what and why

people have asked on several occasions why we chose to have our wedding in upstate ny. the reasons are simple.

1. i love fall. its my favorite season, and i've always wanted to get married among the fall colors.
2. its apple picking season and if we wanted mr. z's family to attend, we had to take the wedding to them. they were excellent sports about working around us.

i've also had several people comment on the readings we chose for the wedding. we did stay away from some of the more traditional readings and tried to chose ones that we liked and found meaningful and unique.

so in this post i would like to share our readings and some examples of why upstate ny in october is a perfect place to get married...

from Captain Corelli's Mandolin
by Louis de Bernieres
(read by my SIL Wendy)
Love is a temporary madness,
it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides.
And when it subsides you have to make a decision.
You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together
that it is inconceivable that you should ever part.
Because this is what love is.
Love is not breathlessness,
it is not excitement,
it is not the promulgation of eternal passion.
That is just being "in love" which any fool can do.
Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away,
and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.
Those that truly love, have roots that grow towards each other underground,
and when all the pretty blossom have fallen from their branches,
they find that they are one tree and not two.

From "The Velveteen Rabbit" by Margery Williams
(read by Mr. Z's SIL Kelly)

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When [someone] loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

lyrics to Adam Sandler's "I Wanna Grow Old With You" from The Wedding Singer
(read by our good friend Jamie)

I wanna make you smile,
Whenever you're sad.
Carry you around when your arthritis is bad.
All I wanna do,
Is grow old with you.
I'll get you medicine,
When your tummy aches.
Build you a fire if the furnace breaks.
Oh it could be so nice,
Growin' old with you.
I'll miss you, kiss you,
Give you my coat when you are cold.
Need you, feed you.
Even let you hold the remote control.
So let me do the dishes in our kitchen sink.
Put you to bed when you've had too much to drink.
Oh I could be the man,
Who grows old with you.
I wanna grow old with you.

i'm still obsessing a bit over little details that are obviously too late to change (did we rush out of the church too fast after the ceremony? did we hurry the photos too much to get any good ones? are people thinking i'm horribly rude for not talking to everyone at the reception? crap like that) but everyone's kind comments have made me feel much better.

wedding photos, round 1

people are starting to post pictures from the wedding on facebook, and i am super excited. (so excited, in fact, that it took me three tries to type "excited" properly)

overall, i think the whole event went splendidly. the decorations turned out amazing, which i can say because i'm not the one responsible. sister gets a rockstar award for making my hodgepodge of fall purchases come together in one splendid decor. her fiance, my little brother, and his girlfriend also win rockstar awards for spending two whole days busting ass and doing all the manual labor. it never would have worked without all of them. another rockstar, sara also did pretty much anything i asked her to do for the week leading up to the wedding... thank god for family and friends!

now i totally stole these pictures from sam, sonja, and jenny. thanks ladies!

the front of the "church." couldn't ask for lovelier weather.


the front "alter."


the reception tent out in the orchard.


the seating tags... everyone had their own apple.


best idea i had for the whole wedding was the coloring books. kept the young ones (and some of the older ones) occupied.


cornhole also keeps the older kids amused.


the dreaded martha stewart pompoms. mike and lorrie also win HUGE props for sticking around and helping us pouf (not sure if that's a real verb or if we just turned it into one) them all. all 110 or so.

the bouquets went into decorated mason jars to decorate the head table.


my super gorgeous cake!! also martha stewart inspired, courtesy of Premier Pastries of Rochester. complete with caketopper from Lauren Alane.


jay and dominic helped us out by making sure the cake made it out to the tent between the ceremony and the reception. i hear it was very anxiety-inducing, but they did a marvelous job.


when there was a generator disaster of some sort (which the men in our lives handled splendidly, and most guests never knew there was a problem) our candle centerpieces lit the tent.


people also seemed to dig the sparklers later in the evening.


considering the great snapshots people got, i can't wait to see how Kristina's professional photos turn out. we got TONS of compliments, particularly on the "details" and the "unique-ness" of the wedding. both of which were things that put a lot of effort into. we owe a huge thank you to our family and friends that went out of their way to help make sure our day was fantastic.

if i could go back and do it again, there are only a few (very minor) things i would change.

