3 Years Later...

And I finally finished our wedding album!

Since we went a little unconventional in the photo department 

(i.e. had a couple of our photography student friends take them),

we didn't have the option of ordering a fancy-pants album 

like the ones I've seen on photographers' websites.

But honestly, I love a project so much that 

I couldn't have had someone else make my album anyway :)

So instead, I kept the ribbons from my bridal shower gifts,

and Brian got me the prettiest book on Etsy (which I love),

and I half-way made an album right after our wedding...

and then never finished it.

But now, it's FINALLY done!

And it makes my heart happy.

Here are a few of my favorite pages...

Getting married was a big deal for me.
Wedding planning was alternatively dreadful and euphoric,
and it forced me to grow up a lot,
and transformed our relationship, making it stronger and sweeter than it already was.

With this album finished,
I feel like I can finally close the book on the wedding (pun intended),
and the growing pains that came with it,
and allow all the wonderful memories that I wouldn't change for the world
to live on for safe-keeping
in that lovely little album.

The Walk

Love is the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another.  It is with a person’s sense of life that one falls in love—with that essential sum, that fundamental stand or way of facing existence, which is the essence of a personality. One falls in love with the embodiment of the values that form a person’s character and create the style of his soul. It is one’s own sense of life that acts as the selector, and responds to what it recognizes as one’s own basic values in the person of another.  Thus, to say ‘I love you’ one must know first how to say the ‘I.’

- Ayn Rand (as compiled and read during our ceremony by our friend, Michael)

When I think back to our wedding day, the memory that hits me hardest is my walk down the aisle.

It's probably because I was so unprepared for it.

You see, I didn't know until it happened that I would be walking part of the way down the aisle alone since I didn't pay attention at the rehearsal (typical).  So you can imagine my surprise (and panic) when we reached the end of the chairs and I found myself released from my parents' steady grips, with nothing to lean on, no one to take the lead, and 15 feet of empty aisle ahead of me.  Every part of me wanted to reach out, grab them back to me and hiss frantically "Don't leave me here alone with all these people watching!"  (Luckily for everyone involved, I kept that impulse to myself.)

I remember a painful awareness, then, that I was all alone, standing in a rather ostentatious dress, awkwardly holding a bunch of thrown-together flowers, trembling with adrenaline.  Oh yeah, and there were 150 pairs of eyes watching me, waiting, expecting a bride.  What do I do with my hands?  Am I supposed to hold this bouquet with both of them?  That feels too weird to be right.  Why does it even matter?  It totally doesn't matter.  Maybe I should just toss them under a chair and hope no one else cares about the flowers.  And these shoes can go, too.  Am I supposed to smile?  I think that's physically impossible right now.  What's wrong with my cheeks?  Ohmygod I am totally failing at being a bride.  Why am I here?  Tell me again why we didn't elope?!

I felt distinctly overdressed.  And completely vulnerable.

I looked down the aisle at Brian seeking some kind of assurance that there was a reason I was going through all of this; that somehow, this fumbling mess would turn into us being married if I just made it to the end of that aisle, even if I ditched the flowers and the shoes, and that married was worth it.  And thank God (whichever one you prefer) I did, because it was there, in his eyes, and I needed it -- confidence.  He had known from the beginning that I would be here, walking down the aisle to meet him, and he believed in it.  Plus, somehow, he was still waiting there, wanting to promise his life to me despite my awkward unbrideliness.  He even looked like he might think I looked beautiful.  I trusted him.  Maybe if he can't tell I'm falling apart, no one can?  There was hope, at least.

But most of all, what I felt was relief.  The relief of knowing that we had won the battle for togetherness.  That after choosing each other over and over, through college, living abroad, grad school, job interviews, traveling Monday through Thursday, relocating, relocating again, planning this stubborn wedding, we were now to be rewarded.  The relief of knowing that the decisions I had made had been the right ones; of knowing that my future was now securely in the hands of the person I loved and trusted most; of knowing that I wasn't alone, and would never be alone because we had made sure it would be us.  It wasn't just me standing in that room anymore, then; it was us, together, on purpose.  And we had earned this.

