I'll See You in Hell Pachelbel

I have one qualm regarding advice given by older family and friends. They all seem to love Pachelbel's Cannon in D. When I told my fiance how upset I was about the sheer mention of the word Pachelbel, he looked at me quizzically. So I explained that in school I played the Cello, which although the sound is rich and beautiful, is not the best instrument for a smaller than average 8 year old girl to play. I literally had to carry my Cello on a luggage pull cart. Which resembled this:

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But this wasn't the worst part of playing the Cello in 4th-10th grades... oh no, it was not. The worst part of playing Cello was Pachelbel's Cannon in D. Any Cellists will appreciate this You Tube clip which summarizes all the reasons I cannot have this played at our wedding...

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Are you and yours using non-traditional ceremony music? Any particular style you like best?

Unrelated DIY Stockings!

And now for something completely un-wedding related, because occasionally you want to craft just because!

The reason that you hear so much about me and my DIY Distress is because although I wish, with all my heart, to be an amazing crafter I am simply DIY Challenged. It all started in my middle school Home Economics class, when I tried to sew a "quilted pillow." I remember it like it was yesterday... and not more than 15 years ago..  I would try so hard to sew my pillow, I would take notes I would observe, I would even come in early to ask Mrs.Christie for help. But all my attempts ended in me causing a hole in my fabric or a huge knot in my bobbin and my sweet Home Ec teacher offering to "just get me started." This always ended in her doing the project for me.

Well this weekend at FSIL's house, who I should note is an amazing sewer and makes beautiful and creative MNSTR Bags, as seen below.

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I ended up going to SAS Fabrics By the Pound a scary store with amazing fabric deals here in Phoenix. I found almost 2 yards of remnant dupioni silk in a beautiful emerald green. The exact color and fabric I wanted for my Christmas Stockings and table runner. I bought all 2 yards at steal $16 INCLUDING TAX! I set out to learn to sew... ended up putting a hole in my runner and also sewing a wobbly line of seam... needless to say the expert FSIL stepped in with the sewing and let me do the cutting and pinning.

I started with my old stocking, traced it onto a heavy paper and then cut the design out. I then used that to cut out the same pattern in the silk and in some heavy high wool content felt (for the inner lining of the stocking). I then pinned these together and FSIL sewed them beautifully.

Personal Photo

 

Personal Photo

I should note that at the above stage of the sewing process, after we had sewed all the basic 1 sides together that we realized they were all facing the same way- so when you put them together to sew them together the feet faced away from each other and not toward each other as they should. My note to you "Think Spatially" and double check your work. We then turned those inside out and pinned it together with another inside out pair and sewed those two together. The end result is AGAIN turned inside out and will ultimately look like this masterpiece:

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DIY- I Can Do!

While at the FSIL's house making stockings and stencils, I stumbled across the cutest idea. The best part of having an art teacher as your FSIL is that she comes up with the best ideas for her students- which translates to DIY projects I may be able to complete. Below is the inspiration piece...

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What is that wondrous creation above do you say? It's my FSIL's Thank You Notes...the style the art is called "Block Printing" it is essentially a glorified stamp, whose origins begin in Asia with wood block printing- the first form of book "printing." The above creation was made using Speed Ball products- a soft rubbery substance that is easy to carve. So much like our pumpkin carving fiasco- I will have to increase my carving dexterity.

This is our next DIY project and the tools for the job include:

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For a complete block printing tutorial (if you don't have your own personal Art Teacher) can be found at EBSQ Art. 

Georgia on my Mind

Well its 4:30am on a Tuesday, and I am awake because the fire alarm in the condo above us went off for a good 20 minutes at roughly 3:40am. Whilst being awake I realized my first HUGE encounter with "Bride Brain" the forgetfulness that ensues in a Bride's brain while planning for her wedding...

