Mrs. Lamb, NorfolkAge and Occupation: 25, Homeland Security ConsultantFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Graduate StudentEngagement Date: January 2009Wedding Date: January 2010Venue: Trinity Presbyterian Church/Harrison Opera HouseAbout Me: I’m a Homeland Security Consultant with a tendency towards pulling office pranks, taking lunch breaks, and drinking Wawa shakes. I’m also an English major with a serious obsession with alliteration and rhymes. While I’m not keeping America safe, I’m training for half marathons and the Escape from Alcatraz swim. Or moving for the third time this year. Or baking. Or wedding crafting. Or crying about wedding planning. All the while, I’m getting myself into Lucille Ball-esque scrapes and making Jim Carey-esque faces. Our big fat Czech/Baptist/Jewish/Italian wedding is a combination of vintage eclectic, DIY, and little spoonful of sugar from our Event Coordinator. It’s going to be a Norfolk flavored wedding with the verve of an only-daughter-blow-out bash!
Getting married on a holiday weekend is pretty fun. It makes anniversaries easy to remember and celebrate as well. That is, they’re easy until you realized that you just depleted all your gift ideas at Christmas and have to rack your brains to figure out an anniversary gift, too.
We celebrated a little early by going to Revolution for a special 3 course prix fixe menu. If you’re in the triangle and celebrating something special, Revolution should be at the top of your list to try. The lamb shank I ordered was the size of my head. The waiters started calling me Pebbles. Awesome!
From the Lamma-ramma-ding-dong home to yours, Happy New Year! And to my woolly counterpart, happy anniversary!
Mrs. Lamb, NorfolkAge and Occupation: 25, Homeland Security ConsultantFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Graduate StudentEngagement Date: January 2009Wedding Date: January 2010Venue: Trinity Presbyterian Church/Harrison Opera HouseAbout Me: I’m a Homeland Security Consultant with a tendency towards pulling office pranks, taking lunch breaks, and drinking Wawa shakes. I’m also an English major with a serious obsession with alliteration and rhymes. While I’m not keeping America safe, I’m training for half marathons and the Escape from Alcatraz swim. Or moving for the third time this year. Or baking. Or wedding crafting. Or crying about wedding planning. All the while, I’m getting myself into Lucille Ball-esque scrapes and making Jim Carey-esque faces. Our big fat Czech/Baptist/Jewish/Italian wedding is a combination of vintage eclectic, DIY, and little spoonful of sugar from our Event Coordinator. It’s going to be a Norfolk flavored wedding with the verve of an only-daughter-blow-out bash!
I really loved blogging on Weddingbee. I really loved some of my DIY projects. I really loved the overwhelming lovey feeling on our wedding day. But I really hated wedding planning. The reality of wedding planning was a huge disappointment to me. I think the post I’m sharing today resonated with a lot of you because even if you don’t hate the whole process, there are parts that are just plain hard. If there’s one thing I could impart to you, it’s that there is hope and joy in the end. I had a lovely wedding and started our family despite the planning headache. This too shall pass.
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I’ve been thinking about what I wanted to say to you all when I got to the “other side”. For some reason, during the planning process, I couldn’t bring myself to write it because I didn’t want to disappoint certain people or to come across as ungrateful. I talked it over with some fellow bees. I mulled it over while reliving some wedding memories as we reminisced on our belated honeymoon (we just got back and it was delightful - more later). And then I read this today as I caught up at Meg’s blog. Now is the time to let a few things hang out and to keep it real.
