It's done

Well, after having makeup slathered on me by three different people, I have booked my makeup artist.

I realize this photo is not the best--it's weirdly pink/orange--but I really loved the makeup. She absolutely got my #1 pet peeve--I hate eyeshadow on Asian women. I think it makes us look sleepy, or plastic, or something. She punched up my eyes with false eyelashes instead, which I must admit I kind of love. If I were the kind of girl who got out of bed each morning with enough time to do anything but brush my teeth and comb my hair, I would be sorely tempted to put on false eyelashes every day :-).

Here is the makeup after four hours:

And after seven hours (please excuse the truly horrendous hair):

I also came away from this trial with a revolutionary beauty secret. You see, I have bushy eyebrows. Every single makeup artist I have seen in this last month has suggested I thin my eyebrows. Over the years, I have had this suggestion made to me by facialists and waxers, as well. The problem is, a) see above regarding barely being able to brush my teeth and comb my hair--I'm pretty low-patience, maintenance-wise; and b) I have very sensitive eyebrows and eyelids. Waxing/threading/plucking them hurts. Believe me, I have waxed other parts of my body (even ones that are supposed to be sensitive) without flinching, but the eyebrows are painful. When I tried threading a couple months ago, tears were streaming down my face. The threader finished the job with her face set in an expression of pure contempt for my wimpiness.

So, when this makeup artist once again suggested plucking my eyebrows, I warned her that I have zero tolerance for it. Then she said these magic words:

"Oh, I'll put some Ambesol on them."

I tell you, a whole new world has opened up for me. If I were the kind of girl who got out of bed each morning with enough time to do anything but brush my teeth and comb my hair, I would totally shape my eyebrows regularly.

When she sat down at the end of the trial to make notes about what makeup she had put on me (to remember for eight months from now when the wedding is actually here), I asked her to be sure to bring the Ambesol: I will have gorgeous eyebrows on my wedding day, if on no other day!

Unexpected

So yesterday Laura and I went to the Gallery of Wearable Art. They custom make very fancy clothes for celebrities, and cost an arm and a leg. However, they are closing because the owner is ready to retire, and whatever they have on hand is on sale for the rest of the month--70% off right now.

I saw an utterly gorgeous red silk gown with fancy floral embroidery and a heavy obi-like sash, which I just adored. Fortunely, it still cost $1,000 even with the discount, and after all, what do I need an Oscar-worthy gown for?

There was also a very lovely embroidered wedding gown the saleperson tried to sell me for $100, but I already have a dress I love.

Then he suggested I look at some of the veils they have in back. I was still not sure I want a veil, but I figured what the heck. Most of them were too poufy. But then Laura suggested I try one with a wide white ribbon around the edge--we had seen one like this last week, and liked it. The salesperson pulled it out for me, and I was happy to see that it had no comb and therefore no pouf--it simply draped over my head. It was very long, too--cathedral length, which I had never entertained as a possibility. After all, I'm not getting married in a cathedral :-).

But, when I put it on, I thought it was pretty. Laura (she is evil) asked how much it was. The saleperson said:

"$75."

What could I do? I bought it:

Now that I own it, I'm actually kind of excited about it: I can see myself in it with the dress on, and I like the idea of it. I might, though, embellish it a bit. See the satin edge?

I am thinking I might sew some red Chinese knots around the edge, to give it color, a bit of ornateness, and a unique touch, too. Plus it would give the veil that nice, drapey heavy edge of the dream veil I once saw in the Saks window. I think even if I end up having to sew 500 knots on, it still won't cost as much as it would have in another store.

I'm pretty happy with my bargain.

Three rectangles

Knitting update: I have continued working on my lace hoodie pullover (despite the fact that it is now much too warm to be wearing a sweater made of an angora blend), and I'm happy to report all pieces are done:



Here they are blocking: three stockinette rectangles representing the back and two sleeves. Now all that's left is the assembly, which, while it is my least favorit epart (I hate seaming), at least has the advantage of producing a sweater immediatley upon completion :-).

For my next project, I am thinking I will knit a shawl for my sweetie's grandmother, who is turning 90 in September. I've never knitted a shawl before, so I am a bit intimidated, given my short attention span: that will be one large piece of knitting!

