Handcrafted Hitching Post

Post-Wedding Project: Displaying Our Guestbook Wishing Stones

2011-08-25T11:21:00.000-07:00

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!)

I'm still holding onto a LOT of our wedding stuff, over a year later. Paper lanterns, photobooth props, framed signage, more leftover paper than I know what to do with, and these:

The wishing stones our guests signed at our wedding!

Ages ago, I wrote a post about our wishing stone guestbook. Basically, we were looking for something fun and non-traditional for our guestbook, and so we asked our guests to sign a wishing stone, and leave us with their "words of wit, wisdom, or well wishes."

It was a big hit, and everyone enjoyed leaving us a little message at our guestbook table at our wedding.

(Above four photos by Shoot Me Now Photography)

And now that I found our signed wishing stones again, I decided to finally follow through with my plans for displaying them in our home.

I found this old vase in storage that would be perfect:

(Please excuse the mess on my craft table. It's a big improvement over the days when I'd cover our coffee table with craft supplies though--these days I have my own room I can make messes in, and it doesn't get in Mr. Cola's way!)

I went through all of our wishing stones, and separated out the, uh, more interesting stones.

Then I started layering the "good" stones around the outside of my vase, saving the interesting stones for filler in the center of the vase, where they wouldn't be visible.

I filled the vase almost all the way to the top this way. Here you can see some of the sweet messages people left us, which I made sure were facing out so we could read them through the glass.

Next, I carefully fished out the top few center stones that were holding the rocks up against the sides of the vase, and quickly inserted some decorative dried greenery to fill the space.

I spread out the stems, and then tucked a few more rocks in the top to hold everything in place, and I was done. One guestbook-displaying home accent all ready to go!

Now it's living in the corner of our entry foyer in our house. Another little reminder of our wedding day that makes me smile every time I walk up or down our stairs!

Will you be having a more traditional or non-traditional guestbook? And do you have plans to display your guestbook after your wedding?

Weddingbee: Snapshot Sundays

2011-08-21T15:20:00.000-07:00

Mr. and Mrs. Cola

City: Woodside, CA (San Francisco Bay area)
Venue: The Mountain Terrace
Wedding Date: June 12, 2010
Bridal Gown Designer: Sophia Tolli "Alexandria" in Spun Gold

Florist: All arrangements were done my my mother, aunt and I
Photographer: Shoot Me Now Photography, Pacifica, CA
Music: Ceremony acoustic guitar played by a friend, reception iPod/laptop music monitored by friends
Transportation: Peninsula Tour (Guest Charter Bus), Limo Bee (Bride and Groom's Limo)
Stationery: All paper products purchased from LCI Paper and Paper and More (DIY)
Cupcakes: Sibby's Cupcakery, San Mateo, CA
Catering: Venue catered (The Mountain Terrace)
Coordination: Sara Gorski
Hair and Makeup: Aimee Lam, San Francisco Bay area
Bridesmaids’ Dresses: Calvin Klein, from Nordstrom
Spouse’s attire: Charcoal grey suit, from Sears
Menswear: Charcoal grey suits, from Sears
Honeymoon: Kauai Love Shack, Kauai (private house rental) and Sheraton Princess Kaiulani, Ohau Favors: Choice of cookies from the San Francisco Cookie Company, white cheddar popcorn from Thatcher’s Gourmet Popcorn, or Ghiradelli Chocolate Squares

Color Scheme and Theme: Alfresco Romance Under the Redwoods, featuring lavender, sage, butter cream and chocolate.

{All photos by Shoot Me Now Photography}

Thanks for letting me share some of my favorite wedding photos with you one more time! It was so nice to have an excuse to look through them again, since a little over a year after our wedding, I definitely don't spend hours drooling over our photos like I did right after we got them back from our photographer. ;)

I had so much fun looking back at the details from our wedding, I think I'm finally inspired now to do something with all of our leftover paper from making our invitations. I think I just realized how much I miss crafting with paper! To check out some more of my DIY wedding paper projects, or any additional details from our wedding, feel free to check out my Weddingbee Wiki and all of my archives, or you can find me these days over here.

And you can see the rest of the Snapshot Sundays posts here.

Shadow Boxes: A Little Snapshot of Our Wedding

2011-07-21T15:53:00.000-07:00

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 boutineer, 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.)

And how about some close ups?

Below shows one of my "something old" items, a little bear I gave my grandma when I was 3 years old, that she carried around with her in her purse for 20 years, until my grandpa gave it back to me after she passed away. Also, one of my Cola rehearsal bouquet flowers, as a nod to my time writing here. And in the far bottom right, some fabric from the napkin rings I made.

A close up of our laser-cut invitations. So much work, with all the cutting, folding (I even hand made the pocketfolds!), and gluing, but I'm still so proud of them.

I had to include a photo of our six foot tall cupcake tower that my husband and I built together, since that was another one of my favorite wedding projects. And also one of the rocks from our "wishing stone" guestbook, signed by my parents. My mom even drew a little flower on it, just like from our invitations.

And now for a closer look at the second shadow box.

Our programs, and a few leftover flowers that I had after I turned the cuffs from my DIY wedding shoes into a clutch.

One of the magnets from our save the dates, and of course, a photo of our first kiss as husband and wife!

And finally, the belly band from our invitations, and our LED luminary escort cards, another favorite wedding project of mine (partly because my husband did most of the work, haha!)

It's just too bad I can't leave the batteries turned on all the time, to glow like they did at our wedding.

(Above photo, and photos used in the shadow boxes by Shoot Me Now Photography)

I can't wait to get some Command picture hanging hooks so I can put these little snapshots of our wedding up in our hallway. Can you believe that these will be the first wedding photos we'll have put up on our walls, over a year later!

Will you be saving any mementos from your wedding, to showcase them later? And how long did it take you after getting married to hang or display your wedding photos?

My Rehearsal Dinner Dress: Revamped One Year Later!

2011-07-12T05:48:00.000-07:00

Alright, 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:

{From this post about making my Weddingbee Moniker-Inspired Rehearsal Bouquet}

The problem was, the top floral layer of the dress is 100% silk and the under layer is 100% polyester. Googling high and low, time and time again I read that there wasn't a fabric dye that would work on both silk and polyester.

I briefly considered taking apart the seams to separate the layers of the dress, dying them separately, then sewing them back together, but that just seemed like too much work.

I kept Googling, reading fabric dying forums, until I found a mention of what is called iDye (for natural fabrics like silk) and iDye Poly (for synthetic fabrics like polyester), which can be mixed together to dye poly-blend fabrics). So I ordered some dye, after polling friends on what color I should pick, and crossed my fingers that it would work on my two layer dress too.

Picking the dye color wasn't easy, since they have so many natural dye colors to choose from, but I was inspired by a bright yellow dress that at Cat Deeley wore a few weeks ago on So You Think You Can Dance. Plus, I decided it was a safer bet, since I had to use both a natural dye and a polyester dye, and the polyester colors were a bit more limited. So I went with yellow, hoping it would turn out something like this:

{Photo of my TV playing So You Think You Can Dance}

I bet you're all dyeing (ha ha) to see how the process worked, right? :)

Well, I pretty much just followed the instructions on the packaging for dying a poly/natural blend fabric, but I took pictures along the way to properly demonstrate!

First, fill a metal pot or bowl with just enough water for your dress to move freely, and make sure the fabric gets completely wet all the way through (to make sure the dye soaks in evenly).

Then, take the dress out, place your bowl on the stove and turn it on to high. Add both packets of dye and the color intensifier that comes with the poly dye to the water and stir until it's completely dissolved.

I stirred for about 5 minutes as the water was heating up, but there were still a couple of dark flakes of dye that wouldn't dissolve, so I fished them out with a spoon and dumped them on a paper towel (be sure to wash your spoon quickly afterward too).

Once your water is boiling and the dye is dissolved, reduce your heat to medium high and add either 1 cup of salt (for cotton blends) or 1/3rd cup of vinegar for silk. Make sure you move the fabric to the side so you're not pouring directly on it, and then stir, stir, stir!

It says it takes anywhere from a half hour to an hour for the dye to work, and for best results, stir frequently. I'd already poured myself a glass of wine before I put my dress in the dye, and had a bar stool nearby to sit on, so I just set my timer for a half hour, had a glass of wine, and didn't stop stirring the whole time.

But with still a few minutes on the timer, I held up my dress for a look, and I thought it was about dark enough.

The instructions said to gradually cool the fabric, so with 8 minutes left, I removed the bowl from the heat and continued to stir it constantly until the timer went off.

Then I ran warm water over the dress, slowly turning the temperature cooler and cooler until it was about room temperature.

And after hand washing it with some Woolite, and all of the dye was rinsed out, I squeeze/roll dried it as best I could between two towels and hung it in my bathroom to hang dry.

The next day my dress was dry and a little lighter in color.

I can't tell you how happy I am that this ended up working! I was a bit nervous to potentially ruin this rather expensive BCBG dress, but as much as I LOVED it in white, I knew I'd never wear it again unless I dyed it. And now I can't wait for an excuse to put it to use!

But until then, I took a few photos of it on in my backyard, so you can get the full effect of how the color looks in natural light. With neutral accessories:

And with black accessories (my favorite, because it's bee colors!):

I'd also really love to pair the dress with some medium grey pumps and a grey belt, although I don't own a grey belt. But yellow + grey is an awesome color combo that I think would look great here too!

And while I'm at it, here are a couple of close up photos of the fabric.

LOVE!

However, if you're thinking of doing something similar, let me interject a couple of words of caution. First, my dress did shrink a little. Which I was sort of expecting, since it's supposed to be a dry clean only dress. But it wasn't a tight fitting dress to begin with, so I thought it would be alright, and it was. But just something to keep in mind if you're thinking about dying something yourself!

Secondly, you may have noticed that the bottom layer of the dress (the polyester layer) came out lighter than it looked like it would when I was boiling it in the dye bath. They say that it's a risk you run; that not all polyesters take the dye, or take it in different intensities, and there's really no way to know unless you try it. I actually really like the look of it on my dress, but it's also something to keep in mind if you're dying a poly-blend fabric. I didn't want the silk layer to end up too dark, since it looked like it was headed toward orange in the dye bath, so I took the dress out early. But if you're dying polyester, or a poly-blend, you might want to leave it in longer. I really don't know if the color of my silk layer would have stopped getting more intense at some point or not, and I wasn't willing to find out, but I probably would have let it go a bit longer if I'd been working with a blended fabric, to avoid a splotchy look. Just another thing to consider!

