Archive for October, 2010

Oct 2010

Dress, Given IX

What could be a better way to end the week than a Sisterhood of the Traveling Dress giveaway, right? RIGHT. I mean, we're all crying from the last two days of posting, but now we can start the weekend happy-crying, which is an improvement.

Robin sobbed over picking the next recipient of her dress, and told me she wanted to rip the dress into little pieces and give a little bit to everyone. At which point I made a King-Solomon-And-The-Baby joke, and told her to find me the real owner of the dress. She said she had that coming.

But she DID finally pick, and she picked Allison T, who said:

Hi! I started reading APW about a month before my sweet fiance and I were actually engaged (in June) and this site has really helped me frame the importance of the engagement time. I was engaged ten years ago, but that wedding never happened (called off two weeks before the date). And that engagement was all about planning a wedding, but nothing at all about planning a marriage and life together.

When I accepted my fiance’s proposal, I knew that I wanted our wedding to be different than my previous experience (understandably!) with the focus being on us and our life together and the friends and family who will be helping and supporting us in our life together. We sat down and made separate lists of what we wanted the wedding day to be like and at the top of both of our lists was that the other person is happy with the day. At the end of the day we will be married. The details will come together and I am hoping that this dress giveaway is one of those details!

I started reading APW for the bridal ideas but then figured out that this site is not really about bridal ideas, it’s about marriage ideas. And I love this site for that reason. Don’t get me wrong, I love to see the pictures because weddings are so much the same (bringing together people to share in love) and so different (seeing all those fabulous styles that I could never pull off) (Editors note: DON'T SAY THAT! You can pull off whatever you wanna!). But the beauty of this site is community and support of (all) marriages.

I am not so fortunate to live in a large metropolitan area with lots of APW readers. Although I hope I am not the only reader from way down south in Alabama. I do appreciate the online community on this forum and the focus on the marriage rather than just the wedding. I think that the sharing of the wedding dress is really a sweet way to pass along the good feelings of the special day.

I love Robin’s dress and I really can’t believe that I am 5′3′ and the same size. I have read comments during past dress giveaways and thought, “How can they be exactly the right size?” And here I am, all 5′3″ of me saying “I am the exact size!” I dread dress shopping and this dress would be a gift to save me from that task! I am looking forward to marriage, but not some of the wedding day details like dress shopping.

Robin is an absolutely beautiful bride and the bride lucky enough to wear the dress next will be too — but not because of the dress, because of the spirit of the dress. Thank you for being nice, Robin, and thanks for considering me to possibly wear your beautiful dress when I see my fiance on our wedding day. Best wishes to you and new family!

Allison

P.S. I love that there is a stain on the dress so that “I” would not the be the one to get a stain on the dress! Yet another burden would be lifted!

So, Allison, email me!

And everyone else, go run over to Facebook and catch up on your APW Book Club meetup. Or, if you're not going to a physical meetup, buy the book and read it. I'll announce all the meetup locations on the site next week, and then we'll discuss online the week after (rubs hands together with glee).

Happy weekend, ladies, and happy Halloween. COCKTAIL TIME!

Posted in: Uncategorized | 14 Comments »

Oct 2010

Ask Team Practical: Honoring Lost Loved Ones

with Alyssa

It's Friday, so you know what that means! It's Ask Team Practical with Alyssa. We kicked off this series with the two easiest, least controversial posts we could think of - sober weddings and thank you notes. What was there to discuss, we said? Well, lots, apparently. 300 comments worth of lots, both times. So now that Alyssa has had her trial by fire, we're kicking it up a notch. Today we're tackling honoring a loved one at your wedding. Which. We'll see how it goes. I suspect you'll have a lot of wise things to say.

APW is an important community because we readers support each other. Even when we disagree, we’re there to lend a hand when needed. Meg wanted to start Ask Team Practical in order to provide an even bigger outlet for that support system, but we both knew that there would be questions that neither she nor I would be able to provide enough of an answer for, and today is one of those days.

