Weddingbee Blog

This installment of my little series marks the arrival of our “official” photo album from our photographers.

I’ll be completely honest here and say that I initially was not emotionally invested in this album, which is probably really sad and not something most photographers would want to hear.

I’ll fully admit that when we chose our photographers, we placed our priorities more on the personalities of the photographers and their actual photos than on the albums (what good is a beautiful book if you don’t love the photos in it?). Their albums are definitely a part of their artistry and they sell some beautiful products, but we were really stretching to get them at our wedding, and so we could only afford the smallest album they offered. In fact it was so small (just 30 small-ish photos, although beautifully printed) that I just couldn’t get excited about it. Kind of like when you see something expensive, and you love it, but you know you can’t have one, so you don’t let yourself think about it too much.

Luckily, a delay in processing led our photographers to offer us a slightly larger album, which we were excited about.
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Hello, Hive! It’s Mrs. Oyster here, the one who got married a looong time ago. I’m back… almost.

While waiting for our digital photos, I’ve been starting out in our quest to DO SOMETHING with these hundreds of wedding prints. The first step was deciding to put the proof images in something other than a shoebox. (If you haven’t booked your photographer yet, proof sets are just prints of every photo from the wedding.) Our photographers offered the proofs in two formats: a pre-printed book and the loose 4×6 prints. Personally, I prefer the prints, because I love that we can take them out and frame them if we want. Later, I overheard one of them talking, and she said that customers who order loose prints often complain because they are unwieldy, and because family members and friends will come over and steal one or two of them.

Well, we had no such problems, mostly because we never told anyone that we had any prints, and because our house is too messy to invite anyone over to. Also, the photographers made it very easy for our geographically spread-out family to buy their own prints online, so that worked out well. And in the beginning at least, I love that we have them to pick up and look at when it’s time to do things like choose album shots, select photos for enlargements, or whatever else (like writing Weddingbee recaps!).

But eventually, I needed to put the prints in a format that made it easier to look them over. Read more…

The last time I wrote about our invitations, I wrote how I felt they were the first communication with our guests as a couple, and how important they were.

If you’ve had a long engagement, you’ve probably noticed that people don’t really care much about your wedding after you announce your engagement. That’s because there’s nothing for them to do! They’re happy for you, but their lives continue on (as they should!)…until the invitation arrives. This is when people start to get excited. The phone calls start, the hotel plans are made and plane tickets are purchased, and if you have any crazy relatives, this is when they make themselves known. The pre-wedding marathon begins. In addition to making the wedding real for you, the invitations’ arrival will make things more real for your guests, too. It’s an incredibly exciting time, and I really did love every minute of it. Being engaged was so much more fun once everyone else (at least, everyone else on our invite list) could share it with us. And it started with these invitations.

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When I first came to Weddingbee, I mentioned that I have four cats—and it’s true! I live with Mr. Oyster and four completely crazy adorable cats.

I have only had one pet in my life, and that’s my little cat Patience. We think she’s about 14 years old. She arrived on my doorstep right around the time I graduated high school, and that’s how I ended up getting my very first pet at age 17.  Isn’t she gorgeous?

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A while ago, someone on the boards mentioned her disappointment that some bees seem to disappear for a bit after we’re married. She wondered why it sometimes takes us a while to write about the wedding after it has happened. For some reason, her comments were stuck in my head for months.

I can’t speak for every bee, but guess what? We can’t write about the wedding unless we have pictures of it! And I have no digital pictures yet (except for a limited preview).

While we’ve had our proofs for several weeks, our photographer, like many others, doesn’t send discs until the album is completed, which brings me to this post.
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Others speak of that “dress moment,” and I think I had the “fabric moment.” It was when I was in the fabric store, having just solidified the vision for my wedding dress, and I was looking for the perfect fabric. I was looking at all the ivory silks, and I saw this little glimpse of something and, as cynical as I can be, as I just *knew* that it was my fabric. And after realizing that, my inner girlie-girl screamed, “It’s pink!”

My convictions about this wondrous fabric were so strong that, initially, I didn’t think twice about wearing a non-white/ivory dress.
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I promised that I’d tell you about our crazy trip home, but I also realized that I forgot to share with you all the beautiful condo we stayed in. It was located in Princeville, the suburb on the north shore of Kaua’i. It definitely lived up to the pictures we saw online. It was a wonderful, peaceful place, and we could hear the ocean.

The bedroom, at sunset

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I’m not much of a DIY bride, but I had one project I absolutely loved.

I’m not sure if it was the romantic “idea” of a flower, or my belief that a bride should always have something beautiful on her head, but I loved making this. I loved it so much that I didn’t want to finish it—so I didn’t, until the week of the wedding.

From the beginning of my wedding planning, I saw these beautiful hair pieces and was disappointed that they cost so much, when they looked like something I could learn to make. So, I pledged to teach myself how to do it, and now I’ll teach you, too! (I’m very excited about this.)

I actually made this project twice. The first one was made hastily the night before my bridal portrait (photos by Heather Essian).

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Our other favorite day in Kaua’i was our visit to Hanapepe. It turned out to be a long day, but we loved it.

Mr. Oyster is really into coffee. It’s like his personal hobby or something! He even roasts his own coffee beans, and hand-grinds them every morning and has his own fresh-roasted cup of coffee. So of course, we went to the Kaua’i Coffee Museum. It’s a nice place; it includes a small museum inside, a coffee shop (of course!), a gift shop, and then you can take a self-guided walking tour of the grounds.