But for the last few steps of that aisle, it was just me.  So.  I (still awkwardly, but with determination now) took that bouquet in both hands, made a mental note not to trip, and all on my own, decided to place one foot in front of the other, to meet my husband at the end of the aisle, and to marry him.  I chose togetherness for the last time.

I walked quickly, too fast for the music, anxious just to get there, just to squeeze his hands, just to be together at the end of that aisle.  It was not the composed procession you see in the movies, and it was not particularly pretty.  But it was real.  It was terrifying and it was freeing, and most of all, it was acutely honest.  It was the moment I have felt most myself in all of my life.

I was not being "given away," I was giving myself over.  Looking back, I would not have had it any other way.

And when it was over, I was so proud.  Proud of my choice of husband, proud of our decision to form a family, proud of how we were doing it.  I'm prouder still, today.

Happy first anniversary to my favorite person.  
May we always remember what it felt like to choose each other.

A Dress Story

Since I've already started in on the anniversary posts (I couldn't just have one, could I?), I have a wedding-related story to tell you.  Well, actually, it's an engagement-related story, I suppose.

It's about my dress.

{you've seen this before}

I haven't told you much about our engagement (or anything about it, actually) and that was on purpose.  I've been reluctant to talk about it because it was so private, much more private than our wedding (which clearly, I have bored you to death spoken at length about), and I'm a little afraid of shaking the glitter off that day.  I'm also a little afraid that the sugary fairytale-ness of it all will make you want to barf, and then you will associate my blog with nausea and you will never want to read it again because you'll be so traumatized by the cheesiness.  But then again, everyone loves a dress story, no?  So I'll make it short.

Brian proposed to me in Florence, at sunset, in a piazza overlooking our beautiful city blanketed in a layer of unexpected snow, with a bottle of wine in hand and no one else around.  He got on one knee, I got on both.  It was everything.

After the sun went down and we soaked up our chianti, we carefully picked our way back down the iced cobblestone stairs, commenting on what a tragically hilarious story it would make if we ended this night with a slip-and-fall trip to the Italian ER rather than a dinner at Il Santo Bevitore.  Luckily, we made it to the bottom with all of our extremities in tact.

{this was actually taken on the way up, before the dark set in, transforming this picturesque staircase into a death trap}

Then we strolled through the old streets of Florence, under the twinkly Christmas lights, both of us smiling like dumb Americans, a ring on my finger and a warm Tuscan meal in our future.

As we turned onto another vaguely familiar street, I caught a glimpse of something poofy and sparkly and white in a store window -- a wedding dress!  I remember that place, I thought.  I had passed the boutique years before when we studied in Florence and when I was young enough not to pay more than a second's notice to a wedding dress in a window.  But now, this store and this dress were suddenly relevant; now, I could be one of those girls, ringing the buzzer for an appointment, and trying on the dress in the window.

How funny, I thought, that we should pass this place now.  And how appropriate, I thought, that the dress in the window was so gorgeous and wow, I would totally wear that.  It was a coincidence worthy of a picture, and so I snapped this shot:

A year later, after our wedding, I printed the pictures from our engagement trip to make an album, and I came across this off-hand snapshot.  That was a pretty dress, I thought.  And then I looked closer.  Atelier Aimee, reads the window inscription.

Atelier Aimee...Atelier Aimee?!  As in, the designer that has only one workshop in Rome and a flagship store in Florence?  As in, the designer who made my actual wedding dress, which was the very first wedding dress I ever tried on?  As in, my dress, purchased from discount store all the way in San Francisco, might actually have come from that shop?!

Yes, that Atelier Aimee.

Sometimes, I don't know what to believe.

Two Places at Once

Welcome back from the weekend!  Did you miss me?  You did?!  Oh good, because today you get a double dose of ME (and we both know that's what you really want to start off your Monday).  Here's your first dose, and for the second, head over to A Practical Wedding, where Meg and her team are featuring that post I wrote last week for our 9-monthiversary!!!!!  Yes, that A Practical Wedding, the one I link to in like, maybe every other post I write, and the one I refer you to whenever I attempt to speak on the subjects of weddings and marriages.  NBD.