1. i would have gone over the actual entrance at the rehearsal dinner so that my brothers would have closed the doors and my dad could have straightened my train prior to everyone seeing me

2. i would not have been so nervous that i forgot to give my dad a hug and kiss when he gave me away :(

3. i would have looked at mr. z more, even if it did mean i cried more and my mascara ran everywhere

4. i would have made sure the ushers knew who was supposed to sit in the reserved pews so the aunts/uncles hadn't ended up in back

5. i would have tried harder to make sure i got around to say hello to everyone at the reception. this is the one i am kicking myself for the most. there were several people that i never got a chance to talk to and i feel quite bad about it.

so, all things considered, i think that's pretty good. we couldn't have asked for better weather, the dj was good, the food was delicious... it was definitely worth the stress of planning. i think everyone had a good time.

good friends, good cake

guess what?! i'm still alive! i may not have any readers left sticking around after such a long post drought, but i'm finally back. its been a hectic week or two, and there's lots to share. it will be at least a month before we get any of the professional photos back, but there's plenty of other stuff in the meantime. (and if anyone out there reading this has pictures from the wedding, send them to me!!)

the saturday before the wedding, some of my good friends threw a bridal shower for me. since my family is scattered so far across the country, and because it was only one short week before the wedding, most of my relatives were unable to make it. i did have a handful of good friends that came, and even got a surprise visit from an old friend and my future mother and sister in law.

they drove all the way from upstate ny, just for the day!!

sarilyn!

the always amazing jenny made a BEAUTIFUL wedding gown cake. it got rave reviews from all shower attendees. (check out her blog, there's a great picture of me preparing to cut the cake)

lemon cake with lemon curd and blueberry... mmmm

some shots of some of the lovely ladies in attendance. unfortunately i didn't get one of everybody, but i tried.

too cute :)

can't wait for baby pictures!

is she disgustingly lovely or what??

a huge thank you to ashley for hosting, and to jenny, sonja, and sara for helping out. and to everyone who came or who sent something for the scrapbook!

i heart....

my lauren alane caketopper!!

photo courtesy of Lauren Alane

cutest little felted birdies ever! and yes, i realize i already bought something for the cake. but it was way too big.

Another decison

Once again I am in need of opinions. Primarily because I am incapable of deciding anything on my own. And again, its in regards to the boutonnières. Or Mr. Z's boutonnière at least, as the dads' bouts are still in pieces scattered around my "craft table"

So the last time, the wheat bout got mediocre reviews, which was unfortunate since it was the favorite contender for both me and the mister.


So I stole an idea for fabric leaves from Martha Stewart and played around with it a little bit. This is a rather haphazardly assembled version, thrown together so I could snap a shot before the light disappeared. Since taking this photo, its been disassembled, and I added some more "veins" on the leaves. I also stitched some copper wire into the leaf and used that to wrap around the wheat stems to attach it all together... very clever, I thought.

fabric is left over from the cornsacs

I have also since ironed the leaf again so its a bit flatter. And when its actually assembled, I will put some effort into tying a nicer bow. So now its opinion time. Better with the leaf? Or without?

