Wedding – Flowers, ribbons and rings

My first choice for our florist was a Portland shop owned by a graduate of Sprague, where Bj and I went to high school. When Bj called her up she was already booked for the date so we got Emee to search around for us, and eventually settled on Geranium Lake. I brought in a bunch of photos and told them I wanted as many local blooms as possible, and that I wanted really open, full and colorful things. I mentioned that I was in to sustainability and Kim, the owner, said they were too, they even drive a bio-diesel van! I knew they were the ones. Oh and did I mention the flowers are just divine?
Flowers

I love this photo, I feel like I’m in an ad here!
My_bouquet

My bouquet was actually three bouquets put together, you’ll see why later. I had her work in some of the roses that Bj always gets me, the orangish colored ones. And I love these local tulips. The Thursday before the wedding I was able to go to the flower shop and check out the blooms that Kim picked out. I thought some of them were too pink and almost had a freak out, but my lovely bridesmaids took care of it for me. I didn’t want to confront them that it wasn’t what I wanted. So they went back in and talked to the women there to make sure I would get plenty of flowers still and not so much pink. I think all the flowers ended up working great together, with our dresses, the room, everything.
Putting_on_beads

I know it’s probably a good thing that I let go a little bit on the day of the wedding and didn’t take any many pictures, but I wish I had a better shot of the beads I wound around the bouquet. They were glass and crystal from my collection. It really calmed me before the ceremony to be able to run my fingers over them.
Flower_up_close

Here you can see a bit how the three bouquets go together. Okay and I’m not just recommending this because I own a ribbon shop, but I really think it is a great idea to provide your own ribbon. They gave me a discount for doing so, and I feel like my flowers were more perfectly colored because they knew exactly what I wanted. Also why all the hate against wired ribbon? I love combining it with taffeta’s, silks, and satins, it makes even a stationary bouquet like this look like it was movement. It’s never sold well on my site though, otherwise I would stock it in every color under the sun.
The_girls

The girl’s bouquet’s stuck to the rust/orange/green section of my color scheme.
Moms

All of the boutonnieres and corsages were different. This is my mom’s. Her ribbon was the same as the ribbon around my bouquet. I loved tying them around their wrists like this, and they stayed fabulously.
With_em

Emilie and Violet had little head wreaths. Brett ended up carrying Violets as she thought it was more of chew toy, but Emilie’s stayed on through a long night of dancing. Plus she had little crystal hair pins stuck in there I had made for her.
Rings

After the ceremony I requested this shot from Eric (who took all these photos). Our rings are from Tiffany’s.
Ring_boxes

After Bj bought them we stuck these blue boxes right in my dad’s safe until Brent picked them up the day before. Unfortunately after we began dancing I noticed a stone had fallen out, and then later another. I don’t have the ring right now because it’s being repaired, we took it back to the shop right before we headed out on our honeymoon. They were very apologetic and offered me a new ring, but I opted to have it repaired (you know sentimental value and all of that). I should be able to pick it up on Wednesday, as it had to be sent to New York for the repairs. Everyone else was more freaked out about loosing the diamonds than me. I knew that seeing as how I’d only worn if for about eight hours they would repair it no problem. And I think it’s very interesting to think of two little diamonds floating out there in the world. Where are they? Bj and I guessed in a someone’s shoe or something. Back to the flowers:
Curtain

Originally I had thought of putting two big floral wreaths on the doors going into the ballroom, but they are dark and Kim thought this might had a better impact. She was right, I loved it. We also got spots for it so that it could be lit. Orchids with ribbon from my shop. This is the number one reason to buy high quality ribbon, look how it catches the light! YUM!!!
Regular_table

Each table had a big full bouquet in these awesome citrus green urns. We bought five of them, I just loved them so much! The night before we were working on tying all that ribbon on the chairs, do you see it? It really made a huge impact in the room. All but the head chair on each table had it. The head tables had the table numbers looped around back. And look; the key place settings. I love how it all went together.
Our_chairs

Our table had three bouquets and our two chairs had pretty flower balls on them. I freaking love those things. Oh and a note if you go with these gold chairs, they normally come with cream cushions, but Emee got the rental company to use their white cushion (normally for the black and silver chairs) for this chair type. I’m not really a gold person, but you can’t fight the room (I saw silver chairs in here, yuck), and the dishes are all white, so cream would have been a huge clashing mess. Before I knew it it was time to throw the bouquet.
Catch

Un-beknownst to the girls I had pulled my bouquet apart and Sciarrino attached the stamped fortunes to each section. It broke apart perfectly when I threw it.
Read

We stamped: "you will marry the boy next door" "you will marry your best friend,"
Millionare

And Kristin’s, "you will marry a millionaire" on herringbone, another favorite of mine. 
Cauught

My mom also used the ribbon to make my garter, which Ian caught, but I don’t have any pictures of it. Basically we pulled the wire out of some semi shinny lime and then put a smaller satin on top of that. My mom gathered them together on elastic and added a ribbon flower, and some blue beads to the center of it.

