reclaiming wife

Posts Tagged ‘San Francisco Wedding’

So today's wedding has a bit of a story that goes with it, about the APW virtual community and real life. When I still worked at an office every Thursday I'd go to the farmers market for lunch to get (amazing) tacos. While the tacos were phenomenal, I mostly really needed a moment to get away from corporate America, and feel like I was around my people for a few minutes—even if I still was wearing my stupid heels. So I slowly got to know the guy who served the tacos, and he'd greet me with a big grin and a, "Hey Meg! The usual?" every Thursday. It was really nice, in a time when not much felt nice. So, fast-forward to December, when I told the taco people I was quitting my job. They asked why, and I sort of stumbled around, mentioning the book and having a blog, as these conversations are always really confusing ("You can make a living blogging? People read those things?"). So I said, "I have a popular wedding blog," and suddenly my taco guy totally focused, and asked which one. I told him, and his whole face lit up. "Oh my god!" he said, "We pretty much exclusively used APW to plan our wedding! Holy sh*t! My wife loves APW! She's going to be so excited!" Turns out my taco guy was Roem, and his wife was Amber, and they're great. My people indeed. So, today I get to introduce you to them, and their blog White Picket Passport (about being middle-class and still traveling), and Amber's exceptionally wise wedding graduate post.

A friend recently asked me if planning a wedding was really “worth it” in the long run or whether, in hindsight, I’d have preferred elopement.  It’s hard to answer that question once the memory of the tears and stress fade and you are left with the lingering sense of love and support your wedding (hopefully) inspired.  You lose perspective; you are no longer sleep deprived from endless DIY projects and can finally enjoy your pictures without cataloguing every flaw.  So while you may not choose to recreate the painstakingly, handcrafted invitations resembling a music record in a sleeve, you can see the benefit of gathering loved ones for the biggest party you will ever throw.

As an encore bride, I knew I wanted a day that was true to both me and my fiancé, Roem.  I had done the big traditional country club wedding the first time and I wanted something different. Determined to avoid all those guilt laden “expectations” that so often come with wedding planning, I felt empowered to create a day that was exactly what we wanted.  Except it become all too clear that I had no idea what I wanted, and I became overwhelmed with so many decisions.  I had no point of reference for the kind of wedding I envisioned and I had no idea where to turn.  It was then that I fell headlong into the rabbit hole that is wedding planning websites.

Every morning for months I would wake up and face the day with increasing anxiety as I checked my overflowing google reader.  My stomach would clench with anxiety as I saw all those unread wedding blogs and I was convinced the one idea for the perfect centerpiece was buried in there somewhere. My convictions slowly eroded and my bridal calm evaporated.  I began to seriously doubt myself and in defending my ideas to others, I grew increasingly worried that my vision was fatally flawed.  In actuality my husband is the cool, artistic musician while I am the more traditional Type-A bride that insists we have a seating chart because that’s what PEOPLE DO AT WEDDINGS.   I began to worry that our wedding would come off as not eclectic and pretty, but instead just cheap.  I agonized over how much money we were putting into this one day event and I cried that we couldn’t afford to do anything that would seemingly make this process a little easier.

It was then that I discovered APW.  I felt the tension in my body release just a little as I read about Meg’s incredibly beautiful wedding and philosophy towards planning a practical wedding. I read the sassy comments and posts all over this website from insightful, understanding people and was brought to tears.  However experienced I thought I was at the beginning of wedding planning, I was still tirelessly trying to please everyone but myself.  I was challenging the establishment and railing against expectations in all other aspects of my life, but I still was buying into most of what the WIC was telling me. Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Amber & Roem

Today's wedding graduate post is all in the APW family, and I couldn't be more thrilled. Emily of Emily Takes Photos has been reading APW since the very very beginning. She was starting her photography business just as I was starting a blog, and somehow we stumbled upon each other. Emily's been an APW sponsor for about as long as I've had sponsors, and has shot... 20 or 25 (depending on how you're counting) Team Practical weddings. Plus, she shot our engagement pictures, and hosts APW books clubs, and everything. ANYWAY! A year and a half ago I got a really excited email from Emily that she and Ed had gotten engaged, and I knew it was going to be the most APW-esq wedding of all time (because **none** of us has gone to as many Team Practical weddings as Emily). And sure enough, the woman is wise, her wedding was hopping, and the joy exploding off the page. Oh. And I LOVE that she paid it forward by hiring a brand new central coast wedding photographer. Love. So, with out further ado, I bring you Emily:

