Please drink responsibly

In lieu of New Year's fesivities I thought it would be fun to find a signature cocktail to be served at Breaha, Heather, and my wedding (not that any of us will be opting to serve signature cocktails, sorry to disappoint)

Breaha's signature cocktail - The Charleston

A classic, this elegant cocktail gives a nod to the swing dance lesson that Beaha and Zach will hopefully be having at their reception.

Heather's signature cocktail - Berry BlushWith a wedding dated for 7/11 a fruity, slushy drink is a must. Maybe even serve them in Big Gulp cups!

Our signature cocktail - Lime 'n' Lemon HourWho wouldn't like a refreshing citrus cocktail for an outdoor summer wedding? We could even set up the bar to look like an old fashioned lemonade stand.

Merry Christmas!

To my family in Arizona who we miss every day that they're away from home.
To my beautiful Nicole in beautiful France.
To Whitney who's spending her winter break in Europe.
To Josh's family who have taken me in for the 4th Christmas now and make everything so merry and bright.
To Will and Kory who spent a whole day after-Christmas shopping with us.
To Sarah for rocking out with me to 80's music.
To TJ and Uriah, congratulations on your Christmas engagement!
To everyone in our lives near and far, thanks for making this Holiday season such a special one! Hope it was the best for you and yours.
Love, Josh and Sheila

Heather's Inspiration Board

To my wonderful Heather. I hope this inspiration board aids you in convincing Tom that a pink and black wedding can be elegant and classy, which it most certainly can.


A couple thoughts to share with you:

4th photo in the top row shows a bride with an adorable blusher. I had the idea to suggest a blusher to Heather after seeing this pink and black headpiece on Etsy. I think this would be so fun for her to wear for the reception.

On the bottom row, the 3rd and 4th are some ideas for a pink and black candy bar. I think a candy bar screams Heather because it fits her personality so well. Everyone knows that Heather loves her snacks, I'm sure she would have a blast picking out sweets for her big day. And it would be great for incorporating her wedding colors in a fun way.

Merry Christmas Heather and Tom!

my wonderful fiance

I have come very close to losing my mind lately. Thanks to Josh, who's been cooking meals, doing all the household chores, answering my studio phone and booking appointments for me, I haven't lost it yet. And I'm proud to announce that because of his efforts, we have officially crossed two items off our list of necessities for our wedding day! (the two most important necessities in my opinion)

The caterer: Spartan Hall of Fame Cafe -managed by a good friend of my dad's, Ricka Tien

and

The toilets: Royal Restrooms; a regal portable restroom experience - recommended by a fellow Habibi and newly-wed, Molly.

Thank you for all your help and support Baby.

Breaha's Inspiration Board

A Christmas present to my lovely sister...my and plum and ivory vision for her big day.


I have two elements in this board I want to share:

2nd photo on the top row are these adorable hair pins I found on Etsy. The set was a bridal party package and included 3 bridesmaid hair pins and 1 hair vine for the bride. She does custom work, so even though they're already sold out you can put in a request for the same set or keep an eye out for similar items at other retail locations.

Love, love, love these lavender seating cards from Martha Stewart Weddings. 2nd photo, 2nd row shows these seating cards which are made by tying paper with the guest's name and the table number printed on them.

It's going to be an elegant and romantic gala affair...I just know it!

Life goes on

What have I been doing with myself? One might ask after noticing how infrequently I've been posting on here.

#1 Belly dancingThe Habibi Dancers had a show at the Riverwalk theater on November 22nd, and 23rd. Beyond the Borders was amazing and I am so thrilled to have been a part of it. We performed many peices that were outside our normal spectrum of traditional Middle-Eastern dance. The picture above is from a fusion bellydance/African number.

#2 ThanksgivingMy future sister-in-law and bridesmaid Breaha invited the family up to her place for Thanksgiving this year. We shared the weekend with her fiancee's family, and I thoroughly enjoyed the time we all spent together. Games, swimming, movies, talking about vampries (see note below) shopping and of course great food. I truly hopes this becomes a long time tradition for our families.