Miscellaneous

Laura and I have half-day summer Fridays, so for the second week in a row, we did some wedding-related errands. This week was miscellaneous non-urgent things: I'm in a sort of lull at the moment, when the major items that need to be done way in advance have mostly been taken care of, and the remaining things can wait a few months.

So, yesterday we did some random shopping:

We stopped in at Mokuba ribbon, a gorgeous ribbon store, which sadly only sells wholesale.

We went to Mood Fabrics of Project Runway fame--this was not really wedding related; I just love browsing fabric stores, and Mood is a beauty.

We stopped in at M&J Trimming and looked at the rhinestone trim, among other things.

We went to Sposabella Lace, where I tried on some veils. I liked the veils, but I am still not sure I want one enough to spend any money on it.


Finally, we ended up at Lord & Taylor, our favorite department store, where we shopped a little, checked out the formal dresses to see if anything red and bridesmaid-worthy had come in, and then we ended up at the Elizabeth Arden counter, where I was accosted by a makeup artist:

I really like it! She used a much lighter hand with the foundation and chose a color which was perfect with my skin. Also, instead of blush, which I don't like on me, she used a bronzer, which looked fantastic. I really liked that she looked at me, saw that I never wear makeup, and took it easy. She also didn't push me to buy anything (although one of her colleagues gave us a sales pitch on some fancy anti-aging treatment throughout).

Here it is four hours later (terribly overexposed, but believe me, it still looked good):

I took her card, of course. I'm hoping she won't be too pricey for wedding makeup!

Makeup trial

So, how did the real purpose of the trip to Verona go?

I'm not too sure. Here is the before picture:

My main concern is that I want to cover up the spots and speckles and zits, especially on my chin. I also want strong eyeliner, no/little eyeshadow (I think eyeshadow on Asian women just makes us look sleepy), and no/little blush (I hate pink with my skin tone).

Here is an after picture:

Looks pretty nice here, right? I like what she's done with my eyelashes--she glopped on more mascara than I had ever thought possible. She definitely evened out my skin tone, but did so by putting on an awful lot of foundation; I felt very made-up.

Here's another after picture, in harsher light:

I look like death warmed over with a mask on, especially in the area between my eyes and nose. And it looked even worse after several hours, when the foundation layer had absorbed, and the powder was coated on top. I really didn't like it.

What did my sweetie think? He said, ".....it looks nice. But not like you. You look really...Asian."

I have no idea what that means, but it didn't sound happy, to me. He is on record as not liking makeup very much (after all, he dates me, and I never wear the stuff), so he didn't really know what to say, and kept telling me that it didn't matter--I should do what I wanted. But, while I want to look bridal beautiful (read: perfect), I also want to look like the prettiest me he's ever seen--and obviously this was not it.

As for Laura, she was very unhappy--she felt the makeup made her look old, and I had to agree it wasn't the most flattering look on her (no pics for privacy reasons :-).

So, while I think the makeup loooked reasonably nice at first, and while I also think its ultimate failure was probably my fault, because I asked for even skin tone, nonetheless, I think I need to go back to the drawing board. I am thinking, since I hate heavy makeup, that I might try doing my own. This will be something of a challenge, since I never wear makeup in real life....but I have nine months to learn, right?

C is for cookie

Friday my friend Laura and I ventured out into the wilds of Verona, New Jersey, for a makeup trial. We were a bit early, so stopped in a bakery for a snack. There, we saw these:

I can do without Elmo or Big Bird, but the Cookie Monster--complete with chocolate-chip cookie shoved in his mouth--I love it.

Hair ornaments

Once upon a time, I had very very long hair, and I used to buy fancy hair ornaments for it all the time. I rarely wore them--very very long hair is quite heavy and doesn't put up with a lot of nonsense. Then I cut it, wore it short for a while, and now that it is (not quite as) long again, I do not have the same navel-gazing life I used to have. That is: I can barely make sure my hair is brushed, much less decorated, before I leave the house each morning.

But, here comes the wedding, which is an opportunity to do all kinds of girly things I don't do in everyday life: wear a floor-length, designer dress. Wear big flashy jewelry. Wear expensive, bright red shoes. Get my makeup done. And: get my hair done and ornament it.

