Our photographer is so funny! He called us yesterday evening to say that he was looking at the photos he'd taken earlier in the day on his computer and that he was very excited with what he got. I worked nights during the weekend and got a grand total of 9 hrs sleep in two days...so we were asleep at 8 and didn't really talk with him. L only remembers the conversation briefly and I didn't wake up.

Engagement Photos

We just got back from our engagement photo session, and it was fantastic! The weather even cooperated. It was 16 degrees today-cool, but not so cold that I couldn't wear my dress. The sun came out just as we started, and looked really great with the yellow leaves.

Our photographer is the Winnipeg based Joseph Keith, and we were very impressed with him. He provided direction, but wasn't overbearing, and was encouraging, but didn't sound like a cheerleader. He showed us a couple pictures that he'd taken of us off the digital camera, and we were happy with what we saw. I was thinking it would be like going to the gym-I don't like doing it, but I like to see the results. I wasn't expecting to actually enjoy the session.

L got the easy part. He usually sat/stood in position, and I was asked to lean this way and that, bend this knee, put hands here. I held an awkward lunge position with head tilt and trailing hand for 5 minutes. It may not seem that hard, but try doing it with a smile on your face. Not so easy.

I can hardly wait until we get the pictures back, and he said that he could have them back as soon as thursday. Thursday!!

I feel completely comfortable with him doing our wedding photography. More than comfortable, totally excited!

My wonderful, beautiful internet has been restored! I've been in wedding planning withdrawl. I don't know how pre-1990's brides planned anything. It would involve so much work and so little fun. Almost all of my ideas have come from the internet. And I regularly visit sites that I've come to think of as wedding support groups. But enough about that.



L and I are hopefully doing our engagement photos this sunday coming up. I am alternately excited and afraid. I am not a photogenic person. I can not look into a camera and look normal. I look a)overexcited b)uncomfortable or c)dim witted. The flash almost always give me a squint eye. My future sister in law and I spend every christmas day taking pictures of the ourselves (you know the one where one of you is holding the camera and hoping that you both are in the camera's sites) and laughing at the results. We both have a squint eye; hers is the right, mine is the left.



I have high hopes for this photo session, and for all the photography for the wedding. Everyone has that one thing that they think is the most important thing for their wedding. For some people it is the dress, the food or the wine. For me, its all about the pictures. Its just unfortunate that L is just as unphotogenic as I am. L is as handsome as they come. And I'm am no ugly ducky myself. But put us together, and the unphotogenicness multiplies tenfold. It took us 16 tries to get a decent picture of the two of us this past christmas. And I'm not talking about the kind where one of us is holding the camera. We had someone acting as photographer, it took us 16 tries, and it was only DECENT. So I am afraid that I've set my expectations too high, and that I will end up disappointed.



I don't know how people can look into a camera an get pictures that fairly scream mysterious or sexy or radiant. Mysterious for me = perplexed. Sexy=dim witted. Radiant= well, normal dull skinned me. If I had to pick a super power, I'd pick the ability to give pictures that say something other than I have not slept in days'.



Take this picture by Hamed Saber (creative commons). The comments that were on the site that I found this on are about how striking this woman is. And I agree. She is striking. But what is it about her that is striking? I don't know. And that is what makes you want to look at the picture. It has something that you can't quite figure out. How do you do that?

Is it the photographer or the person photographed that gives people the sense that picture is not quite static, not just a piece of celluloid?

Okay, enough with the philosophical mumbo jumbo. How do we make sure we get some great pictures?!

Well, we went with a photographer who was very high energy, and had a similar philosophy as L and I. His portfolio was filled with people that looked liked they were having FUN. As we went through his portfolio he became excited and animated and I could imagine his excitement being contagious during his photo shoots. Maybe if L and I can forget about the process of taking a great picture and just enjoy ourselves our personality will shine through. At least I hope so.

