blog of the bride he calls bunny

My hubby, the Cirque performer

2008-03-25T00:28:00.005-04:00

During our last weekend in the area we per usual decided to get out of the area and head to Orlando. We had two days left on our Disney passes so headed up north from Miami on Friday. We checked into our our hotel by 7... headed to Downtown Disney at 8 then proceeded straight to the Cirque du Soleil ticket box to gain entry to La Nouba. Lucky for us some lady bought some extra amazing tickets and sold them to us at rock bottom prices just before the show began.

Imagine our surprise when we really were seated FRONT ROW, CENTER. I mean FRONT ROW, CENTER!

The show itself was awesome. My favorite was the urban scene when the guys bounced from the trampoline to the side or the top of the building. Both me and the husband were shocked when two of the star clowns stepped down from the stage to pull Terry up to the stage. He hammed it up of course. They wanted him to lay down for a stunt bike rider to do tricks near his head. He of course stepped back and the clowns had to pick him up and carry him to a laying down position at the front of the stage. Apparently the clown next to him on the ground said in a thick French accent, "don't move" in a tone reminiscent to Jean Reno in The Professional.

I don't know what really happened from there on as one clown came down from the stage and flirted with me while Terry was gone. His arm was around me, he drank my chardonnay, and then tossed his legs into my lap. After a while Terry returned with a heart beating super fast and was presented with an "Honarary Performer" certifcate at the end of the show. I can officially say I screwed a Cirque performer after a show now... tee-hee!! So hawt!

The show was amazing. I always thought being too close would not be great since you can miss a lot with the aerial performers. Cirque shows utilize all the space they are confined in. The show I saw was much more inspiring than any show I had ever seen. We saw every sinewy muscle fiber flex from limbs, diaphragms pulse after every movement, and a grace I had never experienced as intimately from other sections. I blame the fate gods for putting me in such a great seat that night. Thank you! Namaste.

he he 2 months

2008-03-24T22:23:00.008-04:00

I've been a married old hag for over two months. Woot woot! Playa Punta Uva, Costa Rica!!

I feel like I gotta do a flashback series since I haven't posted in like 4 months.

All right, very brief updates. Went to Disney with my supa dupa best friend from Cali in early November. Bunnyboy and I took off for Cali for him to meet my mom and stepdad for T-giving. That was fun. My dad even came out from Utah for a day to hang with the two of us in San Fran. And then there was wine country... So then we did Christmas and geared up for that last month before the wedding.

The WEDDING... was AWESOME. I had the best time with my nieces, guy, dad, in-laws, bestie friends, etc. It was a busy week. Our photog and his wife traveled and shot us and are totally our besties now as well. I can't wait to see those two later this year. He anticipates over 1400 images for us from a week of shooting. I don't have the images yet, but will get them in due time.

So wedding highlights...

Our coordinator, Dawn, is the shit! I love that woman. She is the chick I would hop in a rambler to road trip with for weeks at a time without an itinerary. Insane, practical, sweet, brash, and with a wicked sense of humor.
Bunnyboy surprised me with a live sitar player for me to walk to our wedding arch with as well as a private concert at the reception hour.
I surprised Bunnyboy with a coreographed fire poi dance in my wedding dress after dinner.
The food was awesome. We ran into the woman who cooked our jerk chicken two days beforehand when we went to her restaurant. We did not know she was one of Dawn's friends.
We were so relaxed and got a couple of hours of surfing in before the wedding began.
We had no idea that people loved dancing to Peanuts songs. But they do.
The night was fun. Our guests had a great time and folks we met during our week in town also showed up. I had no idea the guy with the surfboards from earlier in the day would show. He even tied up his dreadlocks for the event.

After the wedding folks left and our adventures really began. We took off to Panama via a foot bridge at the border with our backpacks. That night we nestled down in our gorgeous over the water bungalow in Bocas del Toro. The next morning we did sunrise kayaking and rested a lot of the two days there. Then it was more adventure back in Costa Rica with a Class IV water rapids trip. Bunnyboy soon went home after that.

I stayed an extra week and had a trip of a lifetime with my dad including a 3 day trip down to Panama to find his homeland. I'll explain later but the mountain he was born on has now been reclaimed by the forest. I went back to Costa Rica with my dad and kicked his arse on a cloudforest mountain one day on a hike. Sadly he went back to the states too and I stayed for a couple more days.

Some nice folks I met a few years ago set me up in a nice room and office in San Jose. I went to the National Museum for a Shakespeare play, visited the modern art museum, and did a serious chill session in Playa Jaco before heading back to Miami and my husband.

So... fast forward to today. We had our first Valentine's Day as a married couple, our first MLB Spring Training game as a married couple, our first St. Patty's as a married couple, our first Easter. We had a small at home reception where Dan, our photog, and my sister-in-law flew in for a few days and it was a blast to hang with them. We just went to the Disney area over the weekend... so much fun. The weekend before last we had a successful garage sale. Oh yeah... we are getting ready to move.

In less for a week we are heading for Colorado. Screw Miami! My husband and I cannot stand this place. While it is great for other people we know we can be happier some place else. So off we go.

Oh yeah. The best news of the last four months. My best friend is expecting. She called me the night before New Year's when she found out. In the last four months we have popped so many bottles of champagne over every little victory. We have drank to her, her husband, and their future over and over again. I am looking forward to meeting my little "Chinew" mix nephew/niece one day. She will be an amazing mother.

The week of our wedding was awesome. We celebrated my niece/bridesmaid's Sweet 16 on the first day, my matron of honor's expectancy news the whole time, everyone's good time on "vacation", a set of friends that never celebrated their honeymoon, and eventually our wedding. There was no shortage of celebration that week nor since.

I wish every bride and groom can have the good fortune we had.

RINGS... D0nE & D0nE!!!

2007-11-11T01:00:00.000-05:00

What an awesome day! We took my engagement ring back to Carroll's where it was purchased. It was cleaned in the ultrasonic machine, and I was chastized a wee bit by Anna for wearing it while I dig my hands in my garden. We had my fiance's ring finger sized again. And I handed over my eBay purchased wedding band for them to resize up one-half size. Do you remember that scene from Breakfast at Tiffany's where "Fred" and Holly get a Cracker Jack ring engraved at Tiffany and Co.? I felt like Holly putting in the work request for my internet band today. Unfortunately the band is too small to mount any of the reclaimed diamonds we got from my family. As it is they may not be able to save the inscription, the main concern is saving the design on the outside of the band. Yay Carroll's... as their sign says, "the STORE for BRIDES."

About 12 hours later I placed the order for my fiance's wedding band. After our painstakingly long search we found a business and band he is very happy with. We are going through the robandlean store on etsy.com for this mixed medium piece.

It is a hand milled titanium band that will be inlaid with reclaimed cypress. There will be an inscription (the message is a surprise) and a reclaimed flush mount diamond on the interior. He is really excited. He says the sucky part now is knowing that his ring will be here for a number of weeks and that he won't be able to wear it.

Disney was so much fun!

2007-11-09T22:42:00.001-05:00

My best friend came out last weekend and her, my fiance, and myself went to Disney. Downtown Disney on day one and Disneyworld on day two. It was so much fun being around two people I love the most in my life. Here are some pics... there is no order since all three of us had cameras and I can't keep track of all that was going on but here are some explanations of what you will see.

My fiance's Scottish-descent head was too big for the Mickey Groom ears/top hat. Instead I wore them since I thought the bride ears/veil were not really me and he wore light up ears.
LEGO rocks... we got customized bricks for our cake topper at Downtown Disney
I LOVE THE TEACUPS!! All right, I LOVE SPINNING!!! FAST!!!!
We were serenaded by a quartet, they sang Bella Notte from Lady and the Tramp
My best friend is a huge Piglet fan, I learned my fiance is in love with Mary Poppins, and for some reason I got really excited to go into the Hall of Presidents even though all I did was sleep.
We were too cheap to buy pictures from rides so took pictures of the pictures of us on Splash Mountain and the Buzz Lightyear experience.
I felt like Mayor McCheese walking around with my top hat and scarf.

I'll do another post about all the wedding-related Disney stuff I saw at another time... I gots pictures

Postage Nerd

2007-11-09T16:33:00.001-05:00

I am getting way ahead of myself... invites aren't done, we have no idea how much it will cost to send them out... but I am looking at postage. My main stamp choice for years has been the Breast Cancer Awareness one. I have also liked the Reptiles & Amphibians, Dr. Suess, Paul Robeson, and the Ecosystem series. However for the invites... I may want to try something new. I checked out the USPS site and found some beauties in the Scientific American Landscapes series. I love the Okeefenokee Swamp and Hagatna Bay stamps, but have enjoyed my time in the Smokies and Yosemite.

We are straight up CRAZY!!!

2007-11-09T13:50:00.000-05:00

This is the weekend for the invites. The weekend of the flowing creative juices. The weekend of actually getting it all done. The weekend of packing a lot of craftiness into about 30 invitations and crossing our fingers that they are at least a little cute. I'm aiming more for fun than anything else.

Here is the insanity process:

Handmade recycled paper from our junk mail embedded with wildflower seeds
Creation of a stamp of the four friends to transfer to a block
Carving of a linoleum block image of the four friends
Drinking some wine
Braying water-based print ink then transferring to paper
Writing the text
Attaching the pages ... handsewing
More wine
Wrapping in brown paper
Sending out
Celebrating with some wine

Wish us luck!

who has it easier: rings

2007-11-09T08:41:00.001-05:00

Hands down... I do! He picked out my engagement ring with no input from me besides my desire for it to be environmentally-friendly, no diamond, and inexpensive. In actuality we had the ring conversation on one of our first dates and he didn't go ring shopping until over a year later. He ended up picking up something on his own, he asked, I said YES, and I had a ring on my hand. My only decision with that ring was to accept his proposal. I do love it though, he bought a pre-owned piece from an estate sale dating from 1915-1930.

For my wedding band we had planned on using a jeweler that uses reclaimed material so that we could get matching pieces. There were some communication issues with the jeweler and they did not respond to me for a couple of months so I started looking on eBay for something pre-owned. Why not use the material before it has to be reclaimed to be made into something else? I found a piece originally given to someone in 1936, and with that auction my wedding ring shopping was done. Incidentally the jeweler did finally get back to me around the time that I found this little beauty.

But my BunnyGroom has not had it so easy, with less than 75 days to go he is still without a ring. We were going to get matching platinum rings but his jaw darn near fell off when I got my ring for $124. He did not want a band that would cost more than my engagement ring and wedding band. I have been scouring eBay for something vintage for him but it has been hard because I can hardly find rings in his size and the price of platinum has risen more than $400 per ounce in the last six months so people are buying it up for scrap like crazy, including rings that I have been bidding on.

So where does that leave him? He can have anything he wants and that is why I have it easier than him. Newly mined platinum is not an option... look at my post and his posts (post 1 and post 2) on this issue. We have been looking at the popular eco-friendly marketed jewelers as well as lesser well-known stores. At less than 75 days to go no order has been placed but I think we are headed in the right direction. Look at his blog for the ring update and the shout out to RobandLean's etsy shop. I'll post here once I make a purchase ;)

Cute Overload Proposal

2007-11-07T16:51:00.000-05:00

I do not know Jess and Colin but it was nice to see Jess respond. Here is the proposal on cuteoverload.com from 6 November.

She responded the same day.

Congratulations to both of you and your adorable kitteh.

Foodie Gifts

2007-11-07T08:55:00.001-05:00

I am going to be a total slacker on this post and did not do any research but took a page from what I am familiar with in my life. My fiance and I don't consider ourselves to be serious foodies, but we know what we like. We like to make meals with wholesome, high-quality ingredients. We enjoy dining at establishments that use as many local resources as possible and are locally-owned. So here are a few things that I love that you may consider for gifts for a couple you know.

CSA MEMBERSHIP

CSA stands for community supported agriculture and the jist is that you buy a full-share or a half-share of the harvest at the beginning of the growing season from an organic farm or a group of farms. We pick up our half-share weekly from mid-November to early-April and get strawberries, avocados, tomatoes, honey, and an assortment of veggies. It is fun and challenging because the items are fresh and we don't always know what everything is. We are educated about what can grow locally and the farms provide events to invite CSA members to see exactly where their food comes from. To find a CSA near you or near a couple you are considering gifting with a share go to localharvest.org.

Bwahahahaha, we were surprised to find this huge cabbage in our box one day!

This was our first week's share last season. There was always a variety.

Slow Food Membership

The International Slow Food Association is the lead organization for an eco-gastronoimic movement to take the culinary experience back to the table with local, wholesome cuisine instead of the fast food and fast paced way that many of us are getting used to. I first learned of Slow Food when I heard an NPR story about the Terre Madre congress they held in Italy in 2006 where people of all kinds of culinary backgrounds were brought together to discuss their methods. They included people from waning indigenous cultures as well as high-profile chefs all showing their skills with food preparation.

You can join your local chapter (or convivium) when you sign up. Just research your local group first. I joined our Miami group in hopes of going to simple potlucks and helping with the gardening program they volunteer with in our local elementary schools but was a bit disappointed this year when most group activities were pricey dining events. Not all conviviums are like this though so do your research because there are a lot of local groups that do potlucks and share their culinary skills with each other.

Cooking School

I love small cooking schools for traveling. I was at a conference in New Orleans in 2006 and went to the New Orleans School of Cooking. It wasn't a hands-on school but it has piqued my interest to try cooking school experiences when I travel. If the couple is going on a trip or if there is something local to them consider a cooking experience for them. We are going to cooking school on our honeymoon in Italy at Organic Tuscany for the week.

Local Wine

There are wineries everywhere now! I have tasted decent wine in Montana, Oregon, and even here in south Florida. We live by Schnebly Winery, the southernmost winery in the continental United States, and have enjoyed their tastings and tours. This winery began when the owners had a lot of lychee fruit left over that wasn't fit to sell to their produce clients and someone suggested that they press it and ferment it. Now they have a line of six fruit varietal wines including lychee, carambola, passion fruit. Gift the couple you are thinking of some bottles and a winery tour.

Cookbook

There are so many cookbooks out there based on a variety of diets. My favorite gift book in this genre right now is "Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen" by Anna Lappe and Bryant Terry. Only half of the book is recipes but the other half covers food issues ranging from additives to environmental justice. There is a lot of information about food systems here and how their ecology relates to what we put in our bodies but it isn't written in a way that makes it hard to read.

Kitchen stuff

Toaster convection ovens allow foods to cook quicker and at lower temperatures

Slow cookers are efficient at cooking meals using less energy than stove ovens

Bamboo kitchen ware is sustainable, strong, easy on cookware... think spatulas, cutting boards, salt keeper, etc.

Cloth napkins, towels, aprons. You can even make this stuff for the couple

Herb starter pack if they don't already garden or live in small quarters that don't allow an outdoor garden

Reliable cookware like a cast iron skillet or copper if they know how to take care of it. It can last generations.

Recycled glassware

There are a lot of "green" products out there so I don't feel a need to list where to get these items. Just think out of the box if you are looking for a unique gift or the couple isn't registered. Does anyone have any other kind of food-related gifts they are thinking of that they want or are giving?

Cool Invite Alert

2007-11-06T11:03:00.001-05:00

I found Amy Rice's flickr photostream and she made some sweet invites for a friend that I had to share. Way to use recycled paper bags!

I designed the wedding invitations for my friends Amanda and Erick. They are block prints on 100% recycled brown paper bags. On Saturday a whole troop of us ironed a trillion paper bags,traced and cut out 200 envelopes, 200 block prints that will become the invitation (we are going to hand stamp the text with a factory made stamp) and the RSVP card.

sugar, sugar - Mani's Bakery

2007-11-06T10:15:00.000-05:00

One crappy thing about me is my allergy to cane sugar. I have developed this within the last several years. I sometimes doubt how serious it is but I get reminded in vicious ways when I ingest some and have abdominal cramps and/or my breathing gets constricted. Needless to say that I need to be cautious when I dine out and have to turn my head and act like my cup of hot tea is all that I want when people around me snack on cookies or other treats in coffee shops.

This past weekend my best friend visited from Los Angeles and brought me a stockpile of treats from Mani's on Fairfax. There are various companies that don't use sugar and you can buy their goods at health food stores, but the quality of treats at Mani's is sooooooo much better! Here is an excerpt of what they do:

We bake traditional gourmet desserts using unrefined sweeteners such as fruit juice reduction and real chocolate sweetened with barley malt. All of our wheat flour is organically grown. We believe these ingredients retain more of their natural nutritional value.

I am writing about them here for two reasons. First they do custom wedding cakes. Here is an information about their pastry chef, Kristina Montaine, including her contact information. Second, they have a blog. And their blog includes selected recipes including their fruit reduction!! Take a look at this and by all means stop by if you are in the L. A. area. They have full menus for meals as well, but the treats are divine.

Yay, Dia de los Muertos topper

The top two tiers are dairy free, wheat free, and vegan.

They can customize anything. Barbie here has no refined sugar.

So what did my friend bring me on her cross-country journey? Macaroons, chocolate-dipped almond shortbread, truffles, almond roca cake, and truffle hearts. She had never been there before and does not try to avoid sugar, but she is now a Mani's convert. She sampled everything she brought and was plotting what she would buy next time she went.

Hair Trial Preparation

2007-10-31T23:43:00.001-04:00

I don't have the luxury of hiring someone to do my hair and make-up for the wedding. We are going to the less developed side of the country and there aren't the resources available to be able to call up a hair person. So my maid-of-honor has agreed to step up and help me out in this department. She is actually giddy, "I love doing wedding hair" was her response. Since she is coming out this weekend we'll give it a few tries. Here are some of the inspiration pictures I am going for.

In the last year I have purchased a hair dryer and a curling iron to begin to go after this look. I have naturally wavy to curly hair. I know that in the humid tropics I need to try to get out as much moisture as possible for the look to stay. Ideally on my wedding day I'll play in the ocean then shower (but not shampoo my hair), and let my hair air dry before we go after it with implements, clips, twisting, and non-aerosol spraying. I like the loose chignon like the third image but don't know how that will hold up with my hair after a few hours and a possible drizzle. I may need to do something more sleek like the first image. I just want to look CUTE or even HAWT :)

Noel Update

2007-10-31T17:08:00.000-04:00

As of the 5 PM advisory south Florida is under a tropical storm watch... the Bahamas are under a warning. The system has stalled coming off the Cuban coast so it will take a little more time for this to pass. It is just a waiting game now for the wind and rain. My best friend comes in early on Friday.

We are now planning to take off late tomorrow if the winds die down to drive up to Orlando and meet her. She is flying into MIA but has a layover in Orlando first. So if we can drive out tomorrow night, and if she takes carry-on, we'll meet her up there EARLY on Friday.

Now the main thing to do is send good vibes that the system will quickly pass over the Bahamas and fizzle out in the Atlantic Ocean. Oh yeah, and to figure out what we are going to do in Orlando. Disney on Saturday... maybe surfing on Friday? The weather is still the major influence of all of our plans.

bottled water

2007-10-31T00:47:00.000-04:00

The production and distribution of a bottle of water costs more than the water that will be poured into a container. An analysis of the production and delivery of one bottle of FIJI water to a distribution point in the United States yielded the staggering costs of 7 gallons of water (26.88 kilograms), 1/4 of a gallon of fossil fuel (.849 kilograms), and an emission of 1.2 pounds of greenhouse gases. This is before the 1 kilogram bottle of water is trucked around the country and then delivered to a store to be purchased then consumed. This information was taken from this article.