J. and Renee both wrote in regarding honoring a loved one who has passed in your wedding ceremony or reception, and we thought tackling this after Tina's heartbreakingly eloquent post yesterday was perfect timing. J. is a wedding planner and she and her two other siblings tragically lost their sister three years ago.

“While I am not currently engaged, I want to begin thinking about creative unique ways to include the memory of her in my wedding party/ceremony. She was my best friend and would have been my maid of honor.”

Renee and her fiancé both lost a parent early.

“My father died of cancer 4 years ago, about a year before he and I met. One of the many things that was hard to reconcile during my dad's illness and after he died was the knowledge that my dad wouldn't be there at my wedding, wouldn't be able to meet my children, you get the idea. My fiancé has also lost a parent, his mother, who died of cancer when he was just a little baby. So of course he wishes his mother could be there, but he doesn't remember her at all and does not dwell on it. He understands when I have my sad moments at weddings, but we don't want me to be sad at OUR wedding. I want to find a way to honor both my father and his mother, without it being something that I have to actively *do* on my wedding day. ”

These questions are way bigger than me and something I can’t answer with any sense of authority. However, reader Morgan (who wrote this beautiful post on weddings in the face of death) and Tina are more than qualified to offer up some advice.

Morgan offers up this:

First and foremost, your wedding day should be a day of joy, of celebration. It’s not a day of memorial, or a wake, and I think it’s important not to let sadness* or memorial activities fall too heavily on the day. Remember those who you have lost, but do not let them become more important than the wedding. I have every day to miss my father (and my grandparents and so on) but only one day to get married. Continue reading Ask Team Practical: Honoring Lost Loved Ones

Posted in: Ask Team Practical, Friends & Relations, The Hard Stuff | 125 Comments »

Oct 2010

Wedding Graduates: Tina & Morgwn

So, by some odd coincidence, both of our wedding graduates this week got married (once, at least) in Munich. Crazy, no? After Lynn wrote about being a motherless bride, Tina emailed me about planning her wedding(s) as her dad was dying. She was in the middle of the process, and I asked her to email me back when all was said and done, and she knew what she really wanted to say. So I'm honored to bring you Tina's absolute bravery and wisdom today, in two parts. The first she wrote after her legal wedding at her fathers bedside, and the second she wrote after her more celebratory wedding, three months after his passing. Tina writes at Melbourne Vintage, and you can read more about her wedding there (also, she says if you want to get in touch, do!). And with that, here is Tina:

My husband is Australian and I am German – we got engaged last Christmas while on a break in Paris. We’ve been together for ten years. My dad loved my husband. My husband loved and respected my dad. When my parents picked us up from the train station in Munich when we got back from Paris, everything seemed perfect.

I remember so vividly and clearly how my dad’s eyes began to shine when I showed him my ring, and how he told me he had hoped we were going to get engaged in Paris, and how he took my arm and marched me off to the car, skipping, and how excited he was. It was pure joy. We almost instantly made plans for our weddings, we were going to get married in Australia in June, and in Munich in Oktober.

In May I got the phone call that changed my life – my dad had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I quit my job, and my husband and I temporarily relocated to Munich to be with him, in what turned out to be the last few months of his life. Since we knew how important it was to see us get married, and knowing it would be impossible for him to travel to Australiain June for our intended first wedding, we had to cancel my parents’ tickets to Australia, and, with completely broken hearts, cancelled the entire wedding.

Instead, we embarked on the horrible journey of trying to get past what seemed like mountains of German red tape to be able to get married in Germany, so my dad could witness our wedding. Since my partner isn’t German, it wasn’t easy, but we made it happen. We got married on the 2nd of June, a few weeks before my dad passed away. The most important thing about the day was, and is, that my dad got to see us get married. It is so special to me that we made this possible for him. But this means that for me, our wedding day wasn’t about me, or my husband, or celebrating our relationship.

