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!

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!

Who says it takes more than two weeks to plan a wedding?

So, we decided to do it. And we decided to do it in two weeks. That was last week. Now, the event is less than a week away.

June 21, 2014

The Summer Solstice

Rob & Rachel's Big Day

When we got engaged a couple of months ago, we knew we'd be planning a small wedding, on short notice, given the constraints of Rob's job.  Our first priority was securing a minister to make it official.  Of course, we immediately thought of our best dive buddy and traveling companion, Rob's dad, Jon.  We took him to lunch one afternoon and asked the favor.  We were thrilled when he agreed to get ordained in order to marry us. Having accomplished that important task, neither of us did another thing to move toward the reality of planning a wedding, instead we debated the more esoteric details like,  "will she change her name?" Until last week when we looked at our summer calendar and realized we needed to do this thing in June if we wanted our kids to be around to celebrate with us.

We began to phone our nearest and dearest to see if they'd be able to make the trip.  Sadly, of course, our last minute plans precluded some from making the trip, but we began to make plans for housing out of town guests that agreed to plan a spontaneous road trip for our wedding. 

Last Sunday, after mass and a soccer game, I found a lovely dress for a whopping $47, the very first thing I tried on. It was serendipitous to say the least, walking into the adorable little boutique Urban Farmhouse in Geneseo to visit the owner, a former student of mine. Upon hearing my news, she immediately went to the rack and pulled out: The Dress. And that was checked off my to-do list. That same day, Rob and I wrote our vows and I bought a case of wine on sale at Hyvee.  I felt incredibly productive!


This week, we finalized the ceremony template and met with Jon over lunch again. We applied for our marriage license.

Here we are at the Recorder's office

We found Rob's wedding attire: yes, he's wearing jeans and boots and is one happy man! We decided on a location for our outdoor wedding, a special little spot on the river front that requires no advance reservation. And, we squeezed in a photo shoot last night.

In between those important details, I've been cleaning and cleaning, and, of course, getting excited about the little things, like making a new wreath for our door.

Can you say, sidetracked?

The dogs got bathed, thanks to R. We found an amateur photographer to take some wedding photos on the cheap, thanks to our pal, Kris.  I came across an amazing poem and coerced my good friend Tracey to read it at the ceremony.  The kids all found wedding clothing and my best friend in the world, Krystal, has kept me sane on several occasions as we've debriefed over the phone.

Several different times over the course of the last week I've had minor epiphanies that sound something like this, "oh my god, cake!  I didn't even think about cake!  People will expect cake, right?" And yes, I was told, people will expect cake.  And, it turns out, although Rob LOVES my Bete Noir cake, he is afraid that it too closely resembles a brownie and a brownie, even if it tastes like heaven, is just a bit too casual for a wedding. So, I outsourced my cake.

Rob is off on a trip, and I am child-less this Father's Day weekend. I'm in a fury of creative efficiency mixed in equal parts with mania:  the perfect combination for planning a wedding in two weeks!  I still need to figure out food and music.  I have this picture in my head of a couple of live musicians strolling around at the ceremony and playing the wedding march, but, alas, that doesn't fit into my budget.  And I'm secretly hoping to talk Rob out of "brats on the grill"as the mainstay of our reception food, but am stymied when I consider making anything else myself, and, doing anything that requires a caterer is getting less and less likely as we move closer to the event.

Still, I feel pretty good about my state of calm.  I will not stress about our wedding.  I look forward with eager anticipation to the day when we will join our lives.  I am thrilled by the love I feel from friends and family who want to be a part of our day.  I am a little giddy.  I'm a little nervous. I'm a lot happy.

Scuba life lessons

Dive Buddies through it all

When we have limited information to work with, we often have to make assumptions. Divers are especially prone to making dangerous assumptions about their dive buddy because communication underwater can be so limited. Part of good communication is being able to see a given situation from your partner's point of view.  If you can do this as a diver, your safety and the safety of your dive buddy will be improved.

The relationship you have with  your dive buddy may be one of the most important relationships ever: certainly it is while you are at depth.  If you are lucky, your travel partner is your dive buddy and you are evenly matched in skill and comfort level in the water.  Some lone travelers pair up with a stranger from the dive boat: but no one goes without a buddy. The buddy system is paramount to diving safety and is emphasized in every dive training program, and reiterated in the dive briefing before every dive.  Stay close to your buddy.  What is unspoken is the message to communicate with your buddy.  Staying close is no good if you are not watchful of each other, checking each others status and comfort and using body language and sign language to communicate needs, concerns or interests.

Rob has been my dive buddy from the beginning.  I admit, he gets the short end of the stick when it comes to pairing up with me under water.  He is a stronger swimmer, a more confident diver and uses his air much more efficiently than I do.  But, I keep an eye on him.  I check his gear before we enter the water.  I try to stay out of his way so I don't inadvertently kick off his mask.  I ask about his air level frequently, mostly to check it against my own as I deliberately slow my breaths and calm myself in the water to try to budget my air.  As a rule, we are conscientious of each other and we work hard to stay in close proximity and maintain good communication.

On our last trip, we had our first dive buddy fight.  Oh, it was bad.  We were both so angry, we had an actual yelling fight later that evening.  We had to go to our room and close the door so as not to embarrass his dad.

