha!

By now you've probably seen most of these photos, but I wanted to share this book anyway. I know that our photographers typically use about 60 images when they make an album, so that's the number I kept in mind as I selected pictures. I'm really happy with how it came out! Click on the preview below to flip through.

Kathleen & Jon | Make Your Own Book

2010: my year in Facebook photos

2011-01-04T23:16:00.041-05:00

While I was out in Idaho for the holidays, my brother-in-law challenged me to put together a 2010 retrospective composed of Facebook photo highlights: one picture from each album I posted in the last year. Easy, right? It was actually quite difficult to boil down some of the larger albums that encompassed many events and months to one photo. I also realized that there was a lot I didn't document on Facebook (though some of my friends took care of that) -- mainly our wedding showers/parties that I covered pretty thoroughly here. (As I recall, I was trying my damnedest to be tactful, given that Jon and I have many hundred Facebook friends who were not being invited to our wedding.)

I made (or added to) 22 albums in 2010, so here are my 22 favorite shots that should provide a good overview of what went on in my life last year. All photos were taken by me (or Jon, if I'm in the photo) using my dad's Nikon DSLR (some day I'll have a fancy camera of my very own!), my Canon point-and-shoot, a Polaroid 300 and the Vignette app on my Droid Incredible, except for the two from Our Labor of Love and one from Smilebooth -- those should be pretty obvious. Here goes!

January

February

March

April

May

July

August

October

November

December

Looks like 2010 was a pretty good year, doesn't it?

some thoughts for the new year

2010-12-31T23:19:00.006-05:00

This time last year, I was in about the same spot I am right now: on Jon's folks' couch in Moscow, Idaho, following a delicious meal cooked by Susan and Steve, waiting to ring in the new year (sans television) with a champagne toast in the kitchen. Last year, with the wedding looming five and a half months away, Jon and I spent our time here addressing save-the-date postcards and trawling through thousands of old family photos as we planned for the big day. I had at least the first five months of the year mapped out by New Year's Eve. This year, we've been playing in the snow and getting acquainted with Moscow Mountain, where Jon's family just bought a cabin. Looking ahead to 2011, I have no idea what's coming next. I'm hoping for big changes in some parts of my life, but I know I'm going to have to work really hard to make things happen for myself.

Snow on Moscow Mountain

This moment in time is, in many ways, an odd one to use as punctuation. (Then again, whose life sorts out neatly into January-to-January chunks? Certainly not mine -- I can't even bring myself to move on from an academic-year calendar.) As 2010 expires, Jon and I are seven months into our marriage and six months into dog ownership; Jon's three months into a new job; and I'm in the midst of one of those typical twenty-something periods of searching, largely ushered in by job dissatisfaction and new interests I discovered over the course of planning and blogging about our wedding. There are about a hundred different directions I think I could go with myself, if only I could find the time or figure out exactly how.

Jon and I fly back to Atlanta tomorrow to begin a new calendar year in our life together. Who knows what it will bring? Though I tend to be a planner, I'm kind of looking forward to having a year of great wide open. My hope for myself is that I'll be able to see past the discomfort of not always knowing and instead look for the possibility in everything and everyone.

flying over the Palouse

P.S. Happy New Year to all of my blog buddies -- thank you for (still) reading! I've got something new up my sleeve... but you'll have to wait until 2011 to find out what it is!

Old-Timey Tuesday: Epic Eighties

2010-12-30T23:12:00.002-05:00

So, I know it's not Tuesday, but I'm calling this an Old-Timey Tuesday post anyway. This addition to my archive of family wedding fashion is one that I didn't nab last year when I was out here in Idaho -- I think I was wary of stirring up bad juju by posting family photos I found amusing -- but have wished I had on many occasions since. However, now that our wedding is long past, I figure I can share it with minimal fear of wedding karma coming back to haunt me. (Right?)

So, without further ado and to cap off the Old-Timey series, I give you this young bride in all her resplendent 1981 Eliza Doolittle/Mary Poppins/hat-and-parasol glory:

I mean... WHOA. Can anyone top that?

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

2010-12-24T10:35:00.006-05:00

I mentioned in my post about our wedding video the other day how well our siblings did in crafting and delivering their toasts. In keeping with tradition, the best man went first and the maid of honor went second. Jon's witty younger brother is out in L.A. trying to make it as a television/comedy writer, so my sister, a very clever but less occupationally humorous lawyer, was a little nervous to follow him.

As it turned out (and as I had assured her), she had no need to worry. She worked up a hilarious, smart toast that was as sweet as it was unexpected. It was structured as a riff on The Night Before Christmas, which we would all read together on Christmas Eve as children. As it is presently the night before Christmas, and since I was just bragging on my sister, I wanted to share it with y'all. (She gave me her copy to keep after she was done.)

First, a few disclaimers: 1) there are a few inside jokes that might not translate; 2) my cat is not a devil cat, he's the sweetest kitty ever; and 3) that mix tape/CD was actually pretty good. The only real dud was a Britney Spears tune I included as a joke. Alright! With all that said, I give you my sister's brilliant wedding toast:

photo by Our Labor of Love

'Twas the eve of her wedding, and in the Poe house
Kathleen sat and reflected on her future spouse.
She thought of his writing, his saxomaphone,
But OH, he watches LOST, she thought with a groan.

It was just a few years prior at the school known as 'Cuse
That our hero, JR, had been first introduced.
But before we raise a glass to this magical pairing,
A brief history of my Seester with you I'll be sharing.

Kathleen was called munchkin, and right from the start
With a sweet, impish grin she stole everyone's heart.
She played sports, she took dance, but where she truly excelled
Was in music; when she sang all were under her spell.

Where on earth did this amazing talent come from?!?
She even sounds good if you just hear her hum!
Some said it was genetics -- have you heard our dad sing?
Some said it was hard work -- but if you ask her siblings

It was in the car that this young songbird was trained:
Road trips with her sister, their brother's ears pained.
"No more Indigo Girls!" he cried, "No more Andrew Lloyd Webber!
No more 'Cats'! No more 'Rent'! No more singing whatsoever!"

Two angels in the front seat, one grump in the back gawking.
He tried everything -- even NyQuil -- to escape from their squawking.
But the music played on, the singing persisted.
"You must join our program!" Northwestern insisted.

From performing to teaching to writing reviews,
First Chicago, then Atlanta, and at long last, Syracuse.
There she met a young man with dark curly hair.
He said, "I'm from Moscow, Idaho." She said, "You're from WHERE?"

The two were fast friends, and soon after started dating.
She came home for the holidays and found her sister anticipating
A report on the young man who had captured her heart.
"Oh Emily," she said, "I have gotten off to a rough start.

"I made him a mix tape to accompany his adventures
But some of the selections I perhaps should have censored.
You know how there are things that just we think are funny?
Like beauty pageants, Three Amigos, and that bear fountain in Germany?

"This is one of those times, I feel kind of absurd.
In the middle of this mix I put 'The Lonely Goatherd.'"
"The song from Sound of Music with the yodeling puppets?" I said,
"Yeah, tough call. But don't get down in the dumps, at least not just yet.

"Could be this guy Jon has a great sense of humor.
And if he can handle your devil cat, as I hear is the rumor
And likes music and books and loves the Braves in baseball,
A few classic movies and showtunes is all

That you really might need to know you've found a winner."
And now here were all are, having just eaten dinner,
To toast, and dance, and party 'til dawn
To celebrate the wedding we all knew was on

From the moment that Jon loved that awful mix tape.
Foretold so wisely by her most elegant and charming sister Emily (the Great).
This happy young couple whose path has now led
Them up to the altar, has the brightest of futures ahead.

So cheers to our hosts -- Daddy, Llama -- for throwing this party,
Cheers to Susan and Steve for raising a hearty
Young man we have all come to love and adore.
His kindness and humor have won everyone o'er.

Cheers to our young couple -- we know your love is true;
And finally, from me: Seester, Jon, AH NUB NOO!

***

I mean, really. How ridiculous is that? Emily and Matthew set an absurdly high standard for wedding toasts that I'm not sure either Jon or I will ever live up to.

Speaking of me and Jon, we're off to Idaho around lunchtime tomorrow after we do Christmas things with my family -- I'll drop a post or two from the snowy Palouse, so stay tuned. In the meantime, Happy Christmas to all!

O Christmas blogs, O Christmas blogs!

2010-12-23T17:28:00.005-05:00

It's been a big week for me on the blogs, folks, a big week!

Yesterday, the oh-so-wise Tiny Wedding Planner at San Francisco Budget Wedding dispensed her advice on how to share holidays and stave off any homesickness. Click on over to read what she had to say!

Today, I've got a guest post on the brilliant Love Your Way blog as part of their ChristmaHanaKwanzica series on holiday traditions. I had a really tough time deciding what to write about -- there are so many things I love about this season! Click on the excellent graphic below to find out what I chose to share. There may or may not be some awesome old photos involved...

Many thanks to Sarah, Bean, Lizzie and Isaiah for having me!

Seven months, one DVD, a plethora of thoughts

2010-12-22T20:51:00.002-05:00

Today, being the 22nd, marks another month of weddedness for me and Jon. Seven months! It doesn't seem like it's been such a long time, but the wedding seems so far removed these days.

As luck would have it, I now have a handy means of calling up the wedding should I ever feel like bringing it closer. My good friend Brock who filmed the wedding recently returned to Atlanta for the holidays, and yesterday he dropped off the wedding DVDs in our mailbox. What timing! It's the perfect Christmas/7-month-anniversary gift.

Jon and I were both a little worried we'd look stupid on camera, but we sucked it up (nothing we can do about looking silly then now!) and watched the DVD beginning to end. It's nothing fancy: literally just the straight-up, raw footage, with a few Camera 1-Camera 2 cuts during the ceremony portion. But it's exactly what I wanted, and more. I only asked Brock to tape the ceremony so we'd have a record of it, but he brought his camera to the rehearsal dinner and the reception and filmed all the toasts and our first dances and our exit through a shower of flower petals tossed by our guests, and I'm so glad to have those moments where you can see a little bit more of us, our friends and our interactions on tape. (Er, disc. Whatever.)

So, now that we've watched the whole shebang (OK, maybe we skipped ahead during the homily), a few observations:

Rehearsal dinner

The best man, Jon's younger brother Matthew, looked totally bored during the rehearsal dinner toasts given by our friends.
Our professor/thesis advisor used the word "milieu" in his toast while likening me and Jon to a famous composer/arranger-saxophonist couple in the world of jazz.
The grad school professors espoused quite a bit of revisionist history. But hey, what writer hasn't embellished a bit to enhance the telling of a story?

Ceremony

All of our friends in the wedding party are fast to very fast walkers.
Jon and Matthew were whispering in one another's ears during the bridesmaids' processional. SUBTLE.
As my processional began with a facemelting organ fanfare, the camera panned across the front of the church and caught Matthew picking something off of Jon's shoulder (gotta look sharp!)
I don't do slow and stately very well.
I blinked and closed-mouth smiled a lot during the ceremony.
Thankfully, the hymn sounded on the video like a congregation singing it, and not just me wailing into the mic Brock put on Jon. Relief!

