our [2009] wedding

I shared our proposal story (it can be found here alongside the story of our first kiss), KC's version, a while back. With today being Valentine's Day I figured I should share some more of our story. Today you get the chapter of our wedding, in pictures...

I got ready with my girls at the Huntley in Santa Monica. The hotel is gorgeous and the staff helpful. The second you walk into the lobby and smell the amazing gardenia & white lily candles you know you are in for a treat. The morning of our wedding my girls and I got up and went for a walk through Santa Monica to have brunch at Jack & Jill's. Then we walked back to the hotel for champagne, hair, and makeup... 

[the garter that my grandmother made and my mother wore as well...my something blue]

[all ready to go...just need to put the dress on]

[mom, me and carly; maid of honor, sister, most importantly...friend]

My grandpa, who I was extremely close to, passed away unexpectedly two weeks before my wedding. It was very important to me that he be incorporated into my wedding in every way possible. 

[my grandpa's wedding ring worn as a bracelet]

In my opinion having family and close friends stand alongside you on your wedding day is almost as important as the vows you make. It has proven beneficial to have had the people in my life who know me, support me and love me as we took  the leap of faith that marriage is. Without these people in my life to share the last few years of extreme joy with my husband, I would not have been as happy as I am. Joy is multiplied when it is shared.  

[my three closest friends from college at UCLA...left to right; deb, christy, christine]

My closest girlfriends from the first stages of life through college...

[left to right; christine, katharine, tawni, christy, ME, carly, deb, dana]

[my HOT husband]

 For multiple reasons we did A LOT of our wedding on our own. One reason was the obvious, that it is more budget friendly. Another is that when you get two highly creative people together that is just what happens. And yet another is that as creative as the two of us are we also have a lot of creative people in our lives who were able to help in ways that made us realize we could not have done it alone. 

[after seeing an adorable pair of little girls flat in J.Crew I made this pair of sparkly flats with vintage buttons and velvet ribbon for my now niece and our flower girl...Luli]

I am beyond blessed to have great men in my life! I am convinced that without the great dad I had I would not have had my heart as set on finding the perfect man for me. My dad is everything I girl wants in a dad and more. He told me stories and had me laughing the whole way down the aisle.

Then there is this adorable man. What can I say...he loves love and I love him!

And the two of them together...

I will never forget this moment and I have told every woman I know whose gotten married after me that this is the moment you should live for. After so much planning, and things that were unplanned as well, this is when everything slips away and you realize that the man standing at the end of the aisle is all that matters. Pure JOY!

There were lots of laughs along the way of our pastor retelling our love story.

[along with all the things that we'd made for our big day were these
floral arches that I made with my parents...manzanita branches, peonies and orchids galore!]

After our vows and the "you may now kiss the bride" we walked away to Stevie Wonder's Signed, Sealed, Delivered...

Me and my grandma (my namesake)! I will never forget going through these weeks with her. Standing with her alongside the hospital bed while we took her husband of almost 60 years of life support and then walking down the aisle two weeks later. As my dad and I got to the front of the aisle there she was, the first person on my left. The moment she saw me she had tears in her eyes and she said to me, "You look so beautiful!" Being able to share that moment with her was priceless to me. 

Me with my perfect man as the sun set. 

We were driven to the reception by my dad in my parents' 1963 Dodge Dart.

When we arrived at the reception site we had a few moments alone to take it all in. We toasted to us in the back seat of the car while we waited to be introduced as man and wife. 

The tables we set ourselves...centerpieces we made and bottles of wine that were also the table numbers that KC designed and we labeled.

Another thing that we were so happy to have as part of our day was the cake topper that my grandparents used on their wedding cake. When my mom was a young adult my grandma gave it to her in hopes that she would use it on her wedding cake one day. She did have it on her cake when she married my dad and we were so happy to have it on our cake too! (Our classic cake from Vanilla in Santa Monica alongside a photo of my grandparents cutting their wedding cake.) 

A great toast from my dad...I love this photo!

My sister and Luli getting down on the dance floor. As soon as we got to the reception site Luli changed into the terry cloth hooded robe I got her...the tulle was driving her nuts. It was too cute have photos of her running around in it. 