You’ve seen the joy on my face that is captured by photographs on my wedding day. I will always treasure that day in our lives. Not captured were the many frowns, the foot stomping and the flat out meltdowns (my Dad calls it O.B.E - overcome by events) that led up to that day. Here, I blogged about details, crafting, funnies, etc. because the blog world was my refuge from what I found to be an all together stressful and frustrating planning process. Read more…
Mrs. Lamb, NorfolkAge and Occupation: 25, Homeland Security ConsultantFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Graduate StudentEngagement Date: January 2009Wedding Date: January 2010Venue: Trinity Presbyterian Church/Harrison Opera HouseAbout Me: I’m a Homeland Security Consultant with a tendency towards pulling office pranks, taking lunch breaks, and drinking Wawa shakes. I’m also an English major with a serious obsession with alliteration and rhymes. While I’m not keeping America safe, I’m training for half marathons and the Escape from Alcatraz swim. Or moving for the third time this year. Or baking. Or wedding crafting. Or crying about wedding planning. All the while, I’m getting myself into Lucille Ball-esque scrapes and making Jim Carey-esque faces. Our big fat Czech/Baptist/Jewish/Italian wedding is a combination of vintage eclectic, DIY, and little spoonful of sugar from our Event Coordinator. It’s going to be a Norfolk flavored wedding with the verve of an only-daughter-blow-out bash!
You may have taken summer vacation to Williamsburg and been forced to appreciate colonial history, but the area has a ton to offer in the way of romance and activity for a honeymoon close to home. Here are my personal suggestions if you’re headed to the area for your honeymoon (or anniversary trip, or even babymoon trip?).
Stay downtown and enjoy the water views! Hop on the water taxi to explore downtown Portsmouth, or hop on the highway to enjoy any of the 7 cities in the area. We stayed there on our wedding night and received excellent service. Read more…
Mrs. Lamb, NorfolkAge and Occupation: 25, Homeland Security ConsultantFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Graduate StudentEngagement Date: January 2009Wedding Date: January 2010Venue: Trinity Presbyterian Church/Harrison Opera HouseAbout Me: I’m a Homeland Security Consultant with a tendency towards pulling office pranks, taking lunch breaks, and drinking Wawa shakes. I’m also an English major with a serious obsession with alliteration and rhymes. While I’m not keeping America safe, I’m training for half marathons and the Escape from Alcatraz swim. Or moving for the third time this year. Or baking. Or wedding crafting. Or crying about wedding planning. All the while, I’m getting myself into Lucille Ball-esque scrapes and making Jim Carey-esque faces. Our big fat Czech/Baptist/Jewish/Italian wedding is a combination of vintage eclectic, DIY, and little spoonful of sugar from our Event Coordinator. It’s going to be a Norfolk flavored wedding with the verve of an only-daughter-blow-out bash!
I really enjoy when bloggers I follow give some insight as to what their life is like outside of their blog. I like the snippets of what you eat, favorite movies, etc. I also feel like I owe you a juicy secret. Not some secret like, “I’m addicted to Mountain Dew.” (I’m not anyways, but I consider it to be a bad secret.) I’m talking about the juicy kind of secret that makes you think, “Wow, she covered that neuroses pretty well!”
My secret is that I have an obsession with toenails. It’s an unhealthy obsession with unhealthy toenail hygiene. I trim my toenails to the quick once a week and clean them out religiously. I NEVER cut the cuticles on my toe nails. I will cut them anywhere in our house that is convenient to me, much to the chagrin of Lambster who constantly yaps at me to keep track of the clippings. I wish that the nail obsession stopped at my own two feet. Read more…
Mrs. Lamb, NorfolkAge and Occupation: 25, Homeland Security ConsultantFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Graduate StudentEngagement Date: January 2009Wedding Date: January 2010Venue: Trinity Presbyterian Church/Harrison Opera HouseAbout Me: I’m a Homeland Security Consultant with a tendency towards pulling office pranks, taking lunch breaks, and drinking Wawa shakes. I’m also an English major with a serious obsession with alliteration and rhymes. While I’m not keeping America safe, I’m training for half marathons and the Escape from Alcatraz swim. Or moving for the third time this year. Or baking. Or wedding crafting. Or crying about wedding planning. All the while, I’m getting myself into Lucille Ball-esque scrapes and making Jim Carey-esque faces. Our big fat Czech/Baptist/Jewish/Italian wedding is a combination of vintage eclectic, DIY, and little spoonful of sugar from our Event Coordinator. It’s going to be a Norfolk flavored wedding with the verve of an only-daughter-blow-out bash!