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I forgot or misunderstood something that now seems obvious. I booked our Thanksgiving flight for a day earlier than intended. How does one do this you ask? Well people like myself and my fiancé are not accustomed to taking "red eye flights" so when meaning to book a flight LEAVING Wednesday night and arriving Thursday morning... we ended up accidentally booking a red eye leaving "Wednesday morning." I curse you 12:45am. What's best about this whole picture is that I am already anxious about my fiancé meeting his FMIL, and this has only caused me to go into ulcer-level panic mode.

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So that being said I decided to tell you what to do in a spot of emergency such as this.

• Do NOT Panic (per the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
• Call your Family at your destination and warn them that you are trying to fix the problem, but may be unable to.
  
• Check your Airline's policies and determine if it would be worthwhile to change your flight.
• If the above will not work out, call work and determine if you may be able to take an extra day off.
• Be very upset for a set amount of time and when that time has past, let it go.
  

By using the above steps we determined that it appeared to be a $100 change fee per ticket. A not unreasonable request. The only problem is that it is now 4:45am and I still am not able to get someone on the phone at Delta. So when all else fails, blog about it!

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Addendum, the reasonable $100 change fee does NOT apply to holiday travel. They wanted a staggering $630 a piece to change the flight- it would have been cheaper to book new tickets. So we ended up just taking the red-eye a day early.

Local OOT Bags

We already discussed how our OOT bags will be customized with the beautiful silhouette of Cathedral Rock in Sedona. But what to put INSIDE the OOT bags? We love going to a lot of farmer's markets throughout our Tempe/Ahwatukee area. Including: Ahwatukee Farmer's Market, Mill Ave Farmer's Market and Scottsdale Old Town Farmer's Market. 

Going to a Farmer's Market is the best way to find fabulous local companies:

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The Made by Bees company even mentioned to us that they do 4oz wedding favors complete with custom labels that read "Bride's Name+Groom's Name, Meant to Bee"

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These chocolate truffles offer a local alternative to Godiva with the same quality.

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As well as fresh + beautiful local flowers!

Most of the local sourced items we have found at the above Farmer's Markets have been comparable in price to their non-local counterparts. So we've devised a wonderful list of items to fill the bags with [if you are attending our wedding as guest please do not read on...] including:

• Made by Bees Desert Wildflower Honey
• Made by Bees Prickly Pear Jam (amazing!)
• Cowboy Chocolates
• Popcorn (from Costco)
• Cookies (from Costco)
• Perhaps a box of Truffles (depending on budget constraints)

Are you going Local in your wedding favors or OOT bags?

DIY Stencil

The wonderful and not so wonderful part about having a beautiful Sedona wedding is that everyone, literally everyone is an out of town guest. Since we only have about 60 guests total we decided to go whole hog and make beautiful little out of town bags that were inspired by Weddingbee.

On the multiple recommendations from Weddingbees, we set out to order from CheapTotes. But we still had one problem, the image we wanted on the canvas tote bags was detailed and larger than we could order, even from Impress Rubber Stamps! Never fear, as I have mentioned my Fiance's Sister is an art teacher and her husband is a graphic artist. They came to the rescue and made a crisp black and white silhouette of the beautiful mountain I wanted to put on the totes. They ended up finding this beautiful image of Cathedral Rock in Sedona, and used it to make an outline.

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Then my Fiance took a piece of plastic and carved out the silhouette using their light table...

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We ended up with two stencils really: a positive and a negative. We will be using the stencil to spray paint the image of Cathedral Rock onto of the canvas bags. Hopefully we will be able to show you finished OOT bags soon! Stay tuned for what we're putting INSIDE the OOT bags!

Old Family Photos

My Abuelita's passing led the family to dig through her collection of family photos. Which resulted in some disastrously funny wedding photos... let me just say the 70s-80s were not good times to be wed. But it led me to research old wedding photos being displayed one's wedding reception. Apparently this has become quite a nice little trend. We're even thinking of having all our guests mail/email us their wedding photos to display on the seating chart table. So while I hope to have lots of these beautiful 1940s-1950s photos....

