4 Days to Go: How to Build a Photo Backdrop, the Brenna Way

Let me start this post by saying that I lost my wallet this morning. Lost. Gone. Well... That's not exactly true. I know where I left it, but it isn't there anymore. So I guess you could say that it was stolen. It just happens that it was stolen from the ground near gas pump number 9 at the Arco station in Vacaville. Cause that is where I left it.

Sigh.

I needed gas, so I went to the gas station. They had taken the little lock thing-a-ma-bob off the handle that locks it in the on position and I needed to readjust my hand, so I put my wallet on the roof. After the tank was filled, I put my gas cap on, got in the car and drove away. My sister and I wondered what that weird sound was as I accelerated away from the pump, but decided to ignore it.

Until an hour later, when I realized that that weird sound was my wallet falling off my car.

Sigh.

Anyway. This post is not about my stupidity, or the process of canceling all your credit/debit cards, or about my loss of a little faith in humanity since the wallet is totally MIA and not turned into the gas station. Or how totally inconvenient this is to be happening 4 days before the wedding. Nope. This post is about a photo backdrop, and how to build it. The Brenna Way.

Step 1: Decide you need a backdrop for your "faux"to booth.

Step 2: Wait until 4 days before the wedding to build it.

Step 3: Glance at some DIY Instructions online, then head to Home Depot*
* To fully experience the Brenna way, first lose your wallet, so you have to go to the bank and take out a wad of cash after convincing the teller that you are who you say you are despite the lack of ID.

Step 4: Buy supplies, including 10 foot long sections of PVC pipe.


Step 5: Carry supplies out to car, all nonchalantly like you are always going to Home Depot to buy 10 foot segments of PVC, what about it?

Step 6: Realize that you have NO IDEA how to lower the back seats to extend the storage space of your trunk.

Step 7: Try to pull really hard on the seats, hoping brute force will make them fold down.

Step 8: Realize that even though your arms are stronger after 4 weeks of boot camp, they are not Hulk arms.

Step 9: Pull out the PVC pipe cutter you bought at Home Depot.


Step 10: Despite reading through the two lines of instructions several times, be unable to make the PVC pipe cutter work.

Step 11: Go back into Home Depot (leaving your 10 foot sections of PVC pipe tucked in the shadow of your car) to complain that you got a dud PVC pipe cutter.

Step 12: Have the teenaged store clerk show you how the PVC pipe cutter actually works.

Step 13: Leave the store, shame faced. (It helps if during steps 5-12, there is a gaggle of school aged kids about 20 feet away selling chocolate bars as a fundraiser.)

Step 14: Kneel down in the Home Depot parking lot and start cutting PVC pipe.

Step 15: Have a very Nice Chinese Man (I'm not being generalistic about Asians here, I know he was Chinese because he had a plethora of Chinese doo-dads hanging in his car) rush up and tell you "No, no, no. Don't cut the pipe here! Extend your trunk!" And then show you how to do it. And, if you're lucky, said Nice Chinese Man won't even laugh at you.

Step 16: Fight back the urge to hug Nice Chinese Man for being so nice.

Step 17: Put your two 8-foot sections, and one 10-foot sections of PVC pipe in the back of your car.


Step 18: Drive home, unload car. Grab camera

Step 19: Wine.


Step 20: Follow the DIY instructions you saw online.

Step 21: Do the ONLY smart thing you've done all day, and label the pieces of the frame.


Step 22: Add the Ikea curtains you bought weeks ago when you planned on getting this project out of the way super quickly. Admire your work.


Step 23 (optional): Use the new photo backdrop to hide the mess in your family room.

(The mess before the backdrop)

That's it! Now you too can build your own backdrop. The Brenna Way!!!

43 Days to Go: Invitations - Now With Secret Spy Action!

Unless you happened to open our invitation near a Wood's lamp, in a skating rink, on Disney's Haunted Mansion ride, or some other place featuring black light, there was one part of it that was kept hidden to you.

It turns out that I'm spying on all of our guests. Or, tracking them, really. Because I learned from other brides, that one day, this would happen:
The guest who forgets to include their name, or whose writing is... difficult to decipher. I am inviting several doctors, so the latter is expected, right?

These RSVP's both came today. I was so excited! Time for my Spy Skillz!! Granted, I easily figured out who the top one was from, based on the cancellation location, and the fact that I recognize the handwriting from years of birthday and Christmas greetings. And I did eventually figure out the chicken scratch on the bottom card, too, it just took a few seconds.

