Ceremony

wedding64, originally uploaded by prideofazchick.

Here is an "unprofessional" picture of our ceremony and some excerpts (note this is not our entire ceremony). Enjoy!

Address to Bride & Groom

Michael, Jennifer, you are about to make promises to one another. The vows you make today are beautiful words representing even more beautiful intentions. As you live these vows over the years, happy times of your life will be twice as joyous because you share them together. When life meets challenges, they will be halved because you will carry the burdens together. For those times when life presents you with opportunities, go confidently in the direction of your dreams and live the life you’ve imagined.

By marrying you do not lose your individuality, but instead gain a partner with whom you can share your joys and sorrows. Together you will grow as individuals as well as a couple.

Always remember, a good marriage must be created.
In the marriage, the little things are the big things.
It is never being too old to hold hands.
It is remembering to say "I love you" at least once each day.
It is never going to sleep angry.
It is having a mutual sense of values and common objectives.
It is standing together facing the world.
It is forming a circle of love that gathers the whole family.
It is doing things for each other, not in the attitude of duty or sacrifice, but in the spirit of joy.
It is speaking words of appreciation and demonstrating gratitude in thoughtful ways.
It is cultivating flexibility, patience, understanding and a sense of humor.
It is having the capacity to forgive and forget.
It is giving each other an atmosphere in which each can grow.
It is finding room for the things of the spirit.
It is a common search for the good and the beautiful.
It is not only marrying the right person, it is being the right partner.

Reading by Elizabeth S (cousin of the bride)
(From "The Velveteen Rabbit" by Margery Williams)

"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 a child 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."


Reading by Jennifer W (sister of the groom)
(An excerpt from " The Two Towers : Being the Second Part of The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien)

ENT: When Spring unfolds the beechen leaf, and sap is in the bough;
When light is on the wild-wood stream, and wind is on the brow;
When stride is long, and breath is deep, and keen the mountain-air,
Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is fair!
ENTWIFE.: When Spring is come to garth and field, and corn is in the blade;
When blossom like a shining snow is on the orchard laid;
When shower and Sun upon the Earth with fragrance fill the air,
I'll linger here, and will not come, because my land is fair.
ENT.: When Summer lies upon the world, and in a noon of gold
Beneath the roof of sleeping leaves the dreams of trees unfold;
When woodland halls are green and cool, and wind is in the West,
Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is best!
ENTWIFE. : When Summer warms the hanging fruit and burns the berry brown;
When straw is gold, and ear is white, and harvest comes to town;
When honey spills, and apple swells, though wind be in the West,
I'll linger here beneath the Sun, because my land is best!
ENT.: When Winter comes, the winter wild that hill and wood shall slay;
When trees shall fall and starless night devour the sunless day;
When wind is in the deadly East, then in the bitter rain
I'll look for thee, and call to thee; I'll come to thee again!
ENTWIFE : When Winter comes, and singing ends; when darkness falls at last;
When broken is the barren bough, and light and labour past;
I'll look for thee, and wait for thee, until we meet again:
Together we will take the road beneath the bitter rain!
BOTH : Together we will take the road that leads into the West,
And far away will find a land where both our hearts may rest.

Blessing of the Rings

A circle symbolizes wholeness, a state in which nothing is missing and everything is possible. Let these rings therefore represent wholeness. Let them remind you of the coming around of an eternal cycle: from sickness to health, from want to plenty, from despair to joy, from failure to possibility, from loneliness to love. Let these rings also be a sign of substance, as is the precious metal from which they are made. May the love they symbolize be, to the end of your days, the most precious part of your life.

Apache Blessing

Now you will feel no rain, for each of you will be shelter for the other.
Now you will feel no cold, for each of you will be warmth to the other.
Now there will be no loneliness, for each of you will be companion to the other.
Now you are two persons, but there is only one life before you. May beauty surround you both in the journey ahead and through all the years.
May happiness be your companion and your days together be good and long upon the earth.

a stand for the readers

We are having an outdoor ceremony but we have 2 readers. Originally we were thinking our venue or DJ could provide a podium for them to stand at or we could rent one. Then, the thought was that a big blocky podium would be really ugly in our pictures and would block our speakers.

I then considered having a microphone stand only but there is one catch - both our readings are from literature and we would prefer to have them read from our actual books. I'm thinking that that could be troublesome since Mr. Monkey's sister's reading is from Lord of the Rings... That's a big book, especially the fancy collector's edition one.

The solution? A wooden music stand!! It is a bit of a splurge but it might be the motivation I need to dust off my clarinet which hasn't been touched since undergrad and thus, it would be useful at home after the wedding.

Here are a few pretty ones from amazon.com:






The last one is beatiful! So, of course, it is out of stock. Maybe I can find something similar elsewhere.

Don't let the intro fool you, it's not "Ice, Ice, Baby"

Brides are under pressure to make their wedding day as beautiful as possible...but what if all these potentially great ideas in their heads don't really work out all that well in the execution?!

I have felt a jolt of excess pressure recently. My photographer is a friend of mine who worked on our college newspaper and yearbook with me (I was a layout designer) and went on to become this amazing wedding/fashion photographer in New York. He usually charges significantly more to do weddings than I am paying him...like 90% more. It helps to have friends!!

He has done several weddings but he is still building his portfolio so he is coming in the day before and going over to our wedding cake baker's house (out of which her company is based) to shoot the cake and now I'm thinking "I really hope our cake is as fabulous as I think it will be because it's important to his career!!"