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I think we'll end up with more colorful photos from the 70s and 80s...

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Either way we will have my Abuelita's beautiful photo and lots of photos to laugh and shake our heads at. I can only hope that in the end we produce lots of photos that our children and friends will laugh at in the coming years!

Our Cross to Bear

In the wonderful words of my MOH/design goddess "We all have our [bridal] cross to bear, mine was my font... but by God, my name was gonna be in the font I wanted come hell or high water." My Cross to bear is/was and shall always be colors. I am very thorough (if not articulate) about what colors I want. This resulted in what I like to call the "Invitation Debacle" or "How much we love our First Initials." I would explain it, but it would seem like a cartoon about an old married couple (except those people would be me and my MOH). So instead I bring it to you in picture format and you can watch that argument come to life...

J: Hate the Colors!

D: I want it reverse Negative

MOH: Okay....

J+D: Colors are better...Font is off

MOH: Okay....

J+D Font Bleh!

MOH: Okay....

J+D: The Font is still off...

MOH: Okay....how about this...

D: Wait I like the 3rd one... wait how do we know which is which?! (ahh Engineers)

 J+D: Much better!!

All images courtesy of our MOH/design goddess. Stay tuned for a final draft of the invites OR something completely different.

Whimsical Save the Dates

Throughout my intense wedding/bridal blog reading I have been unable to find a Save the Date that really "gets me." UNTIL my fabulous, wondrous MOH sent out her Save the Dates. They were classy but funny, adorable with personality- everything I ever wanted. I was both happy and extremely upset with her. It was everything I wanted in a Save the Date...
 

Source: MOH

Source: MOH

... Down to the catchy "Two people enter, one couple leaves" line. My fiancé was talking about this Save the Date for weeks! And remember he's been IN 7 weddings, and has I assume, seen much more than 7 Save the Dates. What could we possibly design that could be as cute and fun as that? Enter my Super MOH who confessed to me this was actually her #2 design idea, #1 involved a posed picture of her and her now husband. I was on cloud nine. MOH has the best design ideas on the planet. That is when she dropped this bombshell...

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Could it be, our favorite movie! In a pinkish/coral sepia tone? Of course the wording is amazingly appropriate for a Save the Date. We're changing it just a bit to "They have a date with fate in.... SEDONA" Our parents names will be listed as the producers and of course MOH will be listed as the Artistic Director.

Stay posted, we've set a deadline of Dec.15th for the production of these bad boys.

White or Bright?

Before we got engaged I had NO idea that brides carried bright beautiful bouquets. I assumed that because I was the bride I would be wearing stark white (well soft ivory) and holding a stark white bouquet. Thanks to all my favorite blogs listed on the side of this blog my eyes were opened to the bright beautiful bouquet world! I was still undecided when we met with a potential florist. Until, that is, she said "Well I just hate it when the Bride is jealous of her attendants florals! Yours should be the prettiest and honestly the most colorful." Her words of wisdom won me over, I had converted from a timid white bride to a bright bride!

As I mentioned in my previous post I wanted amongst my beautiful Dahlias and Garden Roses stark white Hyacinths to honor my Grandmother's memory.  But as we discussed previously my color discussion with my florist was riddled with my inability to accurately describe the colors I wanted. So I called her last week and hashed out the new color scheme and I was able to send her this beautiful color palate my MOH made.

Color Palate by MOH

I explained to my wonderful florist that I wanted the above color palate in my bouquet, just a mixture of beautiful coral, apricot, blush, burgundy and a light touch of chocolate brown. She was thrilled, since originally she had just planned on making an all blush bouquet. So hopefully my bouquet will turn out like an amazing multi-hued bouquet similar to the one below. With of course my beautiful white hyacinths popping out.

 

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What do you think are you a white or bright floral bride?