Nevertheless, I was happy to get the chance to use my spy tools. During the invitation-making process, I got a pen that has invisible ink on one end, and a black light on the other end. I am trying to remember where I got the pen, but I'm having a brain freeze at the moment. It was a $2 pen that I bought from an online Chinese store. Hmm. I wonder if it has lead in it?

Any how, check out the pen at work:
Oh, yeah! Numbers 41 and 55 - you can't hide from me!!!

And for anyone keeping track: We've received about 25% of our RSVPs (our guests rock!) and we are at 83% acceptance rate. This is shaping up to be a big wedding, people. Bring your dancing shoes!

45 Days to Go: Excuses for Extraordinariness, and the Most Extra-Ordinary Experience of All Time

As the wedding draws ever nearer, I find myself taking a step back to get a look at the big picture of this whole planning process. This is mostly out of necessity - I have had a lot of discrete projects I've been working on, and now I need to figure out how everything actually fits together!

One thing that I have come to realize is that I am using the wedding as an excuse. Much as brides use the "you only get married once" excuse to buy crazy expensive dresses. That is something I swore I would not do. But, I guess I was referring only to the dress part. Because it turns out, the wedding has been an excuse for a LOT of things.

But, well, I think that they are all good things. Things like:

- Inviting (almost) all of the coolest people I know to a giant party
- Having said giant party in one of the most beautiful places on earth
- Spending hours learning a new craft (working with paper and Gocco!)
- Using the honeymoon to explore an entirely new part of the world, as well as testing the limits of my physical endurance.
- Going to the dentist
- Working out more and going to Boot Camp (starting next month!)
- Getting microdermabrasion
- Learning the names of Marc's relatives
- Finally getting fitted for a bra

See? All good things! And though many things require money, I don't feel guilty about that. At least not as guilty as I would about blowing several thousand on a dress.

And, just this past Monday, Marc and I had the chance to do one of the MOST amazing things I have ever done. And, people? I have been sky diving.

After many hours debating it (mostly in my head), we decided to sign up for the Wedding Ring Workshop. This was started by a British jeweler. A friend challenged him to help a couple make their own wedding rings. And it worked. And now the experience has reached the US! There are a handful of places across the country, and luckily one of those places was in Oakland.

So, Monday morning, Marc and I met up with Alba Urbina in her workshop to MAKE OUR WEDDING RINGS. With our own four hands. Well. Six hands, because we really couldn't do the whole thing alone.

Wanna see some pictures? You know you do. I posted a ton on our wedding page, but here are some highlights!!

Getting started. We wore leather aprons because we were about to play with fire.

The gold! I guess this is what happens to all that gold that people send in to those "Send us your gold" places... We were able to include a small shaving of one of Marc's grandfather's rings in each bowl of gold.

That's me with a blow torch! And precious metal!

Pouring the ingot. For some reason, this part made me think of Lord of the Rings.

Both of our ingots. I made Marc's ring, and he made mine.

Milling the ingots - stretching them out, basically, by rolling them through metal plates.

After a little milling, we'd anneal the metal so it didn't get too brittle during the stretching process. The gold would get red hot. It looked like a Hot Tamale.



After several rounds of milling and annealing, we put the stretched out ingot into a "half round" mold slot on the milling machine and ran that through a few times, until we ended up with the basic design of Marc's ring! Mine stayed squared, and had an impression made in the center with a brass plate.

We cut off one end, to make one flat surface. Here's Marc cutting mine. That's GOLD he's cutting. With gold saw dust!

Then we used a rawhide hammer to bang that bar into a ring shape! It took a lot of concentration, apparently, if you believe the look on my face. After it was in a ring shape, we cut the other end to get the ring to the right size.

Then we soldered the two ends together! There was a lot of flame involved in this whole process.

Next came a lot of sanding and polishing.

And, voila! We're done! A mere 8 hours later... Phew. Alba told us this process takes her about an hour, and that's when she's making several rings at a time!

Close up of the finished product! Marc's on the left, mine on the right.

Here's the wonderful Alba, right before one tricky part on Marc's ring. We ran into a few snags, but she has been doing this for 20 years, and didn't break a sweat (at least not that we saw!) and did some quick thinking. In the end, we ended up with two amazing and totally unique rings. I love them!!

This was not an inexpensive experience, but, as I've already established, I'm willing to use the wedding as an excuse! No regrets for this one, either!

49 Days to Go: 100 day, 100 hours check in

Well... Time for some accountability.

