As promised, my flowers...

These are my earrings, made from my bouquet...

And this is the picture of the dried flowers, now hanging in our bedroom...

Preserved Flowers

I had my bouquet preserved and framed (I also had jewelry made out of it). It is hurtling its way (gently, I hope) via the mail to me right now, but some initial pictures... (my mom got a much smaller paperweight-sized version; that's the first pic...)





I'll take pictures of the jewelry and the bouquet once it gets to my apartment...

Just as a reminder, this was the bouquet the day of...

One Year of Bliss!

Hard to believe that Reg and I just celebrated our one-year anniversary. We had an amazing, peaceful, romantic weekend up at Lake George, at this lovely little bed and breakfast in Hague named Ruah -- gorgeous, truly gorgeous.


And I am, of course, still finalizing the wedding album... sigh.

Cleveland rocks!

Had to share these two videos -- they kind of sum up much of Cleveland. (Of course, not the parts that any of you will be staying at!)

Hair and makeup trial

I like the fact that I did the hair trial on one day and the makeup trial on another day, as it means that the only day we'll put the entire piece together is on W-day!

Here's a look at my fabulous, fabulous hair by my very talented cousin Alisa (who works at Enzo's on State Road in Broadview Heights):



And here's a look at my makeup trial (also visible in all of the engagement photos) -- the first was taken right after we got the makeup done, and the other was taken about 12 hours after we got the makeup done. It's almost entirely black eyeshadow (and the girl screwed up my lipstick, which I think I'll do myself next time.)




I loved the way the black eyeshadow came out, but I've been wondering if maybe another look wouldn't be *better* for me. First thought: more smoky browns, a la Ivanka Trump:




OR, perhaps I want more of a '60s vibe -- Reg and I just watched Charade, and I couldn't get over Audrey Hepburn's makeup.

Engagement pictures!

So Reg and I had an incredibly fun time doing our engagement shoot with the very talented Kay and Stacy of BCR Studios -- we're so glad we chose them for our photographers. First up, these were some of the inspiration photos that I collected and Reg approved and then we showed to Kay and Stacy at BCR... (I am sad to say that I was taking screen grabs with two different computers, neither of which recorded the source of the picture, which means I can't give them credit. Hopefully the pics are small enough that no one will mind, but if any copyright owners are checking this out, please e-mail me and I'll either give you credit or remove it.)

The "What, there's a camera here?" look



The "we always look at each other this way" look:






The "oh, you just happened to catch us hanging out on the street corner" look:



The "NEAR.... far...." shot



And the classic American Gothic shot.




And now up, a few of our pictures -- we've purchased the disk of all photos but the disk hasn't arrived yet, so these photos still have the watermark on them... prints can be purchased through BCR.

Wedding rings - check

Yesterday, we bought our wedding bands. !!! We went to Wedding Rings Original, which had been recommended by New York magazine and when I'd done some research, the man behind the company (Mel) really struck me as a knowledgeable and nice guy.

I finally decided to pull the trigger because I realized I just wasn't seeing what I wanted on the market, and we would have to go custom, and a) the wedding is six weeks away (!!!) and b) no amount of market research would help me imagine what a ring would look like ahead of time.

I liked this kind of look from Kay's, but they only had it in white gold and I wanted platinum:


Ok, and I am totally incapable of finding any of the 3 rings that we wound up taking attributes for to make my ring, but suffice it to say that it looks fairly similar to the Kay's ring above except a) it's platinum, b) it's super narrow -- very very thin, c) it has very small bead-set diamonds on the top, and I think the one pictured is a channel setting. Also, it's just the bottom ring, and instead of being kind of pointy, there's just a gentle curve.

Reggie's ring is similar to this one from Kay's, but in palladium -- palladium is in the platinum family, but it costs less (about the same as $18K gold) and is a naturally white color, so unlike "white" gold (which is actually yellow gold treated with a chemical) it won't ever turn yellow. It's a wide ring with a hammered look to the center, and a "comfort band" (which I think is a comfort band because the sides are rolled? Forget which one he chose.)


Mel gave us a good discount because we bought both rings at once, and considering the materials and the fact that mine had to be made custom, we were happy with the price.