JK.  BFD (big effing deal).  I'm just a little excited.

If you popped in here from APW, welcome!  Take a look around and stay as long as you'd like.  Mi casa es su casa.

Why Our Wedding was not Like a Birthday

An Attempt at Wisdom from Nine Months In

{photo by Leonel Medrano and Iris Bai}

This Saturday marks 9 whole months since we got hitched!  Woohoo!  So tonight we're seeing Lobby Hero at the Skirball Center to celebrate.  (OK, so we didn't really buy the tickets with a monthiversary in mind, but I'm calling it an anniversary celebration so whatever.)  I'll tell you how it was next week!

Even though nine months seems so short, I feel like in that time, I have learned more than I ever expected to about myself, and about how to be not just a girlfriend, but a wife.  Most importantly, I've learned the difference.

When I was engaged, and I imagined waking up on the morning after my wedding, I thought it would be just like waking up on the morning of my birthday – everyone mockingly asking “how does it feel?” and me expectedly answering “same as yesterday.”  Not that I didn’t think our wedding would be a totally awesome celebration; I just thought it would be more like a big party than a game changer.  We had been together for five years, and we had just moved in together a month before the wedding, so what could a few promises and a license have on us, right? 

{one month before our wedding; moving in together and painting endlessly to cover the awful yellow walls in our Berkeley apartment}

But it turns out for me, getting married was most definitely not like turning a year older, and being married is definitely not like being not married.

The difference is that now, we have albums.  For five years before we got married, the file folders of jpegs on my laptop did the job of preserving our memories just fine.  But now?  Now that’s not enough.  Now, we have hard-bound, paper-printed, legitimate family albums to fill with our very own family history.

{taken by a very nice stranger, just after we picked up our marriage license at the SF City Hall}

I spent a good amount of time during our engagement thinking about the merger of our two extended families – you know, the usual issues of how we would split up holidays and handle family gatherings.  But my thoughts never extended past my static vision of “family” where I played the role of daughter, granddaughter, niece.  What I failed to wrap my head around was the fact that our wedding would also mark the transformation of my life-date into my closest family member, my emergency contact, and the face connected to mine by a horizontal line on the family tree.

But how do you conceptualize something so hugely transformative?  With pictures, obvi.

{NYE 2011}

I remember a moment from before our wedding when I was looking at old family photos of my parents as newlyweds and me as a child, and somewhere between my first Halloween and my second birthday party, I felt my perspective shift.  I realized that my parents must have consciously collected and preserved these albums with the thought of showing them to me one day, so that I could know my back-story, my history.  And I realized that now it was my and Brian's turn to fill our own album.  It was our turn to grow our own family, to make our own history, and to build a story to pass on when our family expanded.  It was a quiet, heavy realization, like an emotional handing off of responsibility.

{Maui, on our honeymoon}

That's when I realized that the wedding I had dismissed as a formality was actually a big deal.  Huge.  Marrying Brian suddenly meant so much more than I ever thought the label “husband” entailed.  But, after I recovered from my minor panic attack à la Carrie Bradshaw when she breaks into hives in the wedding dress shop, I was excited.  (Only a small part of this excitement was about having an excuse to buy a new photo album, I swear.)  I was excited to wake up the day after our wedding and see what it felt like to be family.

{the picture on our first annual family Christmas card...yep, starting it off right}

Since our wedding, I've bought an album and deemed it with pride to be our first family photo album, and now it's about 1/3 of the way full.  Starting the album project was a bit intimidating, though, because it just felt so ridiculous.  I mean, who actually prints out large numbers of amateur point-and-shoot candids of seemingly unimportant events?  I was sure the photo-printing people at CVS were secretly laughing at me.

{Aruba, January 2011}

But now, nine months into this fam thing, standing at that CVS photo counter feels pretty legitimate, and slipping my freshly printed glossies into the 4x6 plastic album sleeves makes my heart swell.  It's a reminder of what the whole point of this marriage thing is, and it's a confirmation for me that marriage matters, and that our wedding was most definitely not like a birthday.

