Pictures!

About two weeks ago, we had our engagement pictures taken. I also had my first wedding freak out.

I was worried that I had booked the photographer to early, and I hadn't really shopped around. I kept reading about brides searches for the perfect photographer and about photography being one of the things you shouldn't try to save money on.

Initially photography wasn't that important to me. Mr. Camrah did catering for a lot of weddings, and he notice some photographers were a little pushy. Our only requirements in a photographer were that they had to be within budget and wasn't pushing anyone to get their shots.

I basically looked at all of the photographers in the lowest price range, and I looked for the best one out of that group. I picked our photographer after a few emails and calls. I looked at her stuff online, but I didn't think I had to meet her in person. Then I read about photographer meetings and started to get worried that I hadn't spent enough researching time to find a photographer.

I was basically second guessing myself about everything that morning because I was worried. What to wear, if my dress will bleach me out, if our setting is to corny, etc.

The photographer sent me a slide show today with a song that I picked out. I think it turned out good even with my minor freak out.

http://secure.smilebox.com/ecom/openTheBox?sendevent=4d5441324e4441304d7a46384d5451354d4449354e6a633d0d0a&sb=1

What do you think? Were you worry about any of your vendors or purchases?

Traditions

I love traditions and the sentiment behind them. I've done some research about wedding traditions in different countries. Here are two sites that have info about different wedding costumes.

http://www.worldweddingtraditions.com/
http://travel.mapsofworld.com/wedding/wedding-traditions-around-the-world/index.html

Just search for the country or culture you would like to know more about. Even if you can't tie it in to your wedding, its still really fun to learn about traditions that your ancestors might have gone through.

Here is a teaser for one of the traditions I am incorporating into my plans.

Do you have any family or cultural traditions you are planning to incorporate into your wedding?

The Conclusion of the Wedding Dress Search

By now you must be thinking that I was obsessed with the Keveza dress, and I probably was a little.

After emails to seamstress and a few shopping experiences, my friend from work convinced me to take off half a day to go dress shopping. She was going to pick up her wedding dress and wanted me to go with her.

Returning to the Wedding Dress Search

Like many brides, I was on a search for the perfect dress. I had an ideal dress, but it was too expensive. I had gone to a few stores, but none of the dresses I tried were as great as the image I had in my head. I still wasn't over the Keveza dress I initially fell in love with.

I started to look into alternatives to buy from a wedding dress boutique. I started to look up all the seamstresses in Seattle and Portland. I figured if I couldn't find the right dress from a store, maybe I could find someone to make the image I had in my head.

The Plunge

My relationship status of facebook is engaged, and because of this I get bombed by all kinds of wedding advertisements on the side of profiles. Most of the time I ignore the photographers and planners, but occasional an add sparks my interest. Last night, facebook introduced me to the plunge.com.
The plunge is a wedding website for guys. The wedding website is pretty funny. I took the bridezilla test (it's meant to be taken by Mr. Camrah to find out about me, but oh well) to see what kind of a bride I was. I was labeled as a government issue bride.

The web site does make fun of a lot of stuff (especially the knot), but don't take it seriously, its meant to be entertaining and funny.

The website is also a lot less intimidating to guys. If any of the guys in my wedding have any questions about their duties, I will be directing them to the plunge. Our best man has some concerns about his toast, and I will be sure to show hims the plunge's article about best man speeches.

Check out the article about wedding porn. The article pretty much describes my use of free time.

Have you found anything to make weddings less intimidating for guys?

Incorporating the Groom

Sorry, but I'm going to have to interrupt the dress saga. I'll come back. I promise. :)

Mr. Camrah has been telling me that the wedding should be focused around two things 1. Us 2. Me. While he is probably right, I've never really been great at taking the spotlight. I prefer the focus to be on everyone. (Don't ask why I have a person blog about MY wedding).

I want to make our wedding about more than just us with a focus on the bride. So, I am trying to incorporate and include those whom we are closest to.

Wedding dresses part two

When I last blogged about my wedding dress search...

I fell in Love with this dress.

Then, I realized it was WAY out of my league. I knew I couldn't get the dress, but the couture dress did teach me several things about wedding dresses.

When I First Fell in Love... With a dress!

I was a fish out of water after getting engaged. Our engagement was a complete surprise to me, and I knew almost nothing about the wondrous world of weddings and wedding planning. One of the first things, I did was join the Knot. When I first started planning it was like my bible. I looked for everything on the Knot from bridesmaids dresses to wedding traditions. I quickly became a fan of the daily wedding obsession blog, and I checked every day to see what new ideas were posted.

Shortly after President Obama's inauguration, a post was put up about wedding dresses similar to Michelle's dress. That was the moment I fell in LOVE.
The dress is by Romona Keveza. I loved it because it was light and airy. So Romantic! It had just enough sparkle, but it wasn't over powering. This was at the beginning of my wedding planning, and I was still a little naive about wedding stuff. I didn't have a budget or price range ideas. All I knew is that I loved this dress.

Intervention Needed. STD Epidemic

Hi. My name is Miss. Camrah. (Hi, Miss. Camrah.) And I'm addicted to wedding websites.
I check the knot's daily obsession everyday and stay up to date on all the wedding bee blog post. Its more than that too. I am continually looking online for dresses, flowers, paper products, and decoration. Etsy, Ebay, and Google are my new best friends.