OH! I forgot to add, that after several rather embarrassing attempts to stitch some veins onto the leaf, I decided it might be worth my while to look up the proper way to embroider such a thing. If you are ever in need of such instruction, there is a very handy website here

a disaster of epic proportions

first of all, i'd like to thank the five or six people who so gracefully handled the sobbing, panicky mess that was me last night. most notably my mom and grandmother who both sat patiently through several minutes of unintelligible blubbering before i could even spit out a complete sentence.

for those of you who did not receive a phone call, text, or facebook message (i was panicking people, i contacted like everyone i knew looking for a miracle) here's what happened.

almost a year ago, last October to be exact, i bought a dress. this dress. in a size four.


i didn't have an "oh my god, this is my dress" moment. i wanted to buy almost every dress i tried on, or at least three dresses from every gown-hunting excursion. i found this one at david's bridal in rochester with mr. z's mom and aunt. i really liked it and it was a fantastic deal, but it wasn't the right size. i really needed a six, but this dress was discontinued and there wasn't a six anywhere in the david's system. so the consultant called the seamstress out and asked her to take a look at it.

"no problem," she assured me. "its not that tight, we can fix it. no problem." so i bought the dress. (can you see where this is going??) i should have known better.

so at the beginning of august i took it in to the david's in columbus for my first fitting. the woman asked me what i wanted. i needed a bustle put in and some pads sewn in the bust, because even if the rest of me is a size six, my boobs are still a size zero. and i pointed out the fact that the waist didn't fit quite right. so she said they'd let it out around the waist an inch on either side. fantastic.

fast forward to yesterday. i had an appointment in the evening to pick up my altered dress. i put it on. boobs look great... and pads are firmly sewn in. (no one wants a boob pad flying out mid-chicken dance.) the waist, on the other hand, looks the same as it did pre-alterations. ashley said my face was priceless. i made a superstar effort to not say the f-word repeatedly. ashley asked the seamstress if maybe they took it in by mistake. seamstress said no, definitely let out. so we made plans to let it out some more and she showed ashley how to work the bustle.

the panic didn't start immediately. in fact, i made it all the way through a disappointing sushi dinner with ashley (two thumbs down for ba sho in dublin, if anyone cares). it wasn't until i was driving home that it suddenly occurred to me that the reason letting the waist out didn't make any difference is that the waist wasn't where the problem is. its too tight around the hips, so it rides up and makes the waist bunch. and the bad news is, the way the dress is constructed with the lace and everything makes it almost impossible to let out at the hips. so i officially flipped out.

thus began the tearful phone call marathon. at one point, my mom suggested i call the alterations department of david's back and tell them what i thought and tell them if they couldn't fix it, i would just pick it up and take it somewhere else. so i called and told the woman that it had suddenly occurred to me that the fit at the hips was the problem. she said she was thinking the same thing, but didn't know if she'd be able to let it out where it needed to be. she said she'd check to see if maybe she could let it out along the zipper but she didn't sound too optimistic. the phone marathon continued.

the major problem lies in the fact that this saturday is exactly five weeks before the wedding. i can't go back and pick up my dress and see if it fits until next friday. exactly 4 weeks and 1 day before the wedding. making it very bad timing if i need to find a replacement dress.

HOWEVER...

i went back to david's after work today. i told the consultant what happened and that i wanted to try on some dresses, just in case. i found two that i like ALOT. quite different from my original dress, but still with a similar 'vintage' feel. (one of which i would probably have picked over mine, had they been around at the same time) the consultant assured me that since they are new styles and i am a fairly common size, they would definitely have them in stock next weekend. and she said there would still be enough time to have a bustle done before the wedding too, IF i needed to get a second dress. but, i was also able to talk to the seamstress again as well, and she said now that she's had a chance to look at it, she thinks it should be possible to alter it so that it actually fits me. so everyone keeps your fingers crossed for me.

maybe this won't be a total disaster after all. though i really did like those two dresses...

license to thrill

or get married. whatever.


according to the website, we're down to 39 days. RSVP's continue to roll in, with the majority of people being able to make it thus far. there was some drama today about whether or not we'd be able to get all the bridesmaid's dresses in time for the wedding. but in the end, its only one that's still up in the air.

