10.19.09 = one month!

it's been a blissful month. tim + i were talking last night about how being married doesn't seem unnatural at all. it feels like (almost) nothing changed, because the transitions from singlehood, to dating, to engagement, to marriage have been so timely... so right.

anyhow, i thought it was time to post some photos from the wedding. these were all taken by my dear friend, kim howe. she + her husband live in chicago. kim + i have been friends since high school + it made the day feel so much more complete to have her there, sharing in it with us.

if you were at the wedding + took pictures, we would LOVE to see them. please email them to ldkieffer@gmail.com. we'd so appreciate it!

tim + honor corps member, bud cushing

walking in to the church + looking quite handsome

the hair + beauty ninja, briana stone

she gives fantastic hair treatments at

euphoria salon in st. paul

http://www.euphoriasalon.info/

i'm so not the photogenic type

mama k, kim k + mama roth, laughing it up

mom heaner in the background, waiting her turn with the hair ninja

the prettier half of our pro-photographer team

tamrah ryan

check out their work at http://ctryan.com/blog

me + my pretty mama

she looked so fantastic because she IS so fantastic (and hot!)

the programs

they look like letters because tim + i have written so many to each other over the course of our relationship

the confetti was made from antique magazines + construction manuals

the birds were made from antique sheet music

that originally belonged to lisa's aunt whitney's mother

(her name was hayden)

the door + window were salvaged from old building

originally, tim was going to build a chuppah

it's a jewish wedding element that is meant to signify

God's covering over the couple

the home that they will build together

the four open walls of the chuppah

signify the couple welcoming others into their love

and inviting them under the covering of God

we didn't have time to build one... so the window + door are a stand-in

the communion table

the two books are the one tim used to propose to me

and an old leather-bound volume of poetry

that we found on one of our bookshop haunts

the flowers are three different varieties of cosmos, my favorite flower
tim planted, tended them + picked these for me on our wedding day

honor corps members + sisters

kimberly kieffer

melody oaks

so pretty. and this photo is just way too typical of them!

honor corps members

melody oaks

bridgitte showell

again... with the gorgeousness

this is the breathless bride, waiting to walk down the aisle

from this point, everything was a beautiful, joy-infused blur

walking to meet The One

mom + dad met me at the end of the aisle

mom lifted my poorly-attached drop veil and...

WHOOPS!

off it came!

we had a good laugh... i'm not sure that anyone else even saw what happened.

taking a moment to take in

all the faces of our loved ones.

we are so lucky!

tim + i (with the help of mike, the pastor)

wrote every single word of the service

(except the pastor's charge to us + when he went "off script")

even the repeat-after-the-pastor vows

every single moment of that day was so full of meaning

this was part of that "off script" moment...

and, in my mind,

one of the most significant parts of the ceremony

i cry every time i think about it.

the ring

the kiss

SO happy.

cheesy married grins

man + wife!

costumes for the photo booth

one of the many board games available for our guests

flower arrangements by wedding warriors

abbey von gohren

robbie lewis

kari holmes

table arrangements by wedding warrior

rachel cushing

all the books, vases + candle holders were purchased

at thrift stores, yard sales or borrowed from friends

part of the dessert buffet

because what's a wedding without tootsie pops?

our "guestbook"
guests were asked to put a pin (with a little note)

in a spot that was special to them

we'll have the pinned-up version hanging in our living room.

all the notes will be pasted into our wedding album

the photo family tree

five generations of our history

the wedding favors were mix cd's

tim + i made about a jillion of these for each other while he was living in ohio

we thought we'd pass along some of the music we like best

the long hallway from the sanctuary to the reception hall

lined with borrowed mason jars that served as luminaries

it was a perfect evening.

perfect.

tying it all together - volume 1

i've been to a lot of weddings in my time. roughly 72 in the past decade alone. i've been to weddings that cost the bride's family hundreds of thousands of dollars. i've been to weddings that took place in government offices. i've seen fountains of expensive, well-designed floral pieces. i've seen bouquets of wildflowers hand-picked that morning. i've seen brides freak out over the tiniest inconvenience. i've seen terrible things happen + watched brides laugh them off as no big deal.

my favorite weddings, though, have usually been the ones that are full of things that show the personality, the journey of the bride + groom. the ones where ingenuity + originality, rather than one's now-empty pocketbook is on display.

