Weddingbee

After looking at hundreds of sets of wedding photos, it is clear that there are many styles of posed photos. There the formal family shots, of course, with family and bridal party members arranged in rows. There are ones that look like fashion photo spreads with dynamic colors and camera angles. Others emphasize the romantic, featuring a staged kiss or a couple embracing. Finally there are the hammy pictures, the silly ones that will make you roll your eyes or giggle depnding on your mindset. I suppose everyone has some combination of these types in their photo album, varying by personality. In my mind’s eye I pictured having lots of fashion photography style pictures with Mr. Lollipop and myself looking fierce, but in the end our true personalities won out and we ended up with dozens of photos of us being wacky/weird/ourselves. It took very little to drag the rest of the bridal party down with us.

However, this didn’t start with me. When I met Mr. Lollipop at 18 I was a serious, studious teenager who rarely smiled and certainly never made faces or horsed around. After we started dating he encouraged me to smile more and more.

Eventually, a few years later we both moved to Japan and lived in neighboring cities. He would always escort me in the evenings from Seto back to Nagoya and keep me company on the train. Most of the time we would be in a car by ourselves. It would be pitch black outside and brightly lit inside the car so the opposite windows carried our reflections like mirrors. Mr. Lollipop used to make faces in them at me, and eventually he goaded me into making them back, and soon we were having facial contortion contests. All of my silly facial habits can be traced back to those train rides.

So, during our pre-ceremony pictures we were in separate places, but we each individually decided to ham it up with other bridal party members. If you’re inclined to be a little bit silly, I highly recommend it before the ceremony. I would have been a lot more nervous and snippy if I had to squash the impulse. Instead, we had some good laughs and the final moments were happy and relaxed ones. Photographic evidence can be found below.

Mr. Lollipop makes the Best Man uncomfortable:

Ham-tasticness runs in Mr. Lollipop’s family.

Some of my ladies were more game than others.

Oh no she di’nt!

Oh yes she did.

Penguin is not the only Bee who likes boobs.

I forget the sentiment that we’re supposed to be displaying here. It was probably something like ‘Hell, no!’

My cousin and I pointed at the plastic Virgin Mary on the altar. It once belonged to our grandparents.

…aaand some normal pictures to balance it out:

All photos above are courtesy of Purvis Photography.
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All photos below are courtesy of Purvis Photography.

We waited on the landing until the front hall cleared. I can’t remember what was said to give me that facial expression, but it was probably something scandalous.

Meeting up with my dad for the first time after getting dressed:

Each of the mothers recieved fragrant gardenia corsages. Coincidentally, the bloom is a favorite of both of our mothers.

The groom and wedding coordinator gave out last minute directions and smoothed unexpected kinks.

Me with my abuelita:

This is one of my favorite pictures of me with my dad.

My mom gave me her wedding ring as my ’something borrowed’. I was expecting her to loan me a different, less sentimental ring, so I was surprised and honored.

We snuck a few pictures in the chapel before the guests were seated.

I can’t believe how gigantic my dress looked from the rear. It never seemed that big in the garment bag, but after putting it on it appears that I could hide my own pretzel cart under the train. Mmm…pretzel.

My husband likes pictures of me making funny faces. I did my best Bridezilla for him in this photo.

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My arrival at St. Andrew’s Episcopal:

My lovely $100 dress, a garment I learned to love again:

My mom and I puzzled over my broken iron. No steaming for us.

Here is the full view of the wrinkles. We never did get the iron functioning and after five minutes I said ’screw it’ and put on my dress. Luckily, it was a warm day so the wrinkles fell out on their own.

Sadly, I couldn’t put my own shoes on without falling over. Wedding dresses are heavier than they appear.

My mom looked great!

Me with my veil over my face during adjustments:

My veil attached to my comb using tiny neodymium magnets. We did this so I could take it on and off without disturbing my hair.

Finally, a look in the mirror…

a hug from my mom…

…(She did get a little weepy.)…(Aww.)…

…and I’m on my way.

Meanwhile…

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My Something New: I purchased new Capezio ballroom dancing shoes. My dress restricted me from putting them on by myself from a standing position. They were well-padded in the inside, but they weren’t quite broken in despite several sessions of wearing them around the house. They wore the skin off of one my ankles soon after the ceremony. I’m glad that my coordinator brought plenty of band-aids.

My Something Borrowed: My Mom loaned me her wedding ring and I wore it during the ceremony. Below is a detail from a photograph of my bouquet, my hand is the one with the ring, and my mom’s is the one without. My mom is great.

My Something Blue: I wore my blue robot watch purchased when we both lived in Nagoya. The little robot guy was upside down all day unless I checked the time, so I flipped the photo below so that he can look like he is having a little fun.