{taken by our friend, Dana, on a rainy afternoon at the Academy of Sciences in SF}

Unsolicited Advice for Your Engagement: Part II

(Or How to Actually Pull This Thing Off)

{fingerprint wedding bands by Fabuluster via Etsy; engagement ring passed down from Brian's grandmother and mother}

Today I've got Part II of my wedding manifesto for you (here's Part I)!  This is where I will bestow on you any and all lessons I learned about the actual planning of a wedding -- the technical getting stuff done and budgeting parts that really suck.  For the most part, these are simple thoughts that might be obvious or totally irrelevant to many of you, but they are the things that I wish I had known from the beginning.  So just in case any of you out there are as clueless as I was, here's what I've got.

How to Get it Done (with a limited budget, limited time, and limited patience)

Forget about the colors.  You absolutely do not have to have wedding "colors" or a wedding "theme."  This is not a sorority semi.  A wedding is supposed to be a celebration of your relationship and your beginning a new life together, and what in the world does that have to do with colors and themes?  If you are the party-planning type, then go for it.  If you're not, then chill.  It will be fine if your invitations don't match your shoes or whatever.  If you like fried chicken but you're having an art gallery wedding, have fried chicken (we did).  If you like more than two colors in the world and they just don't all match, welcome to the club.  The pieces don't have to fit together like a puzzle -- that would be quite boring, wouldn't it?

{"Visions of Love" holographic glasses clearly don't match with anything}

Look for a venue that doesn't need much decorating, or a place that has no decorations at all.  If you find a place like an art gallery, or a shnazzy restaurant, there's only so much that you need to add to it.  On the other hand, you could also find a big industrial space that is super cheap and then spend the money to rent cool furniture and set up a lot of decorations to transform the place into your own personalized vision.  This will obviously take more time (but maybe not more money if the space is a great deal because it's empty!), but if you've got it, use it!  

One thing to ask about for an indoor space is candle usage -- the venue we used didn't allow us to use real candles because of the fire risk.  I'm not that into candles, so I was OK with it, but if you're planning a candle-lit ceremony, you'd better ask first!

Also, I think we need to talk about outdoor spaces.  The problem is that they can be deceptively expensive.  I assumed that gardens and parks would be way cheaper alternatives to the indoor spaces I toured, but it turns out, you almost always have to put up a tent, and bathrooms, and provide kitchen equipment, and possibly heaters, and it all just snowballs.  So if you want to have an outdoor wedding, make sure you ask about all the add-ons before getting too attached.

{our ceremony at Terra}

Other things to ask about at any venue:

- Alcohol.  Can you buy and bring your own?  If not, it's going to cost you an arm and a leg (trust me, it did).

- Parking.  Some places don't even have spots for your vendors to park in!  Maybe that's just in SF?  Anyway, it was insanity.

- Insurance.  Do you have to get this?  How?  How much will it cost?

- Does the facility rental price include an "event manager" and if so, what exactly does that mean.  This was a source of a lot of confusion for me.  The venue we rented included an "event manager" in the price, and I thought that meant like a wedding planner.  But apparently, your caterer is supposed to do all the set up and take down and all that stuff, so an event manager is kind of useless, frankly.  If you don't have to pay for one, then don't.

- Are there weird laws that require you to hire a security guard?  These laws exists in San Francisco for events >150 guests.  It costs $30/hour.

- Children.  Is there like a playroom or something?  I'm not sure what children require, but I think you should ask the venue people about them.

Find a venue with a max capacity that matches your ideal-sized wedding.  You will thank me for this when you never have to fight about inviting so-and-so at the last minute because the guest list has already reached the max capacity of the venue.

A wedding is made up of two distinct parts (obvi).  As obvious as this may seem, it helped me a lot when I started treating the ceremony and reception as two different events to plan, the first for me and for Brian, and the second for our guests.  The ceremony is yours – hold on to that as tightly as you can (graciously, of course) and do not give in to other people’s unsolicited advice and opinions about what ought to be said or not said during that time (except for mine because I'm telling you to do what you want).  It may be a little different if you are having a religious ceremony, but within the boundaries of whatever religion you celebrate, do only what you want and everything you want.  The very point of having a wedding is to feel the simultaneous weight and lightness of vowing your love and life to another person.  So do it in whatever way makes you feel that in all of its hugeness.  It will knock you off your feet more than you ever imagined (and that's the point).  

