Wedding Series: Photography

Tags

central Scotland, photographer, Stirling, wedding

In addition to memories, it is the artifacts from weddings (the dress hanging in the closet or guest book full of loving phrases) that allow us to access the feelings and senses from the big day. Besides scents, photographs are perhaps the most powerful memory aides.

Although I may not often capture what I see, I always try and can get frustrated when I do not have my camera to record the beauty of what strikes me. I would not have been able to relax during the wedding unless I knew that not only were there photos being taken, but that the photos were taken by a photographer trusted to get it ‘right’. A friend of mine captures the senses embedded in a scene and her photography takes my breath away. There was no other option for us; we needed her to create the photos that we would treasure. Since she was already invited to the wedding I was nervous she’d turn down being our photographer and I’d have to find a second-best, but she accepted.

I had a brief chat with Kat about what we wanted, but I trusted that she understood, would follow her instincts and spend the time creating. Immediately after the wedding she sent us a few photos to choose from and we got our favourite printed as 4×6 prints, writing on the back and sending them out as thank-yous. I did not doubt that the photos would be beautiful when we received our full photo package, what she then delivered was exceptional. I LOVE our wedding photos and they bring us joy to look through.

Want to read more about our wedding planning? Read the introduction here. Look out for the next post on our invitations. Photos by Kat Goldin Images.

Wedding Series: Music

Tags

band, central Scotland, civil partnership, David Hughes, DJ, Movenda, music, Stirling, wedding

A friend of mine is in a band called Movenda (pronounced ‘moy enda’) that plays a blend of traditional and folk Scottish and Malawian music. I had heard them play several years before and knew that I really liked their style so we asked them to play before our ceremony and during/after dinner. Their joyous and down to earth style suited us perfectly! We wanted a true blend of our American and Scottish identities and a ceilidh dance was just the way to start the dancing for the evening. We really enjoyed their ceilidh music and it certainly got us moving.

After the ceilidh, we said goodbye to Movenda and hello to our DJ. We initially thought we would be plugging in our iPod but then we calculated the stress and cost of purchasing the songs and figuring out the order and looked around for a DJ. David Hughes is a DJ in central Scotland and we danced the night away at a function he played and we knew he was our answer. We discussed our musical style (for us, it was no swearing or sexual innuendos and aiming for uplifting music), sent him our playlist and indicated the songs we really wanted to hear and those that were banned. He was nice to work with and we enjoyed what he mixed up for us!

*stay tuned for their contact information.

Want to read more about our wedding planning? Read the introduction here. Look out for the next post on our invitations. Photos by Kat Goldin Images.

Wedding Series: Food and Cake

Tags

buffet, cake, civil partnership, fall, meal, thanksgiving, wedding

We had our civil partnership meal in 2011 at the Junk Rooms in Stirling and eventually returned to them to cater our wedding. We trusted them to create the menu that we wanted: a Thanksgiving themed buffet meal. The meal comprised turkey, pumpkin tart, cornbread, mashed sweet potatoes, succotash, cranberry sauce and a pea, onion and mushroom dish. Dessert was apple crumble.

In 2011, neither Honey nor I wanted fruitcake for our civil partnership. Honey doesn’t like raisins and I never identified with the British tradition of fruit cake for weddings so I suggested we went for the traditional American pound cake. My mother in law made that cake and, topped with strawberries from our garden, it was delicious.

For our wedding in 2012, my mother in law again offered her services and was going to make a tiered cake in three different flavours: lemon for the top cutting layer, chocolate for the middle for most guests and fruit for the bottom. I had a piece from each layer but as we took the most fruitcake home and it lasts the longest (and Honey didn’t eat any so I had it mostly to myself), I was eating it throughout the fall.  Now, when I think of our wedding or even read about wedding cakes I salivate at the thought of what has become the standard wedding cake for me; the delicious fruitcake made for us. I then realise that I am becoming more British than I ever thought I would.

Want to read more about our wedding planning? Read the introduction here. Photos by Kat Goldin Images.

Thirty Three, Yipee!

Tags

birthday, childhood, pennsylvania, spring, summer

Cookouts in the backyard, sunshine, warmth, bare feet, campfires, sleeping in tents, playing games, attending a baseball game, dancing to great music, drinking tea, wine, beer (at lunch!), eating in-season fruit, tomato pie, local treats like tastycakes and Rita’s water ice, and going on dog walks propelled us through my birthday weekend. They are all things that I love from my hometown and I have enjoyed savouring them. 

The part that made it all magical though, was the chance to share it with my parents, sisters, four-fifths of my nieces and nephews, and my wife.

Wedding Series: Decorations

Tags

civil partnership, guest book, table decorations, wedding

Planning our wedding, we based the decorations on home made Thanksgiving decor and focused on the textures and colours of the season. We didn’t go for flowers because it was late November in the Northern hemisphere. On the wedding day, I did not regret it one bit because the boathouse looked more authentic and perfect without them. It also saved us money and stress by not coordinating flowers.

We purchased the lighting (rope lights, candles and candle globes), but made the other decorations. With charity shop sheets and duvet covers collected over several months, we made over 80 meters of bunting! That is the project I didn’t think we’d ever complete.