Conditions were ripe for a less than ideal diving experience: visibility was bad, only about 30 feet at it's best. And the current was strong. Our group was fairly large: ten divers and the dive master. When visibility is low, divers tend to stick closer together, so we were all feeling a bit crowed and getting agitated with each other.  It seemed like every time I turned around there was someone running into me or I was getting finned in the face. Rob had the GoPro and was hanging toward the back of the group getting video. I had deliberately swum ahead to stay out of his way and then chose to maintain a depth about ten feet above the group to stay out of the crowd and also to conserve air. On several occasions as I stopped and did a 360 turn to locate Rob, I couldn't see him.  I'd hover for a few moments, deliberating whether to swim back, against the current to try to find him and then he'd swim into view.  What was he doing back there?  I was getting angry at the way he was so obviously getting distracted with his camera and not staying with the group.  Anytime I tried to actually stop so he could catch up to me, I'd drift away....the current was pretty stiff.  At one point, he swam into view and then beckoned me to swim over to him: again, against the current.  I shook my head and motioned for him to swim to me.  I reasoned that it would be silly for me to go to him when he could more easily and with less energy/air consumption come my way just by drifting. He insisted, so I swam over, pissed off, assuming there was some pretty piece of coral he wanted to show me. But there wasn't.

As the dive ended and we began to ascend, we did our obligatory 15 foot safety stop, though we had not exceeded decompression limits.  Then I signaled and made the final ascent to the surface.  When I had surfaced and filled my BC, I looked around and Rob was nowhere in sight.  I put my head back under and could barely see him but couldn't tell what he was doing.  I knew he had plenty of air in his tank and because I was already angry at the way he had not observed good dive buddy behavior, I assumed he just wanted to keep diving.

So, we had it out later, when we got back to our villa.

"Thanks for being such a great dive buddy!"
"Yeah, you too. What was with you not staying with the group?"
"What? ME not staying with the group? What about you? I can't count the number of times you were out of sight.  Meanwhile I was in the MIDDLE of the pack!"

And so it went.  And we were both so certain that our interpretation of what had gone wrong was the correct interpretation.  I hadn't stayed close.  He'd been distracted with the GoPro.  Who was right?

Rob insisted he was with the group the entire time.  I insist that I was.  Truth is: we were probably both WITH the group, but we weren't with each other.  I put so much confidence in his diving ability, I never even considered that I was putting him at risk by swimming ahead to stay out of his way.  I made sure I stayed close to the dive master so I felt that I wasn't risking myself in doing this.  Rob feels certain the dive master communicated with him that he should make me stick closer with the group.  My take on that: the dive master was actually telling him that he should stick with me. 

After we both calmed down, we decided to turn the miserable dive into a learning experience.  The dive, though not deep or technical, had it's challenges: it was crowded, visibility was poor and there was current.  We added to those challenges by trying to get video with our new toy. We should have had a plan for how to incorporate the camera into our diving safely.  We both know that a diver can easily get distracted when diving with a camera, but we hadn't talked about it further than me saying, "You take the camera, I have enough to deal with on my own."

What we took home is a lesson applicable to life on the surface as well.  We each experience the world from our own viewpoint.  In order to understand each other, we need to broaden our vision: try to see the world through our partner's eyes.  When we insist that our version is the only valid interpretation of events, we miss out on the chance to really connect with other people. When we react to situations based only on our viewpoint, we miss the opportunity to help other people.  In diving and on dry land, we can live more peacefully, connect more fully with our partner and our dive buddy, and experience less anger if we can abandon our narrow-focus. 

Here's what I missed during that awful dive when I was so caught up in my own perspective: When we were surfacing and I assumed Rob had gone back down to continue the dive, he'd actually dropped the camera and had to go back down to retrieve it.  I made an assumption, fueled by my interpretation of everything that had happened previously during our dive, things that I had let anger me, and I assumed the very worst: that he was just abandoning me. What if he had needed my help?  I never even considered that.  We ended that dive not speaking to each other, but we learned a valuable lesson that will improve our communication as life partners and our safety on future dives.

Look at us...how could we EVER argue?

The Great Outdoors

Yesterday it snowed. Yep. October 22. Snowed enough to collect on the ground.  So, there was some excitement.  It went a little viral on fakebook.  I get it.  We don't usually see snow before Halloween in these parts, but, come on guys, it IS the Midwest.  Let's all just take a deep breath.

This morning the snow was gone.  On my drive to work, the sun was at that perfect point in the sky to make the landscape just glow.  The sky was a pale blue, the fields golden. It was absolute glory. It put me in mind of family car trips to Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma's.  The feeling of anticipation: good food, sweets, an overheated house.  The sleepy ride home with NPR on the radio, slumped against my sisters in the back seat. The murmur of my parent's voices just barely audible.

Then again, this evening, leaving the office.  It must just be the perfect time of year. The light was incredible. I wanted to grab a camera and stop along the road, capture those rolling farm fields with the barn in the distance, that lone black horse grazing. 

I feel nostalgic for The Great Outdoors.  Or is it family that I'm nostalgic for?  In any event, I need a little infusion of both. 

Anyway, Happy Fall!  Let's enjoy it before winter hits for real.