Merry Christmas, Happy New Year

Picture 0f stockings of all siblings and now David at my parents house,

nicked off of Facebook as I don't have my camera or computer

We are at my Mum and Dad's for Christmas, New Years and the lead up to our week in the Highlands. We bought thermal long underwear and wool socks and pullovers and we drank spiced wine and we cuddled puppies and kittens (BOTH!!) and ate turkey and stuffing and mince pie and all four of my parent's daughters cuddled up in a bed and watched Law and Order SVU for hours. Tonight we're off to go to my cousins and uncle and aunt to greet 2011 and eat goose and then on Wednesday, Mum, David, Sister Tres and I are flying to Edinburg for my gorgeous cousin's gorgeous wedding with a gorgeous cake-topper made of pegs by me. Photos will abound. I'll be missing for a bit. I hope your Christmas was the most wonderful and that you get good and zozzled tonight and that 2011 starts with a hangover and gets better everyday. xoxox

If You Need Me

I will be over at Doux, unless something explicitly wedding related pops up.

Pop on over and visit me and Mary (seen above using fashion tape to try to keep me from flashing my tits to the entire church)

Home Again, Home Again

Back from Thanksgiving, done with work, eating Sunbelt Granola (the ghettoist of ghetto granola) by the handful from it's alluring box and thinking about all those Christmas cards on the desk waiting to be written (being married seems to indicate to me that I should actually send Christmas cards like an adult) and the flat that needs to be cleaned. Snugged on the couch with Susie and the Cat sick as hell. It's very nice to have a husband to get ginger ale and crackers. Very nice.

Thanks. Given.

Cliche:

I am thankful that Susie is still alive.

I am thankful my mother doesn't have a job so she can answer my texts about Susie's health and how to fix watery split pea soup.

I am thankful for sweatpants, not just on Thanksgiving but every day (sidenote: in college my roommate and I would enter our room and immediately shed our trousers for less constricting clothing, sweatpants featured prominently. F*ck pants was our moto. Sometimes still is).

I am thankful for fried potatoes I will be enjoying in sweat pants with Best-Friend-from-High-School on Wednesday night, and for grand old time with Oldest-and-Best on Friday.

I am thankful for our cute new apartment and our very new family.

I am thankful for free cable which hasn't shut off in the four months since we moved in despite the lack of bill.

I am thankful that I will get to be with my whole gorgeous family on Thursday (except Dos who is enjoying her semester in Rome and will be dancing on a bar somewhere in Italy being luminous and living the dream).

I am thankful for Daveroo. Who basically a year ago was still just this guy and is now my husband. Which still seems like a big scary weighted word but I'm working on it.

Picture of last Thanksgiving, my brother with Susie.

Turkey

Thanksgiving. We had some difficulties with David's family immediately before the wedding. One of David's family members tried to get him to nix the idea of marrying me and when that didn't work as well as she might have hoped, shit went down. A lot of it. There were tears and feelings were hurt. I tried to be cool about it and rise above it all but when you arrive at your bridal shower with a puffy, red, streaky face then you have a problem. We got married on a Saturday and that Thursday we packed up and moved to North Carolina, I've seen David's entire family (sisters, brothers, in-laws, nieces and nephews and parents) once since we got married which was nice (seeing them, not the only once aspect). Now we're trying to negotiate our first major holiday together. Which set of parents do we spend the day with? When do you see the second set of parents? How does one you tell your mother that you aren't spending Christmas with her? (luckily that someone is not me) How do you not hurt more feelings? This is difficult even with perfect relationships (as if those exist). My oldest and best friend (who basically could not like her in laws more and who's husband lurves her parents) think it's a suckfest. Trying to do it when your sister in law would probably like to devour your face and serve you up instead of a turkey? Reaaaaaally a suckfest.

At least any holidays not spent with my sweet and lovin' family will be spent with David's (now my) nephew, Ian, who has yummy cheeks for biting and cute tiny toes even if his mom is a mega b-word. The face he is making is the face my brain makes when I contemplate Thanksgiving.

Picture of Ian at our wedding, taken by Shaun Yasaki.

Painting

Accord to Sherwin Williams this is what my bathroom would look like if painted 'peppercorn'. David thinks it's totes hideous. I think he's mostly deranged but I like him anyway. What do we think?

Hint

Just in case anyone who's name is David would like to know about a nice present for me for Christmas which is my most favourite time of the year. I think this is real pretty. Just sayin.

New Weddings

My lovely lovely cousin is getting married in January at this lovely house in the freezy breezy Highlands of Scotland and, this time, I get to be a bridesmaid. I've never been one before and I'm thrilled to the teeth.

Some Things....

....I really like about being married, three months in.

Now that we are married, David makes me tea every single morning and every single evening and sometimes he peels my oranges for me. He used to do it sometimes but now he does it all the time.