And finally, if you're planning on using the pot or bowl you used to boil your fabric in again, be prepared for a lot of scrubbing. I ended up using Goo-Gone to remove the last of the film on my bowl, and then put it through the dishwasher several times. And I threw away the old wooden spoon I'd used to stir the dye-bath--it was bright yellow, and I didn't plan on it being salvageable.

But other than that, everything went according to plan and turned out great. The hardest part really was just taking the plunge, and putting my dress in the bowl of dye!

Have you ever tried to dye fabric? And are you planning to revamp or reuse any of your dresses from your wedding-events?

(All pictures in this post are personal photos)

My Favorite Part About The First Year Of Marriage: Togetherness

2011-06-12T19:02:00.000-07:00

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 who's 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.

I know it's been a while since I blogged here, and there's a whole new group of brides reading now (congrats on your engagements, by the way!). But our one year anniversary is today, and so I thought I would drop by and give you all a little update on our first year of marriage.

First of all, married life is pretty awesome!

{Photo by Shoot Me Now Photography}

We've been seriously having a blast over the past year, and as much as I LOVED planning our wedding during our 15 month engagement, being married is about a thousand times better!

Now that we're not busy DIYing and crafting and planning 24/7, we have so much time for just us. And let me tell you guys, it's pretty refreshing. There actually is life after the wedding is over, and there is nothing better than spending time making plans for the rest of your lives together, and not just plans for a wedding day!

{Personal photo of us out enjoying life at a friend's party, with San Francisco in the background.}

So what plans have we been making for our future? Well, after we'd had a couple of months to recover from all the wedding festivities and our honeymoon, we sat down and took a hard look at our goals, and how soon we could achieve them. Namely, when could we afford to buy a house. And living in the San Francisco area, after crunching some numbers, well, it just wasn't going to happen any time soon. So together, we made a plan to change our lives for the better, financially speaking, and we set out to find somewhere more affordable to live.

We narrowed it down to either Denver, CO or Raleigh-Durham, NC for various reasons. And while this move pretty much consumed our lives for the last 9 months or so, it has been one of the most enjoyable times of my life. Working on this with my husband, to map out exactly what we wanted in a new city, scoping out said cities together, and working out the logistics of a huge move together was (and I almost hate to admit this, because I was crazy-in-love with all things weddings) way more enjoyable than planning our wedding mostly by myself, because Mr. Cola wasn't very interested.

It was the togetherness of it all that made me happy. And still does!

{Personal photo of us together in the Rocky Mountains, while scoping out Denver as a possible city to move to.}

And that's the lesson I've learned most from our first year of marriage: there's nothing better than being a united front and doing things together as husband and wife.

Sure, we do things independently like meeting up with friends, always have, always will. But when it comes to big life decisions (or even just what brands to get at the grocery store), I love making the decision together with my husband. Pre-marriage I always considered Mr. Cola in my decision making and planning, but now, now we get to do that together. Maybe it's the logical, planner in me (I think making lists is fun!), but hashing out pros and cons, having in-depth conversations and coming up with the best solution together has been one of the things I've enjoyed most about our first year together as a married couple.

Yep, we're partners in every sense of the word, and I'm loving it!

{Personal photos from our Florida vacation in March with my in-laws.}

And we really worked our partnership skills about two months ago when we made a cross country move to Raleigh, NC, to our new home. Four days in a car with our three cats and one gecko, driving 2,800 miles, while we crossed our fingers that our moving company would deliver all our belongings unharmed was pretty stressful. But we got through it in one piece, and we got through it together.

So now we're living on the other side of the country, and finally starting to get settled in and checking out our new state (a state I'd only been to twice before we moved to it!). But don't think we're going to just lie down and stop making plans now that we've completed this big change!

{Haha, get it? A picture by Shoot Me Now Photography of me lying down, when I just said I'm not going to lie down....yeah, I'm not great with the puns!}

Heck no, we're still making big plans, and hopefully by next spring we'll be purchasing our first house together, after we learn the area a little better. And until then, you know I've been decorating and DIYing stuff around our new rental house, which I've been writing about here on my personal blog.

So that's my little update on our first year of marriage. Being married = awesome sauce!

And you know what else? I've held true to every promise I made to Mr. Cola in the vows I wrote and read to him one year ago today:

"I will try every single day to make you happy. I will listen when you need to vent, comfort you when you've had a rough day, and always be on your side, no matter what.

I vow to spend the rest of my life with you, laughing, sharing, building memories, and thoroughly enjoying whatever adventures may come our way. I vow to build the best life together with you that we can, filled with passion and achievements, and be fully devoted to the love we share.

And I promise to love you with my whole heart, forever."

Happy one year anniversary to all the June 2010 bees out there, and here's to many, many more years of happiness together as a married couple!

XOXO,

Mrs. Cola

"Nothing could be as exciting as we have now, unless it is what we will have together in the future."

{Photo by Shoot Me Now Photography, quote source unknown, via LovingYou.com}

A Fond Farewell

2011-01-18T07:16:00.000-08:00

Well, the time has finally come.

Time to say goodbye to you all. Well, not really goodbye, since I’m sure I’ll pop back in every once in a while. But my time regularly posting about my wedding on this blog has sadly drawn to an end.

{Shoot Me Now Photography}

To all of my 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 my husband's hard work on our luminary escort cards, giving him a little feel of the wonderful community that us bloggers have formed. For making me feel better about my disappointing post wedding chop. For reading any of my many tutorials, that I so enjoyed putting together for you all. And for following my detailed wedding recaps (all 37 of them!), and allowing me to share how all the little details came together on our big day.

For all of your support, your encouraging comments when I was in doubt, and your alternate suggestions when I needed them, I thank you. Without you, our wedding wouldn’t have been what it was--one of the most special, fondly remembered days of our life so far. I wrote here for about a year an a half, sharing every detail of our wedding planning journey, which wasn't always easy, but without the support, kind words, and excited sharing of similar stories and situations in the comments from you all, I would have had no reason to write.

I truly hope that I've been able to help at least a few of you with your own wedding planning journey, and I've organized my online Wiki with links to most of my archives, if you are ever looking for a quick reference.

{Shoot Me Now Photography}

It’s been a quick 7+ months since I married my best friend last June in a redwood-lined meadow overlooking the San Francisco bay. I had no idea how quickly time would pass after our wedding, but it did! And things won’t be slowing down for us anytime soon, we’ve got lots of upcoming travel plans, I’m working on making some items to open an etsy shop (which I hope to have ready by our one year anniversary), I’m trying to learn how to cook, we’re in the middle of de-cluttering our lives, and I’m dreaming up new projects for our house. You can read about it all over at my newlywed blog, The Handcrafted Life, if you like. I'm doing a gift card giveaway through Thursday night, so check it out!

{Shoot Me Now Photography}

Farewell, for now.

With lots of love,

Morgan

Wedding Wrap Up: Parent Albums

2011-01-16T17:59:00.000-08:00

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 guest book 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. You can start off of a template design, to give you some ideas for layouts, but it's completely customizable to whatever you want to do. For example, you can insert a templated page, but then add, delete, or resize the placeholders or photos however you like.

So this template:

Can become this layout (or whatever layout you want. But I found it easier to start with a basic template, and then modify it, rather than starting with a blank page. Also, if you like a custom layout you made, you can copy it for later in your book, and just replace the photos):

Another nice feature of the Adorama design interface was that it was really easy to resize (Shift + drag the edge of the photo) and line up your photo with the rest of the photos in the layout. Upon clicking on the photos, lines appear, and you can either nudge the photo into place with the arrow keys on your keyboard, or use your mouse to drag the photos.

I also liked the feature that keeps track of the photos you've already placed in your album. I'd narrowed the photos for our parent albums to about 300, which I knew was way too many, but I wanted to figure out the flow of the book before narrowing it down further. At first, I imported all of the photos, but it was just too much to scroll through, so I organized our photos into different folders (i.e. getting ready, first look, etc), and imported them into Adorama one at a time, which was much easier to manage. And as I added each photo to the album layout, Adorama marked it with a check, so I could easily see I'd already included it.

Overall, I was really happy with the Adorama layout program, and after playing with it for a while, and becoming more familiar with it, it was a breeze to finish our parent books. I'd say I spent about 3 hours creating both books (but I used 80% of the same layouts for both books, switching in different family photos for the other 20%). And with shipping, the 10" x 10" 50 page books were about $96 each (although I believe there was a sale for 10% off on the 10" x 10" books at the time. Be sure to check their site often, it seems like there is always something on sale.)

Now, onto the quality.

This is the area that makes me reluctant to order from Adorama for our personal wedding album, as I'm not sure it will stand up to 50 years of looking through it.

The quality is definitely better than the Shutterfly albums I've seen though, and for the price, I still think Adorama is a good value. But I wanted to write this honest review so you're not ordering from them expecting quality binding that is going to last forever. For gifts though, that probably won't get anywhere near the use as your own album, I think Adorama is fine.

Here are some photos of one of the albums, I'll show you the binding first.

(It gaps a little near the binding on the bottom of the book. And there are also some glue spots in the center of the pages, near the binding. In the picture it looks like faint grey dots.)

(There is also a gap between the last page and second to last page, as the back, and front, pages are glued directly to the cover.)

The other quality issue I had with the albums was that some of the photos that were a little darker to begin with, printed darker than they should have. Actually, overall, I'd say that all of the photos in the album were all a little darker than when printed on my personal photo printer, and than they appear on my multiple computer screens. It's not a super huge issue, but definitely something that I noticed, especially on some of the larger, darker-to-begin with photos.

Now, on to the good! The paper quality was very nice, and much better than what I've gotten from Shutterfly (my only other online photo book experience). Per their website, the paper they use is "Fuji Crystal Archive Album photo paper, a professional quality archival paper with excellent resistance to fading." I would estimate it feels to be about 90-95 lb paper. Not quite as thick as the 101 lb card stock I used in my invitations, but close.

And again, I really liked the flexibility of the layouts. Throughout the 50 page books, I utilized about 7 or 8 different spread layouts, repeated several times, to keep things interesting, but still have a nice flow. And even just mirroring the spread layouts works well to change things up, but still have a feeling of consistency.

Also, as Mrs. Cheeseburger mentioned in her post, the lay flat pages are quite nice. The center crease is minimal, and this aspect of the Adorama books made me really happy, because I wasn't 100% sure how it would look in real life.

And finally, I liked the cover a lot. You have the option of a non-photo cover, with lots of patterns/textures (not really textured, but has the appearance of texture) to choose from, or you can have a photo cover with edge to edge coverage, or a combo of both. For the parent albums, we opted for a combo, with a textured spine and front edge texture, with a portrait orientation photo.

The cover feels pretty durable, and doesn't seem like it will show scratches very easily, so I'm pretty happy with this aspect of the albums.