A few posts ago, I talked about my decision to attempt to do 100 hours of exercise in the 100 days leading up to the wedding. Now that more than (!!!) half that time has passed, how have I been doing?

Things started out okay. Then, I decided that I couldn't reasonably be expected to work out an hour a day on the days I work a 24 hour shift. That made things easier!

So far, I have logged 37 hours of exercise over the past 51 days. And, I worked 15 days. 37 + 15 = 52.

Woo-hoo! That means I'm an hour ahead of schedule!!!

I'm totally taking tomorrow off. Or going for a hike. Whichever seems more appealing when the morning arrives. And, next month? Boot Camp. For real. :)

51 Days to Go: And They're Off!

I wanted to post these pictures on Monday when I actually mailed out the invitations, but time got away from me!

Anyway, if you haven't already realized it by now: the invitations are out! Huzzah! I spent many, many, manymanymany hours assembling these things. Some parts were just so horrifically tedious that I didn't even bother taking pictures of the process.

But! I love the end result. Love. I love them so much that I contemplated buying cheap invitations to actually send out to people so that I could keep the ones I'd made. In the end, however, I did not experience too much separation anxiety once the time actually came to send them out into the world.

Of course, I did have to do a photo shoot first.
Here, Natty Gann gives the invitations her final inspection.

Close up of the wrap around labels - my work around in lieu of hand writing nigh on 100 addresses. It isn't "traditional" to put labels on the envelope , but the wrap around label is Martha Stewart sanctioned, and I do believe that in this day and age M. Stew trumps Emily Post. (I don't know why I just called her M. Stew, other than as a reference to shortening names like J. Lo. And cause Martha's all hip like that*)

The trek begins!

...

Anyone going to ask why he has a back pack on?

Anyone?

Because we had to hike to a post office box in the middle of a jungle!!!

Just kidding, it was actually in the middle of a parking lot.

We have the packs, because we were taking a training hike for our honeymoon. Ooh lala! Doesn't everyone want to have to take training hikes for their honeymoons?? I had a 15 pound weight in my backpack. Man is that heavy! Thus the training.

Empty box, no separation anxiety.

And, I know at least some invitations have found a new home because: A) a few people have told me they got them, and B)

RSVPs!!!!! Four of them! That, right there, made this whole thing seem real.

Once more people have received their invites, I'll go into a little detail about how they were made. And how I managed to create them for less than $2.00 a piece. Not counting postage, obviously, which cost $1.08 per invite. The USPS loves them some wedding invites!

If any of you care, the 4 RSVPs give us a 44% accept rate so far.

* While I admire and appreciate Martha Stewart's craft and decorating skills, I did have a minor hissy fit every time Marc suggested we register for something "Martha Stewart" brand at Macy's. I have a thing about using things with people's names all over them. I'm talking to you Emeril, Rachel Ray, Martha Stewart, etc.

57 Days to Go: The Weather

Sooo. Lake Tahoe. Totally beautiful? Yes. Great place to go relax/swim/boat in the summer? Yes. Fantastic place to go ski/snowboard/sled in the winter? Absolutely. Great place for an outdoor wedding in the fall? Eh... maybe?

Fall is my favorite season. I love the leaves changing color, the fall smells, the memory of going back to school (what can I say, I'm a nerd!)... Not to mention the fact that "fall" colors make for wonderful backdrops, as well as inspiration for flowers, dresses and other decorations.

Oooh, pretty! (Timber Wolf Creek would like you to know they own the rights to this picture.)

I love these bouquets.

Fall is the best! I especially love the weather -- the cool crisp air... which is such a relief after a long, hot summer.

So when it came time to choose a wedding date, my first thought was, roughly, "Fall!" We initially picked a "sometime in September through November" time frame. This was narrowed down to our actual wedding date by the fact that it was the only date available at my chosen venue. And, October is totally fall, right? So, fall weather. Awesome!

But. Somehow my brain seemed to glaze over the fact that Lake Tahoe is at 6225 feet elevation. It is an "alpine" lake. I'm not sure of the exact definition of "alpine", but I believe the it involves the word "cold" somehow.

See the snow in the mountains? Cold!

If you ask people who live in Tahoe what the weather is typically like in October, they tend to say something along the lines of: "I don't know!" Apparently October weather in Tahoe is unpredictable. Hot, mild, cold, snowing - it could be any of those!

A few weeks ago, I started to get a bit worried about this, so I scoured the web to find information about "typical" October weather. Weather Underground told me that the average high temperature in South Lake Tahoe in October is in the 60s. Phew. I breathed a sigh of relief with that one.