Reception

Our DJ was totally awesome. (that's not news, it just bears repeating.)
The toasts. were. AWESOME. Matthew killed it. Emily KILLED it. Dad and my brother were pretty awesome as well.
Our first dance was... awkward. Jon and I looked pretty dinky and lame. We scrapped the fancy moves we had learned in last-minute lessons and defaulted to a basic box step. Thank god the song wasn't that long.
My dad and I, on the other hand, did really well! Also sort of awkward, but we had lots of pretty spins and a couple different steps in the mix. Wayne, our dance lesson teacher, would have been proud.
My dress moved beautifully! Sigh.
Jon sorta let his mom lead during their dance.
At the end of the video, as I'm about to get into the towncar that will whisk us away, I look over the roof of the car and wave to the camera/Brock. I really like that moment. It's me!

Everything was pretty much as I remember it, which is refreshing. It's nice to be able to see it as it actually was, but it's also reassuring to confirm that my mind was there and processing it all at the time. I looked very pretty and happy, Jon looked very dapper and happy. Happiness all around!

I still stand by our decision not to hire a videographer, even though there are some awesome ones out there. Photography was absolutely my top priority in terms of recording the occasion, and the incredible pictures Jesse and Whitney took are so far beyond what I imagined they would be. I like the honest, archival quality of what Brock gave us; no montages, no recreated shots, no soundtracking. This is something we'll be able to show our kids, and they'll see everything exactly how it happened, way the hell back in the day in 2010. How sweet is that?

dueling weddings

2010-12-13T14:41:00.008-05:00

It's bound to happen sooner or later: two (or more) of your engaged friends choose the same date for their weddings. In a best-case scenario, the events will be in the same city at different times of day; worst-case, they'll be in different parts of the country, making the timing irrelevant. How do you pick? As a couple, you can try to divide-and-conquer tactic, but I find that approach unsatisfying: unless I can split myself in two and be more than one place at once, I'm gonna be missing something.

For months and months now, I've known that two awesome weddings on my calendar would fall on the same day. I've agonized, I've puzzled, I've kept mum about the conflict to any of the to-be-wedded parties and I've dreaded eventually having to pick between these two pairs:

Couple no. 1
Jon and I are both friends with both halves of this couple, whom we met in our grad school program at Syracuse. (They actually came to the program as a couple, while Jon and I met and got together there.) The groom-to-be was a groomsman in our wedding (which is where the photo at left, by Our Labor of Love, comes from), the bride-to-be is the most stylish person I know, and they're both brilliant writers and hilarious people. They're getting hitched in their hometown of Pittsburgh, and you know it's gonna be badass, because these kids know how to party.

Couple no. 2
I've been friends with this groom-to-be since junior high. We sang together then and we sing together now in the ASO chorus and in church choir, where he met his lovely fiancee. He and Jon became friends (via me) not long after we arrived in Atlanta and even had a few workday lunches together. The bride-to-be and I became fast friends sitting next to each other in church choir and rooming together on our symphony chorus trip to Berlin last December (during which the photo at left was taken). Jon and I ran into this couple on their first date and have been hanging out with them ever since.

How on earth am I supposed to choose??

May 14 is the big day for both of these couples... or so I thought! I swear I must be psychic because just this weekend, I was wishfully thinking that one of them would move their wedding date -- totally unrealistic, but I wished it nonetheless**. In retrospect, I'll call it a premonition. I was sad after some wedding-related conversations with couple no. 2 that I might not be able to be a part of their celebration, but I resolved to wait for more details on couple no. 1 before I committed one way or the other and confessed my decision.

And then! Last night, just before I snapped my laptop shut for the night, I got an email from couple no. 1 with the subject line "SAVE THE DATE! ______ & _____'s Wedding — May 7, 2011!" Jon had retired about 10 minutes earlier, but as soon as I saw the email, I shouted down the hall to him, "Ooh! OOOH! Exciting news!!!" Problem solved! I guess our grad school friends have done some shuffling since last we talked in specifics about their wedding, which was some time ago. (I don't like to bother people for wedding details even though I totally want to know them, let's be honest. Call it etiquette, whatever.)

Anyway, I'm totally thrilled that this has worked out, but I know things don't and won't always shake out like this. It's such a relief!

*I didn't want to splash my friends' photos, names and wedding business all over the internet without asking and I really dislike referring to people by their initials (plus, how would you know which is the girl-initial and which is the boy-initial?), so this is my solution.

** I was actually going to blog about my mental anguish over this situation today even before I got that email... I'm TOTALLY psychic!

the dress, post-wedding

2010-11-30T23:25:00.015-05:00

Tonight I had a dress rehearsal for the first Christmas concerts of the season at the ASO. During the break between pieces, I went to congratulate one of my fellow chorusmates who recently got engaged and ended up in a little gossip circle of sopranos talking weddings. (Somehow it still hasn't gotten old... go figure.) Celia, newly affianced, had just found her wedding dress the day before Thanksgiving; it was her first day of shopping, the last shop she visited. She passed her camera around and we all oohed and ahhed at the beautiful gown she'd chosen.

One of the girls (Erin, my chorus bride-buddy who got married the weekend before we did) told Celia how much she had loved her own wedding dress (at right). So much so, in fact, that she puts it on probably twice a week, just to sit around in it and feel pretty. Come home from work, take a bath, put on wedding dress. (Yes, she admitted, her husband thinks it's weird.) "It's so comfortable!" she exclaimed. Plus, why would you spend all that money just to wear a gorgeous dress once and stash it away? (Plus plus, Erin says, her husband wore khaki slacks with a navy blazer for their wedding and gets to wear his wedding-day attire "all the time." Why shouldn't she get to do the same?)

She asked me what I had done with my dress since my wedding day -- actually, I think she asked me how many times I had put on my dress since the wedding (that would be zero) -- and I told her that it's still at the cleaners. Cautious person that I often am when it comes to expensive things, I went the opposite direction from Erin and had my dress preserved. Why would you spend all that money and not take care of your investment? I suppose that's what I thought. I didn't really know what else to do with it. Besides, the cleaning was going to be so expensive that I figured I might as well cough up the extra for the preservation treatment and fancy box. (What's another couple hundred bucks at this point, really? AGH.)

(Note: I dropped off my dress in July, and they told me it would be ready in about two months. Last week I realized it had been much longer than that and called to make sure they still, uh, had it. Turns out the fancy boxes are on backorder. I'm just glad they didn't lose it!)

Now, my dress was not uncomfortable, but it's not exactly something I'd loll about the house in. It's a ballgown with a whole lotta skirt, and it's also hemmed to wear with 3.5-inch heels. Add to that the fact that I've got a cat with claws and now a crazy puppy, and we're quickly heading toward shredded-dress territory. Erin's dress, on the other hand, is a slimmer A-line cut -- much easier to slip on and off and fairly normal to move around in, I gather. Still, it has lace and some beading on it, which I'd worry about messing up. She also has cats, but I guess they must be very well behaved...

At any rate, all this got me thinking. Former brides, what did you do with your dress post-wedding? Is it in the back of your closet, cleaned and packed away? Hanging on the back of your door, waiting to be cleaned? Have you put it on since your wedding? (Have you even considered putting it on since your wedding?) Will you hang onto it or try to recoup some money by selling it? Offer use of it to friends who want to save money on their own weddings?

There are, of course, countless possibilities, as there are countless types of people out there. So I wanted to do an informal survey: what did (or will) you do with your wedding dress once it's had its big debut?

Six months ago...

2010-11-22T22:40:00.007-05:00

Jon and I got hitched! Hard to believe, isn't it? Sometimes I look at the (amazing, incredible) photos and can hardly believe it happened at all. Not that I don't remember the day, just, like... that was me? Us? Bizarre. And yet here we are, six months down the road*, newly wed, newly puppied, but otherwise carrying on much as we did for the 10 months we lived together before the wedding.

In honor of making it this far without losing our rings or wanting to kill each other, we're going on what I'm calling Honeymoon 2.0 this weekend. The first time around, we took Canada by storm, spending most of our week non-stop exploring Quebec City and Montreal on foot. In retrospect, I realized I might have liked some time to sit around and luxuriate in our lack of agenda after the wedding. So, for Friday and Saturday, we're heading about an hour and a half north to Barnsley Gardens, a resort in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains, to chill, hike, eat, read, lounge, wander, whatever. (And I just might have to spring for a horseback ride, if I get to feeling spendy.) Ahhh!

Generally we wouldn't acknowledge this quasi-milestone in such a fashion, but back in the spring I won a sweepstakes from Atlanta magazine that included in its grand prize a two-night stay at this resort. The weekend after Thanksgiving was the only available one at the resort that worked for us, so it's just serendipity that this getaway has fallen about a half-year since the wedding (and right before the onset of the holiday crush).

Who knows, though; I might have to tell the folks at the resort restaurant that we're celebrating an actual anniversary and see if they'll send out a free dessert...

*more on this soon

holiday cards: done and done

2010-11-18T23:29:00.007-05:00

As much as I would have liked to design and letterpress our first family holiday card, well... it just wasn't going to happen. November starts and my life gets crazy for the next two months with holiday concerts and church choir rehearsals and running around in general. Maybe the time change has something to do with it...

Anyway, when I saw all the awesome design options on minted, I decided to take the old reliable throw-money-at-it approach with my holiday card quandary. I found some coupon codes online to lessen the damage to my credit card and ordered away. Here's what we ended up with:

Now, normally I would go the "happy holidays" route as opposed to "merry christmas" to ensure that the sentiment catches all of my friends, but none of those designs appealed as much as this one did, or worked as well with our card-friendly photos. Merry Christmas it is!

It's a flat card, but at minted you can get exciting things printed on the back, so I did. There's another photo in the corner, and we wrote a quick rundown of our year to go with it. It's short and sweet -- a nice happy medium between a photo card and a Christmas letter, I think, and one that befits our station in life.

This coming Sunday I'm taking a letterpress holiday card workshop that will yield another 25 cards, so I've got some something to send in case I run out of the ones from minted. I'm feeling pretty good that I'll have them all in hand before November's out, though. Hopefully that means I'll get them in the mail before the new year!

Makeup by Tara Young: she'll make you really, really, ridiculously good-looking

2010-11-17T10:28:00.035-05:00

Finding someone to do my makeup for the wedding was one of the easiest parts of my planning process, and one of the best investments I made as well. One of my best friends' older sisters got married about a year before I did, and I remembered thinking that my friend (the maid of honor) and the rest of the wedding party looked AMAZING (without seeming overly made-up). Her secret? Airbrushing! I asked my friend for a link to some wedding photos to confirm that I remembered correctly, then emailed her sister to ask who did their magical makeup. Turns out it was Tara Young, who by day runs the makeup department at CNN in downtown Atlanta. Nothing like a seasoned pro!

(Note to all brides: Don't be sheepish! Ask your acquaintances, friends, and friends' sisters and mothers if you have seen something you like! Referrals are a great way to find sweet wedding vendors.)

The day of the wedding, Tara and her younger sister (who comes along when there are more than five or six people to be made up) turned up at my folks' house around noon to set up and get started. They placed two chairs facing out in front of the large dining-room window that overlooks the front lawn and arrayed their supplies on a table between them. I have never seen so much makeup in one place! They came armed with a wide range of foundation colors, a bajillion brushes and dozens of palettes of blushes and eyeshadows. (The first picture below is Tara's foot (I think), standing on the cord of the airbrush machine... such a cool shot.)

Now, I didn't demand that my bridesmaids have their hair and makeup done -- lord knows they'd already be spending enough with the dress/shoe/travel/lodging combo -- but I did offer to make appointments for any who were interested and let them know the pricing on the makeup. In the end, all but one of us had our hair done (ranging from $33 to $100) and all the girls and my mama got full airbrushed makeup ($75 including a lip gloss to keep), though some opted not to get fake eyelashes.

