TimilyL's biography
nowadays, at some level, everybody loves a bride.
and everybody loves a bride, i think, because a bride symbolizes hope.in a world filled with NO NO NO NO NO and fear and terror and doubt, a bride fills up the space in the minds eye as a giant white tulle YES, and you don’t need to know the romantic backstory. somehow, through some miraculous chain of events, this woman has decided to throw herself into a life commitment. and it means something different now than it did 100, even 50, years ago. because nowadays she has a choice.
- Amanda Palmer
I almost didn't sit down to surf the web before going to work on the morning of September 22nd, but I thought, "Eh, so what, forget it!" Boy was I glad I did! I got a shiny!!
So proud to be a part of the Pink Heart PW Hostess Team! Hooray for helping others!!
Need help? Ask this hostess!!
My fiance and I are getting married, and proud that many of our GLBT friends (some of whom married their significant others in Canada - which is ridiculous that they'd have to) will be attending our wedding.
We support equal marriage rights for all couples in love. And we hope that you will too.
UPDATE: a) congrats to New York state!! b) our friends Laura & Ash just got engaged! I am so excited for them to be planning a wedding!!
Let's begin with our flower girl, sneaks and all, and ring bearer. Both are friends' children, and so cute they were unreal. Months later my flower girl asked me, "Hey Emily, do you remember your wedding!?" :)
They were freakishly cute.
Our friend Karen says this is her favorite picture. She says, "This was when he first saw you, and it was just there. I started crying then."
Next up is the start of the bridal party processional, and our officiant, one of my husband's best friends.
My mother and grandmother.
Passing off the bouquet to my Maid of Honor. I didn't take it back until much later. :)
Overview of the scene (which I love), and then a happy groom.
First reading - "i thank you God for this most amazing" by e.e. cummings.
Second reading - from "Still Life with Woodpecker" by Tom Robbins; then me reading my vows off of my Blackberry. I had flipped out because my vows that I printed off that morning got lost. This was success.
These vows were super important. I made EVERYONE IN THE AUDIENCE CRY. Because I am a winner!
More adorableness. Kids are so super fun to have at weddings.
Planes, tranes, and automobiles (well, buses). I don't believe friends who tell us that a plane flew overhead, mostly because I didn't notice it. I was focused. However, no one could ignore the train behind us.
He turns to his Best Man and says, "These vows are a real train wreck!"
All of our first kiss photos look like we're eating each other, but I love this "post-first kiss".
(seating chart, table numbers, and bouquet made by me! beer homebrewed by our good friends Brent & Vanessa! coozies ordered online! CAKE by my very good friend & bridesmaid Angela! ringbearer pillow by my very good friend and bridesmaid Andrea!
Winter Park's own YumYum Cupcake Truck - a HUGE hit!!
The Mud Flappers, from Orlando, FL - one of the best parts of the wedding!
Our photobooth, set up by our photographer (Robert McClory - www.weddingsbyrobert.com), was a huge hit with all of our friends and family!! Backdrop was a big white blanket; the heart garlands were a easy (yet time-consuming) project completed by myself, one of my BMs, and DH's mother & aunts (pictured below). :)
First Dance..."In the Aeroplane Over the Sea", Neutral Milk Hotel ( )
Cake cutting..."Us", Regina Spektor ( )
Mother/Son dance..."I Hope You Dance", peformed by Roman Keating ( )
Brother/Sister dance..."Isn't She Lovely", Stevie Wonder ( )
A very excited bouquet toss!..."For All the Ladies of the World", Flight of the Conchords ( )
(and a very excited bouquet catch, from my MOH - they all look like they're headed into battle!)
Garter removal/toss..."Bicycle Seat", Timb (who was our officiant/very good friend, also pictured below)
Timb made a go at it, but when no one actually caught it, they gave it to one of the Best Men.
Departure! with some sparklers ;) ..."Sons and Daughters", The Decemberists ( )
First off, I am an AW and kind of long-winded, but I'm also entertaining, so you should read my blog about things concerning wedding planning along with a billion other subjects. HOORAY!
The Real Housewife of Wilton Manors
k back to my wedding introduction!
Is it bad that my mom thinks the funniest thing in the whole world is when we say "Wedding's off!" She says, "You have to be so secure in your thought process to even think that. I love it!"
