Wedding Photography

When budgeting for the wedding, there were certain areas where Ryan and I couldn't have cared less if they even made it into our wedding budget and then there were areas where we knew we'd want to spend more. One such area was photography.

We quickly found out that things (like venues) and people (like photographers) booked up pretty fast when it came to location and time of year of our wedding.

After looking into what felt like so many different photographers, I landed on Captured Photography by Jenny.  We loved (I initially loved and then Ryan loved after I showed him her site) her photographs and the fact that her package came with a second photographer (to be able to take pics with the boys while another was with me, to document all angles of the ceremony...me walking down and the aisle and ryan looking up the aisle at me!), had unlimited hours of wedding day coverage, and we'd get a cd with all of the high resolution pictures.  Those were my requirements and she hit them all...plus she took great pics.

Some highlights from the day here as well as posted at Jenny's blog at: http://www.capturedbyjen.com/blog/ryan-jennifer-morikami/

SO much to say....

It's been two and a half weeks since the wedding so I figure I should post something...anything!

Let's see -

The pre-wedding stuff:

• Ryan and I drove down to Florida the week of the wedding.  We left Tuesday afternoon and stopped over in somewhere Georgia for the night and then finished up the rest of the drive the next day.  We stopped in at Vero to visit Ryan's grandparents and then ended up at my parents' place late Wednesday night. 
• Thursday was filled with last minute meetings with vendors and lots of shopping and then lots of assembling of out of town bags, goodie bags, favors, etc...
• Friday was filled with even MORE last minute items before heading down to Delray for the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner
• While I think we definitely cranked out a lot of stuff while still in Indiana, we probably could have used one more full day in Florida

The rehearsal and dinner:

• Ryan and I couldn't figure out why our rehearsal was set for 3:30pm.  Then day of, we realize its because we had a lot of shit to bring over the day before, unload, and set up what we could (i.e., the chuppah)
• Of course we didn't start on time and when you have the wedding party, plus my family, plus Ryan's family...and not to mention rain showers and really big wind gusts from Hurricane Sandy...it takes a bit :)  But it all worked out and we rehearsed.
• Next up, the rehearsal dinner!  I'm so thankful that Max's Harvest was able to accommodate us inside their restaurant instead of the previously arranged patio/garden seating area.  Turns out the weather held up and it would have been ok weatherwise outside, but I'm still happy that we were indoors, dry, and all together and happy.
• I loved being at the restaurant with family and our closest friends.  And I love that Dave and I wore matching color outfits without even planning it.  Best Twin Ever.  And he gave a great speech too...even got me teary eyed!  Love you, Dave!

Wedding day:

• I really tried to listen to all the brides who have gone before me who said to enjoy the day because it goes so quickly.
• Got up early and had some breakfast at the hotel restaurant...sadly didn't get to eat most of it since the makeup lady showed up super early!  Beats being late though!  If I had one gripe about the day, it would be the access situation.  I understand the need to limit access to the top floor, but it would have just been easier if they let anyone and everyone up to our floor instead of having to have someone go and get them at the lobby!
• Then it was hair and makeup time for the ladies!  We chatted, had some mimosas, and had lunch (publix subs!), before getting dressed and ready for my first look and pictures.  First look on the balcony, then some beach shots, then on the trolley to the Morikami for some more pictures.
• Of course I said that I would NOT be a bride that had a late start to the wedding.  Well, guess what...I'll eat those words.  I was late...only because we couldn't get across a busted bridge to take pictures that I wanted.  Instead, we had to wait for golf carts to drive us the 7/8th of a mile around the park to get to the bamboo garden.  After that, the threw all the family pics off schedule too.  SO...with that, I became a late wedding start bride.  But ya know what?  I don't care...those pics were so worth it :)
• What else about the wedding day?  I couldn't have been happier with the weather.  The weather cooled off (best it could for Florida) and there was no rain (that I saw), a breeze, and clear skies...and a full moon too! 
• I loved our personal touches.  All the hard work we put in really paid off in my book.  Even if people didn't know we slaved over things, I did and I love the sentimental aspects of everything.  It was everything I envisioned...
• For the most part...inevitably, we forgot a few things...ok, more than a few, but ya know...it was fine.  I kept saying, we planned for 100% and forgot like 25, but we still had 75% and that was a-ok with me!
• The speeches...I hadn't thought much about the speeches and who would say what, but I have to say...everyone knocked it out of the park. 
• I'm so proud of my dad and his speech.  I thank Dave for helping him write it, but for my dad to go up there and say the things that he did in the manner that he did, I'm one lucky gal!  Wah eye nee, bah bah!
• Katie - who knew that was going to be SUCH an amazing speech.  So many heartfelt things that I never knew, but totally appreciate and will always remember.  Love that girl!
• Andrea - knew it was a wild card with her...actually not really, she knows her audience.  But another heartfelt speech that I truly loved.  Such beautiful sentiments and great memories. And some pretty good Chinese too.
• George - Such a sentimental but entertaining speech from the best man.  Loved the advice and will definitely remember it and keep it close to our hearts.
• First dances -- Ahhh...so happy I didn't trip or fall or stutterstep during my dance with my father.  So happy we had the opportunity to dance a waltz together!  Mine with Ryan -- again, happy I didn't fall!  Or get too dizzy on the spins :-)  I'm glad Ryan leads so well!  And Ryan and his mom's - happy they got to relive their dancing days!  And Susan and my dad even had a dance thrown in there too.  Who knew my dad had those kinda moves?!?

