Wedding Week 4: Honeymoon Snaps!

Good morning!

I'm finishing off this week sans our usual She Was a Bird flourish of Photo Friday, as I wanted to show you a couple photos from our honeymoon! We went to Jamaica the Monday after our Saturday wedding, and came back home 7 days later! I am really glad we went, and we had a ball, but as I've told several friends, I could have kissed the ground I missed America so bad by the last day!

We left BNA for Miami's International Airport in the afternoon, had a short plane trip down to the tip of Florida, and posted up at Bacardi's Mojito bar for the three hour lay over. The plane arrived in Jamaica around eight that night, and we took a cab from the airport in Montego Bay (yes! Just like "Kokomo!" We saw Key Largo, and then were in Montego! Baby,  why don't we go?) to the Decameron in Runaway Bay, St. Ann Parish. The cab driver was a tall man in his fifties' named Clive who spent the entire forty five minute ride describing various cultural and physical landmarks of Jamaican history in fluent, liltingly accented English, practically without taking a breath. Dude really knew his Jamaican country side! Unfortunately, it was pitch black with no illumination for the most part of his tour, and we had to imagine "up there, the home of Usain Bolt" and " on this spot, where Bob Marley was born". 

The nightscapes were punctuated with tiny bars, the size of a small storage shed, the doorless doorframe of which gave view to space for maybe three people and a handhewn configuration of shelves and bottles behind a tiny counter. "ROLEX CLUB", one hand painted sign read. "PRETTY LADYS PLACE", another. I didn't get any pictures, but they looked almost exactly like this, but illuminated at night by a single fluorescent light. "Eeen JahMAYcah, is all kin' of people...you got de black, de Chiiinese. De Indian, and de white man. Eeen JahMAYcah... it's nottabout de color of de skin...but de color of the money," Clive opined, as we bounced along down one of Jamaica's main highways, on the left side like British roadways, large commercial trucks passing on the right. He talked about various cultural groups, how they came to the islands, and which groups had been most successful in terms who lived in the residential areas, and who lived in the "innah CIT.TEE." I wish I could remember more, but I was so tired and on edge at this point it was hard to retain information.

We rolled into the resort, tipped Clive heavily, and checked into our room. Each room was in its own little cabin type thing, like a nicer (but less kitsch, sadly) version of the Cave City concrete teepees in Kentucky and California. I loved being "separate" from the other vacationers while still being "around people". I always hate walking down hotel hallways in a dripping bathing suit or in the middle of the night on an ice run!

The beach, naturally, was the main attraction, and we got up every day to go sit on the shore like it was a paying job. The all-inclusiveness included drinks, but the quality of those drinks largely depended on the bartender (who might also be a dancer in the night show, or head chef at the evening's meal). We sat with the waves at our feet and drank frozen pina coladas and talked about all the marine life we hoped to see!

On Tuesday, walking through the commissary type area for breakfast, we realized we were possibly the only Americans on the entire resort! Most people were from the UK, and the dining room was a patchwork quilt of accents from Northern England, Southern England, and everywhere in between. I heard a little German, a little maaaybe Dutch, and one, very vociferous fan of a butt-shaking, built Jamaican dancer, who kept shaking the national team jersey he was wearing, and yelling "COLOMBIA! CO-LOM-BI-AAAA" in much the way Tony Montana does in Scarface at the stage. The resort people were very friendly and only a little mean in their teasing of us poor tourists. Once, when getting beach towels, one enormous man greeted us with an aggressive, insistent, "WA GWAN? Waaaa gwaaan, mon? Wa gwan?", sounding like Terry Crews as a Martian. Turns out, that's the Jamaican "What's up?". We heard this many other times over the course of the trip (along with "Ya, mon", almost as one word, and peppered throughout conversation the same as a Valley Girl might say "like"), but this was hands down the most intimidating time.

Here, a fellow vacationer from New Zealand took our photo. Matthew: "I bet our accents sound totally insane to you." Kiwi: "Yaah, theeey DO-oooOO." Well, at least it was mutual.