#3 More belly dancingA local Middle-Eastern restaurant, Aladdin's, has troupe members perform during dinner hours on the 1st and 3rd Friday of the month. Yesterday I danced there for the first time and had a blast! I felt nervous and clumsy but loved every minute of it, cant wait to do it again. My beautiful bra and belt set was hand made by the mother-in-law of another woman in our troupe, and that was the first time I've gotten to wear it. Isn't it gorgeous?

*note: I also have not been able to put down Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. So a lot, if not all, of my free time as been spent reading these books. I've had vampires on the brain for two weeks now. If you know me, you know that I don't enjoy reading books (the last one I read was 3 years ago and before that was required reading for a high school Lit. class) see my bridesmaid Heather's blog entry regarding these books.

some lovely green dresses

Some dress options for my bridesmaids.

zappos.com (1st dress)
overstock.com
overstock.com (2nd dress)
bluefly.com
target (bottom dress)
amazon.com

I can see Nicole in this one.

Inspiration Board-Ceremony

The game plan

Here it goes; our wedding plans.

As you know, the wedding will take place at the home of my family's close friends Steve and Gail. The ceremony will be in the woods of their property and reception in a field adjacent to these woods. There will be space for camping, a big glowing bonfire and Sunday brunch to follow, of course. In case of rain, the ceremony can be held under our tent. The tent will be built by my wonderful father(with the helpof Josh's groomsman and my brothers). In the initial budget run through, it was realized that renting a tent for $1500+ was absurd, and my genius dad suggested that he could build the tent with lumber that could be torn down and reused after the wedding, for $600 or less. Yipee! This in turn sparked a fire to try and replace anything I initially thought needed to be purchased for the wedding with items that are used or can be borrowed. Thus lowering costs and the carbon footprint our Big Day will create.

We will be married by Josh's father. Rex is the perfect person to conduct our marriage ceremony for three reasons:

1. Rex worked many years as a sucessful salesman which = good public speaking skills. He also traveled with this work doing workshop to teach his skills to others in sales and now does public workshops with his new career in healing.
2. Rex is a skilled healer and spiritual counseler. His insight and intuitive touch will make for what we believe will be a touching and deeply moving ceremony.
3. Josh and I have always wanted someone near and dear to us officiate the wedding. Nuff said.
   

Choosing wedding colors also came easily. My engagement ring contains two sapphires (my birthstone) on either side of a diamond taken from an old ring of Josh's. The day after Josh proposed, I was admiring the ring and realized I would wear the sapphire pendant my grandmother gave to me for my high school graduation. Green was choosen when it was decided we were going with a casual, rustic feel for the day. Blue will be an accent color since green is more evident in nature (duh).

Prior to the engagement I'd always believed that friends and family should have little to no involvement and responsibility beyond showing up, looking beautiful, and having the time of their lives. I just want our loved ones to enjoy the day for what it is; the union and celebration of two beloved people. I have thoroughly changed my viewpoint on this matter. I've realized that if I am to stay under budget and keep my sanity, we're going to have to enlist help from the troops. The key will be to ask everyone, and I mean everyone, to be responsible for one task. This way no one is being overwhelmed with several tasks, and everyone has a role to play. And besides, this union and celebration will be that much more personal and meaningful if all those close to us have contributed in one way or another.

Flowers will be provided by a neighbor of ours who has green hydrangea bushes and we will pick Queen Anne's Lace as they are free and grow wildly everywhere in Michigan. Ceremony music will be played by Matt and Steffan, two highschool friends of mine on acoustic guitar and Mandolin. The day will be documented in photographs by my wonderful, Aja, who has assisted me in wedding and event photography in the past. I'd love to have women from my troupe, the Habibi Dancers, perform at the reception. I'm trying to enlist a friend to do a mini Salsa lesson to encourage interaction between guests and we'll have open salsa, merengue and bachata dancing for a small portion of the reception. We wont have cake, but would like a mini desserts table with goodies made by any talented cooks we know who are wiling to contribute. Josh's old bandmates, Ben and Whitney, will hopefully do an acoustic set to kick off the after party. Sunday brunch will be prepared and served by the entire wedding party.