The United States is the leading consumer of bottled water even though we have safe and clean drinking water (source article). You know what I am talking about. It is everywhere and every year we get more accustomed to using it instead of tap water. It also makes one easy and inexpensive DIY project for weddings.

I am more understanding of weddings using water bottles instead of the general public. It is convenient and you want to keep your guests hydrated at a time when they are dressed well thus carrying a SIGG or Nalgene bottle seems inappropriate. If you are having a destination wedding, your guests may be recommended to only drink bottled water depending on the location. However these bottle projects are done a lot because they are inexpensive and it is another way to get a tacky, easy, monogrammed wedding-related item into your guests hands.

Can I please offer a non-tacky alternative to bottled water? Just use water and lemon slices instead of lemonade.

I make an effort to re-use bottles and carry them with me to get tap water when I go out of the house. I will rarely buy bottled water. This has always been my stance because:

tap water is regulated more stringently than bottled water
tap water is clean, if there are taste issues they can be ameliorated with a home filter
the waste of "recycling" or throwing away a bottle for my water with each use is overwhelming
in many cases the bottled water is merely filtered tap water (Dasani & Aquafina)

At least consider if you need to do personalized water bottles for your wedding over a container of cool water. It would be even better to consider if you really need to buy all those containers of bottled water for your everyday use. If you invest in a SIGG bottle and a filter at home the investment will pay for itself in a short time with the money you'll save by not buying flats of water from Costco.

Just be informed/cautious with your choice of bottle. I have moved away from my Nalgene bottles because of the possibility of the durable plastic leaching into the water as the bottle ages. The SIGGs don't go through that degradation.

stages of engagement

2007-10-30T10:13:00.000-04:00

There was a new couple at dance class last night. They were engaged very recently and it showed. At one point in class the guy couldn't understand how to signal to his fiancee that he was going to spin her and I turned to my fiance and said something to the effect that he would know if they already did their marriage prep. It was a bit snarky, but we giggled. You could tell they were excited with their energy, but had a nervousness that seemed a bit off. Sort of like us shortly after he put a ring on me.

After class we met and congratulated them on their engagement. They haven't set a date yet and are thinking late next year. The guy was saying they already went to a bridal show and it was fun. My fiance asked if he really liked it and the groom-to-be said, "Yeah, $22 and all-you-can-drink booze." We are in a more advanced stage of wedding planning and I was thinking back on our newly engaged period when we had no idea what we were doing. We were engaged in August 2006 and didn't make a concrete wedding plan until late February 2007. Those goofy months were kind of funny and all over the place, like they should be. My wish for the newly engaged couple is that they have fun with it and don't stress a lot with planning for their day.

I also wish I would have done this blog to document what was going on back then. Our plans changed so much within those months. It seems like we were trying to appease each other so much that we were planning things that neither of us really wanted. The next best thing to an archive I could have done is Cathy Guisewite's work I suppose. She is the creator of the Cathy comic. I have never been a big fan, but I think I can relate now. Irving, Cathy's boyfriend, proposed on Valentine's Day 2004 and they were hitched in February 2005. Marriage was not on my radar then and I didn't bother to read the strip but I think it could be fun now. Luckily Cathy's wedding planning is available in a book.
It follows them from the proposal through the wedding. Much like we watched this newly engaged couple last night I wish we could get the thoughts that the older relationships in our dance class have about us. Perspective is always fun.

planning the weekend

2007-10-29T22:42:00.001-04:00

Flexibility is a good trait. My best friend is coming out this weekend to hang out and get some pre-wedding, girly, silliness out of the way. We don't know exactly what we are doing yet as a result of 1) poor planning and 2) Noel.

This is what the National Hurricane Center has to say about Noel and our location as of 11 PM Monday night:

INTEREST IN SOUTHERN FLORIDA SHOULD MONITOR THE PROGRESS OF
NOEL. A TROPICAL STORM WATCH MAY BE REQUIRED FOR SOUTHEAST
FLORIDA EARLY TUESDAY.

FOR STORM INFORMATION SPECIFIC TO YOUR AREA...INCLUDING
POSSIBLE INLAND WATCHES AND WARNINGS...PLEASE MONITOR PRODUCTS
ISSUED BY YOUR LOCAL WEATHER OFFICE.

This has been a very slow hurricane season for us, actually for two seasons in a row. I feel I am a little lulled into a false sense of security. I had to throw up this graphic because it is peculiar. Notice how it swings up from Cuba to the Bahamas and then comes pretty damn close to a ninety-degree turn out into the Atlantic. I told my best friend about this graphic tonight and she responded, "cars don't even turn that sharp." Yes Shirley, that is a sharp turn. She doesn't come out until Friday though and the storm will have passed by then.

It is a storm right now and there doesn't seem to be too much caution about it developing into a hurricane and veering off course. However I can't help but think of Katrina when it got us here in South Florida before it headed to Gulf waters. It was a tiny little storm that developed into a category one hurricane that caused some damage here. It is always good to be cautious with mother nature in these situations.

If Noel swings towards us we'll likely get wet. There will be some tree damage. If we head for the Keys for the weekend there probably won't be much effect the further south we go. If we head to the Bahamas we'll need to make sure the area of travel isn't too disturbed from this system. If we head to Disneyworld (which looks like the number one plan at the moment) we'll just hope the ninety-degree curve happens so that Orlando isn't affected. Flexibility is a south Florida way of life when it comes to the weather.

To meat or not to meat...

2007-10-25T08:13:00.001-04:00

Eating meat is definitely more energetically expensive than not eating meat because of what is required to support each trophic chain. Environmentally it is better to eat on a lower trophic chain and be an herbivore (vegan). Let me know if you want an explanation of trophic energetics as an argument for vegetarianism. This post is about my tug-of-war with the decision to currently be a vegetarian or not.

I was a vegetarian for over 10 years but did not make that choice for environmental reasons, or bleeding heart reasons. Or primarily for health reasons. I did it because of disdain for the meat industry. The meat packing industry is horrific and shadows what was a powerful union in the U. S. decades ago. Now severe worker accidents and death is common. The conditions the animals are subjected too is inhumane with overcrowding, medications, hormones, and finally deaths that aren't always swift.

I eat meat now but make an effort to eat meat that is hormone-free, free-range, and that supports better worker conditions. When I was a vegetarian I had the opportunity to eat fish when I was on an invasive trout study. We would kill a catch of fish in areas to collect data and then be told by protocol to toss the carcasses in the middle of the water. That seemed like a waste so me and my crew tried to eat fish often. I would also eat hunting meat that friends would kill then prepare. I learned that a good elk steak is all right, possibly one of the best treats I love to have when I get the chance. However, have you ever looked in a living elks' eyes? So cute! Don't think I don't I understand the bleeding heart argument.

I starting eating meat again when I was training for an endurance event. Then it kept on when I started grad school. And didn't stop there because I had a weird illness that turned out to be an allergy to sugar cane and oats. It has been easier to manage my allergy with meat consumption. So now I am at a point where I can be a veg again, eat little meat, or be a carnivore. The logical thing to do is be a vegan for the environment and humane reasons. However it is easier to have lower body fat composition by eating lean meats, and I do prefer to be toned.

Currently I have the opportunity to attend a chicken preparation workshop with our local organic farm. They need to cull some of their critters and have 10 slots open for the entire preparation of a chicken. You bring a cooler to take it home on ice at the end of the day and go through the entire process. I have all sorts of acquaintances over time with chickens but it is rare that anyone prepares them for slaughter these days. My mother had a big coop for eggs. My neighbor has two chickens for eggs and they are in front of our house every morning. I have a disturbing disconnect between the chicken for eggs and the chicken meat. This is why this workshop seems so appealing.

My fiance was never a vegetarian. When we first met I told him I was considering not eating meat and he was less than supportive at that time. I changed my mind because of eventual food allergies but we have been steadily reducing our meat consumption during our relationship. We try to evaluate our eat-meating every so often and he is even considering a vegetarian lifestyle these days. Our eat meating conflicts are also present with the wedding planning.

For the wedding there will be good veggie food for everyone as well as local catch fish in ceviche. I don't know the source of the chicken but we will have jerk chicken because we will be around an Afro-Caribbean culture and it would be a shame not to. We are going to a Slow Food associated cooking school for the honeymoon and have opted for the course with meat because the animals are raised locally on farms in humane conditions. That seems to be the balance for us right now. Reduced meat consumption, but when we do we try to make it meat with some value.

**Grrrr, I have a previous commitment the weekend of the chicken workshop with the farm. I won't be signing up.

Flowers

2007-10-22T19:54:00.000-04:00

One of the many things that Costa Rica is known for is it's biodiversity. Fauna and flora. I am going to take advantage of that fact and use flowers local to my wedding location... so local that they will be cut from the grounds of the bungalows we will be staying at as well as hosting the reception and ceremony. The funny thing is that you can't always control nature so I don't know exactly what will be available for my bouquet in January.

And I am fine with that.

I decided to write this post after thinking over that crazy news story last week where someone did not have a contract but paid over $25,000 for flowers for a single wedding and they were not the right shade of pink so the bride is now suing the florist for $400,000.

Ideally I want an arch made with mosquito netting and simple arrangements similar to this image from floralartistry.com. Mosquito netting is already at the location to cover beds and the flowers are on the premises. It will be no big deal if we can't construct the arch or it is too windy because the Caribbean Sea by itself does make an awesome wedding backdrop.

I want a bouquet as well as bouquets for my side of the wedding party. They can double as centerpieces at the family-style dinner we will have later in the evening. The arrangements from the arch can be used as reception decor as well. I also want bouts for my fiance's side of the wedding party, our fathers, and his mother.

Here is an example of what is available at our location and the kind of work our wedding coordinator, Dawn Yates, can do.

Basically heliconias, bromeliads, and orchids should be abundant for the wedding. The orchids flowering at that time are usually purple and I am vain enough to know I'll pass on those since they don't go with our saffron/merlot colors. The heliconias will be awesome though (so awesome that they are on our monogram as well as our yard at home) and so will the bromeliads. I already know that I will not be cool with raping the garden for a lot of flowers and want to maximize the less-energetically expensive leaf blades in all arrangements. We are cutting a number of leaves anyway since we are using banana leaves that need to be pruned for plates. We are also collecting fallen leaves for escort cards. I don't know the species but my coordinator says that they are in the almond family and the underside is packed with tanins so we can write scratch names into the blade two days before the wedding and the darker oxidation will be visible for the reception dinner. Here are some great ways to use blades in arrangements.

After the wedding and after they lose their vitality the flowers will be composted at the site they were picked from. They will join our banana leaf plates.

Paper Trial

2007-10-17T23:49:00.000-04:00

I did a paper trial run tonight. We are making paper for our invites from our paper that needs to be shredded (old pay stubs, credit card offers, etc.) It will be grow-a-note paper that guests can put in the ground to hopefully get flowers with in the spring. On Sunday we are going to get through as many sheets as we can but tonight I was testing out the molds I made and playing with the color. I have never made a screen mold to do this before. I only ever used felt and my paper has been thick for gift tags and note cards. I want this stuff to be thinner to possibly go through an older typewriter.

The mold was made from screening. The larger screen is scrap from an aviary my neighbor just built and the finer mesh screen was donated from one of my fiance's co-workers. It was a torn screen door that she had not thrown away yet. I placed the finer screen over the broader screen and duct taped the edges. I tore up a few sheets of our "sensitive papers" and put the pieces in a blender filled 2/3 of the way with water and pulsed until it made a good pulp. But the pulp was a light grey. Our wedding colors are saffron and merlot and we want saffron colored paper. We like these colors because they are Buddhist monk robe colors. Way back in the day the robes were dyed with saffron or turmeric. I have no straight turmeric at home so I used some curry powder and pulsed it with the pulp in the blender. We are adding wildflower seed on Sunday but I did this batch with some much larger cucumber seed that we will not be growing here in Miami. Here is the mold with pulp in the vat. The vat is a litter box we bought from a dollar store for a kitten we rescued that was waiting for an adopted home.

Here is more detail of the layout. After the mold is pulled from the vat you let water drain at a 45 degree angle back into the vat and push the pulp down away from the duct tape edges. Then you place it face down on a piece of felt. Sop up as much water as you can with a sponge. I then turned it over and rolled the felt back off the screen to pull the pulp sheet with it. Cover that with another piece of felt so that the paper is sandwiched between the two pieces of felt and place it in a newspaper stack. After you have a few sheets scattered in the newspaper stack step on it with a wooden board on top of it (I used one of our cutting boards covered in a towel).

Then remove the paper sandwiched between the felt from the newspaper stack and stick it to a window. To let it dry.

My first batch sucked because I sieved the pulp too thin on the mold. It was difficult to remove from the screen and I was also trying to pull the screen off the felt instead of the felt off the screen. The second batch was easier to work with because it had more pulp per sheet but I was on the phone with my mother so I was sloppy in laying it on the window with my shoulder pinning the phone against my ear. Laying it flat is not hard to do but I need both of my arms.
Here are the dried pieces and I am happy with one of the trials.

So on Sunday we will have PAPERPALOOZA 2007 going on in our home. We have a lot of paper to make and I wanted to go through tonight's trial run because I have not made paper in a couple of years, I have never used this mold, and I wanted to test the spice we would use for dying the paper. Right now my hands and the window smell like a big old pot of yummy curry! I bet it would smell so good with some ginger and cinnamon :)

To see a great paper-making tutorial check out this flickr set by B_Zedan.

dance.dance.dance.dance.dance

2007-10-16T08:21:00.001-04:00

We are taking a community education Beginning Ballroom class at Miami Dade Community College. As of now we can rhumba, cha-cha, and swing. The best thing about this class has been training ourselves to lead and follow on the dancefloor. Last night was the end of part one of the class and we had to perform all three dances in front of our classmates... we weren't too shabby!

The best part of this dance class has been working with my fiance in an arena that neither of us are skilled in. I think it has been an extension of our marriage preparation that we did in February. In our relationship we do not have a clear leader in all situations and I have been accused many times of not following when my guy chooses to step up. It is not always easy to follow as a strong-minded, independent woman and at the start of the class you could see us physically having issues with a power struggle. Over the course of the last eight weeks I have grown in giving up the reigns for my guy to step up on the dance floor and I think our communication outside of class has improved as a result. I could be giving the dance class more credit than it deserves because our communication level was already pretty high when class started. What I do know is that my guy's posture when he pulls a good dance move or is leading well is SEXY.

We start part two of the class in two weeks. Next up... tango, foxtrot, and waltz.

The other fun part of the class is music. Last night we heard "Begin the Beguine" by Cole Porter and it is definitely going on our wedding playlist. When class resumes in two weeks we are bringing in a CD of music we are considering for our wedding, including the first dance song. "Baby" by OsMutantes. Hopefully our instructor will give us some pointers on rocking that tune.

Blog Action Day

2007-10-15T08:11:00.000-04:00

Today over 15,000 bloggers are working to have 12.5 million readers view some words about the environment. Read more about it here.

Here is my effort to you. First you should know that I have a background in ecology and have worked with environmental research in the western U. S., Central America, and South America. However I think some of the best efforts to reach more of the general public to think about the environment are to have people consider their consumer efforts and basic resource use like water, especially water (but that is a personal passion because the lack of clean water globally is a big issue that is a reality for a lot of the world).

So I do have A LOT of ideas about the environment and our daily interface with resources but I am going to try to keep this post wedding-related since I am 97 days away until my wedding. I am going to write about why we are making eco-friendly efforts for our wedding. Green weddings are very trendy right now and I am fine with that, I don't care if the bride or groom are hippies, senior scientists, or just doing something green for one day, they are making an effort. The greenest wedding is a simple two-person elopement at city hall but not everyone wants such bare-bones efforts. When I started my wedding research the first book I picked up from the library was "Green Weddings That Don't Cost the Earth" and I highly recommend checking it out. It is bare bones green wedding planning from a period before when the wedding industry exploded all over this segment of the market. Read this first, then move on to Organic Weddings and Eco-Chic Wedding Planning.

We have put a good deal of effort into our marriage. We did DIY marriage preparation 12 months before the wedding, then a facilitated 3-day marriage retreat 10 months before the wedding, we are taking dancing lessons 4 months out and leading up to the wedding, and the dance classes really are a concentrated, physical manifestation about marriage prep for us. I'll write more about that one day soon. The wedding itself is a quick ceremony with a fun party around it. Here is information about our wedding celebration. Read it to judge if these are things you want to do, use it for inspiration to do something that embodies you and your fiance, or ignore it. For us this celebration is a balance between maximizing our joy with our far-flung guests and limiting the resources we are using in our effort.

vintage (a.k.a. used) rings
second hand dress and second hand guayaberas for fathers
save-the-dates made of recycled chipboard and old calendars
invites made from our junk mail and embedded with wildflower seeds so they can be planted when guests are done with them
lodging in Costa Rica is low-impact with green space
reception location, wedding location, and lodging are all within walking distance
public transportation down to our wedding location... yep, yep, yep... gin and tonics on the bus to the coast!
use of leftover wedding decorations from other weddings that already happened (yay for a network of online friends!)
candles, re-chargeable batteries, solar, and low-voltage electric sources
flowers grown at our reception site to be cut the day of the wedding and composted there when we are done
use of scrap fabrics for table runners and napkins to be donated to the area for re-use
banana leaves will be cut from our reception site and used as plates then composted at the site
glasses will be used wine bottles cut and smoothed for our use as well as other use in the area
veggie food options, local catch, and local preparation
fans for cooling instead of air-conditioning with small attached programs made of recycled paper and old playing cards
bridal party gifts include handmade necklaces, recycled tin containers, handmade bags with scrap material, and sarongs to benefit a community education program
relatively small guest list for a wedding... about 20-30 people
guest favors are a donation to a local primary forest project as a carbon offset for all of our collective travel
the big guest activity besides the wedding is a volunteer work day with an indigenous community center involving a hike back through the forest to the site and labor (we are still determining labor needs) with the families of the project because the kids luckily have that week off from school
another activity is a visit to a sloth sanctuary and animal facility that rears critters confiscated by MINAE that people are trying to illegally smuggle out of the country
Our mini-moon will be nearby in Panama at a low-impact eco-tourism project

Do what you can to reduce your resource consumption. Find a balance that you feel comfortable with to maximize the joy of your wedding. And good luck with your wedding planning.

Congratulations Al!

2007-10-12T09:18:00.000-04:00

Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize with United Nations Panel on Climate Change. Let's talk a moment about "An Inconvenient Truth" and Al's crazy Tennessee home. He is not a scientist conducting long-term research... instead he is working on the intersection of science and reaching the public which is a very hard intersection. Most scientists lack the social skills to convey the findings of their research to the general populous and even if they did give people P-values and degrees of freedom the public would not know what to do with such information. Kudos to Al for getting people to think about climate change. That is huge!

An Inconvenient Truth may not be 100% factual since some is technically speculation at this point. If you have an issue with it then do what the judge in Great Britain suggested as part of using it for the public school curriculum... include the arguments about what is considered speculation. At least think about what the film is trying to convey.

Wedding-related: I know at least one knottie planning on giving this DVD to her guests as a wedding favor.

