{Unfake Wedding Feature} Sarah & Tony, Part II

Welcome to Part II of Tony and Sarah’s wonderful wedding. Make sure you catch up and read the Prequel and Part I if you’ve missed it. Let’s jump right into the ceremony and reception, OK? Oh, and the detail shots. LOVE me some detail shots!

Please note the official wedding notebook covers.

The ring-bearer totally got handsy with mom, who was reciting (from memory) from The Velveteen Rabbit.

What was your biggest day-of crisis and how did you handle it (or rather, not handle?)?

Our family and friends (thanks, Louise!) helped set up the venue before the ceremony. Since this was a DIY wedding, we had loaded my minivan with (a) all of the alcohol, sodas, waters and juice boxes for the night, (b) all of the décor, and (c) my dad’s hand truck. The day before, Tony and I had made about 8 gallons of Sangria (here’s the recipe we used) to serve during the cocktail hour. The Sangria was in two 5-gallon coolers. My dad had loaded up the hand truck with cases of wine and the two coolers of sangria, and asked me where they went. I was in a hurry, so I pointed toward the bar area that was set up in the herb garden, and for some reason, he accidentally picked up one of the coolers by the lid, spilling four gallons of sangria all over the patio where the ceremony seating would be. Luckily, we had more than enough of everything (we over-bought and were able to return nearly $600 worth of beverages the week after the wedding). The patio was cleaned off, and since we didn’t have an aisle runner, nothing was amiss.

What was your biggest wedding planning crisis and how did you handle it (or rather, not handle?)?

We had quite a few hurdles during wedding planning, but the biggest one by far was my mom’s health crisis. Perversely, this ended up being a blessing in disguise. About three months after we canceled the wedding and moved back to Arizona, my mom’s doctors informed her that her leukemia was in remission, which meant that the fluid that had filled her lungs in early April was a side-effect of a medication she no longer needed. As a result, we were able to have my entire family at the wedding, including my mom and my aunt, as well as other friends who could not have come, and we had a wedding that was much easier on our budget.

Sarah got blocked! Her brother literally had his hand between their faces!

Who was the biggest pain in the ass on your wedding day (you can opt out of this if you’d like)?

Honestly, I probably was. Because we had chosen a venue that required us to be in charge of everything and we didn’t have room in our budget to hire a coordinator, Tony and I spent the week before the wedding schlepping all over town to complete last-minute chores. When the wedding day rolled around, I was tired and cranky. I snapped out of it by the time we drove to the venue, but the morning was not fun.

T30SB Commentary: Whoa there, Sarah.  If by morning you mean before we got there, then maybe. Otherwise, you were a doll. I think the biggest pain in the ass on your wedding day was one of the venue minions. We weren’t allow to start setting up until 4pm, or something like that. We had no time for shenanigans. At ten minutes after 4pm, the venue people didn’t have the tables out so we could start seriously setting up. I inquired within to get the tables going and I got ATTITUDE from some lady about start up times, etc. She was pretty bitchy. I pointed to the clock on the wall in her office, raised my eyebrows and said, “YOU’RE late. Hop to.” I got a little more attitude, but I also got the tables, stat. 

What was the biggest waste of money that you loved?

Just weeks before we canceled the San Francisco wedding, I found a collection of 20 black-and-white antique travel postcards from San Francisco. We had the postcards double-matted and framed in using archival acid-free mats, to use as a guest book. The frame is HUGE. Even though the frame had nothing to do with a desert garden wedding, we loved it so much that we decided to use it anyway. Our daughter signed it four times, and her friend misspelled “marriage” as “mariage.” We have the frame hung over our mantel in our living room, and it makes me smile every day.

What was the biggest waste of money that you wish you’d passed on?

For our San Francisco reception, we had collected a large number of teapot and tea cup sets and chopsticks. Our plan was to serve hot tea with dinner and then give the sets (washed, of course) to our family and friends at the end of the trip. We ended up giving the tea sets as gifts to our wedding helpers at the rehearsal dinner, but I wish we had not purchased them. I would have liked to have had that money available to buy gifts that were personalized for the people who helped us.

What did you love that was also the cheapest?

I loved all of our crafts, and its so fun to see the butterfly corsages in the photos.

Oh my GOD, I love these last two photos. Sarah with that knife and Tony DYING for some cake. Love.

What was the most unexpected thing that happened (not necessarily a bad thing, just a surprise)?

The sangria spill was a bit of a shocker.

T30SB Commentary: I didn’t witness the Sangria Incident, but I smelled it before it saw it. Hello to 4 gallons of alcohol marinated fruit! After it was cleaned up, there was no smell. When I saw the mess, I said, “For the love of God, please don’t tell Sarah!” Then they told me she already knew and I had to shrug it off. Can’t cry over spilled Sangria.

What was the funniest thing that happened?