So, I have become mildly obsessed with vintage hair combs. Here are some currently on eBay.

From thefunkyjunkco:

From rdshow:

From Simitra:

(Something blue, perhaps?)

There are people who collect these (I have been outbid on several because I can't bring myself to spend significant amounts of money on a comb), and I can see why. I find them beautiful and fascinating.

These are big, Spanish-style combs, that would stick out dramatically. If I were wearing a large bun/chignon, they'd be way cool, and would beg for a fancy veil.

Alas, I am focused on the not-quite-Conehead, and there's just nowhere for one to go on that sleek, cylindrical shape.

Aren't they gorgeous, though?

More veil thoughts

Here's an interesting item I found on eBay:

It's a 50's ad, featuring a pretty, simple veil and simple instructions on how to make it at the bottom. I like this; it's definitely something I'll keep in mind, though I fear it will not go with the haristyle I am currently fixated on.

No, not the Conehead, but this:

The first time I saw this picture, I thought, "Ew, that's a little wild." The second time I saw it, I thought, "Hm, it's interesting." By the third time (and, you understand, viewing something multiple times does not happen by accident), I was thinking, "Hmm, it's everything I like about the Conehead, without the Coneheadiness." It looks like it requires a lot of hair, though.

And, of course, it absolutely will not go with that veil :-).

And...another

What can I say? I'm obsessed. But I really like this one:

(More name changing....it's hard to make up names!)

I would ask my dad to write a double happiness for me, since this one is another stolen jpeg. And this is yet another 2-color design, but I didn't like it as much all red or all black. This is nice combo. Letterpressed on a white textured paper with a red pocketfold: gorgeous.

I suspect I am going to be spending a lot more on invites than I really wanted to....

I detect a theme.....

A few more attempts at designing my own invitations:

(Names changed to protect the guilty)



This one is a "tea length" invitation featuring a Chinese papercut. Alas, the Chinese do not have a tradition of elaborately beautiful papers like the Japanese, but they do have a tradition of very intricate papercut designs. This one features the double happiness symbol as well as a dragon and a phoenix--traditionally representative of the Emperor and Empress, respectively, and used often for weddings.

Both of these designs are 2-color, which adds a layer of cost. Sigh. I have expensive taste, what can I say?

I've really been enjoying playing around with these invitation designs. It has inspired an urge to quit my job, get a graphic design degree, and set up an invitation design business out of my home.

In the course of the wedding planning, I have felt similar urges to:

Quit my job and start up a floral design business.

Quit my job and start up a wedding cookie favor business.

Quit my job and become a wedding hairstylist.

Quit my job and become a wedding photographer (OK, this one would be in a totally different reality).

Quit my job and start up a wedding dress sewing business (again, this would be in a dimension where I am someone with a much greater attention span and a much bigger apartment).

I sense a theme running through these....

On the other hand, I have no desire to become a DJ. I do not expect to have any urge to become a wedding officiant. And I have zero, I repeat zero, desire to be a wedding planner/consultant because you know what? Being a middleman sucks.

In which I lack equipment and knowledge

So, here is a first attempt at designing an invitation, which I did very quickly in Word:


(Names obscured because this is the Internet :-)

It's very plain, and I think my sweetie would like it (I haven't shown him yet). It may be a bit too plain for me, but I think I could come around, especially if I decided to splurge and do letterpress. You see, this place will take your design and letterpress it for a very reasonable price. I could be happy with a plain invitation if I could have letterpress.

The problem with designing my own, of course, is that I lack the tools (and also the design training, but if I keep it simple we won't worry too much about that). For example, I would need to provide the file as a pdf (at the very least: they'd love a Quark file), and I have no means of making a pdf. The little double happiness in the middle is a jpeg I swiped from somewhere; by no means is it a printer-ready piece of art. Somehow I would need to get my hands on a hi-res piece of art, preferably one that's "vectored" (like that term? I learned it yesterday) so that I can size it at will and still keep the quality of the image.

On top of it, it has occurred to me that it might be nice to ask my dad to write a double happiness for me--he's known in his family for his beautifl Chinese calligraphy, and it would be a nice, personal touch. Then I would need a scanner to get the art into my computer, and who knows how you scan something as a vectored piece of art?