ken was in town this weekend for a raging bachelor party and to pick up our paperwork, so we can actually get married legally. turns out we weren't drunk and we aren't any more closely related than second cousins so they let us get a license. requirements are tough here in ohio!

hallelujah...

praise jeebus, i'm finally done. if you've been reading this blog for a while, or if you've read back through my archives (or if you're my family who's heard me bitching "what was i thinking") you may know that last october i got the brilliant idea to knit a wrap for each of my bridesmaids.

i found a lovely fallish orange lace weight yarn (read: very fine yarn that requires billions of stitches to attain a size of any value) and picked out a pattern. roughly two months later, the first wrap was done. then i decided it would probably be a good idea to knit each wrap as a different pattern or i'd want to kill myself before i finished four identical knitted objects so wrap 2 and wrap 3 slowly but steadily came into existence.

wrap 4 was hard on me. i found a pattern i liked and i started it, no fewer than 6 times. it wasn't difficult really, i just made dumb mistakes, and it draaaaaagged on. i never even made it past the fifteenth row, i just couldn't do it and finally i gave up. (though i held on to the pattern,in the hopes that it would work better another time. it was pretty, after all.) while perusing a yarn shop in Asheville in June, i came across a gorgeous lace baby blanket pattern.

Eureka!! tweak the stitch count a bit, make it longer and it would be perfect for a wrap, i thought. i cast on that weekend and never looked back.

i have to be honest, i love the way this picture turned out.

I finished knitting it last night and was almost late for work this morning because i was blocking it. The pattern has points on the end, but i didn't pin them out so instead of points, i have sort of a wavy edge. The more pointed edges are pretty, but i thought something more subtle would blend better with the other wraps.

why hasn't anyone told me that when i tuck my hair behind my ears i look like an elf?? and not in the good "orlando bloom smokin' hot elf" kinda way.

its very difficult to take a picture of yourself, even with a tripod. especially if the battery in your remote shutter button is dead. and while the natural light in the bedroom was lovely, it wasn't very bright so the pictures turned out quite grainy. (have i mentioned that i heart my fisheye?? i want to marry it.)


this is just a closeup of the edge. the provisional cast on worked out nicely and i am quite pleased with the edging in the pattern. in spite of all my grumbling about being tired of knitting miles of orange lace, the results really are pretty. and i overestimated how much yarn i would need so i have plenty left. i may even make myself one in the future as they make lovely, soft scarves.

63 days and counting...

at long last, another wedding post. not too much going on in that regard recently, as it seems like most things are as done as they can be up until the time comes. in fact, most of the stuff has already been taken up to mr. z's parents' house and stored in the spare bedroom. sister even got the pew bows semi-done well ahead of schedule and is shipping them to the future-in-laws as well where they will be assembled the rest of the way the week beforehand. but there are a few things left cluttering up my empty apartment.

all boxed up and ready to go to the post office

today (according to the countdown on our wedding website) is 63 days out. invites are supposed to go out 6-8 weeks prior to the date, but since we didn't send out save-the-dates, i decided to send them out a bit earlier to give people plenty of time to plan traveling. plus they've been all put together and ready to go for weeks now so i figured i may as well get them out of here.


and i did a test run on the tissue paper pom-poms. i found a few different variations on them around the internet, so i tried a couple different things. i think, ultimately, that i like the original Martha Stewart version best. (of course, why would i ever doubt you, oh wise and wonderful Martha). i have these two colors, as well as a light tan and a dark reddish-orange. there are like ten thousand sheets of the yellow, brown, and tan but much less of the red, so i only did test versions of the colors i had plenty of. the original plan was to have them cut out and assembled here and then all we would have to do once we got up to NY would be to fluff them up. i may just wait and do the entire thing the week before the wedding, since Sara will be here to help me. unless i have a burst of productive energy... we'll see


and lastly, i had my dress fitting. Jenny took a handful of pictures, but i'll just post this one. i'm not all that worried about mr. z seeing me in the dress beforehand, but i won't go out of my way to show him either. so this will be a nice compromise. plus the pictures from the front show just how much the waist needs to be let out so that my tummy pudge doesn't show. ;)

exciting news

well actually, this probably isn't exciting to anyone but me. but i'm excited enough for all of you. Mr. Z miraculously located the missing disc of photographs that I was lamenting about a couple months back. Yippee!! Now I once again have copies of all the pictures from back in the days of more lenses than I knew what to do with.