What else?  Feel like there is so much more to list on here!

• So thankful to have had so many of our friends travel from out of town to make it to our day.  It meant a lot a lot to us to have each of you there!
• Love my family and so happy that they were all there and that they've embraced Ryan
• Blessed to have found so many amazing vendors who helped make our day special
• Truly blessed to have Ryan officially as my husband!

I know, lots of words in this post and no pics.  Those will have to wait since I literally took NONE.  In the meantime though, here is the link to our (thoroughly amazing) photographer's blog with our pics.

Invitations!

I'll save the whole invitation DIY process for another post, but for now...let's just sit back and look at these puppies.  Man, talk about labor of love!  They were definitely laborious to make, but I also definitely love how they came out!

 

 

What do people do with their wedding invitations?!  We made ourselves a copy to have photographed, but then what?  We're not scrapbookers, so thats out.  Don't know if I'd really hang it up anywhere if we placed them in a memory/shadowbox?  Maybe we should really just go with the saying of "Take a picture.  It lasts longer."  We'll see what happens...but I think I might be too emotionally attached to these to just trash them :-)

 

 

 

College Station

I love visiting other college campuses and going to an away Gators game is a great way to accomplish that.  The other weekend, I visited my friend Kate for the weekend and we drove up to College Station for the Texas A&M vs UF football game.

What a fun town.  And the school.  They do NOT mess around when it comes to tradition.  Seriously!

Fantastic weekend.  Everything from the people, the bars, to the food. OMG, I miss the food in Texas, so Thank You to Kate who remembered to make sure we fit in kolaches, bbq, and some good old tex-mex all into one weekend.

And I even got to meet up with Ashley who was down from Austin for the game.  Like I said, fantastic weekend :)

 

 

And I thought 100 days to go was exciting

 One Month, People!

I find this picture pretty amusing.  I don't think its at all representative of my One Month Out state of mind, but it was still a pretty funny graphic.

 

So here we are on 9.27.12 counting down til 10.27.12

 

Still lots to do, but my goal has been and still is to get all this shit cranked out ASAP (like tomorrow) so I can stop thinking of what I have left to make or keep track of or buy or order or whatever.

Things have been pretty busy these last couple of weeks between birthdays and trips but things are only picking up steam from here on out, so here's to one more month of craziness!
 

 

 

 

Love me some Biscoff

One of the reasons that I really like flying Delta is for the Biscoff cookies.  I know, I know...they sell them in grocery stores so its not like Delta is the only place to get them.

A while back I was strolling the aisles of my local grocery store and I came across a jar of Biscoff Spread.  OMG.  I was soooo excited.  I snatched that bad boy up and literally had to control myself from opening the jar right then and there and trying it.