All of this is going to cost money; I certainly am not going to invest in a scanner or a piece of software that costs hundreds--that would sort of defeat the purpose of designing my own.

On the other hand, I'm saving a lot of money in yarn these days--what else am I going to spend my craft money on? :-)

Veils of time

Several years ago, long before I met my sweetie, possibly even before I started dating seriously--so, let's say 1999 or 2000--I was standing in front of Saks Fifth Avenue, waiting for a bus to take me home. For those of you who don't know it, Saks Fifth Avenue on Fifth Avenue is a gorgeous, elegant store. The kind of store Carolyn Bessette Kennedy goes into to buy a $4,000 off-the-rack little black dress before flying up to Martha's Vineyard in her husband's small plane. The kind of store with a lunch room for the real Ladies Who Lunch. The kind of store where li'l ol' me goes in to browse, but never to buy. Once I was given a $50 gift certificate to Saks, and it took me two trips and six hours before I found something I could buy--and yes, I looked at the hair accessories.

Saks has gorgeous windows. They are always chock full of beautiful designer clothes, often gowns of the crispest silk faille or the most glorious structured wool suits. I walk by and drool. And, in January, they have wedding clothes.

So, in January of 1999 or 2000, long before I met my sweetie or even started dating seriously, I was standing in front of a Saks window which featured a dress, a tuxedo, doubtless some frippery accessories--and a veil.

The veil was glorious. I don't remember who the designer was, but it was a long, cathedral-length veil, draped mantilla-style over the mannequin's head--not poufy at all, just smooth and elegant as it fell down over her outstretched arm--and edged in at least nine inches of heavy, luxurious alencon lace, all the way around.

I'd never seen a veil like it. It was breathtaking, and the lace was substantial; it looked almost quilted, corded and beaded with pearls, and the extravagant width of it screamed expensive in the best way. It clearly had weight--the veil's drape was entirely due to its lace edge. I fell completely in love with.

Fast forward seven or eight years, and I am looking at veils. Way back when I saw my Dream Veil, I thought it would be an indulgence, but one that wouldn't be too terrible. Now, I laugh: I don't remember who the designer was, but I wouldn't be shocked to hear that that veil cost $8,000 or more. Veils are crazy expensive, especially when you consider that they are pretty simple things: a circle of netting and some lace edging, maybe with a comb sewn on. Sometimes they don't even have the lace edging, and they still run into the hundreds of dollars. I honestly don't get it. There are a lot of things associated with weddings whose expense I don't get, but veils are #1. Designer wedding gowns are ridiculously expensive, but at least they involve some work to create; veils are, well, veils. There's not a lot of there there, and on top of it, you wear the veil for maybe an hour, while you wear the dress all night.

So, needless to say, I won't be investing in my Dream Veil, even if I could find it lo these many years later. But, sadly, the cheaper veils don't do it for me. I am seduced by that nine inch border, something that is so far out of my price range I couldn't even make it myself for the money I am willing to spend. I could easily have a two-inch or even a three-inch border, but....well. It's not the same.

Ha: I guess there is something I am very particular about :-).

So, I am leaning towards skipping the veil entirely. I have been thinking about it, and I realized that I envision myself walking down the aisle without one. I don't want one obscuring my face. Or my hair. Or the dress I love. Or my view of my sweetie.

But that veil in the window of Saks: I'm telling you, it was glorious.

We had to laugh

I've been looking long and hard for an invitation which is Chinese, but not tacky. Chinese themed invitations generally seem to feature a lot of metallic gold and glitter and foil stamping; they are also often on cheap card stock, such as you'd expect a birthday card to be printed on. I am a paper snob, and I want luxurious, thick card stock. If I could justify the cost of letterpress, I would go for it. I love the textural quality of good paper, and I'm not into the flashy glitter.

Finally, I stumbled on this invitation from White Aisle.

That symbol in the lower right corner is the Chinese "double happiness" character. Each half is the Chinese character for "happiness" and two happinesses together is a traditional good wish for a wedding. I would very much like to incorporate this into my wedding. I like the dragon, too: it's graphic and interesting, Chinese without being flashy. I think this invitation is unusual and interesting, and it's reasonably priced, so I ordered a sample.

