hairy hair

I need a haircut. My hair is WAY too long and it's super tempting to sit at my desk and pick at my split ends all afternoon, when the office gets quiet. Can someone please donate $75 so that I can get a good haircut? And why does it cost so much!? I get that it takes 90 minutes to cut my hair, but that's $50/hour! How much do good hairdressers actually get to keep of that? Or is it going to support the fancy salons that tend to employ good hairdressers?

we did it!

This photo was taken just after the ceremony. From this same period in the day there are some "crazy lady" looking photos, so I'm glad that there's a good photo of us. We were so overwhelmed!

About 2/3 of the way down the aisle, I noticed that people were ringing bells along with waving their ribbon wands but I didn't see any bells! It turns out that my mom put some jingle bells on string (75 sets) and her friend Lauri handed them out for people to ring as we recessed. It was great. Right in front of the video camera we stopped and said "wow, where did the bells come from?!" It was great; I guess we did have people with bells on!

Sadie, Sadie, married lady!

I love this photograph, apparently so did the blog--sphere! It was featured on one my my favorite wedding blogs, weddingbee.com, as a Gallery of the Day feature!

almost married!

Just another beautiful ceremony shot, by the lovely ladies of Kokoro Photography. LOL, there are balloons down! Oh well. I like balloons, even if they sink. Oooh, and you can see my mom's cousin Nancy holding a ribbon wand in the foreground. Yey! I thought they were so cute when people waved them as we recessed into the (warm) hotel.

I Like You too

I already talked about this part of the ceremony, so I'll take this time to celebrate with the world that I START MY NEW JOB TOMORROW! That's right, I will no longer be a member of the under employed minions, I will be employed 40 hours/week as an office manager and receptionist for a British, large scale concrete construction firm that's expanding into North America and moving from Houston to Denver. Message me if you'd like to know more.

reading the ketubah out loud

I wonder what's going on here, Rabbi Marc looks happy/pleased and Ben and I look so serious! Daniel, in the background, looks quite serious too. Oh well, in keeping with my recaps, I'm posting ALL of the stamped photos I have of the wedding. Whether they add to the "story" or not.

kiddush, blessing the wine

Rabbi Marc blessed the wine and then we gave each other a sip before passing the wine to each other's parents. Then I guess we were all a family? I think the photo of Ben giving me a sip of wine (the one in the middle) is so cute. He was terribly afraid of spilling on me!

kiddie parade

My dear friend Miri often lets me borrow her daughter and play mommy to her. Well, technically I'm babysitting while she's at work and her husband (a stay at home dad ISO a real job) is otherwise occupied. Ronya, in my crazyneighborlady's red wagon (which took way more emotional abuse to borrow than this photo is probably worth) was the star of the parade. Sadly, my little cousin Benjamin was quite disappointed to pull Ronya down the aisle instead of being a ring barer. Whoops. When I asked his dad (my cousin) if Benjamin would be a part of our ceremony he told Benjamin that he'd be the ring barer. Ben carried the rings in his pocket. Poor little Benjamin. :(

confessions of a haphazard bride

I know I'm a good planner/organizer but I even blew myself away with how well everything came together visually. Plus, the balloons make me smile. The blue accents on the grab-bag of "white" kippot, the balloons, the white fence and the chuppah ties it all together.

I know that I didn't really get a chance to notice how wonderful everything looked until we were walking down the aisle, towards our yihud (seclusion). FYI, everyone should take at least 10 minutes to themselves after the wedding. Time to squeeze their new spouses hand, squeal and jump up and down saying "we're married!", have some water and a snack, and finally to go to the toilet before rejoining their own wedding party/charade.

ceremonial observers

Our parents walked us down the aisle and our siblings stood by us in the corners of the chuppah. Both of us had a single grandparent in attendance and they participated in the ceremony as well.

I know that I TOTALLY strong-armed Daniel into getting his hair cut (it was about 6" longer 48 hours before this photo was taken), but I have to admit that he cleans up nicely. Coming off of a 6 month job as a park ranger at a Civil War memorial site, he looked a bit too "rustic" for most of the family to appreciate. Mark, my pseudo foster brother, cleaned up nicely as well. I think my dad bought him a new suit for the wedding because 2 weeks previously he'd been fretting that my younger brothers were wearing matching suits and he wasn't. On the wedding day, he matched too.

I love how proud Ben's mom looks in this photo, Becca and Ben's uncle Park look proud too. I wonder at what point in the ceremony these were taken. Something with words I'm guessing, since both Ben's Grandpa Bob and Aunt Terry are reeding their programs

we're REAL grownups, with REAL furniture now!

Amongst some crazy furniture sales after Christmas and before the January 2, we finally agreed that it was time to buy a couch. The couch(s) we'd been using belong to a friend's family and are their "kid furniture" that gets passed through the family. We've had them for 3 years and no one had complained, but I was beginning to feel like we'd had them for too long so when another friend offered us a futon I jumped at the opportunity and gave back the love seat of the couch set. The futon made an AWFUL couch. Though it's a lovely lounge platform, that's not quite what I had in mind for what I'd like our young married couple apartment to look like. Thankfully, Ben agreed.

I'd been looking at furniture for the past few weeks and scouting couches out for Ben, though a trip to Borders for free coffee (thank you Sunday paper!) led us on an impromptu trip to Arhaus Furniture. We'd never been in there before and from the outside looked like we'd be out-priced by the store. What we first picked out was quite reasonable, though in the end we decided to upgrade to a sofa bed and spent about 1/3 more than we intended. Oh well, our new sofa will be here in 8-10 weeks and it will be so pretty! You'll even be able to sleep on it, it has a built in air mattress! The frame folds out and then you plug in the pump. Pretty awesome, right? No more springs or bars in your back. Supposedly, the pump is a pressure sensitive one meaning that it will fill with air if the mattress starts to deflate.

Oh, you're probably wondering what we ordered. Unfortunately, there are no photos of the fabric OR the sofa on line, so use your imagination because it's from the Brentwood collection and looks like the wedge sofa, only not wedged and cranberry with flecks of other colors (instead of taupe). It will be beautiful!