Our ceremony had many funny moments. When I reached the altar, I asked my son if he wanted to stay up front with us, and he hollered, “No! I’m playing with Zack!” Then he made a mad dash back down the aisle, where my sister-in-law (the Kid Wrangler) caught him. While my sister-in-law was reciting the two readings, her son walked up to join her. Then he started doing yoga poses all around her, until he ended up laying back and kicking his foot up her skirt. Tony cried during his vows, and without even thinking about it, I leaned in to give him a kiss (because, c’mon!), and my brother poked his finger between us and yelled, “Not! Yet!” I wrote about a couple of other funny moments here.

T30SB Commentary: The kiss block was excellent. I also loved the brother-officiant notebook liners: one side was the Star Wars movie poster pic and the other side was “Weddings for Dummies.” And the kids, oh the kids.  Kids were everywhere!

What was the most ooey-gooey, tear-jerking moment?

About 20 minutes before the ceremony, the kids were busy playing and the adults were off greeting guests and finishing the set-up. I sent the photographers off to get photos of details and guests arriving. I grabbed Tony’s hand, and we quietly wandered through the back area of the gardens. We found a secluded spot where we read our vows to each other before we had to say them in front of everyone. Then we spent the next ten minutes or so sitting quietly together on a bench. We could hear people arriving and the buzz of the wedding taking shape, but nobody saw us until Tony tried to sneak a soda from our bartender. Our photographers caught us sharing a soda, but those 15 minutes alone right before the ceremony are my favorite part of the day. When my brother found us a few minutes later, I was calm and ready.

T30SB Commentary: Tony reading his vows, hands down. Couldn’t hear a word of what he said, but the look on his face made me choke up all the same.

Did you DIY? What parts?

Did we DIY? Ha. Hahahahaha. Yes. Practically everything. We planned and coordinated the entire thing, including the rehearsal dinner. I made my bouquet out of vintage enamel brooches and a bath toy. The kids and I made the “flowers” for the flower girls’ bouquets and for the tables out of egg cartons, old buttons, and floral wire. We made the Yay! Flags, 10 origami crane mobiles, origami butterfly stick pins and extra origami butterflies to scatter around the guest book and dessert buffet tables. We made all of the signs. We designed and made our save the dates and invitations (twice). We made the escort cards and out-of-town boxes. We made our playlists for the rehearsal, dinner and dancing music. We wrote our ceremony and vows. We ordered, picked up and returned (unopened) all of the drinks (if you don’t think that’s DIY, you try lifting cases and cases of wine, beer, champagne, sparkling cider, soda, water, and juice boxes in and out of a minivan 6 times in three days). We made 8 gallons of sangria. My mom made the ring pillow. We thrifted the cake stands and milk glass vases. For our San Francisco wedding, we also made decorative chopstick sleeves (we ended up giving the chopsticks away at the rehearsal dinner). We did so much DIY that I’m certain I have forgotten a project or four.

Where did you go on your honeymoon?

We couldn’t afford a traditional honeymoon, but thanks to frequent flyer miles, required travel for business, hotwire, discount City Passes for San Francisco, pre-existing annual Disney passes that were about to expire and plenty of ingenuity, Tony and I were able to spend four days in Chicago together over Veteran’s Day weekend, and we took a week-long driving trip with the kids up to San Francisco, with a stopover at Disneyland on the way there.

If you could do it all over again, what would you change, if anything?

First, I would make sure we had a good sound system for both the ceremony and the reception. Second, I would skip the complicated destination wedding plan altogether. The coordination and expense for both our guests and us were hellish. Even though the reason we canceled our wedding was scary, when we switched the wedding so that it would be happening close to home, everything became infinitely easier and more affordable. We would have been much better off if we had simply started that way instead of wasting time and money on an unworkable plan.

T30SB Commentary: Agree on the sound system. It was SO HARD to hear. Advice to future brides: considering a PA system? When in doubt, GET IT. Best to be well-heard than not.

Congratulations to Tony, Sarah, Bean and Bug!*

*Sarah, I hope I did you proud with this. It really was an honor to feature it.

{Unfake Wedding Feature} Sarah & Tony, Part I

If you missed the Prequel to Sarah and Tony’s Unfake Wedding, you can read it here. I’ll keep this intro bullshit short since I already wrote my part. Now it’s Sarah’s turn. 

Welcome to the Unfake Wedding of Sarah &Tony!

The most important question: wedding night…did you or didn’t you?

You betcha! You don’t wait 22 years to marry your high school sweetheart and then skip the wedding night. Our venue required us to end the reception by 10:30, so we were home nice and early, and our kids had a sleepover with their cousins. We had decided to skip renting a hotel room since our house was so close to the venue, and I am really glad that our first married night was spent in our house. Somehow that made it extra special.

Please take the time to tell me all the vendors you used.

Photographer  Kelly Rashka

DJ/Band  Mariachi Alma Tucsonense (ceremony and cocktail hour music); our personal playlists, enhanced for dance-ability using Ask the DJ software (rehearsal, dinner and dancing).

T30SB Commentary: Best wedding music EVER.