After months of KC taunting me that he was going to smash cake in my face and me pleading with him to promise not to he politely gave me a taste of cake, no smashing involved and all he ended up with was a dollop of icing on the tip of his nose. The last thing I wanted was to be in the restroom getting cake out of my hair and off my face after all the time spent getting ready. 

My favorite wedding expense for sure was a classic photo booth.  There was nothing digital about this booth. It was a refurbished, mini-darkroom enclosed, long back and white photos produced, booth of fun for us and our guests. We asked guests to "take one, leave one", a favor for them, and one for us. We now have a triptych on the wall of our living room with all our photos together. The best money we've spent...original, personalized, one-of-a-kind artwork. 

It was the best beginning to the greatest life together!

life simplified

Life this week has been challenging at best. As you know from this post, I just lost my grandfather (my dad's dad), and as you know from this post, we went to his funeral last Saturday (on my birthday). I truthfully didn't mind at all that it happened to be on the same day. The way that I feel about it, life is bigger than birthdays. Birthdays are great reasons to celebrate, don't get me wrong, but I'm not someone who feels that the day of my birthday should be all about me. So that was last weekend...

Then came this Monday, my grandma (mom's mom) who is ninety-one years old, and who's goal was to live to the year 2000 (we're almost 12 years past that people!), had to go to the hospital with some seriously ailments. By Monday night she was fully sedated and on a ventilator. A great friend of our family who has been a nurse for a long time, calls my grandma her mentor, and helped us through the trial that was my mom's dad's death, thought for sure my sweet Marjorie wasn't going to make it. We were at peace with that knowing that she lived an amazing and long life. Now, tonight, she is doing much better. Breathing on her own, no longer sedated, talking again. We don't know how, we just know that she is. Miracles people...seriously.

All of that on top of all the rest of life that must go on. All I could keep thinking was that I needed to work as much as I could and log as many hours as possible at the Pilates studio so that if, or when, she passed I could be there.

The real story here though is about all the things we typically surround ourselves with and all the things that we typically spend our time doing. We do so much, thinking, hoping, and even praying that it will some day make us happy. I realized in these crazy days when all you can do is take care of your basic needs and be there for the people in your life, that those things we've been given are the only "things" that can make us truly happy. I hope that the quote above gives you some perspective, as it has for me, that we really do already have everything we really need. Our families, our friends, the people we choose to have in our lives are priceless. The time we have is not guaranteed but that love and happiness that we can share with each other is. Go love on someone who loves you and needs you.

Don't forget that today is the last day to enter the GIVEAWAY! 

Maybe you can send a real "snail mail" card to your grandma. 

xoxo

peas in a pod

You know when someone takes a picture at dinner, and both of your reactions is to make a face, that you were,

in fact, made for each other. 

found my heart in san francisco

So after our trip to San Francisco last weekend, I decided to share our proposal story and photos with you. It all went down in April of 2008. Here is the story from my husband's perspective, as written by him the week after our proposal. It's a long one so grab yourself a coffee (morning readers) or a glass of wine (nighttime readers). I hope you enjoy...

Well my latest adventure took me to the mean streets of San Francisco, where unbeknownst to my beautiful and unsuspecting girlfriend Chanel, I planned a surprise engagement for her. Under the guise of a meet and greet business trip, my lovely and I were to fly into San Francisco mid-day Friday for a few days of fun and exploration followed by a big client dinner and hobnob Saturday night. Chanel had agreed to go with me in hopes of being able to catch up with her good friend from college, now living in S.F., and celebrate her birthday with her, which was on Sunday. Her girlfriend was in on the surprise and, risking their friendship, told Chanel she had last minute family plans, and had to go to Lake Tahoe for the weekend. Disappointed and frustrated yet still supportive, Chanel was willing to still come along for the ride. Thank God. After arriving and checking in we grabbed a car provided by the hotel and struck out to examine the intricacies and obscurities of San Francisco's Japantown... Wait, you mean Chinatown right? Nope the benignly unknown and completely off the beaten path, where no one would know us, neighborhood of Japantown. 