It did mean that I was reminded of how much I missed that equipment... and I may have ended up spending a good portion of my evening on bhphoto.com trying to see if there was a way I could afford just one more lens (there's not) But more importantly, I was able to edit one of my most favoritest pictures ever!!!


And now Novocaine is spelled right. That's right... I pulled it down when I posted it once before because I really looked at it for the first time in years and realized that I had indeed spelled Novocaine wrong. (Cut me some slack... it was before I started pharmacy school)

In other exciting news, Mr. Z and I registered at Tar-shay (the fancy french boutique) today. It was pretty fun. Like shopping but without spending any money. You just get to run around and shoot things with the little scanner gun. They give you a checklist too, to help you make sure you don't forget anything, which was mildly helpful. A lot of the smaller appliances and stuff we have from the last few Christmases and such, but we managed to find plenty to put on there.

I'm not really sure of proper registry etiquette though... we tried to stay away from stuff that was too expensive. I mean I don't want my guests to be all like "who's going to spend that much on those two?!?" But the checklist has some crazy shit on there. Like a dining room table. Do people really register for dining room tables??

Actually the checklist has "fondue set" on there too. The food network tells me those are making a comeback. We did not register for one... yet.

Holy Craft!

Or "my wedding box just threw up all over my dining room!"

I have been a crafting maniac the last few days. Crossed off the "List of Shit that must be done before we take a load of wedding junk to NY in July" (yes, the list title is longer than the list)

1. Made three table runners, ten feet long by 15 inches wide. For the cake table, the guestbook table, and the gift table. The pinning took FOREVER. On the other hand, I am now excellent at sewing in a straight line.



2. Table signs... I still haven't decided if we're going to assign seating or not. Seems like a lot of extra hassle, so we may just reserve a few in the front for our immediate family and the families/significant others of the party. They are all trees, you know with the whole fall leaf thing we have going on, however, there is a Pansy table for anyone who might be concerned.


3. Reserved signs for the front few pews.


4. Matchbook favors. Ok, I so I didn't exactly craft these, but we did have to select the little clip-art decoration for the top. The leaf and writing are a metallic copper. We figured if we were going to have sparklers, it would probably be a good idea to have some way to light them. And as far as favors go, these were far less expensive than most.


5. Corn-hole boards. I don't have a picture of them, but I painted the boards and sewed three sets of corn-bags. The boards need another coat, but considering its raining (AGAIN) it will likely be a while before they get one. I wasn't sure how to paint them, and all red (as is the standard here in OSU country) seemed like an awful lot of red. I ended up getting an off white as the base color and a nice red to put something else on there. Will probably leave them plain for the reception though.

For those of you feeling skeptical, I have come across a number of brides who had corn-hole and other games at their receptions... the way i see it, i bet we have more people playing corn-hole than we do dancing. and those boards are way cheaper than the DJ. For those of you thinking "what the holy-hell is corn-hole?" its sort of like bean bag toss, but usually with more beer involved.

decisions, decisions...

i think i mentioned previously that i had to figure out something to do for boutonnières for both my dad and mr. z's dad. so i made a trek up to JoAnn's and Michael's with Jenny on Saturday. there wasn't any real plan so i kinda just grabbed whatever look fall-ish and appealing and figured it find a way to put it together later.

after playing around with everything i'd bought and the vast collection of fall crap i'd managed to put together over the last few months, i came up with a couple of ideas. i also realized that i don't think the rose therussian made for the groom's boutonnière is going to work.