Ceremony/Reception Venue  Tucson Botanical Gardens

Ceremony Venue Planner  The Tucson Botanical Gardens event coordinator, Cassandra, was wonderful to work with.

Transportation We used Tony’s Mini Cooper!

Guest Hotel  Embassy Suites Paloma Village

Flowers  We did not have live flowers, but DIY’d flower substitutes.

Dress  Marine blue Teri Jon evening dress purchased off-the-rack from Saks.

Hair/Make-Up  Margarita GoDiva

Tuxedos/Suits  Tony’s suit came from Nordstrom, our son’s outfit came from Dillard's. They bought their matching shoes at Payless Shoe Source (Tony’s shoes cost $4, and I don’t even want to think about the conditions under which $4 leather shoes were manufactured).

Ties  The Tie Bar

Flower Girl Dress Girls Dress Shop

Bride’s and Flower Girls’ Hair Accessories TruLu Couture

Rings Rambling Rose Estate Jewelry, Old Towne Orange, CA

Bride’s Jewelry  Azure Treasures

Groom’s Cufflinks & Tie Tack Sherry Truitt

Bride’s Wrap Silk Siren

T30SB Commentary: Silk Siren’s work is amazeballs and the photography simply does not do it justice.

Flower Girl’s Shoes  Sketchers “twinkle toes” sneakers.

Invitations  Plantable paper from Of the Earth (we printed our own invitations), design of invitations and RSVP postcards by Lizzie and Isaiah from Love Your Way.

Catering  Acacia Catering

Rehearsal Dinner Catering  Shlomo & Vito’s

Bartender Vicky Randall

Linen Rentals  Special Events Linens

Desserts  Nadine’s Bakery

“Guest Book” Framing  Aaron Brothers

Who was your favorite vendor and why?

I don’t think I have a specific favorite vendor. Everyone we worked with helped us in such a great way. I would hire them all again in a heartbeat.

Was there a “method to your madness” in choosing your vendors?

No. We luckily bumped into fantastic vendors like a pinball in the arcade. We picked the venue because it was beautiful, and our daughter loves it. The venue required us to use the caterer. The event coordinator for the venue recommended the bartender and the linen rental company. I was already familiar with the bakery. One of my many blog friends, Mouse, recommended our photographer, and our photographer recommended the stylist. We found our rings when we were out junk-shopping one weekend. My mom had heard and loved the mariachi band, so we hired them for her. Tony had a specific style of jacket in mind, and we happened to see something that would work in Nordstrom, and I happened to have about $270 in reward credits, so we bought his suit there. Of course, we used TruLu Couture for the hair accessories because I knew her.

T30SB Commentary: Friendors can be a blessing or a curse. I’m always terrified to do work for a friend, but I’ve been very lucky so far! If you are a bride and are lucky to have a Friendor in the wedding industry, do yourselves a favor and pay them somehow for their services. I gave my Friendor wedding planner a framed oil painting I found in Viet Nam that, for some reason, spoke to me of her (she’s from Singapore). Do something to pay them serious homage for their hard work. I think my “payment” to my Friendor only scratched the surface of the debt I owe her for her magnanimous gift to me and The Candyman.

How long did you take to plan your wedding?

The wedding we had is not the wedding we planned. We spent a year planning and crafting for a wedding. Our plan was a destination wedding in San Francisco, in which we would rent a Victorian in the Alamo Square area of San Francisco that was large enough to house us, including my two kids, and all of my family, including my parents, brothers, sisters-in-law and niece and nephews. We had reserved the fourth floor gallery of City Hall and a classical guitarist for our ceremony; then we planned to take all of our guests on a rented party cable car back to the Victorian, which would be set up for a dinner party at which we planned to serve Chinese food from our favorite San Francisco restaurant and an assortment of cakes and cupcakes. After we had everything planned and had mailed our invitations, we learned that my mom could not travel due to her health. Since the whole idea had been to give my family a once-in-a-lifetime chance to take a vacation together (I was 11 years old the last time my family traveled together), we knew we could not have the wedding without my mom there. After Tony and I talked about the situation together, and then with our kids, we decided to cancel the wedding and move it to Tucson, which is the city where Tony and I grew up and where my entire family still lives. I spent one day canceling the San Francisco wedding. At that point, I was in a daze, worried about my mom and other family and job-related concerns, so I no longer had time to spend days or weeks researching venues and vendors. The day after I canceled all of our San Francisco contracts, I picked a new date and signed contracts with our venue, the caterer (which is the required caterer for the venue), a local mariachi band my mom loves, and had sent an inquiry to the photographer. About a week before all of this happened, I had already accepted a job that required us to move back to Tucson anyway. As a result of moving and switching jobs, we did nothing for the wedding for the next five months, until I realized that our invitations needed to be mailed and that we needed to get cracking on a new to-do list. So, we spent a year making crafts and planning one wedding, and we spent 2 months planning the wedding we actually had.

How many guests did you invite versus how many came?

