Stinkerpants

Stinkerpants Wedding: Cocktail Hour

October 20, 2008 in Our Wedding • Recap Photos • Reception

Hi!  After a four-day hiatus from posting, I’m back!  With photos from our cocktail hour!  I hope you all had a fantastic weekend. And now, back to the wedding.

Because we missed the cocktail hour, I had no idea if people looked through our memory boxes, appreciated our custom napkins or started playing with the photobooth.  Getting those photos back was so fun!  There were a lot of photos of people appreciating my hard-DIY-work.  :)

Guests looking through the memory boxes:

At the guestbook table…as you may recall, I put our photo reminder cards in envelopes for people to store their photobooth photos in.  Here, one of our guests opens an envelope and reads the flickr photo upload instructions.

And a guest appreciates our random facts cocktail napkins (more on that in a second)!!

The memory boxes, closed (note the empty glasses–people were clearly appreciating the signature cocktails):

and open…

Signing the guestbook:

My SIL and one of our groomsmen.  She was clearly quite a good salesperson with the photo reminder cards!

Overall, I think every single one of my DIY projects was worth it (besides maybe the programs: I’m not sure the pain was worth the product in that case!). They were really fun to make, and it was totally gratifying to see people appreciate them.

When I first posted about our Random Fact cocktail napkins on Weddingbee, people wanted to know what all of our facts were!  At the time, I didn’t want to share because I wanted our guests to be surprised.  Now that it’s over (and we’re using the leftover napkins every night with dinner!), I’ll share the facts with you guys.  :)

1. Growing up, Sara happily quit the following activities: Soccer, Violin, Recorder, Art, Golf, and Tennis.
2. Yorkey once walked on 1200° hot coals wearing a kilt.
3. When Sara was in elementary school, she wrote a newsletter for her neighbors called “Neighborhood News” and distributed it exactly 3 times.
4. Yorkey starred in a television commercial for Chabot College…but because he didn’t get the local cable access channel, he’s never seen it.
5. Sara makes $20/year selling advertisements on her website about rats.
6. Yorkey once ran out of gas in the Nevada desert…in his Prius.
7. Yorkey and Sara once convinced themselves that they had bed bugs.  They strapped their box spring to the roof of Yorkey’s car and drove it to the dump…only to realize two days later that it was most likely a mosquito.
8. When Sara was a little kid, her beloved Aunt Maggie gave her a copy of “the Velveteen Rabbit.”  It scared her so much that she threw it in the closet, slammed the door shut, and refused to go anywhere near it.

I had a few people come up to me at the wedding and comment on the random facts.  For example, I grew up in a very small town, and one of our next-door neighbors was my P.E. instructor at school, and also my soccer coach.  When he saw random fact #1, he felt the need to remind me that I had, in fact, once scored a goal in soccer, so I couldn’t have been that bad.  I reminded him that I only scored the goal because everyone was distracted by an injured teammate, and otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten near the ball!

One of my goals for the cocktial hour DIY projects was to include our guests.  Obviously you can only include people in the random facts to a limited extent, but the memory boxes were another story.  We included photos of neighbors from many years ago, old family pictures and dorky photos with friends.  I think people really enjoyed seeing themselves!

Next up?  The reception!

Stinkerpants Wedding: Flowers and Decor

October 15, 2008 in Our Wedding • Flowers • Recap Photos

I am so excited about my flowers.  To this day, I get a bit of a thrill looking at them.  Our florist, Leanne of Callalily Flowers, is truly an artist.  I don’t know very much about flowers, so when we started talking about what my vision was, I just said, “lots and lots of color.”  For the bridesmaids and groomsmen, I wanted stark white–and I found some fun ribbon to spice things up.

My bouquet was TO DIE FOR.  I seriously could not have imagined anything better.  The texture, the color…WOW.