What do you know? My sweetie hates it. The dragon is too "in your face". He wants something classic, simple and (to my mind) dull. As we discussed it, we started to giggle. Once again, our opinions are directly opposed.

What could we do? We had to laugh. And it's back to the drawing board for me, perhaps literally: I am starting to think of designing my own.

The lazy bridezilla

I am finding that being a bridezilla requires stamina, stamina I don't have. It requires sticktoitiveness (I love that word) and organization and grim focus on What You Want. I have none of these things. I read blogs of brides who have interviewed fifteen photographers, a dozen florists, half a dozen DJs, and I get tired.

So far, we've interviewed three photographers, and though we have agreed we should probably meet more, the thought of doing so is daunting, and so the process is stalled while I procrastinate. I interviewed three florists, and have gone with the first one I met, mainly because she seemed like she'd be fairly agreeable to work with. Next week we start with DJs, and if we have to interview more than two or three, I can already see I will quickly want to give up.

People appear to visit dozens of venues before picking "the one". We visited three. The dress search seems to usually comprise a hunt involving months of legwork; I got mine in a single intense frenzy of two hours. I read about brides who have hard-negotiated prices from florists, photographers, venues, etc.; if I get a price that's too high, I go elsewhere.

Does this make me laid-back or lazy? I don't know. On the one hand, I do want the wedding to be everything I want, but on the other, my wants are fairly open and flexible. I want red flowers, but since I love almost all flowers, I don't especially care which flowers they are. I want the photography to be good, but I also don't want to spend piles of money on it. I want people to be dancing, but do we have to have exactly the right DJ or our wedding will be ruined? I love our venue, but I picked it as much for price as for any other reason. I booked the hairstylist on the spot after my trial because I couldn't imagine liking someone else so much more as to be worth the extra effort.

Is "good enough" really good enough, or am I cheating myself by not being very specific and demanding, by not exhausting every option to be sure I choose the best? I think it's a symptom of the bridezilla culture that I'm even wondering this. I mean, this is usually how I make decisions in my regular life, too: I check out a few options, then go with the one I like best and don't worry too much about all the ones I haven't seen. So far my somewhat-spontaneous and not-rigorously-researched decisions have generally worked out.

How else, I ask you, would I have found my sweetie? :-)

I hate my profile

So, I had a hair trial on Friday. Yes, it's ten months out, I know. I initally called the hairstylist because I had read about her on the knot, and I knew she was very affordable, so I wanted to make sure she didn't get booked. When she emailed me back, she said we could wait to do a trial because it was still early and she didn't expect to have any other requests for the date any time soon. My sweetie said, "That's so nice, how she called you totally crazy without calling you totally crazy."

Three days later, she emailed me to say someone else had asked for my date. HAH! Plan early, I always say!

So, I went in for my trial, with my trusty bridesmaids for consultation. Here are pictures.

Style 1, a low chignon:

Style 2, a high style I refer to as the Conehead:

My main conclusion from these pictures is, yes, I still hate my profile. Hate, hate, HATE it. I will have to make sure the photographer I choose knows to never, ever shoot me in profile. That's what the 3/4 view was invented for!

The second conclusion is that I like Style #2 better. I love the look of the chignon from the back, but from the front and side I think the Conehead looks better. Which is funny because I went in determined to have the low chignon, and then at the last minute I saw a picture of Marcia Cross in a high sleek updo and thought, "Hey, why not?"

Boy, was my hair shiny after all the product she put in it. And my sweetie said I looked beautiful! Of course, I must be careful never again to let him see me from the side....

Let them (not) eat cake

My sweetie and I have agreed that we don't want a cake at the wedding. Neither of us especially likes cake; I especially don't like wedding cake, because fondant is gross and in my experience, the prettier a cake is, the drier and nastier it tastes.

Instead, I want to have Beard Papa cream puffs. Beard Papa is a Japanese chain that sells gigantic delicious cream puffs; they opened several store in NYC in the last few years, and I think now have stores in California, as well. Here I am in front of a mother ship store in Shinjuku, Tokyo:

See the line? They're good cream puffs!

My sweetie wants cannolis from Ferrara. I'm fine with that. Cream puffs and cannolis, and you chocolate lovers can go elsewhere!

