Our Wedding Day Vision

One of the first things we had to determine, before we dove headfirst into our plans, was to determine what we wanted our wedding to look like. We both were huge foodies, who loved to cook, eat, drink, entertain and had a penchant for bygone eras. (We both came into our relationship with record turntables AND record collections in early 2003. If you don't know what either are, I'd recommend you Google it!) 

I started to envision a 5 pm wedding ceremony, with an elegant retro-vintage vibe. My soon-to-be husband had introduced me to the Thin Man movies and we fancied ourselves a modern-day Nick and Nora Charles.

While those movies were done in the 1930's, we loved the cocktail element they portrayed and how people actually dressed up and looked sharp when the occassion (and there were many) called for it. We were both smitten with the gorgeously tightly fitted, double-breasted suits of that era for men. Wouldn't it be great to have a tuxedo that looked like that?!

Early when we had just started dating, we watched the original "SpyKids" movie together. If you have not seen that movie, the beginning of the movie starts with how the parents met and their dramatic wedding day. I instantly fell in love with this fictional couples wedding cake: a tall-tiered number, bright yellow with bold flowers piped in frosting across the sides and a Day of the Dead wedding couple figurine for the cake topper.

It indulged my love of bright colors, being untraditional in the usual-boring-typical wedding cake look, and the Day of the Dead figures incorporated my Mexican-American fiances heritage while providing a fun and funky element. When we first watched the movie and saw the wedding cake, we agreed that should we get married someday, we wanted our cake to look JUST.LIKE.THAT.  (Right after we were engaged, I bought my first official wedding planning magazine and a DVD copy of the "SpyKids" movie!)

Plans and ideas began to take shape and form off of our initial concepts.

A vintage, Spanish-inspired wedding venue perhaps? (Old Laurelhurst Church below...)

And while we didn't want to go completely Mexican (no Mariachi bands, thank you!) in our wedding plans and themes, we did want to incorporate some elements into the ceremony and the overall scheme including a Day of the Dead bridal couple cake topper...

I imagined 1950's inspired cocktail dresses for each of our wedding attendants to wear and for those dresses to have elbow-length gloves as a key accessory.

We knew we wanted food to be an important focus at our reception dinner.  Meanwhile, I was dying to have Chivari ballroom chairs for the ceremony and reception, my favorite since childhood.

I also wanted silver beaded glass Belmont plate chargers for the dinner portion of the reception.

Together, we envisioned a three or four-piece jazz band playing during dinner and a post-ceremony cocktail hour with a bar that served signature cocktails. We preferred a formal sit down dinner instead of a dinner buffet and wanted to make our wedding a throwback to a bygone era of long ago: a time when manners and etiquette and formality meant something and was appreciated.

We knew we wanted a smaller wedding (no more than about 75 guests invited) and that we wanted it to be a representation of the two of us.

Finally, we had an outline for the rest of our plans to begin falling into and expanding into place!

Attendant Attire

I never have understood why some women out there would asked their closest friends (and/or siblings) to be a member of their wedding party, and then dress them in some hideous outfit. How obnoxious and mean is that?  Of course, we could arm chair diagnois that this is classic Bridezilla behavior, of not wanting to share the spotlight on their wedding day. Yet I knew that for our wedding, I wanted our attendants to look as beautiful as possible, and that we would provide their outfits for them as their gift from us for being in our wedding.

As we were having a small wedding, we each only had an attendant each. I knew whom I wanted to my Maid of Honor, my oldest friend, met on the first day of high school.  I knew right away, right after I got engaged and asked her to be my MOH, that I wanted to put her in an iridescent orange and pink silk. The color would be gorgeous on her with her coloring, and perfect for the fall wedding we were planning.

My original inspiration was this dress I saw in a magazine on Renee Zellweger designed by the impeccable Carolina Herrera:

It's not very easy to see, but it was a simple and classic silhouette from the 1950's, fitted, sleeveless bodice and full, tea-length skirt. Ultra-feminine!

My scrapbook shows the two patterns I used to get the "bones" of each of the garmets constructed. I originally planned to make Jill's dress from the full-skirted option on the Retro Butterick re-issue pattern.

However, Butterick didn't re-size the original pattern for the modern woman, so the bodice I'd make for Jill, was way too small for her! I kept the skirt portion, but created a simple bateau neck, Princess-seamed bodice to attach to it for her, instead.

For Anastasia's dress (she was my husband's "Best Woman") I wanted to make her something that went with the vintage and retro cocktail-vibe we were planning for our wedding overall, but I also wanted her dress to compliment my husbands tuxedo. The Vogue Easy Options sundress pattern was perfect for this.

I found a fabulous black jacquard fabric at the fabric store, and bought some black semi-matte satin fabric to make the waistband and the double lapel detail that I added to the dress on my own to give the dress a tuxedo look. The jacquard had a puckery-embossed effect and was easy to work with and looked beautiful once finished.  The rhinestone and black enamel buttons at the front waist were beyond perfect!

I added a flat, squared black bow at the base of the bodice back for decoration and to reference the style of bows from the 1950's. Okay, truth be told and lesson learned, I had to conceal the waistband seams since they did not match up after I installed the invisible zipper. This is a common complaint with invisible zippers as it relates to home sewing. They disappear into the garmet seams so you don't see them, but trying to match up any cross seams can be a nightmare. Fortunately, this flat and squared bow hid the mis-matched seam and added to the beauty of the finished garment.

The inside was lined in satin and trimmed in leopard ribbon.

The finished result!  Black hose, black net tulle underskirt that showed under her dress, black gloves and low kitten-heeled, ankle-strapped shoes with diamond-look buckles finished the look, perfectly.!