Go team go!

Our beautiful wedding location

We've had amazing weather for November in Michigan. The past couple of days have been in the low 70's. Today I walked around our yard barefoot for the first time in weeks! I wanted to be sure to post these photos while it's still felt like fall in these parts. Josh and I finally made it out to our ceremony/reception site to finalize all the layout for the actual ceremony, where the tent will be built, and areas for camping. My parent's good friends, Steve and Gail, have been gracious enough to suggest using their property for our wedding and we couldn't have asked for a better location. Not to mention they are absolutely the some of the nicest and laid-back people you will ever meet. Gail even told me that day about her wedding experience, a drive through chapel in Vegas, and her wishes to renew their vows in the middle of the Grand River with wading boots on! Their place is 5 miles west of our house in Grand Ledge and it really is nature at it's finest. We are SO lucky to be getting married at there. These photos were taken on a cold Autumn day, but keep in mind our date is set for August 22nd.

This is the path back to the location of the ceremony. All our guests will have a nice little walk through the woods to get there.

Clearing in the woods where we will get married!
Their dogs and cat followed us while we walked around the property.
path to the Reception tent.
This is where the reception will be. My dad and the guys will build our tent from the ground up here. Look at Josh and Gail all bundled up, it was cold that day.
Steve and Gail's horses, what a beautiful site/sight!

OCD

Maybe I should get it out there that I am a perfectionist and probably a little obsessive compulsive. It's to the point where I mostly never let anyone help me with anything, because I only want things done my way. That sounds so horrible in writing but it's true. We just had our 2nd annual Halloween Bash and this is one of the first times I've allowed other people to help me cook food and hang decorations for a party. I love being a hostess, but with that comes my urgent need for everything to be absolutely wonderful and impressive. I want the largest selection of food, the funnest atmosphere and an amazingly good time to be had by all...except for me. I always spend so much energy trying to make everything perfect that I stress way out and don't enjoy one minute of it. Even my own engagement party was spent watching a pot of water boil for corn because I was so busy trying to do everything myself that I forgot to turn the stove on for such a little thing.

So the Halloween party...I will say that I still went back and moved some decorations around, BUT there were many things I forced myself not to care about and just be grateful that people were wiling and able to help. And I had a blast! People were fed and fun was had by all including me! I desperately have to keep this experience in mind for our Big Day. It's perfectly fine to let go of my own image of how things need to be. We're getting married and nothing else matters, right?

I had sent out an email to our families and wedding party with a list of items we were hoping to obtain for our wedding. I tried to make little to no specifications on the items, forcing me to make do with what I'm given. After all beggars can't be choosers. I received the 1st items off my list the day of our Halloween party. Josh's mom had called earlier in the day asking me what type of blue vases I was looking for. In the midst of party preparation I had no time to return her call and when Josh's brother Nick showed up for the party with the vases, I got nervous about what they looked like. "what if they're not our style? the wrong shade of blue? too small? too big?" I opened the bag to find she had purchased vases that look identical to ones I had gotten on clearance months ago! It was a sign; If I can learn to let go, then I will be rewarded with beautiful blue vases. Er... I mean...don't worry, be happy.

Wedding website is up!

I'm finally to a point where I can spread the word that our wedding website is ready to be viewed. By no means am I a web designer, so I had to toy around with the basic website page designer that comes free when you purchase the domain. Mix that inexperience with my laptop saying goodbye this week and you've got a whole lot of frustration with technology on my end, but it got done nonetheless. Or as done as it will be for a while.

Our main goal for the site is to prepare the guests for the unexpected...so in turn, that would make everything expected. We need to relay the message of "no heels" for the women; the ceremony/reception site is out in the woods. Don't waste your expensive cologne; we'll all smell like bonfire and bug spray anyways. Or that pitching a tent is really the only choice for accommodations.

