The Only Hairstyle I've Really Considered

That's right. As soon as I found my dress, I knew pretty well exactly how I wanted to wear my hair. I remember standing there in front of the mirror in the consignment shop (a story for another time) grinning like a loon, falling in love with my dress as I decided it was mine, looking at it from every angle and saying to my mom and the shopkeeper, "Is it just me, or would fingerwaves look amazing with this dress?" They unequivocally agreed. Or at least they were nice enough to claim to agree with me. One of those.

Fingerwaves. Hairstyle of a bygone era, occasionally reclaimed by a hollywood starlet for a red carpet here or there. Also, the hairstyle sported by my grandmother at her wedding, and in other portraits hanging in my parents' dining room.

Here's a low-quality shot of a lovely picture of my grandparents. I'm named for her, Mary Lorraine.

In looking for photos of finger wave hairstyles, it seems that most stylists use gobs and gobs of gel that hardens in a rather sloppy fashion. Ideally, I'd like something more like this:

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Hopefully I won't squish it too much with my birdcage veil. Maybe I need the gobs of gel after all.

These pictures make me happy in part because I'm already sick of growing my hair out. I've already gotten my hair about as long as the cuts in these pictures, so I can probably start getting it trimmed again but keep growing my bangs out. I can't recall when I last grew my bangs out. 4th grade? 6th grade? Ugh. Always a pain.

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This photo is so strikingly beautiful, yes? The hairstyle, the beautiful girl, the era it evokes, the soft focus.. *sigh* ..everything, really.

I had dinner with Opie's family tonight for his grandmother's birthday. I sat next to his aunt (who happens to be a complete and total sweetheart) who works at a very high end hair salon in the area. She's specialized in color for quite some time now, but I figured there was no harm in asking if she happens to know how to do fingerwaves. She responded that she hadn't done them in 10 years but that her salon also specializes in bridal hairstyling, and she could "hook me up". In other words, she uber-generously insists on paying someone from her (did I mention "very high end"?) salon to do my hair trial and on-site day-of styling!!! Oh my goodness! My mom and I were going to try to figure out how to DIY this, but I'm so ecstatic to be unexpectedly placed in the hands of a professional!

First Dance

I'm feeling particularly lovey-dovey tonight. Therefore, I'm pondering what song should be played for our first dance. Allow me to introduce my current contenders [pending Opie's approval]. Click on the links to be led to youtube videos of these songs:

Sweet Lorraine - Nat King Cole
This is probably the first one to come to mind for both of us, as Lorraine is my middle name and I've always felt connected to this song. It's certainly one of "our songs". That being said, the lines about "each night I pray no one will steal her heart away" bother me a bit for the song to kick off our marriage.

What a Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong
It really is a wonderful world with my love beside me, y'know? Also, I looove Armstrong's vocals. It's a shame he never did a version of Sweet Lorraine that I'm aware of.

Sea of Love - Cat Power
I definitely cried the first time I heard Cat Power's cover of this song. I think I fall in love with Opie all over again every time I hear this song.

Green Eyes - Coldplay
This was probably the first or second song to join the ever growing list of "our songs", probably within the very first few weeks of dating. I used to leave little quotes from songs and poems and such in my away message when I'd sign off AIM for the night. Opie would then investigate where they came from (more often than not being disappointed by how depressing the majority of my music choices are. ha!) and this was one of the first to be truly romantic. It got added to his playlist for driving around ASAP.

A Kiss to Build a Dream On - Louis Armstrong
This is one of Opie's top contenders, methinks. Again, I love Armstrong's voice. However, this song tends to make me think more of a crush than life-long love.

Something in the Way She Moves - James Taylor
James Taylor would definitely play a central role in a soundtrack of my life. His music was my lullaby in the crib, his were the arrangements for portions of every family sing-along, and the backdrop to every road trip. This song is so beautifully romantic. I wish I could think of a JT song to use for the Father-Daughter dance. That would be so incredibly appropriate.

You and Me - The Cranberries
Either this one or 'Dreams' are possibilities, though they're not quite the sound I envision for a first dance, I suppose. They'll definitely get played at some point in the evening though. We blasted the Cranberries as we drove around on our first date. I pointed out that he must be pretty secure in his masculinity to blast the Cranberries at a stoplight with all of the windows open. <3

All I Want is You - Barry Louis Polisar
This, along with Cat Power's 'Sea of Love' are found on the Juno soundtrack. This song is so ridiculously adorable. Can you just imagine us both singing along to this at the top of our lungs as we drive around town together? Oh yes. It happens probably at least once a week.