The reception (if you're having a medium or large wedding) is your gift to your guests.  It is probably going to be fun, but it's probably not going to be romantic (and that's OK because you'll probably need an emotional break after the whirlwind of your ceremony).  It is about celebrating you, but what will make people think you had an awesome wedding has nothing to do with you at that reception.  It's about the food, the drinks, the music.  That's what people love about a good wedding, and hate about a bad one.  And that leads me to my next point....

Spend money on your reception, not on your ceremony.  There is no reason to spend $200 on a gilded, custom-imprinted ring dish.  There will be a picture of it that you will look at once and never print out, and then you won’t know where to put the stupid thing after the wedding.  Just say no.  You will be so consumed by your own emotions and thoughts by the time you get to the ceremony that you won’t notice a thing around you.

{Easy peasy DIY ceremony decor.  On the right: CB2 hanging whirly candle holders with orchids}

Don't serve people food or alcohol that you wouldn't order at a nice restaurant, even if it means you can't afford fancy napkins.  This is like etiquette 101, but just like you wouldn't invite people to your house and serve them frozen TV dinners (if you would, I think you need to re-evaluate your lifestyle), don't invite people to your wedding and serve them a sub-par meal.  The reception is a gift to your guests, remember?  (Plus, do you really want to eat a sub-par meal at your own wedding?)  But you should know that this usually means that the food and alcohol is going to be EXPENSIVE.  Especially if you're like me, and you generally order things that are organic/all natural, and you hate cheap tequila.  The result for us was that we spent half of our budget on food and alcohol alone, and that is maybe the only decision that I feel 100% comfortable with.  (If you're looking for an absolutely fabulous caterer in the Bay Area that does organic food of any type - even organic Southern food! - and will really try to stick to your budget, check out Back to Earth Catering - the people who do Gather restaurant in Berkeley).  So feed your guests as you would want to be fed, even if it means you can't afford fancy napkins (new Golden Rule?).

Don’t rent fancy napkins (or tablecloths).  You are not hosting a party for royalty (unless you are Will or Kate - and if you are, *internet curtsy*).  No one will know except you that your tablecloths are polyester and not Egyptian cotton.  Although I will say that a nice table runner will go a long way.  (I was convinced that I would sew some of these for my own wedding...DIY delusion).

Fancy chairs are optional.  See above.

{un-fancy linens, un-fancy chairs, and DIY centerpieces made by me + family + bridesmaids}

Paper is EXPENSIVE.  I am convinced that once a woman is bestowed with the title "bride to be," some hormonal shift occurs that makes all paper goods and pretty fonts seem absolutely irresistible.  Yes, the sight of an "invitation suite" with cut-outs and fold-outs and letter-press and ties and textured fibrous paper will suddenly have an unnatural ability to pull at your heart strings.  Even if you've never sent a letter via snail mail before, the mailbox will unexpectedly seem swoonfully romantic.  This is a symptom of the wedding crazies.  You must remember that paper goods are ephemeral and inconsequential to all but maybe 5 of the people who will attend your wedding.

I know the paper spell is hard to break, so let's try logic.  A normal price for a cute invitation is anywhere between $4-7/person.  For a wedding of 150 people, that’s AT LEAST $600 + envelopes and postage, so like $850-1300 for JUST the invitations (no RSVP cards for the fancily-inclined were included in that calculation).  Seriously.  And let's not even talk about the trees (who am I?).  I would recommend doing the print-it-yourself option via Etsy, and/or only sending real paper invitations to the people you know will keep it, and then doing paperless post for the rest.  Here are the wedding invitations I "bought" on Etsy (I paid $50 for the personalized pdf) and then printed myself:

{it's this invitation and monogram design at Kim's Custom Gifts via Etsy and printed by me; save-the-date designed by me}

Other paper things that will eat up your budget: place card holders, signs, thank you cards.  These are all so easy to DIY!  For place card holders and signs, you can download pretty fonts on your computer and print them at home (or at Kinko's) on pretty paper (that you hopefully find on discount).  For thank you cards, do as I did: get a wedding picture printed as a postcard via an online site that will give you a "100 free postcards" promotion (and then unsubscribe before the deadline).  There were two pictures I picked out for the postcards, both from our day after session:

{by Leonel Medrano}

{taken by my mom}

Now do you feel better about foregoing the letterpress?  (P.S. you can easily make a blackboard from a piece of wood/old mirror/old IKEA furniture piece in my case - I'm not even kidding you - and some blackboard paint from the craft store.)