We had about three hours in which to get everyone's makeup done, and Tara and her sister did a great job of moving folks through the chairs. While they were making us all pretty, they were chatting and laughing with all of us. They clearly have a lot of fun working together!

Bridesmaid after bridesmaid came back into the den looking perfectly radiant as I awaited my turn. (Even my practically translucent redheaded bridesmaid, who had been worried that any foundation would be too dark on her skin, was thrilled.) I think everyone was pleasantly surprised by how light the airbrush makeup felt and how well it stayed put. My mom, my sister and I were the last to go since we were waiting for the photographers to arrive and also wanted to have the freshest faces for the afternoon and evening.

mama

seester

me & my sweet kitty, Little Man

Bridesmaids all suited up and getting ready to head to the church

As you can see from the photos, we all look really. damn. good. I mean, let's give credit where credit's due! I won't rehash any of the portraits or anything, but here are a couple of pre-wedding shots from the church that show off Tara and her sister's brilliant handiwork:

Last but not least, evidence that airbrush makeup and well-applied fake eyelashes will hold up through an emotional day and a night of hard partying:

Still lookin' good! (Note: my brother had no makeup on. He's just naturally that pretty.) I can't recommend Tara and/or her sister's work enough. They were absolutely a joy to work with, and the price was more than reasonable for the service. If I ever need to look flawless for any occasion again, I know exactly who I'm calling.

* all photos by Our Labor of Love

Unique Floral Expressions: killer flowers that won't kill your budget

2010-11-15T14:35:00.000-05:00

It's been so long since I started the whole recap process on the blog that I almost forgot I hadn't reviewed a few of my most excellent vendors, as promised. So! Today I wanted to write a bit about the awesome florist we worked with, Julie Coffin, and show some more gorgeous pictures of the bouquets, etc.

Julie's company is Unique Floral Expressions, and it's based out of her home in Marietta, which helps her keep costs down. A friend's mother had told my mom during some wedding chatter that one simply could not obtain proper wedding flowers in Atlanta for less than $5,000, so when our initial estimate came in at less than half that amount, Mama and I both were pretty thrilled.

We liked Julie from the moment she welcomed us into her home. Our first of two meetings lasted for nearly two hours because she was so easy to talk to and so thorough and helpful. Like a dutiful bride, I had been clipping photos of flowers I liked. Most of the photos involved dahlias, which, as it happens, are definitely not in season in May. Oops! Julie steered me toward the beautiful peony instead. Such a good call, as you can see:

We kept in touch via email during the planning-lull months, and mom and I met with Julie one more time closer to the wedding to talk about numbers and a few changes before we finalized the proposal. My main concern was that, having chosen to go with bright colors and shades of blue and red, the bouquets and altar flowers would be too God-Bless-America. Julie completely understood that I wanted different textures and gradations of color in my bouquet and knew exactly how to make it entirely non-patriotic. My flowers were so much more beautiful than I ever imagined!

Julie did the usual wedding party flowers -- bouquets for the girls, boutonnieres for the guys -- except that our mothers carried nosegays rather than wearing corsages. These were made of the same gorgeous red peonies I had in my bouquet as well as some freesia, I think. (You can see one of the nosegays in the picture below, second bunch of flowers from the left.) They looked great against our moms' dark dresses.

In addition to the wedding party flowers, Julie created a lovely altar arrangement for the ceremony, decorated our cake with red ranunculus and cornflowers (above), arranged 25 centerpieces (none of which I ever saw -- I was seated at a candle-heavy-centerpiece table), and made a lovely tossing bouquet (so that any of the girls who cared to could hang onto hers).

Last but not least, Julie also provided plenty of flower petals for our guests to throw at us at the end of the night as we left the reception. White flower petals were pretty much the only thing we were allowed to toss at our venue. I was originally hoping for confetti, but this was the next best thing. I love this shot:

If anyone out there is looking for a brilliant florist in the Atlanta area who is easy to work with and easy on your budget, give Julie at Unique Floral Expressions a call. She did an amazing job for us. I couldn't have been happier with her work!

*all photos by Our Labor of Love

holiday/wedding tchotchkes

2010-11-09T22:39:00.008-05:00

Last week, the Christmas tree stand that takes over the middle school playing field behind my house began setting up, and last night I had my first symphony chorus rehearsal of holiday repertoire. Somehow, it's November! This fact, along with the intermittently chilly weather outside, has me thinking once again about all things holiday festive.

In particular, I've been pondering Christmas ornaments. (Not a huge surprise from the girl who had an ornament shower around this time last year.) I first started thinking in terms of Otto and Little Man, and how maybe we should get some of those picture-framey ornaments so they are represented on our tree. That led to thinking about a "puppy's first Christmas" ornament -- do such things exist? Am I crazy enough to try and find out? -- and then, of course, an "our first Christmas" ornament for me and Jon.

(Nevermind that I bought a snowboarding miniature moose keychain on our Canadian honeymoon that I will convert into a Christmas tree ornament. Nevermind the ceramic maple leaf ornament my parents gave us after a summer trip to Vancouver, or the painted porcelain bauble Jon brought home from Amsterdam last week. What I definitely need is another Christmas ornament, right?)

In an extremely brief search of Etsy and Macy's, this came out on top:

I like how it marks the year and conveys wedding without saying "our first Christmas together." (It's really not our first Christmas together, just the first one for which we've been married.) I also like that it's blue. Normally I don't go for this sort of cheesy trinket, but when it comes to Christmas ornaments, I am a total sap.

Is anyone else out there considering a holiday somesuch to commemorate a significant year or event? I'm probably going to end up buying this, even though part of me thinks it's a little bit lame... but hey, some future generation will probably think it's pretty sweet.

sad days

2010-11-03T09:37:00.005-04:00

Hey y'all. I had planned to get back on track with blogging this week, but on Monday my friends' dear, sweet mother passed away unexpectedly. She had been diagnosed with an aggressive and malignant form of cancer this past summer and was in the midst of treatments and handling them pretty well, so the timing of her passing came as a shock to everyone. It's hard to believe someone so bubbly and vivacious (even during her illness) is no longer with us. I've basically been ignoring that fact since I heard the news; I don't think it will hit me until the service tomorrow.

Here is Susan, at right, in June 2009 with her daughters (and my good friends) Tricia and Jenny at Jenny's wedding. Such a gorgeous family:

And here she is dancing with her wonderful fiance Bill at our wedding this past May, before they knew anything was terribly wrong:

It's one of my favorite pictures of our guests, and it's become even more special given the circumstances. Susan was just gleeful about life and love, and it's written all over her face here.

Anyway, if you think of it send up some prayers/good vibes/happy thoughts for the Coyne family and all of Susan's friends in the coming days and weeks. I'll be back to blogging soon.

Carnegie Hall, here I come!

2010-10-29T08:12:00.002-04:00

You may have notice that posting has been a little light of late. My best excuse is that I'm getting back into the swing of things with all my various and sundry choir rehearsals and performances. I had my first performance week with the Atlanta Symphony Chorus last week, and this morning we're headed up to New York (along with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra) to perform at Carnegie Hall. I think this will be my third time there since I joined the chorus in 2005. Here I am smack dab in the middle of the photo the paper ran with a story about our trip in 2006:

I'm famous! Right? At any rate, if you're in New York and want to hear some good music on Saturday night, here are the details. I'll be back next week!

pro pics of my amateur invitations!

2010-10-28T23:31:00.002-04:00

If you've been following this blog all along, you'll certainly remember my thorough account of the invitation-printing process; if you picked up at some point after our invitations went out in late March, please direct your attention to the "invitations" tag for the whole tale. Long story short, I learned how to letterpress and then made our whole invitation suite!

After all the effort I put into the invitations, I completely forgot to set a few aside to be photographed on our wedding day when Jesse came to my parents' house to catch us getting ready. DOH. You always see these beautiful pictures of invitation suites, but no one ever tells you that you need to set them out for the photographer! (Or maybe they do, on those exhaustive shot list blog posts I completely ignored...)

At any rate, Jesse graciously agreed to snap a few shots of our pretty invitations for me after the fact (you can see my own attempt at documentation here). Here are her lovely shots of our totally amazing, excellent invitations!

photos by Jesse at Our Labor of Love

Now, aren't you impressed? You should be! (Kidding. Not entirely.) Thank you, Jesse!

on the holidays, continued...

2010-10-21T21:42:00.001-04:00

I've made an effort to send Christmas cards ever since I graduated college in 2005, but, unfortunately, not in any sort of organized manner. In the past, I've handwritten notes inside store-bought cards or glued them onto the back of Shutterfly-made photo cards, which created a lot (LOT) of work for me. So much that have I set aside cards for VIPs, wanting to be sure to take time to send thoughtful notes, and have never gotten around to writing them. (OOPS. Sorry, very important people!)

Despite my past failings, I'm determined to become a regular sender of holiday cards. This year, I've got up-to-date addresses for family and friends near and far as well as some pretty damn awesome professional photos of me and the mister, so it's gonna happen and it's gonna be good. I resolve to not write long notes (having just sent most of these people wedding thank-yous), which will ensure that I get cards to everyone on my list!

The possibility exists that I will design and letterpress my own greetings and slap on a picture, but in the (very likely) event that I do not have the time for such a project, I've been looking around online for options. I've eliminated offerings from Shutterfly and other generic photo printing sites due to lame designs, and wasn't having a lot of luck elsewhere until earlier today, when this blog directed me to Minted's holiday collection of photo cards. DUH. Why didn't I think to look here?

There are so many hip, festive, uncluttered designs (and some cluttered ones too, if that's your thing) to choose from I don't even know where to begin. Here are some of the ones that caught my eye on the first pass-through:

Pretty cool, huh? I'll let you know what I land on. I'm taking a letterpress holiday card workshop (mostly as a refresher course) next month and obviously some cards will come out of that, but I don't know if they'll be the cards I send out.

Aside from choosing the cards, we have to decide who will be on the list of card recipients. Should it be just those out-of-town folks we don't see often? Our closest friends? My parents send a Christmas card and letter to some family members and old friends, but it's a list of about 30. Some of my friends' parents send a cards to all of their friends. I'm more inclined toward the latter, but I also know how postage (and stationery) can add up. Next year, holiday card costs are gonna be a line item in the budget! (You know, the budget I haven't started making yet... ha.)

Do any of y'all send holiday cards? How do you pick who gets them? Have you found any awesome, reasonably priced purveyors of custom holiday cards? Do tell!

a wedding present that loves us back

2010-10-19T17:48:00.025-04:00

Happy half-birthday to the cutest, most high-maintenance wedding present Jon and I received: Otto, our puppy! (Jon's younger brother was the very generous giver of the puppy-present.) He's six months old today. This time next week we'll have had him for four months. As a lifelong cat person, I'm still adjusting, but things are going pretty well.

It's noots how much Otto has changed since he turned up in June. (The first three pics below are from the day we got him). Without further ado, for your viewing pleasure, a much-longer-than-necessary puppy photo retrospective:

Daww, isn't he sweet? The bandage and the shaved spot on his arm in the two most recent photos are from his neutering operation last week (poor buddy). Otto definitely demands a lot more attention (and upkeep costs) than any of the other wedding presents we got, but he's been an excellent addition to the family. Jon is in love with the dog, and I like him pretty well too. As long as Little Man (my kitty) still loves me, I'm good to go! I have to keep all of my fellas happy.

