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Sunday, June 29, 2014

DIY Wedding

Simplify your Wedding Planning

Spend less - Have more Fun!

Do it Yourself!

Having just planned and pulled off my own, albeit small wedding in two weeks time, I thought I'd share some of the things I did, and learned that helped keep me focused, saved money and made our day, June 21st, the most perfect day ever. 

Choose your venue:  Do you need a church wedding?  I didn't.  This made it possible to schedule our big day on short notice.  If you do, or if you must have a highly sought after venue for your wedding or reception, you will need a year or more advance notice.  Planning a small outdoor wedding cuts that dramatically.  In our case, we didn't even rent a park pavilion.  We chose a spot on the river that had easy parking for our guests, a good backdrop for photos and was meaningful to us. 

Find an officiant:  Do you need a church wedding?  Are you ok with a trip to the courthouse? Do you have a friend who is ordained?  How about a family member or friend who'd be willing to get ordained?  We asked Rob's dad if he would do the honor of marrying us.  It took less than an hour to complete the application process online.  The Universal Life Church is recognized in most states and will ordain you for under $20.  Check with your state to be certain that a ceremony conducted by your chosen officiant will be valid.

Get Organized:  Two weeks is not much time. Make lists. Update them daily. Crosscheck them with your fiance. Crosscheck them with your best friend. I used GoogleKeep and absolutely fell IN LOVE with this free app.  It is my new fave organizational tool. 

Have someone to Vent to:  My someone was my best ever friend.  Though she lives far away and couldn't be hands-on with the help, I couldn't have done it without her.  She kept me focused and brought so many fun ideas into reality.  We talked on several occasions over the two weeks. 
Me and Kit


Consider your "Must Haves":  Are professional flowers important to you?  Music?  Embossed invitations?  A traditional gown?  A reception with all the trappings:  DJ, catered food, table decor? A professional and classic wedding cake?  Photos? 

We pared down our Must Have list to these things:  friends and family that are dear to us, clothing that paid homage to the specialness of the occasion without being too expensive, photos, a fun and relaxed reception, a cake that looked pretty and tasted fabulous.

We skipped the formal invites. Two weeks plan time leaves no room for snail mail or the time it takes to order invitations.  I used an online e-vite for more distant friends. Some will let you send up to 10 invitations for free to sample their service.  I printed a flyer that I hung at the office to invite coworkers to the reception, and phoned an invite to close friends and family.

I found a fun and inexpensive dress at a local boutique:  Urban Farmhouse in Geneseo for $47.  Zappos got my fabulous shoes to me overnight with free shipping.  Rob was thrilled that I chose jeans, cowboy boots and dress shirt/vest combination for him. 
See why they call it Ol' Muddy?
The day of the ceremony, my awesome hairdresser, Fran, artist extraordinaire and owner of the fabulous Your Suite Hair took this picture:
And made my hair look like this:

I didn't know my hair could do this!
 

We were able to fit a really fun engagement shoot into the two weeks leading up to the wedding.  Choose an up and coming photographer to get the best deal on a shoot.  Ask around until you find one who includes print rights and will give you a jump drive that you can take to any photo print shop and print your own.  Cassandra at Oh Snap Photography was so much fun to work with and made us look better than real life!




For the ceremony, we really didn't want a professional wedding photographer.  Just the words alone are expensive.  We asked around and found a friend with a sister, lol.  Shauna came to the house before the ceremony, snapped some fun "getting ready" shots, followed us down to the river, and then came back to the house to get some pictures of the reception.  She is an amateur photographer with a nice DSLR camera and she charged us an outrageously cheap price for the time that she spent. I haven't seen her pictures yet, but I already know she'll be getting a tip from this happy bride.

 
As I mentioned previously, I outsourced the cake in a similar fashion.  You don't know who you know until you start asking.  We found a friend of a friend who does cakes.  After a few days of texting back and forth we settled on a non-traditional cake.  I used a pretty three tiered cake stand that I already owned and she made three different cakes:  Traditional white with buttercream icing, Gluten free German chocolate and a flourless chocolate cake that is "to die for".  Find the recipe for La Bete Noir here.  I was so pleased with the finished product!



Food was a challenge.  And I love a challenge!  We spent the Friday evening before the reception roasting potatoes and vegetables and threading steak, shrimp and brat bites onto skewers.  I had Rob's family and the kids helping and we made short work of it.  I made tomato, pepperoni and mozzarella ball appetizers which looked adorable on little bamboo skewers.  The next day they would be drenched in a jarred pesto sauce.  They were a huge hit!  I made a chimichurri sauce and a rosemary, garlic dipping sauce the morning of the wedding and my daughter K, made an old classic appetizer, Zucchini Carpaccio.  I'll post recipes soon!  After the ceremony, we warmed up the potatoes and veggies, set the skewered meat out on ice, boiled the corn and fired up the grill!

