Weddingbee Blog

Aaaah… the cocktail hour…

I love making sure that I use my time with friends and family wisely. Mr. Swan really wanted to attend our cocktail hour so that we could greet our guests, eat some of the great food we’d chosen for them, and enjoy the general good times. Our cocktail hour was what I like to call “productive”. Here are some things that I did during our cocktail hour that not only made it productive, but most importantly FUN! Remember I’ve said it’s totally necessary to have fun!

1. We greeted many of our guests, especially those that I’d never met before.

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So here we were ready to make our vows to each other. As I mentioned before, we did both traditional vows as well as wrote vows to each other.

Rev. Dease first asked Mr. Swan to repeat after her:

“I, Mr. Swan, take you, Miss Swan, to be my wife, to live with you and to love from this time forward until death separates us. I promise to be understanding, forgiving, and seeking of your happiness as we grow together in God’s grace.”

Then it was my turn:

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So let me set the scene for you:

We had beautiful, sunny morning in Battery Park.

We had FINALLY made it down the aisle.

It was time to start what I like to think of as the crux of the wedding, ’cause if there ain’t no vows, there ain’t no party. Word.

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Before I begin to talk about our ceremony, I want to tell you a little bit about our “other” guests. Who were they? Well “they’re the people that you meet when you’re walking down the street each day.” (Thank you, Sesame Street!)

No, seriously… as a New Yorker, I’m used to doing everything “on the street”. The notion of public space is real to me. I’ve done darn near everything out in the open or on a sidewalk (um… well… not EVERYTHING, but you know…): I eat and buy food on the street; I stumble onto to street fairs almost every weekend in the summer; and I buy clothes on the street (my favorite summer dress for years was one that I bought, guess where? On the street!!). You get the idea.

When it came to our wedding, I guess I didn’t really think about the fact that it would end up being super public in the middle of a very touristy park on a Saturday morning/early afternoon with perfect weather. I guess subconsciously I just I didn’t mind, or rather, put it out of my mind. I saw our wedding ceremony as a public declaration of my love and commitment to Mr. Swan. It ended up being that in the literal sense of the word “public”. In that way, I wasn’t fazed that the only separation between us and passersby in Battery Park was essentially a barrier that our venue, Battery Gardens, had provided. We had guests that I hadn’t anticipated, but I was more than happy to share our loving words and promises of commitment with them, too.
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… And continue to rock the mic! That’s a hip hop reference. Anyone? Anyone? I haven’t hit you with one of those in a while.

It was time to make the grand entrance into our ceremony. I felt a little bad that we let our guests wait a little in the bright morning sun. We had orange hand fans for them to beat the sun with.

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At this point, I should probably introduce some people that will be in a whole lotta pictures going forward. I present to you, La Familia Swan.

From left to right: SIL Swan, BIL Swan (Mr. Swan’s brother), Mommy Swan, I think you know what we look like now; MIL Swan and FIL Swan. There is a Daddy Swan, but he didn’t make it. That’s another post.

After our little mini-photo shoot, we finally made it to Battery Gardens to meet up with the family, take some portraits, and take a breather before the ceremony started. We decided to take care of a little bit of important business: getting all the proper signatures for the marriage license. I figured we should make sure that we are actually married after all that planning, ya know?
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Mr. Swan and I were finally together and used some time before the ceremony to have a mini-photo shoot. We got a chance to take lots of purty pictures of ourselves. I wasn’t sure if we ended up with enough. Actually, how much is enough, really? I’ve been going back and forth about this. As much as I love wedding photography (and Dante, our photographer), I didn’t want our wedding day to turn into too much of a photo shoot. I guess since we did do our photos before the ceremony and since we had a late morning start, there was really only so much time we could spend in front of the camera. Sometimes I wonder if we should have taken more pictures, but I feel like we did enough. I know Mr. Swan’s patience can be a little um… short… and I think we might have reached his limit, anyway. This post contains some of my favorite pics of the two of us.

We moseyed down the promenade in Battery Park and figured we’d just let things unfold from there.

It was such a clear morning that you could see the Statue of Liberty pretty easily.

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With all of this talk about me, I am sure you’ve been wondering where Mr. Swan is. Here he is!

Mr. Swan was pretty adamant that we do a first look in part because he really wanted us to spend as much time with our family and friends during the cocktail hour as possible. I didn’t mind a first look moment because I saw this time as an opportunity to have some quiet time, just the two of us.
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When we last left Swan Wedding Prep 2009, I’d made my way into my dress and shoes, but I was about to put on one of the trickiest parts of my wedding outfit: my veil. My lovely Kasia Fink birdcage veil was so light and delicate… I loved it! I loved it so much that in the weeks leading up to the wedding I had manhandled it trying to make sure that it fit they way that I wanted it to. In the process, I sort of almost FUBAR’ed it. By the time the wedding rolled around, my lovely delicate veil had a little bit of a… dent (hangs head in shame). It still looked lovely, but even I recognized that I didn’t handle it with the care that it deserved, so that morning we tried to revive it just a little. First Christine, my DOC, tried to cover up my mistake.

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Okay, hair and makeup… done!

