Entries tagged with “photos” from Prom to Altar

Since I won't be updating Prom to Altar much anymore, here are some links to past posts and websites that might be of interest to someone at some point:

• Professional photos of our wedding day by Paul Grupp and Brenda Topkins, as well as our engagement photos, are here. These aren't the final versions of the photos (we received the final high res versions of these as well as additional photos on DVD), but the majority of our proofs are there. Paul and Brenda also blogged our wedding here.
  

• Photos from our wonderful guests are here and here and here (photo to the right by Rich).

• You can also go to this set on Flickr to see my photos from the planning process as well as some video snippets from the wedding.
  

And here are some other wedding planning and marriage prep posts, as well as some wedding day posts:

• Our proposal story
• A little about my antique engagement ring
  
• Our save the dates
• Our invitations
• Some of my favorite wedding blogs
  
• Getting ready photos
  
• Pre-ceremony photos
• Riding around in the trolley
• Our Catholic Ceremony photos, and a bit about our decision to have a full Catholic mass
  
• The ins and outs of our homemade photo booth (a few more details here)
  
• Little things Part 1: Things we wore, things we carried
  
• Little things Part 2: Details at the ceremony and a bit at the reception
  
• Little things Part 3 -- our Craigslist centerpieces, our favors, etc
• The rundown of our ceremony and reception music selections
  

I never quite got to recapping the reception, so maybe I'll do that at some point. But for now, that's that-- we planned a wedding and prepared for a marriage, our wedding was fun and lovely, and married life is swell! Thanks for following along, I've met some great people through this blog. I hope to see you (well, hear from you) over at It's Loverly!

Happy new year!

As I've said, whenever I feel the urge to blog these days I'm doing it over at my other blog, It's Loverly. I did want to write about a couple of wedding-related things though and answer a few questions that have popped up in the comments of this blog. So here I am.

The post on our homemade photo booth generated some questions I wanted to answer.
First, our photo printer. We did some research and ended up buy the HP Photosmart A612. For about $150, this is a really nice printer. The print quality is great, it's very compact, it prints up to 5x7 photos, and the supplies aren't ridiculously expensive. The printer did great as the photo booth printer, although a lot of people didn't print their photos (no big deal, as we had all the photos on the camera and printed them at home).  We've used it quite a bit since the wedding, and it's fared very well. It even survived a rather violent fall from the table to the floor, almost entirely unscathed save for one slightly loose part. I highly recommend this printer if you're looking for an inexpensive and compact photo printer (a bonus: Staples sells a generic and budget-friendly version of the photo paper it uses).

As for the construction of the photo booth backdrop, this was all Patrick's ingenuity. He built the frame out of PVC piping. Here's the only photo we have of the frame without the fabric over it--

Patrick's mom sewed the fabric backdrop for us. We originally thought about using some fun pattern for the background of the booth, but ended up going with black when we couldn't find anything else we liked. It worked very well. (Again, full set of photo booth photos can be seen here.)

Over the next month or so we're wrapping up the remaining wedding stuff. Just before the holidays we received the DVDs of our final high res wedding photos (and some bonus video clips) from our photographers, Paul Grupp and Brenda Tompkins. This week they sent us the link to the digital proofs for the layout of our coffee table book. We have some changes, but overall we're very happy with it. (You can see the proofs here.) The books are printed in Japan, so once we finalize the layout it will be four to six weeks before we have the books in hand. Once the book layout is done, we'll also be getting a slide show of our photos from Paul and Brenda.  And once we have that, our wedding photo process will be complete. There are a few other things floating around out there-- the video our friend did for us, some guest photos we haven't seen yet, but for the most part all the loose ends are being tied up.

Last week I saw my friend Kerry, who got engaged to our friend Dave in November. I passed along my slew of wedding magazines and books (many of which I inherited from someone else). It felt good to pass them along for someone else to enjoy, and great to get them out of our home! It's amazing how much I don't miss wedding planning, not one little bit. I was recently going through a stack of papers and found wedding to-do lists from early in the summer. I just felt a tremendous sense of relief that we are done with wedding planning forever. This "post-nuptial depression" thing? I never felt it. I've been too busy loving married life.

Last winter/spring, I managed to keep up a "photo-a-day" project for 51 days, starting on my 27th birthday (not 51 days consecutively, but close). I really liked this project-- it fell apart when life got hectic, which is really no excuse.

I'm going to resume the project tomorrow, Nov. 1. My trusty little Canon Powershot has been upstaged by our shiny new Nikon D80 and has been nearly forgotten, but it's really so easy to carry around and always have on hand.

This entry also brings up the question of whether or not I'm going to move on over to a non-wedding obsessed blog. I think the answer is yes. I've lately been feeling a desperate need to re-connect with a bit of creativity. I'm thinking about a blog focused on that goal. I still have to think about it, but I'll let you know.

A couple of my favorite photo-a-day captures from the last project:

Here we are trying to figure out how to cut that infamous cake without causing a confectionery disaster... 