While perusing the internet for more wedding goodness, one day I came across 1920's art deco postcards on Ebay. I love the look of vintage, and I was searching for art deco and 1920-1930's jewelry, art, and inspiration. The postcards are from a book called Postcards of the Elegant Twenties published in the 80's. It was a collection of 24 pieces of George Barbier's art deco illustrations.

I looked at the above image and fell in love. Art deco post cards with girls in dresses and boys in tuxes. After seeing Mrs. Bunny use vintage postcards for RSVP, I immediately thought these would make great STDs. I love that everyone in each group of friends and family will get a unique postcard. Here are all the postcards I will be using.
Every postcard tells the receiver the name of the illustration on the front. Some of the postcards are not as wedding centered as others, but I really like the effect of them all being different. I also left out about 5 postcards in the set of 24 because they just didn't fit (or had too many exposed body parts).

The only part that is a little sad is that I won't be able to put engagement pictures on them, but hopefully those will be added to the invites.

I'm so excited to be adding this vintage feel to most peoples first introduction to our wedding. I also love how unique all the postcards will look as STDs!

Do you have any ideas for unique STDs?

Snow Covered Engagement

Mr Camrah and I have known each other for over three years now, but neither one of us can pin point the exact date we met. We were both in the Greek system at the University of Washington and met through our houses. I lived in his fraternity for a summer, but we did not start dating until the following summer. Over a year later Mr. Camrah decided to plan a surprise proposal. He sneakily picked out the ring in October and suggested that we visit both of our families for Christmas. We organized our two week family-fun filled holiday. With this knowledge we decided to have a Christmas dinner for just the two of us before we left Seattle. Mr. Camrah suggested we go to the metropolitan grill (a fancy steak house in Seattle), and my one condition was that the dinner was to be my Christmas present. He claimed that he had to at least get me something small to open, or his family would get on his case about not getting me something to open.

Wedding Weekend 09

In my small little world, it seemed like everyone got married this past weekend. I went to a total of two weddings.

Mr. Camrah and I went to two. The first wedding we were there for the bride. She is my friend from work. It was so much fun to have someone to go through this crazy process with. We shared ideas and pictures of what we liked and disliked.
The wedding was held on the water with a sunset backdrop. They were very lucky that it did not rain. There were two very unique things about this wedding. Firstly, the food was not your average chicken and beef options.

Wear the Purple and the Gold?

After Mr. Camrah proposed, I was in shock. We had not previously discussed getting engaged probably because I wasn't ready to. I thought that we had another year or two before we would be thinking about engagement. I took the rest of the night to process. The next day, I told my co-worker. Sometimes it just helps to tell someone, and I think that it made everything more real for me. I started to call friend later that.

Ideas for the actually wedding day started to form a few days later. Images of colors started to float into my mind. I went through several ideas and flip flopped like almost everybody does. I gave a teaser of my color scheme in my first post.

E-ring photo session

Most of the time I work a regular 40 hour 9-5 work week, but occasionally, I work odd hours. Yesterday, I worked a 24hr shift. Its not as bad as it seems, but I definitely come home, eat, and go straight to sleep. That also means I had today off, and I had the apartment all to myself while Mr. Camrah was at work. After my nap, I decide to have an e-ring photo shot.

I have been wanting to do this after I saw all the great pictures other girls took. I was, however, a little self-conscious to do it in front of anybody (I have a lot of self-conscious quirks, but somehow Mr. Camrah seems to find away around them).

Anyways, I had a lot of fun taking these pictures by myself. Although, our cats were very curious about it. The first picture is on Mr. Camrah's Key board.

First time blogger

Hi (nervous wave),
This is my first time blogging. I think its a great way for people to get out their thoughts and feelings, but I always kind of thought it was for way cooler and hipper people than me. I tried doing the journal thing in middle school, but I always got lazy by about day four. So, we will see how this goes.

I started this blog to write about my wedding. I know what your thinking, "A blog about your wedding. How obsessed are you? Are you going to become one of those Bridezillas?"

Well, the answers are very obsessed and I hope not.

You see, I never really thought about weddings. When I was in high school I remember wishing for my grown up life with my husband and lazy Saturdays spent reading on our wrap around porch (I was 16. enough said). But the wedding was never something I thought about.

The factor of my personality that has turned me into a blogging bride to be is my planning. I have been a planner for most of my life.

Exhibit A) I love Disney. Who doesn't? One of my favorite movies is The Little Mermaid. I have gone to Disneyland two times in my life. The first time I looked up stuff about the park, but I really didn't have that much to go on until I got there. After the first day of scoping out the park and receiving the revered map, I mapped out a plan for the rest of the week. We were able to get through the whole park because of my planning. For my second trip, I was primed; I was ready. I had already been to Disneyland, and I kept the map from our last trip. Two things were different about this trip. 1. Adventure land was added to Disneyland 2. My younger cousins were coming with us. Needless to say, I had the whole trip planned out with printed time schedules for everyone. I also learned an important lesson that trip: Things don't always work out as planned. We got off the schedule, and at first I was upset because I put so much work into the schedules. Then I realized I was in the happiest place on earth and had no reason to be upset. Did I mention that I was 13 and 15 when I went to Disneyland?

Anyways, back to the wedding stuff.

Originally, I did not think that I would get this into the whole wedding planning process, but it came at a good time in my life. I am done with undergrad, and I am working to pay off loans before going back to school. I also Love all these little projects and details I am planning. As a little preview of posts to come (since I didn't get a chance to really talk wedding planning), attached is my inspiration board that i just made. TODAY!



P.S. I might use to many parentheses. He He!