Because we had space limitations and budget worries for the San Francisco plan, we initially invited 45 people to our San Francisco wedding, expecting that about 28 people would show up. We did not invite a lot of Tucson people because of the cost of travel. In fact, we did not invite my beloved aunt, who is my mom’s older sister because we knew she would not be able to manage travel to and walking around in San Francisco. When we moved the wedding to Tucson, we had more space and expanded the guest list, but we knew we would lose some people who could not to travel to Tucson. We ended up inviting 87 people, and 45 people came. We did not have any no-shows who had RSVP’d.

What was your budget?

We didn’t have a set budget. Our goal was to have a relaxed, informal but still pretty wedding for the least cost possible. The San Francisco wedding plan had several high cost items (City Hall, cable car and Victorian rentals, photography, tourism/travel) that meant that we had very little budget for any of the pretty things like décor or even a wedding dress. Frankly, the whole plan was turning into a budget nightmare. When we moved the wedding to Tucson, we were able to eliminate almost all of the high-cost items from our budget (no more accommodations and travel costs, no separate ceremony and reception rental costs, the photographer’s rates were half the cost of the San Francisco photographer, no need to rent transportation, the band was less money, etc., etc.). As a result, our total costs for everything -- including money we could not recoup from the San Francisco planning -- ended up somewhere in the range of $12,000 to $14,000, but that was spread out over nearly two years.

Did you include rings and/or the honeymoon in your budget?

The total costs includes everything: all the rings, our honeymoon and family moon, the wedding, the rehearsal dinner, photography, attire for all four of us, décor, favors, band, music, food, drinks, desserts. It’s all in there. Our rings were (relatively) inexpensive because my rings are antiques, which cost substantially less than new retail rings. One thing to note, however, is that some things that would otherwise have cost money were free-to-us. For example, we have a lot of crafting and art tools and supplies on hand. We had friends who were married shortly after we were engaged, and they gave us all of the votive holders, LED candles, and other miscellaneous décor, which saved us a bundle. I own a minivan, and my dad loaned us his hand truck so we didn’t need to rent a van to schlep the supplies. Tony owns a cute little Mini Cooper, so we didn’t rent transportation for us. My brother loaned us the sound system for the reception, and he served as our officiant (no officiant fees). Our blog friends sent us a lovely gift to help us pay for our photography after we lost the photography contest, and the artwork for our invitations, RSVP cards and thank you notes was a wedding gift.

Were you over or under budget? By how much?

I can’t really say because we did not set a specific budget goal other than “free is always better than not free, and if it’s not free, what’s the cheapest way we can do X?” When we started wedding planning, we had more wiggle room in our budget, but by the time the wedding rolled around, my salary had been cut in half, which meant that things were really tight. Since we did not set a specific budget number, we were happy that everything together we had cost less than half of what the San Francisco wedding alone would have cost.

How large was your bridal party?

We did not have a traditional wedding party. My daughter and niece were flower girls, my son was supposed to be the ring bearer, but he chickened out at the last minute, so he walked up the aisle with Tony and waived a Yay! Flag, and one of my nephews stepped in as ring bearer. One sister-in-law was our reader, and my other sister-in-law was the official Kid Wrangler. One of my brothers was our officiant (ordained for free by American Marriage Ministries), my other brother was my witness, and Tony’s friend Karen acted as Tony’s witness.

Did you have favors for your guests? If so, what were they? How much did you spend?

For our San Francisco wedding, we had made wooden luggage tags that we had planned to use as favors and escort cards. To make the tags, I did a photo-emulsion of a vintage travel poster on one side, decoupaged our guests’ names and phone numbers on the reverse side, stained the entire tag using a “Golden Oak” color to age it, and then applied several layers of polyurethane until there was a thick, protective poly coating. We finished them with a sturdy luggage tag cable. The tags came out great, but we didn’t have tags for all of our guests because we had expanded our guest list when we moved the wedding. The tags took many weeks to complete, and I just wasn’t up to major craft projects after we canceled the first wedding, so we gave the tags we had to our friends and family privately. The costs for this project included the unfinished wooden tags (from Save-On Crafts), 12 sheets of 8 ½ X 11 cardstock, brown-toned paper, Elmer’s washable school glue, Modpodge, Golden Oak furniture stain, a foam paintbrush, polyurethane, luggage tag cables, an Epson inkjet printer, and Photoshop. The only things that we didn’t have on hand were the wooden tags, brown-toned paper, and luggage cables. I think we spent $25 total and made 75 tags.

In honor of our venue, which is a botanical garden that teaches sustainable desert landscaping and farming, our invitations and the inserts in our Out-of-Town boxes were made out of plantable paper, so our guests received a “favor” of wildflower seeds with our paper products. We purchased the papers (backing paper, 8 ½ X 11 sheets, envelopes, vegetable-dyed “bands” and a vegetable dyed twistable rope-like paper for tying everything together) and printed everything on our home printer. I addressed the envelopes by hand, and we used standard-issue postage. We spent about $4.25 per invitation, including postage, with a ton of leftover paper and envelopes that we used for other projects.