Our collection of heritage photos meant the world to me at our wedding. While I had physical copies of all the photos, I made sure that I scanned them and eventually ordered prints for myself. I had a vision for how to display them, so I began collecting frames as I saw them on sale at Michaels, Home Goods, and Target.
I love how each picture dates the couple and expressions. Let’s meet the family:
Mrs. Lamb, NorfolkAge and Occupation: 25, Homeland Security ConsultantFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Graduate StudentEngagement Date: January 2009Wedding Date: January 2010Venue: Trinity Presbyterian Church/Harrison Opera HouseAbout Me: I’m a Homeland Security Consultant with a tendency towards pulling office pranks, taking lunch breaks, and drinking Wawa shakes. I’m also an English major with a serious obsession with alliteration and rhymes. While I’m not keeping America safe, I’m training for half marathons and the Escape from Alcatraz swim. Or moving for the third time this year. Or baking. Or wedding crafting. Or crying about wedding planning. All the while, I’m getting myself into Lucille Ball-esque scrapes and making Jim Carey-esque faces. Our big fat Czech/Baptist/Jewish/Italian wedding is a combination of vintage eclectic, DIY, and little spoonful of sugar from our Event Coordinator. It’s going to be a Norfolk flavored wedding with the verve of an only-daughter-blow-out bash!
This is the story of how we ended up with 3 wedding albums. It all started by wanting to save money.
While many albums are absolutely gorgeous (and drool worthy, believe me, I’ve drooled), we weren’t sold on the idea of spending $1000+ for our wedding album. I searched a lot of sites, I looked at Adorama based on recommendations, and I just wasn’t feeling anything. I didn’t want to start from scratch and design pages in InDesign. I didn’t care about the book laying flat. Long story short, I just about gave up on getting an album. Read more…
Mrs. Lamb, NorfolkAge and Occupation: 25, Homeland Security ConsultantFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Graduate StudentEngagement Date: January 2009Wedding Date: January 2010Venue: Trinity Presbyterian Church/Harrison Opera HouseAbout Me: I’m a Homeland Security Consultant with a tendency towards pulling office pranks, taking lunch breaks, and drinking Wawa shakes. I’m also an English major with a serious obsession with alliteration and rhymes. While I’m not keeping America safe, I’m training for half marathons and the Escape from Alcatraz swim. Or moving for the third time this year. Or baking. Or wedding crafting. Or crying about wedding planning. All the while, I’m getting myself into Lucille Ball-esque scrapes and making Jim Carey-esque faces. Our big fat Czech/Baptist/Jewish/Italian wedding is a combination of vintage eclectic, DIY, and little spoonful of sugar from our Event Coordinator. It’s going to be a Norfolk flavored wedding with the verve of an only-daughter-blow-out bash!
Some observant readers noticed my haircut back when I said farewell, so today I came back to give you the skinny on my new ‘do. For this go around, I actually blow dried it with a round brush and everything. Then I put on some makeup.
Mrs. Lamb, NorfolkAge and Occupation: 25, Homeland Security ConsultantFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Graduate StudentEngagement Date: January 2009Wedding Date: January 2010Venue: Trinity Presbyterian Church/Harrison Opera HouseAbout Me: I’m a Homeland Security Consultant with a tendency towards pulling office pranks, taking lunch breaks, and drinking Wawa shakes. I’m also an English major with a serious obsession with alliteration and rhymes. While I’m not keeping America safe, I’m training for half marathons and the Escape from Alcatraz swim. Or moving for the third time this year. Or baking. Or wedding crafting. Or crying about wedding planning. All the while, I’m getting myself into Lucille Ball-esque scrapes and making Jim Carey-esque faces. Our big fat Czech/Baptist/Jewish/Italian wedding is a combination of vintage eclectic, DIY, and little spoonful of sugar from our Event Coordinator. It’s going to be a Norfolk flavored wedding with the verve of an only-daughter-blow-out bash!