Someone recognized me at the scrapbooking store today from my wedding pictures. She was really sweet and told me I was a beautiful bride. I said thank you, of course, and told her that I couldn’t stop looking at my wedding photos. It’s true, I can’t! I want to spring for our Pottery Barn frames now, so that I can have these up on my wall like NOW. But if you’re getting sick of these let me know… I think I could probably talk about the wedding for a year. But I’m also more than happy to go on and on about how cool it is to have Bj here now. How funny he is every night, how he does the dishes, how he gives me kisses for no reason, how he mowed the lawn, how he does all the little things…. I’m crazy in love, what can I say?

Wedding – Getting Ready

Getting ready on my wedding day was so fun. We had the big suite still, the one we were in from the day of the bachlorette on. So my mom, the girls and I spent the morning hanging out with the girls from Event Cosmetics getting all dolled up. They save the bride for last so I had time to be silly:
Bubble_blowing

Using the bubble blower Bj got me. It’s so fun!
Kiss

My mom giving me a kiss… on my lips! Moooooom! Don’t worry I’ll always love you mom!
Candy_thong

Ceara showing off my newly acquired candy thong. It’s so ridiculously big I think only Bj could fit in it, but we’re not going to test out that theory.
Hiar

Don’t judge the girls working on my too harshly by this picture, they were actually not painful at all, I was just a little concerned about the back-combing, but hey look how great it worked out:
Hair

I had hair jewelry made for me and my girls by another talented member of the Bridal Loft, Andrea of August Veils. I couldn’t find anything near like what I was dreaming of in my head and these turned out perfectly. I could seriously wear them in my hair everyday. Love them!
Event_cosmetics

Another shout out to Event Cosmetics love them!
Emilie

Angela’s comment about my pictures is that every one for the first hundred Emilie is on her phone, so true. I think this girl could text through anything.
Note

And here I am writing Bj a note. Man I love this robe. When I saw these photos in black and white I was so happy with what I was wearing.
Bj_gets_it

Bj getting the note. I wrote it on the packaging for my hosiery. And circled where it said "one pair" because I’m cheesy like that. This is also the only picture of any of the six umbrellas we rented from Bella Umbrella. They were all wickedly cool and vintage with ruffles and jeweled handles. And it poured when we were dashing over to the church in cars, but after that, not a drop. I knew it would happen though, come on, if I had not had any cover prepared it would have been super rainy! Back to my room…
Taro

Taro stopped by to give me his passport in case I decided I wanted to stop him from leaving the country. Which I totally did want to do, but alas, he is home. 🙁
Sci_working

And Sciarrino working, always doing something. Despite the fact that she will get sicker and sicker as the day goes on she never stopped helping me. Now that’s a friend!
My_girls

And I just really like this picture. My girls hanging out with me. I was packing my bag up for the honeymoon, and a bag with stuff to take over to the church. We were chill, it was so sweet the last little moments in there.

Those a few of the snippets Eric caught of us getting ready. Enjoy!

Wedding – The Photobooth

Okay so I’ve decided to go through things individually, like dancing, music, ceremony, getting ready, etc. And since I can’t do things chronologically I thought I’d start here, at one of my favorite things. My long dreamed of wedding day photo booth. I thought of this years ago. And then held my breath waiting for everyone to do it before me. I saw it once on a show or wedding magazine or something, but it didn’t take off with anyone I knew, so I didn’t have to throw my “but I thought of it first!” hissy fit. Which I totally would have done because I am five after all (well plus 21). These posts are all going to be picture heavy, sorry I just can’t help myself. So, the photo booth. I found plenty of modern digital photo booths, but it took me a while to find the classic style I wanted. But I eventually I did and they brought it down from Seattle.
This is one photo I had to have. I had told Eric to get someone’s feet sticking out under the curtain (Angela are those yours?). I’m surprised he was even able because people were crowded around this all night. He got some other cool shots of people actually in the photo booth. He would just go up to it and randomly pull back the curtain!