Then, today, I stumbled across another weather related website - Weather.com actually has a Wedding Planner that reviews 30 years worth of data for your wedding month. And, as I had seen before, the average high temperature for our wedding day is 65 degrees! Yay! And, in the past 30 years, 16-17 of the days have been sunny. Yay! It has only rained on 4-5 of the days. Yay!

But. The one thing I had neglected to look at previously was the average low temperature on our wedding day. The average low temperature for our wedding day is 26 degrees. Twenty. Six. That means that if I inadvertantly leave a cocktail outside at some point, I won't have to worry about ice melting. Because that is BELOW FREEZING.

Okay, so maybe not this cold.

But I am a little scared that people will have to dress like this:


During the ceremony time, it should be a balmy mid-60s, so I think it will be okay. But, if you are coming to the wedding: bring some warm clothes!!

NWR: Why I Shouldn't Be Photographed Running

NWR = Non Wedding Related. Aka, something that doesn't take up much of my time these days...

I mentioned in my last post that I was about to run a half marathon. Well, I did, and I survived. Barely. My Nike Plus pooped out on me about half way through, and my knees followed suit shortly thereafter.

If you are not yet familiar with the genius that is Nike Plus, let me enlighten you. It consists of two little doo-hickeys. One you stick on the bottom of your iPod, the other you stick in a little compartment in your Nike Plus compatible Nikes. There's a bit of a brand name monopoly here, but this is one instance where I overlook it!

The two doo-hickeys talk to each other, and send the info to your iPod screen. It tells you how long you've been running, how fast (or slow...) you are running, and how far you have run. I think of it as an outdoor treadmill, and I LOVE it. It isn't super duper accurate for distance/speed, but it is great to use to pace yourself.

So when it had a personality crisis in the middle of my race, I was left without a real way to pace myself. I think I started running too fast, and it just wrecked my whole body. My back is still killing me!

This puts a damper on my plan to fit in one more half marathon before the wedding! See how I took this from a NWR post all the way right back to wedding? I am skilled like that.

Anyhow, I really just wanted to share with all of you a secret shame: I look horrible running. This is a fact I may never have known apart from the fact that they have frickin photographers at races. Why, I know not. I could have gone my whole life, happily, uglily (is that a word?) running along, with the only clue to my freakishness being the odd random look or double take I get as I cross another runners path.

But, alas, for some reason, someone decided that runners should be photographed mid-race. Probably people who look like this when they run:
The grace, the smile, the beautiful surroundings!

Or this:
The power, the determination, the muscles!

Even from my own most recent race, cute runners abound:




Now, me? I now have photographic evidence from 2.5 half marathons that I tend to look:

Confused:




Scornful:




And anything but happy:


(even at the finish line)


See? I should not be photographed running.

Which means there will not be any pictures like these at our wedding. Even though they are totally cool:





Oh, yes, I did bring it right back to the wedding yet again. It's an illness, people. You'd better run!

On Feet, three ways, And Three Feet, one way.

Feet have suddenly taken a front burner in the oven of my life. I guess the burner would be on the stove, though. So I should say, Feet have suddenly taken a front burner in the stove of my life. But really, neither analogy makes any sense, and I'm just trying to come up with a clever way to introduce today's blog post. So just pretend you didn't read this paragraph and move on. M'Kay?

Feet are very important in my life. I use them pretty much every day. As I've aged, I've come to appreciate my feet more, and I enjoy buying them treats. And, as it turns out, my feet really enjoy two particular flavors of treat: shoes and pedicures. The pedicures are pretty self-explanatory, so today, the first of three foot-related topics is Shoes, of the wedding variety, to be specific.

1. The Wedding Shoes.
For the group of you who don't obsessively look at any and all wedding pictures you can possibly find online (which I assume consists primarily of non-brides, and non-wedding photographers), you probably don't know one of the latest photography trends: Taking pictures of The Wedding Shoes.

This falls under the "Details" section of photos, and also includes things like:

Close up shots of the decor,

Flowers and paper goods,

Cake and other food,

And the always ubiquitous (and in my opinion, creepy) Wedding Dress hanging in the window.

And it makes sense to take pictures of these details that the bride spent HOURS AGONIZING over. (I speak from experience here, people. This Bride has spent more than a few hours agonizing over minor details like font size and placement on my invitation alone.)

Seeing all the details from other weddings inspires me, and has helped me hone in on what it is that I want for my own wedding. And for the most part, the things that inspire me are simple and reasonable.