Mmmmmmm, music. I'm in a lovely mood after listening to all of these on repeat for a while tonight.

Veil Sneak Peek

Here's a little preview of the veil my mom & I are making:

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The currently ever-popular super-glamorous birdcage veil! I guess the style we're making would be called a blusher. I haven't yet decided if I want to wear it just below my eyes or just below my nose. I just never saw myself wearing a veil until I discovered the birdcage. Love it.

Photoboothishness

I think it'd be super fun to set up a photo booth of sorts at our reception. I know it's a really common idea across wedding blogs for the last while, but I've yet to personally attend a wedding that has one so I don't know how mainstream it really is. Also, I think I probably just frequent the blogs of super-awesome weddings.

As neat as the little strips of photos from real photo booths are, they are a) not what I can afford, and b) not quite what I'm envisioning. I'm thinking more something like theeeese (I apologize for losing the info on where I found these images):

I looove the idea of using a fun fabric backdrop, draped from the wall down to the floor.

More fabric awesomeness. We could also provide props for extra hilarity, like my yoda backpack, our Shatner standup, paper hats, mustaches, etc. I figure we'll just set up a digital camera on self-timer on a tripod with instructions written up next to it. I'm sure we could rig up some sort of lighting, but nothing too complicated. Maybe check out some lights from my school's photo department... We could then send folks their photos with their thank you notes since I don't much feel like printing them at the reception.

I also think I want to get a flickr pro account and give out the password to our guests on the day of, so they can upload the photos they take at our wedding. I have full faith in our friends who are shooting the wedding, but it'd be fun to have extra candid shots and such.

Honeymoon

We booked our honeymoon yesterday! It's sure to be splendiferously wonderful.

We'll be honeymooning at the Pueblo Bonito Sunset Beach oceanfront resort in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

This is a Junior Suite, so it should be pretty similar to our room. Note the ocean view - with the layout of the hotel, all of the rooms overlook the ocean.

Beautiful.

This resort is one of 4 sister resorts in Cabo San Lucas and Los Cabos. We can take a free shuttle to the other resorts to make free use of their facilities too.

Pretty, pretty, pretty.

The Sunset Beach is on the Pacific Side with enormous waves, so swimming in the ocean is not allowed, but we can hop on over to the resorts in Los Cabos easily enough to do so. The pool facilities certainly seem ample enough, eh?

I've never really had a "tropical" vacation before. My vacations in Colorado, Washington, Ireland, England, and Canada definitely don't qualify. I've been to Mexico before, but only just across the border for an hour or two when I was 7 or 8 years old. Obviously we won't be experiencing the "real" Mexico in staying at a resort, but that's not really what we're seeking with our honeymoon either.

Whee! Our wedding (and our honeymoon!) is a little over 6 months away right now. It gets more and more real all of the time!

Make Up

Oh, Makeup. I think I've worn it maybe twice in the last year. I think my complexion has definitely improved for it, and Opie's not particularly fond of the stuff. Even when I did wear it on a regular basis, it was generally just a little bit of concealer, eyeshadow, mascara, and occasionally lipstick and/or lipgloss.

That being said, although my acne wasn't and isn't as bad as many suffer from, I do have some mild insecurities about my acne and acne scars. That was actually a very small reason I considered waiting to get married (but obviously it wasn't enough impetus to actually do so). I figured my complexion would clear even more a few years out than at the 20.5 I'll be when I get married.

So am I going to spend a gazillion dollars on the services of a makeup artist? Heck naw. I'm spending a smallish amount (or, hey "figurehead".. wedding present? eh? eh? I'm a subtle one, I know.) for the services of my dear buddio who happens to be going to school for costume design, wherein she takes makeup classes. Woot. While I don't feel the need to be turned into a character from Xmen or Pirates of the Caribbean for my wedding, I know this little foxy lady is sure to make me look a little more polished on my big day.

The Foxy Lady herself, in one of her bridal portraits I shot last year

So, wonderful makeup lady of wonderfulness. I've been browsing shots of folks all glammed up. What I want is pretty simple, methinks. I want something really clean and simple. Nothing with much color particularly.. just enough to play up my features and conceal some of my blemishes, but otherwise, remain moderately unnoticeable. Like so:

I'd say lip color is one of the things I'm most unsure about. This is maybe a little too far toward brown or something, but I find that many of these are too far toward pink. It's something I need to play with.