During the week when I was busy canceling our first wedding and making arrangements for the replacement wedding, I folded origami butterflies in the evenings using some beautiful papers that I had purchased on our last trip to San Francisco. I made little antennae out of some old acrylic paints and fishing line that we had on hand, and then I hot glued the butterflies to stick pins (I spent about $5 on a bag of 100 silver stick pins) to make corsages. We had plantable flower paper leftover from the invitations, so I tore the paper into small pieces, wrote each guest’s name on the paper using an art pen to use as escort cards, and we attached a butterfly corsage to each escort card. Since this project was done using all leftover materials except the stick pins, I have no idea how much it actually cost per favor.

San Francisco City Hall does not allow you to throw anything like rice, bird seed, or flower petals following a wedding. They also do not allow sparklers. We therefore decided to make Yay! Flags using natural colored fabric mini-flags we purchased from Oriental Trading and iron-on transfers. We made our designs in Photoshop and printed the transfers on our home printer. Since we already had the software and ink for the printer, our costs were limited to the transfers and the flags themselves.

We made Out-of-Town boxes that had 1 bottle of water, a travel package of Tylenol, a travel package of Excedrin, a biscotti, a brownie from a local company (Fairy Tale Brownies), a bag of baked chips, a tourist guide from the Visitor’s Bureau (free), a map to the wedding locations (airport, hotels, our house for the rehearsal, and the Botanical Gardens), and a letter from us. We used tissue paper that I had on hand in our wrapping paper box to line the boxes and decorated the boxes with butterfly and hummingbird stamps using a black ink pad. For guests who hadn’t received their luggage tags yet, we included the tags in the box. I think we spent about $5 per box, but we only had 10 boxes to make, so it was totally worth it.

For the kids, we purchased little goody boxes and filled them with party toys and trinkets. The total cost per box was $2.

Since the kids were too little for the butterfly stick pins, I pulled out some sippy cups that I had leftover from a birthday party. The cups (purchased years ago from Oriental Trading) are the kind that have paper inserts so that the kids can decorate them. I wrote each child’s name on the paper and decorated the paper with the butterfly stamps. This was a no-cost project because I had the materials on hand.

For the kids, we also had a piñata that I filled with candy. The piñata cost $20, and I spent about $7 on candy. Totally worth it.

I have a collection of milk glass candy dishes. We served butter mints in the candy dishes on each table (I left the lids at home so they wouldn’t get broken). We tried to make the butter mints ourselves, but they didn’t turn out, so I ended up buying a gallon-sized box of them from Amazon. I don’t remember how much this cost.

We decided to do the 1001 crane project. To display the cranes, we assembled them into 10 mobiles of roughly 100 cranes each. At the end of the wedding, we sent guests who wanted a mobile home with one, keeping two for ourselves (one for each of our kids). I don’t know what this cost, but we spent about six months completing the crane mobiles. The supplies included: origami paper, pre-formed pressed board wreaths with holes pre-drilled, beads, fishing line, and hot glue. You can see the instructions for this project here.

Finally, our wedding was the week before Halloween. On a last-minute trip to Michael’s, we purchased three tubes of neon bracelets that were on sale for safe trick-or-treating. Each tube cost $1 and contained 25 bracelets. The neon was a huge hit.

T30SB Commentary: I ♥ my luggage tag. The Candyman uses his too!

Did you include any special family traditions?

We wrote our own ceremony, so we didn’t include existing family traditions, but it was important to us to include our children in the ceremony in a meaningful way. Tony said vows to the kids, and we included a family sand ceremony.

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You’re going to have to check back to see the final installment of Sarah & Tony’s wedding! You’ll not want to miss any of their amazing DIY details, nor the gooey romance that is Sarah and Tony!

{Unfake Wedding Feature} Sarah & Tony, The Prequel

Lyn, Becca, Sarah, T30SB. Photo by Kelly Rashka.

I wish I could remember when I first found Sarah’s blog, My San Francisco Budget Wedding (now known as My Inconceivable Life). I do know that when I found it and started reading, I immediately left a comment saying something like, “Where have you been this whole time?” I felt immediately connected to her style of writing and loved her DIY-heavy approach to her family-centric wedding. We became fast blog-friends. I loved that she and Tony grew up in the same era that I did and would let their “I ♥ the 80’s” freak flags fly. It’s a tough row to hoe, being a huge fan of the 80’s. Not everyone holds the same passion for The Dead Milkmen, Siouxsie & The Banshees or Rancid as us 80’s lovers do.

Over the course of the next year, I would meet Sarah as well as other blog friends, make her hair toy for her wedding, sponsor a photography contest on this blog that she decided to enter at the last minute and lost by *this much* and then attend her wedding, not in San Francisco as originally planned, but in Tucson, AZ. Who knew?

For those of you not familiar with Sarah and Tony and their amazing story, here’s a quick recap: They dated seriously in high school and parted ways as most teenage couples do. Tony married and divorced. Sarah married, had 2 kids and divorced. Twenty years later, they reconnect on Facebook. Both originally from Tucson, Arizona, conveniently Tony is in San Diego while Sarah is in Orange County. They decided to meet.