Jill tries on her dress a month before the wedding so I can see how it fits and looks with the gloves and her shoes. (Apologies for the blurry photos!) You can see I hadn't decided on the waist decoration at this point, yet.

The final result. I gave her a net underskirt that peeked out, too. That and the same shoe style for her and Anastasia created unity and cohesion between their outfits.

Another lesson learned: Jill's shoes proved a challenge. Since her dress was a weave of orange and hot pink silk fibers (that gave a gold iridescent sheen) having her shoes match or blend in was harder than I anticipated. I took a sample of fabric with the shoes to the shoe repair to be dyed, where they assured me they would match the goldish orange in the fabric sample. Instead, when I picked them up, they were bright, bright orange and looked completely wrong with her dress. I remedied the situation by buying some gold fabric paint at the craft store, and literally painted it on her shoes. (Her shoes were a combination crepe toe box and heel with satin trim, heel and ankle straps.)  Surprisingly, the gold fabric paint when brushed over the orange dye job, turned into the perfect shade and matched up to her dress, beautifully!

I was so pleased with the end result, that I painted another pair of satin mules that I wore for the rehearsal dinner in orange paint and then painted them again with gold to get the same result as Jill's.

My final detail for Jill's dress, a rectangular rhinestone buckle I'd originally intended for a belt for her dress, repurposed within a 1950's inspired bow decoration (thank you, Jackie O. First Lady fashions coffee table book I own and consulted for reference and inspiration!).

Wedding Day Photography

We had a few "big deals" for our wedding day where we didn't want to skimp on the budget. One was food: we wanted to share an incredible meal with our friends and family.

The other? The photographer had to be top-notch. I mean, this pretty much is the great recordkeeper of your big day, right?

Photography is tricky, though. It's very subjective. We went through a ton of wedding and event photographer websites until we narrowed it down two two that we thought were worth exploring. One photographer was out of Southern California and had trained with David LaChapelle. The other, was Nick Sokoloff from Salt Lake City, Utah.

To decide whom to hire, we literally opened up two browser windows and clicked on their portfolios nearly side-by-side. And Nick's work really resonated with us. It was a great combination of photojournalism, traditional and some wonderful avant garde shots thrown in for good measure.

Fortunately, we were able to book Nick for our big day and negotiated what we felt was a killer deal. Our agreement included our paying his travel expenses from Salt Lake to Las Vegas, 4x6 copies of all pictures taken, all the high-resolution images from our wedding day on a CD, and the right to use and reproduce our images as we wanted without having to seek permission to do so. We also agreed that he wouldn't do our official, physical wedding album, either.

We met with Nick a couple months before our wedding date when he found himself in Vegas for another photography engagement. This was serendipitous as it let us show him our wedding venue and to put faces and names together before coming together with him again on our big day. It also let me provide him with some images I had collected from the web and magazines of certain photography shots and looks I hoped to include on our wedding day as well.

Lesson Learned: At the time we got married, Eddie and I were more interested in having photojournalism photography than those of a traditional nature. In hindsight, I totally wished we'd done more traditional poses than we did, as we hardly did any. Also, in hindsight, there were certain guests who attended our wedding that I wish I had been able to get my photo taken with that day, just the two of us, together. Or even, shots of guests individually on their own. Additionally, we had family members who although probably a bit camera shy, were in only to be found in one of the professional pictures that Nick took that day: the group photo of our guests on the grand staircase. Eddie has one sister who knows her way in front of a camera, and boy, you might think that she was the only one there at the wedding from the number of photos you can find her in! His other sister? She's only in the staircase photo, I believe, which is unfortunate.

Some of the photos we had taken seemed like a good idea at the time ("Yes! Let's get a picture of me next to the swimming pool!)

In hindsight, not such a great idea. This was a great formal portrait, but we weren't having a casual, poolside wedding. And you can clearly see the pool steps handles which totally ruins the shot for me. [Perhaps in my old age I will learn how to Photoshop and practice photoshopping those out!]

We did a few of Eddie and I on the Lifeguard's chair. The actual effect was more wacky than the intended arty...Which just goes to show that some ideas are better in theory, than reality.

There were some great shots in the suite before Jill and I went off to have more pictures taken in the hotel pre-ceremony. But in some of those great, regal shots, there are A/C vents visible which again, for me, kind of ruins the effect.

Or else, you see Nick taking the photograph using the mirror to do so...Bummer.

We got some great shots pre-ceremony of me at the top of the grand staircase. These were more high fashion in style and I really love how they turned out.

These were a lot of fun at the bottom of the grand staircase, too, with the flowers the hotel had displayed for the weekend. What a boon, flowers that looked great with our wedding colors and we didn't have to worry about footing that bill!

Loved the shot of us cutting the cake! This is probably one of our favorite shots of the night, along with the photograph of our guests on the grand staircase. The picture of us cutting the cake is displayed predominately in our home. Everyone comments on it, whether they were there to see it happen, or are newer friends visiting our home for the first time.

Here is a series Nick captured where the journalism style was perfect for catching the moment. One of my aunts had unexpectedly gotten my grandmother (and her mother) on the pay phone to share some warm wishes with us before we went back to begin dinner...

I was totally caught by surprise but loved my grandmother being able to participate in our wedding this way.

Little did I know that my newly minted husband was hamming it up with Scary Teddy, behind me.

I finish my call with grandma and share how surprised and thrilled I was to have that moment with her.

Then burst out laughing to find out about Eddie's antics behind me!

Below: this was the only formal shot of us, post ceremony, from a traditional photography standpoint.

Like I said above, Nick gave us so many great memories of our wedding day, I just wish I had requested that we do a lot more traditional pictures than we actually ended up having.