Overall, I think I would rate Adorama albums a 7.5 out of 10. For the relatively low cost, quick turnaround time (about a week), paper and cover quality, and easy to use online design interface, it gets high marks. However, the binding isn't going to last forever, and I was a little disappointed with the slightly darker photo printing, so I'm knocking off a few points for those downsides. Still, even with those downsides, I would recommend Adorama over Shutterfly for gift albums, or a guestbook album, but probably not for your personal album that needs to hold up over years and years of viewing.

Are you planning to DIY any wedding albums? If you have used any, which online album companies do you recommend and why?

(All photos in this post are either personal photos taken by me, of our photos taken by Shoot Me Now Photography, or are screen shots from the online Adorama design interface.)

More Photoshop Love: Wedding Photo Edits

2011-01-10T14:01:00.000-08:00

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.

{Love those rosy cheeks!}

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 I.

(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)

Photoshop vs. Reality: Wedding Inspiration Mock Ups

2010-12-14T13:13:00.000-08:00

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.

And the final product. Other than some rounded corners, these came out pretty dang close to my mock up! Not only did doing a mock up really help me nail down exactly what elements I wanted to include, but it also gave me a great start on the content for the inserts that I printed.
Our Ceremony Set Up

We loved the ceremony site at our venue, the trees, the meadow, the bay view, it had a lot of natural beauty, that only needed a little decor. But when you're working with a big empty meadow, you've got to use some imagination. Or some Photoshop! Originally I had wanted us to build an arch that was bigger than the one provided by our venue, and had wanted an aisle runner, so my heels wouldn't sink into the grass.

However, after being lied to by the vendor who I was going to rent chargers and the aisle runner from, I decided on just using rose petals on the aisle. And Mr. Cola convinced me that it would be too much work to transport or assemble a DIY arch, so we ended up just decorating the arch the venue already had. The final result was beautiful though, even if not exactly like my original idea!

(By Shoot Me Now Photography)

Card Box

This was an easy one....and probably it wasn't necessary to do a mock up of a card box. But I did it back when it was too early to actually start working on wedding things, very early in the planning stages, and it turned out almost exactly like my Photoshopped version.

(By Shoot Me Now Photography)

Table Decor and Centerpieces

These mock ups ended up only becoming a partial reality. First, as I'd already mentioned, a vendor lied to us about having purple charger plates available, so we didn't end up getting to use them as I'd planned to add color to our tables.
I was really frustrated at the time, but ended up really happy with the end result. Instead of chargers, I went about $150 over budget and rented overlays for the tables. They still gave me the pops of color I was looking for, without the headache of trying to DIY my own chargers.

As for the centerpieces, I'd say we did pretty good with sticking to my inspiration mock ups. We ended up using some different flowers, but that was expected, since we were at the mercy of whatever was available at the flower market.

The tall centerpieces:

(By Shoot Me Now Photography)

Short centerpieces:

(By Shoot Me Now Photography)

Cocktail table centerpieces:

(By Shoot Me Now Photography)

Rehearsal Dinner Decor

This was one area of planning that I needed a lot of inspiration for. There were no pictures online that I could find of our rehearsal dinner venue actually set up for a dinner. So when we visited the location, I took pictures, which I later Photoshopped chairs, tables and decor onto. My sister was so amazed at how close everything turned out to my mock ups that she pulled up my original blog post on her phone during the rehearsal dinner to show the rest of our wedding party the mock ups for comparison!

The mock ups:

The reality:

The Inspiration Board

And finally, just for fun, and because I've seen a few other bees do it, how about a look at my first inspiration board, compared to what details really happened. I made this first inspiration board to use as my personal blog header, in August 2009 (you can click on these boards for a larger view if you like).

And here are the same details from our wedding (Sorry, when downsizing this board from over 800 MB, it muted the colors a little, but you get the idea!):

(Except the favor boxes, all photos in this board are by Shoot Me Now Photography, cropped by me)

Have you used any graphic design programs to help you solidify your vision for your wedding? And is anyone else as big of a fan of mock ups as I am? :)

(Unless otherwise noted, all photos in this post are personal photos, taken by myself or our guests, and all editing was done by me.)

Wedding Gift Recap: Amazon and Honeymoon Registries

2010-12-07T14:58:00.000-08:00

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. Long ago I wrote about how easy it was to register from the comfort of our couch and almost all of the items we selected qualified for free shipping, because that has been an argument I’ve heard against Amazon registries, that people don’t want to pay for shipping. However, I disagree with that argument. 100% of the time I’ve bought gifts for weddings, through Macy’s, Bed Bath, etc, I’ve opted to have the gift sent to the couple’s home, and paid shipping every single time. So unless you’re going to be hauling the wedding gift to the wedding (which isn’t recommended because then the couple or someone has to deal with it and get it home from the venue), shipping is going to just be something you have to pay for.

We had a pretty conservative registry on Amazon, with far under the recommended number of items, because we just didn’t really need that much in the way of traditional wedding gifts. We’ve lived together for 8 years, and I felt there was no need to replace perfectly good kitchen items. However, in the end, we didn’t end up receiving that many gifts off our Amazon registry, although we were very grateful for what we did receive. Maybe 12-15 things, and mainly these were items that were purchased for us well in advance of our wedding date.

And actually, the main thing we wanted from Amazon was our Pfalzgraf set of everyday dishes, platters and bowls. So I ended up spending about $500 after our wedding to complete our whole set, because I was afraid that our pattern would be discontinued at some point and didn’t want to be stuck with only half the number of plates we needed!

{Our pretty everyday dish set}

Then there was our honeymoon registry, which we set up through Paypal on our wedding website. I know some people are still against this kind of registry, but no, we did not use it to “pay for a honeymoon we couldn’t afford” (the argument I've heard against honeymoon registries). You can see my original post about it, but we just gave people the option to gift us excursions or nice dinners. And again, we’ve lived together for almost a decade and just didn’t need that many traditional gifts, so we thought this was a really great way for guests who wanted to give us a gift to do something a little different and fun.

And this registry actually went over really, really well with our friends. It was easy for them because they didn’t have to worry about bringing anything to our wedding, and it was a quick last minute gift. In fact, about 90% of our honeymoon registry gifts came in in the few days before our wedding, and even a few on our wedding day (I got an email every time someone contributed to our honeymoon). So again, this type of registry couldn’t (and really shouldn’t) be used to pay for a honeymoon that was outside our means. We had no idea what people were going to get us until a couple days before our honeymoon, and it wasn’t something we were counting on anyway. But it was a pleasant, much appreciated surprise, and our guests ended up gifting us all our excursions, snorkel and boogie board rentals, all our dining out, and much more!

{Wearing our snorkels we rented as a gift in Kauai}

In addition to gifts from our Amazon and Honeymoon registries, we received many cards filled with well wishes, cash and checks. Definitely not something we were counting on, but we were so grateful for everyone’s lovely gifts, which we put into savings.

So my takeaways on registering:

- Register for what you want and need, but within reason.
- Don’t hesitate to do a non traditional registry if that’s what you want to do, your guests can take it or leave it, and you might be pleasantly surprised at how much they like it.
- If using Amazon, try to find items that qualify for free shipping, and maybe make a note on your wedding website about the free shipping, in case your guests are concerned about that aspect of ordering online. We put a note in small font under the link to our registry, “most items qualify for free shipping.”
- You will most likely receive gifts for which you have zero use for. Just accept that as an unfortunate downside to people not using registries and promptly send the thank you note to the guest.
- Appreciate all your cards and gifts, your guests were thinking of you when they sent them. And don't be offended if you don't receive a gift from someone. Technically they have up to a year to send something, and in this economy, people may just not be able to afford it. At least they spent the time and money getting to your wedding, and you got to celebrate with them!
- And as a wedding guest, unless you know the couple really, really well, my advice would be to just stick to their registry, or give a card. Or at least look at their registry first, to get a feel for what they are in need of. If you don’t see any crystal or fancy knickknacks with no purpose on their registry, chances are they don’t need whatever versions of those items you’ve found off their registry. Just sayin’! ;)

What are your thoughts on buying wedding gifts, do you like to buy from on the registry or off the registry?

The Colas' Behind The Scenes Wedding Video

2010-11-30T16:20:00.000-08:00

Oh? What's that? You thought my last recap about our Sunday-after luncheon was my last post? No way, I've still got a couple more things to share before I say goodbye, and I wouldn't leave you all without a proper farewell post!

I wanted to share with you our "behind the scenes" wedding video. One of my good friends, who couldn't make it to our wedding, put this together for us and gave it to me last week as a surprise. He does video editing as a hobby, and took bits and pieces of video that several of our guests filmed and created a mash up video.

I'm calling this a behind the scenes video because it's definitely not a wedding video. All of the (bumpy and grainy) filming was done by amateurs on low quality cameras, and because my friend who edited it only had a small selection of video to work with, there's no real timeline flow. And our guests, not being pros, filmed things more like a fly on the wall, so the footage my friend had to work with was really random.

All that said though, I think it's pretty fun to actually see our wedding (and a little bit of our after party) from behind the scenes. Having a videographer was never a priority in our budget, so this is definitely better than nothing! And it was free!

So here it is, the effort of several of our wedding guests and a good friend. The whole video is about 10 minutes long, but it includes a little of our ceremony and us reading our vows that we wrote, so feel free to skip that (from one minute in through about 4 1/2 minutes) if you like!

The Colas' Behind The Scenes Wedding Video from MsCola on Vimeo.

So what do you think? Not too bad for the cost of $0!

And this just goes to show that you can still have something to look at even if you don't have the budget for a professional videographer--you just need a few willing guests with video cameras. And in all honesty, any wedding video we would have paid for would have been something we'll only look at a handful of times throughout our lives, so I know we made the right decision by not hiring a videographer, especially now that we have this.

Are you having a videographer for your wedding? Or are you hoping your guests will take some free video for you on their personal cameras? And is anyone considering just renting higher quality cameras for a few select friends to use, for a cheaper-than-pro-videography option?

A Woodside Wedding: The Sunday Luncheon

2010-11-22T19:52:00.000-08:00

The Sunday morning after our wedding, we woke up early-ish. But after staying up until about 3:30am 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 10:30am 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 table cloths (the same kind we used for our rehearsal dinner tables), and reused the small reception centerpieces and bridesmaid 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!

I helped set up some umbrellas in the back yard, and a couple fans, since it was another ridiculously hot day for June, and Mr. Cola arrived with the build-your-own sandwich platters. We also had meatballs, BBQ chicken and ribs, various snacks, and of course, lots of left over cupcakes for dessert.

I poured mimosas for everyone, and managed to snap a few more photos of our luncheon before my mom yelled at me to sit down and eat something. But I was past the point of exhaustion at that point, and could only pick at my food.