The Photographer Who Wasn't

I should start this post by saying even though I treasure the beautiful photos of mis Abuelos' from their wedding, when we first started discussing our budget photography was the first thing we cut. My fiancé has been in 7 weddings... he's a social butterfly what can I say. I have been in 3 weddings myself. The outcome of being in the wedding party at a collective 10 separate weddings, is a loathing for all things "Wedding Photography." There is nothing worse, to us, than doing the awkward posing that these photographers ask you to do.

Awkward Photo #1:

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Awkward Photo #2:

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Ahh posed photography....we much prefer the journalistic/candid approach to wedding photography. So rather than pay someone upwards of $3,000 we asked my Fiancé's sister who is an artist, an art/photo/ceramics teacher, and overall amazing person to do the photos. She was floored and excited. All she asked for was a flash and a tripod. SOLD!

Source: FSIL

In fact FSIL is SO good at photography everyone just assumed that the photo above was one of our "engagement photos." So we simply say "Sure is," and exchange knowing glances about how much we hate "engagement photos" as well. The fact of the matter was the above photo was a candid shot of me sitting in a tree watching FSIL take photos of the stunning Sedona red rock and my fiancé sneaking up and tickling me. I look G_d awful in posed photos, and I can never seem to smile right. So candid is definitely the way to go for us.

This is not to say I have not had times where I have thought I may have made a bad choice. My Catholic guilt occasionally goes crazy and I feel terrible for imposing upon her during her little brother's wedding- but my fears have been quelled by the entire Future Family In Law that FSIL is quite happy and is very much looking forward to shooting the wedding. Since she hasn't ever shot a wedding before we have done a dry run at the venues, which was quite fun for us. Those photos to come!

So how are you and yours saving money? Or do you think not having a "professional wedding photographer" is a bad idea?

Treasuring the Memories

Some of you may have read about my Abuelita passing. I mentioned that I was very close to both my maternal Grandmother and Grandfather. So instead of a simple floral addition (hyacinths in my bouquet and in my Fiancé's bout) which will likely be overlooked by half the persons in attendance, I will also be displaying photographs of my maternal Abuelos and my Fiancé's maternal grandfather next to the guest book.

Luckily I was able to find this beauty, one of their original wedding photos. This is quite rare as no one was allowed to bring anything (including their wedding rings) over from Cuba. My only guess is that someone in Cuba mailed these to my family in the U.S. after the Bay of Pigs.

 Family Photo: Photographer Unknown

I treasure this photo more than anything, and I hope that one day our wedding photographs will be treasured by our family. Which brings me to my next post about our photographer... or lack their of. But you'll have to stay tuned for that episode.

Dealing with Absences

This is going to be the hardest post I have written to date, my Abuela passed away this morning. I was planning and preparing for this day, but nothing can really help you let go of a loved one. So I will tell you my plans to have her at my wedding in spirit. Let me first start by saying I am not well acquainted with my paternal grandparents, who are also deceased, but I am intimately familiar with mis Abuelos. Who are now in a better place. My Abeula was a kind Catholic woman who behaved more like a Buddhist in every way.

She and my Abuelo were my inspiration to do things, to be better, and most importantly- speak Spanish. I say this because I am able to talk to 80% of my patients in their native tongue. Which is considered a must in Cuban culture. I am proud to tell my pediatric patients who speak English when their parents are talking to me in Spanish that yes, their mother is right- they should learn to speak both. Not just because it will bring with it more job opportunities and more accessibility, but because it is their culture and heritage. I had always known hoped our future children would be able to meet their Great Abuelos, but this is no longer in the cards.

So due to my Abuela's failing health I made an executive decision regarding the flowers. Let me explain that I just thought due to her health she would not be able to fly out to Arizona to attend the wedding. Now unfortunately, or fortunately because she is no longer suffering, that decision will be the happiest part of our wedding. Of course excluding the becoming man and wife. My Abuela's name is Jacinta, translated into English it means Hyacinth. So amongst my beautiful and trendy shades of pink/coral/burgundy Dahlias and Garden Roses will be stark white Hyacinths.