Once I made it home, I confirmed that the spread tastes just as fabulous as the cookies.  It should, right?  Since the spread is made out of the cookies.

Fast forward a few months and I'm back at the grocery store to pick up a new jar and lo and behold there was a CRUNCHY version of the spread now.  Since they're like 6 bucks a jar, I decided to reign myself in and not get both jars...so I'm sitting here happily eating my crunchy biscoff spread right out of the jar.

More Paper Goodies

Between the gracious wedding gifts that we’ve been receiving from our fabulous family and friends and all of the other things that I’ve been purchasing online (Oh, Nordstrom Anniversary Sale, you get me every year!), the UPS and FedEx guys must know our address by heart.

Today, I had a lovely conversation with the UPS man about traveling.  He just got back from Singapore and he was filling me on what was new there since I haven’t been there in years.  I then filled him on my trip to Russia and we compared notes on his hometown of St. Petersburg.  We even talked about his upcoming trip to Ashville to visit the Biltmore, one of my favorite spots.

Anyways…with now less than three months to go till the wedding…attention has turned toward the invitations!

We’ve slowly been amassing lots of stationery.  We settled on paper…The Amazing Holyoke Letterpress 140lb paper.  I just love it…but then again, I love paper.  I’m almost tempted to purchase some sheets of the 280lb as well, but we’ll see about that one…

For envelopes, we decided to go with the Lettra since they had all of the various sizes that we needed.

Last but not least, we also placed an order from Paper Source as well for some goodies.  Nothing like spreading the vendor love!

T Minus

3 Months From Today!

For the Love of Paper

I love paper.  Like really love it.  So when it came down to wedding stationery, I knew I’d love this part.

This past weekend, Ryan and I spent a good chunk of time planning out our wedding invitation suite.  We even visited a local invitation shop where I was borderline fondling the sample invitations in all of the letterpress binders. 

With that next project coming up, I thought I’d take a look back at our Save the Dates.  We knew our invites would not be colorful or ‘fun’ so we thought the Save the Dates could be a little more whimsical.  And since we’re getting married in Florida, we thought we’d make it Florida themed.

Growing up in Florida, there were always oranges around so we centered our Save the Dates around the idea of an orange crate label.  And since Ryan and I are not very formal people, we thought we’d make it a little quirky like us…hence the ‘Orange You Glad You’re Invited?!’ tag line.  :)

We started out with this 1930’s Oak Hill Citrus Growers crate label and mocked it up by adding our wedding information onto the bottom.

We then printed them out onto sheets and sheets and sheets of magnetic paper

Separately, we printed out our Save the Date inserts onto sheets of cherry wood veneer and then sliced them up into the correct size.  I was determined to use actual wood since this was supposed to represent orange labels on wood crates after all!

Then we affixed the magnets to the wood sheets.  After that, we cut up sheets of scrapbook paper to make envelope liners and glued them to the inside of the envelopes.  We also included a mini orange fruit cutout just for giggles in each envelope.

Last but not least, we addressed each envelope, licked them, stamped them, and sent them on their merry little way.

Long Weekend in Florida Bridal Shower

Ryan and I are getting married in exactly 4 months from yesterday.  Where does the time go?  After the wedding, I wonder what we’ll talk about, plan for, or do?  I feel like now there is always something to decide on (like cake flavors) or pick out (like suits) or shop for (like invitations).

In the meantime though, Ryan and I took a nice long road trip down to Florida.  We decided to drive because we had to bring so many things down with us, it just made more sense to drive instead of us flying and then shipping all the items down.

I completely, totally, without a doubt regret not taking a picture of the car after it was all packed up.  It was like a jigsaw puzzle how all the pieces fit together all in the confines of my car.  And there were a lot (a lot) of pieces.  There was so little space left, Ryan and I had to pack our stuff in plastic bags so that they could be squished into any available free space. 

Ughh, I am so sad that I didn’t take a picture of the car!

BUT we made it down to Florida along with all of the car’s contents safe and sound.  Once down there, we also met with what felt like a zillion vendors and then checked out a potential rehearsal dinner location (and even went back there for brunch on Sunday).  Progress! 