Before I left for vacation, I took some of the money I received from my bridal shower and dropped about eighty bucks at Target. Folks, you know I don't own any clothes that are both a) cotton and b) not swishy little cocktail dresses (ie ANYTHING suitable for beach wear), so I did some much needed wardrobe shopping. Luckily, September is the end of the line for Target beachwear, and with deeply discounted shorts and tops and shoes and everything else, I was able to make out like a bandit. All of my pictures seem to show me in swimsuit and shorts or skirt, but I had dresses and t shirt and everything! My poor dad, who has always been mildly against my "creative" attitude towards personal self-expression through dress, kept commenting over these pictures, "You look so grown up! You should get clothes from there more often! No joke, you look nice!" I'll take whatever compliments I can get, though! See how blue the water is?

Here, Matthew poses with a skeleton we bought from a guy on the beach who was carving them. He had flaming hearts with the Harley Davidson logo flying above them right next to Rastafarians smoking next to maps of Jamaica, in terms of his figural work. I felt bad because when we started the bargaining process, he mentioned that he usually gets $70 for a carving. Um, in estate sale or flea market terms, that means you usually get $35, and you would take $20, so I offered $25...oops. He wasn't mean but he was obviously one, not taking twenty five bucks for his work and two, deeply disappointed at this opening negotiation. Over the course of several trips to the Jetty Bar (next to which he was set up), we talked him down to $30, and heck, look at the thing. It was worth it! We named him "Skullford".

Here I am playing Trivial Pursuit on the beach. YES, I WON. What did you think?! Bibi put up a pretty good fight, but I emerged victorious. Matthew was amazed I knew that the Green Bay Packers were the most winning team of the 1960's super bowls. My dad lectures me about everything, and Vince Lombardi was no exception! This is day 5 down there, and thanks to SPF 50 sunscreen, I still look pretty pale:

Matthew, doing his best Jack Lord impersonation. He looked so freakin' cute on a beach.

We found this Alice in Wonderland sized chess set near our cabin, and Matthew may or may not have beaten me (in spite of professing to be "terrible" at chess. What a hustler!). You can see other cabins like ours in the background, and at night, they would be covered with little translucent skinned lizards. As you can imagine, we both had a fit looking at them in extreme closeup.

The food was so strange here! I decided to go pesceterian for the trip, and the best thing I had was at the "rsvp only" menu-based restaurant upstairs of the buffet-style commissary. The "Jamaican Run Down" included scallops, shrimp, crab, and snapper all in a curry-like sauce, and it was a-w-e-s-o-m-e. We also had lobster tail one night, all we could eat (which was a lot)! The weirdest thing I saw on the buffet is a two way tie for "braised cow foot" (nope) and "curried goat" (HECK no), the latter of which is a local delicacy! Poor goats. There was brown sugar cane granules to put in your coffee at every meal, but the hilarious part? It's distributed in Jamaica, but imported from Brazil. Dang! And I thought I had a local product on my hands.

All and all, we had a fabulous time, but I was so ready to go back on the last day that I hardly slept at all the night before! I told my parents, upon returning to Nashville, that one of the best parts of the honeymoon was getting to go on it with Matthew. As tense as situations got so far from home (the power went out one night for like 8 hours in 90 degree weather! The car ride back to the airport in daylight was ACTUALLY hair-raisingly dangerous w/r/t other drivers! The decided lack of non-poultry, pork, or beef based protein on the buffets! etc etc), he never said a single cross word to me and we got along like real troupers throughout both the fun and the slightly taxing parts of our honeymoon. I think that says a lot for the married couple we hope to become!!

Did you or a friend go on a neat destination honeymoon? Have you been to Jamaica? What was your experience of that country? Let's talk!

That's all for this week! Thank you so much for taking the time to read and comment on this life-event heavy posting schedule. Next week, nothin' but vintage stuff, je te promets! Have a great weekend, and I'll see you on the other side. Til then!

Wedding Week 3: First Dance and Cake

Good morning!