nothing to indicate scale, but its substantially larger than the other options

its just too big. i feel like it needs something additional, but anything big enough to match the scale is going to have to be equally large, thereby making the overall product gigantic. hmph.

in the process of messing around with everything else i came up a couple of possibilities. originally i was going to do a different bout for each dad but now i'm thinking this one for mr. z...


the wheat with the orange looks really good with the dark brown fabric of mr. z's suit. this one's just a mock up. the real one will have a much nicer looking bow.

and one of the following for the dads.

i saw a bout using a pine cone on the wedding style website and it was cute, though rather cumbersome. so i was delighted to find that one of the fall "packs" i got at JoAnn's had wee little pine cones in it. they are quite cute, you know, for a pine cone.


the berries are more orangey-yellow, and a bit less red, than they look here. i'm torn between the two options. i do really like the berries alone, but then i think maybe its a bit plain and needs something. but i think it looks nice with the pine cone too, though here its just smooshed together and sitting on top, not actually arranged to look its best. in this one i did actually make an attempt to make a nice bow, though i haven't trimmed the ends yet.

what do you think? and while i happily take into account the opinions of friends, and even strangers on the web, i know my family is out there (yes, i'm talking to all of you). see right down there where it says "0 comments" or "1 comment" or whatever? just click on it and follow the directions.

so many crafts, so little time

for once i actually had a hard time deciding what to blog about. true it helps that its been a few days since my last post. knitting, sewing, craft shopping, wedding... about the only thing that wasn't a possibility was the next photography installment, primarily because i haven't done any sample shots for the next topic.

but while we're on the subject, i've only really gotten feedback from one person. if there is anyone that's come here for the photography explanations, i'd love to hear what you think. i'm trying to keep them from getting too bogged down in technical details while still actually explaining how it works. is it too confusing? would you rather have less detail and more tips? more camera specific stuff? i'm open to talking about whatever, really. i do actually plan to talk a little about lighting and composition once i finish with all the exposure stuff, so if that's what you're after, stick around. its coming, i swear.

but anyway, i decided to go with knitting today, both wedding related and not.



This is Soft Wave, a 100% cotton 1-ply from Queensland Collection. It has sort of a nubbly texture that knits up quite nicely. We shall see how it is to work with. I bought it from Purl's, a really nice little yarn shop in Asheville, NC.

see what i mean by "nubbly?"

We were in town for an evening wedding so we had all morning to kill. My mom and I left Mr. Z and my dad on a bench in the sunshine while we wandered around petting the yarns and chatting with the woman who ran the store. There really is something magical about sticking your hands into giant piles of soft fluffy yarns in all the colors of the rainbow. i have a special thing for teals and greens. but this time i refrained, and in the end only bought this (albeit 10 skeins of it) for a very special project.

and this, of course, is the fourth and final wrap... just in case the orange didn't give it away.

not my most artistic photo,
but in progress shots are hard to make pretty

the Cheshire Stole, while pretty, just didn't keep me interested. So, while at Purl's I also found a pattern for Fiber Trend's Estonian Lullaby Blanket. I modified the stitch count to make it into a wrap, which consists of making it narrower and longer, and so far its worked out nicely. I think the stitch pattern fits better with previous wraps as well. It does have a knitted border on both ends though, which meant that I had to learn a new trick and do a provisional cast on. hopefully that doesn't bite me in the ass when i try to take it out later.

i will say i am surprised that i don't hate this yarn, or lace knitting, yet. i'll be glad when i'm done, but i really enjoy the lace. and luckily this one is knitting up really quickly. that may have something to do with the fact that i have watched the entire first season of Lost over a matter of days. you can get a lot of knitting done watching 17 episodes of anything. i have to admit though, i'm a little bit in love with Charlie... in spite of the heroin addiction. oh wait, what?? he's not real? damn.