Table cloths were finished the week of the wedding from the remaining fabric to match our bunting. I was aspirational enough to want to hem them all properly but was coaxed into being realistic enough to realise that was unnecessary, because who stares at the bottom of a tablecloth? What was necessary, however, is the rotary cutter borrowed from a friend.

Our table chart (we assigned tables, not seats) was beautifully written by my sister on flip chart size colored paper with autumnal names like ‘apple orchard’ and ‘cranberry bog’ and was simply blu-tacked onto the wall at the entrance. Small 4×6 inch photo frames held the table names.

My sister also made our guest book, which will become a focal point in our home. Guests were asked to write some advice for the future and their name on one side of a paper leaf. We asked them to write something that we should always remember to be thankful for in life. The leaves are not yet glued on, so I’ll update a photo once they’re in place.

Table places were ‘decorated’ with print outs containing the running order and words to Give Yourself to Love by Kate Wolf, which featured in our ceremony. We ordered wildflower seed in bulk and put it into small ‘dinner money’ envelopes with a label printed about the seeds and wedding. You can see ours here. The seeds were chosen to be nectar rich and draw pollinators, which are important for harvests and Thanksgiving!

Want to read more about our wedding planning? Read the introduction here. Look out for the next post on our invitations. Photos by Kat Goldin Images.

Wedding Series: Zero Waste Invitations

Tags

civil partnership, homemade, invitations, thanksgiving, wedding

Once we had set a date and booked a venue, it was time to create handmade wedding invitations. We recognised that people often feel like they need to keep invitations for some karmic reason. I guess the idea is that the couple has spent time creating the invite so how can you justify recycling it after their big day let alone before. I think there’s also an element of obligations out of well-wishing that leads people to keep them; as though marking the date in your calendar and then getting rid of the invitation could be anything but positive.

Anyway, we wanted to avoid that guilt-induced hoarding so created simple PDFs in Photoshop that we emailed to people. Finalising a guest list is hard enough so simplifying distribution by using a spread sheet and email wedding invites is a quick and satisfying process. This also reduced paper waste and postage. We did print out invites for grandparents, but almost everyone else received theirs as an email attachment.

I used a photo I took of a birch in full Autumn foliage and layered it with our information to look like vellum paper. It was pretty, simple, effective and reflected our personalities. I cropped off the bottom quarter of the page (our contact details and RSVP date) in this image and hid our surname.

Friday’s post will show you how we decorated the venue and kept it simple while focusing on the things that would evoke autumn and Thanksgiving. Want to read more about our wedding planning? Read the introduction here.

Wedding Series: the Venue

Tags

civil partnership, local, wedding venue

We wanted our wedding to be close to home and somewhere that we would feel comfortable and not like timid guests. My rowing team’s clubhouse is only a few blocks from our home and we added our wedding to the list of social celebrations held at the club.

Since I have been a member for almost 8 years, with the club becoming my extended family,  I have seen the building decorated for dances, weddings, birthday parties, and holiday parties, so I could envision the parts we needed to pay more or less attention to when crafting decorations.

Being a key holder of the venue enabled us to survey, take exact measurements, play furniture Tetris, show catering staff around, or undertake any other form of pre-wedding planning that is made easier when actually standing in the venue. This all made it feel safe, known, familiar and reduced the stress of an external venue possibly telling us how we could or could not decorate. It also meant that our bunting was made to the perfect length! The hall evokes a barn in some of its rustic-ness and a Thanksgiving Barn wedding is what we would have gone for if we had access to one. In reality, it came together so well that we did.

We asked around the council about hiring extra tables and chairs and was told that we could borrow them because we were local. If you need chairs or tables for a function, it is probably worth calling your local village hall or council office to see if they hire or lend them to locals.

Interestingly, this is probably one of the first stages of wedding planning where my foreignness was apparent to me through its seamless join with my daily lived reality. Most of the time living and working in Scotland I forget that I am technically in a ‘foreign’ country. I am not treated as foreign in my work interactions, but  often in my leisure time if undertaking a new activity or going somewhere new. Speaking to the council and being accepted as a local (because not only could I talk about local events and experiences, I was now -in the eyes of wider society- ‘marrying’ a local. No matter that Honey is far less ‘local’ in many ways to the area than I am! Celebrating with a wedding has brought validity to our Civil Partnership in the eyes of casual strangers and my status as foreigner is smoothed out in their eyes as well when they learn that my wife is Scottish.

Returning to the consideration of a local venue, the final benefit was that we could drop off the borrowed chairs and tables several days early, set up the night before and not worry about coming back to clean until the next day.

Holding our wedding in our neighbourhood simplified, de-stressed and emotionally enriched the process for us.

Want to read more about our wedding planning? Read the introduction here. Look out for the next post on our zero waste invitations. Photos by Kat Goldin Images.

