Hey That’s A Nice Life

I started this blog when I was planning our wedding. Last weekend we celebrated our one year anniversary. At an art show. In Richmond. Where it was 98 degrees. While I was a little unhappy with the chilly temps and overcast sky on our wedding day, I had to admit it was a lot better than the heat and humidity this year. 

Here we are posing in our booth on the morning of May 2, 2010 - one year after our lovely wedding.

The traditional gift for a one year anniversary is paper. I made a faux Washington Post cover for Don with the headline ”Virginia Couple Sentenced to 99 to Life,” a nod to the inscriptions on our wedding bands. I also gave him tickets to see Lyle Lovett who wrote the song “She’s No Lady She’s Your Wife” which was the original source of the inscriptions.

Don gave me the beautiful Tina Palmer oil on plaster on canvas painting below.  I love it. A lot.

Also, back in April I finally ordered our wedding album. We used a photo book website, Blurb.com, and I am very pleased with the product.

Yesterday Chris and Hampton came over to drop off the CDs with our wedding photos.  I’m so excited to share them with you … but first we have to actually go through them (so I wouldn’t hold your breath). 

Here are a few to get you started:

My father remarked that my wedding to Don was probably the best photo-documented wedding of all time.  He might be right.

As Don waited on the beach for me, there were no less than 20 cameras trained on him.

There were so many cameras after his image, in fact, that Don whipped out his iPhone and took a picture of the crowd and their cameras.

We’re so lucky that so many of our friends are great photographers.  By the time we arrived at our minimoon destination Sunday night there were dozens of photos from our wedding online on Flickr or Facebook.  In fact, we crawled into the big, comfy bed and spent some time looking at the pictures and reliving our wonderful weekend moment by moment.

Both of these pictures were taken by our friend, Genie Gratto, the Inadvertent Gardener.

Next up: I join Don at the chuppah

‘That was easy.’
courtesy of ‘jaxed’

There was a time when I might have been offended. Last week Susan said that she hasn’t said much to people about my photobooth project because - until that week - she hadn’t been sure I’d pull it off in time. Now that I have been in the software development business for almost 20 years, though, I was flattered and amused.

Flattered because she’s been watching me do various tests and proof-of-concepts the last few months. Those have apparently made her believe that I’ve made enough progress and come up with enough solutions that I would be able to be done by the time the wedding rolls around. It’s nice that I can do things that she finds impressive and sees them as a sign that I’m not a complete boob.

Amused because I know that projects like this follow the 80:20 rule. The last 20% of the project is what takes 80% of your time. The first 80%, of course, takes the other 80% of your time. So now that I’ve gotten all the components doing what they need to do it’s a matter of making them play nice together and putting it all in a neat little box. Well, not so little - “normal” photobooths measure something like 5 feet long, 3 feet wide and over 7 feet high.

Be that as it may, here’s the gist: unless everything goes completely pear-shaped at this point, there will be a big old box you can sit in at our wedding. Press a button - a repurposed Easy button, in fact, like the one pictured above - and it’ll count down, take four pictures of you, do some behind-the-scenes magic, and print them out into a strip like you’d get from a boardwalk photo booth.

You can look forward to some more posts about the pieces and process I’ve gone through and what’s to come.

For some reason I can no  longer remember, a few minutes ago I told Don about a strange wedding photography trend that is compelling in the oddest way.  Fake mustaches.  He seemed skeptical that this is actually a trend. 

But it’s true.  A number of wedding blogs that I read have written about it and showcased pictures.  And not a number like 2 either.  A big number.

So I hauled up the laptop and googled ‘wedding mustache’.  This was one of the first pictures that appeared:

See?  Isn’t it odd and strangely compelling?  Offbeat Bride says that fake mustaches are the new red wedding dress so you know it’s for real.

I don’t see us going this route - it didn’t even occur to me to get a red wedding dress - but I sure love looking at the pictures. 

On the other hand, Don’s surprise project does need a few props, so maybe we’ll spring for a few fake ’staches.

moustaches for all! by racheℓ ✈ mergeweddings.com’ s