Thanks for all the well wishes yesterday! We're speeding right along with wedding week to bring you pictures of the first dance and the other post-ceremony events of our big day. Lo, look upon us shaking a tail feather on an impromptu dance floor (this first one might be my favorite wedding photo):

I preface these photos by mentioning I had made the greatest and best reception mix of all time especially for the occasion. Matthew and I are both almost too into FM Gold hits of the late seventies' and early eighties'-- bands like REO Speedwagon and my beloved Huey Lewis and the News don't have the street-cred-earning weight of saying how much I love Lou Reed or Bryan Ferry, but by godfrey, I love them just as much on the eight hundredth rotation of "Roll with the Changes" or "Heart and Soul" as I did the first time. And I ain't ashamed! 

The playlist was built around that criterion and that time frame. My dad bailed on my proposed father-daughter dance of A Taste of Honey's "Boogie Oogie Oogie" (and, honestly, disco of that calibre requires 100% commitment on the dance floor, so I'll give him a pass). I thought I would probably just have music at the reception, but no "formal" dancing. However, in a split second decision as speeches by Rob, my dad, Matthew's dad, Kelsey, Ernest, and Noah wrapped up, Matthew cued our song from the playlist and led me to the front of the room for our first dance.

What song did we choose? "September", by Earth, Wind and Fire, which goes a little bit like this:

Do you remember the 21st night of September?
Love was changing the mind of pretenders
While chasing the clouds away
Our hearts were ringing
In the key that our souls were singing
As we danced in the night
Remember, how the stars stole the night away, yeah yeah yeah
Hey hey hey
Ba de ya, say do you remember
Ba de ya, dancing in September
Ba de ya, never was a cloudy day

COULD IT BE. MORE PERFECT. IT COULD NOT. The sentimental, sweet, upbeat feeling of the song, and dancing with my Bab, made me stop worrying about looking dumb in front of everyone and just have a fabulous time with my brand new husband. He's such a cute dancer, too, that it was hard not to feel like this dance was our victory lap after months of planning.

I only almost cried three times at the wedding-- once during Matthew's dad's speech, once during my dad's speech, and once as I hugged my parents after leaving the dance floor directly after the first dance. "You know," my dad said, in the pontificating way he starts many a sentence, "It's funny, but I always thought, wedding traditions like first dance and all that were kind of dumb, and people just did them because they had to. But watching you all out there, you just looked so happy, like the definition of a beaming bride, and I thought, 'This is really nice'." Cue stifling of waterworks of an amazing proportion. That's why I especially like that last photo I posted, where my dad's looking on as I'm laughing at some complicated footwork Matthew's perpetrating. Memories!

We let Rob, as the farthest-traveling guest, be our witness as we signed our marriage certificate to make it legitimate legitimate. Here are some photos Oznur took of the happy event:

Kelsey's mom, Linda, with help from her friends Charli and Carolyn, made this wedding cake for us! I think it looks gorgeous, and the little ornaments on top were just exactly the right size! There was also a chocolate mousse flanked on the table by two sprites from Castlevania for the "groom's cake" (you knew Matthew was going to get a retro video game reference in there somewhere, right?).

As Monica, our photographer, was taking photos of the slicing of the cake and all that jazz, I got nervous over the "feeding cake to each other" part, which I was worried would look too weird, cuddly, babyish to be cute in the photos. Matthew solved this problem for me by pretending to feed me, then redirecting his fork's course straight into his own mouth. The resultant Kodak moment you see below (thanks to Matthew's cousin, Rachel):

I mean, if that doesn't deserve to be hanging over the mantle in our family home, I don't know what does. 

Did you do a first dance? If I hadn't done "September", and gone with an earlier idea of doing all forties' and fifties' songs, I think Louis Armstrong's version of "A Kiss to Build a Dream On" would have been our first dance. What song/era/reception playlist did you choose? What thought governed your choice? I have to say, the best first dances at a wedding I've been to were at my friend Caroline's, where she and her dad danced to "Nothing Can Change This Love" by Sam Cooke, and she and her husband danced to "Into the Mystic" by Van Morrison. SERIOUSLY. IT WAS LIKE IN A MOVIE. 