Their story is one of the single most real-life romance novels I’ve ever read. I can’t read her old posts without tearing up. Remember that heart-wrenching love you had as a 14-year old girl? Remember that giddy feeling that kept you up at night, listening to your romance-music-of-choice (Depeche Mode’s Somebody [dude, the ORIGINAL emo band] was a personal fave). Remember the passion that seemed to take over your soul, before wisdom and experience kicked in and kept you from behaving like a total douchebag? Yeah, they got to go back to that…and stay.

However, all good things do not come without a price tag and Sarah and Tony had to pay mightily to see their dream through. Painful divorces, sick family, job changes, moving…all of it seemed to come at them all at once. As cheesy as it sounds, love persevered.

I’m making this Unfake Wedding a multi-parter because like me, Sarah is all about the details. This wedding was so personal, so lovely and so untraditional in so many ways, that you couldn’t help but be moved be the whole experience. I was honored to be a part of it and feel the same way about sharing it here.

But before I let Sarah tell her story, I’ve got mine.

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When me, Sarah, Tony, Becca and Lyn all met, it was really odd. I mean, how often does someone you’ve never met invite you to Disneyland, to stay at their house and just hang out for the weekend? And who accepts that kind of invitation?

Sarah did.

Me, Lyn and Becca do.

Meeting these ladies was one of the best decisions I ever made. Going to California last January was the shot in the arm this freshly-unemployed chick needed.

After that fun experience, we got invitations to Tony & Sarah’s wedding in San Francisco. I was really excited to be a part of their wedding day and I wanted to take The Candyman and maybe take some time for us there. He’s never been to San Francisco and I want him to experience the great things about that town. But then, just a week or so after getting the invitation, I get an email from Sarah about how they were changing everything about their wedding. Not just a quick venue or date change, but the whole city. From San Francisco to Tucson.

SCREEEEEEEEECH! Wait, WHAT? Frantic email to Sarah of the areyouokayohmygodwhatsgoingon variety. Sick mom, no choices, decisions made. Boom. Just like that. Like most things thrown in her path, Sarah seems to take a minute and just sort of look at things and then she makes some smart decisions very quickly. This isn’t to say she doesn’t freak out over things. She does, but never in a way that’s regretful, which I think is so important in life. Never regret, but learn. Always.

Sarah is self-described as one who doesn’t make friends easily. I don’t think she gives herself enough credit, but who of us do? When she tried on her wedding dress for us that night after we’d come back from Disneyland, exhausted but wired, drinking wine, she confessed she had no bridesmaids and that we had been, in terms of girlie-support, her cyber-bridesmaids. As a bridesmaid, I tend to take myself very seriously. I have a duty to fulfill. Hearing her say that suddenly made the experience we were sharing more important. I think we were all touched by her honesty and how vulnerable that statement might have made her feel. I know I would have felt insecure as hell.

A few weeks before her wedding, I emailed Sarah, including Lyn and Becca, telling her that we wanted to help as much as we could with all the bullshit that a DIY-heavy wedding includes (there’s lots of schlepping, set-up, tear down). There was a THREE PAGE LONG to-do list sent back. Right on. This is on like Donkey Kong.

Coordinating the cybermaids was no easy feat. I am in North Carolina, Becca is in LA, Lyn is in Santa Barbara. We coordinated flights (Becca sent a spreadsheet organized in  low to high cost vs. most time spent with the bride/friends options. Very helpful.) to meet in Phoenix, then rented a car, driving the 2+ hours to Tucson, timed to be there precisely when the rehearsal dinner started. That would have been PERFECT had Lyn’s plane not be delayed for a gazillion hours. We got there just as the last stragglers were departing the rehearsal dinner. No one had started cleaning up, they left all the food out, covered and warmed for us. Sarah saved the last few glasses of a VERY nice bottle of wine to share. She gave us beautiful Chinese tea sets and sets of chopsticks in DIY chopstick sleeves. The atmosphere in their home and backyard was just lovely. Beautiful lights strung across the yard. Long tables set up cafeteria style, but warmed with candlelight, friendship and that anticipatory buzz that comes along with planned, life-changing events.

We didn’t stay long. We still needed to find the hotel, check-in, get settled. And it was 11pm Tucson time, nearly 1 am East coast time. I was running low on fuel. But no, once settled in the room, Lyn would have none of it and busted out her travel whiskey. I cried “Uncle!” after just one and headed off to bed. Becca and Lyn stayed up, misbehaving.

Lyn's Bag-o-Whiskey.

The next day, we got half-way ready and out of the house to Sarah’s. We ironed, tucked, zipped and laughed. There were kids everywhere. As someone who doesn’t have kids or spend a lot of time around kids? Children can be worrisome. I don’t want to accidentally drop an f-bomb. I don’t want to make them cry. I want them to get out of my way. Sarah’s level of calm with her kids was like, fucking amazing. She’s like the freaking Zen Kid Master.

