Wedding Photo Wednesday: My girls (and guys)

If it wasn't for these ladies, I would not have had such a great time at my wedding:

And lest I forget the gentlemen who often make my life awesome, here they are:

Wedding Photo Wednesday: The whole affair

Here's a fun wide-shot my stepfather took of our wedding. It was fairly small, considering the size that may weddings are these days, but we still had all the important people. (Click image to see the full view):

Photo by Alfred Lambert

Wedding Photo Wednesday: Family moments

When Travis and I discussed our wedding, we always talked about how important family was to the whole affair. The best part of of the day was getting to see so many great parts of the family. So in this week's wedding photos, I'll be sharing some shots featuring family.

Mumsy-in-law and me

Travis' maternal grandparents. His grandmother is so sweet!

Dad and I during the father-daughter dance. We danced to "Follow You, Follow Me" by Genesis.

Photos by Alfred Lambert

Wedding Photo Wednesday: The actual wedding

My stepfather acted as the photographer for our wedding. His camera is amazing, but he had a lot of trouble with white balance, thanks to the crazy bright sun. That's one of the reasons I've been putting off fixing these photos for so long. I'm afraid I won't be able to rescue some of my favorites and then I won't have a good record of the day.
This week I started working on some of those especially problematic photos. These are all from the wedding itself, and I absolutely love them and the fact that I was actually able to rescue them.
One tip for those asking a friend or family member to do their photos for any event: If they can take photos in the RAW format, make sure they do. If I had, these would not have been so difficult for me to fix.

Exchanging rings

First kiss as husband and wife

Married!

Photos by Alfred Lambert

Wedding Photo Wednesday: Not-so-insurmountable project

We have a huge project ahead of us, one that I've been putting off since September. That's right, I still haven't edited wedding photos. Beyond scanning the photos given to me by my stepdad or uploaded to the paid Flickr site we set up just so we'd have easy access to all of our guests' photos, I haven't even really given a second thought to how we would preserve our wedding for posterity.

It's not that I don't enjoy looking through the photos. So much of that night was a blur, so it's fun to go back and relive some of the moments that have grown fuzzy. The problem is that completing the task always seemed a little insurmountable.

Not only would I have to tone and crop the photos, I'd have to weed out the ones that, despite how much I like the moment they represent, really don't deserve to be printed due to quality issues. There seem to be a lot of those, unfortunately.

Luckily we were introduced to a program from Creative Memories that makes it much easier to pull something together that we can eventually have professionally printed. Basically we purchased the company's Memories Manager, which not only organizes files but also allows me to edit photos within the program and with many of the more useful Photoshop tools, and Storybook Creator, which is basically a program that lets me lay out scrapbook pages using a computer interface similar to scaled-down InDesign. In fact there are some options I wish PS or ID had that are really easy to do in the programs. Plus, instead of buying our programs straight from the company, we were able to support a friend who also happens to be a consultant (go to her page if you are interested in scrapbooking! If you look at her profile picture, you may recognize her husband as a pretty awesome biology professor at CNU). She is EXTREMELY passionate about the programs. Seriously. A quick demo from her was all it took to convince us. Plus the awesome markdowns that were going to end two days after we finally had time to meet with her. Talk about serendipity.

I say all that to preview a new weekly post I'll launch today: Wedding Photo Wednesday will be an ongoing look at some of the photo editing and scrapbook page layouts I've been working on. This serves the purpose of giving me deadlines (which I work better on) and giving you guys a chance to critique some of my work.

I'm brand new to this particular program, but like I said, it's so similar to PS that I had no trouble adapting (though I miss a lot of the useful shortcuts Adobe developers spent so long coding) and already have examples of editing that I've done.

This first picture is an example of some of the detail shots that I am really grateful that some people thought to capture. The colors in this particular shot are sort of washed out and there a few pesky background components that really annoyed me.

So I cropped it to bring the centerpiece in as the focal point. I did a few other things, but if you can't find them, then I'm happy not to point them out:

I loved this next shot for capturing a great shot of dad getting ready to give me away, and Travis ready to take me. Can you guess what annoyed me about this one?

Well, color definitely became an issue. My dress in most of the photos looked white when it's not white at all. In fact, my favorite thing about that dress was the color, and that of course is my biggest challenge with most of the photos. But that wasn't even the hardest part with this shot.

If you thought I just cropped my mom's elbow out, you're wrong. If had just done that, I would have lost my bouquet (which took too much work just to crop out) and that detail of Travis in the upper, left hand corner ready to receive me. So I used the editing software's simple cloning tool.

It only took me about 5 minutes to not only completely rid my mom from the shot (sorry, Mom), but to also replace it with believable details, like continuing the pattern the sun was making in the grass and remembering to give Travis the leg my mom was blocking in the original.

So, what do you think?

I'm back!

