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Mr. and Mrs. Cola
Color Scheme and Theme: Alfresco Romance Under the Redwoods, featuring lavender, sage, butter cream and chocolate.
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Yesterday, when sharing the shadow boxes I made to display some of our wedding mementos, I mentioned that I’d had to dig through a bunch of boxes to find the mementos.
I wasn’t kidding. Dig I did, and I thoroughly messed up the area outside the closet of my home office/craft room/guest bedroom.
(Why yes, that IS my wedding dress, still hanging in the closet, untouched and not yet cleaned or sold!)
A long, long time ago, I put “make wedding shadow boxes” on my post-wedding to do list.
Well, better late than never I guess, because I finally got around to it!
Earlier this summer I had purchased some cheap shadow box frames, which I had a location for on a specific wall, but nothing to put in them. It was the perfect opportunity to find some mementos from our wedding that I had stashed away last year.
So I dug through my old boxes of wedding stuff, and printed out some photos to make a collage for the shadow boxes. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find my husband’s dried boutonnière, but I’m sure it will turn up eventually. I distinctly remember hiding it in some kind of little box or something, somewhere “safe” where it wouldn’t get damaged in our cross country move, but I guess it was such a good hiding place that now I can’t remember where I put it!
Want to see the finished (but not yet hung) shadow boxes? 
(Tip: After you figure out how you want to display your shadow box items, take a photo of the layout before you glue/tape everything into place. It makes a good reference, and is a lot easier than trying to remember the exact layout you liked after picking things up to apply the glue and tape.)
Well really, it’s 13 months later, since I checked in last month with our one year anniversary update!
But, now that our first wedding anniversary has come and gone, I’ve started thinking again about what to do with some of our leftover wedding items.
I still haven’t gotten around to selling or giving away a few extra decor items and still haven’t cleaned any of my wedding event dresses yet. Partly because of laziness, partly because I hate getting rid of stuff, and partly because I ran out of time to take care of these things before our big move to the East Coast, and they’re still packed away.
But recently I did dig out my rehearsal dinner dress from BCBG, because I wanted to try to dye it so I can re-wear it, instead of selling it to someone. I knew that if it was a color other than white, I would have a lot more use for it, and since I really liked the silk floral applique detailing, I figured it was worth a shot.
Here’s a look at my rehearsal dress, so you get an idea of what I’m talking about (the purple sash is not attached):
{From our wedding ceremony rehearsal}
And a close up view of the fabric:
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Well hello there hive!
Remember me?
{Photo by Shoot Me Now Photography}
No? Well, I was that bee who got married last June and wrote about how to pee in your wedding dress without needing help and whose fiance designed LED luminary escort cards and built a 6 foot tall cupcake tower. Or if you’re curious for a quick glimpse of what our wedding was all about, check out my two details recaps here and here, or my wiki.
Well, the time has finally come.
Time to say goodbye to the hive. Well, not really goodbye, since I’m sure I’ll pop back in every once in a while. But my time as a regular blogger on this site has sadly drawn to an end.
{I thought it only appropriate to leave you with a photo of me with a rum and COLA in my hand, by Shoot Me Now Photography}
To all of the readers, I want to thank you for everything. For laughing with me over my peeing in a wedding dress illustrations. For coming to my rescue with suggestions when we were lied to by a vendor. For writing nice things about Mr. Cola’s hard work on our luminary escort cards, giving him a little feel of the wonderful community that is Weddingbee. For making me feel better about my disappointing post wedding chop.
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Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
There are only a few things left to do to wrap up everything from our wedding.
At some point we need to figure out how we’ll be displaying our wishing stones from our guestbook in our house. I also plan to make a shadow box display with some photos, our invitations, some dried flowers from my bouquet, Mr. Cola’s boutonniere, and our LED luminary escort cards. And sooner or later we’ll need to order an album for ourselves.
But one of the big wrap up items has already been taken care of: parent albums!
We gifted these to both sets of our parents for Christmas, and they really enjoyed them. Just like Mrs. Cheeseburger, we (I) designed them through Adorama, and while the results were very nice for a gift, I’m not sure we’ll use them for our own album.
Using the Adorama design interface was quite easy.
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I’m betting a lot of brides have looked at their wedding photos, and wished that something had been different in a few shots. Maybe a person was missing, or something was just off a bit. But in this day and age, where our photographers can manipulate just about anything with Photoshop, some of these “photo regrets” can be fixed. Mrs. Nachos even did a great tutorial on how she edited out the people in the background of her trash the dress photos, here.
Now, you may say that this isn’t right, it’s not showcasing your wedding day accurately if changes are made with Photoshop. Which is true (although I think the same could technically be said for standard edits, like adjusting the lighting). But I still thought it would be fun to have a try at manipulating some of our photos (don’t worry, we have full rights) while I watched trashy TV reruns.
Most of these likely won’t make it into our album, but I’m kind of glad I did them anyway! I think this exercise has helped a little with coming to terms with some of the things missing from our photos, like not having a photo of Mr. Cola with my immediate family. It was a bit therapeutic to be able to fix on my computer what I couldn’t fix in real life!