When the day was over, I didn’t know how to cope with the fact, and I didn’t want to admit, that our wedding day was the saddest day of my entire life. And how, as we sat through the brief ceremony, I could think of nothing else than the fact that I was going to lose my dad. I was completely heartbroken and unable to feel anything but overpowering grief. I was wondering if there was something wrong with me, that I felt so unable to feel any joy that I was finally getting married to the love of my life.

Now, after my dad has passed, and we’ve rescheduled the wedding celebrations for later this year, I can’t stop thinking that my dad won’t be able to walk me down any aisle, or dance with me. He was a fantastic dancer. I can’t believe I won’t get to experience the utter joy of having him dance with me on my wedding day. It breaks my heart every single day. And I think that maybe we rescheduled the celebrations to soon, and that by the time they happen, I still won’t be able to feel how I “should” feel – overpowered by joy and pure happiness.

So how do you re-claim your wedding after an experience like this? How do cope with having the “wrong” emotional response to your wedding? And how do you make your wedding about your relationship in the face of grief and loss? Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Tina & Morgwn

Posted in: The Hard Stuff, Wedding Graduates | 90 Comments »

Oct 2010

Wedding Undergraduate Lauren, Part II

Today we get another installment of APW Intern Lauren's wedding planning. I'm so pleased that we have a planning voice on the site again, because what most wedding media doesn't talk about, is that wedding planning is not always easy. (Note: last time Lauren wrote about wedding planning, some new readers were like, thank God why don't we talk about this ever, which was rattling to me. APW's started with me writing honestly about our planning, so if you're needing more of that, check my enormous archives). The bottom line is, wedding planing isn't hard because you're trying to match your napkins to your bridesmaids' dresses. It's hard because you're reconciling huge issues of faith and belief in a really public sphere, and you're having to own up to your relationships as they are, not as you wish that they were. So today Lauren is writing about reconciling the importance of marriage equality with the fact that she is, fundamentally, a good Catholic girl (for a wedding grad who also spoke eloquently on similar things, see this wedding). Lauren writes at I'm Better In Real Life, and you can see her long awaited engagement pictures over there, along with a truly inspiring tale of her crossing surfing off of her life list, and realizing it wasn't what she hoped it would be. And with that, I give you Lauren:

I went up to Seattle a few weekends ago to meet with the Deacon who would be, hopefully, officiating our wedding. We're getting married in my Catholic high school chapel, which doesn't have a parish attached to it, so you have to find your own catholic-approved leader of the pack - er - official marriage announcer. Also, with Catholic weddings, there is a bit of "marriage prep" required before the big day, and that needs to be done by a Priest or Deacon. Kamel and I are down with this, we think it will be good for our relationship AND personal growth. In other words - free therapy.

But trying to figure this out from 2 states away has been a mite bit complicated. For Example: I have gone to Catholic school my whole life. I've taken more religion classes than the Pope (No, that's a lie...). I have been jumping from state to state and back again for the last 7 years, so going to church regularly has not been my top priority. In fact - I feel like establishing a parish needs to happen once Kamel and I figure out where and when we are going to put down roots. But lets just get married first.

Anyway - I already knew about the marriage prep, etc because I'm a good Catholic girl (who lives with her fiance... and uses birth control... and is pro choice... shh! whatever!). So I called around to churches in the San Francisco area to see how to go about having the prep handled here, but the marrying handled over there, and here is what I got:

Church Lady: What Parish do you belong to?
Me: Holy Rosary in Seattle.
Church Lady: What church do you go to here?
Me: Well, I went to USF for grad school, so I've been to the church there. (where I just happened to be calling... *cough* browniepoints browniepoints!)
Church Lady: But do you attend regularly? (dundun duuun)
Me: I've been.
Church Lady: Well let me explain this to you, getting married in the catholic church is a sacrament, and you are not just marrying your spouse, you are making a PROMISE to GOD, now I don't want to make you feel like I'm lecturing you, but this is a sacrament for true Catholics.
Me: I know what getting married means, I want to catholic school my whole life.
Church Lady: Well, there are a lot of denominations outside of the Catholic Church with beautiful churches, I suggest you try one of those. *click*

And then I cried. At work. It was lovely.