Still, a part of me does feel the pull of the traditional cake. This month's Martha Stewart Weddings features several plastic-looking cakes which leave me cold, and this one:

It's hardly iced at all--just a thin layer of fondant on the top of each tier, covered by a layer of passionfruit curd. The layers are also separated by curd. Each layer is tinted with some food coloring, and the edges are cut and exposed; my mouth is watering just looking at it. I still think we will not be having cake at our wedding (for one thing, delicious though it looks, it strikes me as impractical: I'd think the edges would dry out, even if one didn't cut and expose the edges until right before the wedding began), but I might try my hand at making this cake one day. It looks too fun and delicious to pass up!

(Yes: I read Martha Stewart Weddings: getting married is the perfect excuse to buy into Martha's perfect world. I can unequivocally state it's the loveliest wedding mag out there, and the only one where I've bought more than one issue. The ideas are interesting, the pictures are gorgeous, and while I could never maintain the level of perfection found in the pages of Living in real life, it's nice to dream that I could do it for one day :-)

Nothing in common

I've been feeling a little down about the wedding planning lately.

Don't get me wrong: I'm excited about it. I love our venue, and I am nowhere near as stressed out as I was at the beginning.

What's getting me down, though, is that the planning is bringing home to me the fact that my fiance and I have nothing in common.

OK, this is not strictly true: we have similar values; we agree (mostly) on politics; we are both fairly easy-going. We both love food of all kinds (very important to me, if not to him :-). We agree that together we are stronger and better than we are separate. I am so looking forward to spending the rest of my life with him. I even recently commented to a friend that it had occurred to me that, since we are getting started at such an advanced age :-), we will have forty years together only if we are very lucky, and it doesn't seem like enough.

However, we share almost no aesthestic opinions. We don't like the same music. We don't like the same art. We don't like the same tv shows, movie genres, vacation styles, hobbies. Just about the only time we agreed on something was when we went shopping for my engagement ring: we were pleasantly surprised (astonished, really) that we liked the same style.

This is a problem when it comes to wedding planning. So far we have disagreed on: the venue, the style of the reception, the flowers, the photographer, the music. If you've been following this blog, that means we've disagreed on everything so far, except the dress, and I'm sure that's only because he hasn't seen the dress.

On the venue: I won.
On the style of the reception, formal or buffet: he will win, barring something unforeseen, like the venue telling us that a buffet dinner will reduce the quality of the food.
On the flowers: I will win.
On the music: I won in the sense that I refused to entertain the suggestion of an iPod. On the other hand, which DJ we hire and what music gets played is still a forthcoming argument which I hope we can reach a happy compromise on.
On the photographer: An ongoing argument, which he has basically conceded, which makes me feel very bad.

I realize brides complain all the time about how their fiances are not involved in the planning, and how they have to do all the work. Sometimes I wish my fiance didn't care, because then I could just do it the way I want and not feel like I'm railroading him. Usually when we disagree on something, we either arrive at a compromise (such as with a vacation) or else the one of us who cares less concedes. In our "real life," concessions are split pretty evenly. Unfortunately, when it comes to the wedding, my sweetie is usually the one who cares less, making both of us feel that I'm always winning. It doesn't make me feel triumphant; it makes me depressed.

I don't want this to be a wedding he hates, or that he feels he had no part in. I don't want him to just show up on the day and wonder, what the heck is going on here? I don't want him to be resentful or bored or confused or detatched.

I enjoy weddings, even boring ones. There's something about the ritual, not just the ceremony, but the first dance, the toasts, everyone getting on the floor and dancing without caring what anyone thinks because everyone is family. Everyone is happy at a wedding (or at least they pretend to be). It's so hard to let go of the vision in my head of the ideal wedding. I'm finding this to be the hardest thing, even though I wouldn't have said that I had rigid ideas of what a wedding should be until I discovered that my sweetie has hated every wedding he's ever attended. He hates the formal sit-down dinner. He hates the stupid dance music. He's bored by speeches and toasts. And he's just as nervous as I am that he won't enjoy his own wedding.