And our lack of photogenic fiber is not even the only thing that stands in our way. We are taking our photo's at the Fort Whyte Center, which is a park/marsh setting. We want the trees to be changing colors, so that means that Sunday will not be picture day if the leaves are still mostly green. But the later we wait, the colder it may be, and I have my heart set on wearing this little black dress that I got in the spring and have yet not had a chance to wear. It seems like a strange combination but I like the contrast of the classy and elegant with the casual background. L plans on wearing a suit and having his shirt unbuttoned and no tie, and I'll be wearing black flats and plain straight hair. I hope this idea works as well in the real world as it does in my head.

The Vortex

I decided to blog about planning L and I'd wedding for 2 reasons:
1. I don't want to bore all the people within a 3 meter radius with my wedding ramblings
2. I am already beginning to forget the details

I get giddy when I think about the details, and I could talk about the pro's and con's for the bridesmaid dresses in brown vs green for hours. I didn't think I'd be SO into planning the wedding, but I've been sucked into the vortex that is wedding planning. No. That's not right. I dove right in and I've been loving it.

The wedding vortex. Inviting. Fun. Important to remember to come up for air.
(creative commons - from fatcontroller)

But that still is no reason to bore my friends, family, coworkers, etc., with my hair debate (up or down? flowers or veil? curly or straight) or my centerpiece plans (drowned flower-over done? a bit. Awesome - you bet.) I realized that my wedding over share was in danger of reaching crisis levels when I was contemplating emailing my friends and family a picture of the wedding invitations we were planning on using. I could show them, or just mail them to them when we mail out all the invitations. They will see them eventually.

I just get so excited. So you'll get to see them, random internet people. Or nobody will see them. That's ok too. Just as long as I don't show them to people who will be receiving them in good time.

Most importantly, though, I want to have something that I can look back at and read to remind me of how wonderfully exciting and hectic that the entire experience has been. Because I will forget. I'm sad to admit that I can not remember the date we got engaged. I can only narrow it down to the end of August, and its only been a year. I don't won't to lose the details because the details are the best part.

My Wedding is Being Taken Over by Dresses and Kilts

L and I have been engaged for just over a year now. The first 6 months were idealic. I confess that during this time I thought that planning the wedding would be no big deal. I thought that we'd throw a party in my mom's backyard, we'd deck the bridal party in some sort of color themed fancy wear and I'd wear a pretty dress. Piece of cake, right? Not so much.

The problem was the dress. I want the equivalent of a ball gown. I tried one on, and well, that was it. I'm not even talking about THE dress. Once I tried the first ballgown on, I couldn't stop trying them on. I tried them on during that entire first 6 months, and each time I had someone lace me into a fancy girly dress that back yard wedding became smaller and smaller in my mind's eye until it was gone entirely.

Okay. So no more backyard wedding. No problem. Did you know that 130 people is the most akward number of wedding guests? Most large places require 150-250 people to book a saturday night and most small places only seat 100. You'd think that there would be a happy medium, but no. Its either sitting on your table mates or listening to the crickets. This was the toughest things we've had to figure out for our wedding so far. It left the rest of the planning in a gridlock. But we came up with a solution: Sunday (of a long weekend) wedding! Feels like a saturday but costs us less! And in hind sight, my mom's backyard is big, but maybe not 130 people big.

Now most ladies that I know that have planned their wedding, did just that - planned it with little input from their future husband. It wasn't that the husbands didn't think that the wedding day wasn't important. They just didn't think that the decision between teal vests or aquamarine vests warranted hours of internet searches or discussion. I am lucky that my honey is interested in the mundane details of the wedding obsessed. Unfortunately, he is also interested in kilts. As in wearing a kilt for the wedding.

I've always maintained that the wedding is not just the bride's special day; its the groom's day too. This belief was difficult to maintain however, with visions of plaid dancing through my head. And my favorite colors are yellow and orange. (think less pale and more cautionary) Talk about fashion disaster.

I'm signing off to watch Mama Mia. Not because I love ABBA or musicals, but because my mom said that I should do my hair like the bride in the movie. This makes me truly wedding obsessed.