Gore's Tennessee home... I bring this up because this is the argument that is always presented when talking about Gore and Bush and climate change by conservatives. Gore's home consumes more energy than Bush's Texas ranch... big deal. For me it is not a deal breaker for supporting Mr. Gore because the impacts on this issue that these two men have dwarf their personal use. Anyway, here is an article about Gore's home.

I applaud Al and his efforts. The November prior to the Bush administration taking control of the White House a U. S. Climate Change report was generated by our scientists and shelved. The Bush administration has done little to acknowledge that climate change exists beyond what is considered normal temporal oscillations. I was mighty surprised when Condoleeza Rice came out recently and acknowledged that a consensus needs to be reached on this issue because it is real.

My thoughts are that carbon emissions have been noticeably elevated since the industrial revolution and are having an impact on climate and the environment. We don't know the full extent and won't until the crisis is over (like all ecology studies) but anything we can do now to reduce the impact should be taken. Thank you Al for your efforts to have people besides ecology graduate students and scientists think about this issue. Reaching "Joe America" is hard and I don't know how you did it, but you did. What I can't understand is why some people are SO ANGRY that you are bringing attention to this subject?

The invites

2007-10-10T19:29:00.000-04:00

They are slowly coming along... at least the verbage is

We wanted to use a quote and found one we like:

"Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared." - Buddha

We have our invite wording:

please join us to celebrate the marriage of

kia x. xxxxxx
daughter of braulio, carolyn, and deaune

&

terry x. xxxxxx
son of dennis, nancy, and ronald

sunday, the twentieth of january, two thousand eight
at twenty past four in the afternoon
playa punta uva

more pura vida y comida to follow

We need to do a wording page for the directions and map and the RSVP...

Now we need to find the images for our four friends, make a screen, make the paper, cut the paper, apply the screen to the paper and we are thinking of using an old type writer to handle the text... luckily we have to make under 40... ETD... Thanksgiving.

Ephemera Custom Letterpress

2007-10-04T13:24:00.000-04:00

We were pleasantly surprised last night. We were notified by Weddingbee that we won one of their vendor contests (see link). As a rule I do not enter every contest I see, only the ones I want to win. On Weddingbee I enter everytime they offer Rariteas and there was a store credit to get an embosser a few weeks ago. However, Ephemera Custom Letterpress has some really cute designs and I love the old machine they use. So I entered and we won.

I have since had a couple of interactions with Tara, the company owner, to ask about her business. I figured that using a cast iron machine dating from 1912 might have some environmental benefits over more modern methods of printing and she was cool enough to give me a brief breakdown of their developing kind practices (she is working on an environmentally practices section for their "about us" page):

Current research for ink alternatives. Right now there is responsible disposable of materials. They aren't using soy-based inks yet because the soy washes may degrade the press and rollers and given that the press is vintage they can't afford to degrade the parts. I know, soy degrade stuff, WTH? It is a possibility based on degradation on steel machines that cannot be taken or else a machine that is almost 100 years old could be ruined.
Re-use of paper not suitable for the client order
Use of 100% cotton paper which requires fewer chemicals and produces less waste than tree based paper
Eco-friendly paper source - Crane paper has an entire department devoted to minimizing their environmental impact (they even compost)
Option of Porridge Papers (handmade, recycled paper)
Ephemera is also a small-business that is operated out of a garage. They are small, local benefits of not commuting and using extra resources with being off-site are eco-friendly.

A tri-fold wedding invitation on recycled paper with a perforated RSVP card.

For winning a contest Ephemera Custom Letterpress is being really easy to work with in offering us options for the note cards. Some of the added value of working with small retailers is ability to get an order you really want. Now my fiance and I need to figure out what we really want. The original reason I signed up was because they have a lot of design options, now we actually do have to narrow those options down to one choice. I'll keep you posted on what we select.

Beth Beljon Free "Green" Photography Offer

2007-10-03T17:55:00.000-04:00

Thank you Andreina (knottie RoseWhite) for alerting me to the Beth Beljon Offer for 6 hours of wedding photography for a "green" wedding. Apply by 15 December. For detailed information... click this link.

Basically tell her what you are doing to make your wedding eco-friendly. She'll pick a winner by January. If you win you'll get 6 hours of wedding coverage in the U. S. or abroad, an album with up to 65 images, a website featuring the album, and the option to buy prints at retail cost. If the wedding is outside of the Los Angeles area you will be responsible for airfare for Beth and her assistant (hopefully carbon emissions will be offset) along with hotel stay (2 nights). She will cover all other travel expenses.

She requires that the winning couple sign an agreement that what they state as all green aspects of their wedding such as donations, vendors ect. are in fact true.

Beth is based out of Southern California and not only has shot a number of fabulous weddings but also has publication credits to her name as well. Look at her website to learn more about her work.

October = Be Aware of Yer Bewbies and Do Something About Them

2007-10-02T19:27:00.000-04:00

Pink is EVERYWHERE this month especially (and through out the year) for good reason. Here is a paragraph from the Making Memories Foundation:

The heartrending cost in human life is staggering. In America alone, one person receives a diagnosis of breast cancer every 2 1/2 minutes, while every 12 minutes someone loses his or her battle against this disease. Breast cancer is no respecter of age or gender, estimates show that more than 200,000 women and 1,700 men will develop breast cancer this year. Although breast cancer is the number two cancer killer of older women, it is the number one cancer killer of women between the ages of 15 and 54, leaving thousands of young children without their mothers and young husbands to cope alone.

It was just over a year ago that my fiance and I learned that this disease also attacks men... it was more than that when I learned that very young women were getting diagnosed as early as 15. Please do routine exams on yourself and your partner and go to your regular medical exams. I suppose I am one of the 4 of 10 people that believe in the fallacy that early detection is key to successfully treating the disease. I have loved this shirt and detection kit for a long time for a reason, not all bewbies are the same and some are lumpier than others. Get used to the road map of what you have. This kit could help. This is part of the stance that I believe in... go beyond awareness. Take action and stay informed of what medical procedures are being done these days. Simply buying products with pink ribbons will not protect you like a magic shield.

Well, as far as weddings and breast cancer... there are all sorts of beneficial ways you can spend your money. You can support organizations raising funds for research and support for those affected. You can get bridal gowns and accessories through Brides Against Breast Cancer. You can make donations as favors for your wedding and pre-wedding celebrations. One of the better recognized organizations is the Susan G. Komen for the Cure that resulted as a promise from one sister to another. Consider registering for items that benefit an organization working with survivors and research, you can find everything in pink and benefiting an organization these days. I even have a pink tennis racquet.

With as many opportunities as there are to show support for Breast Cancer Awareness I have hope that one day diagnoses and treatment will be routine and completely successful. This can only become a reality if people go beyond awareness and take action. Please also read this "Putting Power in the Pink" blog entry from Lemon Margaritas for some perspective on pink ribbon commercialization and action after you are aware that breast cancer is out there.

So everyone liked C... (e-pics cont.)

2007-10-01T13:24:00.000-04:00

Thanks for participating in the poll... LOL! 115 of you gave us your opinion and C was the overwhelming favorite. However, I don't know how much re-touching will improve on that one so we are going with B for the re-touch (it is the second place winner). Do you think we can work this on a holiday card this year?

Here are a couple of others. I made a quick bout for Terry with some weeds, a fern, a ponytail holder and the bout pin he will wear at the wedding. We used a fan that will be given to a guest prior to our wedding ceremony with Terry being "creepy" in the background with my binoculars. Then us playing with bubbles. Us in the water and us getting slightly kissy-face.

Craft Fairs!!

2007-09-30T12:44:00.000-04:00

Do you want to support local merchants with your wedding planning? If you are online small merchants can be found at the Etsy stores. However in real life there are networks of all sorts of people offering goods, and if you look carefully you have a good chance of encountering goods made by people that have similar values as yourself.

I don't claim that Miami is the "greenest" or "craftiest" place I have lived but after three years I am finding some niches that I like.

Yesterday was Kraftworks in the Design District. It was hosted by rag*trade and offered spaces for crafty vendors to sell their goods, and was a good time in general. I couldn't stay long but we saw Heather from Ragamufyn there. We met her last year at the Bang music festival and my fiance loves his organic cotton shirt he bought from her.

One of the cool vendors I met there was Barbara, she was vending for her Bebecito line that she also sells on etsy.com. It is "comfy baby clothes with the planet in mind." Barbara was kind enough to talk to me about water-based inks instead of the more synthetic ones because I am considering doing something with inks for our invites and wedding design. She learned her skill from a project on Lincoln Road in South Beach and seems to be open for offering advice. If Terry and I had kids we definitely would want some of her gear, it is ADORABLE.

We also went to rag*trade which is an environmental-friendly business that I learned about very recently. It is basically a clothing exchange with an emphasis on re-use for the purpose for sustainability. We entered the space where this business is run and this is one of the first signs we saw...

This business concept is cool. We ended up buying two guayaberas for our dads while we were there. It ended up being a wedding-related productive day because those guayaberas are our gifts to them. And Barbara's advice about water-based inks may be useful if we do screen our invites.

And the best part... there is another south Florida fair next weekend... Stitch Rock 2007!!!

Engagement Pictures

2007-09-27T00:56:00.000-04:00

We shot some pictures the other weekend out in the Everglades. Technically Big Cypress National Park. We met up with some wonderful women that just completed a photography program in Massachusetts. I don't know how long they will be in Florida, but I am glad we were able to connect.

www.edithrosa.com
www.kindrakeitrel.com

Part of our agreement with them is that we will pick one photo and let them do their crazy re-touching on it. Can you help us pick? I put a poll on the side to ask for your input. Thanks.

Blog of the Groom of the Bride He Calls Bunny

2007-09-24T13:00:00.001-04:00

This is not a tongue-twister joke, I'm serious. My fiance surprised me a few minutes ago with an e-mail sending me to this site.

I don't know his motivation for doing it but he started a wedding blog today. Here is his angle:

Thoughts from the groom's perspective on weddings, honeymoons, the planning process, and most importantly: marriage.

I love this guy. He has been very involved in the planning process so I am not surprised that he is doing a blog but I admit I am a bit sexist and laughed when I saw what he did. A boy doing a wedding blog? WTF?!?

However he does have a lot of well-constructed opinions on all this wedding madness the two of us are going through and likes to be helpful and informative in real life. I don't see why he shouldn't share his mental gems with the internet as well.

Here is the new blogger with his sister at her wedding this past May.

Visit his blog for some perspective and chatter. I hope one of his first posts is about why he thinks grooms may not be into the wedding planning as much as brides are.

Love you babe, good luck with your blog.

A different way to get your wedding supplies

2007-09-24T08:04:00.000-04:00

I am not big on acquiring new items for eco-friendly wedding planning. I prefer to re-use resources that are already out there. If I do get something new then I do want an eco-friendly alternative, but those costs can add up so in my case I need to pick and choose what elements I want to buy new. There are ways to have a nice wedding without sacrificing every little frill you want. Some of my tips include:

1. Question if you really need/want to include a certain element in your wedding
2. Find out if a friend has any leftover resources
3. Go into a cooperative agreement with people to re-use the same resource between weddings
4. Buy used
5. If you buy new find an eco-friendly alternative

Here are some examples from my own wedding planning for each of these tips.

1. Question if you really need/want to include a certain element in your wedding

I am not trying to pack a million things to take down to Costa Rica for the wedding and am using that as one of my motivations to really consider what things we want. My fiance saw monogrammed aisle runners from other peoples' wedding planning and thought that I wanted one. This was a miscommunication on our part, so I reluctantly planned on making one. When I was going over our wedding planning list one day I asked if he really wanted one and he realized I didn't. The monogrammed aisle runner concept is gorgeous and seems to be a staple at weddings now, but I don't want one. I am happy to have sand under my toes at the wedding. It is simple and beautiful in my opinion. I am also happy not to buy all that fabric.

Besides the aisle runner there are a lot of cute details I see my friends doing that I personally cannot justify the paper consumption for. This includes menu cards, table signs, etc. It is a little hard pushing myself not to "keep up" with cute things I see others doing. I have to remind myself to stay true to values we are trying to base this wedding on and I also have my awesome wedding coordinator that keeps me accountable about my motivation for my actions.

2. Find out if a friend has any leftover resources

I was unsure about doing the adorable Martha Stewart inspired lace and paper bag luminaries. Our grounds for the wedding and reception are pretty big and they could come in handy but I didn't want to buy packages of doilies and the rest of the supplies. Well a friend of mine had her wedding this past April and made them. She had a few packages leftover and instead of selling them to me she suggested I make an undisclosed donation to a charity she is heavily involved with. I made a donation to a national canine rescue program for large dogs (Cane Corso Association of America) and she sent me supplies. I was out of my head about this concept. Her doubly generous offer was over the top and pushed me into the "yes" category for these luminaries.

3. Go into a cooperative agreement with people to re-use the same resource between weddings

I know some women from a board on the knot that responded to a post by a bride that was married in late spring that had leftover supplies. They all coveted her silk orchids and have arranged to buy them and use them their weddings in October, November, and then December. They will be used for at least four weddings, that is cool.

4. Buy used

This doesn't have to be tacky just because it is used. I mean, just consider it "vintage." When things weren't looking like they were working out for my wedding band I took inspiration from my engagement ring and ended up buying vintage. My 1920's engagement ring now has an accompanying wedding band that dates between 1915 and 1936. New resources don't go into the production of an item since they were already originally utilized for production at an ealier date (and hopefully used by someone else)... it is just another form of recycling. I gotta say, I love eBay for this. Try to use local sellers if you can because of the transportation costs of getting goods to you.

5. If you buy new find an eco-friendly alternative

OMG, there is a crazy proliferation of new stuff you can buy that is in varying degrees of kind and eco-friendly. It seems like the earth friendly weddings blog goes on and on with all kinds of stuff to buy. I think there is an inherent irony that this industry attempting to conserve resource use has such a diversity of products. I find myself considering consuming products I would never have had an interest in before if they weren't eco-friendly. I ALWAYS have to check myself about buying new stuff to justify if I need it, want it, and will really use it. It is an interesting balance between wanting nice things and realizing that I don't need too many nice things. One of the nice things that I love is the organic cotton dress shirt by Boll Organic for my fiance. Affordable earth-friendly clothing for him has been in a pain in the ass to come by, so this shirt is a big YES in my mind.

Twisted Limb Paper

2007-09-22T20:36:00.000-04:00

I have not out right spotlighted a website yet, but there are a few that I love. I am going to start with Twisted Limb Paper. I was introduced to this site when BelgiumBride pointed me in the direction of where she got her rockin' grow-a-note invites.

I started looking at Twisted Limb based on her invite and really like what I have read about the company since then. It is a recognized co-op that has pretty decent environmental and social programs in place. They are conscious with re-using materials. They send paper used on both sides for correspondence with clients, re-use water from their cooling systems for the paper-making process, and use interesting materials (grass cuttings from their field, recycled office paper, junk mail, and used grocery bags). They donate at least 22% of their profits to environmental conservation efforts community groups. They also pay for carbon offsets with Native Energy and EnviroWatts to compensate for their facility, employee commuting, and business travel. Their products are also really nice, take a look at this guestbook.

I highly recommend looking at this site for your stationary and paper needs if you are in market. I also highly recommend this site for their Green Ideas section. There are all kinds of links on Green Wedding vendors, wedding ettiquette, and Green vendors for kids, home, and office. They are really helpful, here is a page about ways to use scrap paper in your profession.

And if you live in Bloomington or around South Central Indiana they have a number of eco-friendly wedding vendors they can hook you up with.

Kind Search Engines

2007-09-21T13:39:00.000-04:00

There are a few obvious things you can deduce from my blog. Two of them that are relevant to this post are:

1. I am getting married in the near future (FYI 4 months)
2. I use the internet

Based on those two facts you can extend to the logical conclusion that I use search engines a lot. The most popular engine is even considered a verb in our modern language... Google. I even say it when I speak to people, "Did you google x, y, or z?" However I don't use Google. My homepage is set to GoodSearch.

The presented layout takes a little getting used to if you normally use Google but the benefits extend beyond the search results. GoodSearch was created after its founders realized that some of the revenue from the $8 billion dollar a year search engine advertising industry could be used for charity. They figure everyone has a cause they are passionate about so why not let people search for information like they normally would but change the format so that some of the advertising dollars generated by that search could go to charity. You can pick your own charity. Good search donates 50% of its revenue to charities and schools.

My charity is set to El Puente - The Bridge. This is the organization me and my wedding guests are doing a volunteer work day with while we are in Costa Rica. We are also gathering wish list items to bring down for them. So far The Bridge has raised $40 with GoodSearch. It doesn't seem like much but it adds up. The ASPCA has raised $5,870 and Save Darfur has raised $3,550.

I had saveandsearch which is powered by Google up here yesterday. I have since removed that search engine from this post because apparently the black screen consumes more energy with LCD screens and these screens are proliferating a lot of computers now. So while the concept was good for older computers, it is not a real environmental benefit now. Here is an accompanying source about black screens not being the new green.

First an article on Google's blog, "Is black the new green?"

And a more analytical piece testing out the energy consumption between the two from techologg.com, "Black vs. Google power savings - the final test"

Someone told me about my misinformation about the benefits of saveandsearch and did not want to leave a contradictory comment because they didn't want to seem snarky. I told him that is fine because information is knowledge and is always welcomed here. I am glad he did provide me with sources. :)

Helping out: Thank You Postcard

2007-09-20T22:32:00.000-04:00

A friend was recently married in Mexico and instead of the cumbersome card and envelope she is planning on sending out Thank You postcards. I was sneaky and pulled some images from her snapfish account to make a collage and I think she is going to use it. That makes me happy. Congratulations on your wedding Tee and Manny! I wish you all the happiness in the world.

The rings

2007-09-19T19:49:00.000-04:00

Well I went for a plan C. In my impatience of waiting for Green Karat to respond (which they finally did) I began searching for platinum jewelry to reclaim. I came across a number of pieces on eBay and ran across a band that did not sell the first time around because it was put in the wrong category. I could not buy this band only to melt it so left it alone. I came across it a second time and was surprised it wasn't purchased yet. So I jumped on it. I figured the fate gods were testing me.

Here it is. Inscribed with "Donny to Mary 12-6-36" and a size 5. It is 1/2 size too small and needs to be sized up. We'll see if the nice folks at Carroll's Jewelers can also flush mount at least one diamond chip for me from my grandma. I think it goes well with my engagement ring and am happy with how everything turned out. I plan to keep the original inscription.

Unfortunately this leaves my fiance kind of out in the dark. No matching bands for us. His range of bands is wide open now and he is reconsidering platinum because my ring was really inexpensive ($126). The price shouldn't be an issue and I am excited to see what he picks.

R. I. P. Cedrick

2007-09-17T11:29:00.001-04:00

I don't know how appropriate this content is for everyone's wedding planning, but it is for mine. I frequent theknot.com and specifically the Destination Weddings board. I am not big for online forums because I prefer IRL (in real life) relationships but have bonded with a number of people on that forum. It was via an extension of that board that I opened up a devastating e-mail this morning.

One of the brides lost her significant other on Friday. He died during surgery to remove a large tumor on his back. He had spent a lot of the previous year in another country than their home getting treatment for his first round of cancer. They knew the risks and she accompanied him to the country he was getting treatment in when his cancer returned. They spent a fair amount of time with each other for a couple of months before he passed.

