Mrs. Trail Mix, New YorkAge and Occupation: 26, PE TeacherFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, MBA StudentEngagement Date: March 2009Wedding Date: June 2010Venue: Tannery Pond at the Darrow SchoolAbout Me: I'm a country girl who somehow found herself living in the Big Apple and loving every minute of it. I'm planning a rustic, country-chic wedding in my hometown in upstate New York and it's going to be a Party with a capital P. White wine, flea markets and running keep me happy and my friends, family and fiance are my world. I'm a little bit crafty, a little bit crazy but mostly just crazy in love.
Mrs. Trail Mix, New YorkAge and Occupation: 26, PE TeacherFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, MBA StudentEngagement Date: March 2009Wedding Date: June 2010Venue: Tannery Pond at the Darrow SchoolAbout Me: I'm a country girl who somehow found herself living in the Big Apple and loving every minute of it. I'm planning a rustic, country-chic wedding in my hometown in upstate New York and it's going to be a Party with a capital P. White wine, flea markets and running keep me happy and my friends, family and fiance are my world. I'm a little bit crafty, a little bit crazy but mostly just crazy in love.
I recently attended a friend’s wedding on the coast of Italy (the town was called Rodi Garganico) and really wanted to share the photos as it was stunningly gorgeous and just so much fun! My friend married an Italian (they met in New York City on a co-ed soccer team…cue the collective ‘Awww’ here) and believe me when I tell you: Italians know how to party in the best way.
*A lot of these photos are courtesy of our friend Arvind, who is kindly letting me use them here. You can tell when they’re his using this simple equation: Good photos = Arvind’s, Bad photos = mine.
Mrs. Trail Mix, New YorkAge and Occupation: 26, PE TeacherFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, MBA StudentEngagement Date: March 2009Wedding Date: June 2010Venue: Tannery Pond at the Darrow SchoolAbout Me: I'm a country girl who somehow found herself living in the Big Apple and loving every minute of it. I'm planning a rustic, country-chic wedding in my hometown in upstate New York and it's going to be a Party with a capital P. White wine, flea markets and running keep me happy and my friends, family and fiance are my world. I'm a little bit crafty, a little bit crazy but mostly just crazy in love.
My friend whose wedding we attended in Italy is also having a New York City reception next Tuesday. Woohoo for more parties! While we already took the couple out to dinner in Oslo as their wedding gift (by some strange coincidence, they were honeymooning in Scandinavia at the same time we were visiting our friends in Norway, so we all got to meet up for dinner, super-duper fun), I am loathe to show up at a party empty-handed.
I wanted to keep it relatively inexpensive (since, ya know, we just flew out to Italy for their wedding and all) but make it heartfelt, rather than give them a colander or whatever.
Enter the classic ‘Framing of the Invitation’ with my own little twist. Since my friend used a starfish motif on all her paper goods, this was the perfect opportunity to put to use all the shells I collected while walking along the beach during our time in Italy.
I bought a white frame with a matte from Pottery Barn. Pottery Barn’s wooden frames are almost always 20% off at the store near me (I should know because it’s only 7 blocks away. DANGEROUS!) but of course, today I had no such luck. Harrumph.
Still, $25 later and I had a beautiful 5 x 7 frame and matte, ready for action. Read more…
Mrs. Trail Mix, New YorkAge and Occupation: 26, PE TeacherFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, MBA StudentEngagement Date: March 2009Wedding Date: June 2010Venue: Tannery Pond at the Darrow SchoolAbout Me: I'm a country girl who somehow found herself living in the Big Apple and loving every minute of it. I'm planning a rustic, country-chic wedding in my hometown in upstate New York and it's going to be a Party with a capital P. White wine, flea markets and running keep me happy and my friends, family and fiance are my world. I'm a little bit crafty, a little bit crazy but mostly just crazy in love.
Remember when I mentioned that the first several months of marriage were a bit, um, doubt-plagued? Well, it’s now officially one year to the day from our wedding and here’s my follow-up advice: It gets better. Hang in there. Ride out the wave, if you will. I’m so happy to report that after writing that post, the cloud of despair I’d been trying to ignore lifted and suddenly. I no longer doubted my decision to get married. I felt like, maybe it all could *and would* get better.