Lip gloss seems to be a reappearing theme in these photos. Also, I don't have crazy beautiful big blue eyes, but I really like my green eyes and would like to play them up some.

Maybe a little heavy on the eyeshadow here but otherwise nice.

Again, I don't have bright blue eyes, but the idea here is still in sync with mine.

With this look, I probably wouldn't want the eyeliner to extend past my lid, but I otherwise really like it. Also, Natalie Portman, why are you so flawlessly beautiful?

The eyeshadow's maybe a little dark for me here, but on the other hand, the contrast it lends her eyes behind a veil similar to my own is nice.

Can't see a lot of detail here, but I love it.

Too heavy on the blush, but otherwise perfect.

This is pretty much perfect in a lot of ways. My only complaint would maybe be that the shade of pink on the lips is a bit too.. pink. Otherwise, I love that her freckles are still visible and the otherwise subtle makeup.

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I know a large percentage of brides go for a -lot- more makeup than I'm hoping to wear, but then I'm sure they'd be appalled by my going out in public without any makeup 99% of the time.

Also, on a pretty well completely unrelated note, I was watching that "Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?" show on MyStyle, and felt a distinct urge to track down and kill one of the wedding planners. Her clients were this really cool, moderately quirky couple with a quick witty (and sarcastic) sense of humor who were looking to buck a few of the traditions in lieu of things that better represented themselves and their relationship. The wedding planner, hired by the mother of the bride, could not even begin to comprehend why someone would want to do anything remotely different from every established tradition. She was downright rude, scoffed at all of their ideas and suggestions, ignored and disregarded every request of the bride and groom, and then got incredibly indignant and stormed off like a child when they finally expressed their frustrations with her manner of doing business. The show even tried to paint the planner as the one in the right. Ugh. I'm normally amused by the ridiculous nature of the wedding shows on TV, but this time I was just disgusted.

Whee. Here I am today, after a few medically difficult days. Here's about as blank a slate as you'll see. Hopefully I'll be far less tired, stressed, and under the weather on our wedding day. I'm not used to posting pictures without retouching my complexion. Oh well. I love you guys, you 4 or so readers out there.

The Cake Situation

The Bride's "Cake" is one of the things I'm most excited about for our reception. See, I really don't like cake. I mean, sure, I'll occasionally stumble across a cake that tastes good and has redeeming qualities, but I far and away prefer other desserts, particularly pies and cobblers. Growing up, I probably had peach cobbler on my birthday for a minimum of five years in a row. I don't recall having a true "birthday cake" after the age of maybe 5 or 6. If I did, it was probably Angel Food Cake or Pineapple Upside Down Cake or something similarly non-cakey. Soooo after a little convincing of the groom-to-be, ("Hey, it's not fair that you're kind of choosing both the Groom's and Bride's Cake! Wah wah wah!") we've decided to have pie instead of cake! Yaaaaaay Pie!

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I don't know what percentage of my guests are as fanatical about pie as I am, but I mean, really.. who doesn't like pie? And in many ways more importantly, I love how pie is so key to our relationship. That sounds silly if heard without explanation, but it's true. Opie likes to say he won me over with pecan pie. While I'm pretty sure he'd already snagged me for good by the time he started trying his hand at baking, his amazing pecan pies sure didn't hurt. While we've cut down our pie consumption now, there was a time when we always had a pie in the fridge (and sometimes two!), all homemade by Opie (and at times made together). A lot of bonding happened over those pies, and though it may be super-cheesy, it seems right to celebrate our newly declared lifelong-bond over pie too!

As for the Groom's Cake, Opie gets to pick whatever kind of cake he wants. He's not crazy about chocolate (crazy man.. mmmmm chocolate) but loves a good Carrot Cake or Rum Cake, not to mention the family recipe Hummingbird Cake my mom made us recently. I trust him to choose something tasty.

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One of the other nice things about the pastry route we're taking is definitely the price. The very bare minimum I've been quoted for a relatively undecorated tiered wedding cake is $3 per serving. So, say we can get 8 servings from a pie in the price range of somewhere from $5 to $15, that's a per serving price of $.63 - $1.88. Yes please. I don't know what sort of price we'll be looking at for the Groom's Cake, but presuming we don't order it with the title "Groom's Cake" I'm sure we'll avoid a lot of the wedding inflationary pricing that drives me nuts.

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I feel the need to reiterate YAAAAY PIIIIIIIIIE!