APhA, Seattle

In Seattle for the weekend for the annual APhA meeting/conference.  Lots to do, and here are some highlights from yesterday (NOT from the conference):

Bundle of Joy

Finally made it to the post office today to pick up my package from Japan.  I received all of the ink, screens, bulbs, and paint blocker from Crafty Japan all nicely packaged.  Obviously, we weren't able to print the save the dates without the ink, so our March 21st printing date had to be pushed back, but hopefully we're able to print them soon!

 

 I actually only bought one new tube of ink--the rest were cheaper and "used"...but they basically are new.  How awesome is that?!  I got bronze, black, brown tea (karacha), and lime green (moegi) used, and a new tube of olive green (matsuba).

St. Patrick's Day

So instead of drinking bad beer dyed with green food coloring (ok...I admit. I love this, and the green almost makes the beer bearable. ALMOST), or eating cabbage and corned beef, Craig and I made biscuits and gravy for his school's FFAFF (free for all food Friday).

Originally, someone else was planning on making biscuits, and because of our love affair with B&G, Craig wanted to bring gravy.  We've eaten a lot of B&G in the past few years together, but had never actually attempted making our own til now.

I made the biscuits with this recipe.

Craig made the gravy loosely following this recipe

Both recipes were easy and would be very easy to manipulate.  I only wish Craig had left me some for this morning's breakfast!

Wedding music WINNING

With all the silly autotunes songs out there, would it really be that weird to play a few of them at the reception?

Photographer(s)

I knew that choosing the photographer(s) for our wedding was something that was very important to me.  It's one of those important details that I was willing to "splurge" on, considering you only get one chance to capture the events and feelings of this huge event.  While I know that posed photos are a mainstay of wedding photographs, I wanted our photographers to have a more photo-journalistic style.

Luckily Craig also felt this was an important component of our wedding.  When we though of what we'd like out of a photographer, the first thing I thought of was that I wanted someone who could make us feel comfortable--if you don't feel comfortable, it shows in the pictures.  We also wanted to be able to have printing rights and digital copies of all of the photos.  Our first thought was that our friend Zach, who is an awesome photographer, would do a great job.  You can see his work here.  Then we considered the facts that we didn't want Zach to be "working" the whole time at our wedding, and we didn't want to put a ton of pressure on him, considering he has no wedding photography experience.  So, we decided to find professionals.

Deciding where to start when finding photographers was daunting.  Of course, there are all those facebook ads (at least on my page) for Portland/Seattle wedding photographers--and all of those people charge crazy amounts.  Then there's the Craigslist people who just are in general awful photographers.  We wanted to find someone who would give us digital files, had good editing skills, and could work with our budget considering the number of hours and travel to the venue.  Some other things we'd love to have in our photographer (but probably would not be within our budget): 2 photographers, free travel, complimentary engagement session, and full day coverage.
 
My first choice (with little to no research or hesitation) was a girl by the name of Katy Weaver.  I'd seen her photographs on facebook, and they were awesome--and she was VERY affordable.  Even better, she is an OSU student!  We really liked her style, and the fact that she is "less established" meant that we could have gotten a great deal on a very talented photographer. Unfortunately, she was already booked by the time we decided to contact her.

After that, we googled photographers in our area with little luck, and decided to try Flickr.  Looking under a Portland wedding photographers group, we found several that we considered, but we narrowed it down to two photographers: Gina Emerson, and Mosca Photo.  We loved both of their styles and photo processing, as well as the packages they offered.  After a lot of discussion and comparison, we decided to go with Mosca, although I know we'd both be happy if we had chosen Gina.

After meeting Alice and Josh (our TWO) photographers, we signed the papers, and put down a deposit.  So exciting!  These two are so spunky, up for anything, fun, and very talented.  I still think it's funny that we went with Mosca, considering Craig had said he wanted our photographer to be a fly on the wall...(Mosca means fly in Italian).  There are so many great photographers out there--we really got lucky to find a great duo in Alice and Josh.  I think that things really did work themselves out really well in this case, and I'm so excited to schedule our engagement session with them!

Getting all set up

Going to be Gocco'ing our save the dates soon!  So excited!  Our wonderfully talented friend, Seyoung, has illustrated an AMAZING save the date for us that's just perfect for our wedding theme.  I'm so excited to get started on it!  I've ordered the ink, some extra screens and bulbs, and ink blocker, so all we'll have to get now is the paper.  We're planning on printing the save the dates on Monday the 21st, so I have something to look forward to in the next few weeks!  I cant show them off yet, so here's a link so you can enjoy some of Seyoung's work in the meantime:)

http://spwrinkle.tumblr.com/
http://www.society6.com/studio/spwrinkle/foxes_in_love/prints

Hairpiece

So I've been swooning over the cute rosebud hair clips people have been selling on Etsy...and decided to make one for myself.  It was fairly easy, although it did take a little time and patience.  I used ivory and green reclaimed fabrics from random things I had picked up from thrift stores...something old (and cleaned), right?  So here it is:

Sorry for the blurry pictures, but I think you get the idea.  I think they are cute--and have a "vintage" feel to them, which was what I was going for, and which will also suit the wedding theme:)