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Weddingbee Blog
Weddings plans can change at any minute, and our wedding has been no exception! I had told you all how we had won a fabulous photography package for our wedding, and that part has not changed, thank goodness.
The part that has changed though, is the photographer duo that will be snapping the pictures on our big day.
Our original photographers were worried they may not be able to make it to the wedding due to some unforeseen circumstances, so they called their photographer friends to see if they’d be willing to offer us the same package. After approval on both our end and their end, the switch was made! Enter the husband and wife team at Deborah Cull Photography!
Deb and Matt will be coming up to the UP a few days before the wedding, and they have even offered to take some engagement pictures of us in the days prior as well! We had taken engagement pictures last winter, but it will be nice to have some summer/fall shots of us without our wedding Check out these engagement pictures that the talented pair have taken recently.
I am sure that I mentioned before, but we’re not really sure if and when we’ll be taking a full-fledged honeymoon. Between lack of ample vacation time for me and no job yet for the Mr., we’re still hoping that we can find our way overseas for an adventure and some relaxation sometime soon in the future. Instead, we’ll be taking some time away after the wedding to Newport, Rhode Island.
Why Newport? Well, it’s got the makings for an easy and low-cost minimoon, since it’s Mr. Swan’s home state.
Here’s why:
(source)
The story of our proposal still makes me shiver with excitement. Reliving it every time I tell someone (or write about it) makes me more and more ready for the actual wedding.
Mr. Sprinkle and I had been talking about the possibility of marriage for a long time. We had read the marriage books, taking the time to go slowly through each chapter and answer all of the questions (even the really ridiculous ones). We had talked to all of our parents about the idea of it happening soon. Little did I know, the proposal plan, which was a total surprise to me, wasn’t a secret to anyone else! Meaning: everyone in my life knew about the proposal before it happened, and NO ONE told me! My mom knew (and so did all her coworkers, apparently), my friends knew, our hairstylist knew, my boss knew! It’s hard to imagine that no one ruined the surprise.
The lowdown: it was a freezing, cloudy, early, early (EARLY!) morning. We had just arrived in the Bay Area the night before to celebrate the holidays with my family and Mr. Sprinkle convinced me to get up early for some “sightseeing”. How he got me to agree to this, I will never know. I grew up in the Bay Area, have lived there most of my life in fact, so there are very few sights left that I haven’t already seen many times. I think I felt bad that he had never walked across the Golden Gate and said, “Let’s go!”
We arrived. It was drizzling, no one was around, and we started walking.
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Reader Cappuccino and her fiance had a great time shopping while riding in a cart!
We are currently hosting a Gallery contest where we are giving away 10, $40 coupon codes for My Publisher photo books. To enter the contest all you have to do upload your wedding pictures on the gallery and if we feature your picture on the blog, you will receive a photo book! Remember, your images must be under 1MB in size, or they won’t load.
Featured on Weddingbee
All-Inclusion Invitation Suites
“Make an elegant invitation statement without the fuss. Stylish invitation sets with matching envelopes, reception and response cards included.”
Yes, I have one. I know I shouldn’t, but I think this one will be OK. It may turn out to be less work than the first idea.
So way back when, our ceremony coordinator said the flower girl couldn’t throw/drop fresh or dried flowers as she walked in. I was contemplating buying a bag of fake rose petals from Michaels but it just didn’t feel like something that went with the style of our wedding. I then had this brilliant idea to make flowers out of the scraps of fabric we used for the table runners. It would tie together the reception and ceremony nicely.
Well, time has passed and I still haven’t started on those flowers. I thought about having FMIL Joey take them on, but it may be too time intensive.
Guess what? I have a new plan.
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And it’s not… if you’re not 1) frugal and 2) picky. I have been all over the internet, looking for something to match the jewelry below:
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
The intrepid Ms. Lia Lafreniere took these behind-the-scenes snaps of our studio a while back, and we thought we’d share them! Our space is an old button factory in downtown San Francisco - it’s got a real club-house-y kind of feel…
Last Sunday, Mr. Tiramisu and I celebrated our very first wedding anniversary! It is so hard to believe that it has been a whole year since our stormy and wonderful wedding day. We celebrated with a little weekend trip to Maine.
Of course, we had to pay a visit to our wedding venue. They were cleaning up from the Saturday wedding, so hopefully they didn’t notice us trespassing across the lawn and down onto the beach!
Remember this view?
I’ve been researching for the girls’ dresses, just to have ideas I can show them later and to ask them what they think will be comfortable for the wedding. My mom actually offered to make them, but I’m not planning 100% on that because I’m not sure how much time she will have available.
Here are the ones that caught my attention (just the shapes, not all the colors).
{ Source }
The one thing we always kept in mind while planning our wedding was the feel. That was the most important thing for us - not how I looked, nor the details of the ceremony. We didn’t even have a rehearsal or plan a ceremony until about 10 minutes before we went out. We didn’t want everything to look meticulously planned; we wanted it to feel like we threw it all together and it was just totally casual and relaxed. That means… all those details we put together, really didn’t stand out. But that’s what I wanted. I didn’t want anyone to feel like our wedding was a museum of amazing little details, I wanted people to sit back and relax as if this was just a normal get together.
So these are how our details came together to create our mellow, laid back atmosphere. No one will ever know how I agonized over every single freakin’ detail and searched high and low for the perfect _____ that seemed so easy when on the table.