I think I'll do a lightening fast Photo Friday tomorrow of our honeymoon in Jamaica, then it's back to your regularly scheduled vintage posts! Bear with me, and I'll see you tomorrow for some tropical souvenir snaps. Til then!

Bonus: You know you want to stream this completely awesome reception mix. Check it out:

                                               

Week of Wedding 2: The Ceremony

Good morning!

Without further ado, your humble narrator as a bride:

AAAH, right? What do you think?! After trying on every dress it seemed like they had at David's Bridal, and never finding anything that seemed even close to "me", this dress was standing on a mannequin in the window of the Jessica McClintock store at Cool Springs Galleria. My mom and I were cutting across the second floor to look for shoes at Macy's when I saw the hoop skirt and went..."Well, I know I said I declared war on bridal dresses and am actually going to walk the aisle in a pickle barrel, but listen...I think I should try that dress on." Wasp waisted and pintucked at the bodice? Check. Ivory satin for days? Check. It looked even better when I tried it on. Who would have thought! Jessica McClintock, founder of Gunne Sax, ubiquitous prom gown manufacturer, and my bridal gown designer. I could not be more pleased. As for the veil, I kept telling my mom I wanted to look exactly like something that would sit at the top of a wedding cake-- frothy and feminine without being frou frou, ultra traditional without being tight-laced. I love it! This look is E-X-A-C-T-L-Y what I wanted.

I kept eeking out, "I look like a vintage Barbie! I am so happy right now!" Kelsey, who's been my best friend since 1997, helped me get ready, and had a "day of wedding" kit that is like nothing a non-professional wedding planner has ever seen. From granola bars ("I googled "Vegan snacks", these are good!" she said) to chalk for stains to rice paper to blot perspiring pores, this girl is like A MACHINE. And this machine freakin' nails it at weddings. She also took me to my hair appointment that morning and served as a day-long morale coach to everyone involved in the wedding. Between her and the Huberts and Rob, I kept remembering all day what an amazing group of friends I have, and that was the spark I needed to keep me not scared about the ceremony!

I assure you I'll bug you all over the place when I get my formal wedding photos back, but here are some that Kelsey took as the photographer was also taking photos. I wore a bracelet, necklace, and earring rhinestone jewelry set from the sixties' (half off day at a Michael Taylor estate sale, and looking like way more than $8), and those gold Steve Madden shoes from the shoe post I did a while back. No one could see the slippers, but they made me feel even more Cinderella (if possible).

Matthew was in our room at the hotel well I readied myself in Kelsey's room. The bride's side of the preparation involved double sided tape, last minute spritzes of hairspray, the fastening of tiny clasps on jewelry, and squeals. The groom's side looked like this:

That's bibi eating a square of Lindt chocolate while playing Mario Kart on his 3DS. He is possibly the cutest thing ever. Kelsey took a video of us seeing each other in our little wedding clothes for the first time, and it was a really sweet moment. Then we broke back into boys team and girls team of wedding attendants. Our camp drank champagne and joked about how I could probably make it from the half-balcony of the hotel room to the drainpipe to the parking lot if my nerves got the best of me. Here's Kelsey (l) and Alyx (r) and then my sister Sus and me:

After that, we took about 1,000,000 formal photos, and got ready for the main event! Here's Matthew an hour or two later getting ready to go in with Pastor Chris and his brother Noah:

The processional music we chose was "March of the Siamese Children" from the 1956 movie version of The King and I (dubbed from tv version of the scene here). I was absolutely obsessed with this movie around fourth grade, at which time I had committed the soundtrack to memory and was totally in love with Yul Brynner ("Ah...I forget...English not scientific enough for use of chopsticks"...burn, English nationals...ouch). The song from the presentation of the king's many progeny to their new governess peaks at the presentation of the number one born son, whose entrance in heralded by clanging cymbals and swelling strings. Where do you think I decided to come in? 