And along the lines of being nontraditional I decided to post goofy photos for the wedding party section. Actually, with all my personal files being unreachable, I only had a handful of pictures to choose from and somehow they are all the embarrassingly funny kind of photos. I very much enjoy them, and Josh got a good laugh out of them as well. He did comment on hating the picture of the two of us...but it was only fair. I really never would have thought to post the funny photos if I had access to all my digital files. But I'm so glad they're not the perfect shots of our wedding party. Everyone knows how good looking they are, I want to show their care-free personalities. I'm hoping that our friends will appreciate and understand the humor, after all, they're in our wedding party for a reason and if they are at all bothered by the photos on the site, then we'll just kick them out of the wedding. Sounds like a plan.

Today's Mantra: something wonderful can emerge from something gone wrong.

system error

My laptop died. Postings may slow down for a few days until I can figure out how to get all my files off that hunk of junk. Thank you for your patience and continued support.

Autumn in Grand Ledge

Today...
all I want to do it share some of my favorite portraits from this past weekend.
Tomorrow...
I will post something a little more wedding related.
I promise.

Anyone who's been to downtown Grand Ledge can recognize this location; the Island park. I love how blue the sky is in the first photos from this set. And look at the beautiful colors reflecting in the Grand River.

Recognize these two little guys? I'll give you a hint: One goes "Gobble, gobble" and the other goes "Roar!". It looks like we walked up on two farmers having a chat about their harvest this year.

Of course you can't have Fall without playing in the leaves.

Josh loves Sheila...and Sheila said yes

Alright, so that first post was more of a "testing...one..two..." kind of entry. You may have read it and wondered to yourself-I thought this was supposed to be a blog about Josh and Sheila's wedding? Well it is, and I'll have you know that life as we know it does not stop for a wedding. It goes on.

Let me give you a Mission Statement:

I will strive to not allow this wedding consume our lives for the next 10 months. I'll embrace this period of engagement as an opportunity to enjoy the planning of this wedding with Josh and create beautiful memories along the way. I will encourage bonds of family and friendship to become even closer by involving others in the process as much as possible. I will fulfill this mission and maintain my role as photographer, receptionist, belly dancer, and bridesmaid(x2).

Basically, I am going to blog about the wedding, yes, and every other occurrences in my life whether it applies to the planning process or not. I'm going to write about how happy dancing makes me, because in the middle of all this prenuptial stress it's the one thing I look forward to the most. I'm going to write about the hours I'm putting in answering phones, greeting visitors, copying, faxing, filing, and organizing office supplies Mon-Fri, 8am-5pm, because it's what's paying for the wedding of our dreams. I'm going to write about my photo customers and their sessions because it's the #1 thing that get's my creative juices flowing (not to mention I'm getting great ideas from the weddings I shoot). I'm going to write about my two bridesmaids who live in town and I don't see or appreciate nearly as much as I should, my two bridesmaids who are also getting married and have kindly asked me to stand beside them on their big days, and my one bridesmaid in France who I miss so dearly, because I love them all so much. I''m going to write about every single thought and every little wish for our big day because in the end, we may not be able to execute or even apply all the wedding ideas to ours, but maybe someone else will get some use out of it.

So I do expect your input. Please tell me what you think. Give me your ideas. Help me out, people. And if along the way you see any hint of Bridezilla coming out, for god's sake, let me know.

Hello. I'm finally doing this

I'm writing this first post immediately after a disgustingly cute fall portrait session with two 1- year old twin boys. One with curly hair, one with straight, in overalls sitting on bales of hay...oh, and yeah, we did Halloween costume as well (Turkey and a Lion). It's been such a beautiful fall here in Michigan. This morning's first session was a family at Grand Ledge's Island Park and I am fully convinced by the reflections of red, orange and yellow in the water of the Grand River, that this is the most vibrant autumn season I can ever remember.

In the past 3 months I've had unbelievable changes in my life and as one who hates change, I need as much as possible to find some constant in my life...maybe writing a blog? A wedding/portrait photographer, full-time receptionist, belly dancer, bridesmaids to two other 2009 summer weddings, and bride to be of my own August 2009 wedding most certainly does not have enough time in the day to maintain a blog, but...I'm hard-headed and do whatever I want. Lucky you...

Enjoy! I'm off to buy groceries for dinner.