Did anyone else get a live wedding present? Something way more exciting than the norm? Do tell!

home(s) for the holidays

2010-10-18T23:32:00.000-04:00

As a newlywed couple, you've just navigated the perilous waters of planning a wedding to the tastes of two families and (hopefully) kept everyone happy. You think you're done with family-related stress and complications for a while once the wedding has come and gone... and then come the holidays.

Fortunately, in our case, there hasn't been much drama around holiday-splitting. Our main obstacle is geography: my family is in Atlanta, where we live, and Jon's is in northern Idaho. Thanksgiving is sort of a non-issue because of the distance. Jon has done Thanksgiving in Chattanooga with my mom's family for two years already, and his younger brother even joined us last year from L.A. since their mom was out of the country on sabbatical.

Jon and Matthew at Uncle Mike's house, Thanksgiving 2009

Christmas is where things get trickier. In years past, Jon has flown out to Idaho (via Spokane) a day or two before Christmas to be with his family while I've stayed in Atlanta to sing and do my family's Christmas thing, making the trek to Idaho on Dec. 26 or so. Now that we're married, Jon's mom has insisted that we stick together for our holiday travel rather than fly on different days (which I think we would have done even without the maternal mandate).

We started talking about it months ago; not just about dates and flight times, but about what parts of our respective traditions are most important to us. Yes, I have a paying job in a church choir that demands my presence at church on Christmas Eve, but singing those services is pretty much essential to my holiday experience. I told Jon that if the day comes that I don't have a church gig and we're out in Idaho (or somewhere else) for Christmas Eve, we're going to have to find me a church so I can sing christmas hymns and light candles and all that jazz.

My sister and I were always singing in the choir and mom was on the church staff for more than 20 years, so most of our family stuff happens on Christmas Day itself: presents, brunch, foodcoma naptime, dinner, holiday movie outing is how it normally goes. In Jon's family, the boys have tended to nag their mom until she gives in and lets them open a few presents on Christmas Eve, and they do the rest on Christmas Day, which is also when they eat their big festive meal.

The approach we're taking this year is to try and split Christmas Day between both families, despite the 1,924 miles (as the crow flies) between them. We've booked a flight out of Atlanta at noon on December 25, which means we'll have to get started a little earlier than usual at my parents' house so we can get through all the presents before Dad takes me and Jon to the airport. No brunch for us! Boo hoo. We have a 40-minute layover in Salt Lake City (yikes! hope the weather's good) and arrive in Spokane around 4 p.m. Idaho time, which will put us at Jon's folks' house around 5:30, just in time for more presents and dinner. At least we'll get one fancy Christmas meal in! We'll stick around out there until New Year's Day, as we did last year, so we can get a good visit in.

My Idaho stocking hanging up with Jon's family's stockings

Logistically, it's all sorted... but, I gotta say, I keep thinking of new ways in which it will be just plain WEIRD. Jon will be sitting out in the church congregation with my family, and he'll come to Waffle House with me and my sister and my best friend Winston (and Abby if she's in town) for late-night Christmas Eve waffles. I'll go home and finish wrapping presents, like usual, and then Jon will sleep with me in my bed at home for the first time. WEIRD. (Emily told me to remind her of this fact so she doesn't try to climb in bed with me half asleep on christmas morning while we wait for our brother to wake up.) It also just occurred to me that we'll have to find a spot for Jon to sit for present-opening, since we all have our usual christmas morning places in the christmas tree room... it never ends! (Not to mention I've totally meant to make Jon a stocking for our house and have yet to do so. Doh!)

Christmas Eve 2009 at Waffle House with Emily and Winston

On the other hand, once we get out to Idaho, it will be nice to not be the only one opening presents for once! I'm looking forward to my mother-in-law's delicious dinner, but I would be lying if I said I wouldn't miss the Swiss steak in my family's dining room that night. Jon probably has some thoughts on what will be weird about me being in the middle of his family's traditions on christmas day, but since I don't know those, I'll spare you any speculation. This post is way too damn long already.

So, readers, now it's your turn to weigh in. How did you decide to split holidays with your family-in-law once you were married? Was it totally bizarre having your spouse suddenly in the middle of your own family traditions (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, otherwise)? Or are there some of you out there who avoid the hassle altogether and do something on your own, sans families?

*apologies for the inconsistent "christmas" capitalization throughout... it got late and I stopped caring :)

playing catchup

2010-10-13T22:50:00.008-04:00

I have finally dug myself out from under a massive pile of unread (or un-marked-as-read) Google Reader blog items, wedding and otherwise. Hooray! A couple of things really jumped out at me today, so I thought I'd share.

First, this incredible engagement photo shoot by Sarah Rhoads blew my mind. The colors are pretty muted, but the images are so vivid and full of love. I seriously want to be friends with these two. (I totally want to be friends with Sarah too -- did I mention she just turned 26? Way to make me feel like an underachiever...) Here are some of my favorites from the shoot. Picture no. 3 is pure magic!

photos from sarahrhoads.com

The second thing that stood out was this post from Petite Chablis, about how the things you learn in the planning of a wedding amount to actual, useful real-life knowledge. I picked up all sorts of new skills and refined others over the course of my engagement, many of which could (and, hopefully, eventually will) be applied in the service of a fulfilling career. Yet somehow, because it was all part of wedding planning, potential employers (and we ourselves) see this experience as somehow less legitimate. Gotta work on that...

Last but definitely not least (and also not in the realm of weddings but peripherally related through my own engagement story) is this most recent post from Josh Ritter in his series about making a life in music. Now, I'm not even entertaining the notion of becoming a career musician, but I think anyone can find a lot of value in these posts, no matter their professional course. I'm doing a lot of searching and pondering at the moment, so I'm loving his blog. Unsurprisingly, he's an excellent writer!

Alright, that's the best of today in Kathleen's Google Reader. Bedtime for me! I'll try to stay on top of blog things from here on out...

married to the Braves

2010-10-12T14:47:00.024-04:00

Sorry for the disappearance/light posting of late -- I think the last two weeks of my free time went to cheering on the Atlanta Braves! Alas, it was not enough to pull them through. Last night the Braves lost to the San Francisco Giants in an NLDS nail-biter, ending their 2010 season as well as the storied career of retiring manager Bobby Cox:

Bobby Cox photo courtesy twitter.com/braves

What does all this have to do with weddings? you might be thinking. Quite a bit, actually, in some circles! The weekend before last, the Braves played their last home games of the regular season, which would determine whether or not they'd have a postseason. (If there was no postseason, the games would also have been Bobby Cox's last.) Ami from Elizabeth Anne Designs and her husband Scott drove all the way from Chicago to come watch the Braves -- they're originally from South Carolina, hence the rabid Braves fan-dom. Having just wrapped up a guest-blogging stint on EAD, I was excited when Ami mentioned she might have time to meet up while she was in town. And meet up we did! We had a delicious lunch at South City Kitchen in midtown. Not only is SCK owned by the same restaurant group that provided food for my wedding, it's also where Ami and Scott hosted a brunch the day after their epic vow renewal on New Year's Eve 2008.

Which brings me to my point! Ami and Scott eloped back in 1998, so for their tenth anniversary they went all out in Atlanta. You can look through Ami's recaps at the link above for the ceremony and reception photos, but I'm going to focus on their welcome party here, which they held at the Braves' own Turner Field! It's not uncommon for parties, rehearsal dinners and even weddings to be held at sports stadiums, and Ami and Scott did an excellent job planning what looks to be a killer party at the Ted.

Before the welcome party got underway Ami and Scott, along with photographers Jessica Claire, Mark Brooke and Michael Norwood, ran all around the Braves stadium for a photo session. (All photos by Jessica Claire unless otherwise noted.) Check out this awesomeness!

photo by Mark Brooke

photo by Michael Norwood

How happy is that last photo? (And how sweet are ALL of those photos?) Once Ami and Scott were finished in front of the camera, they met their guests in the 755 Club for the welcome party. They started off with a stadium tour, including the clubhouse and the press box, and returned to the event space to eat ballpark favorites and compete in some festive Braves-related contests Ami and Scott had come up with. I love all the Braves details (Chipper Chardonnay is totally tasty, y'all) and the Smoltz-jersey guest book!

photo by Michael Norwood

This is such an awesome way to incorporate something you love into your wedding festivities. I personally wouldn't go so far as to have my actual wedding in a ballpark, but I think it would be great for a rehearsal dinner or some other sort of party like this one. Here's the whole party gang on the Braves dugout:

Here's a quick recap: Bad blogger --> Bobby Cox retirement --> Braves fans --> parties at ballparks --> most excellent pre-wedding Braves party! It all comes together. Thanks to Ami for letting me share her rad ballpark photos with y'all! GO BRAVES!

Smilebooth on my shelf

2010-10-06T23:12:00.013-04:00

Just last week, I posted a preview of the Blurb book I had put together of our Smilebooth photos. I submitted it in the wee hours of Tuesday/Wednesday morning, and today at lunch I found a lovely little FedEx package from Blurb on my doorstep! Here's the finished product:

I have to say, taking not-terrible pictures of pages of a book with a not-broken spine is pretty difficult... so, sorry for the lame pics. (If you want to see the book's innards, check out the earlier post and flip through the online preview.) Overall I'm really pleased with this -- Blurb did a great job with this and our guestbook, and they're super speedy.

Smilebooth book, guestbook, and my own personal Mirthmobile

I'm going to make a scrapbook of honeymoon pictures/ephemera and order a professional photo album of wedding pictures from our photographers, but if I ever make any other photo books (or cookbooks -- one of those may be in the works) in the future I'm definitely going back to Blurb. If you haven't checked it out yet, you should!

a bridal portrait worth taking

2010-10-02T14:30:00.003-04:00

I didn't have any bridal portraits taken before the wedding; in fact, I'm not really sure how I feel about the practice. Mostly, I dislike incurring all of that pretty-making cost more than once when you could just take some solo pictures on your wedding day. (Though I suppose if you set the shoot up for the days you do trial runs of hair and/or makeup it wouldn't be any extra... unless you go to the trouble of getting a bouquet. Oh yeah, and you have to pay the photographer...) And what if you somehow stain or otherwise mess up your dress? It just seems risky and unnecessary. Plus, the whole oversized-bridal-portrait-on-display at the wedding reception thing is sort of weird. I mean, you're right there! In your wedding dress! Who needs to look at a portrait? (And what about the groom?)

But I digress. I came across a bridal portrait about a month ago that was so awesome I simply had to share it. Being a conscientious blogger, I emailed Millie Holloman, the photographer, to ask permission to do so, and she requested that I hold off until the bride's wedding day so that her intended wouldn't happen across it online somehow. Since the couple's big day is today, I'm at last in the clear to post this most excellent portrait! Bride Hannah picked the spot, and Millie captured it in all its glory:

click to enlarge

How rad is this? If I had a location like this (and the vision to pick it for photos) I definitely would have gone for a bridal session. I can't wait to see what their wedding is like!

Brides, did you do a bridal portrait before the wedding? If yes, did you display a portrait on your wedding day? What are your thoughts?

wildcat pride

2010-09-29T15:52:00.006-04:00

Do any of y'all's high schools have alumni magazines? Well, mine does -- which may seem sort of odd, but oh well -- so whenever anyone from high school gets hitched we have to take the obligatory Westminster picture for the alumni mag. At my wedding we tried to DIY it and squish everyone into the Smilebooth, but that didn't exactly work out...