Additionally, I’m sort of picky person, so being able to tweak small things in photos that only I notice has been great. It’s one of the main reasons I wanted us to book a photographer who would give us the rights to our photos. And who knows, your photographer might even be fixing these little nit-picky things without you ever knowing it! Plus, I know lots of photogs do offer additional touch up services, if you too are bothered by little things out of place.
Take for example, I was hot and thirsty after our ceremony, but had to take family pictures right away. In this picture with my sister, my lipstick is starting to come off.
But with a little editing, I’ve put my lipstick back on.
There was also a stray strand of my bangs blowing up in the breeze in this photo that was bugging me.
But with a couple minutes in Photoshop, poof, it’s gone!
Or there were the signs in the hall behind me in this photo that were detracting from the photograph, so away they went.
Even just cropping can do wonders to a photograph! Our first kiss was an important moment for us, but I wanted something a little closer, without our second photographer’s hand and the portable speaker in the picture.
With some cropping and editing out the speaker, we now have this great photo.
I was also bothered by the writing on our photographer’s bag that I was laying on in this photo. It was just distracting next to my shoulder, and you know how it is when you notice something out of place, and then that’s all you can concentrate on when you see the photo!
But with a couple of clicks of the healing brush, it was gone.
So, those were some examples of quick fixes to nit-picky photo regrets. But what about if there was a small detail you wished you’d had, but didn’t?
One of the details we didn’t end up having was Mr. Cola wearing adorable argyle socks. I’m so in love with the photos of guys with their socks all over the blogs, but we compromised, and he agreed to do some of the equally adorable jumping photos with his groomsmen instead.
But with some editing work, I can still dream about this ’what if’ of argyle socks….
I know, I know, that’s pretty dang silly!
And I didn’t even do a very good job of adding the socks, because I didn’t want to spend too much time on a picture that I’ll never actually use. But it’s a good example of the possibilities with Photoshop that could be used on wedding photos these days.
The main thing I really wanted to try to tackle was something I mentioned at the beginning of this post, to try to get a photo of Mr. Cola with my immediate family, since we didn’t take one on our wedding day. However, once you get past small touch ups and decor mock ups, my Photoshop skills are just not that strong.
I tried cutting Mr. Cola out of one picture, and sticking him into the photo with my parents, but the results were laughable. Then I remembered we did have a big group photo with all of my mom’s family that I might be able to do something with.
So I cut us out of that photo, and attempted to insert us into another photo with a prettier background. Again, not good results. It looked just like what it was, an obviously a poor Photoshop job, and reminded me of that one Seinfeld episode where George tries to get taken out of his boss’s beach picture, but ends up getting his boss added back in, in cartoon form.
See? Not cartoons, but obviously we don’t belong in this picture, and I was too tired of messing with it to get it any better.
So my next attempt was just to use the big group photo we were already in, and modify the existing background to remove the other people in the original photo. This actually worked a lot better, although it’s still nowhere near perfect.
What happened with my family picture, I found to be true for all photos where I tried to add something that wasn’t there originally. It just didn’t work very well, and I really don’t have the skills to pull it off. Which is why I haven’t attempted to add my SIL or my sister’s long-time boyfriend to the pictures that they’re missing from. It’s just a lot easier to take objects or people out of photos than to add them.
Like in this photo from our rehearsal, it was quite easy to simply remove the distracting members of our wedding party, so I could have a cute picture with just my DOC and me.
(Two above photos are personal photos)
Anyway, there’s a little look at some of the fun I’ve been having recently with Photoshop! I think it’s really such a fun program, and there are so many possibilities for tweaking your wedding photos that it’s worth a try if you have the time, photo rights and skills!
Are you a Photoshop fan? If so, do you plan on using it on any of your wedding photos if you find something amiss?
(Unless otherwise noted, all photos in this post were taken by Shoot Me Now Photography, and edited by yours truly)
A little over a year ago (yikes, I’m such an old bee now!) I wrote a blog post about how much I love to mock things up in Photoshop or Illustrator. I’ve never been very good at just imagining or hand sketching things, but I like having a clearly laid out vision before I bring a project to life. It really saves on the cost of materials for projects too, since there isn’t as much need to experiment.
I also said in that old blog post that it would be fun to come back after my wedding to compare my early Photoshop mocked up inspirations with the final result. So let’s take a look back at a few of the many, many mock ups I created early in my wedding planning stages!
Invitations
I’d initially had another design for our invites, but it was too complicated and was more DIY time than we could handle. So, I mocked up a scaled down version of our invitation suite.
I thought I’d do a little recap on how our wedding registries worked out, since we had two “controversial” registries (in quotes because I really don’t feel like these are very controversial these days, although I’m sure others feel differently).
**First off, I would like to note that I know registries can sometimes be a heated topic, and I’m not writing this to start a debate. I just wanted to share what happened with our registries, and what worked for us may not be what will work for you. I’m well aware that you are never supposed to ask for gifts for your wedding. However, the fact remains that some guests like to give gifts, and like to know what the couple would like to receive, so I’m in the pro-registry camp. I’ve always used registries for weddings I’ve attended, and I enjoy knowing I’m gifting something the couple will actually use.**
Our first registry was with Amazon.com.