I also called my Mom while I was crying at work. Because who else do you call in these situations? Especially when your mom is Presbyterian and there is some Catholic bashing to be done!

Twenty seconds after I was hung up on I decided I wasn't going to get married in the Catholic Church anymore. Screw them, they are exclusive and when I needed them most I got shit on. That pronouncement did not get the response I thought it would from my Mom, nor did it from my Dad later on in the evening. Their reaction was more along the lines of "THAT IS THE WORST CHOICE YOU HAVE EVER MADE LAUREN! TAKE IT BACK RIGHT NOW.... and just for this little stunt of yours, you're going to join the nearest Catholic church and begin tithing $20 a week IMMEDIATELY." Wow. I did not see that one coming, let me tell you. But, to be honest, getting married by a random reverend really wasn't what I wanted either. At this point, though, I felt backed into a corner. Continue reading Wedding Undergraduate Lauren, Part II

Posted in: Planning, Planning, Wedding Undergraduates | 160 Comments »

Oct 2010

Sponsored Post: Allison Andres Photography

Today is one of those rare and exciting days where I do a sponsored-sponsored post. By which I mean, a post that I write, for virtually free, for someone in the VERY beginning stages of making their business a reality. Helping sane, baby wedding businesses grow into take-over-the-world, sane wedding businesses is part of APW's mission, and you can think of my sponsored-sponsored posts as my pro-bono work. Which sounds grandiose, so I like it.

So, drum roll please....... Today I'm so pleased to get to introduce Allison Andres Photography. I met Allison at the Bay Area APW Book Club meet-up (she's lovely, and was probably the cutest dressed girl there... she kicked it up a notch with a bright green flared dress, while the rest of us we rocking jeans and flats, achem). Anyway! I met her, and then after I wrote the post about women and money, she emailed me with this huge breakthrough moment. She said, "I realized that your article for me was not about MONEY but more about my own personal goals and dreams. It is my desire to get paid to be creative, and to support my family by taking photos. Am I making a living doing what I love? No. I am stuck at a desk job where I get yelled at by customers and constantly feel like I’m spinning my wheels. Every few weeks I start to write a letter to you about becoming a vendor for Team Practical. I begin typing away about my goals and dreams and desires to share moments of joy with couples and families UNTIL the doubts start creeping in. Why do I do this to myself? Well, it’s just like you said, I undervalue my abilities and my self-worth! Well, I will do this no more!"

So I looked at her portfolio, and thought about it for two seconds, and was like, we, collectively, need to help make Allison's dream happen. So here we are. What to say about Allison? She's got a great eye, and composes beautifully with color. She's one of you guys, so you will like her instantly. She's personable, and funny, and is going to bring out the best in you in two seconds. She's also *just* starting out, so in the crazy-expensive Bay Area market, her wedding rates start at just $900. If you're looking for that illusive beast, the just-starting-out Bay Area wedding photographer, who will shoot your wedding at a super affordable rate, give you piles of pictures, and some serious raw talent? Allison Andres Photography is where it's at.

I asked Allison to write a bit of an artists statement, and tell us about why APW was her online community of choice, and ladies, it's fantastic:

I have fine-art still life photography background. I spent 3 years in college studying the technical and fine art aspect of the medium and while I am happy that I know how to color balance a print and can navigate a darkroom with ease, the structure of still life and the dark room were too confining for me. I really had no fulfillment in my artwork. Until, one day, during a hike in the woods to shoot a self-portrait, I turned my camera on my then-boyfriend and found my calling. The rhythm and flow of following him around, composing shots and waiting with baited breath for just the right moment was exhilarating! Later on that week, looking at my contact sheet and choosing my frames I was more pleased with my work than I had been in years. (And it wasn’t because of the boyfriend, because we broke up 2 weeks later!)