In the spirit of a yichud, Lamma-ramma-ding-dong and I treasured our first few minutes as a married couple in the stairwell leading up to the balcony as we waited for our guests to line the church steps with birdseed in hand.
“I feel like I’m watching a movie. It’s an out of body experience,” I told him.
Mrs. Lamb, NorfolkAge and Occupation: 25, Homeland Security ConsultantFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Graduate StudentEngagement Date: January 2009Wedding Date: January 2010Venue: Trinity Presbyterian Church/Harrison Opera HouseAbout Me: I’m a Homeland Security Consultant with a tendency towards pulling office pranks, taking lunch breaks, and drinking Wawa shakes. I’m also an English major with a serious obsession with alliteration and rhymes. While I’m not keeping America safe, I’m training for half marathons and the Escape from Alcatraz swim. Or moving for the third time this year. Or baking. Or wedding crafting. Or crying about wedding planning. All the while, I’m getting myself into Lucille Ball-esque scrapes and making Jim Carey-esque faces. Our big fat Czech/Baptist/Jewish/Italian wedding is a combination of vintage eclectic, DIY, and little spoonful of sugar from our Event Coordinator. It’s going to be a Norfolk flavored wedding with the verve of an only-daughter-blow-out bash!
Only one thing stood between me and marriage… formal pictures. I knew they wouldn’t be fun and that my cheeks would hurt by the end. Worse than that, the pictures would forever document me looking like it was no fun and my cheeks hurt. I think it was Mary Poppins who said, “If you must.” The silver lining is that we ended up with the most complete family pictures in recent memory and everyone who needed to be on time for the ceremony was now on the premises.
(Note the brilliant blue sky and the deceivingly bright sun outside of our church.)
My cheeks recovered in a back hallway by laughing and smiling until they were numb.
Mrs. Lamb, NorfolkAge and Occupation: 25, Homeland Security ConsultantFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Graduate StudentEngagement Date: January 2009Wedding Date: January 2010Venue: Trinity Presbyterian Church/Harrison Opera HouseAbout Me: I’m a Homeland Security Consultant with a tendency towards pulling office pranks, taking lunch breaks, and drinking Wawa shakes. I’m also an English major with a serious obsession with alliteration and rhymes. While I’m not keeping America safe, I’m training for half marathons and the Escape from Alcatraz swim. Or moving for the third time this year. Or baking. Or wedding crafting. Or crying about wedding planning. All the while, I’m getting myself into Lucille Ball-esque scrapes and making Jim Carey-esque faces. Our big fat Czech/Baptist/Jewish/Italian wedding is a combination of vintage eclectic, DIY, and little spoonful of sugar from our Event Coordinator. It’s going to be a Norfolk flavored wedding with the verve of an only-daughter-blow-out bash!
Mrs. Lamb, NorfolkAge and Occupation: 25, Homeland Security ConsultantFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Graduate StudentEngagement Date: January 2009Wedding Date: January 2010Venue: Trinity Presbyterian Church/Harrison Opera HouseAbout Me: I’m a Homeland Security Consultant with a tendency towards pulling office pranks, taking lunch breaks, and drinking Wawa shakes. I’m also an English major with a serious obsession with alliteration and rhymes. While I’m not keeping America safe, I’m training for half marathons and the Escape from Alcatraz swim. Or moving for the third time this year. Or baking. Or wedding crafting. Or crying about wedding planning. All the while, I’m getting myself into Lucille Ball-esque scrapes and making Jim Carey-esque faces. Our big fat Czech/Baptist/Jewish/Italian wedding is a combination of vintage eclectic, DIY, and little spoonful of sugar from our Event Coordinator. It’s going to be a Norfolk flavored wedding with the verve of an only-daughter-blow-out bash!
I feel like I’ve come to the end of a TV series that I really liked at some point, but have gotten sick of and just want to find out the ending so that I can move on to a new show. If you feel the same way about the Lamb wedding, don’t worry - there are just three more installments. I want to tell you about the day chronologically as we prepared, anticipated and then celebrated. Let’s start the story in the morning.