Fortunately, the Riggs family was on hand to save the day -- Brock, my friend, was our videographer, and his mom Bethany is a professional photographer. Bethany saw that the Smilebooth approach clearly wasn't cutting it and appeared with her big honking camera with its big honking professional flash out of nowhere, ushering us all out of the Smilebooth so we could pose for her. (Note: she wasn't super happy with the way the pictures came out, but kindly sent them anyway!) We didn't get the whole Westminster contingent (notably absent is my brother, and some of the older guests had left early I'm guessing), but this is still a pretty strong showing if I do say so myself:

So, now I can send this in and prove to my former classmates that I still have friends. Go 'Cats!

Smilebooth + Blurb = Awesome

2010-09-28T23:06:00.003-04:00

Tonight I wrapped up a post-wedding project that's been in the works for a while: making a Blurb book of our favorite Smilebooth photos. Over the course of the reception more than 600 Smilebooth photos were taken, many of which are total keepers, so making a book seemed like the most efficient, cost-effective and accessible thing to do with our digital negatives. We'll keep it on our coffee table and have a good chuckle every now and then when we crack it open.

Wanna see? Of course you do! Check out the full preview below...

Kathleen & Jon | Make Your Own Book

In the end, I used about 185 photos. Not even a third of the total! (That's not to say that I think more should have been bookworthy, just that I thought I was using a ton and I barely made a dent! Plus, there are plenty of duplicate pics.) I came out with 64 10"x 8" pages, which will be printed on premium paper and shipped to me for a grand total of $44.35 (I had a coupon for the paper upgrade, which saved about $6.50).

This will make a nice companion to our guestbook (also a Blurb production) since a lot of guests missed one thing or the other. Putting them both together should give us a good record of who all was at the wedding when we can't remember anymore!

Did you (would you) have a photobooth at your wedding reception? What did (would) you do with all the pictures after the wedding?

This one's for the fellas

2010-09-27T11:03:00.007-04:00

This past weekend Jon discovered his favorite thing about being married (well, after being showered with wedding presents and having me around, of course): his wedding band doubles as a bottle opener! He had heard that it could be used as such on his recent trip to L.A., I believe. After an unsuccessful first attempt this weekend, I located this handy silent-video tutorial to help him out:

Learn How to open a beer bottle with a gold wedding ring. For more Bar Tricks How-To Videos & Articles, visit WonderHowTo.

Hot dog! Jon had tried to use the other side of his ring, which I suppose seems more intuitive, but sure enough, after watching this he popped the cap off of his beer no sweat. (I then examined the ring for damage, and there didn't seem to be any unusual wear and tear from the process. Approved!) Apparently this trick requires some practice, though, because Jon tried again later in the weekend to no avail.

Anyway, if there are any of y'all out there who are trying to persuade your man to wear a ring (I know some guys don't want to), maybe this will help convince him!

famous last words (as a guest blogger)

2010-09-24T11:51:00.004-04:00

Well, it's been a relaxing week here at A Wedding Runs Through It, since I worked ahead for a week of guest-blogging at Elizabeth Anne Designs. Head on over to read my last post, where I address some as-yet-uncharted (on this blog) territory!

Post-Wedding Wisdom

Once again, a huge thanks to Ami, who invited me to share my wedding with her (much larger) readership!

eight down, one to go

2010-09-23T14:59:00.005-04:00

Recap posts nos. 7 and 8 are up on Elizabeth Anne Designs today. Check them out!

Our reception: this is how we do it

Our day in pictures
(lord knows y'all have seen plenty of those!)

I'm a guest-bloggin' fool

2010-09-22T16:30:00.005-04:00

Yep! two more posts up today. I promise to stop linking to other things and start blogging again for real next week, but I busted my ass writing these so I figured I could take it easy while they were running. Enjoy!

My DIY projects

Our Ceremony: putting the 'rad' in traditional

nos. 2, 3 & 4 for EAD

2010-09-21T13:36:00.009-04:00

Three more posts for Elizabeth Anne Designs are live today -- I think the first actually turned up late last night. Anyway, go read about how our planning process got started (in a nutshell, of course) and how I found a killer dress!

starting from scratch

working on when, where & who

saying no to my dream dress

I'm a guest blogger!

2010-09-20T11:37:00.008-04:00

Shortly after our wedding photos from OLOL hit the web back in July, I received an email from Ami at Elizabeth Anne Designs.
She was preparing to launch a local guide for Atlanta on her website and wondered if I would be interested in guest-blogging a recap of my Atlanta wedding for EAD -- how could I turn that down? I've written a bunch of new posts that will be appearing all week on EAD Weddings. Click on the banner above to read all about it!

Recap central!

2010-09-17T11:01:00.004-04:00

Since my wedding recap posts are scattered across a couple months, I thought I'd pull them all together in one post for anyone who is just finding my blog (hello!), anyone who missed something or anyone who can't be bothered to look through all my post titles. Our wedding weekend at your fingertips!

Wedding weekend recap: brunch and everything after

2010-09-17T09:50:00.006-04:00

Despite our late bedtime after the wedding, we set a wake-up call for 8:30 or so on Sunday morning. My folks were hosting a farewell brunch for our guests from out of town starting at 10 a.m., and my sister was planning to pick up me and Jon at the W on her way over. The first order of business was a shower (and a call to the concierge for a brush and/or comb, since I had neglected to pack mine). I think I washed my hair twice and still felt like it had hairspray in it... yick.

Once we were showered and presentably dressed, we called the concierge for a cart to help us carry our stuff -- not that we had much, but the combination of many small bags + wedding dress was a bit unwieldy. We gave up waiting on the bellhop to come and I slung my dress over my arm -- much easier to carry than I had anticipated -- and headed for the elevator. Before we left, I took a picture of the view from our room, looking out over Piedmont Park. Not bad, huh?

We arrived at mom and dad's all bright and shiny, much to the surprise of most everyone who was already there. I actually didn't feel bad at all (didn't drink much) and wasn't too tired yet at that point, so I was good to go. I hung up my dress in my bedroom and then made a beeline for the food. We enlisted Avalon Catering to do our brunch, and it was AMAZING. Check out this delicious menu:

Asparagus with olive oil
~
Red Mule grits with Flatcreek cheddar cheese
~
Early summer tomato and fresh herb salad and lettuce
~
Local farm egg frittata with spring greens, young garlic and sweet Italian peppers
~
Angel biscuits filled with Benton’s Country ham slices
~
Banana bread, griddled brioche, blueberry muffins
~
Sweet Grass Dairy Green Hill and Thomasville Tomme cheeses
~
Riverview Farms strawberries and sliced melon

Don't mind if I do, right? Damn. It was so good. We loved it, all the guests loved it, the two catering staffers were super nice -- couldn't have been better.

Friends and family came and went all morning and into the afternoon. Here are a couple of the very few pictures I took, featuring my friends from summer camp:

A couple of hours in, Jon and I landed out on the screen porch with some of our grad-school classmates -- they all had pretty late flights out, which was awesome because we got this extra time to visit with them! We ate and laughed and hung out until around 2:30 or so (I think) when they had to head out.

One last group photo!

Once all of our guests had left, Jon went with his mom and stepdad to get his car from the church parking lot and head home while I stayed back with my folks a bit longer. Eventually we loaded up all the gifts people had brought to the wedding and the brunch into my car and I drove back to our apartment.

It was probably 4:30 when I got home to our place. Jon helped me bring the presents inside, I broke out my master gift-tracking spreadsheet, and we went to work opening them! About halfway through that process Jon's family turned up, so we all walked to the neighborhood burger joint (Jon's favorite) for one last dinner together before Jon's stepbrothers had to head for the airport. As we walked back home after the meal we said our farewells in the street, and once Jon and I got inside we collapsed on the sofa.

I don't really remember the specifics of what came next, probably because I was totally exhausted from the excitement of the weekend... Jon wanted to watch the LOST finale, and I couldn't have cared less about it, so I believe he went to his brother's room at the W for that while I stayed home and packed for the honeymoon. I think my sister came over to visit that evening, but I'm not totally sure...

I was really glad that we planned to leave for our honeymoon on Monday rather than Sunday -- it was so nice to have that extra day to visit with people a little more (since we'd hardly had a chance at the wedding itself) and to decompress a bit. I highly recommend it! We reminisced and relaxed with out families on Sunday, and, bright and shiny Monday morning, we were off to exotic Canada!

Thus concludes my very thorough recap of wedding events. I told one of my friends this was as much for my own memory as it was for sharing with y'all. Thanks for indulging me!

Wedding day recap: the afterparty!

2010-09-14T23:19:00.007-04:00

Getting into the town car at the end of the reception marked the first time either of us had sat down since dinner, so when the driver followed the GPS's wonky directions, I didn't mind that he took the long route to the W Midtown where we were staying that night. A lot of Jon's family and many of the wedding party members had booked rooms there as well, so it had been decided that the celebration would continue in the hotel bar once the reception was officially over. It was nice to sit for a while!

[WARNING: Super long post! Just fyi.]

Because we had taken a somewhat less direct route from the reception to the hotel, when we arrived we pulled up behind my best friend's parents' SUV -- they were dropping off a carload of friends for the afterparty. My friend's dad popped the trunk, and out rolled her older brother. Hilarious! Jon and I were greeted by the hotel staff, who took my little bag of things and led us to the elevator to take us to our suite on the 24th floor. Ooh la la! Don't mind if I do! As the elevator doors closed, Jon's cousin, one of the groomsmen, popped in (somewhat inebriated) and said he was going to come up to our room and use the bathroom. The hotel guy tried to stare at the wall and stay out of it I think, and Jon probably gave his cousin a look that said oh hell no. When we stopped at 24 after a pretty awkward ascent, his cousin decided he would just ride back down to the lobby and find the public restroom there. So weird.

Anyway, so we got to our room, which I believe Jon's folks had upgraded from a normal room to a suite, and for which my brother and his girlfriend had purchased some romance package that included rose petals on the bed, chocolate-covered strawberries and champagne, and the first order of business was to REMOVE SHOES. Here you see Jon doing thusly:

After shoe-removal, we looked around a bit. Not too much to see, except that the shower was all glass, one of those glass walls was right next to the bed (HELLO), and the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked Piedmont Park. (We could practically see our house from our room in the morning!) Since it was a suite, there was a den/sitting room when you first entered. Here that is:

Interestingly, I saw this very room (or one decorated in exactly the same fashion)
featured on the W. Scott Chester blog this morning. What are the odds?

I decided to give the glass-walled bathroom a go, since I hadn't peed all night. I just want to say, ladies, that it is TOTALLY POSSIBLE to go to the bathroom all by yourself and not dip your dress in the toilet. I did it three times over the course of the night with no mishaps and was so proud of myself. (Sad, isn't it?) Basically, you just grab the innermost layer of your skirt -- which, in my case, had a stiff edge to it to make the dress easier to walk in -- pick it up from the hem and turn it inside-out so it holds all the outer skirt-layers in a sort of bowl-like situation. Brilliant, I tell you!

