train + me = wake of destruction.
Us and MaggiYou are holding up a ceiling
with both arms. It is very heavy,
but you must hold it up, or else
it will fall down on you. Your arms
are tired, terribly tired,
and, as the day goes on, it feels
as if either your arms or the ceiling
will soon collapse.
But then,
unexpectedly,
something wonderful happens:
Someone,
a man or a woman,
walks into the room
and holds their arms up
to the ceiling beside you.
So you finally get
to take down your arms.
You feel the relief of respite,
the blood flowing back
to your fingers and arms.
And when your partner's arms tire,
you hold up your own
to relieve him again.
And it can go on like this
for many years
without the house falling.
A Marriage
By Michael Blumenthal
It was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart.
It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.
I also eliminated a major stressor for no additional monetary investment. I had been planning to get frosted candle holders for my 144 LED tealights. I may or may not have raved about these things previously, but they're little battery-operated plastic tealights that flicker a rather flame-like yellow. I got them because the venue doesn't permit real candles to be lit anywhere but the dinner tables, and it seemed like it would be fun to have candlelight elsewhere. They're great because there's no smoke, no heat, no melted wax, they require no oxygen, and they last longer than your average tealight. (While careful testing has shown that they do last the 120 hours suggested on the package, they start to get noticeably dim after 10 hours or so.) But, they still last a good long while, and that means you can turn them on in advance of the event and have one less thing to do.
So, using a runner full of permanent adhesive tape that was not invisible enough for the vellum fronts of the invites, I made 144 vellum candle shades. Some careful math and less-careful trimming yielded 144 slips of paper from 24 sheets producing an assortment of 2", 2.5", and 3" tall shades. Using one LED candle as a template, I ran the tape down one short edge and wrapped the paper around the candle into a cylinder, sticking it back down to itself, then slid the candle out. At the end of the night, all of the cylinders were packed in layers in a cardboard box, ready to be easily slid onto the LED candles by my conscripted helpers on the day of the wedding. 
Next, the design. I made a simple sketch of the general layout of a standard page, commonly known in the biz as a wireframe. Then I mocked up the homepage in photoshop, pulling in design elements from the invitation, specifically colors, fonts, the trapezoid shape, and the interlocking squares motif. Sorry folks, no sparkles.
Setting up the template took ages and didn't hold up to initial cross-browser testing, but eventually I got it hammered out and went on to develop the content and functional bits. For example, the screenshot (with blurred personal information to protect the not-so-innocent) on the left shows our wedding party. Each member is clickable which expands a layer showing their role in the party and a mini-bio. In this image you can also see the navigation on-state, which highlights the user's current location. That, by the way, is quite annoying to set up. That strange conglomeration of letters at the footer is the middle of a flash animation that has resolved in the first screenshot (thus the blurred out-ness).
On Monday night, when we first got back from Vermont, I put the finishing touches on files for printing. That's pretty light lifting. But the second night, I stayed late at the office to make uninterrupted use of the laser printers to print the response cards and inserts. When I got home, I then cut them all down to their rectangular sizes: exact quarter pages for the response cards, and a variety of sizes for the inserts. I also began cutting the inserts down to trapezoids from the rectangles. See inserts on the left (though the photo actually shows all of the inserts after they've been cut into trapezoids).
On Wednesday, I was able to confirm (slightly earlier than anticipated) the start time of our event with the venue, so printed the invite fronts (again staying a bit late so as to have uninterrupted use of the work laser printer). Upon arriving home, I cut those into rectangles slightly smaller than a quarter page and also cut the majority of the inserts into their proper shapes. At this point, I called in the cavalry (mom and little sister) who would be coming to my assistance on Friday night. Being the total control freak that I am, I wanted to finish as much of the "finer" work as I could, to ensure that if anything was going to be irrevocably messed up, it would be messed up by me. 
So Thursday night, I attached all of the vellum invite fronts (see left), numbered all of the response cards (and wrote-in the number invited, as you'll see later) according to the ordered guest list, and addressed all 60-odd envelopes, pairing them to their respective response cards. You may or may not know this trick, but you number the response cards so that if someone doesn't put a return address on their response envelope, if they forget to fill in the "names of attending" line, or if they just write illegibly, you still know whose response you've received. 
On Friday, mom checked my envelopes against the guest list to be sure I'd gotten everyone's names and addresses right while little sister and I put stamps on all of the response envelopes, put my address labels on the front of the response cards, and inserted the inserts into the die-cuts on the back of the invites (see left). When mom was done checking against the list, I re-addressed a few envelopes that I'd done a bit too close to the bottom of the envelopes while she started inserting inserts, and little sister put return addresses on the back flap of the well-addressed sapphire envelopes.
On the left is that response card I mentioned earlier. We could have added many more questions for our guests to answer (where will you stay, when are you arriving, enter your email to be added to the mailing list, what is your quest, etc), but the more blanks, the more complicated it is, and the greater the likelihood of someone not filling it out correctly. The line that reads "Yes, ___ of ___ will be attending" is designed for us to fill in the second blank letting them know how many people are invited (in case the front of the envelope wasn't clear enough) and for the recipient to fill in the first blank saying how many are attending. This discourages people from writing in more guests than were invited. As we've already found, it doesn't stop them from wishing for more guests or from asking for more, but at least they have an idea of how futile their request is.