The coffee fields, with rain clouds looming overhead (there are always rain clouds looming in Kaua’i):
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I’ve been married for several weeks now. According to the government, the bank, and my job, I’m Mrs. [New Name]. But I still have my old email address, and I sign my old name when I buy something because I don’t have my new ID yet. I’ve gotten a few pieces of mail with my new name on it. It’s so weird, I feel like I’m “in-between”. I’m sure the adjustment will become clearer in a week or so, when I start the new school year with my students and get to be called “Mrs. [New Name]” a few hundred times a day.

Anyway, while I adjust to marriage and wait for our professional photos, I’ll share with you some of my favorite images of our Hawaiian honeymoon.

It was wonderful to “escape” everything and run off to Kaua’i after we were married. The wedding and its accompanying celebrations were intense (in a good way), and some time to decompress was exactly what we needed. Mr. Oyster and I are kind of quiet by nature and I think we were looking for a beautiful place we could rest and relax, without feeling like it was so once-in-a-lifetime that we had to see everything (e.g., Europe, Brazil or any of the other “dream places” we want to go someday).

Upon arrival in Kaua’i, we picked up our car and headed to our rented condo, located on the north shore (in the suburb of Princeville). I was happy that we remembered our little friend…
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It took me about two weeks to come out of the “wedding fog” we experienced after the wedding, and the parties, and the honeymoon. So much joy packed into a few short weeks can take quite a toll!

The full set of professional pictures won’t be in for another few weeks, but in the meantime I hope to share some images from our honeymoon, tell you about the last few weeks of wedding planning (including a project or two) and some other things.

As I began writing this post I got an email from our photographer, letting me know that he has a few images up for us to preview! How exciting, and how perfect that I received this on our one month-aversary (when we were already reminiscing anyway).

I keep staring at these images and cannot wait to see the rest of them! It’s like… the wedding, all over again.

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Years ago, when I was single, I had a dream that it was my wedding day, and I didn’t have a dress. People were running around, there were some flowers, and my mother and I were staring at the closet thinking, “What shall I wear?” Eventually we chose some old dress and some earrings. But it wasn’t what I really wanted.

Apparently my mother, having known I’d meet someone someday, had sent me a beautiful Vera Wang dress. But the dress was so unbelievably beautiful and my prospects for marriage so far away that I couldn’t imagine it, and I had sent the dress back. And there I was, having spent so much time in disbelief that I refused to believe anything good was coming my way, and inadvertently ruined a day that was so important to me.

I told my mom about the dream and she, being much more religious than I, said that this dream was a message. It meant that I needed to believe that good things could happen for me, and that I should “get ready.”

Well, I did.
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The day of my bridal portrait shoot I was a harried, hot mess. It was a million degrees here in Dallas. I had to finish the flower I’d made for my hair in the morning. I had a million errands to run which included going to the hair/makeup appointment, picking up the bouquet, getting a manicure, at some point I needed to eat something, and of course, the portraits themselves which were located an hour away. I was hot, stressed out, tired, and alone, and I never could get it together.

My makeup/hair appointment started about an hour late (so much for the usually-punctual Miss Oyster!). I’d been so stressed and preoccupied lately that I’d forgotten to actually pick a hairstyle and just said, “You know, lots of curls.” It was so hot and humid and my hair appointment so much earlier than the portraits that she put the curls in pins, which, when taken out a few minutes before the portrait shoot, looked kind of weird. And they fell five minutes into the photo shoot, because the photographer’s a/c shut off when I got there.

I didn’t pick a makeup look either, and when she asked if I wanted a natural look or something “more formal”, I picked the latter.
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When I got engaged, hardly anyone asked, “When’s your date?” like they do most girls. Instead, my friends and family, aware of my inherited interest in photography, asked me, “Who will be your photographer?”

For the first half of our engagement, I couldn’t answer them.

Here’s my confession, and the reason I’m writing on this particular subject with very little time left before the wedding: For the first half of our engagement, I couldn’t even envision our wedding. I’d been independent for so long, and making a concerted effort not to hope for marriage with every boyfriend that came along (lest I be disappointed), that now it was real and I couldn’t picture it.

Oh sure, I could picture it in the abstract; I’d been secretly dreaming about it for years. I could imagine dancing with my husband, imagine walking down the aisle, seeing the smiling faces of my family and friends. But it was hazy; blurry; unreal. I couldn’t choose a person whose eyes I wanted to see my wedding through, because I couldn’t see it myself. Finally, I stepped back and decided to think about what my wedding really meant to me, and then the decision was easy.
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When you are dating someone and your immediate family lives a few thousand miles away, there are no casual get-togethers, no “bring your boyfriend to the family picnic”, no “let’s meet him”. Everything is a little more formal and requires plane tickets, formality, and bracing yourself for that let’s-get-everything-done-while-you’re-here feeling that your parents have when you come visit, which will be familiar to anyone else who lives far away from their families.

Mr. Oyster didn’t meet my mother until after we were engaged, when we took a trip in early 2009 to visit her. When my mom and grandmother came to visit me in the fall, they were here to help with wedding plans and also to meet Mr. Oyster’s parents.

The first night they were here, the six of us went out to dinner. As the parents met each other for the first time, the palpable joy was nearly overwhelming. Everything, from the small talk, to the conversations to find things in common, to the shared enthusiasm over their new son/daughter, was underscored with happiness and anticipation and welcoming enthusiasm.

That first meeting was the first time I really understood what all this meant. It was the first time that my and Mr. Oyster’s love for each other meant something other than “just the two of us”.
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