Bj’s parent’s, hehehe. His mom made that dress after she couldn’t find a green one she liked, sweet huh? On the right of the booth Emee set up the table with the books:
Books
The lights were something my mom and I got at Pottery Barn before Christmas. We had originally thought of putting them around the cake, but Emee came up with this and I loved it! So you do remember those books right?
Books_1
Oh my goodness they are so much fun to go through, so much fun! I got some cool surprises, like my photographer, boobs, and my wedding coordinator Emee!
Emee
Ah I love Emee. I miss calling her like every day. Random friends getting in the booth together was awesome too see, I was really hoping for good mingling:
Or accidental almost kisses:
Sciand_brent
“An illusion” she says, right…. Oh Sciarrino is going to kill me I know. Here, Sciarrino here is a good one:

Don’t they both look so classic? Love my girls!
Writing
And sometimes what really made the photos rock was what was written:
Andrew
Carmen’s husband Andrew has a wicked sense of humor. Trying to be the straight man here, and the best is the last picture where he starts to loose it. Carmen’s parent’s also came, they were so funny. Here they tried to cram into the booth together:
Peters
Hehehe. The best might have been Kristin and Kristen who brought fake mustaches, knowing I was going to have the booth. They were put to good use, and then left in the book for us.
Eyebrows
Britt LOL she is in like half the photos in the book, I love it!
Kandzach
And a surprise when I got the photos:
Mustach_man
I never saw this on him! Eric really was everywhere. Hehehe.

My Favorite Is…

Fav
This is my favorite wedding picture. I just said, "Hey look, it’s the future!" And this was the reaction I got from Brent and Sciarrino. I love the expression, the details, her hair, his face, the way Bj has his hand on my back, my laugh, the flowers, her pashmina (sp?), EVERYTHING. Yes, wedding pictures are in. I love them, every single one! I’ll be sorting through them a bit. I think I’ll put a bunch up, but I want to do it in batches so I can tell the story behind everything, that’s what I really don’t want to forget down the road. Seriously though, with everything Eric shot, I don’t think I will forget. He got ever detail. We love him!

Let’s do the time warp again!

And backing up again to pre-wedding fun, I bring you: the day before. It started off with Sciarrino helping all my friends out of the hotel room. Just about all of them spent the night there after we went out, but by the time I woke up only Sciarrino and Ceara were there. We lounged around and chatted while we pulled apart all those millions of sparkly sticks I got in December for the decorations. Michele brought us lunch and then pitched in:
Rehersal

Luckily Taro took a picture of us because I was way too excited to even think of it. And do you see that bouquet? Sciarrino had been working with three showers worth of ribbon and it turned out so pretty:
Bouquet

Everyone remarked it was the best rehearsal bouquet ever, I love it! Then onto dinner at Serratto’s I was too excited to really eat, I couldn’t wait for Bj to open his gift! I spent forever thinking of the perfect thing to get him. I finally decided on a piece of artwork because it’s something he’s really interested in, and is always so supportive of all my artistic endeavors. I trekked around Portland for a day trying to find the perfect thing when I had a flash memory of

He really liked it, I’m so glad. It’s by and artist named Lena Oxly (only I’m sure I’m butchering the spelling because I can’t find the artist’s statement anywhere). She paints on the side, and this one is acrylic and called "Downtown Bridgetown" And look no green! I’m very proud of myself for picking something specifically for Bj’s tastes. And it turns out he has just as great a handle on me:
Bubbles

He got me a Tiffany’s sterling silver bubble wand. Who knew they even made them, so cute. I love it! And he also got me a classic leather duffel which I got to take on the honeymoon and look all sophisticated and married with. We got our parent’s silver letter openers and framed engagement photos, the boys got engraved cuff links, and my girls… Well I totally had a breakdown when I went to give them their gifts. I was fine all day until I tried to squeak out, "I have the best girlfriends…" and lost it. I wanted to say that they are all so different no one thing could define them all. I had jewelry made for them by a woman working in the bridal loft, Alex. I described their personalities, picked some colors and let her do the rest. The necklaces and earrings fit them perfectly, but I don’t have good pictures of them so you’ll have to wait for wedding pictures.
All_of_us

After we ate (yum!) I couldn’t wait to get to the Governor and see what the ballroom was shaping up to look like. Sciarrino, Bj, Carmen, Ceara and I headed to the ballroom to check it out and work on some details:
Photo_board

The photo board that was by the photobooth, ribbon on the backs of chairs, tweaking the key cards, and other little details. It was so fun. Bj used his long arm to capture us all. Carmen: "Man you do have long arms!" hehehe
Work_crew

And the next day was the wedding!!