                                                  

The aside my dad is making to me in the photo below has something to do with the fact that it took us so long to walk down the aisle. During the rehearsal, I mentioned to everyone that in spite of having rearranged the order and length of the song professionally (thank you, producer-friend Bobby, for making this happen!), there was still a small room and a lot of music! Accordingly, we practiced walking slow but there was a good forty seconds or so to go when it was supposed to be time for the father to escort his daughter down the aisle in the actual event. It was a classic "Lisa and her dad" moment:

Dad: ((in a whisper, but over the music)) We're gonna look dumb, man! How long do wait before we walk?

Me: You know who they're waiting on, right? Us! We're the show! Let 'em wait! I ain't walkin' til I hear cymbals!

Dad: ((standing solemnly, then cracking up again)) They're all in there like, what the heck are they waiting on?

Me: I'm waiting on my cymbals!

It was totally worth it. I would also like to mention that I worried for no less than the entire walk down the aisle that my "back looked fat" as I was walking or that my bra strap was showing. Success! Neither was true!

Pastor Chris delivered a really sweet ceremony. The one hiccough was when he mentioned to Matthew, in the preamble to the vows, that "Lisa is going to have days where she's stressed out from work, or she's tired. Lisa might have bad hair days--" to which Babu immediately interjected, "She will NOT!" and we both giggled as the audience outright laughed. I mentioned later at  the reception that I don't have bad hair days, I just call out of work, sick ("SICK OF THIS HAIR!"), but it was a cute little moment. I could almost see Matthew through my veil, but it was so surreal how the whole event took place in soft-focus behind the tulle netting! Also, what a "wow this is for real!" moment when he lifted the blusher and kissed this very happy bride.

We face the guests as man and wife! I specifically asked the pastor to introduce us as "Mr. and Mrs. Matthew H------", because whatever the opposite of feminist thought on that is, that's what I subscribe to. I'm nobody's property, but to be Mrs. [Husband Name] [Last Name] is something I've been looking forward to for years and years, ever since my grandma used to sign her checks in that format. 1962, I've arrived! Here I am!

Here we are just after the ceremony, giving a hug! It was sweet because I was so giddy the entire time after the ceremony....we did it! We're wed! Matthew had a hard time letting go of me after each hug, and could you blame him? Smitten to death, both of us.

Thanks again to Kelsey and Jules for taking these photos so I could tell you about them!

So! What do you remember from your wedding ceremony, the actually nitty gritty of the event? Have you had a wedding or been to one where the ceremony was really special? Let's talk!

More on our first dance and cake tomorrow! You'll be sick of weddings by the time I'm done with this this week, haha. Thanks in advance for your forbearance, and I'll see you soon! Til then.

Week of Wedding 1: Setting the Scene

Good morning!

Well, I'm back to spread the good word about married life! It's been more than a week since we tied the knot, but it seems like it was thirty seconds ago! Nevertheless, I would feel like a bad blogger if I didn't start showing you SOME of the photographic evidence of this whirlwind of a September.

We had professional photos taken by Monica Lee, a photographer out of Clarksville who did great work on two of my friends' ceremonies. Her photos still need to be culled and curated with a professional eye before we get to see them, but my dear friend Jules took about a million photos of the happy day. It was so nice to get to wake up married on Sunday and relive the highlights through these pictures!! I thought I would show you some of hers and friends' photos of the pre-wedding, before giving you the actual "goods" (Matthew and I in our formal duds! YEEEEEAH) tomorrow. Come look!

Here's the guestbook table. I decked my little hatstand from home out with a 1960's bridal veil that in no way would fit attractively on my head (otherwise it would have been on it for the ceremony!), and this heart made of red paper flowers and a photo montage of Matthew and me reminded guests of the "reason for the season":

Jules actually also made this photo mat! It's usually in a frame, which she and her husband James gave me for an engagement present, but I thought it would be sweet to trot it out for the wedding decorations. There we are at Jules's wedding in the lower right hand corner! (The ouroboros that is my friendship with this wonderful lady, haha)

The room had this crazy, crazy carpet, which was love at first sight for me. I'm over the moon about how all our photos looks fall, fall, FALL in terms of seasonal feeling. Here's the arbor up where I would eventually meet Matthew to exchange our vows. It was nice to have a target to walk towards, because under my big net veil, it was hard to make out anything but shapes in the early evening dark! We had the sheers let in a lot of natural light as we walked the aisle, which I loved. We were going to attach lights to the arbor like the box set intended, but when it got down to those last 30 minutes or so, things had to be prioritized, and I was like, forget it, flowers it is. Notice how it matched the carpet! It looks a little lonely by itself but worked just wonderfully in the actual ceremony.