I’m a wedding photographer, so naturally, I go to lots of weddings.  There comes a point every time during the reception, usually after the cake has been cut and the party starts to wind down, that I think to myself, “That’s it.  All those months of preparation and planning, and now it’s over.”  Don’t get me wrong, those parties never disappoint, but those moments during each wedding helped me keep perspective when it came to planning my own.  No matter how much time and effort I was going to put into this event, it would eventually end.  That single thought is what ultimately kept me grounded throughout the planning process.

I took on most of the work myself, though my husband did have a hand in planning.  I had worked as an event coordinator a few years back, and I had an arsenal of wedding inspiration from working in the industry, so it just made sense.  For a minute, and not much longer, I was worried that we fell into that category of bride-who-decides-everything and groom-who-nods-quietly, but I realized that was dumb, and the way were doing things made absolute sense for us and even mirrored our life together: he speaks up when he feels particular about something, the rest he leaves to me, knowing I’ll do what I think is best for both of us, making it pretty while I do it, because damn it, I care about the aesthetics!

By the time we got engaged, we had been living together for nearly four years, so I wasn’t expecting a huge transformation or enlightenment during our engagement or even after our wedding.  What surprised me is that during our engagement and planning, I learned more about my relationships with other people in my life than I did about Ed’s and my relationship.

I learned that my family (even the more prim and proper side) didn’t have as many opinions as I thought they would have. Would they think having a dinosaur-shaped piñata was odd?  Nope. Would they appreciate my smart-ass invitations?  Well, they kind of saw that one coming.  Would my Catholic-priest uncle think the wedding was an abomination if there was no mention of God during the ceremony?  Not even a little bit.  I learned that some friends, while they mean the best, really just won’t come through when you need them to, which can be kind of heart-breaking.  I also learned that other friends, who you don’t think you can count on, so you don’t even bother asking, will surprise you with support (or manual labor) when you least expect it. Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Emily & Ed

So on Monday I told you that both of this week's wedding graduates would be Bay Area APW Book Club ladies, because I wanted to celebrate the community part of this site... the real life community part. Well, Today's post is from Robin, who took me out to lunch on Saturday, and then wandered and chatted with me for hours. We didn't even talk about APW much, we just talked about our marriages, and our dreams, and where we were in our careers, and then we bought vintage shoes. Which is basically what APW is, but in real life. So I'm really grateful for that, and grateful to know that's starting to happen in DC and Boston and all over the place... not just here. And as part of building that community, later today Robin is going to give her (beautiful) dress away. So with that, here is Robin, saying a lot of really wise things and sharing her beautiful, sunny, San Francisco wedding.

We moved to the Bay Area from Philadelphia nearly three years ago, mere days after our engagement.  We took a year or so to settle in here before starting to plan our wedding.  When we started planning, we thought we wanted a wine country wedding.  It seemed quintessentially California, and a true destination for our guests, the majority of whom were flying in from the east coast.  We thought—easy.  A no fuss wine country wedding-- a small-ish guest list, a seasonal menu, extraordinary food and wine—done, right? Ha.  Every weekend we got in the car, and drove to wine county to visit potential venues.   We saw wineries, hotels, private estates, and outdoor gardens.  In the end, with a contract in hand, the idea of renting a tent, and a floor, and bathrooms, and transportation, and a catering tent…. it was too much.  We walked away.

In reality, I’m kind of a controlling person.  I like things done a certain way, and have pretty clear ideas about the right way for most things.  But for the wedding, I managed to conjure up this other self, and to transcend my need to manage EVERYTHING.  I just kept telling anyone who asked if I was nervous, or worried, that no matter what else happened, the bar would be open, and we would be MARRIED.  The rest was a bonus, and ultimately, didn’t matter. After briefly toying with a City Hall wedding, we went in search of a restaurant, or other space, that could accommodate a small, food-focused reception. We found a small hotel with a great outdoor space with views of the Bay, and with an amazing restaurant to host the reception.