Well, I've actually been back from my honeymoon for a few days now, but I sort of felt like I needed even more time to recover from the craziness. That and there's been a lot to accomplish since I've been back. I have not really accomplished much of it, but I have gotten one big thing finished. I set up an site for everyone to upload their photos of our wedding.

Our first dance, photo by Paul Beck (my dad)

Wedding photos tend to be the biggest chunk of change for many brides/grooms and their parents. In order to save some money we asked my stepfather to be the official photographer and then told everyone else not to forget their cameras. After the wedding I planned to set up an online account with a photo service where everyone could upload their photos.
This is the only thing I've really accomplished since returning. My house is still a mess. Miyagi seems to have forgotten large chunks of his training. I have piles of gifts (which we are really grateful for) from extremely generous friends and family that I'm hoping to finish writing thank-you notes for soon. And on Friday we are moving back to Newport News.

You may now kiss the bride, photo by Myrna Teague (my great aunt)

But I have officially set up a pro account on Flickr. Everyone can upload their photos there so I can download high quality original copies instead of shrunken files from Facebook. That helps triple the total number of photos I have access to when I'm finally able to afford printing good quality copies. Looking through my stepfather's pictures, I've realized he doesn't have the right eye I wanted for catching some of the details of the wedding (which I worked so hard to visualize and my friends and family worked even hard to implement). He did capture the basic photos you want, but some shots were missing. Having others take photos as well allowed me to have shots I wouldn't have gotten if I had depended on just my stepfather's shots. Such as this shot from my new sister-in-law:

Table settings, photo by Jenny Land (sister-in-law extraordinaire)

So if you plan to get married, I really recommend doing this if you can't see spending $3,000 (minimum!) on wedding photos.

Technical gibberish, or Why I chose this method
I chose Flickr because for about $25, I get unlimited downloads, storage and access to the original sized uploads.
Why is this important? Well, I wanted the chance to Photoshop photos that might not be perfect (most have beautiful potential, but many need a little tweeking) and that is extremely difficult to do when you are working with sizes that have been shrunken down for web use.
Facebook, for example imports photos at a resolution of 72 pixels per square inch and a size of about 720 pixels wide by 540 pixels high. For comparison, the camera my dad was using saved pictures at 4,272 pixels by 2,848 pixels at 72 psi. That may sound like gibberish to you, but pixels hold the information that make up the building blocks of a photo. So, the more pixels, the more information I have to work with. Ergo, I can make a beautiful photo perfect.
At the same time, to print photos they need to be at least 200 psi for quality printing. If you resize the Facebook photo to 200 psi, it can be printed no bigger than 3.6 inches by 2.7 inches. And that is too tiny for me to use.

Coming soon
Finally, I wanted to let you know that I am going to be doing a lot of posting in the near future. Not only do I want to go through some of the awesome details of the wedding, I have several other posts I've been putting off, including: several book reviews (including The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender and Crescent by Diana Abu-Jaber), a photo tour of our new home and the setbacks and triumphs we've hit while training Miyagi.
So, please come back soon and let me know what you think!

Wordless Wednesdays: Love & Marriage

Photo by Ken Kienow via Ruffled blog

1 cake vs. 80 (cup)cakes

We are now having cupcakes, for many reasons. This way everyone can have some of the cake and also we don't have to worry about cutting the cake for everyone. Also, my cake topper is a bit too heavy for a cake to hold it up without collapsing. Anyway, the cupcakes will be arranged like four tiers with the cake topper at the top. Like these:

Though, most assuredly not this tall. LOL.

Turtles and cake toppers

This is our cake topper. It's so awesome we're getting a cake so that we have something to put it on. It was gonna be a small cake, but now I'm worried people will want cake instead of pie. Plus you KNOW the cake will be awesome. I suppose we'll have to figure it out soon. I mean I only have a week and 3 hours.

Wordless Wednesdays: A table full of pie

Photo by Brinton Studios, via Style Me Pretty

Wordless Wednesdays: The hairstyle I officially want

Photo by Frenzle Photographers, posted by forget.me.knot.weddings

Wordless Wednesdays: Fuji mums and Lemons

Photo by Carla Ten Eyck; From Little Black Book Blog

Wedding Decor: On folds, fans and fun

Less than a month and I'm just now considering decorations. What am I considering? Well I'm falling love with these:

And these:

And these:

And, yes, especially these arbor decorations (cause I'm really not feeling the plain white arbor):

They can't be hard, can they? In fact, I could easily start right now and do a few during every show I watch and I'd be done in a week or two. Now I just have to buy tissue paper and maybe some origami like paper.

Can I just say how much I love the Internet and it's plethora of tutorials?