Remember those pillows that I had my friend/slave sew for me? They went on the benches next to the parasols and the palmier cookies we had put together. They don’t know that it took hours the night before to prepare these cookies.
Well, we’re kind of in a holding period, folks. I have recapped all I can of the hours before our photographer arrived, and in order to continue down the yellow-brick road of recaps, I have to wait until our pro photos are ready. Yes, I have non-pro photos, but I want to share the experience with you through the fabulous lens of Shutter Sam. It’s the only way to fly!
Soooo, I thought that while we’re twiddling our thumbs, patiently waiting, I would share some details with you that I didn’t have the chance to write about before the big day.
Let’s start with our ceremony!
Mr. Powder Puff and I had one final meeting with our pastor for our last premarital counseling session, and during that time we planned out our ceremony. I had always always always wanted use traditional vows, but when Pastor Ron presented us with his ceremony overview, with beautiful vows that he wrote himself, I couldn’t say no!
The ceremony was very traditional, with some elements that Pastor Ron felt very strongly about. An example? After my dad walked me down the aisle, and he declared that he and Mama Powder Puff were giving me to Mr. Powder Puff as his wife, my dad took my hand from his arm and placed it into Mr. Powder Puff’s hand. Pastor Ron really appreciated to symbolism of that moment, and as such it became an important moment to us.
Now on to the best part—our vows!
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I’ve written about my garage sale habits before—those bright orange, yellow, or green signs luring me from street corners on Saturday mornings. This past weekend, though, I hit… The Motherload. In between brunch with friends and an afternoon hike, I turned into a small pocket in Santa Fe following three signs. The first, less than exciting, but the second? A vintage store-owner purging her life of all her old finds.
Everything was in stellar condition. Her driveway (which was very big) was full of vintage kitchen goods and beautiful crystal dishes; racks of embroidered, flared, and flowy cotton; a rack taller than me swirling with adorable aprons; and much, much more.
Here’s what I walked away with (for a total of $28):
A blush-colored pearl clutch. There are a few pearls missing but I love it anyway.
(That’s my dress fabric around it)
We are now almost one month removed from our wedding day. Where has the time gone? In the midst of writing thank you notes, chillin’ with friends and family (everyone wants to hang out with the “newly married couple”), and getting back to work, I am trying to regain some semblance of my former life. Yet, the question continually looms (and haunts), “When and where will we honeymoon?”
Before the wedding, Mr. G and I made the decision to postpone our honeymoon. Mr. G had just started a new job and he hadn’t accrued much vacation time. So we happily agreed to put off the honeymoon until September or October. I say “happily” because, at the time, the thought of travel planning (on top of wedding planning) seemed like a chore.
Well here we are, it’s almost August, and we have no plans to speak of. The truth is that I’m having second thoughts. The whimsical, romantic side of me says, “Go on your honeymoon. It’s a once in a lifetime chance to spend blissful moments with Mr. G.” The practical side of me says, “Honey, hold on to the extra cash, and save it. It could go toward a future house.” Mr. G said he’ll go along with whatever I want. In other words, he’s stumped too.
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I never really told the hive about our first baker. She was new and up-and-coming in Baltimore, and her shop was down the street from where I lived in college. She had delicious cream puffs infused with lavender and heavenly chocolate tortes, and though she had just opened a few months prior to our visit, she said she was offering wedding cakes. At the time, we let her know we’d be leaving the country soon and we preferred to sign a contract and place a deposit ASAP. A month passed without a response, and when I’d contact her, she’d ask all the same questions that had been answered and re-ask for the design file. Then? nothing. I repeated that process 2-3 times before finally giving up in March. After I returned to the US, she contacted me asking for the details, specifics, and design files. By then, I’d had enough. I’d already moved on to the idea of a cake buffet, and felt so frustrated at that point with her service. Here I was, trying to give her money and a contract, and I kept getting blown off or stalled. The good news? I experienced her inattentive behavior prior to signing the contract or giving her any money, so it was 100 times easier to walk away from our verbal agreement.
I figured I’d try the one last baker in my area, Sweet, in Ellicott City. We met with Tracey (the cake baker) and while I at first felt guilty that I was taking up her time to discuss a cake buffet rather than one giant, cool, wedding cake, she quickly put me at ease and there were tons of details I hadn’t considered.
We spent about an hour discussing sizes, servings, colors, designs and placement. Poor Mr. D leaned over at one point and whispered, “I just want to eat cake!”
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I’m ashamed of myself. As I near the 100-day mark I’ve become more and more aware of one thing in this wedding planning process that I’ve completely neglected: my health.
I came to this (not-so-abrupt) realization yesterday when I had to call in sick to my internship. I had somehow forgotten to drink water/liquids the entire day before and was severely dehydrated. Desert-dehydrated. Nearly hospitalized-dehydrated. Dehydrated to the point where I felt like I had spent the previous night partying in Vegas harder than those Hangover guys. You get the picture.
This is so not like me. I routinely carry a reusable water bottle around with me EVERYwhere I go (I have a huge glass of water at my desk as I’m typing this). While recovering, I also realized that I’ve hit another point in my life that I’ve never been before: weighing more than I ever have. I seem to have just disregarded my health and fitness completely while planning for my wedding. The worst part? Exactly a year ago I was in the best shape of my life and making money as a part-time model because of it.
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