For flowers, this is what I decided.  HyVee.  White daisies.  Done.

My sister rocked out our decorations for us.  She is such a creative genius.  I had gathered some random items together: old glass bottles, and glass serving dishes, mini chalkboards, mason jars and tea lights, some ribbon, some antique suitcases, aviation maps and some bits of burlap.  Here is the before picture:


She did some of this: 



And this:
And made everything look exactly how I envisioned it.  I love her!
I will post some of the professional photos of the ceremony and reception soon! 




If you are up for planning a DIY Wedding, I encourage you to go for it!  Our wedding day was so much fun.  Doing it ourselves, we had things exactly the way we wanted them and at a price point that we were comfortable with.

If you are even a little creative and handy in the kitchen a small to medium sized reception is very doable with just a few handy prep cooks and decorators helping out.

This is my team of "prep cooks"!  Love them!!!


 The most important thing to keep in mind is that it is a day you should remember as being fun, not stressful. So, do your advance planning, stay within your budget and your skill-level and have fun planning your wedding!








Saturday, June 28, 2014

Aruba: One Happy Island 2/2014



 Aruba Dive Trip 2014


Pristine white beaches. A reputation of being the island most frequently returned to, year after year, by happy vacationers. Easy to reach by air in the time frame we needed to travel, and surrounded by wrecks renowned for diving. For all these reasons, we made Aruba our dive destination this past February.  Our experience on the island was that of frugal divers and not your typical beach seeking tourists.  We rented a villa off the main hotel strip, opted for renting bikes instead of a car to get around, and sought meals that were inexpensive, choosing instead to spend our money on underwater adventure.

 Mermaid Dive Center, feels like a family run operation, small but professional. They picked us up from our villa both days, in a beat up old passenger van and took us to the shop in time to sign paperwork and size our rental gear.  The second day, I needed a full wet suit for the cold water temperature and was provided this at no extra charge. The divemasters took a personal interest in helping their customers improve their diving skills even on a routine recreational dive.  With temperatures uncharacteristically cold for Aruba, I spent the first day shivering in my skin suit and 3mm shortie, meanwhile blowing through my air in record time. Carlos took me aside and gave me some tips to improve my air consumption.  Although I was greatly improved on day two, I actually credit the full 6mm wet suit rather than any improvement in air management skill.

We did three dives each day. The Antilla on day one was our first wreck dive. We had a long surface interval after that dive, as we came across a couple who had capsized their sailboat and ended up towing them to shore.  Water temperatures were 76 degrees at depth, and by the third dive, on Isla Bonita Reef, (see above picture) I was so cold that I had to surface early. Vercazio, our divemaster, found a cute octopus who was willing to participate in a photo shoot with the group.  Some of us were less willing participants!
As you can see, visibility was not good, 30 foot at best. Although the divemasters noted that temperatures were unnaturally cold, they made no mention of the viz being worse than normal. As all of our dive sites were close to shore, I'm not surprised that it was so bad.

Day two brought a new depth record of 98 feet as we dove the J/C wreck. Penetrating the structure was an exhilarating experience. Wendy, one of the owners, was our divemaster and she made the experience so much fun, making sure we had plenty of photo ops near the prop of the ship.

We completed day two on Plonco Reef and Skalahein Reef, where the corol and wildlife were more plentiful than the deep dive earlier in the day, but visibility and water temps were ongoing struggles.
Read what I learned about dive buddy communication on that last dive here: http://www.thisishowwelivenow.blogspot.com/2014/03/scuba-life-lessons.html


 The hotel strip was good for a photo op, but not much more!


We lucked out with our villa: La Costa Esmerelda Village  which had just opened when we stayed there. If we ever return, my guess is that it will be out of our price range.  The owner had a "manager" who worked next door at an exclusive restaurant.  They met us at the gate of the villa at our agreed upon arrival time and we exchanged pleasantries and a modicum of actual useful information for navigating the island without phone service (we had failed to add international service onto our plan before the trip) or transportation.  The owner's son, a polite young man in his early teens acted as translator to the best of his ability. In truth, once we left the villa and ventured out onto the island, we had no trouble communicating.  The rule seems to be that most islanders speak 4 or 5 languages. 







