To Video or Not Video

I thought we were all set with no videographer. But then I see these and my heart just melts.

Notice the background changes, empty room vs full room. The videographer shot them practicing before the reception and merged shots in from the real dance and set it to their first song: I'm Yours[acoustic] by Jason Mraz.

I'm Yours from Annie on Vimeo.

The feel of this one seriously makes my heart hurt.



Meredith and Tommy from Monachetti on Vimeo.

The cinematography style in this video just blows my mind (he'll also blow your budget).



Caitlyn + Nick | a surprise same day edit from Jeff Brouillet on Vimeo.

Make-over

How do you like the new look of our site? The major difference is the page tabs. This is the look that I was originally going for, but I couldn't figure out how to create. Thank you Blogger for updating your templates to include CSS capability. Now I just need to figure out how to code in CSS.

Wedding Train: Stop #1

Come on ride the train
It's the choo choo ride it woo woo
Come on ride the train it's the choo choo wedding train

Gemma and Rusty

May 29, 2010

Monponsett Inn
Halifax, MA

Jake and I are wedding veterans (well, more so me than him). We have attended three prior weddings together. And I've been attending weddings since 2003. My memory escapes me now, but I think I went to 4 or 5 in 2004 alone. Yea, we do things differently out West.

Anyways, I digress. The take away here is that this was our first wedding as an engaged couple. You see weddings in different light when you are planning your own. You notice the personalized touches. And when you go to a slew of weddings with the same circle of friends, you make mental notes on what's been done just so that you don't copy them. Or maybe it's just me and I'm crazy.

Let's move on to some pictures, shall we? Oh before I forget, Jake was one of Rusty's groomsmen!

(All photos taken by moi)

While this wedding was in MA, it was an hour drive from where we live. Between rehearsal, wedding, and the after party, we booked a two night stay at the "hotel" that the rest of the clan was staying at. You'll notice that I wrote hotel in quotations. I'll be blunt, it was a skeevy roach motel. As it turns out, they lost our reservation. The only rooms left were smoking rooms, which were down in the section that they rent out for Section-8 housing! 

Jake armed with the yellow pages and me with my trusty Garmin GPS, we started calling up hotels in the vicinity. I honestly didn't think that we'd be able to find any vacancies since it was Friday night of Memorial day weekend, near the Cape. Jake struck out. I chose a high end hotel from the list the GPS spit out. I figure if it's expensive, maybe they'll have a room. I struck gold! The Radisson 3 exits up put us up for the night and the next. The women behind the counter must be an angel. After hearing about our story, she gave us the house rate for both nights!  

The Radisson was located in the cute town of Plymouth (yes, Plymouth rock). There were cute shops everywhere and local ice cream stands on every corner! We were able to explore the area some and enrich our minds with history before ending our adventure.

(Personal photos)

P.S. Plymouth rock is a pretty small rock.

All aboard! Next stops: Rochester, NY and Folsom, CA. 

Updates - June 2010

Hey Y'all! A lot has been going on around here. We've been attending weddings (3 between the two of us in a single week). We've been chipping away at our wedding planning, slowly. We've been helping others with planning their wedding. I've been asked to be a bridesmaid. Of course there was Father's Day. Soon, we'll be flying out for our annual trip to Oregon, attending more weddings, celebrating our third anniversary, closing in on a full year of engaged life, and who knows what kind of adventures we'll find along the way. We'll get around to posting our adventures over the next few weeks, hopefully we can catch up.

Coming up:

Wedding Train: Stop #1, #2, and #3

The White Dress (FYI: there will be no pictures in any dress postings made prior to the wedding)

Tales from a Crafty Bridesmaid

Random wedding findings

A while back, I ran to Costco to pick up contact solution. If you've ever been in a Costco (or BJ's), then you are familiar with the "I must take a quick look around" mentality. I didn't expect to find anything. Actually, I was hoping not to find anything. A find leads to money spent. Well, mission FAIL because I found this:

Double sided gift wrap set in our wedding colors AND in our rehearsal dinner colors! Oh yeah, our rehearsal dinner has a theme of it's own. Stay tuned to find out how we'll incorporate this find.

Milestone: Font

We have officially purchased our wedding font: Kon Tiki Enchanted! Done and done.

Previously:
I ♥ Font

May I have this dance?

I came across this video not long after we got engaged. The couple, obviously pros in the swing [dancing] circuit, is dancing the Lindy Hop. EPIC first dance if you ask me.