Except for the one detail that makes my little heart go pitter-patter with desire: The Wedding Shoes. Look at them!







You all know that the ("stereotypical") bride uses the wedding as an excuse to spend more money on a dress than she would ever imagine spending on any other single item of clothing. The "It's My Big Day/It's Only Once/I Deserve This" argument. I was able to avoid that particular Wedding Industry Dictate. Don't get me wrong - I still spent a fair chunk of change on the dress, but I was not about to spend 10% of my total budget on a dress.

But I'm _this_ close to caving on the shoes. It is irrational, but... for some reason, I have this horrible fear of having detail pictures of my shoes that just look ugly. The horrors!!! Can you imagine?!?

See? Even I know that sounds irrational.

But there is a little shoe lover inside me that is saying: when are you ever again going to have a chance/excuse to buy designer shoes, don't you deserve this, it is your wedding after all!

And then I look at these:


...and these:


...and these:


...and I think, "Well. I'm budgeting on lots of things. I really could afford to pay $200 for shoes. And if $200, why not $300. And if I'm going to splurge, why not really go in, and get those $500 shoes?!"

And then my feet pipe in and say: "Go ahead and buy me those beautiful shoes, they will make me look divine. But I will not take you anywhere in them. And you know they will just end up abandoned by the side of the dance floor as soon as the first dance is over. And I will be happy to return to my nice comfy sandals."

My feet are smart.

So. I will not be buying designer shoes. But that has not stopped me from agonizing for hours to find the perfect pair of shoes. Which brings me to foot-related item #2.

2. I Heart Zappos.
I spent hours going through every possible combination of shoe color, height and style that I thought would work for me. I added probably about 30 pair to my cart, then combed through them to pick my first contender:
Sofft brand (which I love, and highly recommend), brown wedges.

Totally not sexy like Louboutin, but should be comfortable. And should add enough height to me so that I won't have to have my dress hemmed! I ordered them last night.

I had ordered from Zappos before, and really appreciate their free shipping. But this time Zappos surprised me with free OVERNIGHT shipping! Which means, my shoes already came!!!

Zappos rocks my socks off!

3. The last foot issue isn't so much about feet specifically, but more about how I use my feet.

After I got engaged, I decided that I should "get fit" before the wedding. I figured I had 10 months in which to do it, so no problem. But January was already partially gone, so I could start in February. But then February was so busy at work, and I really didn't want to 'get fit' in my spare time, so I'd start in March... and so on and so on...

Then the 100 day mark hit, and I decided to take on a new challenge. I copied it actually, from another Bride to be who blogs. The 100 day challenge: 100 hours of exercise in the last 100 days leading up to the wedding. I'm only 2 hours behind so far, which really isn't that bad.

My feet are helping greatly with the challenge. I am actually running a half marathon on Sunday, which is one reason I've been able to get so many hours in!

Anyway. If anyone wants to join my challenge, let me know. We can all go party/celebrate the night before the wedding! You can join today (88 days, 88 hours) or any day you choose to. Marc is on board too, but I think he is fairly behind at this point!

And finally, at the end of a ridiculously long post, an issue that is probably the biggest of them all. The Tree Feet issue.

As those of you acquainted with me know, my family name means "Three Feet." I used to hate it - I was always at the end of the alphabet, I... Hmm. I guess the only thing I hated about it was being at the end of the alphabet.

However, I had always sworn that I would "marry up" in the alphabet. Somewhere along the line, though, I realized what an advantage it is to be at the end of the alphabet. Always last in a stack of alphabetized papers, easy to line up alphabetically, and so on. And my name is so easy, just four letters long, one syllable. My patients can say it, it is a great way to break the ice with little kids.

Now that the time has come to get married, and I am fulfilling my goal of "marrying up," I don't know if I can give up my name! It is the name I have my degree in, and my license and my board certification. Those are very meaningful to me, and hard to change.

Plus, my grandfather was a podiatrist, and known as "Doc Yard" and I like my connection to him. And my father had no sons to carry on the name.

But... I don't want to diss Marc by not taking his name. And I don't want to have a different name than any kids we may have.

This is coming to a head for me, because we are going up to S Lake Tahoe tomorrow for cake tasting (yay!!) and were thinking about getting our marriage license while we were there. It is good for 90 days, and to me it makes sense to get it now when we have the time. The form asks for our new names, though, and I'm not ready to decide!!! Thoughts??

Are you still here? Go do something!