Wedding notes: On hair

It's one of the least important aspects of my wedding (to me) and yet it seems to be one of the first things women tend to ask me, right after what color my dress is (ivory) or what shoes I'll be wearing (yellow Converse). Who knew that hair was so important among us females. I certainly didn't. In any case, my hair will most likely be simple, just like every aspect of my wedding. For a few ideas, see the following wedding porn (as Ariel of Offbeat Bride fame calls it):

I like the simplicity of pulling back some of the hair, but leaving the rest loose. Plus you can't beat fresh flowers.

Long and loose, with a curling iron to add a bit of flair.

And then there is the low bun with a floral accent, which I'm leaning towards if it is hot and I don't want to get overheated.

Wedding Notes: Dancing with my dad

One of the first things I thought about upon getting engaged was my dad. I was excited that he would walk me down the aisle and that we would have a father/daughter dance. I remember a father-daughter dance we had in Illinois which was sponsored by the girl scout troop my mom was a leader in. It's a pretty foggy memory for me because I was only five or six, and yet it's stayed with me for most of my life. It's this memory I want to honor at the wedding, but I also want to honor all of the great times we've had together. We really are great friends. When I make huge decisions in my life, he's always the first person I call. In fact, I called him first when Travis proposed. I even called him before adopting Miyagi because I didn't know if it was the best decision.

In that vein I've been putting a lot of thought into what our song will be and I'm torn between songs that convey love and what our relationship is and songs that remind me of him, but don't necessarily speak to our relationship.

For the former I've come up with two songs:

Nickel Creek -"When you come back down"

Beatles - "In My Life"

When I think of my top three favorite bands, Genesis(and Phil Collins) always makes the list, and that is all thanks to my dad. The first song I remember learning the words to was "I Can't Dance." (The music video is hilarious; you must click on the link and watch it).

While the song always invokes memories of driving in my car with Dad, that song isn't exactly appropriate for the occasion. I have come up with a Genesis and two Phil Collins song I could see dancing to:

Genesis - "Follow You, Follow Me" (This actually makes me think of having nightmares as a kid and knowing it would be alright because Dad was there.)

Phil Collins - "You'll Be in My Heart"

Phil Collins - "Can't Stop Loving You"

Centerpiece ideas

I went on a wedding-blog-reading spree last night. It's been so long since I could stand seeing or talking about anything involving weddings. For a month there I was feeling overwhelmed and kept getting a sinking feeling every time I tried to stoke my creativity with wedding porn. There's still so much to do and so little time to do it, but I think I'm ready to get back to work on it.

My first step will be researching flowers since I've officially decided to take care of my own bouquets/boutonnieres/centerpieces. People have told me it's crazy, but I want laid back, simple arrangements and it would be easier to achieve that by not having a professional do them. Plus I'll be saving a lot of money. And, one of my secret dream jobs was as a florist, so now I can take a crack at it. It will be a bit of a task but I think I'll be OK, at least with the help of my friends. Right, guys?

Anyway, here is some wedding porn involving centerpieces and flowers.

I've already talked about my love of twine, but I think I also like the look of plain craft paper. It's clean and simple.

Right now, the only flower besides Calla Lilies that I know I want are Craspedia or Billy Ball's. I think they have amazing shape and are the right yellow pop I've been looking for. The bouquet featured in the top right of the above collage is so perfect. I love those white flowers in there. They look like mini-daisies and I MUST know what there. I guess that's something I'll need to be researching as well.

Finally, I think this is an awesome idea. I've already considered having lemonade as a beverage. Slicing limes and lemons into the bottom of a few vases/mason jars would look awesome and carry my color scheme into everything. Plus the smell would be so fresh!

It's been awhile since I've posted. Since my failed run at NaBloPoMo in June, it has been very difficult to talk myself into bothering with blogging. To be truthful, the NaBloPoMo debacle isn't the reason I've been sporadic. While I could blame working (which is a small part) or spending time with the puppy (who is now a year old), I have to admit that it mostly has to do with the simple act of writing. Having spent such a long period of my life with only one goal in mind (to record my thoughts and observations on paper and, later, on the interwebs), it is hard to admit that I rarely have the strong urge to write anymore. I think I've been purposely pressing that innate urge down (because, really, we cannot change our true selves so easily) and so choosing not to write so that I won't miss it so much.

In any case, I am not promising that I am back for good or that I will even compose another post in the near future. What I can promise is that I will be trying to figure myself out more and so I may feel the need to record those explorations here.

For now, I will share a photo that best reveals how Travis has (finally) decided to dress the groomsmen:

"Michigan Farm Style Wedding," Weddingchicks.com

Essentially, Travis would like all his men to wear whatever suit they have and then the same color tie (or bowtie, in Graham's case). I happen to think it actually looks cool, but then I don't usually focus on matching things. So I hope that little wedding tidbit will hold you over until I am able to share more.