But I digress. In addition to rose petals, strawberries and champagne, there was another surprise awaiting us (courtesy of Jon's folks) in the form of a dozen mini cupcakes from Highland Bakery, who had made our wedding cake. Once we had kicked off our shoes, used the facilities and scoped out our swanky suite, we plopped down at the table and cracked open the bubbly. We also took a look at the massive bag of food our caterers had sent with us, which included samples of every dish that had been served. Two giant slabs of cake (wedding and groom's) were sort of glopped together in one of those takeout boxes. Seeing no forks, we decided to dig into the mini cupcake assortment instead.

We snacked and drank some champagne while we chatted and rested our feet for a bit. We probably stayed up in our room for about 30 or 45 minutes before we went back downstairs. (Meanwhile, I received [drunk] texts from my best friend that read "WHISKEY PARK" [name of hotel bar] and "FOLKS IS HURRRR.") I attempted to put my shoes back on (for the sake of my dress) but ohhh it buuuurned, so I opted for the flip-flops I packed and dragged around an extra 3.5 inches of skirt for the rest of the night. It was an excellent call, I have to say.

When we showed up at the bar, most of the grad-school crew was there, along with most of the wedding party, Jon's family and all the other guests who were staying at the W. It was definitely a good crowd! The bar was sort of clubby and loud, but it was a good time. Witness:

chatting with a grad-school classmate

Jon and Kasi, his best friend from home

Random bar-goer congratulates me!

Me and my NU guys!

Jon and his SU guys/groomsmen (Dante changed)

Poes + Wolbes + stoneface = YES

Me and Emily with Stewart, object of my jr. high affections and little brother of one of Em's best friends

Abby, me, seester

me with some of the grad-school gang!

Me and Jon's cousin Kent -- we took a series of pictures and this was by far the most awesome

Best Man, looking pretty psyched about life

After a little while in the clubby bar, we decided we wanted space where we could all sit down and maybe talk some, so we went downstairs to what looked like an empty bar but was actually a closed bar. Oops.

Someone from the hotel came to inform us that we could either go to the bar upstairs or the bar downstairs, but we couldn't stay in the middle. Jon's folks took this as their cue to turn in, but before they did we needed one last family photo for the evening:

From there we continued down the stairs to the lobby bar, which had photo opps aplenty. I couldn't resist spreading out across a large bench in my poofy dress:

Abby's brother Morgan sat down and got sucked into the photo session:

We spied another just-married couple at the front desk, so I had to do a get-a-load-of-this-guy cam shot for their stealing some of my bridal thunder. Gah! My dress was totally prettier, too! ;)

I actually spoke with the groom shortly after -- they had come all the way to Atlanta from Athens because they had a flight out in the morning -- and we wished each other well.

After that, my sister had the brilliant idea of recreating one of our favorite movie moments: the scene in Three Amigos when the amigos first turn up in Mexico and get shots of tequila at the bar. These were lemon drop shots, but whatever. It's a pretty faithful homage to a fine film:

It's like beer...

"That's an odd taste."
"It's probably watered down..."
Anyone?

Not long after that, we found the spot where we would camp out for the next few hours. Underneath the main staircase in the lobby there was a weird little pod-room with booths lining the perimeter. Perfect! Our own private room with seating for everybody!

Folks came and went, and eventually the crowd thinned. Round about 3 a.m., the guys in the picture above the one of me and Jon decided they needed pizza. They went to ask the concierge which local establishments delivered at this hour and managed to track someone down. They placed an order and the few of us who remained at this point all migrated up to Jon's cousin Christie's room, where the pizza was eventually delivered.

There was seriously not a bite left about 2 minutes after the pizza arrived. I didn't have any, but most everyone else did. The crew at this point consisted of me, Jon, Jon's brother, two of their cousins, one of their stepbrothers, an old neighbor of theirs, two of my college roommates and another dormmate friend of mine from Northwestern. Kind of a hoot. While we were hanging out there, I began the long process of removing bobby pins from my hair -- I definitely appreciated the head start when I got back up to our room!

I also want to take this opportunity to say that it is a freaking miracle that Jon stayed up this late, and seemed to enjoy it at that. I am a night owl and a party animal by nature (I was always the last to go down at a slumber party), but Jon tends to be in bed by midnight most nights and that's how he prefers it. I was so proud and pleased that he partied our wedding night away with me and all of our friends who had come to town for our big day.

This picture of my dress hanging in the den of our room, taken at 4:18 a.m. Sunday morning when we finally decided we should get some sleep, is the last shot from our monumentally awesome wedding day. Thanks for the cool lighting, W Midtown!

*all pictures courtesy of myself, E. Poe, D. A. Ciampaglia, A. Wolbe and A. Quinn via facebook

Wedding day recap: a few details

2010-09-10T11:29:00.002-04:00

Alright, before I leave the insanely awesome photos from Jesse & Whitney behind, I want to show you juuuust a few more that didn't fit into any of the aforementioned recap categories. I'm glad they took a few people-less detail shots! It's nice to have these aspects of the day captured close-up. Here we go:

DIY guestbook courtesy of Blurb, frame from IKEA,
awesome engagement photos by OLOL.

Table 1 -- that's us! This was our "economical" centerpiece option. I'm
slightly underwhelmed, but I also didn't even notice when I was there!

Another of the lower-cost centerpieces. (I do wish they'd gotten a real
one! No biggie.) I thought I was being clever getting heavier paper for
the table numbers, but I clearly should have reinforced with some paper
in between... I don't think this show-through was all that common though.

Beautiful cake table with beautiful flowers! Those
lovely red peonies up front are what the mamas held.

Just a pretty shot.

DIY honey favors from my dad's backyard beehives with their cute sign.

Last but not least, here are some of the awesome ring photos Jesse & Whitney took. I love what they did! Clearly I don't have dainty girl-hands, because my ring is almost as big as Jon's... but then again, he doesn't have massive man-hands either. Oh well! The first one is of our wedding rings, but they actually used my engagement ring for the last two (probably because you couldn't otherwise tell which was the man-ring and which was the lady-ring. [Not that there is anything wrong with two man-rings or two lady-rings!]).

Ok, so that really brings us to the end of the pro-pic recaps. However! I have yet to tell you about the raging after-party in the hotel bar! Coming soon...

(Also, did anyone else have basically same-sized rings, or am I a sausage-fingered freak? ;))

*all photos courtesy of Our Labor of Love

for all you musical theater nerds out there

2010-09-09T14:05:00.012-04:00

This was just brought to my attention by my two New York-based Broadway-loving bridesmaids, and I would be remiss if I didn't share it with y'all. Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the hit musical In the Heights, got hitched over the holiday weekend and surprised his bride at the reception with a full-cast rendition of To Life (L'Chaim) from Fiddler on the Roof during the toasts. By full-cast I mean pretty much everyone in the wedding party, including the bride's father in a lead role, of course. I'm so impressed! My dad would never have been able to pull that off (not that Jon would have considered such a thing). The bride's reactions are priceless!

Check it out:

video found on broadwayworld.com

parallel pictures

2010-09-07T14:56:00.018-04:00

I think I mentioned before that, sadly, most of the pictures that Jesse and Whitney shot of Jon by himself and one-on-one with his groomsmen on the wedding day were lost. The photo below is the only solo picture of Jon we ended up with. When I saw it, it reminded me of another older wedding photo I had come across: namely, one of Jon's dad. Check out this pair of pictures, taken about 34 years apart:

Pretty cool, no? I can definitely see the resemblance here. Seeing that made me wonder if there were any pictures of myself that were similar to the pictures my mom has from her wedding 38 years ago. This is the best match I could make:

And of course, there are the wedding photos that will pretty much always happen if you have a aisle to walk down or a cake to cut, so these next few pairs aren't quite as novel. I still think it's interesting to see, though. (FYI, I cropped these a bit to help with the comparison) We'll let Mom & Dad go first this time:

Did any of y'all who are married have any specific shots you wanted to recreate on your wedding day, either from your parents' wedding album or from somewhere else? Even if you didn't, like me, you might just have some photo doppelgängers lurking amongst your wedding pictures!

*non-old-timey photos courtesy of Our Labor of Love

free at last!

2010-09-06T20:21:00.004-04:00

I spent most of my Labor Day holiday writing thank-you notes, and I am thrilled to report that I am finally DONE! Glory! I had about 30 or so still to write, it turned out. (I thought it was more like 20, but, to be fair, not all of the notes were wedding present thank-yous.) As I went along, I updated my address/rsvp/gifts received spreadsheet and added lots of Ys to the "thank you" column. Here's the stack for Mr. Mailman to take away tomorrow. Impressive, no?

There were a lot of things on my to-do list that I didn't get to today, but this is a huge monkey off my back, so I don't feel so bad about the smaller things left undone. Plus, only four workdays to go until the next weekend. I'll do all that cleaning I meant to do today then, right? Totally.

38 years (and counting)

2010-09-02T07:35:00.009-04:00

Today's post is dedicated to my excellent parents, who are celebrating their 38th wedding anniversary. Happy anniversary, y'all!

1972

2010

You've given me and Jon a great example to follow. Here's to many more happy years!

* if you want to see more of my folks' wedding pictures, check out the Old-Timey Tuesday series!

Wedding day recap: wrapping up the reception

2010-09-01T22:14:00.001-04:00

As you saw in the last post, all of our guests were gettin' down with their bad selves on the dance floor for as long as the DJ was playing tunes. Of course, we had to wrap up by 11 p.m. and fit a few more customary wedding things in before all was said and done, so we couldn't just boogie on through.

About a week after the wedding, I blogged about the wedding regrets I had at that point: one of them was that I feared I hadn't tossed my bouquet well enough. Well, once I saw these photos I knew that I had worried needlessly. NAILED IT. It definitely was not the line drive I thought I had thrown! I love these shots:

Mary Jacob, one of my best high school girlfriends, caught it. So classic:

After the toss (to Single Ladies, what else these days?) the dance party continued, until it was eventually time for Jon and I to do our last dance. (The DJ tried to make Yeah! the final song before we had the floor to ourselves again, but he graciously added another three minutes or so to the evening by playing Hey Ya! at my urging. Then we had our last dance.) Tom the DJ announced it and the floor cleared to make way for us as the opening chords to Kathleen filled the room. I sang along the whole time:

All the other girls here are stars -- you are the northern lights...

This next picture is probably the most gorgeous of the whole wedding. I'm still debating whether or not it's socially acceptable to have this photo enlarged and framed. I love how it captures the end of the night so perfectly:

After our song was over, the DJ instructed everyone to head out to the steps and grab some flower petals on the way so they could throw them at us as we made our big exit. The space cleared out pretty quickly, though I did manage a couple of Smilebooth photos with my college roomies and Jon and I took a few shots since we hadn't been in there just the two of us yet. (My favorite Smilebooth shot is one we took right before we left!) Amanda, our brilliant coordinator, came in to drag us away from the Smilebooth so we could depart and get out of the venue on time. We walked into the entry hallway and waited for a sign from the photographers telling us we were good to go...

At the bottom of the stairs, before we hopped into our Lincoln town car, we hugged and kissed our parents. When we got ourselves into the car, it was the first time either of us had sat down all night since we ate. (OH GOD MY FEET.) We had some trouble rolling down the window, but we eventually managed so Jesse & Whitney could get one last shot before we pulled away:

Jon and I spoke briefly with our driver, then settled into the cushy seat, popped open the cold Sprite that was in the cupholder and passed it back and forth as we talked about how much damn fun the day had been.

Well, that brings me to the end of the evening, at least in terms of professional pictures! I have a few more details to share with you before I'm totally done. The party certainly did not end at this point, though! More on that later...