If you've found your way here via A Practical Wedding, welcome! The design of this blog is lacking, but you can read more about our wedding (and see the photos) by following these links:

• Professional photos of our wedding day, as well as our engagement photos, are here.
  
• Our photographers blogged our wedding here.
• Photos from our wonderful guests are here and here.
  

I've slowly begun to recap our wedding day-- if you're interested in that, you can see those posts by following these links:

• Getting ready
• Pre-ceremony photos
• Ceremony
• Our homemade photo booth
• Little things Part 1 and Part 2
• A bit about our music selections.

Thanks for coming by!

Our wedding day was not all about the little details-- it was about the big picture: our commitment to each other, the presence of our family and friends, the emotions of the day. I've said that before, right?

That said, there were of course plenty of details that we put thought into.  Here's a bit about the ones that got photographed and the thought behind them.

My jewelry. The blue pin on the left belonged to my grandmother Helen. I was going to pin it inside my dress, but I chickened out-- I was afraid it would fall out, or get snagged on the dress, or befall some unknown disaster. The amethyst ring belonged to my grandmother Mary. Amethyst was our shared birthstone, and she gave the ring to me on my 16th birthday. I was going to tie it to my bouquet, but I chickened out on that too-- I would be devastated if I somehow lost that ring, so I left it at home.

The bracelet and earrings were made by Etsy seller Handwired- they matched my dress perfectly. (I also had hairpins that matched the earrings and bracelet, which I forgot at home in Massachusetts. Bummer, but no big deal.) My friend Jen wore the earrings on her wedding day a few weeks later. I've put them away in a box with a note listing my name and Jen's, and our wedding dates. Hopefully we'll continue to add names of family and friends to the list of ladies who wore those earrings on their wedding day.
 

I bought these typewriter key cuff links from Etsy seller The Empty Nest for Patrick last Valentine's Day. He bought a set of links for each of his groomsmen. Apparently they enjoyed them:


My bouquet was wrapped in lace taken from my mom's wedding dress.
 
The photos tied to the bouquet are wedding photos of my grandmother and Pat's grandmother. When we started planning, we expected to have our grandmothers with us at our wedding. As most of you know, we each lost a grandmother over the summer. Dear sweet Jen had these pendants made for me, and it was so special to have a symbol of their presence that day.

I bought each bridesmaid a pendant with her initial on it from Etsy seller Funky Time Art. The back of each one had a different word and definition: Love, thoughtful, joyful, sweet, friend. Each pendant came with a chain so that they could wear it later as a necklace if they wanted.  (The flowers were pinker and more green than I thought they'd be-- I was expecting more ivory and very pale pink. Another example of not being able to control every little thing. Even with the pink and green, the flowers were very pretty-- the big open ivory roses were my favorite.)

Oh how I love old fashioned photo booths! And oh how renting one was not in our budget.

We love photos, we love taking photos, and we really wanted some sort of photo fun at our reception. So we researched and brainstormed.

We came up with an alternative to the old fashioned booth, and created our own photo booth area. It consisted of a 3-sided structure designed and built by Patrick, covered in a fabric backdrop that was sewn together by his mom. We bought a couple of work lights to light the area. In front of the "booth" we set up a digital camera on a tripod, which was hooked up to a monitor for photo viewing and a photo printer. We had a guest book nearby along with adhesive, pens and markers.

Next to the booth we set out a basket with various props and a chalkboard for message-writing.

We asked Pat's very creative and tech-savvy cousins to man the station (they are in 5th and 8th grade, and they were the perfect pick for this job). They asked if they could bring their "silly hat collection" and we said ohmygosh YES! We asked the techie husband of one of my friends/bridesmaids to head to the reception early to set up the booth. (You see, this project required a lot of help from many willing and able parties.)

The booth was a huge hit, and everyone loved the silly hats (they made their way into quite a few of our wedding photos!). We have over 100 fabulous shots of our guests: all ages, surprising groupings, poses wacky and demure. Not everyone was up for the booth, but those that were really had fun with it.

You can see the full collection in the set on our wedding Flickr page.

Here are a couple of highlights:

Guest photos from Rich and Jen's wedding are being collected here. So far it's great stuff and captures the weekend well.

It was a gorgeous setting, a beautiful wedding, and a joyful affair. A ton of fun, too. Patrick and I were honored to be a part of it.

(This photo by me, although Patrick had custody of the camera most of the weekend. I need to spend more time getting to know it in a setting that is not so much once-in-a-lifetime!)

They both looked fabulous and glowed all day long.

Before the ceremony, we snuck in a few minutes of group shots. I can't say enough how much I love our photographers for minimizing the amount of time spent on actual photo "sessions"-- this isn't what everyone is looking for in a photographer, but it was exactly what we wanted. Mostly, Paul and Brenda focused on capturing things as they happened, and we hardly thought about photos-- we enjoyed the moment and knew they were on the job. However, they also managed to shoot great stuff in the brief and painless blocks of time set aside for group shots and portraits.

Here are a few from our pre-ceremony sessions:

I gave the girls the color and company for their dresses (Aria, aubergine). They chose their own dress style, jewelry, shoes-- everything else. It was fun to see what they all came up with.