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How are you incorporating absent guests into your wedding plans?

DIY Distress

When you read any good Bridal/Wedding blog these days it seems these women are DIY Divas. I am a lowly DIY Drag amongst them. Case in point, I absolutely love Halloween and decorating for holidays in general. I attempted to carve like the pro (aka the Fiancé).
Well lets just see how I fared....

This is where we both started, a trunk full of beautiful hand-picked from the Buckelew Farm in Tucson, Arizona.

This was attempt #1 of trying to teach me to carve:

Mine is the large green pumpkin who was carved in an attempt at Jack Skellington.

Note that the smaller orange Pumpkin is my fiancé's expertly carved version complete with sinister eyebrows.

This last pumpkin is a replica of two characters from Monster Commute, a webcomic that my Fiancé's sister + husband work on. It was featured at SteamCroween, where my pumpkin which was to read "Steamcroween" was also to be on display... sadly this just didn't work out.

I will be the first to admit that I could have probably made a decent looking Pumpkin which read "steamcroween" but just didn't due to my inner 5 year old having a breakdown/tantrum as I watched my expert fiancé carve his masterpieces. Instead the beautiful squat red pumpkin from the first picture laid in a half carved/permanent markered state.

This weekend however I am stepping out of my comfort zone and I will succeed. I have Christmas & wedding crafts I really want to create. So here is the list, just to keep me honest:

• Homemade Stockings (3)
• Tin Pots repainted to look like patina-ed copper (8)
• Block Printer (read:stamp) of  "Cathedral Rock" (1)

Meeting with the Church Lady

"You can't do too much in preparing for a lifetime together" - Our wonderful Minister. Although I'm sure this view has been expressed by every clergy member of every religion over time there are no better words for it. Sure the "wedding" itself will be a beautiful, whimsical, vintage-y party- but we are there to celebrate the start of our marriage... not just me wearing an ivory gown and him wearing a suit and relatives acting silly and dancing to ridiculous songs played by our over priced DJ (more on the DJ debacle to come).

Both my fiance and I are very excited to start premarital counseling. Being the 1% of the population who loves to discuss, plan, and make 5-20 year plans we have had several discussions what the material of such counseling would be, and have found that we agree on about 99% of our "life decisions". Still, you can't do too much to prepare for a lifetime together... so counseling we have agreed will be fun.

We were all on board the pre-marital counseling train until suddenly I hit a road block. I am a good Lenten Wednesday/Easter Sunday/Christmas and a few other Sundays Catholic. So I felt obliged to give both the Lutheran Pastor recommended by our Minister as well as MY Parish Church a try....

I was already afraid of what this would mean... I would be asking for dispensation to marry a Lutheran, dispensation for a Lutheran Minister, dispensation for non-canonical form... and most heinous of all dispensation for Not Marrying in a Church. No, the Chapel unfortunately does not count as Church to Catholics.  Let me explain to any non-Catholics reading this that dispensation is a nice way of saying the church will still bless you and recognize a marriage that they, without the correct paperwork and some prayers, would not acknowledge.

The meeting with self-proclaimed "Church Lady" in charge of the Sacrament of marriage was not as scary as I thought it would be. But we were definitely lectured about being interfaith and raising our kids Catholic, as well as about the dangers of living together. Although she never said "How Conveeeenient" the message was certainly received.

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Well two hours later, what was supposed to be a one hour session, we ended up reviewing the Church affidavits, the curriculum, donations, fees, and let's not forget full and complete new baptismal records. And I left feeling a bit like a lapsed Catholic, more so than usual.

I have applied for a new baptismal record from the church where I was baptized but now the debate begins... will we be doing our marriage prep through the Catholic Church or the Lutheran Church or do we want to pursue both? Stay tuned for decisions as they unfold.