Oh how this makes me miss dancing. After taking my first ballroom class in college at the urging of a friend, I was hooked. I took every class possible (and some twice). When I was away from school during my internships, I would take group lessons at local dance studios. Somewhere along the lines, I got it in my head that I wanted to dance competitively in Dance Sport. It took seven years of dancing and thousands of dollars spent on workshops, group and private lessons to learn that I have a nasty case of stage fright. I still love dancing, just not when the spot lot on me. Hmmm, this is going to make our first dance interesting.

Many years ago, I thought that I would dance something fierce at my wedding. Unfortunately for me (fortunately for Jake), we won't be doing the Lindy for our first dance. BUT. Yes, there's a but. We won't disappoint. Jake came out of his "cave" (aka office) one day, took my hand, and proceeded to show me a few steps of my favorite dance he had learned from online videos. Can you say "aaaaawwwwwwwwww"?

Random Fact: I took a Lindy Hop workshop from Frankie Manning himself!

Save Our Date! (Round 1)

Hello Family and Friends -

We're getting married!

Since you live west of the Mississippi and we understand what a haul it is to come to Massachusetts, we wanted to give you ample time to start planning (and saving). This will be a great way to visit Boston if you have not had the chance yet. And for those of you that grew up in the area, you can hit two birds with one stone and visit family, too.

We would love for you to be present for the festivities, but we understand if you cannot make it for whatever reason. Please, do not feel obligated by any means.

More information to come. We look forward to celebrating with you (in ~14 months)!

-Celia and Jake

(Photo taken by Jake's Dad and edited by Celia.)

Impromptu Vacation - Ogunquit, ME: Epilogue

Our vacation is pretty much over at this point, but we do have one last adventure to share with y'all. We will forever refer to it as the I'm a medium! story.

While we were at the outlets, Jake had picked up some new shirts for golfing from the Nike store. Channeling the stereotypical guy, he picked out a couple of shirts and a pair of shorts that are size M. "I'm a medium, it's fine, I don't need to try them on, they'll fit."

Back at the hotel, he decides to show me his new wardrobe. We quickly learn that Jake is not a medium. I remember saying at one point "You can fit a midget in there!" OK, so maybe I'm not very PC sometimes. Still, Jake insists that he is a medium. It's a good thing the outlets were on the way home ;)

I now walk around saying "I'm a medium" when I'm channeling Jake. If you can imagine Cartman from South Park, eyes shut tight, whiny voice, and un-enunciated words, that's what it sounds like when I say "I'm a me-ium!" I even have the closed eyes and head tilt!

Previously:
Wedding Crashers
Impromptu Vacation - Ogunquit, ME: Preface
Impromptu Vacation - Ogunquit, ME: Day 1
Impromptu Vacation - Ogunquit, ME: Day 2
Impromptu Vacation - Ogunquit, ME: Day 3

Impromptu Vacation - Ogunquit, ME: Day 3

There's a walking path along the water's edge in Ogunquit called Marginal Way. It's very similar to the Cliff Walk in Newport, RI. We caught ourselves calling it Cliff Walk a few times, oops. We went south by foot and headed back to Perkin's Cove. We loved the Lobster Shack so much that we went back for round two. The owner remembered us too! This time we went with the boiled lobsters. On the way to Perkin's, we ran into my coworker, Steve. He informed us that George Bush, Sr. was dining at Barnacle Billy's. We didn't see him, but we did walk right past the secret service guys in the parking lot.

After lunch we headed back to the main drag via Marginal Way, and wouldn't you know it, we ran into Steve for a second time. Remember Mau-Mau from the knick-knack shop? We hit up the ice cream shop next door. Jake picked up some Moose Tracks while I indulged in Black Raspberry ice cream. It turns out that black raspberries is a version of the blackberry. Neither one of us can really eat and walk at the same time. So we kind just hung out in front of the knick-knack shop. Of course, Jake found his cat friend and went in to pet it.

Before heading back to the hotel to rest, we made one last trip to the beach. We have a growing collection of sand from every beach that we visit: Aruba, St. Lucia, Oregon, and now Maine. While at the beach, we got to witness a beach wedding, as I previously blogged about here. On the way back to the Inn, we ran into Steve for a third time! How crazy is that?

We ended our last night at the beach with tapas at Gypsy Sweethearts. We ate everything before I even thought about taking pictures.