And then, amazingly,…it did. Things got good. So good I sometimes can’t believe I am lucky enough to be living this life and have to cross my fingers and my toes in order to prevent from jinxing it all.
It’s true what they say, the harder you fall, the higher you bounce. It seems that, for me, the hard moments have made the good ones that much better. Perhaps I would not appreciate what I have now if I hadn’t experienced the bruises of a bumpy road beforehand.
It’s bizarre that it’s been one year since our wedding. It feels like forever ago yet it’s probably a rare day where I don’t reminisce, just a little. The wedding was, and I suspect will remain, one of the best days of my life.
Closed Circle Photography
Yet, I don’t miss being knee-deep in vendor discussions and stressing over table assignments.
Mrs. Trail Mix, New YorkAge and Occupation: 26, PE TeacherFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, MBA StudentEngagement Date: March 2009Wedding Date: June 2010Venue: Tannery Pond at the Darrow SchoolAbout Me: I'm a country girl who somehow found herself living in the Big Apple and loving every minute of it. I'm planning a rustic, country-chic wedding in my hometown in upstate New York and it's going to be a Party with a capital P. White wine, flea markets and running keep me happy and my friends, family and fiance are my world. I'm a little bit crafty, a little bit crazy but mostly just crazy in love.
But…(siiiiigh)…not weddings. It’s hard to believe and even harder to write this, but my time blogging here has reached its end. And for once, Little Miss Gabby, Chatty-Cathy, Talk-Your-Ear-Off me is at a loss for words.
Because how do I express what Weddingbee and all its incredibly smart, funny, rockin’ readers have done for me during my one-and-a-half year tenure as a blogger? It’s so hard to figure out without sounding trite, cheesy, or repetitive, but I’m going to give it my best shot.
When I joined the site in June of 2009, I never expected to become real-life, honest-to-goodness friends with people. I mean, it’s a wedding site and I came looking for wedding inspiration. And here I am, almost two years later, in awe of this community and the ties that bind it. Seriously, this is a pretty amazing place.
And while saying goodbye to you all is the hardest, a part of me is sad to say goodbye to our wedding, too.
Mrs. Trail Mix, New YorkAge and Occupation: 26, PE TeacherFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, MBA StudentEngagement Date: March 2009Wedding Date: June 2010Venue: Tannery Pond at the Darrow SchoolAbout Me: I'm a country girl who somehow found herself living in the Big Apple and loving every minute of it. I'm planning a rustic, country-chic wedding in my hometown in upstate New York and it's going to be a Party with a capital P. White wine, flea markets and running keep me happy and my friends, family and fiance are my world. I'm a little bit crafty, a little bit crazy but mostly just crazy in love.
Ah, the budget. The budget is a tricky beast, wouldn’t you agree? Everyone who is contributing to it wants a say in how the funds are used, not to mention the fact that it has a funny way of rapidly expanding (much like my stomach after my recent purchase of six boxes of Girl Scout cookies…).
First off, I gotta put this out there: Tented weddings are not cheap, yo! I originally decided to go this route after looking at packages from a few places that were well above what I thought we could afford. For example, one place I liked would have cost right around $100/head. When I did the math, my eyes bulged out of my head and I decided (without really thinking it through) that a tented wedding would be a better option, since I had been quoted around $45/head from a caterer I had sent an inquiry to. What I didn’t think about was the fact that when you add in all the rentals, the costs per head were probably almost equal! Ooooops…D’oh! *Insert the sound of my palm hitting my forehead here…
Another major issue was location. In a book my mom received about tips for planning a wedding, the number one recommendation to save money was (wait for it…)—to get out of the Northeast. Huh. Well, seeing as how we’d already put down a deposit on our venue at this point, it was too late to do that, but I will say that I agree with the book: the Northeast is a mad expensive place to hold a wedding.