Now that we are married, I can tell David I really hate his new haircut and he doesn't mind that much because I'm not going anywhere.

Now that we are married, when my dog nearly died and David went with me and my arms full of westie and wool tartan blanket and my red, puffy, sobby face to the vet and didn't say anything about it when I cried really loud and ugly in front of all the vet people.

Now that we are married, we have our money, and our dogs and our cat and our flat and our car and our computer and our bed and our dinner and our lives. Which is much easier than having to mind your own life and car and flat and dog and computer and bed and dinner and money. Much much easier.

P.S. The dog has been in the doggie hospital for two days and while for normal people this might not cause heaps of sobbing and ghashing of teeth and sleepless nights, for me this is it. So send Susie happy thoughts.

BRB

I'll be back soon, don't go away. I just moved and am looking for a job and drinking lots of tea and every now and then screaming at my husband and throwing things. Because it's a bit hard right now.

A Brief Aside

I am not one of those cool girls who never wanted to wear a white dress and didn't think about weddings. This is the evidence. I wore this for a whole year.

P.S. Dear Four-Year-Old-Hannah: I want yo shoes. Love, Twenty-Four-Year-Old-Hannah

Let Them Eat

The cake came from our friendly neighborhood farmer's market cupcake lady. She made the cake, dropped it off with Meghan-the-day-of-coordinator and then at the last minute we decided that my little tiny peg people should go on the regular cake. Because I'm crafty darn it. Crafty. She also arranged some extra flowers around it. My youngest sister at it for breakfast every day for a week after the wedding. It was so unbelievably delicious. I remember reading somewhere on APW about a couple who served cake to everyone and we hadn't really thought about who was going to serve the cake so I ended up doing it. Which gave me a chance to speak to everyone who wanted cake and made me feel like a real hostess, I loved it. I also managed to resist feeding David cake. Which. I. Did. Not. Want. To. Do.

Feeding cake to my sister-in-law, which I did want to do. Please ignore my double chin.

If anyone in Western or Central Maryland or South Central PA wants a fantastic farmers market cake tasting like magic, shoot me an email and I will hook you up. I have all the hook-ups.

All photos by Shaun Yasaki

Snap Dragons and Lavender

Way back in the pre-engaged engaged phase where we were getting married but he hadn't asked and I was scouring the interwebs looking for beautiful things I decided that if Meg and Peonies could do their own flowers than so could I. I found a DC area floral warehouse, ordered online and Friday morning Dad and my sister Jessie (yeah, I have three sisters, and a brother, there are a lot of us floating around) went to pick them all. My favourite flowers are snapdragons and I basically took the two colours of snapdragons that the warehouse had and then picked six other things in basically the same colours, a tiny bit of greenery and some berries and that was that.

I had been saving jars upon jars to pour the candles into and we used the rest for the centerpieces. None of them looked the same and we all just kind of went for it. People advised me to do a test run but I was poor and lazy (and still am) so I just decided to go for it when the flowers arrived and we did.

Gorgeous bridesmaids and sister put together flower arrangements

We arranged all the flowers in buckets and cookers and two of my bridesmaids, my Oldest-and-Best-Friend who DIYed her flowers in December and my sisters and I went to town. We made our own bouquets just sort of gathering them up and handing them off and that veteran friend wrapped the bouquets with floral tape and navy ribbon (something blue!)

Littlest sister rocks the hell out of flower arrangements

Maid of honor turned out to be florist extraordinaire

Now for the specifics: I kept looking for these when I was planning and I couldn't really find much. I had 400 stems, and spent less than $500 and we had SO many flowers. There were six bridesmaids bouquets, my bouquet, two little flower girl bouquets, twenty-table arrangements, four alter arrangements and heaps and heaps left over. We filled every vase in my parents house and there were flowers everywhere. It took a lot longer than I might have anticipated, there were seven of us and it took several hours to sort everything out. And the mess. There was a really big mess. My dad got the job of carrying all the stems and leaves to the compost bin.

A Bit of DIY, A Bit of DIT

SO. I figured it was time for some official photos and some round-up sort of things. I thought I would start with some of our many many do-it-yourself or do-it-together projects. Our wedding got very very DIY. My bridesmaids and I did the flowers, David and his groomsmen steamed the linens and cleaned the barn, my mother and sisters did a hundred little DIY projects and my uncle and my mother's cousin together painted the farm sign the morning of the wedding, we hung all the lights, my sister wrote the place-cards. Our wedding was not just something we picked-out and put together, our wedding was something that we built, that our families built. I wore a flower in my hair my friend from college made for me, I carried a bouquet wrapped by my Oldest-and-Best-Friend, our wedding felt like something we had spirited out of nothingness. To show you every single one of our do-it-yourself projects or do-it-together projects would take days, but here are some of my favourites.