I tell ya, after shopping for wedding flowers Wednesday morning, the low key bachelorette party Wednesday night, arranging flowers all day Thursday, our wedding party welcome dinner and sunset cruise Thursday night, the ceremony rehearsal and rehearsal dinner on Friday, our amazing wedding, and after party, I was about running on empty. So if you are planning on having a ton of wedding events like we did, just plan on being really, really tired after it's all over. Definitely pack some Double Shots or 5 Hour Energy shots in your purse, in case you need a last minute pick me up. And drink a ton of water, staying hydrated will help you keep your energy up through days of non-stop events!

After picking at my lunch, our officiant friend reminded us that we still had a very important matter to take care of. We'd forgotten to sign our marriage license at our wedding! So I ran out to my car to retrieve it, and then we had to figure out how to actually fill it out correctly.

I think I was counting out what day we had to mail it in by in this picture....

And to make sure we were all clear on who had to sign what and where, our officiant read the instructions out loud.

Form signing galore! I like that in this picture you can see that our smaller wedding centerpieces were still holding up pretty well, considering we arranged them on Thursday.

And....I'm totally not sure why I'm posing like a crazy person in this photo. Showing off my Anthro dress maybe? Who knows, like I said, I was too tired to be thinking completely clearly!

Once our officiant filled out his part, it was my sister and my BIL's turn to sign as witnesses.

And we too had to get in on the posing while signing action, even though we didn't really need to sign anything!

After posing for a few more photos as family members requested, it was time for hugs all around. Some of our guests were taking off to go sightseeing for the afternoon, and Mr. Cola and a groomsman had to go back up to our venue to pick up the Uhaul full of our wedding decor.

I loaded up my car, said goodbye to a few more of my family members, and just like that, it was all over. And it was surreal....and bittersweet.

15 months of planning, crafting, budgeting, blogging, more planning, and finally the executing--it was all over and done with. And I won't lie and say I wasn't a bit sad driving back home by myself. Actually, during my 25 minute drive home after our luncheon is probably the closest I came to crying our entire wedding week. I'm not a crier (at all!), but just thinking about how much love I'd felt all week, how great it was to see friends and family, how wonderful everything was, and the fact that everyone was packing up and going home, and it was really and truly over made me tear up a little.

But alas, luckily I couldn't dwell on it for too long. Once I arrived back home, we had to unload the 10 foot Uhaul truck, return it, pickup some last minute honeymoon items at the drug store, say goodbye to the last of our wedding party before they flew home, and procrastinate on finishing packing for our honeymoon by laughing at and uploading fauxtobooth pictures for guests to download. It ended up taking about 4x too long that night to pack for our honeymoon (which we were leaving for at 9am the next morning), because we were just plain dead tired and brain fried.

But that Sunday night was the best, most restful night of sleep we'd had in weeks, in our own bed, married.

Miss any wedding week details? Catch up here:

- I packed an emergency bag that saved my dress
- We had a crazy 4 days prepping for house guests and stuffing favors
- Shopping for a ton of wedding flowers to arrange ourselves
- Mr. Cola drinks a 40 and I have a night out on the town for our low-key bach parties
- A day of DIY'ing flower arrangements
- I kicked off our official recaps with my #1 wedding tip
- We began the weekend festivities with a sunset cruise for our wedding party
- We rehearsed our quick and easy ceremony
- I panicked, but we got our rehearsal dinner decorations set up just in time
- Our families met for the first time at our rehearsal dinner under the trees
- What went wrong on our wedding day, and my tips for future brides
- My bridesmaids and I got our hair and makeup done in the hotel suite
- I put on my wedding dress and became a bride
- The guys watched the World Cup, then got ready in 10 minutes
- Traffic delayed our decorations getting to the venue, and I almost ruined our first look
- We got to see each other for the first time on our wedding day at our first look
- We took some time for bride and groom pictures in the park
- I gave you a behind the scenes look at our family, friends and DOC setting up our venue
- Arriving at our venue and getting ready for the ceremony to start
- Everyone walked down the aisle
- Excerpts from our ceremony, and reading the vows we wrote for each other
- I interrupted our officiant, we exchanged rings, and with a kiss we were officially married!
- Wedding party and family portraits, and my thoughts on missing pictures
- Our guests enjoyed cocktail hour while we took a few more photos
- Everyone ate a delicious dinner, and our siblings gave beautiful toasts
- We didn't practice, but we had a very special and wonderful first dance as husband and wife
- I showed you some disposable camera pictures, which were totally worth it to include on our tables!
- I found a target and tossed my bouquet at her
- Mr. Cola finally managed to find my garter under my dress and tossed it
- We fed each other cupcakes, and our guests swarmed our 6ft tall cupcake tower
- We stole some private moments together that our photographers documented
- All our guests had some fun taking pictures in our DIY fauxtobooth
- We enjoyed the rest of the evening with our guests
- I showcased all the pretty details from our wedding, part 1 and part 2
- We snuck out of our reception and away into the night
- We partied into the early morning at our awesome after party

(All photos in this post are personal, taken on either my camera or Bridesmaid H's camera)

A Woodside Wedding: After Party Awesomeness!

2010-11-21T17:51:00.000-08:00

Once we arrived back at the hotel after sneaking out of our reception, we had to rush, since we only had a half hour head start on our guests! Mr. Cola helped unlace my dress, we changed, emptied both of the ice machines on our floor, and scrambled to clean up the bridal suite for our after party.

Luckily one of my bridesmaids was texting me with updates as to how close the charter bus with everyone was, so by the time they arrived, Mr. Cola and I were ready to continue the party!

Our after party outfits were so typical of us--I was all dressed up in a nice dress and he was wearing a tuxedo t-shirt (which I bought for him, and he was very excited about) and shorts. I was even wearing 4 inch heels, while he went barefoot for most of the evening!

(I'd meant to shorten this dress to above my knees, but ran out of time. Oh well, after enjoying our open bar all night, I doubt anyone noticed it was too long!)

One of my friends, who owns his own bar and restaurant, started mixing drinks for everyone, and we got down to partying.

(We had a counter full of liquor and mixers, plus several buckets on the floor full of beer and ice. I still can't believe how many half gallons of booze we emptied that night!)

Early in the evening Mr. Cola broke out his "beer robot." It's actually just a remote controlled cooler that I got him for his birthday last year. But it was a hit....until the batteries ran out after about a minute of beer delivering action!

Then our late night snack of pizza, wings and bread sticks was delivered, and enjoyed by all.

(I took this last photo from the second story of our suite, oh, 10 minutes after the pizza was delivered. It sure didn't last long!)

And of course, after being fortified with some greasy pizza, some shots were in order with our wedding party!

We spent the rest of the night just hanging out with our friends, drinking, reminiscing, and just enjoying getting to hang out with a lot of people we love, but don't get to see very often. These photos pretty much sum up the rest of our after party!

(I totally love that my bridesmaids put back on their "getting ready" purple hoodies I'd decorated for them!)

(Showing off our new bling.)

(My sister swiped some of the mustaches from our fauxtobooth). And yes, it was so hot with all the drinking people in our suite that we turned the temperature down to 63 degrees so the AC would blast!)

(One of my favorite photos from our after party, since my sis and I never got a chance to pose together in our fauxtobooth.)

At around 2:30 in the morning it was time to call it a night, which I'm sure our neighbors in the hotel appreciated. Everyone trickled back to their own rooms (some, I suspect, continued partying for a while), and Mr. Cola and I could finally retire upstairs in our suite and rest our feet. And spend a good 45 minutes trying to untangle my hair and get all the bobby pins out (over 50 of them!).

This picture was taken towards the end of our after party, you can see that my curls were still going strong. What you can't see is that the under-layer of my hair was a giant tangled mat. I was SO tired, but couldn't go to bed that night until all the tangles were out!

Are you planning to continue your wedding night with an after party? I highly recommend it--it was the only time all evening that we got to spend with some of our closest friends!

Next up, my final wedding event recap (so sad!), our Sunday luncheon.

Miss any wedding week details? Catch up here:

- I packed an emergency bag that saved my dress
- We had a crazy 4 days prepping for house guests and stuffing favors
- Shopping for a ton of wedding flowers to arrange ourselves
- Mr. Cola drinks a 40 and I have a night out on the town for our low-key bach parties
- A day of DIY'ing flower arrangements
- I kicked off our official recaps with my #1 wedding tip
- We began the weekend festivities with a sunset cruise for our wedding party
- We rehearsed our quick and easy ceremony
- I panicked, but we got our rehearsal dinner decorations set up just in time
- Our families met for the first time at our rehearsal dinner under the trees
- What went wrong on our wedding day, and my tips for future brides
- My bridesmaids and I got our hair and makeup done in the hotel suite
- I put on my wedding dress and became a bride
- The guys watched the World Cup, then got ready in 10 minutes
- Traffic delayed our decorations getting to the venue, and I almost ruined our first look
- We got to see each other for the first time on our wedding day at our first look
- We took some time for bride and groom pictures in the park
- I gave you a behind the scenes look at our family, friends and DOC setting up our venue
- Arriving at our venue and getting ready for the ceremony to start
- Everyone walked down the aisle
- Excerpts from our ceremony, and reading the vows we wrote for each other
- I interrupted our officiant, we exchanged rings, and with a kiss we were officially married!
- Wedding party and family portraits, and my thoughts on missing pictures
- Our guests enjoyed cocktail hour while we took a few more photos
- Everyone ate a delicious dinner, and our siblings gave beautiful toasts
- We didn't practice, but we had a very special and wonderful first dance as husband and wife
- I showed you some disposable camera pictures, which were totally worth it to include on our tables!
- I found a target and tossed my bouquet at her
- Mr. Cola finally managed to find my garter under my dress and tossed it
- We fed each other cupcakes, and our guests swarmed our 6ft tall cupcake tower
- We stole some private moments together that our photographers documented
- All our guests had some fun taking pictures in our DIY fauxtobooth
- We enjoyed the rest of the evening with our guests
- I showcased all the pretty details from our wedding, part 1 and part 2
- We snuck out of our reception and away into the night

(All photos in this post are personal, taken on either my camera or Bridesmaid H's camera)

A Woodside Wedding: The One Where We Sneak Away Into The Night

2010-11-17T16:48:00.000-08:00

The sun had long set.

We’d dined, danced, and enjoyed the evening, but it was over much too quickly.

At least for us it was.

Our guests, however, got to continue drinking and partying for another half hour. See, we didn’t actually do a send off. As much as I love the photos of guests waving flags, ribbon wands, or sparklers as the couple departs their wedding reception, we had a plan, and needed to stick to it.

