Weddingbee

Fabulous photography rocks.

All photos by Angela Herzog Photography

Too much great photography, though? Makes my stomach hurt.

We started with more than a thousand images which I narrowed to 120 of my favorites. After editing, I had 408 really great photos. Really. I love them with all my heart.

Um, but now what? I don’t know what to do next. And trying to figure that out is making me breathe funny and feel hot and overwhelmed.
Read more…

Have I ever told you how we found our photographer? No? Well, here goes…

Not long after we were engaged, I found an old box of photos from earlier times in my life (which is a euphemism for my first wedding/ marriage, because I’ve decided it’s time to stop talking about it so much now that the chapter is finally, blessedly, peacefully closed). My fiance found me sitting on the floor in tears while I struggled to deal with the rush of memories taking over my heart.

Until that point, I didn’t care much about photography, figuring the best experiences were meant to be enjoyed, not captured, and the best memories would always be in my head. But then I found a picture of my now-deceased grandparents dancing. And I remembered the long-forgotten drama that raged around our choice of centerpieces; saw myself in all of my youthful naiveté; found my favorite picture of my favorite kid. I realized that someday I’d want to share my story – the whole story – with my children, and I’d want to show them these pictures as evidence of the life I lived before I met their father.

With newfound appreciation for the merits of photography, I set about finding a photographer stumbled upon a listing for a photographer on Craigslist. She was looking to expand her portfolio and so offered reduced sitting fees (of course that caught my attention, don’t you know me well enough to know that yet?). I was looking for an inexpensive way to remedy the fact that my beloved and I had perhaps one good (non-goofy) picture of us both.

When I jumped over to her website, I was stunned.

Read more…

I have this little joke going in my head, a joke that started way back when the first reader called me out on not posting pics, and continued when it was pointed out that I wasn’t doing any wedding planning, or DIYing anything, or really doing much except talk about my relationship with my fiance.

The joke is that I could totally be a faker, acting as if I was getting married but secretly a teenager with no hopes of dating or a retired teacher with free time on her hands. Okay, so that sounds more creepy than funny, but it still makes me laugh.

I’m not, though, and I have proof, courtesy of my fabulous photographer Angela:

Read more…

In preparation for our hometown reception over the fourth of July weekend, I’m checking out options for printing a good quality but reasonably priced photo book… or five.

source

I’ve picked through a thousand SOOC (straight out of camera, for those of you who don’t follow Mrs. Avocado’s blog) photos and chosen about a hundred favorites, and our photographer is editing them as we speak. I want to put together a wedding scrapbook for our peeps who couldn’t make it to the actual shindig to peruse, plus a couple of keepsake albums for each of our parents, all in less than a few weeks’ time.
Read more…

{And before you ask, yes, I promise I will post pictures — real pictures! — of our wedding just as soon as I have some and get my mind around how I want to tell the story. Really. I’m not planning to accidentally forget to give you proof that we did indeed have a wedding in spite of my procrastination and general unwillingness to do anything ahead of time. Pinky swear.}

So, along with the name-changing party going on around here (I’m trying to put a happy spin on it), we’re also buried under a mountain of post-wedding paperwork. Rather, I’m buried, since we long ago agreed that I’m the Paperwork Doing part of this couple and he’s the Dealing with Plumbing part. Fair, I think, though I still reserve the right to be resentful sometimes.

Whether or not you change your name, there are records to share, beneficiaries to update, and insurance policies to adjust. We all know that I’m no bastion of organization, but I don’t have to be. Trent over at The Simple Dollar has an astoundingly comprehensive Information Disaster Plan. Build the plan and you’ll soon discover what needs to be done post-wedding.
Read more…

Argh. You might recall that I bought two wedding dresses and way back when, y’all helped me decide which one to wear to our wedding. It was perfect. I loved, loved, loved it, and was secretly looking forward to wearing it again at our hometown reception. I mean, who doesn’t want a second shot at wearing a dress that makes their waist look tiny, tush look proportionate, and keeps the boobage under control? Plus, the bustle swished around my legs like frothy water. I felt like Ursula the Sea Witch, but in a good way.

Happy sigh.

However, our hometown reception is in Southern New Mexico near the height of summer — July 4th weekend. Aside from the fact that my beloved dress is way too much for a casual reception, it’ll be WAY too hot to trudge around in it for a whole evening.

I have to find another dress. You all gave Miss Mary Jane such great suggestions that I thought I’d ask you for help as well. Here’s the catch: I’m short (5 foot) and busty (30F), and our reception is in about three weeks. I’d love something as equally sassy as my wedding dress. A short dress would be nice and cool, but (much like a six year old) my legs are perpetually covered in bug bites and scratches, so maybe a long dress would be better.
Read more…

No, I haven’t yet straightened out the DMV situation. That’s a story for another day, hopefully when it’s actually straightened out (I just love a happy ending, ya know?).