We thought we would get into the event space the night before, as the hotel coordinator had said Saturday weddings were usually set up on Thursday nights. That Thursday morning, the coordinator called and said a last minute meeting had been booked in the space (a Doberman Pinscher professional breeders' meeting, if you'd believe it), and a strictly-blocking, no-decorating rehearsal was the best we could manage before the meeting had to be set up. Kelsey, one of my bridesmaids and a key "making stuff happen" member of the wedding planning team, Matthew, and our friends Rob and Oznur (who were staying in the hotel and had come all the way from Switzerland to attend the wedding [more on that later]) decorated the room as I got my beauty rest on Saturday morning. They did a great job! My little succulent plantings and old books and tchotchkes made for a very "Matthew and Lisa" centerpiece. Plus, people were tickled to death to get to take the cacti home (win!). Here's the display from Jules's table...you can see my friends-since-high-school and fellow married ladies Caroline in the chevrons and Jennelaine on the right in the wispy bg of the photo:

Two days before the wedding, my mom and I went out to Bed, Bath, and Beyond to see what the situation with placemats was out there. I'd had a brain storm that morning, while wringing my hands about the lack of decorative runners or mirrors or what have you to "tie the centerpieces together", that PLACEMATS would be the right size and the right pop of color to make the whole thing look cohesive. BBB was VERY ACCOMMODATING by having these adorable multi-colored bamboo placemats for $1.99 apiece. I snatched up enough for the tables, and was ready to go! It was a wedding miracle that the colors went as well as they did, I was so pleased. Plus, you can bet I'll be using these again for entertaining at my house (bonus!).  UPDATE: Here's a photo Kelsey took!

That matador was from Eartha Kitsch's free garage sale! Love it.

More wedding favors! Here are the candles from this post and little treat boxes of Hershey's kisses laid out on a table. The black and white of it all looks so elegant! My mom assembled these from flat boxes at her kitchen table like it was a paying job the week of the wedding. I had to get my arts-and-crafts determination from somebody!

As a teaser for tomorrow's post...here's Alex and Thomas and Brian (bridal party members) getting ready to strut their stuff down the aisle:

And me! Nerves everywhere, my sister Sus on the right, getting ready to do this thing!

Do have any horror stories or unexpected coups from the set up of your wedding ceremony? How did you cope with the "AH! I'M ABOUT TO GO DOWN THE AISLE!" last minute heebies? I told Matthew after the ceremony that I never had even a tinge of a cold foot about marrying him, but I sure did freak out a little at the prospect of being in an enormous hoopskirt in front of pretty much everyone I have ever known, while also expected to perform an act of public speaking. Now THAT'S a nerve rattler!

The wait to see my dress will be over tomorrow, I promise! I'm off to get a little post-vacation rest, but I'll see you here Wednesday. Til then.

Photo Friday: Technicolor Wedding Edition (1966)

Good morning!

Thanks, guys, for all your good advice yesterday on my next-to-last post as a single woman! I couldn't hardly sleep last night thinking about the rehearsal today, so Lord help me tonight when the big event is practically at hand!! I hope you're having a good week, but what week would be complete without a Photo Friday to look forward to? Today, I was looking for COLOR in all caps, and boy did I find it. Just try searching "wedding 1966" on either Flickriver or Flickr itself, and these are the kind of technicolor dreamboats you're going to come across. 

Let's look!