Since that day I have chased after the feeling that I get when photographing people. I love being in the middle of a packed dance floor and consumed by the electric happiness of weddings. I love fussing with a girl’s hair at an engagement shoot because I know that she’d want me to capture her at her best self. I am always smiling when I’m taking portraits because I know I’m capturing something amazing. Like moments of stillness in a world of chaos.

I love brides and grooms. When I was asked to photograph my last wedding, I was so excited that the bride and groom wanted me there to document the moments of their day. It’s almost like I was given the key to some sort of exclusive club!

Since I am located on the border of the east bay and north bay I really want to be the a resource for napa valley brides. I know the the typical photographer in the area starts at 5k and it can be really overwhelming to find someone good that doesn't break the bank (I speak from experience).

I’ve been reading APW since early 2009 (editors note: that's forever-EVER ago!) I searched “San Francisco Wedding Blog” in Google. After I got engaged I was looking for something, not realizing that I was going to become a part of such an amazing community. But here I am.

I read the wedding grad posts and reader comments and thought to myself “THESE are the kind of clients I want to book”! They are chic, funny, and wise. It’s taken me a long time to muster up the courage to advertise on APW (I don’t advertise anywhere else except for my Facebook page) but I know the kind of personal and business successes APW vendors have experienced and I know it’s because the readers are really great at boosting each other up and praising each other’s hard work and dedication. It’s rare to find that in the wedding world.

So with that, go enjoy. Look at her pictures, read about her, ogle her rates, and then drop her a line. And send me the pictures. I can't wait to see the magic you make together!

Posted in: Sponsored Posts | 7 Comments »

Oct 2010

Reclaiming Wife: Pulling On The Boots

This weekend, David and I decided to go out to dinner on Sunday night. Somewhere fun, just the two of us. We hadn’t done this in a while, and we’d been off doing our own things all day (Him - tailgating… yes, even intellectual types do this occasionally in Northern California. Me - watching a Sister Wives marathon, drinking tea, and working a little). So we picked a super hipster gastro-pub, and I meandered off to get dressed.

I figured I’d just wear my normal uniform, jeans and flats and an over-sized sweater, and dress it up with jewelry and makeup. I’d look cute enough, it would be easy. And then I found myself thinking back on the post about inspiration, and my conversation with Rebecca. How much harder is it to put on a skirt and tights than jeans? Instead of complaining that I never get a chance to put together an outfit, why didn’t I dress it up?

So I did. I pulled on the tiered grey skirt, and the black tights, and the wooden necklace I got at Mighty Summit. And then I reached for my flats. And right next to the flats were my grey cowboy boots, the ones I thrifted in Brooklyn this spring and almost never wear. So what the hell? I put them on.

And then I stood in front of the mirror wondering if I was the kind of girl who wore grey cowboy boots and black tights out to dinner. Was I, really? Was I that hip, ever? What would it take to be that girl?

And then I realized. What it would take to be that girl was wearing the outfit out of the house. That was it.

I had, after all, already been brave enough to buy the damn boots in the first place, I might as well wear them. So I twittered the outfit as proof, and clunked my way out the door. And you know what? I was one of the cutest damn girls in that hipster pub. And I loved it.

I’m telling you this story not to talk about fashion (because do we care what I wear on my feet? Not really.) I’m telling you this because it seems like an apt sum up for my life this last month. Since I got back from Mighty Summit, I wrote about the inspiration that I took away from that weekend, about challenging my relationship with money, and about actually going for what inspires us. And ever since then I’ve been gunning for my big goals and dreams.

And let me tell you, I’d almost forgotten what this feels like. Which is, in sum, hard. It’s exhausting. Continue reading Reclaiming Wife: Pulling On The Boots

Posted in: Entrepreneurship, Life, Meg's Thoughts, Personal Thoughts, Reclaiming Wife | 120 Comments »