Because we were having an after party in our hotel suite right after the reception, we needed to get a head start on our guests. So we snuck out of our reception a half hour before the charter bus was coming for everyone. We wanted the party to continue for everyone else, while we had time to change, get ice and set up everything for the after party.

But that didn’t mean we couldn’t still get a few cute departing photos!

Our DOC slyly gathered my bag, shoes and all the stuff we needed to take with us, and inconspicuously ushered us out the back of our venue and around to the front.

We hopped into the limo, the driver opened up the sunroof for us, and we were off!

It was about a half hour ride back to our hotel from our venue, and I must say, it was an amazing part of the night for both of us (I know, I know, I’ve said that about almost every part of our wedding!). We just cuddled in the back of the limo, and quietly recapped our wedding the whole way back to the hotel. Going over all the love we felt that night, how fun it was to see everyone, the highs (so many!) and the lows (so few), we just talked and reminisced, and it was wonderful. The drive felt like it was only a few minutes long, and we soaked up all the emotions from the day and just held on to them. It was a perfect end to our reception.

But that wasn’t the end of our night, we still had an after party to get ready for!

What are your plans for departing your wedding reception?

Miss any wedding week details? Catch up here:

- I packed an emergency bag that saved my dress
- We had a crazy 4 days prepping for house guests and stuffing favors
- Shopping for a ton of wedding flowers to arrange ourselves
- Mr. Cola drinks a 40 and I have a night out on the town for our low-key bach parties
- A day of DIY'ing flower arrangements
- I kicked off our official recaps with my #1 wedding tip
- We began the weekend festivities with a sunset cruise for our wedding party
- We rehearsed our quick and easy ceremony
- I panicked, but we got our rehearsal dinner decorations set up just in time
- Our families met for the first time at our rehearsal dinner under the trees
- What went wrong on our wedding day, and my tips for future brides
- My bridesmaids and I got our hair and makeup done in the hotel suite
- I put on my wedding dress and became a bride
- The guys watched the World Cup, then got ready in 10 minutes
- Traffic delayed our decorations getting to the venue, and I almost ruined our first look
- We got to see each other for the first time on our wedding day at our first look
- We took some time for bride and groom pictures in the park
- I gave you a behind the scenes look at our family, friends and DOC setting up our venue
- Arriving at our venue and getting ready for the ceremony to start
- Everyone walked down the aisle
- Excerpts from our ceremony, and reading the vows we wrote for each other
- I interrupted our officiant, we exchanged rings, and with a kiss we were officially married!
- Wedding party and family portraits, and my thoughts on missing pictures
- Our guests enjoyed cocktail hour while we took a few more photos
- Everyone ate a delicious dinner, and our siblings gave beautiful toasts
- We didn't practice, but we had a very special and wonderful first dance as husband and wife
- I showed you some disposable camera pictures, which were totally worth it to include on our tables!
- I found a target and tossed my bouquet at her
- Mr. Cola finally managed to find my garter under my dress and tossed it
- We fed each other cupcakes, and our guests swarmed our 6ft tall cupcake tower
- We stole some private moments together that our photographers documented
- All our guests had some fun taking pictures in our DIY fauxtobooth
- We enjoyed the rest of the evening with our guests
- I showcased all the pretty details from our wedding, part 1 and part 2

(Unless otherwise noted, all photos in this post were taken by the very talented photographers of Shoot Me Now Photography)

A Woodside Wedding: Details, Details, and More Pretty Details, Part 2

2010-11-16T13:16:00.000-08:00

In my last post you saw part one of all our wedding day details (and if you missed it, go check out part one first). Now, here is the second half of one of my favorite posts I've put together, with lots of pretty picture overload!

Just like in part one, feel free to click on any of these for a larger view, and I’ve included the links to the original tutorial or inspiration posts at the bottom. Enjoy!

Photo 1: over 6 foot tall cupcake tower, Photo 2: our first dance, Photo 3: carving at our buffet dinner, Photo 4: choose your favor table, Photo 5: short DIY centerpiece and pre-ceremony refreshments, Photo 6: our rings with one of my something old items, Photo 7: DIY bride and groom chair signs, Photo 8: ceremony details, Photo 9: cocktail hour cheese table and bridesmaid purse bouquet, Photo 10: LED luminary escort cards, Photo 11: pictures in the park, Photo 12: signed stones from our memory stone guestbook, Photo 13: DIY programs, Photo 14: DIY laser cut wedding invitations and our first look, Photo 15: groomsmen suits, Photo 16: a stolen moment, Photo 17: our ceremony site waiting for guests to arrive, Photo 18: my bouquet and dress details, Photo 19: tall DIY centerpiece, LED lanterns, and DIY programs, Photo 20: our DIY bridal suite sign, Photo 21: bridesmaid purse bouquets at our ceremony, Photo 22: close up of centerpieces, Photo 23: my DIY shoes and more dress details, Photo 24: our venue at night

Another detail that I didn't have anything to do with, but I thought was really a great touch, was all thanks to our photographers. They provided a digital photo frame, which they placed on our guestbook table about halfway though our cocktail hour, loaded with all the (unedited) photos from earlier in the day. So our guests got a little peek at us getting ready, having our first look, and got to see our ceremony though our photog's eyes.

Our DOC snapped a few photos from the digital photo frame for us (although it's sort of funny that we didn't receive either of these photos in the final set from our photogs!):

(Hee hee, I was so excited about drinking my rum and COLA after our formal pictures, I didn't even know I was being photographed!)

Sadly, there were a few of my DIY details that we didn't receive pro photos of, but I thought I would give them a brief shout out here. Our bathroom baskets:

(personal photo)

Bathroom signs, to cover the ugly ones at the venue:

(personal photos)

And my framed signs for the buffet:

(personal photo)

Of course, there were a few other details I would have liked to see captured, but like I already said, I know it's not possible for photographers to be everywhere at once. And I love the photos we do have!

What are your favorite details from your wedding?

Miss any wedding week details? Catch up here:

- I packed an emergency bag that saved my dress
- We had a crazy 4 days prepping for house guests and stuffing favors
- Shopping for a ton of wedding flowers to arrange ourselves
- Mr. Cola drinks a 40 and I have a night out on the town for our low-key bach parties
- A day of DIY'ing flower arrangements
- I kicked off our official recaps with my #1 wedding tip
- We began the weekend festivities with a sunset cruise for our wedding party
- We rehearsed our quick and easy ceremony
- I panicked, but we got our rehearsal dinner decorations set up just in time
- Our families met for the first time at our rehearsal dinner under the trees
- What went wrong on our wedding day, and my tips for future brides
- My bridesmaids and I got our hair and makeup done in the hotel suite
- I put on my wedding dress and became a bride
- The guys watched the World Cup, then got ready in 10 minutes
- Traffic delayed our decorations getting to the venue, and I almost ruined our first look
- We got to see each other for the first time on our wedding day at our first look
- We took some time for bride and groom pictures in the park
- I gave you a behind the scenes look at our family, friends and DOC setting up our venue
- Arriving at our venue and getting ready for the ceremony to start
- Everyone walked down the aisle
- Excerpts from our ceremony, and reading the vows we wrote for each other
- I interrupted our officiant, we exchanged rings, and with a kiss we were officially married!
- Wedding party and family portraits, and my thoughts on missing pictures
- Our guests enjoyed cocktail hour while we took a few more photos
- Everyone ate a delicious dinner, and our siblings gave beautiful toasts
- We didn't practice, but we had a very special and wonderful first dance as husband and wife
- I showed you some disposable camera pictures, which were totally worth it to include on our tables!
- I found a target and tossed my bouquet at her
- Mr. Cola finally managed to find my garter under my dress and tossed it
- We fed each other cupcakes, and our guests swarmed our 6ft tall cupcake tower
- We stole some private moments together that our photographers documented
- All our guests had some fun taking pictures in our DIY fauxtobooth
- We enjoyed the rest of the evening with our guests
- I showcased all the pretty details from our wedding, part 1

(Unless otherwise noted, all photos in this post were taken by the very talented photographers of Shoot Me Now Photography)

A Woodside Wedding: Details, Details, and More Pretty Details, Part 1

2010-11-15T12:25:00.000-08:00

Ahhh, the details. This is the post that I’ve been waiting to write since I first started blogging. All the tiny touches, glimpses of the venue, DIY details galore, and a few shots of the bride and groom thrown in for good measure.

I know some Bees like to do this post early in their recaps, but I decided I wanted to save mine for towards the end, so I could do a pretty picture overload post, without a lot of description. Just a “soak in all the details and hard work from our wedding” kind of post.

I’ve already touched on most of these details, scattered throughout my recaps, although there are some photos I’ve been holding onto for just these posts. So without further ado, here’s the first of my two-part details recaps (sorry, I just couldn't narrow it down enough to fit in one post!). Feel free to click on any of these for a larger view, and I’ve included the links to the original tutorial or inspiration posts at the bottom.

Photo 1: my DIY shoes and bridesmaid dresses, Photo 2: my dress, jewelry, and Mr. Cola's suit, Photo 3: memory stone guestbook, Photo 4: pictures in the park, Photo 5: table numbers, Photo 6: my bouquet my mom made and DIY napkin rings (guest photo), Photo 7: LED luminary escort cards, Photo 8: more from our pictures in the park, Photo 9: cocktail table centerpieces, Photo 10: my bouquet details and jewelry again, Photo 11: our ceremony site set up, Photo 12: another DIY shoe shot, Photo 13: our first look, Photo 14: my dress details, more memory stone guestbook, Photo 15: over 6 foot tall cupcake tower, Photo 16: shoe shot, Photo 17: Mr. Cola's boutonniere, Photo 18: cocktail hour cheese table, fauxtobooth and a stolen moment, Photo 19: choose your favor table, Photo 20: more table numbers, Photo 21: one of my 'must have' photos, on the swing, Photo 22: acoustic guitaris t friend who learned to play our ceremony music for us, and our ceremony aisle, Photo 23: our rings resting on our DIY laser cut wedding invitations, Photo 24: circulating during dinner, Photo 25: our DIY programs (this is a guest photo), Photo 26: DIY card box and Mr. Cola's tie

Part two of all the details is coming up next! Is anyone else as excited about getting back pro photos of all their wedding details as I was?