Lyn and Becca zipping. Photo by Kelly Rashka.

Once Sarah was dressed and pretty, we cybermaids busted ass over to venue to set up. Her mini-van was packed to the max with crane mobiles, egg crate flowers, cake stands, gallons of Sangria. Everything was labeled and we had The List. We divided and conquered. Becca and Lyn took the outside; hanging mobiles, setting up the PA, table decor. I took the inside; dessert tables, guest stations, more mobile hanging. Her family took care of the bar and liquor stuffs.

Lyn, contemplating crane mobile transportation and mini-van extraction. Photo by Kelly Rashka.

We left the venue to head back to Sarah’s to change. We seriously had 15 minutes to get dressed and do hair and make-up. I’d had my hair up all day in these weird clips in order to keep it scrunched up, so that it would look good. It’s my version of walking around in rollers. I mean, I went to Jamba Juice with my hair piled on top of my head, looking like a warrior Amazon woman.

With Lyn, watching Sarah getting her hair did. It looks like I’ve got may hair in a banana clip. And I ran around the city of Tucson like this. All day. Nice…. Photo by Kelly Rashka.

Anyway, my hair ended up looking good for once, though it was flinging all over the freaking place whilst I boogied down later that night. Meh. I have a lot of hair. I deal with it.

We got back to the wedding venue in plenty of time to tweak. Move that cake over here, straighten those escort cards. Sadly, at this point, Lyn was feeling like a bag full of assholes. Something, whether the whiskey the night before or the Arizona tap water she was chugging (we warned her to stick with bottled!), Lyn was starting to look a little peaked. Pale. Clammy. Lacking in all aspects of her usual snark. She sipped ginger ale and ate lightly, until it was cake time. I suggested a little hair of the dog and surprisingly, she perked up some after a cocktail. She was feeling well enough to get her dance on by the end of the night.

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You’ll learn more about the wedding in the official feature.

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After we packed up the reception and got back to the hotel, we were exhausted, but we’d had such a wonderful night. We dove into the snacks from her OOT boxes.

My arty OOT box photo op. LOVE my luggage tags!

The next morning we dragged ass back to Phoenix, running late, literally running to catch my flight. No time to say proper good-byes. Quick hugs all around in the car rental return garage. Not nearly the ending to something I watched grow over the last year.

But what I know is that it’s no ending. We’ve promised each other things for the next time. Money is tight for all of us. We can’t just willy nilly jump on a plane like we’re a Kardashian and meet up some place fabulous and have a fabulous girl’s weekend. No, it will take timing and planning and effort. And it will be so worth it.

Next up? The actual feature. Check back, I promise Tony and Sarah’s story is incredibly special.

The Best of the Best 2011, Day 4

Over the holidays, I was in Topsail Beach, NC, with The Candyman and my family. The week of Christmas in BlogLand is a rather slow one. Traffic peters out because folks are busy shopping and cooking and traveling versus blog reading. I’d been pleasantly surprised that mine didn’t dip quite so much as it has in years past, but I prepared my ego for the drop all the same. 

Imagine my surprise on December 23rd when I checked in on the bliggity blog early in the morning and saw a LOT more traffic than normal. I was on vacay, so didn’t really dig into the source. Instead, I went for a walk on the winter beach. The next day, I checked in and nearly pissed myself. Traffic had SKY ROCKETED to numbers that I’d seen only when folks had built some robots to illegally vote on a photography contest I had earlier in the year.

This is not an old post. It’s recent. The reason for the high traffic? It appears that a rerun of Say Yes to the Dress that featured  my Unfake Bride, Erin Pianko Howarth had aired.  Sadly, from the time the episode first aired when Erin was in remission to the time of the rerun, Erin had lost her life to breast cancer. The Say Yes to the Dress folks added this factoid in at the end of the show and apparently it struck a cord. My traffic came from people Google-ing Erin’s obituary information.

While this broke my heart all over again, it did give me some solace knowing that perhaps her life was not lost in vain. People are reading her story, learning about Young Survival Coalition and the importance of self examination, particularly in women under 40 who aren’t privy to mammograms by the insurance giants. This makes me feel a little better.

I’m happy this was the “winning” post. As the New Year rolls around, we all start to make resolutions we won’t keep; we make promises to the gym and to our eating habits and to the nails we will no longer bite. Perhaps this post and its popularity are a sign.  Let’s give our resolutions some focus: to love as if our lives depended on it, to live each day as if it were our last, to concentrate on the joy life brings us. It looks like Erin lived life in these ways and I resolve to do my best to live similarly.

{Unfake Wedding Feature} A Tribute to the Bride

Original post date November 14, 2011

I had this wedding feature submitted to me a while back and like I do with any wedding I’m interested in featuring, I sent the photographer a copy of my “Veteran Bride” questionnaire for the bride to complete.