Somehow, in spite of all our penny-pinching and stressing about money, our wedding still ended up costing a sh*t-ton. Read more…
Mrs. Trail Mix, New YorkAge and Occupation: 26, PE TeacherFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, MBA StudentEngagement Date: March 2009Wedding Date: June 2010Venue: Tannery Pond at the Darrow SchoolAbout Me: I'm a country girl who somehow found herself living in the Big Apple and loving every minute of it. I'm planning a rustic, country-chic wedding in my hometown in upstate New York and it's going to be a Party with a capital P. White wine, flea markets and running keep me happy and my friends, family and fiance are my world. I'm a little bit crafty, a little bit crazy but mostly just crazy in love.
Way way back (gosh, it feels like ages ago!) when I was still knee-deep in wedding planning, I would gaze longingly at hilarious photo booth pictures that made the wedding blog rounds but then heave a dramatic sigh and move on. I knew there was no way I was willing to give up anything in our budget to make room for this amazing trend and we simply did not have the technology to do it ourselves. I simply assumed from the beginning that it was a lost cause.
But then! The typically cruel and merciless wedding gods took pity on a poor, woe-begotten bride and, like a ray of sunshine through the clouds, offered up a solution in the form of our photographer (Kelly of Closed Circle Photography.) She emailed me, out of the blue, to say that she was offering a promotion for a free photo booth set-up for any wedding where she was booked for at least six hours. Since we qualified, did we want to take advantage of the offer?
Um, HELLS to the YES we did!! And so, with absolutely no planning, stressing, DIY-endeavors or budget-squeezing, we got our photo booth. Wahoooo!!!
Mrs. Trail Mix, New YorkAge and Occupation: 26, PE TeacherFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, MBA StudentEngagement Date: March 2009Wedding Date: June 2010Venue: Tannery Pond at the Darrow SchoolAbout Me: I'm a country girl who somehow found herself living in the Big Apple and loving every minute of it. I'm planning a rustic, country-chic wedding in my hometown in upstate New York and it's going to be a Party with a capital P. White wine, flea markets and running keep me happy and my friends, family and fiance are my world. I'm a little bit crafty, a little bit crazy but mostly just crazy in love.
To truly appreciate the rest of this post, I have to give some back story…
For as long as Mr Trail Mix and I have been talking about weddings (specifically ours), it has always been followed with a conversation where I would give him my most serious, I-am-not-joking-even-one-little-tiny-bit face and tell him that smushing the cake in my face at our wedding would absolutely ruin the day for me and the only thing we were going to do is politely feed each other dainty little bites. It was tacky, I proclaimed. Trashy to the max. ABSOLUTELY NO CAKE SMASHING. ZILCH. NONE. Capisce?
Alright, now on with our story here…
After feasting and dancing for a while, the subject of cutting the cake was brought up and since dessert was being served (strawberry shortcake), it seemed like a good time to do the damn thang. By this point, our photographer had left as had our DOC and everything (and everyone) was kind of a mess. I looked around for a knife to cut it with but alas, in my semi-sober state, could only come up with a soup spoon (we used the handle to cut it. GHET. TO.)
See, here we are, all smiling pretty, prepared to slice into our lovely little cake… All looks well and good, right? Riiiiiiiight… Read more…
Mrs. Trail Mix, New YorkAge and Occupation: 26, PE TeacherFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, MBA StudentEngagement Date: March 2009Wedding Date: June 2010Venue: Tannery Pond at the Darrow SchoolAbout Me: I'm a country girl who somehow found herself living in the Big Apple and loving every minute of it. I'm planning a rustic, country-chic wedding in my hometown in upstate New York and it's going to be a Party with a capital P. White wine, flea markets and running keep me happy and my friends, family and fiance are my world. I'm a little bit crafty, a little bit crazy but mostly just crazy in love.
If there was ever a time in my life where I needed to “Just Dance,” this was it. I think we all know by now that my wedding was mildly disastrous and finally, at this point in the night, there was nothing left to do but drink and dance.