one of the things we are determined to avoid in our wedding is the tendency to spend tons of money on things that look pretty, but have no emotional or symbolic connection to our relationship. we've scrapped everything that felt like an expected motif or rote tradition + tried to incorporate things that felt like us.

we've entered the "fun" stage of the wedding planning. the invitations are mailed, the bridal party accounted for, the dress + suit purchased + fitted... now it's just the details. i adore details. + so, i thought i might clue you all in a little...

the color scheme: ivory-champagne-caramel-chocolate brown-black...

we want the wedding to feel like the well-worn pages of favorite volume of old poetry, or a sepia-toned photograph of a long-lost relative. rich + warm. faded + comfortable.

we've chosen this palette not for the look alone, but because we wanted to incorporate the feeling of history. i'm wearing tim's great-grandmother's wedding ring. it's been in the family since 1910. we're both interested in the roots of things. much of our time together has been spent whiling away the hours in 37-room bookstores, dusty map shops, historical museums. we love to go visit with our grandparents, to listen to their stories + the stories of those who went before them.

my dress is ivory. tim is wearing a black suit, ivory shirt + tie. the honor corps will be in black: the women in black dresses of their choosing with a wrap in varying shades of the spectrum listed above, the men in black suits of their choosing, black shirt + a tie in varying shades of the same spectrum. the only stipulation for attire (aside from the primary color: black) is that the honor corps member choose something that he or she would actually wear again.

i've purchased some pretty radical shoes. bright red satin slides. they look like something from the forties. i just completely love them. they don't exactly match the color scheme, but i couldn't be all wedding-y about the shoes. i just couldn't.

we've already covered the topic of hairstyle in a previous post. so i won't go there again. i guess the next thing to cover would be the ceremony space + all other elements therein.

we're getting married at hope presbyterian church in richfield, minnesota.

we'll have the main aisle roped off with ribbon + little paper birds made from antique sheet music, old buttons (that a sweet lady i met on craigslist mailed me for free) + twine.

i saw this idea of using flower petals to make a pattern up the aisle. loads of flower petals can get expensive, though. my thought was, "hey... let's make confetti from old books + use that instead!" reduce. reuse. repurpose. recycle. confetti is easier to clean up, too. i'm thinking big confetti... a la ticker-tape parade. about an inch wide + 2 inches long.

we will be using books in several ways: the ring "pillow" will be a stack of books (each significant in its own right -- a family bible, the book tim used to propose to me, a journal i've kept since childhood, etc.) tied together with ribbon. we'll use piles of books around the stage as foundations for candles, jars of flowers + the like.

as for the ceremony itself, we'll be doing things a little differently. we want to keep it short. 30 minutes max. i will walk myself down the aisle + my parents will be waiting at the end of it to give us their blessing. there will be no unity candle, though we will take communion together. grandma joyce will play a hymn during communion. there will not be the usual scripture reading. rather, rachel heaner (sister of the groom) will read an excerpt from one of our favorite books. we will use the traditional vows -- there's just something so holy + solemn that is missing without them -- as well as some that we write ourselves. the songs that we've chosen for the processional + recessional are far from traditional... so, uhhm... prepare yourselves.

tim + i wrote (+ continue to write) literally hundreds of letters to each other while we were dating. i have a box full of them in my bedroom. i saw this idea for programs that looked like telegrams + thought it was spectacular. it didn't really fit with our theme, nor did it have any real connection to either of us. but it started me thinking of the letters we wrote. i decided to incorporate the idea of written correspondence into the wedding by making the ceremony programs look like letters written from tim to me + vice versa. (i'm so excited about this! can't wait to make them.)

okay... enough detail for now. more next week.

inspiration

inspiration is everywhere. you just need to look for it.

for me, in planning this wedding, inspiration had been hard to come by. originally, i was thinking of going sort of asian-themed. tim + i both love kung fu + asian food. the clean lines + simplicity of asian design really appealed to my aesthetic sense.

but the more i tried to make the picture fit, the more it felt unnatural. i couldn't capture the essence of "us." i really wanted to incorporate family history. i wanted the wedding to feel unique. not so much like a one-time event as a visual + sensory expression of our relationship, past, present + future.

i have a friend named janell chan who is a complete genius when it comes to making beautiful weddings happen. she lives in california, so i started picking her brain via email. we decided to ditch the green, ditch the asian + go for something more "historic" in feel.

i started looking online and found inspiration in the pictures below. enjoy the preview!