The highlight though was a fabulous bridal shower.  I’m not one that enjoys being the center of attention, but I guess that is unavoidable when you decide to get married and invite 120 of your family and closest friends. With that in mind, Saturday afternoon was filled with family, great friends, fabulous eats, and lots of love. I am definitely blessed to have so many wonderful people in my life to call my nearest and dearest and couldn’t imagine sharing this with anyone else!

To Andrea, the hostess with the mostest – Thank You! 

Seattle

If it didn’t rain so much in Seattle, I think I’d love to live there.  The last time I was out there, it only rained for like 15 minutes during our entire trip.  This time around though, it rained about 50% of my entire visit.  And it wasn’t the light drizzle type of rain either.  Even people who lived there said it was uncommon for that type of rain.

Luckily though, when it wasn’t raining, it was gorgeous and we got to do some pretty cool things.

One of those being a trip to the newly opened Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibit at the base of the Seattle Space Needle.  I’ll be the first to admit that before going to this exhibit, I didn’t have a positive opinion of Dale Chihuly.  Yes, his work is gorgeous, but it’s really everywhere.  It’s hard to go to any museum in any city these days without seeing one of his installations there.  Gardens too.

Then seeing his work both in the museum and in the gardens of Seattle changed my mind.  Yes, I still think he is everywhere :), but his stuff really is beautiful and I can see why every museum, garden, hotel, etc… wants his stuff around.

Ryan even claimed that he was surprised that after seeing Chihuly’s work at night in a garden setting, I didn’t ask him if we could get some of his work at our nighttime outdoor garden wedding!  Oh, trust me, the thought crossed my mind :)

In addition to our Chihuly and Space Needle sightseeing, we were also able to squeeze in some good eats as well!

We walked through what I would call the ghetto to get to Salumi, but it was worth the walk and the line to get into the store!  The line moved quick and there were even some open seats in the back where we enjoyed a Salumi Salami sandwich and a Porketta sandwich as well as a meatball on the side.  That Batali family sure knows good food…and pork!

I’m a lucky gal…Ryan put up with traffic to drive over to West Seattle in the pouring rain to check out Bakery Nouveau for their famous Twice Baked Almond Croissants.  Of course I had to purchase a *few* other items too…and they were all very good.

We couldn’t go to Washington without a trip to the Red Hook brewery.  Ryan picked up some goodies from the gift shop (stocked up on t-shirts and hoodies) and I got a sampler of their beers!

A dinner boat cruise started out with a view of the brand new Seattle Eye…not sure if that’s what it’s called, but that’s what I am going to refer to it as.  It was brand spanking new.  We saw it Tuesday and it didn’t have the carriages on it yet.  Then Wednesday, they were up.  The weather was perfect!  Made for a fantastic view of Mt. Rainier with a spectacular sunset.

Dinner at a winery makes for a whole lot of wine glasses with dinner.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many glasses set up on one table before.

I always love going out west because there are always Asians out there…which then translates to Asian food.  Here in Indiana there isn’t exactly a huge market for Fast Food Korean shops…but in Seattle, there is!  I was so excited to get some bibimbap…I didn’t even mind not having the hot rock bowl :)

Post Trip Plant Update

All the greens survived our 6 day absence!  I was mostly worried about the herbs, but the hydrospikes did what they were advertised to do and there was even water left in the giant bucket feeding them.

As for the roses though…while they all survived our trip, one endured being run over by my right front car tire :-\  when I was pulling into the driveway the other day.  I feel terrible about it…I overestimated the size of our driveway when swinging out to avoid the garbage bins.

Here’s to hoping that it recovers and lives on.  To be continued…

Hydro-Spiking It

On a recent (of many) trips to Lowe’s, we picked up some herb plants.  These little guys’ new home is now one big blue planter sitting on a table in the corner of our balcony/deck. 

A few days ago, I ordered some HydroSpikes in the hopes that they would keep our herbs alive while we’re gone for 6 days.  They arrived yesterday and I filled them up and stuck them into the pot last night to try them our before we leave this weekend.  One night and one morning later and it looks like it might work.  Only problem might be finding a water reservoir big enough for those little suckers (pun intended). 

Stay tuned for updates once we return on how the plants do!