*all photos courtesy of Our Labor of Love

Wedding day recap: do these guys know how to party or what?

2010-08-30T13:15:00.035-04:00

After the toasting and special dances were finished, Tom the DJ opened up the floor for party time! I actually didn't get to dancing for a while once things got started -- I was greeting and hugging guests on the side of the room I hadn't gotten to yet -- but I was happy to hear that Tom was reading the crowd just fine and kicked off with some oldies that the boogie-ready parentals would want to dance to.

Susan and Uncle Steve, cutting a rug

(Non-Uncle) Steve and Susan, not dancing but
looking quite the handsome couple for the camera

me and Jon dancing to one of the only slow songs I
remember hearing, Ray Charles' Georgia on my Mind

Soon enough one of my bridesmaids decided I'd had plenty of time for talking and I needed to be on the dance floor, so off I went to party it up with all of our friends. This is where the evening gets hazy (even though I only drank a couple glasses of Champagne then stuck with Cheerwine for the rest of the reception); I can hardly remember what songs the DJ played! The reception is pretty much a blur. There was definitely some Journey, a little 99 Luftballons , a touch of Motown Philly, toss in a bit of Backstreet Boys... generally lots of '80s/'90s/early aughts goodness. All the makings of a raging dance party! (At least for my friends.) Jesse, Whitney and third-shooter Keaton did an amazing job of capturing the spirit of the party:

everybody cut footloose

Uncle Tom, portraying the post-motorcycle accident
Leader of the Pack (it's something of a family tradition)

me and my siblings, rocking out to Journey

Ridiculous fun, no? These are such epically kickass photos. True classics, all of them.

Hard to believe it's possible, but I have just a few more photos from the reception to show y'all! Stay tuned...

*all photos courtesy of Our Labor of Love

Wedding day recap: cake, toasts & dances

2010-08-25T22:34:00.005-04:00

After bidding our taxi-riding friend farewell in the driveway, we headed down the alley to the back door and inside to our little private space behind the curtain. All of our guests had been ushered into the main event space (the cocktail hour had used the entry hallway as well) to await our arrival...

When most everyone was inside, we left our table for two behind the curtain and stepped into the entry hallway, where the jazz quartet was breaking down their equipment. We thanked the musicians for playing the cocktail hour and got a few congratulatory hugs, and then took our place a little bit back from the doorway, waiting for Tom the DJ to give us a cue. We didn't have any music picked out for this, so I'm not really sure what he played (or if there was a song) and frankly, I haven't the foggiest how he introduced us! Kathleen and Jon Ross? That sounds about right. At any rate, we made our grand entrance into a room full of smiling, clapping friends and family, another exhilarating, indescribable moment in a day with dozens of them:

what am I doing with my arm here? oh goodness...

there, that's better.

That last photo gives you a pretty good sense of the room. The tables and food stations were in the outer thirds of the room, outside those sheer drapes, and the middle third was for dancing, wedding cake and a big double bar.

Speaking of cake, not long after we ate (which was immediately, at the instruction of Amanda, our coordinator) it was time to cut the cakes. We had requested a Wynton Marsalis-Bobby McFerrin collaboration as musical accompaniment for these moments, but neglected to ever send it to the DJ... oops! When she gave me the five-minutes-til-cake-time warning Amanda asked after this. I told her the DJ didn't have the tune since we'd never sent it, so he could just play whatever. He ended up choosing Candy Girl by the Archies, which Jon and I had picked apart in our grad-school pop music seminar one day. Good call, Tom!

The main wedding cake was red velvet iced in buttercream on the outside with cream-cheese icing between the layers (NOM); the groom's cake, which was only vaguely shaped like Idaho, was German chocolate cake. Both were delicious! The lovely cake topper was made by the über talented Ashley Meaders of Flashdance fame.

Next up, toasts! The following picture pretty well summarizes our reactions to all of them:

Jon's brother Matthew kicked things off. He's working to become a TV writer and he's hilarious, so he knocked it out of the park and set the bar high.

I'm pretty sure that, in the above photo, he's just referenced the

first time he came to my apartment, saw all my Waffle House
memorabilia and wondered if I was a nutbar.

Next up was my big sister Emily, who totally outdid herself with a weddingy riff on The Night Before Christmas. It rhymed and everything! Holy crap!

I think my dad spoke next, but I'm not entirely certain. He gave a toast that my late Grandpa Fred (mama's daddy) had brought back from his years in the Navy. It's a family tradition that someone give this toast at big occasions. Dad told the story of how Grandpa found the toast and read from a copy one of mom's cousins had done in calligraphy for us.

Last but never least, my big brother Matt wrapped things up with a short and sweet toast to me and Jon. I love this picture, because it sort of looks like he's singing to us:

After the toasts, we went straight into the formal dances everyone usually does. First up, Jon and I danced to Blossom Dearie's rendition of 'Deed I do:

Next, my dad and I showed off our sweet (and hard-earned) dance moves to Frank Sinatra's version of The Way You Look Tonight. (Same as Bill and Chelsea Clinton, I read! But we did it first. HA.)

And, last up before the dance party really kicked off, Jon and his mom Susan took a spin around the floor to the Beatles' In My Life.

Susan is one happy mama, isn't she? I love these shots.

Next up, things get all wild and hairy on the dance floor...

*all photos courtesy of Our Labor of Love

15 minutes of wedding-blog fame: Bride Buzz

2010-08-25T11:25:00.004-04:00

I had an email yesterday from Kate Templin, one of the founders of the blog Bride Buzz and a newlywed herself, wanting some details on our wedding so she could put up a post about our big day starring the inimitable photography of Our Labor of Love. Of course, I happily obliged. Click on the picture below to see the Bride Buzz feature, and check out the rest of the site while you're at it.

Thanks for all the internet love, y'all!

15 minutes of wedding-blog fame: Ashley Baber Weddings

2010-08-24T14:10:00.004-04:00

My oh-so-excellent wedding coordinator Ashley Baber tipped me off that she'd be featuring our wedding on her blog today. Huzzah! There were so many lovely photos that she had to break it up into two installments. Those of you who have been following my recaps here will get a little sneak peak of what's coming (i.e. the reception) in Ashley's second post. If you haven't already had your fill of our wedding photos, head on over to Ashley's blog and check us out!

Part I
Part II

If you happen to be in need of a top-notch wedding coordinator, look no further than Ashley Baber Weddings. Read more about my wonderful experience working with Ashley and her associate Amanda here!

Wedding day recap: a cocktail hour of photo fun!

2010-08-23T15:25:00.005-04:00

About 15 minutes after pulling out of the church parking lot, the minibus turned into the Puritan Mill development. Amanda, our super awesome coordinator, was waiting at the gate to greet us. The bus stopped so Jesse, Jon and I could hop off, then pulled around to drop the wedding party at the main entrance to the reception so they could enjoy the cocktail hour.

Whitney appeared about a minute later, and then the five of us (photogs, coordinator, me and Jon) took an alley to the back door of our venue. Inside, behind a curtain that hid the area from our guests, there was a table set for two with some hors d'oeuvres, water and, of course, champagne. Amanda popped it open and poured us each a glass (such service!), and we sat down for a moment while Jesse made a pit stop and Whitney went to fiddle with the Smilebooth. Jon and I had a few nibbles and practiced some turns as the jazz quartet played on the other side of the curtain to make sure we could dance in our wedding garb without damaging ourselves or my dress.

After about five minutes and a couple glasses of water, we headed back outside with Jesse & Whitney. We started off in the alleyway (the first two pictures below) and basically worked our way across the property taking photos. My favorite backdrop has got to be what looks to be a wall of kudzu -- actually a fence and a hill blanketed by the leafy vines. People who have seen our photos have been surprised to learn that we didn't go anywhere off-site for these pictures... just to the parking lot behind the building next door!

my skirt really liked to pick up odds and ends
(like these twigs) over the course of the evening

actually playing paper scissors rock (yes, that's what I call it)

After the kudzu portion of the photo session, we stopped in a rusty old loading dock and in front of what I assume used to be a warehouse. I love these photos too. (Of course. I pretty much say that about all of them.)

Amanda came out at some point, or maybe she texted Whitney, to say that we needed to be back inside to make our big entrance into the reception in about five minutes, so we wrapped things up with a few more shots and headed back.

As we were about to cross the driveway back to the main building, a taxi was pulling up to the exit. The rear window rolled down and out popped our friend David, who was on his way to the airport to catch the last flight back to New York that night. We ran over to hug him and thank him for coming, and either Jesse or Whitney snapped this photo of us. Later, Jon and I kept talking about what perfect timing that was, and how glad we were to have been with our photographers then to capture the moment!

Next up, we'll get the party started with some dancing, cake and toasts!

*all photos courtesy of Our Labor of Love

Wedding day recap: post-ceremony photo session

2010-08-18T18:37:00.033-04:00

As the wedding party recessed out of the sanctuary, we were all shepherded back to the parlor where the girls had gotten ready to hide out while the crowd dissipated. Much hugging ensued -- I hadn't yet seen Steve, my new father-in-law, that day, or many of the groomsmen. After a few minutes, once our guests had spilled out onto the church steps and the narthex had cleared, Jon and I ducked back into the sanctuary to get a quick photo with the minister:

Done and done. After some more hugs to the music nerd gang that was hanging out by the organ console, it was time to go outside to take a few family and wedding party photos.

Jesse and Whitney don't tend to spend a lot of time on the standard posed pictures in front of the altar, but they of course make room in their schedule for the family portraits that everybody wants. The weather was so lovely and the lawn of the church so green that we decided we'd rather take all of these group shots outside. Fortunately, the weather had also cooled off a bit since 3:30 or 4.

We started off with the family photos, since our parents would need to get to the reception. The bridesmaids and groomsmen were all riding in the glamorous minibus with us, so they could wait. First up, the two families now joined together:

the Ross/Tomsovic clan at left (stepbrothers, brother, stepdad, mama)
and the Poes on the right (dad, mom, sister, brother)

with Jon's side

with Jon's folks

with my side

the Poe children, all looking pretty spiffy (if I do say so myself)

I had to include this one of me and mama because it's so happy.
I love it! She had a real problem with pulling on my veil when she
put her arm around me though. Bad llama!

I think I'm trying to get out of the way here so Jon can have a turn

here we go. The Rosses: Jon, Susan and Matthew

call in the wedding party!

obligatory jumping/celebration picture. Dave, second from right, totally wins.

LOVE this

we have seriously attractive friends, y'all

Once we finished our group session, we sent the wedding party to the bus to soak up some A/C while Jesse took me and Jon aside for a few more photos at the church:

When we were done, Jesse, Jon and I hopped on the bus with the rest of the gang. Emily kindly removed my veil before we got moving, and soon we were off to the reception!

Up next: cocktail hour for the guests, more pictures for me and Jon!

*all photos courtesy of Our Labor of Love

my cousin's butterfly wedding

2010-08-17T15:55:00.014-04:00

Jon and I attended my cousin Vicki's wedding this past weekend in my parents' hometown of Kingsport, Tenn. (It's Vicki's hometown too, of course.) Like my folks' Kingsport wedding all those years ago, Vicki and Greg held both the ceremony and the reception at their church. Unlike my parents' wedding, there was definitely a theme to the decor: butterflies.