I told my co-worker, who is a big proponent of arranged marriages, "If my mom could have chosen anyone in the world, she's still have chosen Tim." :)
Emily & Tim's, Tim & Emily's Wedding Page
So very super duper exicted about these! Please allow me to share my best pics with you!
(our engagement photog encouraged us to get in a shoving match!)
(As the photographer said..."You get to marry that guy!")
What I love about wedding planning, more so than anything else, is being able to be there for other people to make sure that things stay copacetic. I delight when I get to help people plan their weddings. I don't ever forsee that as a business or anything, but I love helping my friends and I also love Project Wedding for that reason.
And my best piece of advice? They'll get over it.
My mom hates my shoes! My grandmother doesn't want to hear this song! My uncle's cousin wants to walk me down the aisle since my dad hasn't been seen in 20 years but I want to walk by myself but he's getting cranky about it!
They'll get over it.
If they don't like it, remember: although it may be the most important party of your life, you're still planning a party. If they don't like something about it, they'll get over it.
And yes. People do talk (and will talk) about weddings for years and years in the future. But ever so rarely do they talk about how much they hated that the stephanotis boutinnieres were pearl-centered rather than rhinestone centered.
They'll get over it.
And it usually happens before, on, or by the wedding day. Future mother in law making you INSANE over rehearsal dinner stuff? She'll get over it. Insane evil step-mother with insane evil step-daughters (just like Cinderella!), including a step-daughter's neo-Nazi boyfriend, causing you trouble? They'll get over it.
The previous two scenerios occurred in two weddings in which I was a bridesmaid. And guess what happened by the wedding day? THEY GOT OVER IT. And everyone had fun at the respective weddings.
If you keep that in mind, people will come out of your wedding knowing that it was an awesome fun good time. And if they don't? They'll get over it.
And if they don't do that? It's their problem and not yours. As I tell my students all the time, deal with it. No need to be a Bridezilla. Just know that they'll get over it and move on your merry way, planning your ideal wedding day.
Tim keeps asking me what the colors are. He might even show up in a silver tie. :)
Much of the colors are based on the engagement ring (see above). It's an inspiration.
Swatches from dessy.com :)
The blue may be a little darker, but you get the idea.
Seeing as how my biggest inspiration for the wedding (and the dress!) comes from a 1957 musical, I think that going with all things vintage will be nice, too.
first photo from Offbeat Bride (I believe), second from here on PW, third from Once Wed (photog: Josh Goleman). Clue me in to more accurate sources of the other two photos and I'll gladly note that. :)
I love hydrangeas, roses, gardenias and delphiniums. We'll see how this all comes together. These are completely unsourced photos that I've found all throughout browsing Project Wedding.
I would love to get a lot of blue mason jars, white ribbon, order from a warehouse shop, and completely cut out the florist, but we'll see how well that all works. I think it can be done, though.
DIY brooch-y silk bouquet
I found this photo on the PW boards one day, and fell in love. I KNEW this would be my bouquet. And I also love that it's something I can keep for years to come.
inspiration, c/o the lovely and beautiful pmnunes83!
One day, I got locked out of my building (FI has the key to the building and I just have a code, which wasn't working!) and I went to Michael's and went bonkers.
And I kept buying brooches from Etsy until I was satisfied!
Here she is!!
I just need some inspiration for a bouquet handle. And that top/center rose is a little squished, and maybe we could use some more blue in that very white patch in the third photo.
The Dress!!
Thank Dolly Couture and Audrey Hepburn for this inspiration!
I saw this in Dolly's "custom collections", and fell in love with it. Then, she made it a regular style, available right off the site.
Inspiration + INCREDIBLE photo of a bride in the dress (via Facebook)
My dress will be in ivory. I know, it seems insane to order offline, and I won't be going into any stores to try on dresses, but I'm okay with that!
UPDATE: They have created a purchase link for my dress! It will be customized in that it'll be made to my measurements, there will be a big, beautiful organza bow on the back, and there will be a custom pink petticoat to add fullness to the dress (and match the shoes). I'm a little nervous about the matching with the shoes, as I haven't even tried them on yet...but alas.
And my mom is buying it for me!!!! Which is a huge help. Part of the money being used for the dress is money she inherited from her birth father, who we have only met once. Although it's a strange and sad way for my biological grandparents to be involved in the wedding, it's oddly poetic, as well.
And to match the shoes (see below), I think I'm going to order a dyed petticoat...something like this (also from my dress designer).