The wedding was held in the barn on the farm my family my family bought my freshman year of highschool. There is a room in the barn that The-Oldest-and-Best-Friend and I painted and cleaned out to use as a fort and my little sister later took it over and painted it lime green. I lived in the house on the farm by myself when David and I met. The barn was full of hay and pigeons and David spent hours and days and hours pulling hay out of it and spraying it down and trying to get rid of the pigeons and keep them out. It was his full-time job for most of June and July.

I ordered two reams of tissue paper online (shipping that stuff costs a fortune) and my sisters and a few adorable friends spent many a random episode of Bones making those Martha Stewart Pom-Poms that every single other bride seems to have at her wedding. We made what felt like thousand but we barely had enough, I loved the way the antique white looked against the barn, we had them hanging over the wedding cake and over the band (which was my brother's band, they are totes stellar, listen to their music, buy their cd).

These sparklers don't really count as diy but I put them in a jar and wrote a tag and they were the best wedding exit ever. Yeah, EVER.

This freezer was in the bottom of the barn the entire time I lived there. My little sister did some serious disinfecting while leaving the rust intact. I wanted rust. My friend Meghan who was my day-of-coordinator propped it open and we filled it with glass bottle cokes and Perrier (dear Sam's Club, I love you). The bar ended up right next to it.

I was planning on making a ring pillow for the boys to carry but three days before the wedding that wasn't done and I was planning on having them just march up the isle. My mom offered to make a ring bowl and boy did she ever. Mummie is the single greatest boss of paper mache and rocked the hell out of this wee bowl. My sister Ellen (Tres) painted our initials and the date one it as well as the gold ring.

Ellen also wrote ninety names on these old fashioned mailing tags and she and my dad wrapped them around the napkins we got at Sams Club. I poured 90 candles using soy wax. I bought fifty pounds of the stuff online (here) and had everyone I know saving jars for me. I used all 50 pounds. There are now candles EVERYWHERE at the house.

My bridesmaid Christina apparently burnt herself a lot and frank most of a box of Franz while making these babies but they looked GORGEOUS. I was moaning about not knowing what to put in our hair and she told me she had it and she did. She made one for each of the bridesmaids and I considered it evidence of the excellent time they all had after I left when I found two in my parents pool the next morning.

I got the idea to use a chalkboard for a seating chart ages ago and my 13 year old sister, Fiona, jumped on it. She found the frame for $3 at a garage sale and she primed, painted it, bit of chalkboard paint, bit of wood, wood glue and some nails. She's the bomb.com My sister Ellen then used chalkboard pens to write the seating chart on it. Right now it's waiting to be put on the wall of our new apartment in Durham. I can't quite bring myself to erase the names of everyone who was there with us. Lovely lovely lovely.

Photos by Shaun Yasaki and my sister Ellen

More to Come

I promise that this isn't the end of the wedding blog. We are just moving and David's in one place working and sleeping on someone's couch and I am in another place, sleeping in my girlhood bedroom in my parents house surrounded by boxes and three other siblings who are all going back to school and my muddy wedding dress. There will be more pretty pictures and details and all that. Being married is weird. It is not like not being married. Even though everyone else said it was. My soul feels different, which I didn't expect. And I'm still getting used to. More on all this later.

Three Weeks On

The photographer posted pictures today and there are some unexpectedly lovely pictures. Amelia laughing at the reception, me not looking like a mobster's wife, the church packed to the gills with lovely, loved people. Shaun did a good job.

All photos of course by Shaun Yasaki

Our Wedding Also Looked Like This

Wed

It was a fanf*ckngtastic wedding. I looked like this. There are more pictures. For later. We're moving to North Carolina tomorrow and I am tired, and have bug bites on my eye lids and have bronchitis. But the wedding? Luminous.

P.S.

And as for Zen? It's kind of real. So weary that I don't really care all the much that my ATM card won't give me anymore money for the bartender and organist or that the plumber my mom called to replace the jank looking downstairs bathroom faucet actually just ripped the whole thing out and it's sitting on the lawn and the downstairs bathroom is non-functional is not reaaaaaaaaallly what I would have called zen. I'm not at peace. I'm calm like a serial killer is calm.

Wedding.

Is tomorrow. I know it's not really done to post during your wedding weekend but there is a moment of quiet. Dad and Sister Dos went to pick up flowers, Mummie is taking the dogs to the kennels and picking up the CSA and Sisters Tres and Cuatro went to pick arms loads of Queen Anne's Lace to fill in bouquets. Brother and his bandmates are still en route and non of the bridesmaids or friends has shown up yet. David is hungover somewhere in bed after bachelor party. Susie, the prettiest bridal dog in town, is on my feet. We are tired. All of us. We want things to get rolling. This getting married business is scary but my favourite thing ever gleaned from Meg is the Jewish Proverb that has been in my facebook favourite quotes (mock, I don't care) for like a year:

“The entire world is a very narrow bridge
And the essential thing is not to succumb to fear.”