Vicki loves butterflies -- my other cousin even wore butterfly earrings to the event in Vicki's honor -- and you could tell, because they were everywhere. What was so cool about it was that many of them were stained-glass butterflies made by Vicki's dad over the course of her engagement. There was one of the arrangements pictured below on each windowsill in the sanctuary, and apparently each bridesmaid got to choose one as her bridesmaids' gift. How sweet is that?

Outside the sanctuary by the programs, they'd even stuck a butterfly in the bible...

Their delicious cake (inspired by the colorful MS Weddings cover from last winter?):

image found here

Here's another stained-glass Uncle Don original acting as a centerpiece on one of the reception tables:

Last but certainly not least, we have the blushing bride and groom, dancing their first dance. You can't see it here, but Vicki has a crystal butterfly on her necklace and I think a butterfly pin in her hair (as all the bridesmaids wore).

Congrats, y'all!

Wedding day recap: the main event!

2010-08-16T21:25:00.024-04:00

When we left off last week, my dad and I were just crossing the threshold into the sanctuary. Up until that point, I had been cool as a cucumber. All day, people had been asking me how I felt. "Pretty normal," I'd respond. Basically right up until they opened the doors I was fine; not jumpy or nervous or anything.

It hit me like a ton of bricks when I stepped into the church, though. The "oh shit" moment I wrote about in the last post was a rush of surreal and overwhelming and bursting with happiness and buzzing excitement. I started off down the aisle grinning wide, transitioned to what I imagine was a not terribly attractive not-gonna-cry face for the middle third and managed to pull myself together for about the last leg. (Meanwhile, Jon was staring at the wall. Ah well.) I don't remember how quickly or slowly we walked or how much of the processional the organist got through by the time I arrived up front; the start of the ceremony is frankly a blur. Needless to say, I'm really looking forward to seeing the video my friend took.

I love this picture - it was taken during the hymn, while I was
cracking up the best man with my lusty singing of
"Come thou fount of ev'ry blessing"

a good shot of the wedding party (while Kasi reads a Neruda sonnet)

this gives you a good sense of the space

This is one of my favorite pictures. The pianist is one of
my former teachers and dearest friends

this was a total musical dream team

giving Jon his ring

then, when Jon went to give me my ring, I sensed that he was going for
the wrong hand (my right), so I sort of helped him out and stuck
out my left hand. The whole place erupted in laughter!

finally has the correct hand, still laughing

the kiss!

I think this one is so cool, how I'm looking down and
Jon's looking up... I dunno. Something about it.

aaaand we're off!

Married! (wow, that still seems kinda weird.)

Coming up next: more portraits than you could possibly care to look at. I promise to edit!

*all photos courtesy of Our Labor of Love

Wedding day recap: Oh, the anticipation!

2010-08-12T20:50:00.030-04:00

Bet you thought the ceremony was up next, huh? Nope, not yet! Since I'm breaking things up into easy-to-manage chunks of photos, we've got a little more time to kill before I hit the aisle. These are the moments of oh-crap-it's-happening that hit as our friends and family filled the church and the prelude drew to a close.

one of my girlfriends (whom I enlisted as a program attendant!)
came to see me all fancied up and give me a hug before the ceremony

the girls grabbed their bouquets

and I dried off the stems of my bouquet so I wouldn't drip water down my dress

Jon's brother Matthew and their mom Susan, ready and waiting in the narthex

Mama and my brother Matt, also ready to get this party started

some of the girls chatting in the hallway (Krista, at right, was also a program attendant)

This picture cracks me up. Do you think Dad's a little nervous maybe? Or something?

lined up!

MEANWHILE, on the other side of the sanctuary, David (the minister) and Jon yuk it up

Ok, back to the ladies. Maid of honor Emily helps me sort out my skirt for its big debut!

last-minute questions for the sweet church lady

sister and best friend exchange I'm-gonna-cry looks

it's just me and daddy now... (and Amanda, coordinator extraordinaire!)

laughing our way to the top of the aisle... no idea what we talked about!

all smiles

a look of zen-like calm? panic? it's not entirely clear.

And we're off!
I think I was doing fine until this very moment,
when I recall turning to Dad and saying, "Holy shit!"

Well, clearly you all know what happens from here... but I'm going to show you pictures of it anyway. Up next: the ceremony!

*all photos courtesy of Our Labor of Love

Wedding day recap: pre-ceremony portraits

2010-08-11T21:21:00.002-04:00

After nearly two solid months of temperatures in the 90s here in Atlanta, the weather on our wedding day now seems positively balmy. It was actually quite lovely, and pretty standard for May in these parts; the high was somewhere in the mid-80s, I think. Regardless, it was hot enough that we were sweating in no time once we went outside for photos on the church lawn. Jesse assured us that she'd let us know if we looked like we were wilting. I definitely got a lot of use out of my embroidered hanky as a blotter!

this is one of my favorites. we're on the front steps of the church overlooking the lawn

lining up for another shot -- I had to swing wide to make sure my skirt didn't bunch up

proudly displaying my wedding hanky without meaning
to at all. what's really going on is that my bridesmaids are
picking ants out from between the tulle layers on my skirt!

meanwhile, the guys were hiding out (with Jon's best friend Kasi)
in the media center awaiting their turn with the photographers

back inside, we took pictures of me with each of the bridesmaids.
(Jon et al did this too, but those files were corrupt/lost. Boo!)

others waiting for their turn

Josephine rests her feet

sounds good to me! taking a break on a pew.

looking down the side aisle through the window in the door

photography gold, I tell you what!

probably the best bridal pic of me from the whole affair

After we were all done, we retreated to the parlor again. The guys headed out to the church lawn for pictures before the guests started to arrive. Some of the bridesmaids watched through the window to see what kooky things the guys would get up to in their photo session.

so far so good

my brother, Jon and Dante, one of our grad school classmates

High fives! (Sorry Dave, none for you.)

I forget what this dance move is called, but it's pretty
awesome frozen on film. priceless looks all around.

okay, last one. make it extra dapper!

Man, these photo recap posts could go on for weeks... there are just so many amazing pictures to share! I'm really trying to be economical with them. Anyway, come back tomorrow for more lovely photos from Our Labor of Love!

*all photos courtesy of Our Labor of Love

Wedding weekend recap: suiting up!

2010-08-10T22:33:00.026-04:00

Having kissed the cats, I grabbed my dress from the back of the hall closet door where it had been hanging and the bag with my shoes, accessories and something to wear the next morning. With myself, my mama, seven bridesmaids and Jesse, we had ten people to transport to the church, so we split up and piled into three cars with all our crap, with my dad and uncles as chauffeurs. Fortunately we had to be there early enough that they had time to run back home and get prettied up before the ceremony. Once we arrived, we settled into the church parlor and, before too long, got me into my dress.

lovely maids arrive at the church

the gorgeous flowers were already there when we arrived!

my bouquet

my dress awaits

upskirt shot

I'm in my skivvies at church! Eek!

thanks for dressing me, friends!

something borrowed (earrings)

two somethings old (rings), one something new (pearls)

and the finishing touch -- seester puts my veil on!

Check back tomorrow to see some of the portraits we took (separately) before the ceremony!

*all photos courtesy of Our Labor of Love

Let me bring you up to speed...

2010-08-09T19:58:00.029-04:00

Way back in June I started recapping our wedding weekend, mostly so I wouldn't forget any of the details I still had in my memory. I got as far as early Saturday afternoon, when we headed for the church, and then decided to hold off until our professional photos to arrive to continue.

Of course, Jesse arrived at my parents' house to document things as we were getting ready, but I didn't have any of her photos when I was writing nearly two months ago. Before we continue on to the ceremony, I want to revisit getting ready at home through Jesse's lens. Here are some of my favorite photos from that afternoon:

my hanky

my shoes, in the wild

the garter my friend Krista made for me!

the ukulele I gave Jon

the soles of my shoes, with those heart-shaped tread thingies on them

Crazy Steve (front) and Little Man, lounging in a cat bed in my parents' room

makeup (durr)

my sweet mama!

my gorgeous seester!

five of seven bridesmaids milling about, waiting for us to finish makeup

an awesome shot of the dining room table: cash, wedding program,
purses, my shoe box, World Cup issue of Vanity Fair

me in the makeup chair

makeup artist's tattoo, airbrush machine cord

our German calendar, which rarely gets changed, updated for the occasion by my dad

hair and makeup done -- the only thing left to do before
heading to the church is hug and kiss my sweet Little Man!

Coming up next: donning the dress!

*all photos courtesy of Our Labor of Love

More OLOL awesomeness

2010-08-06T15:05:00.020-04:00

I know, I know, I said the recaps were coming... and they are! But first, I just have to share a few pictures from another OLOL wedding, because they are SO KILLER. Some of you might know Lauren, the lovely bride, from her blog I love you much, or perhaps as Mrs. Scissors of Weddingbee fame. If you don't, it goes without saying from looking at these photos that this chick is seriously creative and tons of fun.

Lauren and JP's wedding was featured on Rock 'n Roll Bride today and posted on the blog of love earlier this week, which is where I got these pics (with permission of the bride). Matt Miller is the mastermind behind the camera on this one. I love Lauren's dotted-swiss Christos dress (great minds) and her brilliant CMYK color scheme. Hooray for colorful, dotty Georgia weddings!

their awesome Smilebooth backdrop

Officially official

2010-08-04T21:21:00.006-04:00

Guess what came in the mail today?

My new driver's license! (Complete with unflattering picture! Sadly this was the retake I had to do after I realized too late the lady had typed in my address incorrectly. Drat!) I must say, I'm pretty impressed with the turnaround time on this -- just two weeks! My new social security card also arrived last week, so I've got all the necessary documentation for changing my name on various other things that I'll get around to eventually (banks, credit cards, etc.). The passport I need to do this month if I want to get it done for free, and otherwise I'll take it as it comes.

But, weird! I'm a Ross! Or a Poe Ross, I guess, which means there's only one of me...

our lives in a photo-nutshell

2010-08-03T21:27:00.009-04:00

Now that I'm back from vacation and have my professional photos from Our Labor of Love in hand, I figure it's time to resume recapping and reviewing (for my own memory and for the benefit of future Atlanta brides, respectively). I've already given the rundown on our lovely rehearsal dinner at Canoe, but I wanted to share one more part of that evening before I dive back into the big day: the obligatory rehearsal dinner slideshow!

This was definitely a team effort -- Jon diligently scanned in dozens of old family photos, dropped them into iMovie and slapped a song on his portion of the pictures, then left the rest to me. Given that I didn't finalize it and burn it to DVD until about 2:30 p.m. on rehearsal-dinner-day afternoon, I'm thrilled with how it came out! We played the slideshow for our guests at the rehearsal dinner and also projected it, without sound, on a big blank wall at the reception so everyone else had a chance to the pictures.

Unfortunately, Jon, who is a good steward of his hard drive's storage space (unlike myself), deleted the iMovie file a while ago, so in order to share the slideshow with y'all I had to download a trial ripper and extract a file from the DVD I burned, hence the sort of annoying watermark in the top left corner. Just ignore it. Without further ado, here's our rather lengthy, somewhat entertaining childhood-to-marriage slideshow:

Deepest gratitude to The New Pornographers, Fiona Apple, Gary Wright and Josh Ritter for unsanctioned use of their excellent music. Does this qualify as fair use? Not sure, off the top of my head... Regardless, I hope you enjoyed this little glimpse into our younger, cuter days. Too bad there weren't more pictures of teenage Jon with green hair!