The Shoes!!
I was thinking blue, in keeping with the color theme of the wedding, however I think I am just going to find the shoes I like best and wear those. These in particular from www.unique-vintage.com are current front-runners.
The Accessories!
I am definitely a fan of handmade EVERYTHING, a craft fair aficianado, for sure, so I have definitely looked to Etsy for jewelry! My favorite bridal jewelry seller is plumbcrazy, because her style is simple, classic, and just so damn pretty. I have been drooling over her jewelry for some time now, and I think I'm going to go with these earrings...
(had to size the photo down a little bit...it was larger than the dress photo...)
Along with a streamlined necklace and maybe a bracelet, too..
If this wedding were a movie, it'd be...
Funny Face... (starring Audrey Hepburn & Fred Astaire)
directed by Baz Luhrman... (Moulin Rouge, etc.)
on an Andrew Bujalski budget. :)
Inspiration Board!
Inspiration board gathered from personal photos, random blog posts, facebook shots, and of course, PW inspiration.
Two more I made!
(gimme a minute here..)
And an inspiration shot, not so much even for the wedding but from the movie Funny Face, which I honestly haven't seen in years but stayed with me enough to inspire me for the wedding!
I'm with Eastside Bride on this one. I think that glass jars are one thing I'll NEVER get sick of seeing at weddings.
Actually, repurposed glass items play a big role in our wedding. HOORAY!
(second photo is from my friend Katie's wedding!! she actually makes jams & jellies and so those are her canning jars!!)
Last photo from Etsy seller...whoops?!
Okay, as seen earlier in the bio, FI drew a bunch of stick figures to show our friends & family how the engagement went (no photos - as he said himself, "I think the engagement should be a private thing, and then the wedding is the public thing.")
(He actually had to say that - no joke.)
The stick figures spread like WILDFIRE through FB, etc. and everyone loved them. One of my BMs who is helping with a lot of creative planning & making the cake says we should use them for EVERYTHING. So naturally we had to use them for the STDs.
This was the inspirational sketch, which was altered a little bit. Most of the difficulty was getting the image on the actual card. Of course, it would be an image HE DREW, because I would not have it any other way, and it's also a way for him to be involved, which is very important to me.
Final product:
Some of the later ones we've made show the figures a little faded...alas. Adds to the "vintage" feel of it, which is part of what I'm going for.
I also used the fonts Lauren Script (regular) and J.F. Ringmaster from DaFont.com - yeehaw!
The really not fun part of it though has also been writing out all of our own envelopes (so much for buying pretty pens instead of ADDRESS LABELS!) and getting all of that taken care of. I also "booby trapped" the envelopes with heart confetti that I punched out of the scraps from making the STD - nothing goes to waste, right?! Which is cute, but some people then leave a trail of paper hearts behind them. Oh well!!
it is neat to see them on our friends' fridges when we go over!
Due to several factors, mostly privacy concerns (always there on the internet), I have elected to make a good portion of my bio Friends Only. If you have a bio & are active on the forums, then feel free to add me! I love friends!
The only rule that I have is that if you show me yours, I'll show you mine. :) You gotta have SOME bio pages in order for me to add you.
"It's like Paris, without the jetlag!"
My first thought for a honeymoon? PARIS! But Paris, mid-November, in the middle of the school year? It wasn't going to work. And FI has already been there.
So the next thought was Montreal!
And then I don't know why, but I guess I figured NYC would be cheaper, and FI has never been there. I have several times.
And then we looked at hotels in NYC and the rates are CRAZY. Going to NYC without spending thousands upon thousands of dollars involves couch (or even floor) surfing and metro cards. Not ideal accomodations for a honeymoon.
We considered other places: San Fransisco, Key West...but one of us had already been there. I think it makes it that much more special when you are going to a place together for the first time on a honeymoon.
So after much discussion, we turned back to the idea of Montreal, and booked the whole thing in one afternoon. Our flights are not bad, and the hotel we booked is TO DIE FOR.
And not overpriced! Seriously, it's your honeymoon, you've gotta get a nice room!
So yes - cultural capital of Canada! My ancestors are from here, and it's going to be cold, but that's okay. We live in South Florida, and honestly we are not beach people. And neither of us have traveled here in the past. So excited!!
I just hope we get to see a little bit of fall foliage before the winter sets in!