2 Days

From right now I will be driving to the inn and it will all be over. There is a little zen now.

Did Anyone Else Hear This?

I heard this article on NPR this morning while making about Not Getting Married. Becoming domestic partners rather than getting married. One guy said "marriage is the big commitment, let's not ruin anything" which reminds me of Meg's post yesterday. For me I think the best thing about having made the decision to get married is that we've decided to be together forever. So whether or not we ruin anything, we're in it. Which is kind of the point. Hmmm.

Apres

This is my fantasy right now so much.

I loved when Ten Thousand Only just kind of disappeared after getting married. I had Doux before but have left it in Mary's hands completely since getting engaged. Because you know. I'm a monstrous engaged disaster. Well with ten days until the wedding I'm really looking forward to a real life again.

The Loveliest Kitchen

Because fortunately we won't be engaged forever. Via Design Sponge

Mini-Moon

We just booked our mini-cabin (MD parks department's term, not mine) for three nights right after our wedding here. We'll have a firepit, and a picnic table and a one room cabin with one double bed and an outlet, and a lake and a cooler filled with beer and s'mores and we'll arrive in our new groovy city of Durham a week after our wedding tan and sunburned and sleepy a week after our wedding. I couldn't be more chuffed with us.

Also: Today we bought Perrier in little glass bottles and glass bottle Cokes and big bottles of Pelagrino for yummy wedding yum yums. Now if I can drag our enormous old '60s freezer out of the basement of the barn and clean it off..... Oh yeah. And OUR MARRIAGE LICENSE was gotten today. HOLLER.

We Are Making Candles

Because we cannot make sisters-in-law love me, and we cannot make more money and we cannot make time move more slowly. I have made 40 of these buggers with a 50lb bag of soy wax and have only about 40 more to make. Our papel picado arrived, and our bistro lights, and David is power washing my parents barn tomorrow, and I am putting in my 2 weeks notice at my soul crushing job and I am packing the glasses and frying pans and bowls that people who love us have given us, and I am packing the painting of the street my grandmother lived on in Connecticut in 1963 and the table cloth my parents bought for their wedding in their apartment in 1979. I am sewing a comb onto my grandmother's veil so I can wear it. I am cudding my dog and cat a lot. I am wrapping people I love around my like a wool blanket and drinking lots of tea. I sunburned my nose today in the pool. Three weeks from tomorrow.

3.5 Weeks

Things have been rough in wedding land. Like crying for two hours on the morning of the bridal shower because my fsil doesn't want David to marry me rough. Like some people didn't show up when my parents invited his family over for dinner so they could meet because those people were angry about stupid things rough, Like, throwing up at work because I'm so nervous rough.

This past weekend we had Bridal Shower, bachelorette party, my dad moved into his new apartment in the city, my mom tried to unpack the entire country house because everyone moved back, we did meet the parents, we learned that David is starting a new job hundreds of miles away before the wedding, we learned that I was going to have to quit my job immediately, we learned that David's sister hates me more than anything and doesn't want us to get married, we learned that we don't have enough money to pay for the wedding.

Things have been kind of rough.

Mexican Wedding Flags For Me Please

I want these, so hard.

I love

These flowers so much my eyes hurt.

Invitations

Today my first batch of RSVP cards came in. We got the gorg Paper Source Invitations and my gorgous best friend Mary did the calligraphy. Because the paper source RSVPs were the same price again as the invitation, and I am very poor I found the botanical print of a peony and hacked it down and had it printed by a local printer as a postcard, tied them to the invites with very very thin grey wool from my parents sheep (so basically free, hip and organic but mostly free). I also gave in to the mad multi-stamp craze. I know I'm biased but I think they are they are the most beautiful invitations anyone ever had. Just saying.

David Gets Pants

Mini David that is. The tie is just a stand in until we decide what colour ties the real guys will be wearing. Fruit cake here they come.

Zen

According to everyone I am about 43 days away from Wedding Zen (wedding is 44 days away) and while I am looking forward to that I would also really really be into Wedding Sleep, or even Wedding Mellow-Morning. I am really over Wedding-it's-two-in-the-morning-and-I-can't-sleep-because-of-all-the-twitchy-things-in-my-mind-and-the-12-coffees-out-of-an-instant-coffee-machine-I-had-today-at-work-in-order-to-make-up-for-not-sleeping-at-all-last-night-because-I-was-twitchy-then-too-and-eff-my-life-I'm-moving-tomorrow.

Yep. F*ck zen, I just wanna sleep.

And Again

P.S.

Can we make it look like this?