No, this post is about how name changing affects your life in much more insidious and PITA ways: email accounts and blogs. I posted a while back that I reserved a new Gmail account in my new name. Seemed like the right thing to do, since my current personal email account includes my maiden name.

I HAD NO IDEA HOW MANY PLACES THAT PESKY LITTLE EMAIL ACCOUNT WAS USED. Seriously. Bank logins, insurance accounts, benefits websites, online magazines… and blogs. Oh, the blogs.

See, you can’t switch the primary email address on a Google account. Say what? Yes, let me repeat: you cannot change the primary email address on a Google account if that email address is a Gmail address.

Editing Your Account: Username

You can’t change the email address on your account to an existing Gmail address, but we invite you to add a new Gmail address to your Google Account.

Read more…

Here I am again with one of those untouchable wedding topics: regrets. I get it, really I do. You don’t want to “shake the glitter off” (as was commented on my last post) and you don’t want to pay any attention to things you can’t rectify or get right the next time (because as of right now, I am never. going. through. that. again. Ever).

On the other hand, I’ve yet to meet a newly-minted wife (just-graduated bride? What do we call ourselves now?) that doesn’t have regrets. Like doubts, regrets are one of those shared experiences that we never share. So I will share them, as they occur to me, more to scare them away with the light of honesty than anything else.

• I wish I had done more of the little touches ahead of time. By the time our wedding weekend rolled around, we were in full prioritization-by-fire mode, so little things got rushed. I wrote thank you notes to my bridesmaids while getting my hair done. I printed goofy little matchbook cards (”Come on baby, Light my fire”) and tags for the potted geraniums (”Take me home tonight/ I don’t want to let you go til you see the light/ Love, geranium”) at 2 AM0. I handed over token gifts without wrapping them. It seemed like a small thing beforehand – nobody’s going to love me less because I didn’t wrap their gifts – but overwhelmed with gratitude for the people who showed up early and stayed late, cleaned the bathroom and picked up any stray dog poos, I fervently wished that I’d put as much love into thanking them as they did into helping me.

Read more…

{Tell me you loved the movie “Adventures in Babysitting” as much as I did. Yes, the one back in the ’80s with Elizabeth Shue. When I moved to Chicago, I suddenly understood the whole drive-into-the-scary-city premise. Anyhoo…}

So, armed with my newly-married force field (ya know, the one keeping away normal frustration, at least until the word “husband” doesn’t seem so mind-blowing), I headed happily off to the Social Security Administration and DMV, armload of paperwork in hand.

Side note 1: I keep all “important documents” in a little zippy waterproof folder. When I need to do something official, I grab the whole zippy folder. Didn’t make it clear I needed an original birth certificate, Miss Snooty Government Gatekeeper? Well, here you go! Think I don’t have a copy of my very first voter registration card? HA! Proved you wrong! Yea, I’m a dork.

Side note 2: I didn’t head off to change my name as happily as I might have suggested. I’m still slightly ambivalent. But I want my kids to have the same last name as my husband and me, so I’m going with the Band-Aid Theory on this one (rip it off before you have time to dread it). On the plane home from our fabulously lazy honeymoon, I asked Mr. Cheese to indulge me by outwardly and overtly acting like this was the best darned thing I could do to show my love for him. He obliged, offering to take me out for drinks to celebrate (though we instead broke out the new blender and made our very first batch of pina coladas).

Armed with the second Twilight book, I waltzed into the Social Security Administration. In my state, you start there, and the receipt from your transaction is a requirement at the DMV. No problem. 45 minutes and a friendly chat with the helpful name-changer later, I had the slip of paper declaring my new identity:
Read more…

I hesitated before blogging this morning. My hubby and I just returned from a very fantastic 7-ish days in Puerto Rico (wonderfully cool place) to clingy animals and a house… well, let’s put it this way: the last thing we did before we left was get married in it, so in the interests of picture perfection (okay, so we wouldn’t look like total slobs), we hid crap in every available crap-hiding space. Coming home is like being in a really f’d up scavenger hunt.

I’m biting the bullet and changing my name today, spending time away from my new husband for the first time in weeks, AND in a series of super fun government office waiting rooms. Blegh. (But at least I’ll have the second Twilight novel to keep me company. I caved while on the beach and read the first one, and now I’m hooked.)

I have misplaced the cord for my camera (in the aforementioned crap-hiding extravaganza), so I can’t show you honeymoon pics, and I don’t have any wedding pics yet.

But it’s more than that. Our wedding was fantastic. Yea, yea, every bride says that, but they mean it in different ways, and I struggle to explain mine. Yes, I got to marry my favorite man. Yes, we had a great party (with really great food). Yes, his vows were just perfect and my hands were shaking and the music was very personal.

But my favorite moment of the whole night, the one I return to over and over with a lump in my throat and tears threatening to fall, happened just before I made my walk.
Read more…