getting ready

i had such a perfect quiet wedding morning.

my hairdresser came to the suite to pretty us up around 11 am so i had plenty of time to get myself up and ready for the day before she arrived. it was just my sister, my mother, my best friend andrea (also my make up artist) and myself. it was intimate, peaceful, and such fun girl time. i also love that my mom and sister got to spend some time with andrea, she is an LA friend and doesnt get a lot of exposure to my family so seeing the three of them chit chatting and playing with hair and makeup together made me such a happy girl.

andrea works in fashion, she brought me a piece of lace trim from her show room to add some bridal-ness to my hair and i used one of my mom's antique broaches with a clip on it as a fascinator. i love how it came out. it was soft and romantic without being over the top, just enough of something special to make me feel like a bride.

i love this last photo of us in my dad's car en route to the farm for the wedding. i love our matching robes, the three blondes squeezed in the back like kids, and the down to earthness of us all piled in the back of my dad's car. it kept the day real and me here on earth rather than in never never big production bride land.

rehearsal and out of town dinner

the party before the party was really almost fantastic as the wedding, it was over the top, full of love and FOOD.

as i mentioned before, we had a swarm of guests and family members flying in from out of town so for all extensive purposes this was a destination wedding. my family came in from wisconsin and we had friends from los angeles, dublin, seattle, new york and even new zealand converging on a small vacation town in southern maine.

friday morning a small group of us got up early and got to work setting up the farm. by the time i got back to the hotel for a bite to eat and a shower before the rehearsal the hotel pub was full of family i hadn't seen in years, my parents and siblings, and friends from around the globe. i remember being so pumped full of adrenaline i was buzzing like a telephone wire. i ordered a beer and a sandwich i couldn't eat ( and not only because i wanted to jump up and hug every person who came through the door) i think my body decided to stop digesting, it was too busy keeping tabs on all of the other physical phenomena occurring.

seeing peoples faces when they arrived at the farm was one of my favorite parts of the wedding. it's such a magical beautiful place that any preparation or description really didn't do it justice. and if i do say so myself the hodge podge of seating that we put together looked fantastic.

(ps. isn't my niece the cutest little girl you've ever seen?)

once we got the house keeping out of the way it was on to dinner which was literally a feast. mike's dad was our host, as he runs the hotel we all stayed at, and because he knew we had so many people flying in to maine from afar he decided he HAD to do a family style lobster dinner. it was decadent, over the top, and such a crowd pleaser. friends and family were laughing all over the room teaching each other to crack open lobsters, all in their bibs, it was amazing.

our florist also decorated the rehearsal dinner. the small bottles and vases with wild flowers were moved into the barn the following day to decorate the surfaces, and the 4 gorgeous wreathes that were in the windows were hung on the barn doors.

after everyone was pleasantly stuffed, a few cocktails in, and we had made our speeches and delivered our gifts, we headed to the hotel pub for a special treat from my sister. she made a slide show of mike and i's childhood photos and then photos of the two of us together. it may sound cheesy but it was a true tear jerker. not only is it overwhelming to see your life flash before you but i had never seen any of mike's baby photos. they are the subject of much grief due to divorce and it was just the sweetest thing i'd ever seen...he was so cute!!

(mike copping a feel, getting as much as he can before we retire to separate rooms)

"photobooth" photos

the "photobooth" was an element that we practically scrapped, there was just too much else to do in the days before. BUT one of our lovely ushers and my groom decided to get it up and running just hours before the wedding and it really did get us some great photos from the cocktail hour which we didnt get to participate in...i love them!

little extras - waste of money or totally worth it?

i dont really know where to begin the recaps so i thought i would start small and talk about some of the little details while we await the professional photographs...

favors and escort cards were some of the details we included in our wedding that some cautioned were a waste of money - they would be left on tables and we would have a stock pile of wedding extras to deal with once we returned from the honeymoon. lucky for us this was not the case.

maybe it was knowing our audience? maybe it was how we incorporated the items into the overall vibe of the event? i dunno but we were thrilled that everyone took home the cd's we painstakingly* created and the keys we designated as escort cards. (in fact, we were a little disappointed because we were hoping to have some left over to hang on to as mementos ourselves.)

we have heard countless times, via phone, text and facebook since the wedding that our guests are listening to the cd we created on repeat in their cars re-living the weekend. how could we not smile proudly? even my mom who doesn't always compliment took the time to tell me yesterday that she knows it by heart now, that she loves how it tells the story of our relationship, and that she thinks i should start a business making wedding cd's for people ( not fully understanding that part of why it was a success is because it was so honestly us, but hey...)

on our way home from hawaii we stopped over in LA for a few days to see friends and family before returning to reality and we saw 3 keys in seperate households on display, and were told by one amazing guest how she already went out to find the perfect chain to turn her key into a new necklace. how cool is that?

in short i hope you can see that for us, it was worth it. i can understand that it might not be for everyone. whether it be money or time (because lets face it, if you dont have one you are going to make up for it with plenty of the other) i for one love to throw myself into a crafty project - and as the wedding approached i found comfort in the distractions that they provided. the fact that our guests responded so well was what we hoped for but with something creative you never really do know do you?

* the cds were a true labor of love, from hunting for vendors to supply the raw materials i envisioned, to the learning curve that came with teaching myself to silkscreen, to the monotonous labor involved in folding and glueing the cases. even stamping the thank you tags and donation info was a project but i was lucky to have a partner in crime ready to lend a hand and spend an evening in front of the tv with a bottle of wine and a bottle of rubber cement.