Giving Thanks and a Memorable Wedding!

A week ago today, QB and I got married.

Our photographer, Erin Fults, about whom we cannot say too many fantastic things, created a slide show with some of the wedding images HERE.
(p.s. Erin's assistant Lindsey is fabulous in her own right.)

We were married at the Agricultural and Forestry Museum Chapel and our reception was at the Northpointe Red Barn in Jackson, Mississippi.

She also posted a little preview on her blog HERE, too.

QB and I couldn't have had a better wedding day. It was cold just like I prayed it would (because, I'll be honest, I didn't want it to be humid and to sweat - another reason why I'm glad we changed the date from May to November! Just several days before, it had warmed up and gotten a little humid...damn Jackson weather.) and our family and friends were around us to make the experience complete. It was great having everyone in town, hanging out, catching up, getting to know each other and giving everybody big hugs!

Everyone came to our house for Thanksgiving - we had a dizzying array of food and drink from turkey enchiladas, chicken and dressing, sweet potato pie, pecan pie - suffice it to say, we still have way too much food in our fridge.

This week we keep having to pinch ourselves to make sure it really happened. Both of us have been so giddy and I'm truly thankful for my wonderful new husband.

Our first dance was a west coast swing routine
to the song "Soulful Strut" by Young-Holt Unlimited.

We got a lot of whoops and hollers for our frisky moves!

We're going to have an official honeymoon in 2010 - still deciding where exactly!

My dress is a Bari Jay bridesmaids dress that the seamstress at The Bridal Path, here in Jackson, helped tailor-make for me like I wanted. She put the tulle around the hemline for me, also made the lovely fabric flower sash out of the sash fabric and tulle, and fixed the sleeves for me. I can't tell you how helpful and resourceful they are! Both my pairs of shoes I found at Marshall's. Initially I wanted a pair from Nordstrom's but got both the teal and wine colored pairs for less, so my budget couldn't argue with that. (Truth be told, I'm glad I had the wine-colored pair to dance in - they are Sofft's and saved my soles! haha)

I got the mocha-colored bird cage veil and peacock-colored fabric flower/feathers in my hair from Etsy sellers, Tessa Kim and Miss Ruby Sue. (I added the tall feathers to the flower piece). Both of whom were easy to work with and extremely helpful. The bridesmaids all got handmade copper earrings from Purple Lily Designs and copper necklaces from Museglass.

Flowers were by Lesley Frascogna and Tulip Design Studios. She did an incredible job capturing the feel of the fall flowers along with the color scheme! Hats off to her.

Now that we are going through the registry and getting ready to buy a few more things, we have a Williams-Sonoma gift certificate on hand. After perusing the site for options, naturally, I was drawn to the food and look what piqued my Mississippi interest: handmade tamales and Game Cocktail Tamales...!! Who knew?!

We are still on "cloud 9" and it will be a while before we float back down to earth!!

Arty, Owlie Wedthings

Now that invitations have officially gone out, I'm ok with posting the real thing below. They turned out so well! There is a man here we know through the Crossroads Film Society who owns about two or three old (seriously, old) letterpress machines and we found the owl face in one of his dingbat books. One of QB's friends at work designed the RSVP card and the map for us - and he did a great job.

I, personally, love owls because I've had a couple of run-ins with one in the neighborhood while I was doing a lot of my inner transition work and intensive life coaching last fall. QB and I saw one flying through the trees in our neighborhood park, so our little Hugo is around and watching over us. We think owls are great woodsy creatures and perfect for a fall wedding.

Also, here is what I've been diligently working on the past couple of weeks, so that people will find pretty invitations in their mailbox...I mixed two ink colors together to get a pretty brown metallic ink, bought a calligraphy pen set, a small paint brush to fill the resevoir of the nib and practiced a good bit first. Naturally, my technique became better the more invitations I wrote, but overall I'm proud of how they turned out and got lots of compliments.



Our "guestbook" at the reception is a great idea that QB came up with, which is for people to sign cards and "mail" them to us. That is a nod to his mom and step-dad (and other family members, as a matter of fact) who both work at the P.O. We bought a standard mailbox at Wal-Mart and my idea was to get vintage postcards off of Ebay, so that they could write special messages to us and stick them in the mailbox.

Below is the message:

My sign initially started out on one side of a Manila folder (above) and I was wondering if maybe I could cut it with pinking shears with a pattern, but then an idea popped in my head! I've been cutting out owl shapes from sheet music that I plan on hanging at the reception...why not cut out an owl shape for this sign as well? I had to draw and adjust for the size, but unconsciously I had written everything in a shape conducive to the owl shape! What fun! So, here he is! Isn't he lovely? :)