NaBloPoMo: A rough-around-the-edges type of potential

While I've known where I'm getting married for a long time, I haven't really been able to share any of it with you, my dear readers, because every time I visit the dang place I forget to bring a camera. So that was first on my mom's to-do list when she came down to Hampton Roads for wedding planning. So, without further ado, here is the spot I'm getting married at. Keep in mind it's quite rough around the edges, but if you're willing to see the potential than you can just imagine what my wedding could be like.

This is the pond right behind the awning where the ceremony will be.

This is a cute cottage between where the ceremony and reception will be held. It can be used to change clothes.

Here's the awning under which we will get married. That is the pond right behind it.

The reception will be in a greenhouse that has the walls taken out. There are lights already included and lots of places to plug in things if we need it.

This pond is where the planner recommends getting pictures taken at between the ceremony and the reception. It's is really beautiful.

NaBloPoMo: On setting a date and invitations

Last week someone asked me when our wedding was and with a sigh of relief I was able to give an actual date. I even have the time set. But more than being able to verbalize this fact, making the decision on a wedding date has meant that it is finally time to get serious about these wedding invitations. As TheKnot.com has informed me, wedding invitations should be sent three months before the wedding.
After making the decision to essentially design my invitations and have mom print them, I sort put off the actual work for about two weeks. And now it's becoming imperative that I get these designed because the three month mark is quickly approaching.
The design is fairly simple and is based on a webcomic I read once several years ago. Unfortunately I have no idea which comic that was or where I could find it, but basically it's about a sad turtle who finds love. So a turtle theme was the easy decision. Now I'm left wondering how wedding invitations are worded, what information needs to be on them and how to take care of RSVPs (online? e-mail? phone calls? snail mail?). This is the classic one suggested by TheKnot.com:

"Bride &
Groom
invite you to share and celebrate at their wedding
Day, Month date, year
at time"

Here's an example of more fun and informal wording that would compliment the wedding style:

"Bride &
Groom
Invite you to join a round-up of friends and kin
to celebrate the day our new life will begin.

Day, Month date, year
at time

at place

Dinner and fun to follow”

Even more vexing for a designer like me is the font. Right now I'm mixing some of the standard fonts that come equipped in every computer (Trebuchet and Georgia, to name two), but I'm not really impressed by them.
I suppose all the details will fall together, but, for now, do you all have any ideas on any of my vexing design/wording questions?

NaBloPoMo: First dance

One summer, the fiance and I headed to different parts of the world. I went to Morocco for three weeks as part of program from the previous summer that brought 20 Algerians and Moroccans to our shores for a cultural exchange. The fiance headed to Costa Rica for a month to help with Loggerhead Turtle conservation efforts. When he returned he made me promise to salsa with him sometime because he had so much fun with the dance down there.

We've thought long and hard about what our first dance will be to. When we touched on the idea of doing a salsa dance I couldn't help but consider a song I hadn't ever thought of before. Most of the songs we mentioned to each other were slow songs that meant something to us as a couple. But this song is different. While it does speak to us, it's not what most people would think of as "us." But we're all about having fun and this song just makes you want to dance. It's not exactly a salsa tune - it's more reggae hip-hop - but the fiance says you can salsa to anything with a beat. And this song has a beat.

So here's what we're thinking of as a first dance song:

"Say Hey (I Love You)" by Michael Franti



This one goes out to you and yours worldwide
I say hey I be gone today
But I be back around the way
Seems like everywhere I go
The more I see
the less I know
But I know one thing
That I love you
I love you (3x)
I’ve been a lot of places all around the way
I’ve seen a lot joy and I’ve seen a lot of pain
but I don’t want to write a love song for the world,
I just want to write a song about a boy and a girl
Junkies on the corner always calling my name
And the kids on the corner playing ghetto games
When I saw you getting down well I hoped it was you
And when I looked into your eyes I knew it was true
I say Hey I be gone today
But I be back around the way
Seems like everywhere I go
The more I see
the less I know
But I know one thing
That I love you
I love you (3x)
Now I’m not a highly metaphysical man
But I know when the stars are aligned
you can bump into person in the middle of the road
look into their eyes and you suddenly know
Rocking in the dance hall moving with you
Dancing in the night in the middle of June
My momma told me don’t lose you
‘cause the best luck I had was you
I said Hey I be gone today
But I be back around the way
Seems like everywhere I go
The more I see the less I know
But I know one thing
That I love you
I love you (3x)
And I said rocking in the dance hall moving with you
I said Hey momma hey momma close to you
Rocking in the dance hall moving with you
I said hey trippa trippa close to you
Rocking in the dance hall moving with you
I said Hey Momma close to you
Rocking in the dance hall I said
hey momma hey momma hey momma hey momma

My momma told me don’t lose you
Cause the best luck I had was you
And I know one thing that I love you
I said I be gone today but I’ll be back around the way
It seems like everywhere I go
The more I see the less I know
But I know one thing for sure
I love you (3x)