Y’s boutonniere was also a masterpiece.  After the wedding, I kept wondering if our photographer had managed to get a picture of it (there was a mix up, and the portraits of Y were taken before the flowers arrived).  Luckily Kim is amazing and managed to get some!  Because I am so in love with this (why, oh why, do flowers have to die?!), I’m posting two:

I love how the white looks against the bright bridesmaid dresses:

How awesome are these boutineres?  They’re white, but they’re so special!

Moving on, to the reception…our centerpieces were amazing.  Those are little cards hanging from them with cropped versions of that table’s drawing.

OMG amazing.

The room, while people were eating dinner….

There are obviously more details, but they’ll be sprinkled out in the rest of the posts.  :)

Um, so I realized I totally forgot the cocktail hour.  Oops.  Completely out of order, that’s what’s up next!!

Stinkerpants Wedding: Grand Entrance and First Dance

October 14, 2008 in Our Wedding • Recap Photos • Reception

After our formals, it was time to head up to the reception!

One thing about me: I am always cold.  As a result, I knew I’d need something to keep me warm on the day of our wedding, especially given San Francisco’s summer weather (read: freezing).  After looking at boleros and other small jackets, I realized that my dress would look best with a pashmina.  My mom and I did a lot of “research” (read: shopping) before deciding on a color for said pashmina, and eventually settled on hot pink to match my shoes.  Sadly, the pashmina disappeared when I needed it most and I had to borrow a white one from one of my darling bridesmaids (so much for the research!).  When I got our photos back and saw this one, I wondered what happened to my pashmina.  And then I saw another photo, where my mom was wearing it!!  THIEF!!! hahahaha.

In the elevator on the way up to the reception:

Our caterer set up a special room for us to get some hors d’oeuvres before the cocktail hour.  Y was happily eating away and having a glass of champagne, but I was super antsy and couldn’t wait to get to the party.  I ate two hors d’oeuvres and drank a little water, then started begging Y to head into the wedding.

We decided to do something a little different for our grand entrance: we entered to our first dance:

Our first dance was kind of silly: “our” song is My First, My Last, My Everything, by Barry White, which is a pretty goofy song.  Our awesome band learned how to play it, and the horn section made it really cute. We decided quite awhile ago to choreograph our first dance (after falling in love with a few YouTube videos).  Unfortunately, our dance lessons were a bit unsuccessful and we kind of slacked off on our choreography.  We figured out some silly moves to about a quarter of the song, and then…we figured we’d wing it.  Not recommended. We were nervous and things kind of fell apart midway through the dance.

Because we were so nervous about the dance, we decided to go straight into the first dance from our grand entrance, which was a great idea.  Here are a few photos from the first dance:

This photo cracks me up.  Y is clearly an excellent dancer.

I think our saving grace was my spur-of-the-moment decision to grab a bunch of our guests and make them dance with us.  It ended up being really fun!

Overall, if you’re nervous about your first dance, I HIGHLY recommend starting off with it.  It was fantastic, and after we were done I totally relaxed.  We went right to our table, made a little speech to welcome everyone, and then started eating.  During the first course, we had some toasts, and then finished dinner.  After dinner, my dad and I did our father-daughter dance and opened up the dance floor to everyone.  It was so perfect.

Next up!  Flowers and decor!  I loved my flowers and decor!  Wait till you see them!

Stinkerpants Wedding: Formals

October 13, 2008 in Our Wedding • Recap Photos

I hope you had a wonderful weekend, guys!!  Personally, I cleaned out my refrigerator.  :)

But it’s Monday, so back to the wedding!  We had our formal photos taken in three places: at the hotel, at Crissy Field, and at the Green Room.  The ones in the hotel didn’t turn out too well–we didn’t get any bridal party shots (as planned) and for some reason we didn’t look that cute.

The first formal photos we had that I was super in love with were taken under the tree at Crissy Field.  In 2005, this is the tree that Y and I were standing under when I asked him if I could be his girlfriend.  Who knew that three years later we’d be standing under the same tree, on our wedding day?  Awww….

While we were waiting for the trolleys to show up, we took some photos with the bridesmaids and I.  I love these photos, because the colors really pop!

I love the white flowers against their colored dresses!