I am sad for her. I am angry that this could happen to such a lovely, good couple. I feel guilty that I am lucky enough to have my fiance because not everyone has that luxury. I am a mess and have shed a good number of tears in the past few hours. And what I feel is a mere tiny fraction of the loss that she must be going through. I have not been able to bring myself to write a condolence note yet. That is my next order of business.

I made the announcement to the wedding planning boards she has had a tremendous impact on. Cedrick's passing has sent a shockwave through our online community. We are now collecting a fund for her in an attempt to help offset funeral and travel costs. We all wish we could be there to give her a hug and a tissue if it would help. We all got to know her because she wanted to practice her English while planning a wedding but her friendship has meant so much more to us than that.

I was reading some of the responses "knotties" had left following the announcement and finally saw the "rest in peace" message. Wow. He is really is no longer with us. I hope he does rest in peace. My prayers are with her and those who were also a part of his life. Rest in peace Cedrick, and Fanny please know that you are well loved by all of us.

I am posting their picture because I saw she removed her knot bio. I am going to remove my link to her bio out of respect but don't want to lose them.

Monogram... ta-da!

2007-09-13T13:43:00.000-04:00

So here was the vision...

After much searching I found an icon. Then an online friend showed me how to restrict the image in a circle (thanks dani!) And off I went. This is the one we are going to see if we get made into an embosser. My fiance is not 100% about the font because his name looks like "Tezzy" and not "Terry". However it is the best font we could find so far thus it stays for now.
I also made one with our initials and the same heliconia icon.
These are two other ones we will use in print and on our cyber sources, first with the four friends. It cracks me up. I couldn't find a peacock/pheasant and am using a penguin. Ha!
And here it is with no silly icons in the bordering space.
We didn't want colorful monograms and went for the classic black and white. They can be printed on bright stationary or laid over bright colors.

Invites On My Mind

2007-09-13T09:01:00.000-04:00

We need to be thinking of invites pretty soon and of course I want to recycle some of our junk mail (a.k.a. credit card offers) and make the paper, use kind ink, and attach to migratory birds to drop off at their intended recipients. O.k. maybe not the last one, that is a little over the top. It would be best if we lived in the same town with everyone and just had the town cryer announce the wedding in the town square on market day, but that is going to happen in south Florida as surely as imaginary migratory birds traveling north for the winter with our invites strapped to them.

So I intend to make our invites but am looking at invite sources for inspiration and a plan B.

The greenest invites I can find are evites. However as one commenter has mentioned, I am "simply shallow." Therefore in admitting how shallow I am, I want paper products to go out in the mail to our guests. If you want to make life easy on yourself take one of my recommendations or go to the TreeHugger Guide to Green Weddings. I could have saved myself a lot of time if I went there in the first place, but this is the stuff I saw and liked in my process.

First off I love the "grow-a-note" stationary where wildflower seeds are embedded in the paper and invite recipients can plant the invitations when they are done with them. I think some of the more chic invites I have seen in this style come from Green Field Paper Company.

Another company doing grow-a-note paper I was introduced to thanks to a knottie friend is Twisted Limb Paperworks. They use recycled junk mail, use water from their humidifier and AC unit to make paper, send samples on recycled paper, send your order with shredded recycled paper, offset their business with Native Energy shares, and also have decent social responsible programs as well as being a co-op.

I was also introduced to Of the Earth where a knottie only bought the paper and made the grow-a-note invites herself. They do make invitations though.

Invite Site has come really cute designs and uses a lot of recycled materials.

Shindig has some very creative paper products and here is their policy statement:

Where ever possible, Shindig is committed to using
materials that are either recycled, recycleable or biodegradeable. Using papers that meet FSC standards, and working with printers that use soy or vegetable based inks.

There are a lot of vendors looking to get into the eco-friendly wedding market since this is tagged as a huge trend right now. Try to see if their values line up with yours as you decide if you want to support their business. And for goodness sake, look at the etsy store and other small outlets where the designer will customize an order for you.

Scouting Locations for Engagement Pictures

2007-09-09T21:54:00.001-04:00

We came across an extremely generous offer recently and are planning on taking engagement pictures next week. The photographers suggested a beach shoot and I bended their ears about an Everglades shoot. They are new to our city and have not had a chance to play in the Everglades yet so I offered to scout some locations today. We went at midday when the sun was high and it was hot out there. Hopping into the water was great, and of course as soon as we left the thunderstorms began. I hope the photogs agree to our location, if not they'll do an awesome beach shoot. I can't complain here.

I have to be careful when I hand my fiance my camera when I hop in the water.

He had never been to this area and was fascinated by everything!

Our main goal was to record easy access and dry locations for the photogs to shoot from.

There are all sorts of crazy things in the Everglades besides the hydrology, flora, and fauna.

This is what I'm planning to wear if we do the glades. A dress I found for under $10, my red wellies, and possibly my standard heels.

Non-denominational Marriage Preparation

2007-09-05T15:08:00.000-04:00

Almost as soon as a ring was slapped on my finger I was looking for marriage preparation for the two of us. We didn't have any dire need for counseling for fights or anything of that nature, relationship counselors handle that. We wanted straight up marriage preparation. A concentrated space facilitated to discuss our opinions about our upcoming marriage (e.g. finances, expectations of the other, child-rearing, spirituality).

My search took about four months. Four months! Apparently many couples go through their spiritual centers and churches. However, I am Buddhist and FI is Buddhist/Christian (I didn't realize the extent of the Christianity until our retreat BTW). In Buddhism marriages are like civil arrangements, we couldn't find a marriage prep source via the institution we are loosely affiliated with. The hunt for non-denominational preparation was on!

My big advice if you are looking for non-denominational marriage preparation is to think out of the box and start early. This is especially true if you live in a less than liberal community.

So here is a brief re-cap of where I looked because basic Google searching didn't cut it. We wanted comprehensive marriage preparation that didn't cost an arm and a leg.

First we tried locally:
1. I asked my university and they didn't offer services.
2. My university suggested the "switchboard" which is essentially a collection of resources within the county to assist its residents and of the three times I called I was told I could get help if there was a domestic abuse case involved and I needed help. WTF?
3. I contacted the health and psychology department heads and instructors for my university and a nearby university that teach curriculum about marriage preparation but never received responses.
4. I did find numbers to a therapists 10 miles away and 25 miles away that did not have marriage preparation programs but were willing to talk to the two of us for $150+/hour.
5. Of course in the state of Florida you get a discount on your marriage license if you attend marriage preparation so I naturally found a number of online courses where you basically pay for a certificate and print it out.
6. I also found a really cool organization south of us, En Familia, that works with the migrant agriculture community. They weren't offering any English programs anytime soon though.
7. I sent out e-mails and phone calls to the contacts listed in Miami-Dade county for preparation programs via their marriage license division on their website but I either did not get return communication or was told NO.

I went through national organizations and web-searched like a demon at any lead I could find. These aren't all the sources, but a number of them.
1. smart marriages
2. American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists
3. Prepare-Enrich by Life Innovations, Inc.
4. Equality in Marriage now defunct but still on the web for archival purposes
5. The National Registry of Marriage Friendly Therapists

The non-denominational prep we were considering the most were:
1. XY Outlook with Mimi Azoubel Daniel in Baltimore, you can do it via the phone now
2. Marriage Prep 101, weekend workshop in the California Bay Area **Lots of good links!
3. Marriage Success Training based in NYC, but they travel
4. a weekend B&B in Canada retreat
5. a backpacking retreat in Arizona

We also looked into DIY prep:
1. RELATE operated from BYU but it is not affiliated with any religion
2. The Conscious Brides Wedding Planner (great book, we actually did this 2 months before our retreat). The author Sheryl Paul also has a great website up with advice and message boards, consciousweddings.com

Eventually when I was beyond frustrated and had sent out all kinds of messages to people in the U. S. and Canada I got a response from the Diocesan Center for Family Life in St. Augustine. I was naturally wary considering that the Archdiocese in Miami was a bit rude to us about this matter. However after a series of e-mails and reassurances about how my fiance and I would be treated we registered for their Engaged Encounter weekend as a fully non-denominational couple. The priest I had spoken with said this was a good idea given our "unusual circumstances" as he noted. We paid our $280 and drove eight ours each direction to the sweet retreat center in late February earlier this year.

Catholic Engaged Encounter: www.engagedencounter.org

United Methodist Engaged Encounter: www.encounter.org

Episcopal Engaged Encounter: www.episcopalme.com/ee.htm

Lutheran Engaged Encounter: www.leeionline.org

Mennonite and Brethren Engaged Encounter: www.marriageencounter.org/ee.htm

We got what we wanted, a concentrated space for us to discuss ourselves and our roles in our upcoming marriage. I know many people scoff at the idea of marriage preparation for various reasons including, "we've lived together for a lot of years, we already know each other." However, I recommend marriage prep if for anything else just to check-in with one another. I see us doing relationship retreats every few years into our marriage. It can be a nice informative space. I'll go into what ours was like in another post at another time. For now you can see the questions we went over at the top of my knot bio.

reasons #548 and #549 why I'm lame

2007-09-03T12:35:00.000-04:00

#548... I didn't realize how old I turned yesterday. I think I may have been telling people I am a year older for a while now. My bad, how often do you really think of your age though??

#549... after I have been going on about cake for MONTHS I remembered something last night. I don't really like cake and frosting. I haven't had a piece of cake in about 2 years. My niece made a really cool cake when I visited family a couple of years ago. I only had a small sliver before heading for the airport on the way back home though because we were there to camp at some Utah elevation so never stuck around my sister's house. Before that I think my last cake was for my undergrad graduation when I ordered a poppyseed cake with raspberry whipped filling and buttercream frosting with flowers from Ramone's Bakery in Eureka, CA.

The cake I just made was actually pretty good. I modified the recipe to include 3/4 c. + 1/3 c. of agave nectar instead of sugar. I used 2/3 c. of buttermilk instead of 1 c. And I cooked the cake for the same amount of time in a 300 degree oven instead of 325.

The big issues came with the frosting. My poor fiance has never realized what frosting is made of. When I bought Crisco vegetable shortening he seriously grossed out. He looked at pre-packaged frosting and had no idea how fatty that stuff is. When I made the frosting last night I did the crisco and cream cheese then mixed with a bit of agave nectar. It was really gooey, it would never hold in the tropics! I added some 100% all fruit preserve for the filling and it was gross so I wiped it off the cake and instead put on some of the 100% raspberry preserve on its own. I made icing with Crisco, food coloring, almond flavoring, and agave nectar. It came out shocking pink and I packed it in a mendhi cone, but the stuff was either too thick or started to rapidly melt. I know I am have not practiced applying mendhi in a while, but this stuff was really hard to work with and my design came out craptastic once I gave up after applying a sorry peacock on the top of the cake.

Overall the frosting/icing/filling part of the cake was a fiasco. So if you don't like me then you are probably getting all sorts of satisfaction from this part of the post. If you do like me then I hope you find this also kind of funny.

I think I reacted like a little kid to the prospect of missing out on something, you want it more. My sugar cane allergy means I can't have a regular cake made so I have been obsessing over cake for months now. I honestly forgot that I don't like cake & frosting.

So where does this leave me? I don't know, cakes and frosting are pretty. I may be cool with a regular cake I can't eat. One that I'll still cut into with my fiance and then I'll eat some grilled pineapple or something. I may be stubborn and try to work out a frosting recipe that works better. I may go the croquembouche route. I don't know.

As far as last night the realization came when I had a slice of cake and immediately ate around the frosting leaving a carcass of sweet on my plate. I realized that has been my cake eating method for as long as I can remember because I have never liked frosting. Not even as a kid. And I also remembered that despite attending a number of weddings I have never had a slice of wedding cake, I have always passed.

The STARFISH Post

2007-09-02T00:19:00.001-04:00

It is my birthday and like I stated in the previous post, I get to be a sass-pot. Well not exactly, but why not take this opportunity to make the STARFISH post? I like starfish, they are in the echinoderm family and are fascinating to study because they are voracious predators. The Paine (1966) study of Pisaster in their natural ecosystem is a definitive ecology masterpiece because of the establishment of the keystone predator concept. When the starfish (Pisaster) were removed from their ecosystem their predators and prey went wacky leading the ecosystem to a serious point of instability. When I teach Marine Biology labs I tell students that these guys are the "mean" ones in the ocean if we were to anthropomorphize them. I tell them this and then I pull them from the sand in their tanks and let the students hold them usually to a chorus of "ooohs" and "ahhhhs".

Starfish have been a major ecology example to me for a while and that is the realm I usually associate them in. That was until I started planning this wedding. I am on theknot.com quite a bit and am utterly perplexed by the amount of women who use them in their beach wedding decor. There is a common thread post asking how to get rid of that stinky fish smell their starfish have from when they were delivered. The posts rarely asks why they stink because folks don't care, they don't need to know that. When I first began knotting I would answer why they smelled (basically decomposing tissue being fed on by bacteria) to "ease" people's minds and then suggest they air them out. It seemed like my words fell on deaf ears because I rarely received comments. I actually found and do find the use of starfish in wedding planning to be really disgusting.

People will use whole dried starfish on invites, place settings, and even cake toppers... yucky, yucky, yucky. A whole dried starfish is essentially similar to a mummified human or other organism. I live in south Florida and occasionally geckos and anoles get into the house but don't make it out. When we clean we'll find a lizard corpse and that is what a starfish is like. I however am not going to put a decaying lizard on my wedding cake. I would do a vampire bat skull because they are super cool, but I only feel that way because of my zoology background.

One of my other issues with the use of starfish is wondering how they are harvested. I imagine tanks of critters being raised so that they can die and be bagged because they come pretty cheap via a number of decor companies. When I order organisms to study and dissect in labs they are available via scientific suppliers and you better believe I give students a speech about taking the dissection seriously or needing to leave the class because organisms were sacrificed for their education. However weddings... a completely different animal. I don't think that people are bad for using starfish. I just figure that they don't want to think of starfish decorations as once being living organisms that are decomposing through their wedding process. I have said it before, the sanest bride can throw her sanity out the window when preparing for a wedding. I am no different, I am doing things that are beyond what the simplest of weddings dictate.

I actually like starfish images like these made of candy and sugar. Just not the kind made of 100% real starfish tissue.

So this is my post today. I guess my birthday wedding-related wish. I would like folks to at least think about the origins of their wedding decor before purchasing them. My fiance also knots and he has stated similar views to mine and has been attacked by women going off about how he is mean and only there to try to make people feel bad. It seems that this is not a subject you bring up to a web forum of brides-to-be, sort of like how you don't bring up the subject of being fat to a pregnant woman. I don't claim to be a saint with my wedding planning either. If you are talking about using animal-based resources we are serving ceviche, jerk chicken, cake and ice cream at our reception. I think that can be as disgusting as putting a starfish on your wedding cake to a vegan.

Mmmm, the thrill of the birthday cake

2007-08-31T22:16:00.000-04:00

My birthday is this weekend and I am looking forward to a few things:

1. Playing with my presents from my fiance
2. Taking advantage of "my day" and being a sass-pot
3. Giving myself a present I have been looking forward to
4. Cake, cake, cake, and cake :)

I usually don't do birthday cake but this year is different. I need all the excuses I can get to practice on a wedding cake layer.

The cake issue is funny/sad if you know me. Almost two years ago I was diagnosed with a sugar cane allergy. That means sugar and sugar cane products. This allergy really sucks! I have to be careful of what I eat when I don't make food myself and I don't get to eat a lot of sweets. I think the idea of not having a wedding cake is one of the saddest prospects that came in my head after I became engaged. I have been going over various plans on how to deal with this while being down in Costa Rica for the wedding. Ideally I want a "normal" wedding cake. I think I am going to go for it and try to make a cake layer myself that I can eat. So this weekend will be my first trial and I am starting off high-end.

White velvet cake with a raspberry whipped cream filling and lemon filling.

Wish me luck.

Here is the recipe I am going to try to adapt with agave nectar and/or crystalline fructose.

White Velvet Cake

1 1/2 cups butter, softened

1 1/2 cups white sugar

2 eggs

1 cup buttermilk

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter flavored shortening

1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese

4 cups sifted confectioners' sugar

1 tablespoon milk

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease and flour 2 round 8 inch pans. Sift the flour and salt together and set aside.
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and mix well. *Dissolve baking soda in buttermilk. Alternately add flour and buttermilk, beginning and ending with the flour. Pour into two 8-inch pans.
Bake at 325 degrees F (165 degrees C) for about 30 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into cake comes out clean. Cool cake completely before icing.
To make the White Velvet Cream Cheese Icing: Beat shortening and cream cheese together. Gradually beat in confectioners sugar. Add milk until a frosting is formed. (Add more milk if necessary.)

I found it on the lovetoknow website.

planning with my guy

2007-08-30T08:07:00.000-04:00

I have had a great time planning this wedding with my guy. From what I hear I have the good fortune to have a guy that enjoys the planning process. Last night I took him out to dinner which is rare because I like to cook and he usually takes me out on the nights he provides nourishment. We went to a little Italian spot near us and he suggested we work on our monogram there. So with some wine and an appetizer this is the silliness we tossed together.

I didn't include the red ink notes of what we want to incorporate into the final design but we have a clear "vision" now.

Unfortunately the rhino beetle monogram didn't make the cut.

We also like the stacked invite idea with the four friends.

I hope your planning sessions are as fun as ours. If not, consider softening him up with some food & wine in his belly. We seem to get a lot of details out of the way over meals.

When Politics and Weddings Collide

2007-08-29T14:56:00.000-04:00

I am not trained in political science. However I am pretty well-informed about our political system for an American. In my geeky joking around I even started an Knotties for Obama group on Barack Obama's website. I thought me and my fiance would be the only members signed up. Wow, I just looked and apparently there are a couple of other people too. I suppose that I should actually do something with that since it is more than just me and my guy.

We saw Obama speak last year and bought a signed copy of "Audacity of Hope" before he announced his candidacy.

I think the intersection of weddings and politics is odd because the popular narcissistic tasks of planning a wedding do not seem to coincide with what should be the thoughtful process of picking our next President. I suppose that would be true in more ordinary election cycles but given the state of things, the 2008 election is a popular topic right now. Our current president's approval ratings are so low that it seems like most people that would not even be thinking about the election at least raise their heads when this one is mentioned. Also there may be a chance for the first White House wedding since 1971... so there is all kinds of wedding and politics chatter everywhere since one of the Bush twins became engaged.

I would love to be so optimistic to think that every person involved in wedding planning were more interested in pragmatism and the political landscape that they would be starting their married life in. PUH-LEEZE, that is not going to happen. However I am all for getting people involved in the political process by any means necessary (personally I think free t-shirts at the election polls would be the way to go... people will give up their first born for free t-shirts). So this brings me to... bridesdecide.com

I first saw this as an advertisement on my community profile page on the knot. I laughed pretty hysterically because I thought it seemed pretty darn absurd. However I need to stop being so jaded. The knot.com is partnered with affiliates to present views of the candidates, candidate wedding stories, and summaries of the issues. The knot has gone so far as to make a message board devoted to the 2008 election which I don't frequent because I do my political discussions in other non-wedding related forums.

I haven't fully delved into this bridesdecide.com website but I should commend them. Any medium that offers information for potential voters to register as well as ways for them to get informed about the election process is all right by me. I don't see why they have descriptions of the candidates weddings there, but I guess they still need to be a "wedding" site somehow (wanna see Huckabee's wedding story???).