Also, he has an agreement with Brides magazine because they really like his previous pictures so I gave him permission to submit our wedding. What if they don't take his pictures because my fabulous (in my mind) wedding isn't so fabulous (in reality)?

I just want to give him as much opportunity as possible considering he is doing crazy things like shooting my rehearsal dinner and bending over backwards for basically free.

Yikes! Talk about pressure.

The beauty of simple things... like soda bottles?

My mad brainstorming post included my idea for a lemonade stand. We inquired about this with our resort but the price they quoted for making and refilling the lemonade for our stand was out of our range and I wasn't sure how we could manage it ourselves. I thought having a family member refill the lemonade dispensers would be a bit tacky. Well, maybe not tacky because I hate to use that term but just not the aesthetic we are going for.

So I started thinking we wanted something fun, whimsical and beautiful and I came up with... soda!!

Beautiful soda though, not what you're thinking right now ;-)

Soda like this:

Sources:

bawls.com

thefoodpaper.com

jonessoda.com

amazon.com

jonessoda.com

Pretty, no? We are going to set them up on a table in the garden for cocktail hour.

All the sodas are available online but we actually found a local soda shop that sells by the case, saving us a ton in shipping and is actually cheaper per bottle too. We are going soda shopping at the end of the month!

The great sparkler let-down...

I have always thought that since FI and I are staying at the hotel where we are having our reception, we wouldn't need a big send off after the reception. It will be dark and we just have to walk down some stairs and then down a path to our "cottage." But then I started thinking "hmmmm... what about sparklers?!"

I saw this picture and I was hooked!

Photo from Sparklersonline.com

Sparklersonline.com would probably be a fabulous place to buy sparklers for your wedding if they were not, in fact, illegal in your state!

Sparklers are not legal in Arizona. I thought maybe this was the case but then I saw a picture of a similar exit done at our wedding resort so I thought everything was okay. Apparently, those people defied the law in our great state. I considered ignoring the law for about half a second before I realized my retired firefighter father would never let this happen.

My sparkling sparkler dream was quickly doused by a huge bucket of cold A.R.S. 36-13-1.

How's that for a mixed metaphor?

Let me tell you a story...

There once was a girl, let's call her "Jen" and she met a boy, let's call him "Mike." They met freshman year of high school. He had a crush, she was not that interested at the time. Four years later, he had finally won her over and they started dating. Nearly 5 years after that, he popped the question. 1 year, 3 months after that, Jen STILL wasn't done planning the wedding and felt very behind...

ACK! Jen is a SLACKER.

It's not like I haven't had time! Here's the thing... I haven't been dreaming about my perfect wedding my whole life. I was pretty ambivalent about actually getting married at all. And then, when I got the ring, I became MADLY obsessed with weddings (hence the wedding blog). There are so many cute little details and cool things that you can use to make your wedding wonderful and unique and have a great time with all your guests. The details are the best part and I've been putting off actually having to make decisions.

Every time I see a great idea, I want to add it to the wedding. Now that it's crunch time (T-3 months), it is not the time for that! It is the time to finish up all my DIY stuff that hasn't been done because I just now decided I want to do it!

Now I must say that I have booked all the appropriate vendors and most things are running smoothly in that department. My problem is all the little things I love!

A recap of some (only SOME!) of the cool wedding things discovered that I'm trying to incorporate...

We are placing jars similar to this with candles in them outside along the wall in the garden for cocktail hour and leading up the stairs to the garden. The garden for cocktail hour is right outside the ballroom so we figure people might want to sit out there for a break in the evening. We are encouraging this by having the bar out there and filling the garden with lights!

marthastewart.com/weddings

The following 3 pictures are from amazon.com. Cavallini makes the most beautiful postcards and coordinating stamps and stickers. I'm incorporating these stamps into my escort cards and I used Cavallini decoupage paper to make my card box (also incorporating scraps of paper from the programs we made (post pending on those). I was going to use the postcards as table markers but we decided to use our own photos instead.

I really want a lemonade stand! We are trying to figure out the logistics of this... and maybe tinting the lemonade blue or green?


Favor boxes for the candy buffet! I currently have 144 of the blue ones sitting in a corner of my house!

ebay.com

And the candy buffet itself! I think this one is really cute (and it's the right colors!)

the knot.com

And we are considering using river rocks like this to line the aisle... not sure about the logistics of this either!

pcast.com

Anyone else have these kinds of concerns? The overwhelmingness of little details put off until 3 months before?

Accidental theme #2 - Wine Corks/Bottles

I was surfing around the Martha Stewart site one day and discovered some place cards with wine cork bases. My first thoughts were: Wow that looks cool! and We like wine! (I know, articulate, right?) I was basically sold on the idea.

You just cut a slit in the cork and slide in a place card. We have done some experimentation and an exacto knife seems to work best but you can cut through cork with a kitchen knife too.

My cards won't have the embellishment around the edge but will be stamped instead:

Photo courtesy of Martha Stewart

We actually bought the corks at an ebay auction for "200 wine corks" because I'm doubting fiance and I can drink 100 or so bottles of wine before May 31. We could try! But then we might be alcoholics.

I had also been trying to figure out some table number holders but nothing seemed to work (I even just bought some boring ones which I am now returning) until I came across this after searching weddingbee for ideas.

Photo courtesy of Weddingbee

We will have a wine bottle table number holder next to our centerpieces (ignore the bottles with the flowers in them in the pic above) and for a uniform look, we are ordering cobalt blue wine bottles from a bottling company to coordinate with our wedding colors!

Photo courtesy of ebay.com

Weird how sometimes it all comes together. I plan to do a mockup when everything arrives so stay tuned!