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!

A Menu for All Senses

I'm pointing to our name on the directory at the Four Seasons. We were there to have our wedding dinner tasting, including the wines we wanted to serve. Looking back, the tasting was a great way to experience our wedding dinner, since on our actual wedding day, we didn't eat much from nerves and excitement and the whirlwind of making sure we hit all our scheduled wedding milestones (after ceremony photography, first dance, toasts, cake cutting).




Our first course, a cold smoked, cured and candied salmon with mustard dill sauce.




Spiced butternut squash soup with maple, pumpkin oil and toasted pine nuts...

Missing, is a picture of our salad course, which was spinach and arugula with roasted walnut and anjou pears, seared foi gras, with a dried cranberry dressing.




Colorado lamb rack with leek and asiago cabernet whipped potatoes, tarragon jus.

The chef gushed to us about how excited he was to see (and to prepare) our menu for our tasting and our upcoming wedding. Normally, he confided, most bride and grooms go the safe route of chicken (and often, do a buffet). But he complimented us on our "adventuous" choices! We replied, we just loved food and wanted to share an amazing meal with those people we loved on our big day.




As you can see, I was never very far from my trusty note pad and sketch pad...

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.