Wow, Hillary and Bill only had 15 guests at their wedding. I feel much more informed now.

Like I said, I usually do my political speak in other non-wedding related forums. Some things you should know about me are that I am not a Democrat or a Republican. I don't want to send an "invitation" to get a proclamation of our wedding by DUB (I want to sneak one in to whoever the next President is). I don't know who I will vote for in over year. And I fully support instant run-off voting as a means to ensure less divisive campaigns that are more beneficial to the voting community.

So not a techno-geek

2007-08-23T21:44:00.001-04:00

I've been playing with photoshop the past couple of days. Here are the fruits of a little labor...

I developed a stamp to watermark the pictures in my knot bio. (I also learned how to mat a frame.)

I have also been thinking about our wedding monogram. A kind knottie let me play with her monogram for the practice (thanks Amanda).

I can also do the arching path text from the pen tool and shape template.

This is all very rudimentary for some people, I'm not one of them. It is fun though. I'm messing around with anything "graphic" by goofing off and using various online sources. I am being more diligent with "the photoshop CS2 book for digital photographers" by Scott Kelby though. It is a very easy book to use.

Ring Frustration

2007-08-23T09:02:00.000-04:00

The rings for our wedding are a huge deal for me. Actually his ring is. I have a ring already and would be fine without a band (it would be a nice luxury but is not a necessity) but he doesn't even have a wedding symbol yet. The ring and officiant/lawyer are my top wedding priorities. Everything else is part of a big party to me. Unfortunately I am having some ring frustrations these days and am thinking of my plan B, plan C, etc.

I am buying my fiance's ring and he is buying my ring. We obtained some diamond chips from one of my grandmother's rings and my father even donated a couple from some work pins he said he will never wear. For my fiance's ring I want to do a plain 5 mm wide platinum comfort fit band with a single diamond inserted flush on the inside with an engraving. It is a custom order and I have been having a hard time communicating with the jeweler I thought I was going to go with. I think they may be really busy if they are really popular now. I sent an e-mail in June, one in early August, and even called. Those three attempts resulted in no responses. I found two other jewelers that are also considered eco-friendly, but their prices are higher than what I had budgeted for. The original jeweler even raised their prices recently but I am fine with that.

Question #1 is WHY PLATINUM? You need to go back to the story of my engagement ring. I never wanted an expensive ring. I didn't want diamonds (blood diamonds), I didn't want an expensive metal (the more expensive it is, the more waste that is usually created to mine the ore). However my fiance navigated those obstacles and bought me a ring from an estate sale. It is dated to the 1920's and is considered eco-friendly since it not the result of any new resource extraction because it already exists, it existed before I was born. Since my engagement ring is platinum I need a platinum wedding band. If the wedding band was made of a weaker metal it would get damaged when I would wear it with my stronger engagement ring.

We had planned on getting him a platinum wedding band because we ideally would like matching bands. It is also a nice luxury that I think he would enjoy. However I would prefer to go through an eco-friendly jeweler that recycles platinum that has already been mined. Apparently to get one ounce of platinum 10 TONS of ore need to be mined. That is not good. When this stuff is removed from the earth it is washed and the run-off is not healthy to ecosystems and neither is the sudden near 10 TONS of matter that is now left on the earth's surface.

This is what getting my ring has done to the earth. Now just think that in 1992 alone 8.3 million ounces of platinum was harvested (source). Current mining practices are exponentially more destructive than mining from the the beginning of the 20th century. There is not only this environmental cost, think of what conditions must be like for workers in that mine... there is a human cost as well. I don't want to pay to contribute to these type of mining practices.

So here here is the plan B at this point. I'll do what he did and find a ring already made. A friend that deals with vintage jewelry suggested pawn shops. All I can think of is a sad circumstance that may have landed that ring in the pawn shop (think of the movie "The Crow"). I am consistently checking eBay. I need to go back to the jeweler that he bought my engagement ring from and ask them to keep an eye out for me. Then I'll need to find jeweler to flush mount the diamond and engrave it.

Here is the plan C. Get some platinum and have the ring casted. I'm not holding my breath but I found a not so ideal ring on eBay that I am considering buying if I can get it for a good price. I need to find someone who will make the ring though. Apparently melting and casting with platinum is more complicated than doing it with gold. Anyone know anybody that does this?

Question #2... WHY PUT YOURSELF THROUGH ALL THIS TROUBLE? This goes back to the ring being important to me. The ring is only a symbol but I want that symbol to be as earth-friendly as possible since that is one of the principles we share and are building our marriage on. We have been pretty good about expressing intention with this wedding, thus marriage. I want that intention definitely expressed in the marriage symbol my soon-to-be husband will be wearing.

Eco-Friendly Printing Alternatives

2007-08-22T04:20:00.000-04:00

During our wedding process we have tried to keep our paper and printing usage to a minimum. I am an advocate of using paper as a communication medium, but just think we should do it efficiently and in an eco-friendly manner if you can... for all aspects of our lives. For us this has included using recycled paper products for our save-the-dates with ink and pen writing (the magnet wasn't so kind I admit), sending out a double-sided tri-fold brochure that also acted as an envelope for our newsletter update, and planning to recycle the paper for the invite and potentially using silkscreen for the type. There are far better craftier people that are experts in material usage and how to maximize design for efficiency out there and I found one great resource through treehugger recently.

Monadnock Paper Mills has released a Field Guide for Eco-Friendly, Effective and Efficient Print that is available as a .pdf from their website. The 38-page book is also available in print. It is a cool little guide with sections on paper, production, inks, printing, finishing, packaging and reference information. Here is a small excerpt:

The purpose of this guide is to offer information in support of sustainable design and print. The message is threefold: Eco-friendly design can be cost-efficient, environmentally sensitive and beautiful. This guide gives graphic professionals the opportunity to think about design differently.

The purpose is aimed for professionals but the text of the book will not be over anyone's heads. I have seen some truly atrocious paper projects that people have sent out for their weddings during my own planning process. Looking at the final product I have thought in my head, "why didn't you just send an e-vite and not waste all that paper?" I admit a lot of my bias is based on the lack of optimal design (efficiency).

I think this book can serve as a good guide for brides that don't want to go as extreme as my save-the-dates (minus the magnet ;)) but still send out a nice presentation. Since I am by no means an expert in all things print I have learned a little bit about printing alternatives already by simply glancing though this guide once. For example alternatives to petroleum based inks include a suite of agri-inks besides soy ink and there is even a recycled ink option. The packaging section has tips for minimizing your material use and designing a presentation that can save you money in the long run.

Take a look at this guide. It is free and you can download it. Oh yeah, their graphics are pretty as well.

187 quest

2007-08-21T09:55:00.001-04:00

187 is the term used to refer to mini servings of wines because they are packaged in 187 mL containers. The wine market is starting to proliferate with them now as younger consumers are surging into this frontier and want more than pre-packaged Coca Cola drinks or wine coolers for outings (See Conde Nast Portfolio article).

As a bride-to-be I like the idea of the bridal party sipping on 187s. Each lady has her own. No one can go overboard and get drunk (like can sometimes happen with larger bottles). And they are CUTE! For me I'll only need two since my BMs are underage. There seems to be one 187 that proliferates knottie bios... Sofia Blanc de Blancs sparkling. I have heard some not so great things about how it tastes even though it looks so adorable. Luckily I found a single can this weekend (for $3.99) to try it out.

The packaging is adorable. Small pink can, sippy straw attached to the side, hip words stamped all over the can, named after uber-cool Sofia Coppola. How could a lady resist?

This is the big attraction here. The sippy straw that comes with every can. As a lady getting ready for a wedding or a friend's wedding you can't dare ruin your make-up.

Unfortunately it does not taste very good. This isn't a girl vs. boy difference. I made the same face.

I even let the can breathe, still yuck. I even mixed with orange juice. No dice. Consider this a PSA for you to at least test this stuff before you buy it for your wedding day preparation time.

There are so many other options to test as well.

Nicolas Feuillatte makes a 187 in regular and rose with an attached wristlet so you don't lose it. (About $12)

Piper-Heidsieck Brut has even won some editor choice awards from various publications. (About $8)

Gotta love the Korbel Brut. I'm a California girl and grew up with the Korbel sparkling wine. It also retails for about $3.50 per bottle putting it just under the Sofia price and tasting much better. Currently my 2nd choice.

My first choice darling right now is the original Pommery POP champagne. This company started the mini trend and pissed off a lot of people in the process for sullying the name of good champagne with what was thought to be a cheap gimmick. It is a tasty morsel though. Besides the original they also have a rose out in an adorable pink packaging and they are introducing a vintage GOLD mini line this fall.

It isn't necessarily the cheapest champagne though (and by no means expensive either). FI and I bought a mini-bottle for New Year's this past year. We didn't want to drink all night and let a big bottle go to waste so we shelled out for a $12 mini bottle and had a good time. I think I may stick with this stuff for me and my MOH as we get ready for the wedding unless my loyalty to California's Korbel kicks back in.

A year ago...

2007-08-19T13:09:00.000-04:00

My pwesh ring

...today I woke up engaged to the man next to me in our tent. He proposed a year ago last night. We were camping at Bahia Honda State Park in the Florida Keys. I had just taken my qualifying written exam for grad school and was preparing for my orals in a few days. I was really stressed and decided to take two days to forget the world or else I would give myself an ulcer.

The campsite

That friday night we went to the Winn-Dixie supermarket in Big Pine Key and bought a steak, some zucchini, and lettuce. We went back to our site and I grilled the steak and zucchini and made a big salad out of it. We topped it off with whiskey and cokes with lime.

I was pretty exhausted from a week of exams already and not understanding if my boyfriend at the time was acting normal or if I was just agitated at everything. I went to wash dishes and he hounded me up to the faucet. I mean he was REALLY annoying. Dishes were washed and he wouldn't let up. We eventually settled in for the evening with our chairs poised towards the surf and I started stargazing. He was rummaging around in the back of the car forever . I was fed up with his nervous actions by this point and had some strong drinks made by our chairs. I was hoping he would get really drunk and chill out. He was so bad I had considered drugging him so he could go to sleep.

Imagine how bad I felt about my "scheming" plans when he finally stopped rummaging at the back of my car and walked up to me. I don't remember what he said, I was kind of trying to ignore him at that point. Well he popped the question. One knee in the sand. I said "oh my god" like a million times and finally said yes. It was pretty dark where we were so he gave me a flashlight to inspect the ring. Puh-leeze, I didn't care.

Yep, that's a newly engaged woman there

I was shocked I was given a diamond though. I told him on one of our first dates I didn't want a diamond (blood diamond AND mining waste issues) but he found one from an estate sale that dates back to the 1920s. So he bought it. It fit really snug that night because we ate some potato chips on the way down to our site and my sodium intake was high coupled with me starting my period. I was retaining a lot of water and I thought the ring looked like a tight band around a plump sausage on my finger. LOL! I told him never to propose to a woman just starting her period again.

Me at lunch in Key West the next day... less salt, etc.

So we kissed. He stopped being weird. And we were totally twitterpatted the rest of the weekend.

Amazing lightning storm later that night

The Wedding Scent

2007-08-18T23:28:00.000-04:00

I have pretty much dismissed the idea of searching for a wedding scent. When I wear a scent besides my deodorant it is usually a solid Green Tea perfume from L'Occitaine. That is about it. I have not thought about hunting for a scent because I have had no idea on where to start. In case you haven't noticed, the market is pretty saturated with scented products.

However strange things took control of me today while I was in every girl's playground, Sephora. I took an old gift card in today to buy false eyelashes and some more Dior Show mascara. Both are for the wedding and I figured I would get the individual eyelashes to practice with before the wedding. I also wanted to use the gift card since I have had it for a very long time and didn't want to lose it permanently.

While there the wall of stink called to me. Most of the scents either smelled like someone rubbed a new edition of Tiger Beat magazine across their bare skin or an old lady using a cacophony of household remedies to mask medication scents coming out of her pores. After a few minutes my fiance and I had to go to the front counter on a hunt for coffee beans to clear up our ol'factory senses and there we met a very friendly associate. He asked if we needed any help and we eagerly pulled him from the register counter.

We went over a profile of what scents I like and how strong I like them. He started going off with suggestions and spraying little sample sticks for us. I was amazed at how he spoke about this stuff and the complexities. His first choice of the Un Jardin En Mediterranee for Women by Hermes was pretty good.
After a period of time he realized we weren't digging a lot of the scents and he recommended the Fresh line. As he said it they have one or two notes and that is it. He started with the Cannabis Santal and of course we laughed while telling 420 jokes. But guess what? It smelled pretty darn good. We went through the rest of the line and the Cannabis ended up being the best. The three scents in it are patchouli, cannabis, and rose.

The associate then asked if we wanted samples to test the scent. He thought the idea that a unisex scent could be a bride and groom wedding perfume was really nice. It would react differently with our body chemistry so we decided to give it a go. He gave each of us generous sample atomizers and sent us on our way. He also gave me an atomizer of the Hermes scent.

Honestly though, my fiance and I hardly wear anything to cover up our natural scents so I don't know how much of this we will use before the wedding. The samples could end up being our wedding scents. Tonight though, I do have to admit that I have liked smelling the nape of his neck. Meow!!

So we'll see where this wedding scent journey takes us. I have no idea how kind the Fresh company is. I at least know that Dior doesn't animal test. I can also see myself saving a load of money and getting something at Wild Oats for under $20 like a bottle of Demeter's Gin & Tonic or their Cannabis Flower.

Tropical Time

2007-08-15T22:56:00.000-04:00

Tropical time is not the same as continental U. S. time (with the exception of Miami and other tropical lifestyle outposts). I parallel the difference to an anomaly of physics breaching laws of relativity. It is definitely not that people are lazy elsewhere, but people have a different value system that includes how they spend their time.

As someone from the U. S. planning a wedding in a tropical location this breach of physics, thus time can be confounding. I am not the only bride-to-be that is not able to get a hold of their planner when I want or in my latest case a lodging vendor. I called the small cabinas more than a dozen times today via Skype. Either the phone was busy or no one picked up. The location is amazing but hard to get a hold of. No website. No publicly listed phone number. No e-mail. When I had to speak to them in 2005 I spent two weeks of trying until someone answered the phone. They apologized for the delay and said they were fishing. No biggie, it is part of the way of life.

In Costa Rica there is a resonating phrase that always comes up, "pura vida." That translates to pure life. Visit down there and see how people value their time and each other other and it is generally more laid-back and joyful than the rat race we have accustomed ourselves to in the U. S. As a bride it can be nerve-wracking when you want to get things done on your schedule, but it is also reassuring to be forced to chill out when the world is out of your control. I think this forced relaxation is one of the reasons us tropical brides have chosen our locations.

This image is by Rafael Salcedo. He let us use one of his images for our save-the-date magnet.

I hope to reach these cabinas people in the next month. That is why I am starting now. The next challenge is how to speak to them. Will they answer the phone in conventional English, Caribbean English, or Spanish? That is also part of the fun, like a diversity lottery. Pura Vida.

Wedding Dash (it's a video game)

2007-08-12T12:17:00.001-04:00

I am not a gamer but had to post about this. PlayFirst has taken their popular game Diner Dash and converted it to Wedding Dash. As a player you are a wedding planner that works with a couple to pull off a dream wedding. I am sure hilarity ensues with loads of obstacles. The obstacles I read about include tipsy guests, a falling cake, and catty bridesmaids. Meow, this is like real life!

I think this could be great. Besides being something for regular gamers I suspect that it could also be a powerful tool for new brides that are going through planning withdrawl and don't want to open a planning side business.

Click here to read the PC World article.

Click here to read the USA Today review.

LEGO+Wedding=Happy Marriage?

2007-08-10T19:58:00.000-04:00

Who doesn't have a significant other that LOVES LEGO? Who doesn't love LEGO themselves? I feel inspired to write this entry based on the Lego Man that washed up on the beach in Holland recently (NY Times story link).

It seems like weddings and LEGO go hand in hand. My fiance proposed to me on 18 August 2006 and I immediately wrote to LEGO for them to send us a complimentary cake topper and letter of congratulations. We received both items that October to my fiance's surprise, he had no idea they gave kits like this away. It was the best gift I could have given him. It currently has Batman and Star Wars accessories on it too. I am staring at it as I write this (he keeps it on his computer desk) and I am wearing the dress, a Batman cape, holding a gun, holding my chalis, and a chain connected around his neck.

The original kit.

This is what he did after someone gave him a Batman Secret Santa gift from work.

When we attended his sister's wedding this past May the groom's cake had a bunch of Star Wars LEGO characters hanging out on it.

I have seen a lot of women on the knot display some sort of LEGO love in their bios as well as flickr members. I get knot requests for help in asking for the set from the company and finally linked it in my bio so I wouldn't have to respond. Flickr people are really creative and if you search "lego and wedding" you'll get back about 230 pictures with whole wedding scenes laid out for wedding stationary with ready-made figurines, whole scenes laid out with homemade brick figurines, a great same sex ceremony, wedding swans, LEGO placecards, LEGO centerpieces where guests were given a bucket and told to play, and a number of LEGO inspired wedding graphics. It is great.

I know of something LEGO I haven't seen in a wedding YET. A LEGO wedding ring. If my fiance was into the silver, and not platinum for his ring I would get him a Brickwall Ring. I saw these at Giant Robot this year. .925 silver and each one comes with 4-6 different color attachable bricks that snap on over the silver. Sizes 8.5 to 11.5.

I know people are willing to take their LEGO love this far and am waiting to see it in pictures. It is only a matter of time. Giant Robot just started selling these this year. $75 for the 2x1 and $80 for the 2x2.

By the way. The bunnygroom has now hinted that this would make a great wedding gift. We'll see what he gets.

Too add a bit more LEGO glamour I was recently alerted to the LEGO fonts on dafont.com. Yes, the x-key is a bit risque and the j-key has a man being placed in cuffs. :)

This is Lego System:

Who has it easier?

2007-08-10T13:31:00.000-04:00

The bride or the groom? Who do you think has it easier when it comes to shopping for wedding attire? In our case it is definitely the bride. I found a dress on ebay, paid $36 bucks for it and that was that. We decided on a destination wedding and I bought a different dress for $64, then sold the $36 one.

FI bought a jacket last year at a post-Thanksgiving sale but can't find pants to go with it. He really likes it and wants to start to wear it with jeans on casual Fridays and when we go out. We have been to a huge mall (two weekends ago), a vintage store (last weekend), and this week two different department stores.

The funny part is that when brides try on gowns they don't always make the best faces... neither do grooms. It doesn't help that on the second department store day I majorly messed with his hair so that his "fro" is all over the place.

Here are the latest shopping adventures of the bunnygroom:

This is a Cubavera herringbone suit. It is a bit large in the chest. FI says it hangs funny as if it is equipped for "moobs" and the interior construction is a bit relaxed.

This is a Nautica blazer. It is a bit big on him and he looks really squirrely from the side. The material was a lot heavier too. His face in this pic resembles his "mugshot" like pic on his passport.

A funny thing happened at Macy's in The Falls shopping center. We met an awesome guy working there named Victor who helped us out a lot. He steered us towards lightweight fabric, decent construction, and something made for my lanky fiance. The INC line.

He also tried on a Perry Ellis jacket. The interior construction is great, but not what he wants.