I looked at the clock, looked through my Blackberry, looked at the clock, and then back to the phone again. Willing myself to lay in bed until at least 7:00 am, I watched the digital numbers change from 6:59, then smiled as I swung my legs over the side of the bed. I started the coffee maker and opened my laptop to log into Weddingbee. I read every comment I had received on my last Miss post. I also called Kinko’s and arranged with a friend to pick up our seating assignment chart. After checking off the last wedding “to-do” task, I turned my attention to the serious business of breakfast. A bagel baby soon emerged from my stomach when I downed two carbalicious bagels at Yorgo’s in the Ghent neighborhood (sesame with veggie cream cheese and chocolate chip with butter in case you want my recommendations).
The Lambaids and I rolled into my parents’ suite at the Marriott as our last minute hair/makeup savior, Liv Lethal, finished setting out her beautification tools. Read more…
Mrs. Lamb, NorfolkAge and Occupation: 25, Homeland Security ConsultantFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Graduate StudentEngagement Date: January 2009Wedding Date: January 2010Venue: Trinity Presbyterian Church/Harrison Opera HouseAbout Me: I’m a Homeland Security Consultant with a tendency towards pulling office pranks, taking lunch breaks, and drinking Wawa shakes. I’m also an English major with a serious obsession with alliteration and rhymes. While I’m not keeping America safe, I’m training for half marathons and the Escape from Alcatraz swim. Or moving for the third time this year. Or baking. Or wedding crafting. Or crying about wedding planning. All the while, I’m getting myself into Lucille Ball-esque scrapes and making Jim Carey-esque faces. Our big fat Czech/Baptist/Jewish/Italian wedding is a combination of vintage eclectic, DIY, and little spoonful of sugar from our Event Coordinator. It’s going to be a Norfolk flavored wedding with the verve of an only-daughter-blow-out bash!
After our engagement and a few frightening experiences in planning the wedding that left me in tears, I began to cling to the idea that our wedding needed a philosophy. From the pages of 2000 Dollar Wedding and A Practical Wedding, I borrowed aspects with which I identified and built my own philosophy. I would love to say that we had an amazingly transcendent family sit down where every one understood the importance of having a wedding philosophy and participated in building one. However, I was the lone crusader on the warpath of defining it. Others thought it was overkill, granola, heady, unnecessary, etc. From the perspective of being on the other side, having a wedding philosophy, even just one that I adhered to, was pivotal to keeping me sane and freeing me to truly enjoy our wedding.
When I got down/upset, it seemed like everything was out of budget, or every craft was failing, I thought of the most important thing about our wedding: It was the beginning of our marriage. In the grand scheme of starting a marriage, finding the perfect wrapping paper to line envelopes could be put into its proper category of “not that important, after all”. Stemming from this main philosophy, I focused on a few sub-principles that I thought would enhance the intimacy, ease the coordination, or decrease costs. For fun, I labeled these principles with a catch all phrase: High on Style, Low on Budget - Just how Mother Likes it. In the following paragraphs, I highlight a few of the principles and the application to our wedding planning.
Mrs. Lamb, NorfolkAge and Occupation: 25, Homeland Security ConsultantFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Graduate StudentEngagement Date: January 2009Wedding Date: January 2010Venue: Trinity Presbyterian Church/Harrison Opera HouseAbout Me: I’m a Homeland Security Consultant with a tendency towards pulling office pranks, taking lunch breaks, and drinking Wawa shakes. I’m also an English major with a serious obsession with alliteration and rhymes. While I’m not keeping America safe, I’m training for half marathons and the Escape from Alcatraz swim. Or moving for the third time this year. Or baking. Or wedding crafting. Or crying about wedding planning. All the while, I’m getting myself into Lucille Ball-esque scrapes and making Jim Carey-esque faces. Our big fat Czech/Baptist/Jewish/Italian wedding is a combination of vintage eclectic, DIY, and little spoonful of sugar from our Event Coordinator. It’s going to be a Norfolk flavored wedding with the verve of an only-daughter-blow-out bash!