Saying I managed to transcend my usually controlling self, does not mean that nothing mattered to me.  Of course it did.  I wanted our ceremony to be so well timed that it would start right after the Ferry Building’s clock tower bell chimed, so that the ceremony would end before the next chime.  But in retrospect, I can’t even tell you if this happened or not.  I had lists, and spreadsheets.  I had DIY projects, like knitting our chuppah.  But I didn’t finish the chuppah, or cross everything off of my lists,  and it seriously had no impact on how we experienced our day.

Making wedding choices is a lot like buying expensive items for your house. When we were shopping for a big TV (which we did for MONTHS), my husband would drag me into Best Buy and show me two or three TVs and ask me which one I liked better.  I very rarely could even tell the difference between them.  What I told him, was that ultimately, only one was coming home with us.  If we bought the second best, or even the fifth best, it wouldn’t seem second best, because we wouldn’t have the other one in our living room to make the comparison.

This is true of your wedding, too.   On your day—all of the things you didn’t choose (for financial, or any other reasons), that you worry you’ll feel badly about…they won’t be there for comparison.  And what you DID choose, will be wonderful.  And no one, including you, will be thinking, this wedding is nice, but it would have been so much better if she had upgraded these chairs. Continue reading Wedding Graduate: Robin & Ronnen

Back in March 2009, Kate Harrison Photography (loooonnnngggg time APW sponsor and I) decided to hatch a plan to make some magic happen as the economy continued to fall apart in slow motion. So Kate decided she was going to give away wedding photography to an APW reader, and after some discussion, we decided that it should go to someone who was experiencing some economic hardship. The contest we came up with was called Local Squared, because we wanted to do some good for Northern California, which is home for both of us.

Needless to say, I've been waiting to post the winners wedding for a long long time, and today I get to bring you Christen & Seth. There wedding makes my soul sing in a million ways. It's in the lovely Mendocino, where my grandmother lived for years, so each feature of the small down is familiar and well loved to me. It sings sweetly of the ocean, which I love. But more than I that, I love the way Christen talks about coming to grips with having a very traditional Catholic service. Because for all our wedding looked indie in pictures, we had a deeply traditional service, something I came to love for all the reasons Christen lists. So you're in for a real treat today. And the pictures. Ohmygod. I, um, couldn't help but use a lot of them, since I want to eat them all up. And with that, Christen:

Seth and I met seven years ago in the tiny, storybook village of Mendocino, CA—a windswept, coastal town frozen in time and in many ways isolated from the “real world”. Seth was living and working in Mendocino, 20 miles down a dirt road, in a one room cabin at the heart of a redwood forest. I was living in San Francisco and working as a theatre actress (while juggling other jobs) and jumped at the opportunity to perform in the bucolic village of Mendocino. The rest is long-winded and juicy, but I don’t have time to go into that. Our individual journeys up until that point were rambling to say the least— I’m still amazed that our paths crossed in the most unlikely of places. But wham, 7 years later, here we are.

We chose Mendocino as the wedding location because it represents our beginning and is dear to our hearts. We are California transplants, so all of our family and many friends are from far flung parts of the country and world. We realized that a Mendocino wedding would be difficult for many people-- travel time and costs would be prohibitive. Therefore, we wanted the journey and weekend to be a magical escape for those willing and able to make the trip. Despite the obstacles and difficulties along the way, we tried to keep all aspects of the wedding focused on family and friends and our gratitude for the role they play in our lives. I am still amazed and exhausted that we pulled it off. While it was fabulous, worth it, and one of the best days of my life, I am also very glad it is over.

The wedding planning process wasn’t easy. I always assumed I’d get married, but never envisioned or imagined the details. Added to that-- I’m a pleaser, a second guesser, and kinda shy. Many aspects of a wedding—the planning, the actual event—are a nightmare to someone like me. I worry too much about other people’s opinions, feelings, and expectations and I tend to put other people’s needs first. This makes me adaptable and flexible and easy to be around, but leads to difficulty when trying to plan a wedding and blend such a diverse group of people. Seth was raised by hippy, intellectual, non-conforming, artist parents in isolated parts of Newfoundland and Maine, while I was raised by devout, hardworking, but fun-loving, conservative Catholics from the Midwest. Though our family’s had met and got along swimmingly, I worried a lot about pleasing both parties and blending these diverse communities.