Miss any wedding week details? Catch up here:

- I packed an emergency bag that saved my dress
- We had a crazy 4 days prepping for house guests and stuffing favors
- Shopping for a ton of wedding flowers to arrange ourselves
- Mr. Cola drinks a 40 and I have a night out on the town for our low-key bach parties
- A day of DIY'ing flower arrangements
- I kicked off our official recaps with my #1 wedding tip
- We began the weekend festivities with a sunset cruise for our wedding party
- We rehearsed our quick and easy ceremony
- I panicked, but we got our rehearsal dinner decorations set up just in time
- Our families met for the first time at our rehearsal dinner under the trees
- What went wrong on our wedding day, and my tips for future brides
- My bridesmaids and I got our hair and makeup done in the hotel suite
- I put on my wedding dress and became a bride
- The guys watched the World Cup, then got ready in 10 minutes
- Traffic delayed our decorations getting to the venue, and I almost ruined our first look
- We got to see each other for the first time on our wedding day at our first look
- We took some time for bride and groom pictures in the park
- I gave you a behind the scenes look at our family, friends and DOC setting up our venue
- Arriving at our venue and getting ready for the ceremony to start
- Everyone walked down the aisle
- Excerpts from our ceremony, and reading the vows we wrote for each other
- I interrupted our officiant, we exchanged rings, and with a kiss we were officially married!
- Wedding party and family portraits, and my thoughts on missing pictures
- Our guests enjoyed cocktail hour while we took a few more photos
- Everyone ate a delicious dinner, and our siblings gave beautiful toasts
- We didn't practice, but we had a very special and wonderful first dance as husband and wife
- I showed you some disposable camera pictures, which were totally worth it to include on our tables!
- I found a target and tossed my bouquet at her
- Mr. Cola finally managed to find my garter under my dress and tossed it
- We fed each other cupcakes, and our guests swarmed our 6ft tall cupcake tower
- We stole some private moments together that our photographers documented
- All our guests had some fun taking pictures in our DIY fauxtobooth
- We enjoyed the rest of the evening with our guests

(Unless otherwise noted, all photos in this post were taken by the very talented photographers of Shoot Me Now Photography)

Bees Then and Now: Cola Edition

2010-11-10T19:22:00.000-08:00

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 bread winner 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 friend. 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! There was even a guy I dated twice in high school, once my freshman year and again my sophomore year, but we could never make it work, and just always reverted back to being friends. My whole life I’ve had a lot of guy friends, starting when I was in elementary school, when the only two kids my age in my neighborhood were boys. I definitely had my boy-crazy periods, but I mainly just put guys in the friend zone eventually.

Would you like to see a picture from way back then? How about a senior photo?

(I have no idea who took the original picture, but this is a photo I took of a photo. No way I was scanning these ancient pictures at work!)

That was, until I met my ex, the summer after my junior year in high school. He was cute, had a great sense of humor, was my opposing school’s quarterback until he got injured, and just a fun guy to be around. But I always knew it wasn’t forever, even back then. However, we had a lot of fun our first few years of dating, and ended up staying together 3 ½ years, before I dumped him for Mr. Cola.

And just for fun, because I know you want to see more funny pictures of me in high school, here are some prom pictures with my ex:

(More photos I took of photos. Face blurred to protect the innocent/jerk. Man, I wish I still had those skinny tennis player arms!)

It took me quite a while of reflecting to figure out why I always knew I would never marry my high school boyfriend. And it was because we were never really friends. Sure, we hung out, we knew each other pretty well, but I was never as close with my ex as Mr. Cola and I were, even before we started dating. I wrote about it before here, about how much I love the fact that my husband and I were friends and roommates for years before we started dating. And even though my high school self didn’t realize it at the time, that was what was missing in my prior relationship: friendship.

And even more telling, I knew within about a month of when we started dating that I wanted to marry Mr. Cola. I’d finally found the perfect relationship, with the perfect person, my best friend. I’m so lucky to have found someone who could change my mind about marriage, and very glad that I’m a different person now than I was then, because of him.

(By Shoot Me Now Photography)

Are you a different person now than you were back in high school?

A Woodside Wedding: Enjoying The Evening

2010-11-10T14:41:00.000-08:00

After the scheduled bouquet and garter tosses were over, and the cupcakes had been served, we were free the rest of the evening to just enjoy our reception.

Our reception resembled more of a cocktail party than a crazy dance party, and was just what we wanted—time to kick back with our friends and family and enjoy everyone's company over some yummy alcoholic beverages.

(Haha, don't worry, that last photo is just my friend joking around! Above 3 photos are guest photos)

I know most of these photos won’t mean as much to everyone else as they do to us, but I love looking back at everyone just hanging out and enjoying themselves!

That's because during our planning time, I sort of felt like there was a lot of pressure to make our reception "conform" and fit the more typical format of having lots and lots of dancing. But that just wasn't us. So we didn't do it! Sure, a dance or two more mixed in would have been fun, but overall, I'm happy that we ended up having a "let's hang out, drink and catch up" type of reception. It’s definitely true that you can have a wedding reception without a lot of dancing that is still a blast, it’s up to you to set the tone of the reception that you want.

Of course we did more than just stand around, talking and drinking. Our fauxtobooth was still going strong:

(Above 3 photos are guest photos)

And our wedding wasn’t completely devoid of dancing, some people were breaking it down on the dance floor, especially after the open bar had been busy all night! :)

(This above photo might just be my favorite of my FIL ever!)

Also, because our reception was more like a cocktail party, we got a ton of great group shots and posed photos of our guests.

(Above 5 photos are guest photos)

That about sums up the later part of our reception. Again, it's up to the bride and groom to set the tone of your reception, and if what you want to do resembles a cocktail party or nice dinner party, just go for it! You guys enjoying yourself, and making your reception be a reflection of who you two are is what is important. Your guests will grab a drink, put on a silly hat from the fauxtobooth, and follow suit!

What type of tone are you hoping to set at your wedding reception?

Miss any wedding week details? Catch up here:

- I packed an emergency bag that saved my dress
- We had a crazy 4 days prepping for house guests and stuffing favors
- Shopping for a ton of wedding flowers to arrange ourselves
- Mr. Cola drinks a 40 and I have a night out on the town for our low-key bach parties
- A day of DIY'ing flower arrangements
- I kicked off our official recaps with my #1 wedding tip
- We began the weekend festivities with a sunset cruise for our wedding party
- We rehearsed our quick and easy ceremony
- I panicked, but we got our rehearsal dinner decorations set up just in time
- Our families met for the first time at our rehearsal dinner under the trees
- What went wrong on our wedding day, and my tips for future brides
- My bridesmaids and I got our hair and makeup done in the hotel suite
- I put on my wedding dress and became a bride
- The guys watched the World Cup, then got ready in 10 minutes
- Traffic delayed our decorations getting to the venue, and I almost ruined our first look
- We got to see each other for the first time on our wedding day at our first look
- We took some time for bride and groom pictures in the park
- I gave you a behind the scenes look at our family, friends and DOC setting up our venue
- Arriving at our venue and getting ready for the ceremony to start
- Everyone walked down the aisle
- Excerpts from our ceremony, and reading the vows we wrote for each other
- I interrupted our officiant, we exchanged rings, and with a kiss we were officially married!
- Wedding party and family portraits, and my thoughts on missing pictures
- Our guests enjoyed cocktail hour while we took a few more photos
- Everyone ate a delicious dinner, and our siblings gave beautiful toasts
- We didn't practice, but we had a very special and wonderful first dance as husband and wife
- I showed you some disposable camera pictures, which were totally worth it to include on our tables!
- I found a target and tossed my bouquet at her
- Mr. Cola finally managed to find my garter under my dress and tossed it
- We fed each other cupcakes, and our guests swarmed our 6ft tall cupcake tower
- We stole some private moments together that our photographers documented
- All our guests had some fun taking pictures in our DIY fauxtobooth

(Unless otherwise noted, all photos in this post were taken by the very talented photographers of Shoot Me Now Photography)

A Woodside Wedding: Fauxtobooth Fun

2010-11-09T11:09:00.000-08:00

From the time dinner ended, there wasn’t a moment all night long that our fauxtobooth wasn’t packed. So I’ll give my tip early in this post: if you’re considering renting a photobooth, or making a quick and easy fauxtobooth, just do it!

Ours was the quick and easy fauxtobooth version, which I detailed constructing here. Basically I just wanted to use stuff I already had, so I used three garment racks from my closet, and sewed a few snaps on sheets that were draped over the top for the sides and background. We used my sister’s Mac, which has a photobooth program on it, and webcam, and just instructed our guests to download their photos from our wedding website the next day (we also printed out one of their photos and included them in our thank you cards).

And I must say, the fact that our booth wasn’t fancy at all (in fact, the garment racks got bumped all night, messing up the sheet background repeatedly, and the lights I provided weren't quite set up right, giving a weird glare to the photos), or that we didn’t have the photos printed out on site, didn’t matter one bit to our guests. So if the logistics of a DIY photobooth are concerning you, don’t let it! Playing with the many props (that we got for cheap after Halloween last year) and getting to see the silly pictures they were taking on the 21 inch monitor we provided was plenty of entertainment for our guests. They couldn’t get enough of it, as evidenced by the couple hundred photos they took, and I’m so glad we decided to include this little project. Plus, getting to see all the hilarious photos the Sunday night after our wedding was just icing on the cake for us, since they were the first photos we saw from our wedding.

But enough gushing about how much fun everyone had in our fauxtobooth, let’s see some pictures!

First, some photos taken outside the fauxtobooth, by our photogs and guests--we all loved playing with the props!

(by Shoot Me Now Photography)

Now for some photo collages from the fauxtobooth!

(You can see our lovely DOC straightening the background sheets in the bottom right above photo, people were so eager to take their photo that they kept messing up the background!)

(Surprisingly a ton of the older people at our wedding loved the fauxtobooth action, including my dad! I think he has more pictures in the booth than anyone because he didn't want to move, haha!)

I made the above collages in Picasa, which has a lot of neat features to arrange large numbers of photos. I think doing a large collage like these below might be fun, printed out poster size to hang in our spare bedroom!

Are you planning to rent a photobooth, or build a DIY fauxtobooth for your wedding?