Previously:

Wedding Crashers

Impromptu Vacation - Ogunquit, Me: Preface

Impromptu Vacation - Ogunquit, Me: Day 1

Impromptu Vacation - Ogunquit, Me: Day 2

Impromptu Vacation - Ogunquit, ME: Day 2

Remember our outrageous 6 mile walk from the night before? When I woke up, I couldn't walk! I was basically hobbling around for the rest of the weekend. The running joke now is that Jake broke my foot.

Aside from having to gimp around, I woke up in time to see the sunrise. The plan for this day was to hit up the outlets. We figured that it would be less crowded than on Saturday or Sunday. We highly recommend this. We had to go back to the outlets to make an exchange on Sunday, and it was a complete and utter zoo.

Getting to the outlet was an adventure in and of itself. We took the scenic route to Kittery. It's literally just up the road on Route 1, but we ended up passing the outlets 2X before finally finding them. We have a GPS (we call him Jeeves). Jeeves is kind of old, he doesn't know the difference between a hard right and soft right, is a bit slow at times, and sometimes he just gets plain confused. The trick to using Jeeves is to be one step ahead of him, i.e. look at the map and see what's coming up before he announces it as you go past the turn. When Jake is in the car with me, I rely on him to do so. Sometimes things just don't happen the way we plan.

Once we found the outlets, it was game over. We spent the afternoon in JCrew, Calvin Klein, Crate and Barrel, Nike, and Aldo. Thank goodness the shops are all spread out and not really in walking distance. I had to gimp around the stores as it was. Once we exhausted our wallets, we headed back to Ogunquit. We were both starving, so I figured we'd stop by Stonewall Kitchen Cafe for a lobster (lobstah) roll . Stonewall's deli had other ideas; it closed at 3 and we showed up well after. A new plan was hatched: lobster rolls at the Lobster Shack in Perkin's Cove.We wrapped up dinner by taking a short walk (hobble) around Perkin's Cove before heading back to the Inn to hang out.

Sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean.

Lobstah roll (it was so unbelievably good).

Previously:
Wedding Crashers

Impromptu Vacation - Ogunquit, Me: Preface

Impromptu Vacation - Ogunquit, Me: Day 1

Impromptu Vacation - Ogunquit, ME: Day 1

We arrived in Ogunquit with no issues late Thursday afternoon, checked-in, and then went exploring. We got our grub on  at a cute little Italian cafe called Caffe Prego. Mmmmmm panini and sorbetto, YUM! It was so nice just to sit, relax, and not be on any sort of time line.

Over the course of our meal, we noticed that the knick-knack store across the street had a cat. Not just any cat, a GIANT rag doll cat. The cat had free reign of the area, going in and out of the store as it pleased. Now, if you know Jake, you know that he love, love, LOVES animals. He wanted to run across the street at start playing with it. At one point the cat  (whom Jake has named Mau-Mau, cat-cat in Canto) was just laying in the middle of the side street next to the house. The guys walking back from the beach knelt down to pet the cat. My reaction was "what are those guys picking up? Are they picking up garbage? Oh wait, there's a tail. OOOH it's the cat!" Now, if you know Jake, you know that he love, love, LOVES animals. He wanted to run across the street at start playing with it.

After finishing up our panini's (and sorbetto and cappacino), we took a walk on the beach. We started from the Norseman Resort at the South end of the beach. The weather couldn't have been more perfect; high 70's with a warm breeze. I didn't think that we would walk far. Just a short walk, take some pictures, and then turn around and walk back to our hotel. Boy was I in for a surprise. Once we were started, Jake decided that he wanted to see the houses at the end of the beach. I don't think he had any reference to how far away the houses were (3 miles!). So we kept walking, and walking, and walking.

When we arrived at the first house, he wanted to see them all. "We're here, might as well see all of them." And so we walked some more. Right before the very end (where it looked liked you couldn't walk any further due to a cliff), we turned around to make the return trek. Let me tell you, after walking that far in flip flops on a hard beach, my foot was beginning to hurt. We made it a little over two-thirds of the way back when we decided we wanted to see what was on the other side of the sand dunes. "Hey look, there's a road, let's follow it back."

Oh boy, at first we started doubting our choice, but we pushed on and ended up on the main drag, which was our goal. Along the way we over heard a couple having a fight in their jeep, walked past a cop (who we speculate drove passed us multiple times later in the night), stopped by a small market to pick up water, cheese, and crackers. It started to get dark on us pretty quickly, but we finally made it back to our room and just in time for the finale of Fringe!

This was our "walk":

(Jake's actually kissing my head as I'm trying to take this picture.)

Previously:

Wedding Crashers

Impromptu Vacation - Ogunquit, Me: Preface