Will you marry....... us?

Now that we have the location and photographer down, I'm working on checking other things off my list. Next up, officiant.



Neither Mike or I a very "churchy" people, so we neither have a priest that we know nor really want one. Our wedding will be meaningful and symbolic, but secular.

That leaves a professional wedding officiant or a justice of the peace.

A wedding officiant could be nice because we'd have some time to get to know them ahead of time and because they have had experience with designing meaningful, secular ceremony. Biggest downfall? Its not the cheapest option.

A justice of the peace is a much cheaper option, but that means a much simpler, less flexible ceremony. (I think? I admit, I haven't contacted any of them yet.) But, it still might not be the best option.

The last possibility is to have a friend or family member get an online certificate to be a wedding officiant. After several times reading the law about who is able to officiate, calling local officials and checking my wedding blog resources, its still unclear to me whether or not this is legal. I asked my mom to check around with the friendly neighborhood family lawyers and see what they say. In the mean time, the person who I originally had in mind is unable to do this for us, so its back to the drawing board on this idea too.

So, if anyone has had any experience with J.O.Ps in Livingston County, or is familiar with any of the professionals in the Rochester area, I'd more than welcome some recommendations!

Onions aren't just for salsa...

Finally, things are getting checked off the list!

Once we had a date and a location to work with, I was able to narrow the long list of photographers I had in a spreadsheet to just a few. From there, Mike and I checked out prices and websites and came to a decision- Onion Studios from Buffalo.


I met Dylan and his assistant at a Bridal show at the Pearl Street Brewery in Buffalo in February. I was impressed right away. His set up was clean, relaxed and informative. He was friendly, but didn't immediately jump down my throat like some of the other booths at the show. There were photos displayed around the table and a series of them scrolling on a computer monitor. The pictures were mostly in the photo journalistic style that I liked, but there was something different about them. I really liked the architectural elements and angles that he used. Standing there, watching the photos scroll across the screen, I saw a photo of my art teacher from high school. I mentioned it to Dylan. He said, "Oh yes, that's so-and-so. He got married to so-and-so at such-and-such a place so many years ago" I was impressed. That he would remember someone's wedding and their names gave me the impression that he really cared. Coupled with some obvious talent with the camera and a good amount of experience, that was the kind of person I was looking for to help capture my day.

Not to mention that his prices were very reasonable and he was very nice about negotiating. Saving money always helps :) Now, I definitely have some friends with great camera skills too. But I don't think that its fair to ask them to step outside of the enjoyment of the day to be the photographer. Still, we'll probably get a flickr page or something going to collect everyone else's photos too.. The more taken, the more likely we'll have ones we like!

So, photography... check. Next up: the dress, the officiant, the food (which may or may not include some salsa)

These are a few of my favorite things....

There are a lot a great websites out there for me to stare at when I don't want to do work and don't want to go to bed yet. One favorite is Etsy. I don't remember how I first found it, probably another blog about pretty things, but there certainly is a lot there for me to drool over and be distracted by.
Etsy is a website that is all about things that are handmade. Sure, there are the expected things like art, knitted things, knick nacks, but there are some other amazing things that you wouldn't expect! For now, i've just been favortiting all the things I love, and some day, when I have the money maybe I can get some of these pretty things:)
Here are a few examples of the great stuff I've found!
Beautiful Vintage Jewelery from Sweet Vintage


Cool Vinyl decals for putting everywhere from Tasty Suite

Beautiful, PLANTABLE cards from Grace Graphics (I actually bought some of these :) )


Fun and funky pins from Button Empire (though I can't quite buy these ones yet...)




There is tons more great stuff on the website, and everything is continually changing. They also have this great feature called Alchemy where you can request something be custom made for you. You include the details and a suggested price and sellers can bid on making it for you. With such a huge community of creative and truely skilled people you can end up with something really great for a cheaper price than you might find else where. I haven't tried it yet, but I've heard of it being used for all sorts of things, from wedding dresses to toys.
Now that I've gotten the idea of putting images into my blog (yay!) I'll try to occasionally post some of the cool stuff I'm finding in my internet wanderings. Maybe I can get someone hooked on these things like others have done to me!

Responsible

Lately I've been trying to be a responsible consumer, or at least thinking about what a responsible consumer is. I've been trying thinking about who I buy from, what materials the product is made from and if I should buy things at all. I'm trying.
One way of being a responsible consumer is really thinking about the personal worth of what you're buying. There's this book I've heard of and would like to read about someone who went a little more to the extreme than I think I ever could. Its called "Not buying it: My year without shopping." by: Judith Levine. I doubt I'll ever be brave enough to try an experiment like that, but there are plenty of ways
I've also been looking for companies/products that are socially/environmentally beneficial... or at least better for the environment than their alternatives. I really like the Bert's Bees products, for example. Besides just being nice products, they are not tested on animals, use recycled/recyclable packaging and part of the proceeds goes towards buying land for conservation. I've also started using Preserve razors lately too. I've read about them in the past and finally found them at Wegman's so I decided to give them a try. These are razors that the handle is made from recycled plastic (something like 60% comes from Stony Field Farm yogurt containers). On top of that, once you use them (they're disposable) you can get free packaging to send the handles back to Preserve where they make them into plastic lumber that picnic tables are made of! I don't know where these picnic tables go or are sold. Maybe I'd be helping them make double profits by giving them their materials back, but I guess thats okay because its keeping them out of the landfills.
Speaking of giving back materials, there are some neat recycling things I have found out about lately too. There are these paper recycling dumpsters at several locations around town, usually schools and churches. Depending on how much paper that place collects, the recycling company donates money to them! What a neat fund raiser :) I've found that I go through a lot of paper and typically take a paper bag over twice a month. Another great recycling thing I've found lately is a website called Book Mooch. Basically its a trading site for people to get rid of books they're finished with and "mooch" books that they want to read from other people... free! The more books that are shared, the less that are printed... which is bad for publishers, but good for the environment. And for my wallet... which most eco-friendly/organic things are not....
Maybe I'm just jumping on the environmentalism bandwagon that is so popular now. But is that really a bad thing?