Throw money at technicality-type problems like transportation.  No one wants to figure out how to transport a whole bunch of people without paying a lot of money for it.  It's not worth your time - just pay it forward.

{scoff all you want at my cliche white limo, but riddle me this: how the heck else do you transport 10 people 20 miles without having to worry about parking or where to put the champagne glasses?}

Flowers are a good DIY project, in theory.  I decided to DIY all the flowers for our wedding, and it ended up costing me around $400, which I considered to be a great deal.  I ordered all the flowers at the SF Flower Mart in advance and then went to pick them up the day before the wedding.  All of this story ends well, but part of it is something you should avoid.

This is the good part.  The afternoon before the wedding, my bridesmaids and my family and I went over to the venue and put together all the flowers for the centerpieces, and the big birch logs and orchid stems for the ceremony.  It was quite a chaotic scene, all of us splashing water everywhere and frantically shoving stems into spray-painted wine bottles, but it is also one of my favorite wedding memories.  I know nothing about flowers or flower arranging (nor did I have time to become a flower expert in the 9 months of my engagement), but the whole experience made me care a whole lot less about how the flowers came out than about having my friends there with me, making things for my wedding.  And it was affordable and awesome.

{photo taken by my friend/bridesmaid, Sogol; note that the six sqaure flower arrangements were put together in the bridal room seconds before the ceremony with flowers that arrived as a surprise delivery from my family in Turkey who couldn't make it to the wedding -- thanks to Sogol for being an on-the-spot DIY queen!}

{imperfect DIY flowers; photo taken by my friend Aditi}

What a lovely DIY success story, right?  Well.  Let me tell you, the bouquet-making on the day of the wedding was a different story my friends.  This time, when I woke up, none of the purple flowers I had ordered for the bridesmaids bouquets had opened up like the merchant said they would.  (Note to self: never again believe a flower seller when he tells you that the flowers are supposed to look like that.)  So I had no bridesmaids flowers.  What would they do with their hands when they walked down the aisle?  You are probably staring at your screen thinking I am a crazy person for caring what my friends did with their hands when they walked twenty feet down an aisle, but these kinds of things matter to you on your wedding day.  So it was time to turn to Plan B.  What's Plan B, you ask?  The rehearsal dinner flowers!  Yes, I frantically pulled apart the centerpieces I had taken home from the rehearsal dinner, searching for multiples of flowers that would go with the mustard-yellow bridesmaid dresses.  Stems flying everywhere.  But it worked.  There were plenty of second-hand flowers to go around, and we all got together and made some pretty OK bouquets.

So the lesson is: ALWAYS take home the rehearsal dinner centerpieces just in case your bouquet-making aspirations are dashed by the lies of your flower merchant.  This one's important people.

{unexpected DIY; Tasha, making her bouquet from the rehearsal dinner remnants}

{good enough, eh?}

{they look pretty legit from far away}

{my bouquet - also DIY-ed for under $25, luckily without any flower mishaps}

Go broke before you go big (in terms of dress shopping strategy, that is).  Even if you've got the budget for a designer gown (I'm jealous), check out a discount designer place first (like the Glamour Closet, where I found my dress!), just like you would check out T.J. Maxx before going to Bloomingdale's (or is that just me...).  You never know what you'll find, and plus, it's always more of a rush when you find something you love without expecting to.  (And don't forget to invite me to go dress shopping with you.  I LOVE wedding dresses, and I'm good luck.  OK that might be a lie, or at least not based on any substantial facts, but still, invite me please.  K thanks.)