What is your old/new/borrowed/blue?
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The image on the cover is from the series of pictures I took of Mr. Lollipop and myself jumping in front of our green screen. The quote on the cover is from first Thessalonians, chapter 5: “Test everything. Hold on to the good.” It’s my favorite even if it makes it sound like we’ve both, um, dated a lot of people.

The outside cover was made of a piece of green 8.5″ by 11″ paper folded in half. Inside we stapled a piece of tabloid sized paper (11″ by 17″) that we folded into quarters. That means that we had 8 quarters to work with, front and back. When guests first opened the front cover they were greeted with another jumping picture of Mr. Lollipop and myself along with a short biography of us as a couple.

Next, that portion flipped open to reveal a series of silhouettes of the wedding party members as well as short, humorous biographies of each person. I’ve been to too many weddings where I wasn’t sure who the heck was up on the altar next to the bride and groom (Sibling? Childhood friend? Jail buddy?), so I thought it would be a nice courtesy to fill in all of our guests.

When the program is fully opened the inside reveals a full script of the wedding ceremony as well as a few notes and directions for guests. Most of my family is Catholic and his is fairly non-religious, so we thought it would be a good idea to let them know where to say ‘we will’ and ‘also with you’ in our Episcopal ceremony. Plus, I screwed up the directions to the reception in our invitations (oops!), so it was a good place to put revised ones.

Finally, we were able to put some of our thank yous in the last empty quarter on the other side of the program.

The bottom four pictures are courtesy of Purvis Photography.
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Gift bags are ideal for distributing two things, information and stuff. Really, the information is the important part. We enclosed the following in our welcome note:

• A schedule of all wedding related activities
• Directions to our ceremony and reception locations
• Walking directions to nearby restaurants that we like
• A local contact phone number just in case anyone got lost

If you’re on a budget, this will be more than enough to keep guests on track for the weekend. The rest of the stuff, including the bag, is just for fun. Our fun stuff included the following:

• Something to help them find their way: maps of the our city, Pittsburgh
• Something to represent our city: tiny bottles of Heinz ketchup and mustard
• Something that guests might need: single serving packets of sun screen
• Something sweet and themed to our wedding: rock candy sticks
• Something to drink: bottled water
• Something to snack on: little takeout boxes of our special blend of trail mix

My mom helped me mix up and package the trail mix in our kitchen.

We handed out a mix of banana chips, sunflower seeds, vanilla rum peanuts, golden raisins and pepitas. Our concoction was a big hit with our guests.

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I’m really looking forward to getting our lives back. Suddenly the prospect of a weekend trip isn’t so terrifying, nor is the idea of spending a weekend on our house instead of running wedding errands or tying a thousand tiny bows. Our housekeeping is in a state of deep neglect and I’ll be happy to finally turn the situation around. Our living room has not been dusted for a year and our fridge has turned into a chamber of mysteries.

Mr. Lollipop was excited after the wedding because he would finally have time to exercise and lose weight. He’s also psyched about having time to fence in our back yard so we can get the dog he always wanted.

What did you do to chase away the post-wedding blues? What do you look forward to doing after the wedding?
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Unfortunately, in the aftermath of our wedding it seems like only a few of our family members caught these name change clues. Our friends are young and savvy and only a few assumed that I kept my name, but we’ve been getting lots of checks, invitations, and letters to my non-existent married name, especially from my side of the family tree. Perhaps thank you cards and Christmas cards will be the best vehicle for a subtle reminder, with a polite phone call to some of the repeat offenders. It’s very tempting to add a little card with a graph explaining our whole naming system, but I’m afraid it might be seen as too blunt.

In most cases, I don’t see it as a big deal, but there are times where I am nervous about getting a big check addressed to a name that never existed. On the other had, I will admit to fantasizing about taking anything addressed to Mrs. HisFirstname Hislastname and returning it marked as addressee unknown.

For changers and non-changers alike, how did you let everyone know what you would be called after the wedding? What did you do with people who didn’t seem to get it?
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I’ll admit that I had fun trying to act casual while Mike snapped dozens of pictures.

He managed to get some good location photos and we might use a few of these to round out the album. I especially liked this shot of the underwater tunnel,

and this shot of the aquarium’s indoor jungle.

Mike also caught some great shots of the animals. For instance, this peacock peeking in the window on the aquarium roof,

or this curious fish,

or one of the impassive bears in the exhibit just a stone’s throw from the aquarium.

Mike also had a chance to visit our ceremony venue and talk to our officiant, Rector Bruce Robison. It was a huge relief to me for them to work out the photography rules ahead of time. I wanted great photographs, but ones that wouldn’t annoy or distract our pastor, a man we greatly respect. I am pleased to report that I didn’t notice either photographer during the ceremony. Good job with the ninja skills, guys!
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