Miss any wedding week details? Catch up here:

- I packed an emergency bag that saved my dress
- We had a crazy 4 days prepping for house guests and stuffing favors
- Shopping for a ton of wedding flowers to arrange ourselves
- Mr. Cola drinks a 40 and I have a night out on the town for our low-key bach parties
- A day of DIY'ing flower arrangements
- I kicked off our official recaps with my #1 wedding tip
- We began the weekend festivities with a sunset cruise for our wedding party
- We rehearsed our quick and easy ceremony
- I panicked, but we got our rehearsal dinner decorations set up just in time
- Our families met for the first time at our rehearsal dinner under the trees
- What went wrong on our wedding day, and my tips for future brides
- My bridesmaids and I got our hair and makeup done in the hotel suite
- I put on my wedding dress and became a bride
- The guys watched the World Cup, then got ready in 10 minutes
- Traffic delayed our decorations getting to the venue, and I almost ruined our first look
- We got to see each other for the first time on our wedding day at our first look
- We took some time for bride and groom pictures in the park
- I gave you a behind the scenes look at our family, friends and DOC setting up our venue
- Arriving at our venue and getting ready for the ceremony to start
- Everyone walked down the aisle
- Excerpts from our ceremony, and reading the vows we wrote for each other
- I interrupted our officiant, we exchanged rings, and with a kiss we were officially married!
- Wedding party and family portraits, and my thoughts on missing pictures
- Our guests enjoyed cocktail hour while we took a few more photos
- Everyone ate a delicious dinner, and our siblings gave beautiful toasts
- We didn't practice, but we had a very special and wonderful first dance as husband and wife
- I showed you some disposable camera pictures, which were totally worth it to include on our tables!
- I found a target and tossed my bouquet at her
- Mr. Cola finally managed to find my garter under my dress and tossed it
- We fed each other cupcakes, and our guests swarmed our 6ft tall cupcake tower
- We stole some private moments together that our photographers documented

(Unless otherwise noted, the photos in this post are personal, taken by guests or in our fauxtobooth)

A Woodside Wedding: Stolen Moments

2010-11-03T13:11:00.000-07:00

Several times throughout our wedding reception, our photographers asked us if they could steal us away for a few minutes, to get in some additional photos of the two of us.

This was a fantastic idea, and I really recommend it to everyone. Not only did it give us a chance for a few minutes alone-ish with each other periodically through the night, it also got us some great shots in different locations. Plus, it was a wonderful way to regroup, because the rest of our reception time was spent being pulled from person to person in non-stop conversation. Taking a few minutes out for just ourselves was just what we needed, and seemed to slow down the evening for those few stolen moments together.

The first stolen moment that was captured was one I didn’t even realize was being photographed! Our photogs suggested we meet them by the flower petal covered aisle, and as we were walking over to the aisle, they captured these lovely hand in hand photos. Something about these really tugs at my heartstrings, so simple, yet so lovely.

When we reached the petal aisle, we still had no idea anyone was taking pictures. We were just lost in the moment, enjoying our quiet time.

This resulted in these kissing photos, which are some of my favorite of the day, and I’d like to frame one of them, but can’t decide which. We’re probably only going to frame 4 or 5 of our wedding photos, and I really want one to be a full length kissing photo, but not from our ceremony.

Which of these do you like best?

Photo 1:

Photo 2:

Photo 3:

Photo 4:

After our photographers slyly took the kissing photos of us, we realized that they’d arrived next to the petal aisle, and it was time for some playing with the petals. We had almost all of our 260 cups of rose petals sprinkled on the aisle, we’d might as well do something with them other than just walk on them!

First we laid on top of them.

Another gratuitous shoe shot! :)

Then we sat up, with our reception in the background.

But our photogs decided that the trees would be a better background, so we turned around.

Next, the kids at our wedding were nominated to throw petals on us, which they did with abandon.

I thought it was hilarious, and the petals in my hair and going down my cleavage were really tickling me!

Seriously, I was having way too much fun getting pelted by the kids with petals!

That was the end of our first stolen moment photo shoot, but the kids stuck around and made us a heart out of petals, which they showed us later in the evening. So sweet of them!

(above two photos taken by Bridesmaid H--and just look at that hint of sunset above the bay view through the trees, great shot!)

Even later, after the bouquet and garter toss, and the cupcake “cutting” we stole another few moments by ourselves out on the deck. Just a couple minutes to ground ourselves, connect, and soak in being husband and wife.

These stolen moments pictures are so special to me, as were the minutes with my new husband during our reception. I love the fact that the majority of them aren’t posed, they’re just a natural representation of the love we were (and still are!) feeling for each other on our wedding night. I highly recommend taking time on your own wedding night for some stolen moments, they are very centering experiences at the time, and wonderful memories to look back on.

Now, back to the kissing photos from above, which one do you think should we pick to frame in our house, photo #1, #2, #3 or #4?

Or there's also this one other full length kissing photo to consider, photo #5:

Miss any wedding week details? Catch up here:

- I packed an emergency bag that saved my dress
- We had a crazy 4 days prepping for house guests and stuffing favors
- Shopping for a ton of wedding flowers to arrange ourselves
- Mr. Cola drinks a 40 and I have a night out on the town for our low-key bach parties
- A day of DIY'ing flower arrangements
- I kicked off our official recaps with my #1 wedding tip
- We began the weekend festivities with a sunset cruise for our wedding party
- We rehearsed our quick and easy ceremony
- I panicked, but we got our rehearsal dinner decorations set up just in time
- Our families met for the first time at our rehearsal dinner under the trees
- What went wrong on our wedding day, and my tips for future brides
- My bridesmaids and I got our hair and makeup done in the hotel suite
- I put on my wedding dress and became a bride
- The guys watched the World Cup, then got ready in 10 minutes
- Traffic delayed our decorations getting to the venue, and I almost ruined our first look
- We got to see each other for the first time on our wedding day at our first look
- We took some time for bride and groom pictures in the park
- I gave you a behind the scenes look at our family, friends and DOC setting up our venue
- Arriving at our venue and getting ready for the ceremony to start
- Everyone walked down the aisle
- Excerpts from our ceremony, and reading the vows we wrote for each other
- I interrupted our officiant, we exchanged rings, and with a kiss we were officially married!
- Wedding party and family portraits, and my thoughts on missing pictures
- Our guests enjoyed cocktail hour while we took a few more photos
- Everyone ate a delicious dinner, and our siblings gave beautiful toasts
- We didn't practice, but we had a very special and wonderful first dance as husband and wife
- I showed you some disposable camera pictures, which were totally worth it to include on our tables!
- I found a target and tossed my bouquet at her
- Mr. Cola finally managed to find my garter under my dress and tossed it
- We fed each other cupcakes, and our guests swarmed our 6ft tall cupcake tower

(Unless otherwise noted, all photos in this post were taken by the very talented photographers of Shoot Me Now Photography)

A Woodside Wedding: Tower Of Cupcakes!

2010-11-01T15:43:00.000-07:00

Immediately after the bouquet and garter tosses, it was time for CUPCAKES!

Our wedding cupcakes deserve their very own recap post, since Mr. Cola and I worked so hard to design and build the stand together, choose the flavors and frosting designs, and specify the precise layout of the cupcakes on our stand.

And here is our over-6-foot-tall beauty, in all it's yummy glory, on our wedding day!

And you know you want to see some detailed shots, so bring on the cupcake close ups! (Warning, try not to drool on your keyboard!)

(guest photo)

Our cupcakes were one of the biggest hits of the evening. Nobody could stop talking about them, and during dinner our guests were making bets, trying to guess how many there actually were (the highest guess I heard was 350, and the actual total was 385, counting the jumbo one at the top).

Guests even had a little too much fun posing with the cupcake tower, as you can see in the below 3 guest photos.

(Pretending to steal cupcakes, in blatant disregard of the signs, LOL!)

Now that you've seen the cupcakes and the stand, it's time for a play-by-play of our cupcake "cutting."

First, it's very important to weigh your options, which of the 5 flavors to try first?

I might be a little too excited about this!

I picked a vanilla cupcake with latte flavored frosting, and Mr. C went for the carrot cake.

Instead of an actual cutting, we had decided to just feed each other a bite of a mini cupcake. So taking the wrapper off first was an important step!

"Ready for this? Remember, the deal was no smashing, unless you wanted to pay for my makeup artist to stay the whole night!"

Getting the cupcake in Mr. C's mouth AND trying to watch the cupcake coming toward my mouth was a lot harder than it looks!

Nom nom nom!

I then gave Mr. Cola a frosting flavored kiss.

And as I brought my arm down, I bumped his cupcake with my elbow.

So I made him lick the frosting off, natch!

I must say, I was pretty pleased with myself for that sly move!

Then, we took a step back, and the cupcake stand was SWARMED! Mr. Cola said it was the only part of the night that he didn't feel like the center of attention, and so he took the opportunity to duck away. I ended up standing there for a while, repeating the cupcake flavors, all the while just trying to finish my half cupcake still in my hand from our "cutting."

(Nobody could take just one!)

We only had a couple kids at our wedding, and they begged for the giant cupcake at the top, so we let them have it. We weren't planning on saving it anyway, not when we can get fresh, not freezer burned cupcakes from the same bakery on our anniversary!

At the end of the night we still had plenty of cupcakes left over for the Sunday luncheon (which we had planned on), and our DOC even sent a small box of cupcakes with us back to the hotel that night, which I munched on for breakfast the next day.

What are you serving your guests for dessert? Any other cupcake fans out there?

Miss any wedding week details? Catch up here:

- I packed an emergency bag that saved my dress
- We had a crazy 4 days prepping for house guests and stuffing favors
- Shopping for a ton of wedding flowers to arrange ourselves
- Mr. Cola drinks a 40 and I have a night out on the town for our low-key bach parties
- A day of DIY'ing flower arrangements
- I kicked off our official recaps with my #1 wedding tip
- We began the weekend festivities with a sunset cruise for our wedding party
- We rehearsed our quick and easy ceremony
- I panicked, but we got our rehearsal dinner decorations set up just in time
- Our families met for the first time at our rehearsal dinner under the trees
- What went wrong on our wedding day, and my tips for future brides
- My bridesmaids and I got our hair and makeup done in the hotel suite
- I put on my wedding dress and became a bride
- The guys watched the World Cup, then got ready in 10 minutes
- Traffic delayed our decorations getting to the venue, and I almost ruined our first look
- We got to see each other for the first time on our wedding day at our first look
- We took some time for bride and groom pictures in the park
- I gave you a behind the scenes look at our family, friends and DOC setting up our venue
- Arriving at our venue and getting ready for the ceremony to start
- Everyone walked down the aisle
- Excerpts from our ceremony, and reading the vows we wrote for each other
- I interrupted our officiant, we exchanged rings, and with a kiss we were officially married!
- Wedding party and family portraits, and my thoughts on missing pictures
- Our guests enjoyed cocktail hour while we took a few more photos
- Everyone ate a delicious dinner, and our siblings gave beautiful toasts
- We didn't practice, but we had a very special and wonderful first dance as husband and wife
- I showed you some disposable camera pictures, which were totally worth it to include on our tables!
- I found a target and tossed my bouquet at her
- Mr. Cola finally managed to find my garter under my dress and tossed it

(Unless otherwise noted, all photos in this post were taken by the very talented photographers of Shoot Me Now Photography)

A Woodside Wedding: We Get Tossed, Part 2

2010-10-31T14:09:00.000-07:00

After I did the bouquet toss, it was time for the garter toss! If you remember, I'd hand sewn my own DIY garter:

(personal photo)

Because it was such a hot day, I didn't put on my garter until right before the tosses, and I never ended up putting on my old and blue other garter. I knew Mr. Cola was going to have enough trouble locating one garter under my eight layers of dress, without adding a second one in the mix!

