WBF becomes WBFM

WBF was my roommate my first year at boarding school. We both started living with weird/crazy roommates and worked with 12 other girls to coordinate an unprecedented 9 room, 12 girl switch-a-roo. We were the only ones where neither roommate ended up in the room they started out in. We bonded over Pink, Garbage, No Doubt, and other late-90s girl rock.

We got along like sisters, arguing about stupid stuff and doing little things to taunt each other sometimes. It was kinda awesome. We chose different roommates for our second year at school and then went off to different places for college (me to CCPA and her to USC). I visited LA for one spring break, and later Austin when WBF was in law school at UT and I was finishing up school in Boulder. She planned my bachelorette party (pole dance lessons, followed by pizza and cocktails, and tickets to a cabaret show), it was awesome but poor WBF was really sick and I think she actually skipped the cabaret show. Oh well.

We were all hale and hearty for her wedding this weekend!

tall boys wearing toddler ties

working out the wedding rehearsal staging

me and Ben at the TX capitol

on the trolly bus, en-route to the wedding!

the almost-weds, making eyes at each other during the wedding

And then my camera ran out of batteries and the photographer seemed disinclined to take any photos that didn’t have both halves of the couple in them. I’m vain and hopefully I’ll get to see how my outfit came out in photos! I think the dress I wore was out of the closet for it’s last time, it was almost too big/baggy but I ate enough tacos in 2 days to remedy that…. Back on track now that I’m not longer in tequila and taco land, just in time for the A-RTS festival in my neighborhood and Cinco de Mayo this coming weekend!

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It Smells Like Campfire Outside

High Park Fire Larimer County Colorado (Photo credit: Striking Photography by Bo)

It smells like campfire outside, and it’s not a good thing. The High Park Fire is burning outside of Fort Collins (about 40 miles north of Boulder), and so far has consumed over 43,000 acres (over 8 square miles). The fire was started by a lightning strike 3 days ago. It started in the late evening, only 2 acres, and as the winds picked up over night it grew and grew and grew.

What I want to talk about here is how selfish it is to even start a fire. The last 2 fires I remember hearing about in Colorado were both caused by people. 2010’s Four Mile Fire, here in Boulder, was caused by a fire pit rekindling. The owner of said fire pit was a firefighter! He thought he’d done everything he could, but the fire still won. About a month ago there was the Hewlett fire, that was started by a camp stove.

Now, I have friends who are getting married this weekend and their website claims that “in staunch defiance of the fire ban,” they will have a bonfire at their havdalah kumzitz. I want to yell and scream at them that there are TWO synagogues within 500 feet of where they want to have this bonfire, but I don’t have the balls to, so instead I’ll be passive aggressive and hope that they read this.

If someone who knows my otherwise awesome friends who are getting married on Sunday reads this, please pass along this message to them. I don’t want to bring them down before their wedding and I don’t feel close enough to call them out on this bullshit.

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for my girl friends: when the wedding bug bites

I’m not an expert on planning a wedding, I only did it once, but I did do it with a lot of love and intention. [See the article I submitted and had published that says as much here: Wedding Graduates: Deena & Ben]

Here’s a list of my favorite wedding-y sites and why:

• A Practical Wedding: they published my article! Also, it’s where REAL women talk about real wedding issues and let you have a glimpse into their lives, messy stuff and all. The people who write, read and comment on that site are an amazingly open and supportive community of practical gals.
• Offbeat Bride, Altar Your Thinking. When you’re tired of the Wedding Industrial Complex (WIC) being shoved down your throat a you want to see busty gals in rockabilly wedding outfits, this is the your anti-David’s Bridal mental palate cleanser. You can read about anything from nerdy Star Wars themed weddings, to druids who married at RenFest, to a gay couple who had beautiful church weddings with a potluck reception. There’s some of everything that’s anywhere on the non-normative spectrum.
• Wedding Bee: follow individual brides as they go through the last 8 months of wedding planning and then do lots of wedding recaps. There are a wide range of women who blog for this site ranging from classic Southern Belles who have big white dresses and church weddings to tattooed ladies who get married on Army bases.
• Style Me Pretty: a fairly normative wedding blog that focuses on the garden chic aesthetic and has lots of crafty influences. The weddings featured here are mostly high end and too styled for my taste, but it does have lots of great inspirations.

Other than theses blogs, I recommend that you find vendors in your area who’s websites don’t annoy you and subscribe to their blog on your favorite RSS reader -I like Google Reader, it’s easy. (You don’t want to work with a vendor who annoys you before you’ve even met them!) Organize your subscriptions by LOCAL VENDOR and WEDDING BLOG and maybe a third category of REAL BRIDES for when you start finding personal blogs to follow (find them by clicking on the profile of commenters you like on the blogs listed above).

You may have noticed that I didn’t list The Knot. I think it’s designed to induce anxiety (too many to-do and check lists) and competitive cattiness (see the forums), plus who wants to look at all the homogenous weddings when you can look at creative ones!?

Did I miss anything? Please, comment and add any sites that you like(d) that I missed!

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why didn’t I find this blog BEFORE I got married?

http://hindsightbride.com/2011/10/10/open-letter-wedding-bloggers/

Awesome, and the post was written on our 1 year anniversary. Sweet! Downside: she would have our wedding fall under the “trendy” category with mountains in the distance (hello, we live here!) and my tea length dress (which kept me from feeling like one of those Barbie torsos stuck in a cupcake of dress).