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This first photo is notable for the mother of the groom's youthful, Faye-Dunaway-in-a-European-movie style goldenrod ensemble. I love that the elbow length gloves match the hat, and meet at the elbow length sleeves. Can you see the little ribbon detail at the cuffs of each sleeve? To wear a hat like this just once, and this well! The mother of the bride is a pretty snazzy looking herself, in an emerald seafoam of a print, also with white gloves and a subtle, velvet band of a hat. Do you know how much less interesting of a photo this would have been in black and white? Thank goodness for Eastman Kodak!

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 I like this photo for two reasons. One, I can hear in my head the bride saying "And you could use your bridesmaids dresses for a number of different formal, social occasions after the ceremony! It's not just a one-off dress, it's really very elegant and versatile!" And she would have been lying like a rug. Still, the girls do look pretty sweet in their pale and midnight blue gowns. Two, I can't get over how tall the two grooms on the groomsmen side are in the middle of the lineup. Please, groom, if you're going to have friends, they need to be of either a uniform size or at least smaller than you. These pituitary cases are distracting the rest of us! Just kidding. But it is weird to have such tall men among such smaller ones. It looks like someone's done something to distort the proportion of the photo.

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Now these, theeeeeese are some bridesmaid dresses. What is going on here?! While the bride looks lovely, I am so thrown off by the jumper-like construction of the other gowns and why did you let the one bridesmaid have a violet instead of a pink hat? Isn't the whole point for the girls to look uniform? As timeless as the tuxedo'd men and the bride look, you know she's looking back on her wedding photos like "Why...why did I insist on those dresses?" or better yet "Why did I allow my bridesmaids to choose their own dresses?!" This is a picture that might have been better in black and white. Still, the vividness of the photo is hard to argue with.

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A much more traditional bridesmaid dress collection here. Do I love or do I LOVE the bride's cupcake of a dress? Maybe this is why I chose a similarly poufy one for myself! I actually like these bridesmaids dresses, too, because they're a true powder blue. And honestly, if you shortened the hem a little, you could wear them again as a nice evening sheath. It can be done, apparently! 

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Last but not least, here's a happy couple rushing off for their honeymoon! What strikes me about this photo is how of-a-moment and breathless it is. Obviously, someone's cousin or college buddy was lying there in wait, next to the getaway car, to snap a in media res photo of the couple dashing through the thrown rice to the first moments of their lives as married people and alone! Also, the bride's red coat and blue ensemble are pretty cute, if I do say so myself.

So! What do you think? Which of these photos is the most colorful? Did your mother or grandmother employ any completely crazy color schemes on her non-suspecting bridesmaids, or was she kind in her dress selection? Which of these vintage looks would you wear right now? Let's talk?

PEOPLE, I'M OFF TO BE A MARRIED GAL! Wish me luck! I have a week's worth of reruns lined up next week to get you through our vacations, so make sure you stop by to see some blasts from She Was a Bird's past in my absence. You guys are the best! See you soon. :)

Wedding Planning: THE HOME STRETCH

Good morning!

GUYS, I'm almost to the altar! EEEEEEK! We've been running around like crazy the last week or so trying to nail the down the last details of this to-do and the weird part? The zen-like distance I am feeling towards the ceremony itself. Two weeks ago, I was in a hot panic over flower decorations, centerpieces-- pretty much about a week ago, as things started to fall into place, I stopped worrying as much about details. The same feeling you get when you've prepared and prepared and prepared for a school presentation or a job interview is what I have now, where sure, there are things that I will remember that I need to do day of, but as far as prep work, I am do-o-o-one. For today's post, I thought I might show you all some of the things I've learned over the five months from save the dates being sent out to THE DATE BEING ALMOST HERE!

WEDDING KNOWLEDGE Q AN A:

Matthew at my folks' house, practicing for height. The arch will be about a foot taller,
after we finish assembling it, so I can fit under!

Q: How long does it take to string a trash bag full of silk flowers into a 10 foot long garland of alternating colors and leaves?