So that’s what we did. And things got pretty damn crazy, which means it was all a crazy fun blur in my mind but thank goodness we had Kelly and some friends with nice cameras to capture it all. These are some of my favorite photos because everyone is (thankfully) having a blast, in spite of all the hiccups and never-ending rain.
Alright, so the power did short out on the band (TWICE!) during this part but the first time I laughed it off and it was fixed almost immediately and we resumed dancing. The second time it happened, it took about ten minutes to fix and I cried, but once it was back on, we just kept dancing.
So, in short, I think the best advice I can give you is that if things go wrong on your wedding day (courtesy of the immortal goddess of wisdom known as Lady Gaga) JUST DANCE, because things will be OK. Better than OK, actually. They will be effing awesome.
Mrs. Trail Mix, New YorkAge and Occupation: 26, PE TeacherFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, MBA StudentEngagement Date: March 2009Wedding Date: June 2010Venue: Tannery Pond at the Darrow SchoolAbout Me: I'm a country girl who somehow found herself living in the Big Apple and loving every minute of it. I'm planning a rustic, country-chic wedding in my hometown in upstate New York and it's going to be a Party with a capital P. White wine, flea markets and running keep me happy and my friends, family and fiance are my world. I'm a little bit crafty, a little bit crazy but mostly just crazy in love.
After all the scheduled dances were done, we just kept dancing! The band played a great first set for about 45 minutes, which I think allowed everyone to digest all the cocktail food and get ready for, well, more food (I mean, this was a Jewish wedding after all, which means no one, and I mean no one, goes hungry!)
First, my grandfather said a blessing over the Challah and our dads said a blessing over the wine.
Mrs. Trail Mix, New YorkAge and Occupation: 26, PE TeacherFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, MBA StudentEngagement Date: March 2009Wedding Date: June 2010Venue: Tannery Pond at the Darrow SchoolAbout Me: I'm a country girl who somehow found herself living in the Big Apple and loving every minute of it. I'm planning a rustic, country-chic wedding in my hometown in upstate New York and it's going to be a Party with a capital P. White wine, flea markets and running keep me happy and my friends, family and fiance are my world. I'm a little bit crafty, a little bit crazy but mostly just crazy in love.
I have these doubting thoughts sometime about my marriage. It’s so hard to admit. Isn’t the first year of marriage supposed to be blissful? Aren’t we supposed to be so caught up in our own little world that we float through our lives on a cloud of cotton candy? (Mmmmmm. Cotton candy.)
Sometimes, all I can think is, “What did I get myself into?”
I guess I never realized that marriage is hard. Not hard like “Errrghh, my Saturday morning strength and conditioning class was so hard (and it’s led by a woman who is seriously 95 years old—What gives?)” but hard like, “Holy sh*t, I-can’t-believe-this-is-the-rest-of-my-life-what-have-I-done?” kind of hard. At least, for me. And I’m willing to bet for a decent amount of you guys out there. If you’re not in that camp, color me green with envy and mad props to you for whatever you’re doing to manage your relationship.
But I think the real question here is, why? Why is marriage so hard? I’d been with my partner for four and a half years when we got engaged and five and a half years by the time we got married. We’d lived together for three of those years and done the long-distance thing (New York to Miami) for two. I don’t think anyone could accuse us of rushing into things or not knowing each other well. So, what changed when we signed that silly little legal document that committed ourselves to each other for the rest of our lives? Read more…
Mrs. Trail Mix, New YorkAge and Occupation: 26, PE TeacherFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, MBA StudentEngagement Date: March 2009Wedding Date: June 2010Venue: Tannery Pond at the Darrow SchoolAbout Me: I'm a country girl who somehow found herself living in the Big Apple and loving every minute of it. I'm planning a rustic, country-chic wedding in my hometown in upstate New York and it's going to be a Party with a capital P. White wine, flea markets and running keep me happy and my friends, family and fiance are my world. I'm a little bit crafty, a little bit crazy but mostly just crazy in love.
Once our guests had noshed and drank, chatted, and took shelter from the rain, we gave the go-ahead to our DOC to start the party!