I’d subscribe to it, but I’ve mostly eliminated wedding blogs from my Google Reader feed. The only ones I still have on there (and look at) are A Practical Wedding and Offbeat Bride. APW is awesome because Meg and her band of merry editors write great stuff and think that my writing is awesome enough to publish (oh, and agree with me that our photographers were baddassbitches too). OBB is awesome because there are so many unique things featured there, but lately I’ve been finding myself skimming those articles more than reading them. Don’t worry, Offbeat Empire, I still love Offbeat Home and won’t subscribe to (yet) but often read Offbeat Mama too –remember that baby bug I can’t seem to shake….

I’ve still got Weddingbee in there too, but to be honest I don’t read it anymore. 2 years ago, I wanted to badly to be a bee, but every email I’ve sent (to apply to be a bee and to get the “I was featured” badge) has dissapeared and never gotten a response. Oh well. More importantly, here are new bees (bloggers) and I don’t know them! I do subscribe to a bunch of former bees’ blogs, but they’re mostly starting to have babies or battling with grad school (more where I am).

[In case anyone is wondering, I’m on a break at work, blogging. Multitasking for the win!}

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Squee! a photo from our wedding has been featured again!

Ask Team Practical: Daytime Weddings, Additional Guests, Angry Twins « A Practical Wedding: Ideas for Unique, DIY, and Budget Wedding Planning.

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one year anniversary

Exactly one year ago I put on this dress (with the help of my girlfriends):

Then I met Ben in the rotunda of the St. Julien Hotel and Spa:

Then we went to our Bidekin:

taking the rabbi's talit to symbolize choosing my husband

Where we signed these documents:

And stood under this chuppah:

Where we drank wine:

Where supported by our Rabbi and our friends:

And supported by our families:

Put on our wedding bands:

Then we kissed:

the "OMG, we're married!" kiss (with our beautiful ketubah in the background)

And we realized how blessed we are (and kissed some more):

Partied a little:

Lit some bananas foster on fire:

And had lots of fun at a bar:

And ended the night hanging out alone here:

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I’VE BEEN PUBLISHED!!!!

Oh my goodness, people. I’ve been published! Seriously! And 42 people have commented so far. The warm fuzzies are seriously flowing over at A Practical Wedding.

Please read my Wedding Graduate post over at A Practical Wedding:

http://apracticalwedding.com/2011/08/simple-jewish-weddin/

Oh and I hope my dad doesn’t mind, but he had the sweetest comment so I’m going to repost it, along with the photo he’s talking about.

Deena – I like the way this reads.  Also very impressed by the rave reviews that follow.  You should download this or otherwise make sure tht you capture it for inclusion in your wedding files, as stuff on the web has a way of disappearing eventually.

The only suggestion I have for improving it at this late date would be to include a photo of you and Ben at the pool table at the after-party.

Sounds like you might be responsible for a mini-boom in twirly dresses!

Happy birthday.  Love, Dad

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Phoenix is HOT in the summer!

This past weekend, we went to Phoenix to see this lovely couple tie the knot:

by M. Coblenz, at our wedding

They were beautiful, the wedding was beautiful, the weather looked beautiful from inside the air conditioned Wrigley Mansion.

my point and shoot camera

While we were in Phoenix (staying with a friend -Thanks Kris!), we took some time to go sightseeing on Saturday before the wedding. We started by meeting Ben’s parents at Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright‘s winter home, studio, and school. We took the 9:30 AM tour, before it got TOO hot, which was good. During the whole 90 cum 120 minute tour, I drank my entire CamelBak that I’d filled with ice water before leaving Kris’s house.

Then we made our way to The Herd North Scottsdale Museum, where we had a super tasty lunch at the Café with my in laws. SO GOOD! I wanted to go cactus fruit picking after having cactus fruit lemonade at the cafe, it tasted like flowers and berries and didn’t set off my allergies! Woohoo! Cactus fruits are just coming into season, but we couldn’t find any at the bodegas Kris checked or the GIANT international grocery store by her house in Peoria, AZ.

Sunday was the wedding, where I accidentally got drunk (damned waiter kept refilling my wine glass when I wasn’t looking!) and boogied my butt off, followed by hanging out with Ben’s mom in her hotel’s pool while his dad took a nap.

It was a great weekend, and we even got to see trains and a spectacular lightning storm that turned into the most rain Phoenix has had in a long time. I missed being able to orient myself with mountains only being to the west though. Valleys are confusing to this Boulderite!

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Michael and Lauren’s VA wedding

Michael and I have know each other since preschool, when we were THREE. Since we’ve know each other longer than our siblings, we signed each other’s ketubot as witnesses. Kinda awesome. I wish I had more photos, but until the reception was starting to gear up my camera battery was plugged in behind the bar, charging. Doh! At least not having a camera in my hands forced me to be more present in the ceremony, not a bad thing. One more awesome detail that WISH I had a photo of: Michael and Lauren used the quilt from our chuppah for their chuppah. Beautiful. It looked so different too because they hung it up way higher and with more of an angle from the front to back as well as rotated 90 degrees from how it was displayed at our wedding.

The ceremony was beautiful, and I even got a shout out in the Rabbi’s introduction. I haven’t been to another Jewish wedding in a while, so it was interesting to see how different couples/rabbis do things differently.

Here are the few photos I did get that aren’t crap. Ben took some of them.

If Ben and I had decided to get married in the DC area, this is one of the locations we we were looking at: the atrium at Meadowlark Gardens.

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wearing the same thing to everyone’s wedding

Um, I’m boring. I think I’m going to wear the same dress to everyone’s weddings. It was almost $200, so that helps me justify it, right?

Does anyone else have a “wedding guest outfit?” Or just Ben and me? Maybe I switch up the shoes or the jewelry, but these are our go-to wedding outfits (Ben’s suit has a jacket, but we were SO warm from dancing!).

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