Approximately 3.5 episodes of Law and Order: SVU on Hulu. My mom gave me these fall flowers in May or so, and I was deadset against them. "Mo-o-o-om, they look like cemetery flowers, come ON." I didn't want real flowers either because of a) the expense and b) my conviction that something, somehow, would happen to the organic material in such a way that it would look bad before the ceremony (see Austin Scarlett's corn dress in season 1 of Project Runway). Matthew and I made approximately 500 tissue paper flowers in reds and whites and yellows, which gave the whole thing a kind of cool Elvis Aloha from Hawaii look. While the color theme was consistent and I liked how unusual it looked, I was last minute worried that the whole thing would look like someone's third grade class project gone wrong. Weekend before last, I shook out the bag of flowers, stripped each bunch of its leaves and petals, arranged them in piles by color, and then used a needle and fishing wire to string them all together. This is much more like what I was going for! 

I love Barbie's flyaway veil!

Q: From what height and at what speed does the 1960 Wedding Ken ornament we've chosen as our cake topper sustain loss of feet and base fractures?

Um, apparently when you just barely touch him and he falls from the mantel onto carpeted floor. Not to worry, my dad's going to airplane glue Humpty Dumpty back together. I bought these figures at an estate sale in the pouring rain in Hendersonville, the same one where I bought four bags full of costume jewelry because it was something like 80% of the original price that day. The weird thing about the sale, other than the torrential downpour? There was a fifties' two-car garage in the backyard-- imagine one of those ones with a concrete floor, almost like an outbuilding. On the tables around the edges of the room, were PILES, and PILES, and PILES of wedding decorations. Mostly from the eighties', but some going back to the sixties'. Everything looked like it had probably been in the garage for 20 years (maybe the person has a wedding related business?) except these mint-in-box Barbie and Ken Hallmark ornament from 1995. We'll take it! Sidenote: All the in-store wedding toppers I've looked at have been awful! Does nowhere sell those sweet, plain little figurines to put at the summit of your cake? I kept seeing either a) clear figures (??) or b) the one where the groom is running away and the bride is catching him (because that joke is so fresh). Oh well! I'm happy with Barbie.

Q: When is the best time to buy miniature cacti in Tennessee?

Mid-August! On my birthday, Mom and I stopped by the Dickerson Road Lowe's to price some tiny succulents for the centerpieces. Since my success with the cacti bowl in my living room, I've been hooked on the idea of replicating it for the wedding. I made cake stands by gluing clear glass dessert plates to cordial glasses (25 cents a piece on half off day at Goodwill), and the little round bowls with the cacti and gold army men will sit on that! These cacti are not only in my wedding colors, but were fifty cents apiece on a clearance rack. "It's a birthday miracle!" I said to my mom. I'd planned to go with some kind of grass or similarly inexpensive foliage if the cacti price was too dear, but it was actually less than I'd even planned to spend on it! Can you see the army men and lizards/dinosaurs in the rocks there? I bought a bunch at Dollar Tree and spray painted them gold so they'd be a uniform color. I think they give it that extra "oomph" to the displays. These, the cake stands, hand-picked tchotchkes from my collection, and small stacks of old library books will make up the centerpieces. I really can't wait to see what it all looks like.

Q: How do you explain the mechanics of a wedding processional to a group of artistic people, especially if you're a complete control freak about planning stuff ahead of time?

Infographics, naturally! They're all visual learners, and the high school teacher I used to be came out in spades as I designed this wedding rehearsal cheat sheet for my nears and dears. It's a very small wedding, but I still want to do a very traditional down the aisle processional. I wanted to make sure everybody knew where to go and when! I pasted this, along with information about the restaurant for the rehearsal dinner, a menu from that restaurant, and a time line for the wedding on Saturday on a double sided sheet we can hand out at the rehearsal so people will have something to look at while I'm frantically trying to put silk flowers all over the place before we get started. I also happen to think it looks super cute.

Well! I gotta get back to work, but let's talk! Do you have any last minute wedding planning advice? What went well that could have gone better at your wedding or wedding rehearsal? What did you learn in the process of planning your own nuptials or seeing another plan theirs? I can still benefit from your wisdom!

That's all for today, but I'll be back for a final Photo Friday before matrimony tomorrow! See you then!