And struggle he did, it took him what felt like a good two minutes of reaching up my dress. I love the laughter on everyone's faces in the background of our pictures--his struggle with this was pretty hilarious!

Still looking....

Come on, dude, it's not that hard to find.....

Success, he's finally got it!

Then it was time for some tossing! The guys gathered (we had a whole lot more single guys than single ladies at our wedding).

(Two above pictures are guest photos)

And it was our MC groomsman who caught it. Look at him, showing off!

It was pretty funny because this was our groomsman's 3rd garter he's ever caught, just like it was the 3rd bouquet that my cousin had ever caught. And they're both currently living in Texas...hmmm! ;)

I love this photo of Mr. Cola right after the garter toss. It really captures how much fun doing these silly traditional tosses were!

And oh yeah, I had to yell at my friend, who was supposed to catch the garter. I'd been telling him for a year that he was the target, considering he and his girlfriend have been dating for 8 years, and already own a house together. But he didn't even try to catch it!

(A lovely guest photo, capturing me yelling "Dude, you were supposed to at least try to catch it!")

If you are doing the bouquet and/or garter toss, will you have "targets" in mind of who you're going to throw to?

Miss any wedding week details? Catch up here:

- I packed an emergency bag that saved my dress
- We had a crazy 4 days prepping for house guests and stuffing favors
- Shopping for a ton of wedding flowers to arrange ourselves
- Mr. Cola drinks a 40 and I have a night out on the town for our low-key bach parties
- A day of DIY'ing flower arrangements
- I kicked off our official recaps with my #1 wedding tip
- We began the weekend festivities with a sunset cruise for our wedding party
- We rehearsed our quick and easy ceremony
- I panicked, but we got our rehearsal dinner decorations set up just in time
- Our families met for the first time at our rehearsal dinner under the trees
- What went wrong on our wedding day, and my tips for future brides
- My bridesmaids and I got our hair and makeup done in the hotel suite
- I put on my wedding dress and became a bride
- The guys watched the World Cup, then got ready in 10 minutes
- Traffic delayed our decorations getting to the venue, and I almost ruined our first look
- We got to see each other for the first time on our wedding day at our first look
- We took some time for bride and groom pictures in the park
- I gave you a behind the scenes look at our family, friends and DOC setting up our venue
- Arriving at our venue and getting ready for the ceremony to start
- Everyone walked down the aisle
- Excerpts from our ceremony, and reading the vows we wrote for each other
- I interrupted our officiant, we exchanged rings, and with a kiss we were officially married!
- Wedding party and family portraits, and my thoughts on missing pictures
- Our guests enjoyed cocktail hour while we took a few more photos
- Everyone ate a delicious dinner, and our siblings gave beautiful toasts
- We didn't practice, but we had a very special and wonderful first dance as husband and wife
- I showed you some disposable camera pictures, which were totally worth it to include on our tables!
- I found a target and tossed my bouquet at her

(Unless otherwise noted, all photos in this post were taken by the very talented photographers of Shoot Me Now Photography)

The Secret Life of Bees: Cola Edition

2010-10-29T09:22:00.000-07:00

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 scared 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!)

2) Part way through 3rd grade, my mom thought it would be just adorable to give me a short pixie haircut. I’m not sure what possessed her to do this to me--I have never been able to pull off a short look and never will. These chubby cheeks have been with me my whole life! But I got the cut, and immediately hated it. However, there’s not much you can do when you’re a kid, and they won’t let you wear hats to school.

The day after my cut, I had to go into school late for some reason, I think it was because of a dentist appointment. When I walked into my classroom, everyone was in the middle of reading time, with their books out. I came in and sat down quietly in my seat near the front, and after a minute I heard a comment from behind that just mortified me. Some boy in my class raised his hand and asked, “Teacher, is there a new boy in our class?” Yes, he was referring to me, with my horribly short haircut! I really don’t think I’ve ever lived that one down, which is why I’ve never again had hair shorter than my shoulders, and part of why I was so sensitive about my bad post wedding chop.

I Romanticized Breaking A Bone, Until I Realized I Hate Pain

I was kind of a crazy kid in that I spent a year in elementary school trying to break my leg. I was obsessed with reading (I read more books than anyone else in my library’s summer reading club 2 years in a row) and my favorite was the Baby Sitters Club. Remember the one where Claudia breaks her leg because one of the kids she is sitting plays a prank on her? Yeah, well because of that, I thought it would be *so cool* to have a broken leg. Thoughts of wheelchairs and crutches, and awesome casts getting signed by my friends danced in my head. I had romanticized being injured for some odd reason.

And as a result, I tried everything from dropping rocks on my shins, to spending recess jumping off the highest part of the jungle gym over and over. I think my parents thought I was insane, but they never really tried to stop me (at least not that I remember). Maybe they thought if I ever did manage to break my leg, I’d learn my lesson because of all the pain I’d be in (and I’m a huge wimp about pain).

It took me a year or so to put two and two together and realize that my breaking a bone would actually hurt. And as I already mentioned, I cannot handle pain. Or even the thought of it. I totally fainted and puked the first time I got my ears pierced. I still can’t even watch the show House when they show the bloody parts or, like, needles going toward someone’s eye. If I don’t look away in time, a cold sweat washes over me and I have to run to the bathroom (although I’m ok, and have never actually puked from watching gross TV, I just think I might!). And don’t even get me started on if I cut my finger chopping veggies for dinner….on more than one occasion Mr. Cola has had to finish cooking for me, while I sit in the corner and try not to think about my bloody finger!

So now I do whatever I can to avoid pain. I’ve become a very careful person, and to this day I’ve still never had a broken bone. The closest I ever came to my dream of a broken leg was for Halloween, in 5th grade, I dressed up as a car crash victim. My mom helped my cover an old snow boot with white medical tape, and I decorated it like a cast with markers. I thought I was so cool…

(This is from my 5th grade Halloween party, I’m the one in the middle with the car crash blood stains on my shirt. Another photo of a photo from my framed scrapbook page, it’s the best I could find without pestering my parents to dig through their storage unit.)

My American Idol Dreams Were Trashed Before The Show Even Began

I cannot sing to save my life. No really. I know lots and lots of people say that, but have they ever been told by their music teacher in 4th grade that they have no talent? For reals.

I had sort of an odd music teacher. Or a great one, it’s hard to tell. She was obsessed with Trinidad, and always made us sing songs from there, which made for some odd concerts for the parents, but I guess made us more cultured? Anyway. There were always drums involved, which I thought were really cool. And if you were playing them, you didn’t have to sing as much, or she didn’t notice you I guess. But at one point, in 4th grade, we had to all sing something without any kind of drums or instruments. Bad idea on her part, because without me being distracted by playing instruments, I was free to belt it out. And, yeah. I was literally told to “just mouth the words” in front of my entire elementary school music class. This has totally scared me for life, especially after I broke out my tape deck and recorded myself, to see if I was really that bad. I was. And still am.

So to this day I do not sing where anyone can hear me, ever! At birthday parties I only ever mouth the words to Happy Birthday. I detest karaoke, and will not go, for fear someone will try to force me on stage. There are only two places I’ll actually sing out loud now: someplace where the music is too loud for anyone to hear me, like at a concert, where everyone else is singing, or in my car. I’ve got some serious mid-90s rap skills (well, in my head I do), and my car is the only safe place for me to bust a rhyme. Dogg Pound or Eazy-E anyone?

(Of course this experience didn’t stop me from staying in the chorus class, because you got out of something else if you were in it! This is a lovely photo from my 5th grade yearbook.)

Now it’s your time to share, tell me one of your childhood secrets that has impacted you as an adult!

A Woodside Wedding: We Get Tossed, Part 1

2010-10-26T15:18:00.000-07:00

About 45 minutes after dinner ended and we had our first dance, it was time for some wedding activities! First up was the bouquet toss.

I know lots of couples decide not to do the bouquet and garter tosses these days, but for us they were just fun traditions, that have been done at almost every wedding we've been to. So we figured, why not?

Our MC groomsman made the announcement, and ladies started gathering to one side of the bar. I surveyed my targets.

I finally spotted who I was going to aim for, and made sure she knew my eyes were on her!

Then I did a fake out throw! I love the below guest photo because you can see just how badly our officiant's girlfriend wanted to catch it, and my sister looks like she's saying, "hey, what the hell is with the fake throw!"

(guest photo)

I figured more than one fake toss would just be cruel, so I went ahead with the real toss.

I quickly spun around to find out who had caught it.

(guest photo)

Turns out it was my cousin (with her arms in the air in the above photo). This was apparently the third bouquet she's caught, so hopefully good luck comes in 3s in her case!

(guest photo)

Are you planning on doing the traditional bouquet and/or garter tosses at your wedding?

Miss any wedding week details? Catch up here:

- I packed an emergency bag that saved my dress
- We had a crazy 4 days prepping for house guests and stuffing favors
- Shopping for a ton of wedding flowers to arrange ourselves
- Mr. Cola drinks a 40 and I have a night out on the town for our low-key bach parties
- A day of DIY'ing flower arrangements
- I kicked off our official recaps with my #1 wedding tip
- We began the weekend festivities with a sunset cruise for our wedding party
- We rehearsed our quick and easy ceremony
- I panicked, but we got our rehearsal dinner decorations set up just in time
- Our families met for the first time at our rehearsal dinner under the trees
- What went wrong on our wedding day, and my tips for future brides
- My bridesmaids and I got our hair and makeup done in the hotel suite
- I put on my wedding dress and became a bride
- The guys watched the World Cup, then got ready in 10 minutes
- Traffic delayed our decorations getting to the venue, and I almost ruined our first look
- We got to see each other for the first time on our wedding day at our first look
- We took some time for bride and groom pictures in the park
- I gave you a behind the scenes look at our family, friends and DOC setting up our venue
- Arriving at our venue and getting ready for the ceremony to start
- Everyone walked down the aisle
- Excerpts from our ceremony, and reading the vows we wrote for each other
- I interrupted our officiant, we exchanged rings, and with a kiss we were officially married!
- Wedding party and family portraits, and my thoughts on missing pictures
- Our guests enjoyed cocktail hour while we took a few more photos
- Everyone ate a delicious dinner, and our siblings gave beautiful toasts
- We didn't practice, but we had a very special and wonderful first dance as husband and wife
- I showed you some disposable camera pictures, which were totally worth it to include on our tables!

(Unless otherwise noted, all photos in this post were taken by the very talented photographers of Shoot Me Now Photography)