The idea that every aspect of the wedding would be a reflection of ME, the BRIDE was horrifying. I cared deeply about many things, those choices were easy. But despite the myth, a wedding is not the Bride’s Big Day. Or at least, I don’t think it should be. And it’s not even the Bride and Groom’s big day. In a lot of ways, it’s about everyone else (our parents, our families, our fabulous friends) and I’m absolutely ok with that. While Seth and I went into the process wanting to throw a party that reflected US and do things OUR way, I think this is naive. Weddings are all about bringing people together, so compromise is key.

CEREMONY
Seth and I definitely wanted to be married in a hand-crafted, outdoor ceremony. We share a profound love for the outdoors and nature is our common church. For my parents, however, our marriage would not be real unless it was a Catholic marriage performed by a Catholic priest. But the Catholic Church sees marriage as a sacrament that must be performed inside a church, no exceptions.

At first it frustrated me that my parents would not budge, but I understood their position—it is their faith and my upbringing and I am grateful for it. (I am spiritual in my own way, and use tools from a Catholic foundation to create my own multifaceted, non-denominational approach to the mysteries of life. Nonetheless, I am inescapably a Catholic at heart.)

Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Christen & Seth and The Local Squared Wedding

A few months ago, when I did the APW reader survey, I found out that Team Practical brides run, unsurprisingly, older than the average bride. Which I love. What I don't love is that this age diversity has not, so far, been recognized in Wedding Graduate posts. Which, frankly, sucks. In big wedding media, brides are either A) 22 or B) fabulously wealthy (what's up with that, by the way? If, as women, we're not 22 we need to be millionaires, or married to them?) On APW, we have, thank god, done better than that... but not as much better as I'd like. So I'm falling over myself thrilled to introduce Theresa (who as 37 when they married) and Clark (who was 41). While still spring chickens, they bring a sense of wisdom and experience to their wedding day that is So Damn Refreshing to see. Wheeeee! Couples who are like the readers! Hooray! But that's not all. Theresa and Clark, well. Add Mills College and henna and interfaith and kidlets and love and joy.... and you've got something close to how magical their wedding was. And with that, I bring you Theresa:

....

It's been a little over six months since we got married and current, stressful life happenings have really brought me to reflect upon the day a lot.  Our day. was. amazing.  This simple little word pretty much sums it up.  It sounds so cliche and didn't think I would use that word to describe it.  It's not like I didn't think we could have an amazing day, I just didn't realize or have any clue on how amazing it would feel, right down to my bones.

I'm not the girly girl type or the woman who has thought about her wedding day since she was a little girl.  When I got married, I was a month shy of turning 37 and my husband turned 41 the week before we got married.  We had lived very fulfilling lives prior to meeting each other, full of travel, wonderful family and good friends.  Honestly, I really never thought I'd get married and I was fine with that. I didn't want to feel like a princess, I dislike princesses.  I wanted a simple dress I felt comfortable wearing, not something I would not recognize myself in.  I wanted purple shoes and no veil. My husband and I are really emotional, deep feeling, laid back, fun people and we wanted our day to reflect US...not the bridal mag "us", or other people's opinion of "us", just. us.

Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Theresa & Clark

This post is for every one of you who said last week you really wanted a city hall wedding, but were afraid you would regret it, or couldn't get your family to agree to it. Because no. As I was writing this post, big alligator tears kept forming in my eyes... partially because San Francisco's City Hall is a special place for me, and partially because it's rare seen a bride look as completely, wonderfully, radiantly happy as Mayi (and that's exactly how I felt, so light and so free). So take this post, and email it to the people near and dear to you who are worried that a wedding at City Hall won't be magic. Because Mayi and Jon... they are walking on air. (Oh, and please note the ammmaaaaazzzziiiiinnnnnnggggg El Tonayense taco truck... scrumptious and affordable. We didn't end up getting them for our wedding picnic, but we're planning an anniversary party some year, JUST so we can use them.) Take it Mayi: Continue reading Wedding Graduate: Mayi & Jon And The San Francisco City Hall Wedding