Response numbering, pretty stamps and our address labels on the response envelopes. They actually matched the silver of the envelopes better than it looks in the photo.
Here, the whole invitation suite stacked up: the response card tucked into the flap of the envelope, behind the invite, facing the back flap. Basically any way you pull it out, you shouldn't get pieces falling all over the place.
When the invites were done, stuffed and nested into their envelopes, I insisted on pulling them all back out and checking to be sure the numbers on the RSVPs lined up with the names on the guest list, because I'm just that crazy. I would absolutely not permit little sister to start sealing them up until after I checked the invite process I'd put together. And, to make a long story even longer, on Monday morning when I was ready to leave the house with my un-stamped invites to go to work and the post office, I somehow realized that I'd misspelled the last name of someone in my wedding party. It was a near thing, and Fiance offered to re-check all of them against the list (which was right) in the evening, but I managed to let it go.
I've had this ring for just shy of a year now, and it far exceeded any hope/expectation I'd had for an engagement ring. Fiance spent months working on the design with one of his Co-Best-Ladies and then having it custom made by a local Philadelphia jeweler. After a few rounds of review, he was able to pick up the finished product while I was away in Australia and presented it to me just a week or two later (of course, I couldn't just have it. I first had to agree to marry him). It's a princess cut stone in the center with a trillian on each side, set in a triple trellis setting. The 2.5mm platinum band is more flat than round and tapers to a knife-edge as it mounts the trellis.
For quite some time, I envisioned this as my wedding band, complete with responsibly mined sapphires and recycled or responsibly mined platinum. This lovely piece is from Brilliant Earth who are a major player in the realm of eco-friendly jewelery. I've had some trouble with loose stones on my e-ring, but a channel setting like this one doesn't rely on prongs, and rarely has any problems. One jeweler I spoke to referred to channel setting as "virtually indestructible." However, this particular ring would leave a significant gap between itself and my e-ring, due to the width of my stones in comparison to the band. It is possible to get a channel setting contoured to curve around the shape of an engagement ring, and I tried on a few with diamonds, today.
The last time I was having my setting tightened, I found this beauty from Hearts on Fire. Hearts on Fire is mostly about their special cut of diamond, which isn't especially relevant to me, since I want sapphires, but this setting really appeals to me. It's called the Felicity Queen Anne band, and it's meant to contour around the matching "solitaire" engagement ring which is shaped very much like my custom ring! 
See the contour here. I only wish I weren't so enamored with the idea of a "virtually indestructible" setting. Also unfortunately, my wedding band will need to be platinum, if I plan to wear it with my e-ring, because any other metal would cause the two rings to gnaw at each other.
Fiance, however, has no such restrictions, and will probably wind up with something lighter, harder, and cheaper than gold or platinum. Sapphires were his idea in the first place, so he'll definitely have some as well. The first number on the left is from Absolute Titanium which has a fun selection of tension settings in addition to more traditional settings. Tension settings are actually one of the major benefits of going with a non-precious metal, since it requires a metal much harder than gold or platinum to safely hold a stone that way. 
PS. I did also purchase these awesome Nine West rain boots that I fully plan to wear with my dress any time I am outside of the wedding venue. But they were never seriously in contention for being the all-night shoes, so they don't count as part of the search, really.
We met with one of our fabulous event planning team over at Glen Foerd Mansion, today to hammer out some of the details of the event. 
Next was linens, where I was tempted to upgrade from ivory to white, but for the negligible difference it will make in a dim, candle-lit room, it hardly seems worth the expense. 
major from New Jersey, were becoming fast friends along with a classmate of hers, a charming young gentleman from elsewhere in PA. (As an interesting aside, all three of us are getting married in the next six months, though not to any of the others.) Kat, Jason, and I had been, to varying degrees, involved with theater in high school, and decided to attend the "Welcome Freshmen" performance of the shows that the theater department had prepared over the summer, which was to be followed by a meet and greet with the cast, crew, and faculty. (Above, me and Jason, 2005, obviously not freshman year. Note: water bottle does not contain water.)
via FFFFOUND!
Only the most lovely cake ever! Beautiful, simple, wintry, and even a tiny bit modern in its high-contrast linear-element sort of way. Unfortunately, the birds would definitely not fit into my wedding, and without them, it might seem a little empty. So the search continued, but with direction, this time. Looking for cakes with modern but twig-like elements led me to the snowman-like cake on red below found on Brides.com. It is primarily exciting due to its chai-flavored filling which I will have to try to make on my own, now. Mmmm.
Then finally an Aussie friend of mine pointed me to this cake on BudgetDreamWeddings.com. It is admittedly not the most glamorous cake ever, and I don't plan to use any acrylic flowers, but the cake-to-twig ratio is good, and it's the perfect opportunity to include these wire and crystal branches from White Aisle, as they finally just came back in stock! I'm also considering using the branches to form a little wicker-withes crown as an abstract topper, or as a wreath on a layer. I'll have to make some mockups...