I'm scared if I give in on things like the photographer and the music I'll regret it. I really can't agree to an iPod: I am absolutely convinced it will lead to a lousy party, and if there's one thing we agree on, it's that we want our wedding to be a damn good party. But does the photography really matter? The guy he likes is great, a nice guy, and his photos are pretty. He'd be fun to have at the wedding. The guy I like is more serious, and his photos are more technically interesting. As art, I like them better. But do I really need my wedding captured as art? Maybe it's worth the karma of my sweetie getting the guy he's most comfortable with.

Do you look at your wedding pictures and wish they were more artful? Or that you'd had a photographer you really connected with on a personal level?

Lace...and not bridal lace

Lest you think I haven't been knitting during all this wedding madness, I offer the following:




This is the front of the lace hoodie from the Vogue Spring/Summer 2005. I am knitting it with Berocco Pleasure, a lovely soft cashmere-blend yarn, in color "emotion" (a purply-grey). I'm wet-blocking it on my brand-new blocking board, which I bought at the beginning of the year, as a splurge. I love it. I love the squares which help you block the piece to the exact dimensions you need.

Here is a close-up of the lace. I really like it. For my first significant lace project, it turned out pretty nicely.

Now, I just have the back and sleeves....which are simply rectangles of stockinette. I think it's going to be wildly boring, but it will be difficult to make a mistake.

The sweater will be awfully warm when it's done...just in time for summer!

Life of the party

My sweetie and I met with some photographers yesterday.

There are a heck of a lot of photographers out there, especially in and around NYC. I've asked my married friends for recommendations, but all of their photographers, who were affordable when my friends got married, are now too expensive. This seems to be the way of wedding photographers: they are affordable when they first start out, but as they build a portfolio of weddings and a record of happy couples, their prices creep up.

So, I've gone with recommendations from the Knot, and also from the Wedding Photojournalist Association, which helpfully lists members by location and price.

Photojournalism seems to be the current trend in wedding photography, and it's one I really like: basically, the photographer does little to no directing of action, s/he simply records events as they happen. A good photojournalist will capture a real you-are-there feeling that's something I would like to have.

My sweetie and I met with three photographers, who could not have been more different, personality-wise, even though their stated photojournalistic approach is the same. The contrasts were striking: one guy met us in a Starbucks, and had a very friendly, businesslike, outgoing personality. The second one met us in a small independent cafe downtown, and had a more intense, serious, somewhat arty presence. The third met us in the lobby of an ultra-modern hotel in Chelsea and was young, hip, and trendy. It was several slices of NYC life :-).

Each photographer showed us a complete wedding he had shot--that is, all 300-400 proofs from a wedding, not merely the albums of 50 or so of the best pictures. The idea behind seeing a complete wedding is that you get a better sense of the flow of the day, and how the photographer tells the story. I must say, I enjoy looking at wedding pictures. I'm a total sap at heart.

As I looked at hundreds of pictures yesterday (and even more online), I realized that one thing that really matters to me is good shots of the party. I could be wrong, but I feel that most reasonably competent photographers can get lovely and moving shots of the ceremony, or portraits of the couple, or magazine-beautiful pictures of the flowers and the cake. The real challenge seems to be the party: do they get pictures of people dancing, talking, laughing? Are these pictures interesting to me, who has no idea who any of these people are? Do we only have long shots of a group of faceless people on the dance floor, with a lot of backs? Or do we get great close-up action shots of Aunt Mildred breakdancing? Do we have endless pictures of couples trapped at tables, smiling stiffly at the camera, or do we see people laughing or flirting with each other, oblivious to the camera? Photojournalism is great for this kind of photo, but only if you're really good, because if your goal is to be unobtrusive and let the action happen, the risk is that you back off too much.

Photography is really important to me; it always has been. When I go on vacation I take a ridiculous number of photos, and if they turn out poorly I'm crushed (the last time I went on vacation, my pictures were ruined by the x-ray machine, and it almost ruined the vacation for me). I'm really, really anxious to find the right photographer. From all reports, your wedding goes by so fast, you miss half of what's going on. I don't want to miss a minute. We are doing our best to put together a relaxed, fun wedding, and I want the photographer to capture it. I don't want it reduced to stiff posed pictures or crowd pictures that show nothing.

I want to see the party.

Check this out

Red rhinestone trim, $19.98 per yard at M&J Trimming. I'm thinking I could have some fun with this....