There were fresh flowers and fruit in the room upon our arrival.



The pool glowed at night.

Can you tell what's wrong with this picture?
 For divers, the location was perfect, we had room in the courtyard by the pool to hang our equipment after rinsing it at the outdoor shower.


Rob and Jon are busy rinsing our gear while I am inside making a frugal yet fantastic meal. Details just ahead!




On previous dive trips, we've struggled to get our gear dry before our return trip home. Being able to hang everything outdoors in the secure courtyard was perfect!  And the grounds were simply gorgeous.  Each morning several groundskeepers/housekeepers made the rounds watering and caring for the extensive foliage surrounding the pools, brick walkways and patios.


There were several supermarkets within walking distance of the villa.  We stocked up on fresh mangoes, the likes of which you will never taste in the states: the smell alone was rich and lush. I spent about ten minutes perusing the aisles looking for the makings of a meal and came up with an old pantry standby that I haven't made for years: Tuna Croquettes.  Hey! Give me bonus points for incorporating seafood while on the island!


Cheat eats!
There's no actual recipe, so you can't go wrong: tuna, some kind of bread or cracker crumb, egg, and additional flavoring ingredients.  I used carrot, red onion and capers, sauteed in copious amounts of butter.  Peasant food, yes, but after a day of diving, we were ravenous and they tasted wonderful!

We didn't eat every meal in the villa.  The first night on Aruba we walked down to The Old Cocuno House
 Where we had a lovely outdoor meal, enjoyed our first of several Balashi beers,
 discovered that on Aruba,
 the beers are miniature sized, unless you order the extra large. 
 We enjoyed the many avian visitors
 As well as the classic Arubian food.
 Rob had the Keeshi Yena, pictured above.  It was decadent.  I had the cod fish Grand Ma style, which turned out to be a salty mash of cod and vegetables. Get the Keeshi Yena!
Both the waitress, Jasmine and the manager, Cory, were solicitous.  They even looked up the phone number of Red Sail Sports, the bike rental shop, and let us use the restaurant phone to place a call.

The bikes were integral to the last few days of our trip. We had made arrangements to pick up them up after our first day of diving. A long walk down to the hotel zone and along the beach finally brought us to the rental cabana. We donned our helmets and took off across the island to visit the Harley Davidson store. And we encountered the ferocity of the winds of Aruba.  Didn't seem to matter which direction we rode, it was always into the wind!

After navigating the island on beach bikes for three days, our collective advice to future visitors is this: rent a car! Bike lanes were non-existent; we were lucky to have a shoulder. Many of our routes had us riding on highways and making our way through traffic circles.  We saw very few other cyclists and came to the conclusion that the island is just not well suited to road biking. We toughed it out, even surviving a blow-out on the last day.

Calling Red Sail Sports to come rescue us! They arrived, replaced the tire and had us back on our way within 20 minutes! For a shop that specializes in diving, and para sailing, they did a great job with bike rental for us.





A Scenic overlook we stopped at on our day-long bike trip.


Continuing our ride, we stopped again to hydrate and rest in the shade: three divers out in the desert heat, wondering if the destination we'd chosen was truly worth it!

What's that coming into view?


Worth it!


Not too tired for a photo

We ended our bike tour of the island with a late lunch at Reef and Beef, where they really love their chalk boards! 


 



The daily specials were good, we each tried one of what they had remaining from their lunch rush. The Carni Stoba, Chicken Sate and Grouper Creole.  Service was slow.  It almost seemed like everyone was on break or that the restaurant was not actually open.  But, the food was good.  I haven't yet "liked" them on Facebook as requested, though I do admire their chalk board enthusiasm.
They are located in the courtyard adjacent to Aqua Windies Dive Shop, purportedly the biggest on the island.  A sign offers discounts at Beef and Reef to divers, but does not include the daily specials, as they "are already on special" according to the owner, who served us himself. 

All too soon, our short visit to Aruba: One Happy Island, was ending.  We packed our gear, called a taxi and headed to the airport.  We were welcomed by crowds of fellow travelers. Yikes!


The line snaking out of the airport and wrapping around the parking lot

I'm not sure if there is any airport more complicated for it's size than Queen Beatrix International Airport.  Be forewarned: the instructions to arrive early are not a mere suggestion. You will pre-clear US customs when flying to the United States, so that is one explanation for the airport's complexity, but having to remove shoes twice for double security clearance, giving up your luggage and then reclaiming it only to check it once again...these things were unexpected and time consuming.  Arrive early!