We opted not to introduce our bridal party but our (hands-down-best-wedding-decision-ever) band introduced us to much cheering and clapping, as evidenced by our insanely happy and mildly embarrassed faces.
Mrs. Trail Mix, New YorkAge and Occupation: 26, PE TeacherFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, MBA StudentEngagement Date: March 2009Wedding Date: June 2010Venue: Tannery Pond at the Darrow SchoolAbout Me: I'm a country girl who somehow found herself living in the Big Apple and loving every minute of it. I'm planning a rustic, country-chic wedding in my hometown in upstate New York and it's going to be a Party with a capital P. White wine, flea markets and running keep me happy and my friends, family and fiance are my world. I'm a little bit crafty, a little bit crazy but mostly just crazy in love.
Before I got married, I never really understood what was so difficult about making an album. You pick out some photos, decide on a layout and badda bing, badda, boom, album done.
Um, yeah…not so much. It turns out, making an album really is as much of a b*tch as everyone says it is.
First of all, at least in my case, I was trying to narrow down 2,156 photos to about 60 or so. Friends, let me tell you, that is no easy task. I wanted to make sure we chose the best of the best, the photos which truly represented our wedding and where everyone has their eyes open and was smiling pretty. It took me almost a month just to choose the pictures!
Then I had to decide what kind of album I wanted to make (this one is for my parents, I’m sure ours will be a solid year or two coming). While our photographer seemed to offer competitively-priced albums, I just couldn’t come to terms with spending so much money so I decided to go the DIY route.
Mrs. Trail Mix, New YorkAge and Occupation: 26, PE TeacherFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, MBA StudentEngagement Date: March 2009Wedding Date: June 2010Venue: Tannery Pond at the Darrow SchoolAbout Me: I'm a country girl who somehow found herself living in the Big Apple and loving every minute of it. I'm planning a rustic, country-chic wedding in my hometown in upstate New York and it's going to be a Party with a capital P. White wine, flea markets and running keep me happy and my friends, family and fiance are my world. I'm a little bit crafty, a little bit crazy but mostly just crazy in love.
We whipped through our portraits in about half an hour, anxious to get to the cocktail hour, where delectable appetizers, champagne and our loved ones awaited us.
Finally, Kelly declared us finished and we headed to the tent, traversing through rough terrain that included puddles, mud and rain galore…
I basically held my dress up like in the photo above for the entire reception. Siiiiigh…I should’ve gotten one of those loop-things sewn in like Mrs Seashell did! Read more…
Mrs. Trail Mix, New YorkAge and Occupation: 26, PE TeacherFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, MBA StudentEngagement Date: March 2009Wedding Date: June 2010Venue: Tannery Pond at the Darrow SchoolAbout Me: I'm a country girl who somehow found herself living in the Big Apple and loving every minute of it. I'm planning a rustic, country-chic wedding in my hometown in upstate New York and it's going to be a Party with a capital P. White wine, flea markets and running keep me happy and my friends, family and fiance are my world. I'm a little bit crafty, a little bit crazy but mostly just crazy in love.
Mr. TM and I threw a little holiday shindig this weekend. In an effort to mimic Martha Stewart’s homemade hospitality, I spent the entire Friday night beforehand baking, crafting, wrapping, cooking, bedazzling, hanging, cleaning and making things by hand.
HA! That’s a joke, my friends. Instead, I went to Duane Reade to pick up a few bags of holiday candy to serve as snacks. (Oh stop, I had other food too. In fact, I actually did bake peanut butter cookies, so boo-yah!)
I made my way to the special “holiday candy” aisle (which is separate from the regular candy aisle…and yes, I know this because I make frequent candy runs to Duane Reade, don’t judge me), found the holiday candy aisle, and picked out holiday-themed Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, holiday-themed Hershey’s Kisses and what I thought were holiday-themed M&M’s…
Side note: How come all the candy is Christmas colors? Where’s the blue and white M&M’s for Hannukah? Or um, whatever colors represent Kwanzaa? Read more…