Wedding Series: Outfit Part 2 (the Dress)

Tags

burgundy dress, handmade wedding dress, infinity dress

In Wednesday’s post, I talked about my eclectic approach to the wedding outfit and the things that I felt were important to create the perfect feel. My wedding dress was the central part of that story. Honey always dreamed of a big wedding in a church, seeing her bride in a dress at the end of the aisle. I thought her dream was a pretty good reason to wear a dress for our wedding. I don’t particularly love dresses but knew that if I made it I would love my dress. I also knew that I would want to get a lot of use out of any dress I created so the Infinity Dress was the perfect choice.

After searching the fabric stores here and finding nothing, I bought what I needed during a trip to the US in June. When I went to pay, I learned that the fabric I choose ended up being on super sale and I got 7 yards for $24.95…an unintended deal when I was prepared to pay a bit more for my wedding dress!

The fabric was gorgeous so, although I’ve sewn t-shirts, I was very nervous about messing this project up. I delayed starting the dress for months but as the Fall approached, I figured I had better start in enough time to find an alternate outfit if needed.

(Another super-cropped image above).

I borrowed a rotary cutter and mat from a friend, gathered my courage (a.k.a. my mother in law) and begun measuring and pinning! I used a combination of two blogs for instructions and created a dress with a very tall waistband, which I am very happy with. We measured several times, pinned slowly, and carefully cut (it would have been impossible to get a good cut without a rotary cutter because of the stretch and slight curl at the edges). I was a bit terrified to start sewing my dress and almost let my mother in law do it for me. I practiced on a small bit of scrap and it puckered terribly with my zig zag stitch and the tension was off. When reading the manual (what a practical thing to do!) my mother in law found a stitch used for things like bathing suits. I tried it and it was perfect. It creates tiny, pucker-free seams. With this new discovery, I sewed the whole thing myself.

The other instructions out there say to sew the straps and waistband in all at the same time, but I envisioned slippage that way so I sewed the straps in place first and then the skirt.

For our wedding, I wrapped it with the waistband under the bust and both straps over one shoulder as though a tunic. I have since worn the dress to another wedding and wrapped it with two shoulder straps and wore a wool blazer and black boots. It looked entirely different and I’m confident that the half-dozen other combinations I’ve come up with will mean that my staple dress carries me through a lot of occasions.

Want to read more about our wedding planning? Read the introduction here. Next week I’ll post about our wedding venue. Photos by Kat Goldin Images.

Wedding Series: Outfit Part I

Tags

crochet shawl, wedding

I envisioned a classic yet eclectic approach to my outfit and thought a wool shawl would be the perfect compliment to the dress, my 1940s-inspired hairdo (an ode to my grandmothers), and mom’s crystal necklace. I love the simplicity of Eva’s shawl and have made it several times. 

The yarn used was New Lanark DK wool that I loved but had never found the right project for. It matched the dress fabric and clearly waited to become a special shawl. As you can see in the super-cropped image below, I closed the shawl over with crystal-like barrettes that I thought complimented my necklace and helped to evoke a late Autumn frost.

While the shawl had been blocked for weeks, I wove in the last end on the day of our wedding as my sister sat beside me doing a bit of sewing.

Want to read more about our simply and handmade wedding planning? Read the introduction here. The next post will describe my handmade wedding dress.

Photos by Kat Goldin Images.

Wedding Series: Thanksgiving Wedding

Tags

civil partnership, scotland, wedding

When Honey and I got engaged in 2010, we decided that our wedding would be in November 2012 to correspond with our anniversary. We started dating the week of Thanksgiving so it was perfect when Thanksgiving 2012 fell on our actual date. Our wedding was set for the following day to allow for a more sociable Friday evening wedding; a Thanksgiving party to celebrate our life’s harvest.

When we set the date, we didn’t know how the journey would be toward getting approval for our Civil Partnership. Since I am a citizen of a non-EU country, we needed to ask the UK government for permission so the far off wedding date would work for us to celebrate whether we had permission by then or not. The law requiring permission was removed in 2011 so we jumped at the chance to legally commit to one another when my dad was over here visiting that summer for my graduation. Our Civil Partnership ceremony and meal were very special and an intimate occasion and rite of passage with our close family.

Our wedding was planned as the actual party to celebrate with the community around us. One goal that we strive for in our life is to keep things simple. This remained a guiding principle for the wedding and throughout our planning, we questioned our choices and checked whether they were right for us. We wanted a simple, honest and joyful celebration with minimal impact on resources and our finances. We also wanted to do things in a way that would reduce obligations on people. It took a lot of discussion at times to move past what we thought was expected of us, or ideas we thought we wanted, to get to what truly fit into our vision.

We went for hand made, local and seasonal whenever possible. We used local services for our venue, catering, photography, band and DJ and we made our hall and table decorations, invitations, favours, and my outfit (both the dress and shawl). The guest book and cake were handmade for us.

Our Thanksgiving Harvest themed wedding was hard work to put together but was worth every moment of effort. Come along with me over the coming weeks to see how we created the most beautiful Thanksgiving I have ever experienced.

Wedding Outfit Part I: the crocheted shawl

Wedding Outfit Part II: the dress

Wedding Venue

Zero Waste Invitations

Thanksgiving Wedding Decorations

Food and Cake

Wedding Music: band and DJ

Photography and Thank Yous

All our wedding photography is by Kat Goldin Images.