Posts Tagged ‘UK’

International Country Kitsch Wedding Invitations

Posted on September 15th, 2010 by Erica. 3 Comments

Erica
Wedding Date: 17 April 2010 and 16 October 2010
Bio: My wife Alex is the medic, the Brit, the music & book lover, and the most compassionate woman I've ever known. I'm the writer, the pancake maker, the American living with her in London, and completely smitten with her. With the help of much family and friends, we've already thrown one amazing wedding in Cornwall, England, and now we're gearing up for a 'country kitsch' ceremony & party in Northern California--we can't wait for October!

RSVP postcard with country twang options

What are you going to do when you don’t live in the same country as your wedding location and 98% of your guests? You enrol someone to do it for you–in our case, my amazing mom and Maid of Honor, Katie! Oh, and Vistaprint.

First of all, one of our bridesmaids, Christy, designed our INCREDIBLE country-kitsch, embroidery-themed wedding invitations. We went for using the word ‘marriage’ in the invites instead of ‘union’ even though the road to marriage equality for California will be a bit longer. Once she’d finished the basic design, she uploaded it onto Vistaprint–her recommendation–for our viewing and editing pleasure.  Part of me cringes to think what kind of operation Vistaprint’s got going to be able to allow me to order so many things for free; then again, one wedding is expensive, two weddings gets even pricier! (My conscious is only slightly relieved by the fact that I can order with recycled paper, but even then…). Once we finalized the invitation and RSVP design with a tweak here and a tweak there, we agreed on the designs and got ready to order.

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Long Distance Planning Blues

Posted on August 17th, 2010 by Erica. 2 Comments

Erica
Wedding Date: 17 April 2010 and 16 October 2010
Bio: My wife Alex is the medic, the Brit, the music & book lover, and the most compassionate woman I've ever known. I'm the writer, the pancake maker, the American living with her in London, and completely smitten with her. With the help of much family and friends, we've already thrown one amazing wedding in Cornwall, England, and now we're gearing up for a 'country kitsch' ceremony & party in Northern California--we can't wait for October!

Photo Credit: Button Bouquet by kottonkandy52 on Etsy

There’s something really tangible about planning a wedding– the fabrics, the colors, the details, the food. But when you’re planning your wedding with 6,000 miles between you and your wedding location, things can get digital quick. Now obviously I love me some internets but picking out a table cloth color or ‘getting a feel’ for the centerpieces just ain’t the same. Luckily, I’m not planning this wedding on my own, 6,000 miles away from both my partner or my family. Alex and I are together in London picking out stuff bridesmaid favors and our save the dates and sending them to my maid of honor and my mom back home while their sorting out things like the wedding shower and bachelorette parties. And they’ve been brilliant in getting things in order–venue, caterer, white knots, jam, hotel rooms–but still, sometimes, I get the blues.

I want to TOUCH the button bouquet that arrived at my parents’ house last week and PRANCE around in the living room with it. I want to SEE the jars of strawberry jam my grandma has made and FEEL the fabric she has picked out for the lids. I want to meet with the caterer in person and walk Alex around the ceremony site in my hometown. And I definitely don’t want to figure out how to print, label and post wedding invitations in two countries OR not try on my wedding dress until a week before the wedding. But, that’s the way it is.

So, what’s helped with the long distance wedding planning blues so far? Here are a few things I can credit for my current levels of happy wedding sanity:

  • Wedding Blogs: I think it’s a combination of seeing that people get married ALL the time and that every wedding is different that continues to buoy me. There are so many ways to get hitched, so many options to seal that union and decorate that table that I am able to fight off the “How are we going to make this one different from the last?!?!?” and find a multiplicity of ideas that I can easily share digitally with our loved ones in California.
  • Skype: Sometimes, I just need to SEE my folks, my friends, the stuff I’ve bought on Etsy and had shipped to somebody’s house in California. And sometimes I just want to hear that voice, be able to double over in laughter, and make silly faces. All totally necessary in any wedding planning process.

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Two Weddings & a Fun Table

Posted on July 26th, 2010 by Erica. 3 Comments

Erica
Wedding Date: 17 April 2010 and 16 October 2010
Bio: My wife Alex is the medic, the Brit, the music & book lover, and the most compassionate woman I've ever known. I'm the writer, the pancake maker, the American living with her in London, and completely smitten with her. With the help of much family and friends, we've already thrown one amazing wedding in Cornwall, England, and now we're gearing up for a 'country kitsch' ceremony & party in Northern California--we can't wait for October!

Whenever I thought about a wedding as a kid, I didn’t really think that I’d have two weddings to plan, let alone two in one year. It has actually become a bit of joke with our families. Alex’s mum has decided that with two women, you just have to have two of everything: two dresses (just for me), two rings (we thought about a ring exchange for both weddings), two bachelorette parties (one for each country), two cakes at each wedding, so on and so forth.

My mom and dad are blaming it on my birthdays: when I was 3 ˝ my dad started celebrating my ‘un-birthday,’ the day that marked when I was officially 6 months older. With a Christmas birthday, I think my parents felt a little sorry for me so I got a summer ‘un-birthday’ too—along with multiple celebrations in December with much of our family scattered around different parts of California. Regardless of our of multiple celebratory tendencies, Alex and I like a good party and, well, we want to celebrate our love with everyone we love—no matter which English-speaking country they happen to live in.

Aside from the long-distance complications, this brings us to another dilemma: how do you throw two unique ceremonies and celebrations that are at once relevant to the location and the people and retain the essence of who we are and hold as the center of the day that we are getting married? So far, we’ve attempted this balance by remembering the key words that come to us when we think about us getting married: love, acceptance, and people. (Dancing does come into that equation for me, too, although it is less a catalyst for how to plan a wedding and more a requirement of the day. I know that some of you might not feel this same way, but I’m not hitched ’til I get to dance afterward!)

Those three words breakdown what our day is about: our love manifesting through a union and a commitment to be with one another as a family; the acceptance of ourselves, each other, and others, as human beings and a same-sex couple; and the people in our lives who have made us who we are, share with us in our joys and sorrows, and who want as much time as possible with on such a momentous day.

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(Re)Introducing Erica: Getting Hitched All Over Again

Posted on July 15th, 2010 by Erica. 3 Comments

Erica
Wedding Date: 17 April 2010 and 16 October 2010
Bio: My wife Alex is the medic, the Brit, the music & book lover, and the most compassionate woman I've ever known. I'm the writer, the pancake maker, the American living with her in London, and completely smitten with her. With the help of much family and friends, we've already thrown one amazing wedding in Cornwall, England, and now we're gearing up for a 'country kitsch' ceremony & party in Northern California--we can't wait for October!

Hello, again, lovely readers. I am Erica, your faithful blogger, recently bethrothed, and starting the wedding planning all over again.
Just engayged!

On June 16th, 2009, I introduced myself to you for the first time: a new blogger, recently engaged, and brimming with wacky ideas for our (two) weddings. Since then, you may have heard about what happened when our first wedding venue got sold, how we picked our diamond free wedding rings, seen the gorgeousness of Hawes & Curtis button-ups for women, giggled over our REAL UK Civil Partnership withme, and had the chance to meet my wife.

Bundled up for Christmas -- 4 months to the UK wedding!

You’ve been alongside me while we prepared to get married in England on April 17th, 2010, and I’m back again to plan our second wedding on October 16th, 2010–this time in California, USA!

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