Victor recommended the gray INC jacket with tan pants. He says he thinks this could work with my champagne dress IF we find the right shirt to pull it all together.

One question that keeps popping up in our shopping is how does the suit look from the back. This jacket works well on his shoulders and torso, but quite truthfully what is a man's caboose supposed to look like in a suit? What is good? I generally think it is hidden if the suit fits right. I like the way this one gently hoods his behind like an awning.

So this is where we are at this point... my fiance has no idea what to wear. Victor at Macy's was a big help. So far I think the grey and tan is the front runner but that was last night. My guy is so fickle that I don't think that idea will last too long. This suit could be fun with a pair of Cons, clamshells, sandals, or barefoot. However, if he wants a linen suit he needs to find one that fits well. Next up we'll be hitting the little boutiques that line South Beach... apparently you can find great deals in the no-name ones.

I know I have had it much easier finding my wedding attire than him. I had a lot of options and I did not have to pay a lot of money to find something I like that fits well. With alterations I think my dress will be less than his suit. Even if I went into a bridal salon and tried on 2o dresses I would have had it easier. I really wish that this process was a cake walk for him like it has been for me.

I'll keep you posted on the suit adventures.

the written word I

2007-08-07T23:33:00.000-04:00

We are not making this easy on ourselves... we are choosing to write a lot of this wedding.
The ceremony is SLOWLY coming along:

Welcome by officiant

ee cummings reading (by selected guest)

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)
i am never without it (anywhere i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet)
i want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Christian Reading (by selected guest)

Buddhist Reading (by selected guest)

We like the Hands Blessing and may alter it for our vow recital and possibly a handfast.

Jumping of the Broom by officiant

Our couple will now jump the broom, a ritual with convergent roots in Mother Africa and Celtic Europe. As the bride and groom jump the broom, they physically and spiritually cross the threshold into the land of matrimony. Traditionally, jumping the broom was also a means of sweeping away any evil that may come into their paths. Therefore, in honoring this ritual, Kia and Terry issue a hope and a prayer of sweeping away any hatred or prejudice between people of different colors, beliefs, or traditions.

Pronouncement of man and wife by officiant

Kissy Time by us

FOR INVITES (adapted from pg. 51 of Organic Weddings by M. Kozin):

some quote we like....?

please join us to celebrate the marriage of

kia x. xxxxxx
daughter of braulio, carolyn, and deaune

&

terry x. xxxxxx
son of dennis, nancy, and ronald

sunday, the twentieth of january, two thousand eight
at twenty past four in the afternoon
playa punta uva

pura vida y comida to follow

We will fill in the blank spots as we go on. Indiebride.com has a great page on vows, readings, and all things ceremony. We have a google notebook that both of us collaborate on and we place various words into our ceremony section with bits of religious/spiritual texts, poetry, prose, and song lyrics for now. It will come together. The vow is the tricky one. We both almost cried at the Hands Blessing when it was being read at our marriage retreat weekend and think it is almost appropriate. Thus the thing that most people make the most personal we may use some standard words cut and pasted. If it works, then it works. This process has been academic and fun delving into our spirituality and the words that represent us.

$10,000 mink/diamond false eyelashes?!!

2007-08-07T13:36:00.000-04:00

This is what 10K can buy you at Nieman Marcus. One set will be available at seven different stores. Gina Brooke designed the first set for Madonna. So if you want to be like the material girl you can get these or try to adopt your own Malawian child.

I wonder if we are going see these at any celebrity weddings in the near future? I really hope these don't become a trend. I plan to wear fake lashes for the wedding, but this is just too much.

The rings

2007-08-07T08:39:00.001-04:00

It is about time to order the rings. This is the purchase I am most excited about. Well this and paying the lawyer to handle the paperwork in Costa Rica. These are the two expenses that really make the wedding a wedding for me. Everything else is just a whimsical luxury. Purchasing the ring has been delayed by my sister. She apparently came into possession of my grandmother's jewelry when she passed away. My sister removed diamonds from a couple of rings and recycled the gold. I am currently awaiting the diamond chips that my sister mailed to us.

My engagement ring...
Vintage 1920's 1/4 carat in platinum with filagree that goes all the way around the band.

My sister offered to make our rings but there is a problem. My fiance gave me a vintage platinum ring. So I need platinum if I want to wear my band and ring together. We also want matching bands. So that means we both want platinum bands. Platinum is very expensive and we all looked around for platinum so that my sister could make them, but it is not possible. This is where GreenKarat comes in or another jeweler that will recycle materials.

This is the band we both love... Celestial Love (the name is funny but the band is perfect)

I gotta say the blogosphere is making my life easier. I did not know about Leber Jeweler until I looked the Wedlog the other day. I wrote to them to ask about their platinum prices, I'm waiting for a quote.

I want to add one of my grandmother's diamond chips flush on the inside of his ring. Like what Miss Gummi Bear did for her fiance's ring. She posted her ring experience on weddingbee.
His ring is from Niwaka and has a cool twist in it. I showed Miss Gummi Bear's post to my fiance and he thought the ring was really cool but he is resolute in wanting matching bands.

As for the engraving for my fiance's ring... I am stuck on two ideas.

1. "me to my love" ... an engraving on the ring of part a deceased celebrity couple we admire
2. "life is such a comedy" ... a quote from our favorite movie (Monsoon Wedding)

Forget the dress, the cake, and the stationary. This is the tangible detail that makes me all sorts of wedding giddy with a butterfly fluttery tummy. ::squeal::

I am loving this gift idea

2007-08-06T17:08:00.000-04:00

Lately we have been making the vintage store rounds. I am one of those people who have usually equated vintage to mean pretty expensive thrift store because I grew up with some really great thrift stores around Los Angeles. I have come to appreciate the quality of vintage stores in south Florida though. The pulled selection is sweet in good stores.

We would love to find a men's consignment shop to hunt for FIs suit for the wedding. In that vein we went to Vintage-A-Go-Go this weekend. The men's selection was great... almost 40% of the store. The prices were actually pretty decent as well. FI didn't buy anything but he did look pretty thoroughly at their selection of guayaberas.

I found the most darling little apron with a 3 1/2" ribbon tie waist and 4" hem. I wanted it but couldn't justify it since I have a reliable apron at home already. I think this is an easy project to make for a bride-to-be in her wedding colors with some fabulous fabric. Gift this and some of the kitchen stuff from her registry and she'll be set.

Paper Products

2007-08-05T00:04:00.001-04:00

Finding post-consumer waste paper has been a real hassle in our community. I definitely had more ease out west and my fiance even pointed out that it was easier in northern Indiana. We haven't printed a lot of stuff for this wedding, but dang yo. It could be an easier process. We have some paper swiped from a place of employment (tee hee) that I printed bridesmaid newsletters on. However I decided to print the 5-month newsletters for our guests. Yesterday I was at Office Max trying to find paper and the only recycled paper was pink, purple, and yellow. Yuck! Today we went to Staples and could not find any non-bleached, recycled paper.

Finally we went to Kinko's/Fed Ex and I went to the self-service carousel and the ivory paper had all kinds of small specks on it. I asked the workers there if it was post-consumer waste and you would have sworn I was speaking "martian." I figure the paper has some recycled properties because of the "specks" and started printing.

We did the newsletters in grayscale for this job in Adobe Illustrator. The bridesmaid newsletter was made in color on our home computer via PowerPoint.

I sent this to the bridal party with the thank you notes and purses last month.

The 5-month guest newsletter is a tri-fold brochure that is sealed with tape to keep it closed en route to addressee. These will be out in the mail on Monday or tomorrow.

South Florida shout out

2007-08-04T23:46:00.000-04:00

I bitch about this place a lot due to the high property rates, high insurance rates, high rates of traffic violations, etc. However it is a sub-tropical climate with a population that originates greatly from all over the tropics. I love this diversity and we can see it all over the place, even our conventional super market... Publix.

As if you couldn't tell I love food. I am a member of Slow Food and love to visit our local Fruit and Spice Park. When my fiance and I go to the super market most of our purchases are produce instead of processed food. Right now we have few produce options because our CSA (community supported agriculture) membership is on hiatus until the weather cools down and the local farms can produce again.

So here is a brief tour of some of the cool stuff you can find in our big-chain supermarket. Yay for living in south Florida at times like this...

Here is the exotic fruit aisle

carombola (starfruit) on the left and dragonfruit on the right My fiance made a killer pizza a while back with carombola instead of pineapple

kiwano and some sort of pome/apple fruit

kiwi and something that resembles a lychee varietal. We have a winery nearby (Schnebly Winery) that specializes in tropical fruit wines... and their lychee wine is a top seller.

tiny bananas in big hand (too cute) with papaya in background

None of this beats the jakfruit we bought two weekends ago that was grown at the organic farm we buy a lot of stuff from. Mmmmm, this in smoothies is so delish. Imagine juicyfruit gum, just really juicy! We bought 4 pounds of the 24-pound monster that was harvested.

lack of official stationary... no big deal

2007-07-31T14:33:00.000-04:00

People have done some nice things for me since our engagement. We have not yet made a monogram, thus no metal embosser, and thus no official stationary. Today I took matters into my impatient hands to send out some Thank You notes even though nothing is on "official" stationary. I don't even know if we will have uniform official stationary. So far I have been trying to use stuff we already have for this wedding so this is no different.

I pulled out my dwindling collection of recycled paper products:

Pulled out a fun tropical stamp I have not had the chance to use yet:

And went to town with a note:

And the envelope:

I am glad I can send these off with the rest of our mail. Remembering how to say "thank you" and "please" are lessons I hope I never forget.

Nice Day for a Green Wedding

2007-07-29T22:48:00.000-04:00

20 July article that appeared in seattlepi.com about a wedding for one of the workers of grist's online magazine. Nice green wedding, words from "Eco-friendly Weddings" author, how green is green, to go organic/local/organic & local, and a resource guide.

Good food for thought about showcasing your values, figuring out your values, and some resources if you need a bit of help.

7 hours in a mall, whoa!

2007-07-28T22:25:00.000-04:00

Sa wgrass Mills Mall, "Florida's largest retail and entertainment center" according to their website. I was there from 12 PM - 7 PM with my fiance today. That is an awful lot of mall time for either of us. We aren't big on shopping at these places, but when we do we try to do it right. Have the strategy of the stores we want to go to and the path we will take. Perhaps look online to see if there are sales and coupons. This place has a lot of outlet stores and you can find some great deals. I have purchased some of Christy Turlington's Nuala line from the Puma store for a serious fraction of their retail prices and those are the kinds of deals we were after today, but for him, not me.

Today's goal... find the rest of his wedding day attire. He has a jacket he bought at a Thanksgiving sale last year, but no pants, shirt, or shoes and he doesn't have anything in his closet he already likes. My guy does love natural fibers, and you can find organic fibers at a number of stores every so often.

We first had lunch, then began at the Calvin Klein store since he has a CK jacket. No dice... a bevy of other places and him mostly touching synthetic fabrics and grossing out. We cruised through a lot of stores and ended up at the Crate and Barrel outlet. My only purchase of the day was one pound of fabric remnants... 95 CENTS! Score!!!

Then a snack break at Paul's. It is a nice little French-themed place that is not over-priced. My fruit cup was $2.75. It had more kiwi, strawberries, and pineapple but I ate them before I snapped this shot of my snack.

As far as clothes my fiance only purchased a pair of work slacks and a t-shirt the whole day. I spent most of the time following him around and sitting in dressing rooms giving him opinions.

Here are some random pictures of my guy in action. Mostly goofing off.

This is a semi-serious shot. He liked the feel of these but the colors did not go together the way he wanted.

The day wasn't a bust. We hit the Super Target at the very end to get some groceries, but before that we had a pleasant surprise. There was a wine shop, Cavas, that opened earlier in the day. Their first day in business. We stepped inside and the display cases for the samples were pretty cool.

The bottles are vacuum sealed in a temperature-controlled environment. You buy a pre-paid card to insert at the top of each display and choose a sample, 1/2 glass, or full glass quantity. Once we acquired a card we were given two glasses and a plate of cheese, grapes, nuts, and pretzels to snack on. One of the employees helped us out with recommendations. My fiance asked if they had any organic varieties and the guy said no, that is not an emphasis on the store right now. However, to the employee's surprise, I did find one organic Argentine variety. However it was a lot sweeter than I prefer and I couldn't blame the employee for not knowing, it was their first day. Instead I fell for a California chardonnay and my fiance bought me a bottle.

Going to this mall is always a conflict for us. We say the phrase, "I don't really NEED..." a lot. There are so many things to buy, so many of them are unnecessary. However there are some unnecessary things we want to take care of. Some are better than others, but then where is the value placed? Altruism to find the Code Red items that Bono helps promote? Organic cotton items from a vendor that is usually not into helping the environment? Paying inexpensive prices for discounted items that the first tier retail store no longer can sell? Saying screw trying to have values and just buy pretty things? Realizing that you already said screw it by driving the 40 minutes to get to the location? Going out of our way to buy kind products by the Body Shop even though we really don't need anything from there?

For us we share this conflicted value of aesthetics and materialism versus resource consumption and keep each other in check for the most part. I think it is a topic we talk about a lot more than most couples and we challenge the motives of our purchases all the time. As far as his wedding attire he is also considering eBay (does loomstate make suits?) since we can't find a nice men's consignment shop in our area. He will pull something together that he is pleased with, I'm not worried about that. I do go out with a very wacky, stylish boy <3.

More pics from the Keys

2007-07-28T09:10:00.001-04:00

These are some pictures I took from my fiance's camera from our six month trip last weekend. So since they are from his camera they are all of me!

Getting grapes from the bag we packed in the kayak after making it to the small island.

The small island has 3 black mangroves on it. I am joking around and licking the salt off the backside of one of the leaf blades.

Dinking around the shore of the island. There were a number of fish harvesting off some rocks I wanted to see. The net wasn't for capture, it was more to anchor myself in one place when I was close enough to watch them.

Hustling back to the mainland. Quick break. Parallel to us was a dark cloud with lightning strikes. This was over the seagrass beds near shore when we realized we were good for another 15 minutes of water time.

I have a rule. I don't like to consume quantities of food or liquid bigger than my face. My fiance knows this and gets a kick out of cups that are bigger than my head. This is at the Bass Pro Outdoor shop in Islamorada. The art gallery at this place has the facade from a grain mill imported from Paris on the 2nd floor. That is pretty.

DIY Pearl/Ribbon Necklace

2007-07-27T19:52:00.001-04:00

I made these for my bridal party to wear at the wedding. One of them is allergic to most metals so I am hoping that the rings wrapped in ribbon and the crimp bead lifted off her neck will be fine.

First you need the pearls. I bought a strand of champagne-colored, freshwater ones long enough for 3 necklaces from eBay for under $10 including S&H.

After procrastinating all month I finally got my stuff together. For each necklace I used clear filamentous string (a.k.a. fishing line), crimp beads (.06 per necklace), 2 7mm double rings (.14 per necklace), between 70 and 74 pearls ($3.33 per necklace), scissors to cut the line, and multi-purpose tool with needle nose pliers for the crimp beads.

Run a line through a crimp bead, around a ring, back through the crimp bead, and crimp the bead close to the ring so that there is hardly any space. Leave a 3" tail and begin stringing the pearls so that 3" of them are run through both pieces of line. At the end of the string run the line through another crimp bead, ring, crimp bead again and string 3" of that line back through the strung pearls. Pull the string as tight as you can so that you can crimp the bead as close to the ring and pearls as possible. Nothing is connected at this time.

Cut a 24" to 30" piece of 1" satin ribbon (.34 to .50 per necklace). Notch the ends. Run this piece of ribbon through both rings and tie in a bow. Here is my wonderful fiance modeling the back of the necklace for me.

Each necklace turned out to costs about $4 for supplies alone. If you won't ever use the rest of the supplies again this necklace turns out to be $6 with a bunch of wasted supplies. However I am sure that you will finish using the spool of ribbon (I am a ribbon fiend) and fishing line is always handy. The crimp beads and rings were $1.99 each from JoAnn's Fabrics in quantities of 70 and 30 respectively. You can give them to a crafter or even ask for a few from a friend that makes jewelry.

I love that I did these and they took like 45 for 3 of them. I just need to notch the ribbon better.

Meaningful Symbols... The Broom

2007-07-27T10:35:00.000-04:00

We bought our broom just before New Year's when we found an artisan at a farmer's market while on a road trip (St. Augustine, FL). We both immediately knew we wanted it for the wedding. At the time we were planning a local wedding. We bought it, came home, and my fiance mounted it alongside our front door. It is a symbol of the home we are working towards building with our union. Jumping it at the wedding is essentially a physical vow of that goal.

Now that we are getting married in Costa Rica we can pack it in a tube, etc. However I want to pack as minimally as we can and suggested getting a broom down there to decorate. My reasoning is that a broom is just a symbol. Even suggesting this kind of "crushed" my fiance because this particular broom has come to symbolize a lot for him. It most likely will always be displayed somewhere in our home as a symbol of a domestic goal we are working towards.

I think it is sweet that he is so attached to it and feel a little bad about my indifference, but I realize I don't want to drag this thing all over Costa Rica and Panama with us. Hopefully I can ask a trustworthy relative or friend to take it back to the States for us after the wedding.

What does the broom symbolize for you if you are jumping it? What are you going to do with it after the wedding?

This is Javi and her husband recently jumping the broom in Tobago.

She mentioned that the broom displayed above the door is a great symbol to keep negative energy out of the house. Her broom is still on the island where they jumped it, but they plan to get it back to display above the door. They had luggage restrictions and had to leave it with a friend for now. I did not know anything about the broom and keeping out negative energy. Ours is currently hung up above the door and to the side. I have a feeling that is where it will be displayed no matter where we live.

Running of the Brides CONTEST

2007-07-24T12:46:00.000-04:00

I need a little help here...
The "running of the brides" is supposed to be similar to the "running of the bulls" but are the brides the bulls or the machismo men trying to run with the bulls?

Oh I get it now!

I would love to go to one of these and it turns out that I can if I really want. The Today show has partnered with Martha Stewart to encourage people to enter to win a free wedding. The organizers are in the application process right now and had some interviews in Miami last week. However, to encourage more applicants they are letting ladies line up at midnight at the Loews Miami Beach Hotel to try to get wedding gowns. The first 50 with completed wedding contest applications will be allowed to enter a room with 50 bridal gowns. FIFTY FREE BRIDAL GOWNS. Today it was Vegas, tomorrow Miami, the day after is Chicago, and then finally New York.

I don't need a dress. I just want to see the mayhem. This is the best rule of the contest that I caught, "You must behave at all times in an appropriate manner, which includes not acting or behaving in any manner that does or could possibly injure any other participant."

Also you do not need to be at one of these Running of the Brides events to enter the contest to get Martha and Today to throw you a wedding. They are looking to do it around October 5th but the applications need to be in this week.
click here for more details

The 6 month weekend

2007-07-24T11:45:00.001-04:00

I love Bahia Honda State Park. It is where we became engaged. It is one of the few nice camping areas close to us that has a TENT ONLY section (I hate sucking RV fumes in the morning). It is rated as one of the nicest beaches in Florida. It is just pleasant.

We drove down on Saturday to spend the night. The drive down was delayed due to construction. We also saw a lot of law enforcement activity. Apparently we went on the two days of the the spiny lobster mini-season. Fish and Wildlife officers were working with customs, military, and local law enforcement to bust people taking too many lobsters. My mantra all weekend was, "Run lobsters, Run."