Lighting seemed like one of those frou-frou unnecessary expenses to me, until Pavaune showed me pictures of the differences between unlit rooms and uplit rooms. Pavaune found Blue Steel through recommendations from some of our other vendors and handled all of the contract negotiations. My mom really loved the idea of a personalized gobo (seen during the father daughter dance in the picture below), so we ordered that and the amber uplighting seen in the dance picture below.
Mrs. Lamb, NorfolkAge and Occupation: 25, Homeland Security ConsultantFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Graduate StudentEngagement Date: January 2009Wedding Date: January 2010Venue: Trinity Presbyterian Church/Harrison Opera HouseAbout Me: I’m a Homeland Security Consultant with a tendency towards pulling office pranks, taking lunch breaks, and drinking Wawa shakes. I’m also an English major with a serious obsession with alliteration and rhymes. While I’m not keeping America safe, I’m training for half marathons and the Escape from Alcatraz swim. Or moving for the third time this year. Or baking. Or wedding crafting. Or crying about wedding planning. All the while, I’m getting myself into Lucille Ball-esque scrapes and making Jim Carey-esque faces. Our big fat Czech/Baptist/Jewish/Italian wedding is a combination of vintage eclectic, DIY, and little spoonful of sugar from our Event Coordinator. It’s going to be a Norfolk flavored wedding with the verve of an only-daughter-blow-out bash!
Having a wedding is sort of like an extended Christmas/birthday season. The gifts seem to just keep on coming! The only weird thing is that you sign up for the gifts you want and you can see what gets purchased and when. It reminds me of looking for our Christmas presents when my brother and I were little. One year, we found them hidden in our parents’ closet. Thrilling. I dislike most surprises because I find a lot of joy in being in the know, so the registry was super fun. That said, some of my favorite gifts were strays from the registry. Here a few of my favorite gifts:
Since I already inherited a KitchenAid from my grandmother, I was on the hunt for attachments that we could add to our registry and that I would be most likely to use.
Mrs. Lamb, NorfolkAge and Occupation: 25, Homeland Security ConsultantFiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Graduate StudentEngagement Date: January 2009Wedding Date: January 2010Venue: Trinity Presbyterian Church/Harrison Opera HouseAbout Me: I’m a Homeland Security Consultant with a tendency towards pulling office pranks, taking lunch breaks, and drinking Wawa shakes. I’m also an English major with a serious obsession with alliteration and rhymes. While I’m not keeping America safe, I’m training for half marathons and the Escape from Alcatraz swim. Or moving for the third time this year. Or baking. Or wedding crafting. Or crying about wedding planning. All the while, I’m getting myself into Lucille Ball-esque scrapes and making Jim Carey-esque faces. Our big fat Czech/Baptist/Jewish/Italian wedding is a combination of vintage eclectic, DIY, and little spoonful of sugar from our Event Coordinator. It’s going to be a Norfolk flavored wedding with the verve of an only-daughter-blow-out bash!
We hired an event designer/wedding planner for oru wedding. I feel like I just confessed to a horrible crime. I’m a bee! I DIY! I believe in the philosophy of a practical wedding! And I hired a wedding coordinator. The. FULL. package. Not that I feel like I should defend that decision, but I wanted to explain the process of making the decision and working with a coordinator.
I have always loved weddings and originally thought I would have a huge role in planning my wedding. My parents liked the idea of day-of coordinating and it seemed to be a good match at first. However, upon further consideration, I evaluated several factors:
Up until 5 months before the wedding, I was planning an out of town wedding (vendor complications resulted in our ultimate decision to wed in Norfolk). I couldn’t make it to all the vendor appointments out-of-state and I wanted a representative who could act as my proxy.
As a people pleaser, I wanted someone in my corner. My bridesmaids were wonderful and affirming, but since they were all from out of town, they weren’t able to be present all of the time when I needed back up.
Spring Wedding Favors