Often times, it takes a while for the photographer/bride to get back to me. So I follow up and generally say, “Where the hell is my questionnaire?” OK, I’m lying. I’m more polite than that. I just follow up and find out what’s going on.

I loved the look of this destination wedding and couldn’t wait to find out how the bride managed the Gandia, Spain, wedding from her home in Orlando, Florida.

I received an email from the photographer with news that the bride had passed away from Stage IV breast cancer.

Um, WHAT?

The photographer shared her Facebook page story with me and I read a few of her online obituaries to find out her story. It’s one that makes me mad (mammograms only being covered by insurance after the age of 40, Erin was 34 when she died), sad ( a young life that ended much, much too soon) and inspired (Erin’s strength in her battle against cancer).

You might recognize Erin. She was on an episode of Say Yes to the Dress (Season 5, Episode 11).

If you can get through her Facebook story (she was pregnant when she was first diagnosed) and her obituary with a dry eye, you’re a stronger person than I am.

I read that in lieu of flowers, the family wanted  donations to be made to the YSC, Young Survivors Coalition. If you’d like to honor her young life, please donate.

I rarely ask this of my readers, but those of you who blog, tweet or on Facebook, I’d love for you to share this story and the link to the Young Survivors Coalition.

Young Survival Coalition (YSC) is the premier global organization dedicated to the critical issues unique to young women who are diagnosed with breast cancer. YSC offers resources, connections and outreach so women feel supported, empowered and hopeful.

And ladies, the one thing I want us all to take away from this? If something feels wrong in your body? PAY ATTENTION. Pay for that extra office visit. Ask the questions. Demand answers. Get a second opinion, or third, or fourth if you must. Trust your gut. Self exam. As someone whose OB/GYN found a lump (it was nothing), I quickly realized how careless my self-examinations had been. Do not be sloppy. Be thorough. Be concerned. Protect yourself.

So, enough with the sad. Time for the happy. At the time of her wedding in May 2010, Erin was cancer free, living in remission.

Her wedding was held at the Borgia Palace in Gandia, Spain. Her bridal portraits taken at Xativa Castle. I’m including some causal pictures of the couple in Spain before the start of the celebration, just ‘cuz they are so darn cute.

Photographer: Andrew Morrel Photography

Welcome to the Unfake Wedding of Erin & Adam!

Erin lost her life to breast cancer on October 17, 2011.

In memory of Erin Pianko Howarth.

{Unfake Wedding Feature} A Tribute to the Bride

I had this wedding feature submitted to me a while back and like I do with any wedding I’m interested in featuring, I sent the photographer a copy of my “Veteran Bride” questionnaire for the bride to complete.

Often times, it takes a while for the photographer/bride to get back to me. So I follow up and generally say, “Where the hell is my questionnaire?” OK, I’m lying. I’m more polite than that. I just follow up and find out what’s going on.

I loved the look of this destination wedding and couldn’t wait to find out how the bride managed the Gandia, Spain, wedding from her home in Orlando, Florida.

I received an email from the photographer with news that the bride had passed away from Stage IV breast cancer.

Um, WHAT?

The photographer shared her Facebook page story with me and I read a few of her online obituaries to find out her story. It’s one that makes me mad (mammograms only being covered by insurance after the age of 40, Erin was 34 when she died), sad ( a young life that ended much, much too soon) and inspired (Erin’s strength in her battle against cancer).

You might recognize Erin. She was on an episode of Say Yes to the Dress (Season 5, Episode 11).

If you can get through her Facebook story (she was pregnant when she was first diagnosed) and her obituary with a dry eye, you’re a stronger person than I am. 

I read that in lieu of flowers, the family wanted  donations to be made to the YSC, Young Survivors Coalition. If you’d like to honor her young life, please donate.

I rarely ask this of my readers, but those of you who blog, tweet or on Facebook, I’d love for you to share this story and the link to the Young Survivors Coalition.

Young Survival Coalition (YSC) is the premier global organization dedicated to the critical issues unique to young women who are diagnosed with breast cancer. YSC offers resources, connections and outreach so women feel supported, empowered and hopeful.

And ladies, the one thing I want us all to take away from this? If something feels wrong in your body? PAY ATTENTION. Pay for that extra office visit. Ask the questions. Demand answers. Get a second opinion, or third, or fourth if you must. Trust your gut. Self exam. As someone whose OB/GYN found a lump (it was nothing), I quickly realized how careless my self-examinations had been. Do not be sloppy. Be thorough. Be concerned. Protect yourself.

So, enough with the sad. Time for the happy. At the time of her wedding in May 2010, Erin was cancer free, living in remission.

Her wedding was held at the Borgia Palace in Gandia, Spain. Her bridal portraits taken at Xativa Castle. I’m including some causal pictures of the couple in Spain before the start of the celebration, just ‘cuz they are so darn cute.

Photographer: Andrew Morrel Photography

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome to the Unfake Wedding of Erin & Adam!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Erin lost her life to breast cancer on October 17, 2011.

In memory of Erin Pianko Howarth.