Now I actually had to put on THE dress. I am usually someone who likes to put clothes on by myself. How about you? However, this is in fact a wedding, and so the rules of everyday life are suspended for several hours. That’s why I had two people helping me get dressed. One you may remember is Mommy Swan. Who is the very diligent woman working the zipper? That’s Christine Viola of Exquisite Affairs Productions, my day-of coordinator. Christine was super helpful helping me get dressed, making sure I stayed calm that morning and most importantly if there were any issues, I surely didn’t know about them.

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I think each bride has something that they struggle with during the wedding planning process. For me, it was dealing with my various hair issues. Remember that? Luckily, my hair turned out better than I could have expected. Even makeup had initially rattled me. As much as I try, I am still in my early 30s and can’t get beyond a makeup regimen consisting of slathering on some lip gloss with occasional lip liner (and the liner is on a good day!). I had two makeup trials, and settled on Ellen Bodkins of Ellen B Makeup. Actually, a Weddingbee reader suggested Ellen, so thanks as usual, hive.

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And away we go! Let the Swan wedding recaps begin!

The night before the wedding I couldn’t sleep. I’m not talking about some tossing and turning here; I mean I really couldn’t sleep a wink. After a pretty quick and efficient rehearsal, a nice family-only dinner and drinks with many of our guests that night, I thought I would be totally zonked out. I was initially, but about 1AM my mind was racing and I couldn’t go back to sleep. Yikes!!!

I knew that I wanted some personal alone time before my very early beauty appointments starting at 7AM (one of the downsides to having a daytime wedding, I guess). I really wanted some time to wrap my mind around what was about to happen and to make sure that I had some time for some prayer/meditation with my friend, Big Mitts (not her real name) who was staying with me that night in my hotel room. Big Mitts and I do a lot of prayer and reflection together, and I really liked the idea of being able to do that with her before all of the craziness of the day started. The problem was that I woke up four hours before I wanted to do that!

After lying in bed for what seemed like forever, I tried my best not to wake up Big Mitts, and I snuck down to the hotel lobby. I tried to journal but apparently the hotel thinks it’s cool to blast music in the lobby at 5AM!! A completely vacant hotel lobby was not the quiet, relaxing retreat that I thought it would be. After being way too annoyed by the music, I rushed back upstairs and tried to not wake up Big Mitts, which didn’t work.

Big Mitts and I ended up talking a lot, I cried quite a bit (A GOOD cry, not a sad cry, more like a releasing cry) and we had some nice peaceful moments together.
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After a few days of rain and spending most of my time indoors, the rain finally stopped. Rio was calling me outside to see its natural beauty. Rio is a very large and spread out city, so that day I enlisted the help of a guide, Madson, to get me around. Plus, I was a little starved for conversation, so it was nice to be able to talk to someone about everyday life as a Carioca (a Rio resident).

After many winding roads, a quick shuttle bus ride and an elevator, I finally made it to one of Rio’s most recognizable landmarks: Corcovado, or Christ the Redeemer.

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My first stop in Brazil was to the beautiful city of Rio de Janeiro, a place known for its caipirinhas, skimpy bathing suits, pulsing samba, and breathtaking landscape. I am sure you want me to tell you how cool it was to sip some great tropical juice while getting a massage on the beach, but that didn’t really happen. Rio was having probably one of its dreariest Octobers on record, and the beach was totally off the menu for the first few days. October in Rio has the same type of weather as April in the Northeast U.S., so the first few days I was there I experienced quite a bit of rain and overcast skies. Rio is a city that needs to be appreciated for its natural beauty, especially on a sunny day, but there’s quite a bit to see if you need some shelter and don’t mind leaving the Copacabana/Ipanema beach area that’s so popular with tourists.

Before I begin my story, let me make a confession: My name is Mrs. Swan, and I am a guidebook junkie. Not only do I collect them, but they serve as my little travel companions that don’t talk back and give you great information (when they’re up to date, that is). I do definitely veer off the beaten path when I can, but my guidebooks are my little security blankets.

Anyways, what’s there to see in Rio on a rainy day when Copacabana Beach looks like this?

Churches! Lots of ’em…

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Hello, everyone!

My, how I’ve missed you! I’m in wedding blogging limbo still waiting for our pics to come through from our photographer. It’s definitely hard, but I know that good things come to those who wait.

In the meantime, I thought I would tell you about one of the more fulfilling experiences that I had while I was engaged. Last October, I took a week-long trip by myself to Brazil. I’d never traveled completely by myself internationally before, especially to a country where I didn’t have total command of the language, so on many levels this was a total challenge for me (after a year of college Brazilian Portuguese I have the vocab of an 8 year-old… okay, better make that a 5 year-old.).

I had a different outlook on this trip, though. It was the first time that I would be leaving my future husband at home. I will give Mr. Swan a shout out for being so encouraging and not freaking out when I said that I wanted to a plan a trip by myself to a city that did not necessarily have a reputation for always being super safe (Rio; I went to Salvador, too.). Mr. Swan hears way too much about my wanderlust and has learned to appreciate (for lack of a better word) my independent streak. I so appreciate his confidence in me, and his willingness and ability to let me be me.

After the excitement of getting engaged I stopped myself one day and came to a deep realization: this is it, Swan… you’ve got another person who will be your partner in making decisions (even about things like vacations..uh oh ), who may occasionally worry when you walk out the door for the day and for whom you’ll need to do the same.
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