I told the lobsters to run many times when we kayaked out to a small island on Sunday and there were all kinds of great crevices for them to hide when we snorkeled around the land mass. That island trip was fun. The night before there was a serious lightning storm going on for hours. I figured the same thing would happen on Sunday but later in the day. When we made it to the island I saw one darkish cloud in the distance and asked my fiance to keep an eye on its development. At one point he was getting something from the kayak while I was in the water and I raised my head to him screaming, there were lightning strikes not too far off so we had to hustle back to the mainland. It was quite an arm workout. Electrical storms in Florida are no joke!

Here is a picture of the ocean he took from our tent the night he proposed.

On the trip we made the usual stops... Midway Cafe for caffeine and a snack (mile marker 80.5). I actually got a green protein smoothie that looked like Oscar the Grouch fell in a blender but tasted very yummy. Spirulina, pineapple, and protein powder.We went to Big Pine Restaurant for breakfast on Sunday (mile marker 32 I think). We split blueberry pancakes and a provencial veggie omelette. We went to the health food store across the street for dried mango but they weren't open yet. On the way back we went to the Morada Bay Cafe for a late lunch (mile marker 81.6). I tell you, that cafe is a great wedding venue for the keys.

T minus SIX MONTHS...

2007-07-20T23:06:00.001-04:00

I will be a married woman 183 days from today. Woohoo!!
On Wednesday night my fiance caught me, unknowingly. He asked if I knew what Friday was... I slowly said, "anniversary?" as a joke. Yep, negative-demi-versary. I came clean tonight about not knowing and he thought I acted weird on purpose so that I wouldn't embarrass him if he didn't know. He gives me way too much credit for my stupidity.

My fiance is too sweet. He confessed tonight that he has been looking forward to today for quite a while. He has a flower person that he met via work and had a dozen roses delivered earlier in the day. He made reservations for us to go camping tomorrow night at the park where he proposed.

I made a lasagna tonight and ordered four pounds of jackfruit for him through our CSA. They apparently harvested a 24 pound jackfruit, and my fiance goes nuts for this stuff. He is going to be in smoothie heaven for a while. I must admit that I didn't make lasagna or get him this fruit as a special occasion gifts, it is just the kind of mundane stuff I would do for him anyways. He has "forgiven" my lack of celebratory effort.

So six months from tonight we will be man and wife. For now I am going through Mexican ska for our wedding playlist and he is reading the last Harry Potter book out loud to me on the couch. Very sweet and mellow. Tomorrow we will be beach camping, snorkeling, and kayaking... hooray!

Weddingbee is going LOCO!

2007-07-20T15:47:00.000-04:00

Contest loco that is ;)
I guess they did a DIY contest last July and are doing it again this year.
They are also having daily contests for the rest of the month starting on Monday.

I am no where near having anything cool enough to submit for the DIY contest, but next year, he he he, next year.

Click here to link to the weddingbee.com madness.

Here is last year's winner...Kelly's "Through the Years" table numbers.

Weddingbee is insanely popular now so who knows what caliber the projects will need to be at to be considered this year?

thank you to my ladies

2007-07-20T06:55:00.000-04:00

I have a pretty small bridal party. Two of my teenage nieces and my best friend of 20 years. In asking them I committed several serious bridal taboos early on. I believe I asked my matron of honor to fill that role in the same phone call I told her I was engaged. I asked my teen nieces to be bridesmaids on the phone about a year before the wedding. Luckily I still adore the hell out of all three of them and my errors have no bearing on their involvement with the wedding.

What did I do "wrong"???
1. I asked too darn early apparently. I guess a year is enough time to have riffs with folks and then still be stuck with them in the wedding.

2. I asked over the phone instead of in writing or in person. My wedding etiquette has not been stellar through all this process, so oooops. I can't do the in-person thing anyway too easily, they live 2 and 3 time zones away from me.

I do feel a bit bad that I have not put anything in writing with them yet besides the save-the-dates. To make up for it I am making some bridal party thank you packages. I made these cards for the six-month wedding mark:
I mostly used materials already around the house. Chipboard, old contact paper, construction paper, vellum paper, and ribbon.

I bound the board like you would with book binding and attached the construction paper over the loose seams. I folded the board over and made two holes with a corkscrew for the ribbon.

I am also sending them these purses I bought from a local Indian importer:
My fiance and I have noticed that we are enjoying animal elements in our wedding planning. Particularly elephants, peacocks, and of course bunnies. There is a "four friends" fable about these three animals with the monkey exhibiting a structured cooperation and this is why they are able to thrive very well.

I am going to send a copy of this fable with an update about their dress and accessory situation inside the purse with the card.

I listed what I did "wrong" when I picked my bridal party. I think it is only fair that I mention what I did "right" as well.
1. I picked people that I love dearly and haven't questioned if I made a wrong choice once. I have been pressured by several folks trying to get into my bridal party that I have much love for but do not trust like I do the attendants I chose.
2. I asked their input to select wedding day attire that they can handle financially as well as options so that they are the most comfortable at the wedding.
3. I keep them in the loop with wedding planning, but don't expect them to be fawning over me and my situation right now. I told them all that their main duty is to hang with me while I get dressed at the wedding and support me when I say my vows.

road trip with a bridesmaid

2007-07-20T05:58:00.001-04:00

A couple of weeks ago I flew one of my bridesmaids/nieces out my way. She is doing a summer conservation program that selects high school students from across the nation and places them in random locations. She lives in Utah but was selected to work in a recreation area in Georgia. I was going to fly her into Atlanta but my fiance loves hanging out with her too. So she came out to Miami and I drove her up to her site over a few days after she soaked up some of our sun. There was a lot of girl talk, singing, and watching random late-night TV in our hotels. Here are some highlights of being on the road with my emo bridesmaid.

First her and my fiance dorking around at breakfast while still in Miami. He is mocking her sunglasses, those really aren't his.

We took the coastal route to Georgia and I couldn't resist Driftwood Beach on Jekyll Island. Large trees are the driftwood and she was blown away by how gorgeous it was.

We made our way to Savannah and went on a ghost tour with Sixth Sense tours, it was pretty sweet. For the previous two days before this picture was taken she was all about wearing her skinny jeans and keeping her hair perfect. By the third day she realized the humidity and heat was kicking her butt and that she needed to travel for comfort and not fashion. She finally decided to wear shorts and a t-shirt. She felt defeated and dreaded having a picture taken at Forsyth Park.

After Savannah I drove into Atlanta and up to the Blue Ridge mountains. It was a respite from the heat and humidity and our last chance to hang out and get her ready before I wold drop her off. This is a shot of her in the coin-op laundry in Jasper, GA. I have a lot of backpacking experience and lent her a some equipment for this trip. She has been letting me get all up in her packing business for a few weeks prior to this trip. We were doing one last run-through of everything she would be taking after I dropped her off.

I confiscated another pair of skinny jeans and a hair straightner but she got to keep her cons and studded belt. This is just before I dropped her off with her crew at the ATL airport.

It was really nice to hang out with her on the road for a few days. She wanted to talk to me a lot for a 15 year-old hanging out with a geezer. She had random questions like, "What is Darfur?" and crazy deep stuff that her mother does not talk to her about. We also talked a lot about our family and some situations that have caused tension with her and her mother in the last few years. I found myself being fiercely overprotective of her on the trip while pushing her out of her comfort zone at the same time. The kid is all right and a lot of fun. Being an aunt is rough because I think I punctuated a lot of stuff with, "be glad you aren't my kid... you'd have a lot more boundaries" but I am still able to talk to her about music and fashion (her mom is 12 years older than me). I took a break from wedding planning on the road but did manage to sneak in some rudimentary Spanish lessons to prepare her for Costa Rica. I can't wait to hang with her down there.

Mmmmm, sweet honey

2007-07-15T09:02:00.000-04:00

This is a hard post to write. Even sad. I LOVE HONEY and bees are adorable. When I travel that is the souvenir I am always on the lookout for... local honey. However honeybees like most pollinators have NOT been faring that well these days (see a link). Recently there is global recognition that our commercial bees are declining more rapidly than previously thought (see another link).

This news is very disturbing. Yet my CSA (community supported agriculture) sends notices every two weeks for honey orders and other goods. They have honey and their bees are fine. Apparently bee colonies that pollinate organic crops and aren't treated with pesticides and antibiotics in their hives seem to be fairing well (I do not know of any published studies comparing organic vs. conventional bee declines, the USDA is just starting to commission studies on the commercial bee collapse). My sources have been reading treehugger and other local organic message boards. I hope that at least bees not directly treated with chemicals continue to thrive.

So this brings me to the point of this WEDDING POST. Honey wedding favors!!! When my fiance and I were planning a local wedding we had talked to our CSA about their honey supply because I LOVE HONEY and thought it would make a great favor. Even if you don't use honey, it can be a nice touch to share with your guests something local, organic and yummy as a favor. If you don't make jam, preserves, salsa, or pesto yourself... your CSA or local farmer's market most likely have folks ready to do this for you. If you don't know how to find them go through Local Harvest. This website is a great resource for any of your local, organic food needs.

I can't resist... Becks

2007-07-13T23:01:00.000-04:00

Yep, Posh and Becks moved to America last night and today he held a press conference with the L. A. Galaxy. This has nothing to do with weddings, I just like futbol and my jaw dropped when I saw the press conference pictures. The L. A. Galaxy jersey is long sleeve and looks a lot like the Real Madrid jersey AND the team is now sponsored by HERBALIFE??? Oh the shame of being a native Angeleno and seeing that. I went to the Galaxy inaugural game where the jerseys were hideous but at least the team was sponsored by Budweiser.

Anyway, Becks is a good looking man and to quasi-tie him into weddings, etc. Here is the picture that Annie Liebovitz shot of him for the Disney Campaign earlier this year. Becks as Prince Charming...

He also launched his blog today. There could be room on the sidebar to link this. Ya gotta give respect to a great futbola', dad, husband, and all around sweet guy with a soft voice. And I guess easy on the eye ;) Good lucks in America Posh and Becks.

Free Bridal Shirt

2007-07-13T09:06:00.000-04:00

Bridal Party Tees is currently doing a promotion where they are giving away a basic white t-shirt with two, black, custom lines of font and a bride with groom sketch. You simply pay $5.95 for the shipping and handling.

The promo code is PWG1.

Click here to go to your free shirt.

Average Woman (AW) Wedding

2007-07-11T13:08:00.000-04:00

The latest issue of Women's Health (July/August 2007) has an average woman last page devoted to weddings. It is a collection of statistics about the average American woman (I can only assume since there is no source for the data and the weight measurement is in pounds, not kilograms).

Here are a few highlights:

Hours the average wedding takes to organize: 250
Hours per week the average bride spends on it: 8
Percentage of women who undergo physical alterations: 37
Percentage of weddings that get called off: 15
Top three wedding day worries: zits, rain, embarrassing relatives
Pounds the AW wants to lose before the wedding: 10-20
Average cost to attend a wedding: $500
Average cost to be a bridesmaid: $1,400
Percentage of women who have gone stag to a wedding: 41
Percentage of women who admit to hooking up at a wedding: 5
Percentage of weddings paid for by bride's parents: 30
Percentage of weddings paid for by both sets of parents: 4
Percentage of weddings paid for by couple: 32
Percentage of weddings paid for by other: 34
Cost of photography and video: $3,691
Cost of wedding rings: $2,067
Number of women who cry when they find the right dress: 1 in 5
Number of dresses she tried on before finding it: 21

Win a Philadelphia Green Wedding

2007-07-11T09:40:00.000-04:00

Entries are due July 20th for a September 9th wedding. click here!

The prize is sponsored by Urban Green Partnership and includes a wedding for up to 60 guests. Ceremony, reception, catering, music, photography, flowers, gifts (including house cleaning service), transportation and more.

You just need to describe yourselves in 150 words or less.

1. What makes you green? How do you practice sustainability?
2. Who are you-- both as individuals, and as a couple?
3. How to contact you. Give us your full names, telephone numbers, and email addresses.

And then hope for a follow-up interview. Good luck. :)

so much champagne

2007-07-11T09:13:00.000-04:00

Our colors are Saffron, Merlot, and Royal Blue... however it seems like my eyes are set on Champagne. I blame my dress and location. I found a killer deal on a BCBG dress for $64 on eBay in Champagne.

The vintage sepia tones of tropical beaches also bring out a Champagne feel. So that is the color of my dress, the bridal party sashes, the pearls for the bridal party and recently my fiance found something else totally extravagant.

In last month's Maxim magazine there was a picture of a good "Gift for Her" and he likes it for me... Champagne Ray Ban Aviators. They are actually a pink/gold gradient but they do rock.

I really do like Ray Bay Aviators and have not had a pair in years. It would be cool if I received them as a gift but I am not holding my breath because they aren't a necessity.

pearl & ribbon necklace diy

2007-07-09T23:09:00.000-04:00

I'm pretty excited. While I was gone my champagne pink pearls that I ordered came in a long strand.

One of my near future projects is turning this strand into 3 necklaces for my bridesmaids with a bright white ribbon to tie it together around their necks. I believe this project was in the last Martha Stewart Weddings, but it was a pearl collar for a dog attending a wedding.

I guess this project is played out if Martha is doing it for Rover, but I still think it is very pretty.

Amateur Wedding Photog Tips

2007-07-09T21:14:00.000-04:00

Digital Photography School posted an entry with 21 tips for amateurs shooting weddings.

click here for the entry

I have been asked to shoot a couple of weddings but know I am too amateur for that yet. Some of us have friends shooting weddings as favors and I thought this could help. This can also help anyone else asked to shoot a wedding. Heck, it can help if you hired a less than proficient photog.

Days of Our Lives Green Wedding

2007-07-08T09:30:00.000-04:00

Here is a quick clip going over some of the details from the May 8th Sami and Lucas eco-friendly wedding on the soap opera. I did not know that they covered so many details.

Apparently... organic caterer, seasonal flowers (donated to charity afterwards), pure silk wedding dress (Monique Lhuillier), and "renewable gold" rings with conflict free diamonds.

I think the idea that they are doing is awesome. For the show and the knot green weddings are a "trend" and not neccessarily a way of life. I like the way that the Lucas character states that using food not sprayed with chemicals is a sacrifice they are making for this green wedding. Oh the sacrifice of not consuming those chemicals (sarcasm). However even if it is cheeky he did state that he may need to go out and get a hybrid vehicle.

For people not into eco-conscious concepts I hope this wedding on this extremely popular soap opera is a gateway to better eco-conscious applications they can make in their everyday lives. After all, these weddings are not a way to save the world. They are generally an extension of values shared by a couple and sharing that with their guests.

07.07.07

2007-07-07T21:38:00.000-04:00

Happy biggest wedding day in like forever to all of the most recent newlyweds!

I have been on a road trip with one of my bridesmaids and did not attend a wedding today. However I saw a bride with some of her ladies outside of the Jekyll Island Hotel yesterday after we took some pictures at Driftwood Beach. I assume she was getting married at the cottage next to the hotel.

Next up... 08.08.08?

4th O' July

2007-07-04T09:14:00.000-04:00

Have a great Independence Day if you celebrate that kind of thing. Or I hope you had a great Canada Day (if you celebrate that kind of thing). And/or have a great time preparing to go to whatever 07/07/07 nuptial you are attending this weekend... there are so many.

Galliano Killed It at Fashion Week

2007-07-03T12:10:00.000-04:00

One of the best things about the world-wide-webs and the internets is that know-nothingtons like me have access to what is going on in the fashion world. I am not the most stylish person but I love learning about the world of high-fashion even though it is a world I don't want to be a part of. When we do plug in the cable at our house you can bet I like watching some early weekend runway show re-caps on the Style Network. I especially love the oddballs like Gaultier and Heatherette.

Dior's house designer for 10 years has been John Galliano. He is definitely eccentric and for those of us getting married you may recognize this little number he did...

Well Mr. Galliano kicked off Fashion Week in Paris yesterday for the Christian Dior label at the Palace of Versailles. It is the 60th anniversary for Dior and Galliano took it back and tore it up. Maybe you can use some of these images for your mood boards?

Punch Drunk

2007-07-03T10:23:00.000-04:00

When I was finishing my undergrad degree I would go to parties at a good friend's house. She was a total Martha Stewart type. She would have her sidewalk lined with the paper bag luminaries. Her house would be open and inviting. And in a small shed off the kitchen and porch was a small shed where she would display her punch bowl. It is a darn good pretty pink punch.

I have taken her punch recipe and used it for a few years now. I even used it at my best friend's upscale bridal shower years ago and it passed the test of her scrutinizing mother-in-law. I figure with all the bridal obligations many are going through at the height of the season I would post this recipe if you want something quick, easy, and sophisticated.

Here it is... Sarah Elizabeth's Punch

1 bottle sprite or 7-up
1 bottle white wine (something dry like chardonnay)
1 bottle of champagne
1 bag of frozen raspberries
1 pint of frozen raspberry sorbet
assorted frozen citrus slices (orange, lime, lemon)

Start the night out by mixing all the above in the punch bowl and periodically check on it as guests drain the pretty pink punch. Add a bottle of something here or there, more fruit as the night goes on, etc. It doesn't taste the same through the night, but it is low-maintenance and really good.

We are indeed lucky

2007-07-02T16:57:00.000-04:00

I came across this graphic today from a NY Times article and thought it was pretty cool. I mean the fact that this graphic exists at all sucks because these laws were once active. I'm not saying life is a utopia now, but it is pretty nice to think that couples like me and my FI aren't breaking the law by getting married when a few decades earlier we could have been fugitives. This kind of stuff makes me appreciative.

I hope this isn't considered a heavy subject for everyone. It is a reminder for me to be appreciative for the liberties I currently have. This even extends to voting rights as a woman. Life was a lot different a relatively short time ago. I just thought I would share.

Couples that came before us have not had it so easy. I get to marry the love of my life next January. That is pretty cool. Happy early Independence Day to me. Perhaps one day this type of graphic will seem like a relic of the past for same-sex marriages? Who knows.

Peanut Wedding Favor?

2007-06-30T23:20:00.001-04:00

Treehugger.com posted about TaberuMe cards. The cards come from Arigatou Co., Ltd. which specializes in the sale of laser-etched food products. The carbon dioxide laser engraves words on to hard, organic material that can be eaten like peanuts, rice, pasta, etc. In the picture above the peanuts are business cards.

The idea listed in the article is for business cards, but why not wedding favors? I told my fiance about it and he started to think about coconuts that we can double as cups at the wedding.

The applications are endless. I think the peanut escort favor could be really cute. However I don't know all the costs (environmental impacts, etc.) for the laser service. For now I can tell you that in order to get about 150 laser-etched favors you will need to spend about $50 and communicate in a bit of Japanese since Arigatou's website is not in English.

registry must haves

2007-06-29T17:55:00.000-04:00

I found this article in the premier issue of Portovert Magazine

There was no particular ranked list order but here is the summary:

1. toaster convection oven cooks food 20% faster but without heating the surrounding area too badly
2. slowcooker uses less energy than an oven
3. bamboo kitchen ware is stronger than wood and more renewable
4. cloth napkins reduce landfill
5. organic fruit club membership to support organic farmers... I say just go to a CSA
6. leafy plants improve home air quality
7. organic, high-count thread linens to avoid fixatives in other sheets and keep them around for a while
8. digital cameras capture moments without wasting resources to process all the film
9. his and her bicycles as an alternative to cars
10. hand-held solar power charger as a first step to getting off the grid

Save-the-Dates

2007-06-29T14:57:00.001-04:00

While we didn't have the most fashionable save-the-dates we sent out something that was representative of us. We put the majority of them in the mail at the end of February for our January 2008 wedding. My friends knew exactly where they came from before they looked at the return address. They were received favorably.