{my dear dress that now sits in a box}

Friends don't make friends buy dresses from a bridesmaid dress shop.  I love the different-but-coordinated bridemaid dresses trend, but it's pretty hard to pull off when your bridesmaids live all over the country and are very busy people.  Having all your girls wear the same thing is simpler, and less stressful, and thus (unsurprisingly), it's the route that I opted for.  However, that does not mean that you have to go the traditional bridesmaid store route.  There are a bazillion pretty dresses out there in the world, and a lot of them cost less than $150 (which is basically the low-end at a bridesmaid store).  Plus, who in the world has time to go to like 5 fittings for a dress she didn't even necessarily want in the first place?  I found my bridesmaid dresses for $40 (including shipping) on Lulus.com, a site that I order from for myself all the time.  That way, those who needed to get alterations could still afford them, and those who fit well enough in a S-M-L sizing scheme weren't forced into the rigid bridesmaid dress fitting routine.  Just because it's a wedding doesn't mean you have to use wedding vendors, especially for something so easy to find at retail, like a dress.

{pockets and bows}

No one else reads wedding blogs.  Just because you’ve seen it a million times doesn’t mean it’s over-done when your guests have probably never seen it before!  Mason-jars-as-vases?  Cork place card holders?  Totally novel ideas to everyone in the room who has not recently gotten married, and I promise you won't be infringing any copyrights by stealing a centerpiece idea from Style Me Pretty (don't quote me on that, I'm not a lawyer yet).  So don’t stress too much about making your wedding the coolest hipster-indie-modern-enchanted-forest-hollywood-glam wedding that has never been done before; just make it something you like.

Ask your fiance to be in charge of the things that make him/her most uncomfortable.  Weddings make some people uncomfortable (generally).  So minimize by giving them control to make the things they dread the most more comfortable for them.  For example, Brian is not so into the whole dancing in public thing (unless the "dancing" in question involves fist pumping), so I delegated the first song choosing duties to him.  That way, he picked something he liked and felt comfortable with, and I was comfortable because he was comfortable, so we could both enjoy the dance and not feel that awkward.  Success.

Don’t base your decision of whether to see your fiance before the ceremony or not on the potential for photographs.  Whether you want to see your fiance before the ceremony or not is a very personal decision, and I don’t think it should be based on practicality.  Yes, it is easier if you see your partner before the ceremony and take portraits and family pictures.  But if you have a grandma who sternly objects to doing something that is such bad luck (in her opinion), and if you have a fiance who sometimes grasps on to tradition with tooth and nail, then don’t push it.  Pictures are nice, but that’s not the point.  I don’t know what it would have been like if we had seen each other beforehand, but I can tell you that there is no picture that could possibly capture what I felt when I walked down the aisle and saw Brian standing up there, waiting.  It wasn’t worth the risk to me that I wouldn’t have that feeling, just to get some frame-able shots.  See East Side Bride.

{THIS moment}

Day after sessions rock (especially if you choose not to do portraits before the ceremony).  Frankly, I have no idea how women out there go do a wedding portrait session after the ceremony.  They must have super human abilities to look pretty amidst emotional tumult, and ridiculous patience.  I was way too overwhelmed after the ceremony to go take portraits where I somehow would look serene and "bridal," there was a high potential for 5-year-old face (have I told you about how I do that when I'm really really happy?  It's not pretty.), and after having taken all the family portraits I just wanted a drink (or 3).  Having a day after session also meant that I didn't have to worry about finding a venue that had easy access to good picture spots, or rushing to get portraits in before sunset.  Plus, I loved the fact that I got to go to my own cocktail hour.  Once the actual reception started, I barely got to talk to anyone, so that time turned out to be really important, and it also made the whole thing feel a bit less formal for me.  Try asking your photographers to come later (you really don't need 100 pictures of yourself putting on your make-up...so over-rated), or leave early like right after the first dance (you really don't need 100 professional pictures of your guests getting down at the reception -- funny but capable of being adequately captured by amateurs), and do a short day after session instead.

Here are a few from our day after session, just because sharing is caring:

OK, I'm done playing show-and-tell now.  Thanks for indulging me.

Wait!  One last tip: don’t eat scallops the night before your wedding.  Trust me, it's a bad idea.

The end.