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Picking my favorite post I’ve even written is a tough job. I’ve loved writing for the ‘Bee, but generally speaking, I don’t think my strength in my contribution to this site has been in the emotional arena. Nope, my pride and joy has been writing tutorials on our many DIY projects that we incorporated into our wedding. What can I say, I come from a more journalistic writing background, relaying a “here’s what happened and how” is just what comes more naturally to me.
And one of my favorite projects that I wrote about was our 6+ foot tall cupcake tower. This was by far our biggest wedding project, and a really special one to me, because Mr. Cola and I worked hand in hand to complete it together. With my vision, his engineering and construction skills, and a lot of sweat, sanding and painting, we created one of the highlights of our wedding, together.
It’s not just the fact that this display for our wedding dessert blew our guests away, and was a huge conversation piece all night long that makes this a special project to me. No, it was really all about how we joined forces and came together to create something great with our own two hands. We’ve collaborated on many things in the past, deciding where to move, making budgets, and many life choices. But this was really our first opportunity to create something tangible together, working side by side, giving and taking, and just making it work.
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I thought I’d share some funny stories from my childhood. These aren’t that big of secrets if you knew me when I was in elementary school, but they’re not things I go around telling people these days because they’re a little embarrassing! I was scarred for life from some very distinct times in my life, but I guess we all are to some extent, right?
I Experienced Several Hair Traumas
1) When I was 4 years old I thought it would be a good idea to cut my own hair. I’m not sure my exact train of thought, but I do remember sitting at my little desk in my room, looking at my little round-tipped red scissors and then it just happened. That’s really all I remember, but apparently I either knew I shouldn’t have done it, or looked in the mirror and knew I did a bad job, because I put on my jacket with my hood on right after, and my dad and I went to go pick up my mom from her work. I had to use the bathroom, so my mom took me, and when she took off my coat and hood, she discovered my handiwork. Some of my hair was still below my shoulders and normal length and some of it…well, some of it was about a half inch long. Needless to say, my parents were not happy with my DIY look!
(Luckily my hair had grown out by kindergarten, as you can see in the above picture from my birthday party when I was 6, I’m the one the red arrow is pointing to. And yes, I totally took a picture of a picture from a scrapbook page that an old friend of mine framed for me!)
How I found Weddingbee:
Well, I got engaged on March 5th, 2009, on vacation in Mexico. We got home from vacation on March 9th…and it wasn’t more than a week or two later that I discovered Weddingbee!
(Personal photo from our Mexico trip, little did I know, I’d be engaged 2 days after this photo was taken!)
I already knew about the other big wedding website out there, and had tentatively looked at the prices of a couple local venues (hey, I knew the ring had already been purchased, just wasn’t 100% sure when I would receive it!), but it was through a Google search while looking for wedding inspiration that I found Weddingbee. And I never looked back—it just felt like home!
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Back in high school, weddings and getting married were the farthest thing from my mind. Honestly, I didn’t really think I’d ever get married, and I knew for a fact that I wouldn’t be with my senior-year boyfriend forever.
In high school I always wanted a very independent life for myself. I wanted a career. Maybe a husband, someday, in the far, far away land of my 30s. Part of this I think has to do with the fact that I didn’t have a traditional upbringing. My dad was a stay at home dad for most of my childhood, until I started 9th grade, and my mom was the breadwinner in our family. So, I had a strong female role model that showed me it was OK to prioritize work over family, marriage and children (not that we weren’t a priority for my mom, but my family situation laid the groundwork for this in my head).
Plus there was the fact that a lot of guys I dated ended up being just my friends. Perhaps this is also related to my dad being around to raise me—believe it or not, I was actually a tomboy at one point, until I went to kindergarten and saw all the pink and purple clothes and cute hairdos I was missing out on!
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The Sunday morning after our wedding, we woke up early-ish. But after staying up until about 3:30 a.m. the night before for our after party, we weren’t moving too quickly. I had a Starbucks Double Shot and some leftover cupcakes for breakfast, and typed up a short morning-after blog post on my phone, before I was ready to take a shower, get dressed, and start cleaning up our messy hotel suite.
By around 10:30 a.m. we’d gotten both of our cars loaded with everything from the suite, and I headed up to my grandfather’s house a couple miles away to help with setting up tables, while Mr. Cola checked us out of the hotel and went to Safeway for the luncheon food trays, ice, and orange juice for mimosas.
Here’s a look at my grandfather’s house all set up for the luncheon. We borrowed some extra tables and chairs from neighbors, bought linen-like disposable tablecloths (the same kind we used for our rehearsal-dinner tables), and reused the small reception centerpieces and bridesmaids purse bouquets to decorate the tables for the lunch. Plus, my mom had bought brightly colored disposable plates and napkins on sale for about 80% off, so big win on cheap decor for our Sunday event!
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