I have a silly Dad.

Patrick designed some great cards to be handed out at our reception encouraging photo booth use, directing people to our pro photos site, and instructing guests on how to share their photos with us. The cards are gorgeous, seriously. They feature vintage cameras!

Unfortunately, they arrived five days after the wedding-- despite promises by OvernightPrints.com that they'd arrive by the Thursday before the wedding. If anyone wants one or 50, let us know-- we have 250 cards that only make us sad to look at.

In lieu of the cards, we sent out a series of emails to our guests in the days after the wedding with instructions on uploading to our wedding Flickr account and sharing to our Flickr group.

I can't say whether the cards would have been more or less successful than the emails at getting people to share, but we have received hundreds of our guests' photos from our wedding, the rehearsal, and the day-after brunch. So all in all, it worked out pretty well.

You can see the collection of photos from our guests here.

Oh my my, what a fabulous honeymoon. The beach, wine tasting, Disneyland, museums, parks, the zoo, the pool, historical sites, delicious food, the purchase of our dream camera, exploring San Diego-- and plenty of time to relax and enjoy each other. The weather was amazing, and it was the perfect vacation. Oh how we needed it. It's been awfully hard to return to the grind...

I'd like to do some wedding day recap, but I'm trying to figure out the least boring way to do it. I know that I'm bored to tears by the minute to minute recaps, and I usually focus most of my attention on the photos, regardless of format. I'll start a bit of recapping later this week, but I think I'll keep it brief in words and focus mostly on photos, lessons learned, and what really mattered. I'll also do a bit about details that I didn't talk about before the wedding. Sound ok? Suggestions regarding what you'd like to read about/see photos of? Or what you'd rather not hear about, for that matter?

Speaking of photos, here are a few honeymoon photos from our new camera-- these are all from our day trip to La Jolla, on the southern California coast:

Our guests have been posting photos for the past few days, and we've been attempting to collect them. Here are some of my favorites:

the number of confusing wedding-related acronyms and abbreviations is out of control. when i first started reading wedding blogs and websites i felt like i needed a decoder ring to figure out what the heck these girls were talking about. jen also expressed her confusion at the terms used by these brides-to-be all over the internet-- "what's an e-ring? do i need some sort of electronic ring?" oooh, apparently "engagement ring" is just too many letters to write out.

when i sent the bridesmaids a link from one of these wedding blogs, grace wrote back and made me promise i would never refer to them as BMs: "I am not sure if it is just because I work in healthcare, but we use this word on a daily basis to mean something a little less pleasant than a bridesmaid. So I am making a request: please, please don't call us BMs!"

and then there's the ever-present STD abbreviation. what were you thinking? of course STD means save the date! we also rejected this one in favor of SD. i can only imagine the ads gmail would start placing above my inbox if it were full of info about STDs. and now i dread the kind of spam this blog is going to get after that mention.

e-pics was one that had me confused for a while. what were these epics all these girls were having done? where does one get an epic? is this some sort of beauty treatment? pre-marital counseling sessions?

alas, the first batch of our epics (engagement photos, if you want to take the time to use all those extra syllables) are online. check them out if you're interested by going to the home page of our photographers' site and scrolling down a little to the blurb about us, or go directly to the gallery.

it's sunday night and we just came back from our engagement photo session-- over the past two hours we've had a camera aimed at us more than we have in the past ten years combined! we tend to be the ones behind the camera most of the time, so we were both a bit nervous about the idea of a full photo shoot focused on us (this was part of the point, of course: to get over those nerves before september).

paul and brenda came out to northampton, and we spent the afternoon ambling around town and the campus of smith college. they took tons of photos, and were full of ideas. it was a good chance to get to know our photographers and their working style better, and to get more comfortable in front of the camera (something i have never been, despite growing up with a photographer dad). it also meant a lot to be able to capture a bit of our life here in northampton. it was a great day-- we had fun, took the time to enjoy each other, and soaked up a glorious may afternoon.

as of yesterday, the forecast for today was grim: cold, rainy, gray. yesterday was raw, and i couldn't imagine getting good photos in that kind of biting weather. we talked about canceling and rescheduling (again-- we already canceled once, back in april), or doing the photos when we were in albany. i fretted about what to do, pat calmed me down and we examined our options. we ultimately decided to stick with our plan: things would work out the way they were meant to, or so pat promised.

as paul and brenda arrived in our parking lot, the clouds were getting ready to pack up and call it a day. for the rest of the afternoon the sun stuck around, with a few bouts of just the right amount of overcast to make for good lighting. the temperature shot up 10 degrees and hovered around 65. our faith paid off, and we ended up with the perfect afternoon. it would be nice if just having faith were enough to guarantee this kind of weather luck on our wedding day!

we have a way of balancing each other out-- we don't always fall into the same roles, but we nearly always center each other. this time around it was my turn to worry and fret and attempt to plan the unplannable (i think i just made up that word). it was patrick's turn to remain calm, to lay out all the options, and to bring some logic to the situation. in the end, he was right on: things worked out the way they were meant to work out.