Mrs. Radish, Chicago/Syracuse
Age and Occupation: 27, Executive Assistant/Journalism Student/Musician
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 28, Anthropologist/Musician
Engagement Date: December 20, 2005
Wedding Date: August 18, 2007
Blogging Since: June 26, 2007
Venue: The Wellington House in Fayetteville, NY
About Me: Mr. Radish and I are both from upstate New York, so we are planning a wedding in Syracuse from about 700 miles away. When I’m not obsessing about our wedding I play the cello in my band (which Mr. Radish is in too), read as much as I can, sleep even more, travel whenever possible, and try to find time to have fun with my friends. I’m also working on finishing up my journalism degree with a concentration in environmental reporting and I’m the VP of my campus Amnesty International chapter… so I’m a pretty busy bee.
Bouquet Flowers
July 2nd, 2007 @ 6:29 pm by Mrs. Radish
My sister and I are going to make the bouquets ourselves, so I am going with a mix of paper flowers, dried flowers, and silk flowers. Since we are making them ourselves, there is really no way that we can use fresh flowers. We would have to do it the night before, and we will be too busy for that. So, instead, using faux flowers we will make the bouquets far in advance.
For my bouquet, I found these beautiful paper flowers from Paper Source. I got about 6 or 7 of them. They are fairly large - about 5 inches in diameter I think. Some of them have a greenish tint in the center, and the others have a pale pinkish tint. I think I will use these as the “main” flowers for my arrangement.
A Picture Is Worth…
July 2nd, 2007 @ 11:29 am by Mrs. Radish
… thousands of dollar, apparently! Like so many other aspects of our wedding, we ended up totally changing our tune about photography.
At first, we said we didn’t want to spend more than $1,000 and I started looking around at the lower priced photography options in our wedding area. I was NOT impressed. I couldn’t see the point of spending even just $500 on pictures that we would probably hate and never want to look at again. Then I talked to my sister who got married a few years ago and her biggest regret was her photography. She only spent $800 on it but her pictures don’t look much better than the non-pro pictures from her wedding. Taking that into consideration, Mr. Radish and I decided to increase our budget on photography.
I started doing a ton of research and talking to some pros that I work with (I work at an art college) about the different options out there, and it sounded like we would be most happy with a wedding photojournalist. Then I found one that I loved! Tim Forbes from Kingston Ontario. Here are some of my favorite shots from his online portfolio:
The Search For The Church
June 30th, 2007 @ 10:24 am by Mrs. Radish
Once it was decided that we would have a Catholic wedding ceremony, the next step was to find a church that would marry us. This was much harder than I imagined, mostly because we are out-of-towners and Mr. Radish’s family is not from Syracuse either. My parents live there, but they don’t go to church. So because we are not members of any church in the area, and neither are any of our family members, it made it a little bit harder for us to find a church. I think that is the case with just about any religion, though, for out-of-town couples. I guess it only makes sense that they give their own parishioners preference.
Mr. Radish called just about every church in the area to find out if any of them had our date open and if they were willing to perform our ceremony. Many churches were already booked (over a year in advance, yikes!) and there were a few priests he spoke with who were very strict. And since Mr. Radish and I live together before marriage (a sin in the church’s view)… that was a bit of a problem for them. Eventually we found St. Matthew’s in East Syracuse, NY. It’s only a few minutes away from our reception venue and the priest there, Father Clemente, is very relaxed and didn’t have a problem with us living together or the fact that I’m not Catholic.
A Holy Matrimony?
June 29th, 2007 @ 11:56 am by Mrs. Radish
Okay, so let me be honest here. I do not consider myself to be a Christian. I was baptized in the Episcopalian Church since my father’s family is Episcopalian, but religion was never very important to my family. I think my parents only baptized me because of pressure from my grandparents. I grew up in a very secular family and it has certainly had an impact on me. When I was younger, I was curious about religion so I went to several different kinds of churches with my friends from school, but nothing ever really made sense to me. I started going to a Unitarian church with my older sister in my early twenties, and it was probably the closest I have ever come to adopting a religion.
Mr. Radish also considers himself to be agnostic, and yet we are having a Catholic wedding. You may wonder why, so I will try my best to explain our reasoning.
Mr. Radish’s parents are devout Catholics and he is the youngest of their six children. My future father-in-law actually attended seminary school for a couple of years before he decided that he wanted to marry Mr. Radish’s mother and become a math professor instead. Mr. Radish is named after a French-Canadian monk (who has been nominated for sainthood) whose heart is preserved in a jar in Quebec City. His parents make a pilgrimage to see this heart in a jar every year. Anyway, I guess my point is that their beliefs are very important to them and they made it known early on in our engagement that they were hoping for, as my future mother-in-law put it, a “holy matrimony.”
Your Presence Is Requested…
June 28th, 2007 @ 4:28 pm by Mrs. Radish
Our invitations are done! They were designed by the wonderful Lee of Pearl & Marmalade, and I couldn’t be happier with them. I think they are perfect. This picture kinda sucks, but they are beautiful in real life. We printed them at Kinkos on 100% post-consumer content recycled cardstock. It was pretty cost-effective to have them printed that way, especially since they are 3-color.
The Venue Search
June 27th, 2007 @ 6:38 pm by Mrs. Radish
One of the first things that we took care of was finding a venue, since we couldn’t really set a date and get the ball rolling until we did that. Initially, I kept saying that I didn’t really care that much about the venue and that I just wanted something affordable. We even looked into having a tented reception in our best man’s backyard (he offered). But - as we started looking at places, the more we realized that we DID care and that we are actually very picky people. Who knew?
There were certain things that we decided we wanted early on. We wanted someplace “scenic” that didn’t look like a mall, as Mr. Radish put it, something preferably near the water (Syracuse has several lakes and rivers), and someplace that could incorporate a vegetarian/vegan menu (I’m a vegetarian and Mr. Radish is vegan). It was, however, rather difficult to find a venue that fit these criteria that was also within our price range. We really didn’t want to spend more than $45 per person including open bar. Luckily, in Upstate New York this is possible but we still had to do some digging. Read more…
A Radish Is Born!
June 26th, 2007 @ 8:24 am by Mrs. Radish
Hello. I’m Miss Radish and I’ve been addicted to WeddingBee (as I’m sure many of you are) ever since I stumbled across it earlier this year. I’m really excited and honored to join the beehive!
Mr. Radish and I have been together for over five years now. We live in Chicago but we first met back in Buffalo, NY where we were both going to school. It wasn’t exactly love at first sight, though - he thought I was snobby and I thought he was nerdy! But we quickly became friends anyhow and starting hanging out all the time.
After about six months of being friends, I realized one day that I had a crush on my little Radish after we talked on the phone until 9:oo in the morning. I told a friend of mine, who was also a good friend of his, that I thought I was starting to have feelings for him. Her face lit up and she said “Oh my god, are you serious… he is madly in love with you and won’t stop talking about you!” Apparently, he had been driving our dear friend nuts talking about how he had a crush on me but he thought that I wasn’t interested in him. Meanwhile I had no idea he felt that way about me and I thought he just wanted to be friends. So, to make a long story short, our friend did a little meddling and convinced him to ask me out on a date, and we’ve been a happy little pair ever since!