Back at the Green Room, we took some more photos with the groomsmen:

My FIL is a big goof!

The whole bridal party:

These all crack me up.  I couldn’t choose my favorite!

At this point, the photos started to go downhill…everyone started to get tired. This one’s not that bad, but a lot of them were.

Our parents and us:

My husband and his sister, being very brother & sister-ly:

I hate to say it, but I wasn’t too keen on our formal portraits.  I love the ones we have here, but maybe it would have been better to get shots like “bride and groom with parents” throughout the night, rather than during a formal session like we did.  Everyone ended up looking pretty uncomfortable.  Thoughts?

Next up…the First Dance and the beginning of the reception!

Stinkerpants Wedding: the Trolleys

October 10, 2008 in Our Wedding • Recap Photos

Yay!  I’m so glad you guys found the ceremony text helpful.  :) Let me know if there’s anything else I can provide that might be helpful!

After the ceremony was over, it was time for our trolley tour of San Francisco.  Our plan was this: we needed a way to get our guests to and from the ceremony site.  When we rented the trolleys, we learned that they had a three hour minimum.  Not one to waste money, I realized that the ceremony and driving time would only take about 2 hours.  That left an hour of paid time!  As a result, we scheduled the ceremony and transportation so that we’d have time for an hour-long trolley tour after our ceremony, and we would all make it back to the reception hall for the cocktail hour.

Unfortunately the trolley situation was seriously screwed up (as I mentioned earlier).  We ended up waiting around for ages for our DOCs to get the trolleys ready to pick up the guests–despite taking as long as 45 minutes to get guests on the trolleys, they still sent them on an hour-long tour, meaning some of our guests were 45 minutes late to the reception.  But I digress.  We had to wait longer than everyone else, so during our time waiting for the trolleys, we had some formal photos taken (you’ll get to see those in the next post).

Had it worked out, I think the trolley tours would have been super amazing.  As it was, some of our guests didn’t notice the problem and had a great time anyway.  If you plan to do this (which I would recommend, if it works into your day), make sure you:

a) have a day of coordinator (DOC) that listens to you and fully understands what you’re doing.  You will need a DOC for this.  Putting 125 guests on four trolleys is not something you want to be responsible for on your wedding day. I don’t really think there was anything I could have done differently in our situation, but like I said before, just make sure you have DOCs you can completely trust.

b) make sure YOU have made a game plan; don’t trust that your DOC will work it out.  Make sure that they know to have the trolleys waiting for your guests as soon as the ceremony is over–don’t just assume they’ll do that because it makes sense.  Make sure that the guests are evenly distributed over all the trolleys, so some are not more full than others.

c) reserve the trolley drivers who can talk about the neighborhoods they’re driving through.  We hadn’t even thought about this, but we were lucky to have a couple of guys who knew how to do that.  As a result, some of our guests got an extra special ride.  If this isn’t an option, our trolley company said we could provide CDs with our own music on them.  We didn’t do that, but I think it would have been fun.

d) reserve a trolley for bridal party, parents and friends.  It’s way more fun to be on a trolley with a bunch of your friends than a random assortment of guests–you’ll have time to talk to the rest of the guests at the wedding.

And that’s it for advice regarding trolley tours.  If anyone plans to do this and has any questions, feel free to ask!  I think it makes for a very special and fun addition to a wedding.

Here we are leaving the ceremony to wait for our trolley.

This photo makes me laugh. Y has made a big deal about how uncomfortable his ring is, how he doesn’t like wearing jewelry, and how he’d rather get a tattoo of a ring than actually wear one.  My position?  I just spent a whole bunch of money on that ring, buck-o: you better wear it!  I’m pretty sure he’s joking about how he’s not going to wear the ring in this photo:

Checking out the program (you can see Y’s boutinnere in this photo–how amazing is it?!  It’s a work of art!):

After we got back tot he reception area, we took a few photos on the trolleys:

This is one of our favorite photos from the day.  Taking this picture was kind of hard (we’re strong!!), but it’s so cool!

Next up?  Formal photos!