“I’ll do easter”

So what to do when you’re swamped getting back into normal life, work, laundry, and catching up on life in general? Well offer to host easter of course! My main motivation in doing this was basically to use my china. I am so in love with all the wonderful things we got for our wedding and I just couldn’t help myself. So I give you a thrown together easter:
Tulips

I love the vase he got us, and the tulips so pretty! Other than a lot of eating we did manage to figure out the clothes/closet situation. Bj added a wood support below the bar to take the weight of his clothes. I pulled the dresser out of the closet to give us more space in there, and re-appropriated a hallway drawer for his big shirts and stuff.
Big_shirts

All and all not bad, now just have to get on to the rest of the house, it’s a nightmare, ack!

The Night I was Drunk

Okay I have some of my pictures, but still not from the wedding, so let’s take a look back to the Thursday before at my bachlorette party. My bridesmaids had arranged it all, and Sciarrino sent out awesome invitations that I didn’t get to see until after the event. So I had no idea what we were going to do. The next day I did get to see the invitations and they were so clever. Sciarrino had carefully split open a condom wrapper, taken out the condom and replaced it with dollar coin sized papers, each with a different snippet of information. Very cool, I have to dig it out and take a picture. Anyway back to the party, well Thursday in general. I got to the hotel with my girls and Bj had left a big bunch of flowers at the front desk for me, they were so pretty.
Flowers

Inappropriate gifts:
Granny

And my super fun and funny friends:

Meandbritt

Me and Britt: Girl scouts rule!

Crew

Julia all the way from the east coast, yeah!

Girls

Tex up from Texas (but that’s NOT why we call her that), Kristin down from Canada, and Kristen from right here!

Tracykathy

Kathy and Tracy my local gals.

K2

And the Katie’s. Yes Sciarrino has a first name!

Okay so that was probably really boring if you don’t know my friends, so let me paint this picture for you. I had told Ceara and Sciarrino that I did NOT want a stripper, and I did NOT want to get majorly smashed, since I’ve never been drunk before and I didn’t want to get all sick or whatever. Anyway so we’re opening presents and talking and listening to music up in the suite and there’s this knock on the door. I yelp, "Oh no!" and dash into the bedroom thinking it was hotel security or something. But Ceara drags me and and sits me on a chair facing away from the door, and I start to get this sinking feeling in my stomach. To my right Shannon and Britt (two friends from high school) start to pull the table towards them and get shocked expressions on their face when the mystery guest comes in the door. I still can’t see because I’m turned away (and too afraid to look). Then a guy comes around and I can see him take off his shirt…. All of the sudden I realize it’s Taro. I almost wet myself laughing. See Shannon and Britt had never met him and really thought he was a stripper. After that scare we headed down to the lobby and the girls surprised me with a big limo that we all hopped into. We headed to a bar called bettie ford. I had my first shot ever (which took me more than one sip to get down so it was a bit painful), and danced the night away. All and all a great night with some of my favorite people.

My other love

Yesterday in between packing and moving my man I stopped to see Michele and little V. I had to show her the photo strips from the photo booth. They are freaking hilarious. Plus it was unseasonably sunny and warm and sitting out in the sun for a while seemed like a good idea to me. Besides I’m sure V really missed me:
With_amber

And this was after I told her I’d take her to Disney Land, which was totally awesome by the way. But the pictures to that adventure are on Bj’s computer, and I don’t have a hard copy of wedding photos, so we’re going to be jumping around this week.
V_2

Not as cute is all of Bj’s boy stuff in my our cute little cottage. Everything he owns is big: big computer, big clothes, huge shoes, argh.  I am going through a major editing process, we are going to have two huge sales really soon to get rid of all the extra. And we opened all of our presents last night and something went screwy with the registry so we got three of somethings, but not enough of our china, and silverware, so we also have a big pile of returns. It’s very exciting to have Bj here all the time. I keep expecting him to go home. We even packed up his cubicle, which I had never seen before. When I was sitting in the lobby a security guard came over to ask me if I needed help. "No," I said, "I’m just waiting for my husband to bring the car around." So weird saying it, my husband. But I love it. And I love that I’ll be seeing more of Bj. He’s working remote from our house and has a little office space set up downstairs across from mine. I better go clean out the storage room because him and Sciarrino are due back soon with another load of stuff!!!

Mrs. Garrison, that’s me!

Hello blog world! I’m back and I’m married! The wedding was so special and the reception was absolutely fabulous. Perfection, Bj and I can’t stop talking about it. The honeymoon was so great, and now I’m moving my hubby down to "our" house. I’m up the apartment right now cleaning and packing. I can’t wait to get settled into married life. But I wanted to give you a little glimpse of our party courtesy of Angela right here. Angela does professional photography so she put a few of our pics up on her site. Thanks Angela!