We first designed the magnet. We found a base image design by an artist on DeviantArt.com and he gave us permission to use the image. We added our names and the information on the black background. After we submitted it to vistaprint he even offered to do the graphic for us but it was too late. Thank you Rafael Salcedo.

Then the magnets came in and we needed someway to send them out. We had already worked on the website and established travel times and lodging. The basics were on the site, we just needed people to read it. We had initially considered buying a recycled paper note and envelope set at Target but opted to basically do some recycling ourselves with random stuff we already had in the house.
We had some recycled chipboard that I brushed over with some water and watercolors.

I cut the chipboard when it was dried and flattened it out. I wrote on it with india ink and a calligraphy pen. I left enough room to attach the magnet with some photo corners we had. If I wanted to do it all matchy-like we would have bought black photo corners.

Then there were the envelopes. I don't like tossing out old calendars because the pictures are so pretty and the paper can be used for so many things. I took calendars from Costa Rica biological reserves and cut each piece in half. I folded the paper around the chipboard card as if it was an envelope. I cut notches around any joint that overlapped and affixed the envelope together with double-sided tape on paper that folded over to seal the contents within. I folded the top edge under so that it was a clean edge when presented to the addressee.

I sealed the envelopes with double-sided tape and sealed with a foil heart. The labels are standard white labels trimmed with black marker and punched with a small palm tree stamp along the bottom. The return label is made the same way, just about 1/7th the size of the addressee label and without the palm tree. I hand wrote the addresses.

In all we tried to match the image of the envelope with the guests' personalities or what we thought they would like best.

The response to these was so positive that we are definitely keeping the recycling theme going for the invite. However we want for those to be a lot more chic. We expect to send invites out by November so we still have time to refine what exactly it is that we are going to make.

really touristy things just don't appeal

2007-06-25T00:11:00.000-04:00

It is easy to act anti-establishment to pretend not to be mainstream. I can boast that I have NEVER stepped foot inside of a WalMart. I don't dig fast food, Starbucks, etc. Well one thing I have not overtly tried to act out on is travel related to our wedding. We are headed to Europe for our honeymoon at Organic Tuscany, an organic cooking school in Tuscany that is a member of the Slow Food movement. However my fiance and I are thinking about staying in Europe for a longer period of time and are deciding what to do...

I don't want to get a euro-rail pass to see the Eiffel Tower one day, the Leaning Tower of Pisa another, and Big Ben at the end. YAWN... boring. First of all big cities generally suck because yeah, there is touristy stuff but there is also less desirable urban stuff too. All big cities can be dirty and poor in areas as a product of being urban areas. Paris, Rome, London, etc. I am not saying big cities are bad, you just need to know what you are doing. Seeing as how this will be the first time either of us cross the pond... we have no idea what we are doing

I want to live somewhere for a month. A rented flat, work in a B&B, volunteer on an organic farm. It has been my dream honeymoon for a number of years. Ideally I would love to rent a flat in northern Italy to go bouldering nearby everyday, eat good food and have lots of hankie pankie. That would rock.

My fiance agrees about the "living experience" concept with me. I should clarify about my background and why a super touristy honeymoon does not sound appealing. I grew up in Hollywood, CA. As a tyke I would hustle tourists on the boulevard and made some decent change while doing it. Watching folks come to the Mann Chinese theater from all over the world seemed so lame to me. I don't have any desire to be that lame person on some foreign soil. When we go to Europe I want to walk a few steps in some European shoes even though me and my fiance and I will most likely be those loud, disgusting Americans.

This American Life ran a David Sedaris piece today (Three Kinds of Deception: Accidental Deception) where he unwittingly goes incognito as a French pickpocket to some loud Americans on the metro in Paris. I was in stitches because him and his beau are doing the same kind of experience we are hoping for and the American tourists I don't want to be are insulting him in English as if Sedaris as a French man can't understand them.

However, we are at step one right now. We have the idea. The cooking school we are going to suggested WWOOF as an organization to join if we are looking for farm opportunities in specific countries. All that we have done so far is narrow down our choices to countries...France, Italy, and then Spain in that order. We have so much research ahead of us if we are going to pull this off in 11 months when we leave for our honeymoon. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Very cool wedding

2007-06-22T19:16:00.000-04:00

Nirali posted their second online issue recently. It was on weddingbee, style me pretty, and even mentioned on theknot by one of the bride's featured (she posted on the south asian weddings board).

I definitely took interest in the When Mendhi Met Maricahi article.

It was a melding of Indian Hindu and a Mexican Catholic traditions. Outstanding! Her dress is a regular white dress cinched up to reveal her mother's wedding sari. Her mendhi is off-the-hook. The decorations for the outdoor area are gorgeous blending marigolds, wrought-iron, lanterns, and sari table-runners.

The food from the two cultures blended great as well. Yum just thinking of chicken in pomengrante walnut sauce.

Anyway I thought this was cool to look at given our Indian-inspired them in a Central American country.

grub: ideas for an urban organic kitchen review

2007-06-21T14:48:00.001-04:00

I think this book will be an excellent source for eco-conscious rehearsal dinner, reception meal, or day after brunch planning.

Last year I was traveling through California while visiting family and wanted to get my fiance a gift. I went to the weekly Hollywood Farmer's Market that I have been going to since I was 14 and I bought a book co-authored by Bryant Terry and had it signed for my guy (Anna Lappe is the other author). The book is Grub. At the time my fiance was doing a writing assignment on high fructose corn syrup for a night class and was really getting into nutrition and holistic living. I already knew a lot about these concepts but liked the packaging of this book. Of the 300+ pages, 125 are devoted to health issues in our country, environmental justice issues associated with food, the vast processed food industry, and simple steps anyone can make to put better food in their mouths that will benefit their health, their community, and the environment. What I really loved about this book is that it is not as "Anglo" as most books on this subject are. The book is targeted to be very inclusive of those in an urban setting. Sure the Moosewood Kitchen series is kind and has great recipes with international flair but I rarely see those books in the kitchen of a minority.

The authors, Anna Lappe and Bryant Terry

The menus reflect a high-degree of cultural diversity that is evident by examining who lives in urban areas. I pulled this book off the shelf to look at some recipes last night and started going through the menus again. There is some gold here for wedding planning. Each menu is a set of food to be served as courses or together at once. Each menu comes with a musical soundtrack that will go well with the food. Some have stories or poems, and some account what the event was like where this menu was served. Some menus are titled New Millenium Soul Food, Lara's Cuban Comfort Meal, and Straigh-Edge Punk Brunch Buffet.

The New Year's Eve Good Luck Hors D'oeuvres menu includes crudites with hummsu, black-eyed-pea croquettes with yogurt dill dip (a spin on the good luck tradition in the South), quinoa stuffed cabbage packets, cinnamon-dusted sweet potatoe fries, and a money green champagne. The music includes Cottonbelly, NYC Sessions 1993-2004: X Amounts of Niceness, DJ Kicks doing Daddy G, and the Phat Global #1 compilation. The champagne reminds me a bit of a mojito... grinding mint with organic raw sugar and then mixing in lime juice and adding champagne. Mmmmm.

I need to go over this book again for the music to see if we need it for our wedding playlist, some of the menu options for any parties we may be having, and just because the stories are cool. I recommend this book if you are looking for eco-conscious party planning menus, if you are looking for a source that talks about what is wrong with the current way Americans eat and how you can fix it, or for any organic cooking enthusiasts. This book has become one of my staple gifts to give friends for housewarmings or if these topics seem like they could interest them.

mood board 2.0

2007-06-20T23:05:00.000-04:00

All right. I am going to walk away from it now. I added one more pic and restructured the existing stuff.

The picture I added I shot tonight about an hour til sunset. The mosquitoes outside were jerks so I had to hurry. I took my champagne wedding dress and laid it on a patio chair in the garden. I placed a ceramic, vintage, chic bust on top of it. I surrounded her with my mala beads, my fiance's mala beads, a string of pearls, and my engagement ring and then I started shooting.

Here is the "final" product... time to walk away from it.

Mood Board 1.0

2007-06-20T11:28:00.000-04:00

Hmmm, I don't know yet. I like it. Very minimal. Vintage sepia-tone beach in the back. Indian-inspired in a Costa Rican setting. I like it so far. Very subtle. Do I need more girly elements though? Like killer earrings or something?

let's talk carbon offsets

2007-06-19T21:54:00.000-04:00

Note: ecological nightmare + purchasing carbon offsets does not equal the best you can do

With that out of the way I thought I would add my two cents about purchasing carbon offsets to make a wedding move towards a carbon nuetral event. Click here to read the Wikipedia article about Carbon Offsets. The basic jist is that carbon is released into the atmosphere via carbon dioxide and various gases as a bi-product of our biology as well as our industrial and technological waste. These gases are linked towards many global threats such as reduced ozone, increased surface temperatures, etc. Various companies have created ways to theoretically reduce the impact of the carbon you contribute to the world by offering "credits" in the form of reforestation projects, alternative technology implementation, etc. The key word is theoretically because these offsets are meant to do something but the action of the carbon release still occurs.

We contribute to carbon release all the freakin time especially in first world nations. You can do an internet search to find generators that figure out your ecological footprint to let you know how the way you live your life impacts the Earth and how many planets we would need if everyone on ours lived a life the way you do. However weddings seem to be a bit taboo when it comes to this subject. Even the sanest, most well intentioned couple can throw common sense out of the window to achieve a dream wedding. I am even guilty of this. My fiance and I are planning our wedding in Costa Rica for goodness sake. Most of the guests are flying from the United States. They would have to have traveled all over the place anyway, but we are guilty of making the destination a tropical get-away in Central America. Why didn't we choose Montana, Tennessee, or Redwood Country? Simply because we (as usually sane people) like Costa Rica a whole hell of a lot. We had to struggle with the decision of trading in better eco-sense for a loving experience with a few of the closest people in our circles on a 5-day trip.

We are getting a lot of praise for our eco-conscious efforts beyond the travel. We are using organic products locally produced around our destination. Socially we are having the wedding party and guests spend one day volunteering with a local project benefitting some of the few remaining indigenous folks in the country. We are having guests also bring down wish list supplies for this organization (The Bridge). The vendors we are using are locals and our financial contributions will help their family-run businesses. It is a little cheeky when people comment on how good we are because in truth we are still bastards in the whole low-impact scheme of things.

So how do we sleep at night? We justly proclaim we are doing the best we can. And we are contributing a donation to a LaDanta Salvaje, a primary forest reserve project. The money we are contributing will go towards the maintenance of this reserve. The land was purchased but it needs to be maintained against animal and plant poachers, it is used for outreach purposes, etc. Our money will not go towards planting 250 new trees (where in reality a fraction will grow to sequester a sizeable amount of carbon). It will not go towards altering a huge area that is reflecting heat to absorbing heat and thus altering a landscape-level process. We know where our money is going. It has FONAFINO accredidation and is trustworthy non-government operation that we have faith in.

The three issues I want to point out with wedding carbon offsets are:
1. Reduce your carbon impact from the start by getting local products and reducing the travel and emissions related to your wedding as much as you feel comfortable with.

2. Use carbon-offsets as a tool to aid in your planning but realize that money does not wash away the carbon emissions you helped create.

3. Research the company you are buying your offsets from. They are companies that need to profit somewhere and all are not at the same level of ethics. Also learn how the money will be used because even though most companies have the best intentions, their end-product may not align with your values.

Like I stated, we are bastards for all of the travel emissions we are helping to generate, but we are doing the best we can. Good night.

P. S. Tomorrow night I will still have some guilt (the LaDanta shares don't offset that) but I will be better reconciled because this once in a lifetime experience we are sharing with our far-flung loved ones will mean a lot to us in the end.

Pin-Up Boudoir Pics

2007-06-12T22:14:00.000-04:00

I have been thinking of doing boudoir pics for sometime. I think it would be nice to keep a record of my little body as it tightens up in preparation for the wedding. It can be something to scare my grandchildren with. And they can be a fun project to put in a book for my fiance.

However I get bored looking at a lot of boudoir pictures. I play with my camera a lot and consider getting into the boudoir picture industry every so often. My favorite artist that originally inspired me was Lone from Lolo's Boudoir. I guess I love her kitsch and that she does a lot of outdoor stuff. Both are right up my alley. She is on the other side of the country though and I have been considering traveling to see her if I had some other reason to be in the Bay Area at the same time.

Locally there is Atomic Bettie. I have not been 100% sure I am ready to commit to them because of the cost and not really knowing if I dig their style. I have seen some of the ladies they feature in real life because some of them are in the Sexy Kitty burlesque troop. I think they made those ladies look fantastic compared to real life (I'm not saying they were ugly but they look really polished in the pictures).

Tonight I hit the motherload of inspirations. My fiance and I went to Barnes and Noble's to dork around the bargain stacks. He found a 3-D Hollywood Nudes book. I thought it was funny and we bought it since it was under $10. I started looking at it once we were home and quickly realized the photos are all by Harold Lloyd. Harold Lloyd was one crazy mofo! He was a filmaker and actor in the same vein as Charlie Chaplin. He did his own stunts and even lost part of his hand when a bomb went off while he was still holding it. I had no idea he shot women like this later in his career. This book is amazing! Tura Satana (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!), Betty Page, Jane Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe, etc. I have a huge fascination with Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and was even thinking about the opening go-go scene of that movie as a boudoir picture inspiration before this book.

My fiance and I went through the book once already. I need to flag some pages that he likes as I continue to ponder the boudoir picture idea. However I am one giant step closer to putting a deposit down with Atomic Betty if we are on the same vibe about how cool Harold's pictures are and if they can emulate his style. The book is also cool because the 3-D glasses are in his signature round style which is hilarious.

the death of organicweddings.com

2007-06-11T09:51:00.001-04:00

Michelle Kozin's "Organic Weddings: Balancing Ecology, Style and Tradition" was published in 2003. I bought my fiance a copy as a present and it is dog-eared and marked up as we prepare for our wedding. It seems like eco-minded weddings are gaining popularity but I sadly discovered recently that Michelle's organicweddings website is no longer active. I know she has a background in business and I wonder if she was not able to reap the benefits of her Organic Weddings project. She was perhaps a couple of years too early with the idea because it seems like mainstream society is running with random green wedding projects now. Why just last month two characters on the soap opera Days of our Lives had a much-hyped "green" wedding. I naively hope that the rest of America is not too far behind.

I tried to e-mail Michelle with no luck. New Society Publishers sent me an address to contact her. I want to send her well wishes and thank her for her publication. The book is still available and I recommend getting your hands on a copy at a bookstore or your public library.

I suppose the successor of the Organic Weddings legacy is now Green Elegance Weddings. There are many resources available on the internet, in the library, and via your local co-op, but this website seems to follow a similar layout model as Organic Weddings.

If you need a quick tutorial about eco-minded weddings you can check out a quick and comprehensive guide at treehugger.

Stick to Your Guns

2007-06-10T19:47:00.000-04:00

As a destination wedding bride I must make it clear that Costa Rica was not our first choice. One hour south of Miami is Key Largo, it is the first key you encounter in the famous Florida Keys. We went down there today to workout and get breakfast at the Key Largo Coffeehouse. Key Largo is semi-important to us for the fact that we were planning to get married there for a little while.

I should give some background on determining our wedding location. We live in Miami, his family is in the midwest, and my family is out west. We did not know any place we liked that was central and convenient for everyone. We don't care that much for Miami and ruled that out but figured the Keys were nearby and they might be enjoyable for our guests.

We scouted Key Largo in November 2006 and liked the Hungry Pelican for lodging and the ceremony. We were also considering their hut for the reception and the coffeehouse for the rehearsal dinner. Soon after we made these choices my fiance slammed on the brakes because he noticed we were sacrificing a lot for the sake of our guests. He talked me into waiting a couple of months before we made our final decision because he did not think we had found a location we absolutely loved yet.

During those months he suggested Costa Rica and I am so proud of him for demonstrating an active planing role or else we may still be doing a Key Largo wedding next January. In the end I think we may have stayed at the Hungry Pelican for our lodging but moved the ceremony and reception to Pierre's/Morada Bay near Islamorada. That option sounds appealing to me, but it is not my ideal wedding plan.

Don't get me wrong. I like Key Largo but it is not the best location for us. We were not in love with the idea of getting married there. I now realize we were trying to force ourselves into loving it even though we did not feel a strong affinity towards the area. There is not a lot of space due to all the development on the narrow key. The beaches are not known for their expanses of soft sand. The community is friendly, but we know friendlier ones that we feel more comfortable in.

I am writing all this because today we went down there and I was reminded about what could have been. It was hard to find someplace to run that wasn't right on US 1 and even then we were confined to a one-square block park. It was cute and complete with a physical fitness course and aquatic complex, but it was small compared to miles of open beach. We also tried to hop in the water after breakfast and had the rude reminder that finding an open space with clean water to jump into was difficult even on a small strip of land bordered by two huge water bodies. There were other nuances we noticed that made us shake our heads in agreement that a Pura Vida wedding better fits our personalities.

The bottom line is that Key Largo is fun, but we like another location better. I am glad that my fiance encouraged us to "stick to our guns" despite the initial objections of our guests and the hassle of coordinating from another country. My #1 wedding advice for any couple is to do what feels right for you and your fiance. This is important for all major decisions. You can let your family and friends influence the minor stuff but you deserve to have the celebration you'll be proud of years later. We are seven months from our wedding and I know I would have felt like we were "settling" if we stayed on course for a Key Largo wedding.

***I do have a piece of useful advice for Key Largo couples... go to the Chamber of Commerce. The staff there are friendly and helpful. They called locations for us for our scouting trip, offered to help with every coupon they had for our out-of-town bags, and even offered the services of their marketing staff to help with our planning. They are a great service in a tourist destination and they are under-utilized.

MotherHubbard, at least we have the blue...

2007-06-09T00:34:00.000-04:00

My macbook (my less than 6 month old macbook) is on the fritz and I wanted to work on my mood board this weekend. Poo!

My dear friend Sarita made one and it was displayed at weddingbee.com this past week. Click here to check out her mood board for her Sevilla, Spain wedding.

So I had some pretty pictures on my macbook that is now in the shop. I figure I'll keep collecting images and try to put something together with my much older iBook. It doesn't have CS2 on it though, so it won't be as cool as I had hoped for now.

The chandelier on display is great because of the blue. When my fiance and I were picking colors months ago we knew we wanted turmeric and a deep merlot. I let him have free-range with the last color. He kept saying blue but couldn't figure out the shade of blue. Today we were at a trinket shop and he flipped out when he saw a random pillow cover... it was THE BLUE!! Too funny. He took out his little point and shoot camera to capture it. Previously I figured cornflower and just went with the blue lining the sleeve of His Holiness the Dalai Lama's robe because he couldn't give me any precise details about the shade of blue. Now we need to retract our steps because he has gone nuts with this blue. Is it like iced teal? It reminds me of drinks with Blue Curacao or rock candy.