Not being able to write the script any better, our driver missed the street we were meant to turn on and we rounded the next corner to back track to our destination.  Somehow we accidentally ran right into Chanel’s girlfriend, who was supposedly out of town, along with 4 other of Chanel's closest friends, that where there for the surprise, getting into a cab on the most random street corner possible. As Chanel propelled herself out of our moving car screaming in rhythmic beats “(Friend)?!?!---Pull over!---(Friend) is that you?!"  The blood rushed out of my head and extremities and all I could think to do was pretend it wasn't happening and proceed to ask the driver at the top of my lungs, "...so is that a 6 speaker sound system you got going there, cause it sounded fantastic... Bose right?" I then start pointing profusely at inanimate objects around the car to try and divert her attention. "Baby did you see that door handle, no seriously check it out I think it's kevlar..."  At that point, it was in the driver's best interest to do as my rightfully confused and borderline violent girlfriend was exclaiming and pull the car over. Thank God it was Chanel’s friend’s birthday weekend, and the girls were quick on the uptake to make the potentially devastating encounter all about her friend and divert the attention off Chanel. The girls told Chanel that the real surprise was that we were all supposed to meet for her friend’s birthday dinner and a special girls ‘night reunion, sort of a reverse surprise party. And I was along for the ride with work obligations. A two-for-one. And that we just happened to circumvent the “SURPRISE” part by a couple of hours... Sure I'll go with that, I had no idea how I was supposed to fit into girls’ night out but at that point I was willing to squeeze into Chanel's pumps to pull this thing off (insert your own bald designer in San Francisco joke here). The girls managed to make Chanel feel assured of the agenda and we ended up having an amazing unexpected night out with good friends, even without me in drag... 

[about to head out for the night]

The next day, as Chanel and I killed some time before "my big client business dinner," several more groups of friends and family equipped with a massive banner, arrived in San Fran. 

[adventuring around the city]

They loaded a chartered trolley and posted up on Pier 29 right about the time when Chanel and I happened to be "discovering" Coit Tower and the views of the city from above. 

[while they were getting off the trolley in front of pier 29, KC and I were up in that tower]

Completely exhausted from way too many emotional pump fakes, as well as sacrificially jumping on some unexpected sake bombs the night before; I took out a pair of binoculars that were conveniently packed in my bag. We gazed out over the city's natural and architectural wonders for what seemed like several torturous hours (it was about 12 minutes) allowing all the pieces on the street below to be moved into place. As I pointed out various monuments and landmarks I could see that the crew in the trolley was in position and I eagerly encouraged Chanel to, "look down at those crazy people on the street with that massive sign!" 

[all of our friends and family holding up the HUGE sign..."Chanel, K.C. has a question"]

Upon reading it through the binocs, she finally realized what was happening as she turned from the window back to me, already on my knee, where I was able to tell her how I feel about her and asked her if she would marry me. 

She said yes.

Several hugs, kisses and text messages later, the trolley with everyone aboard came and picked us up. 

[everyone on the trolley]

[Coit Tower behind us]

We popped a few bottles of champagne and had a few toasts, took a little tour of the city and its sights, and then had an amazing dinner and celebration. We followed it up the next day with an all group excursion into Chinatown and the best Chinese food I've ever eaten (House of Nanking on Kearny).... 

Nanking]

I was insanely thankful to all that helped pull it off. It was an amazing weekend of perfect weather, ridiculously epic scenarios, friends, family and a stunning new fiancée.

Obviously my story differs from his some, being the girl on the other side of this. And, since I am not him, I can say that he nailed it with this one. There were so many amazing details that he left out and the amount of planning and love that he poured into this weekend proved that I would be a very blessed girl to spend the rest of my life with him. Now we get to live out that blessing. Life is good.

I love having all these photos from our proposal but from all of them, this might be my favorite...check out that sign. Ha ha!

I hope that you liked reading the story and seeing the pictures as much as I did getting to relive it! 

what's in a name?

Chanel. Having a name like mine, I have been asked too many times to count, "like, Chanel No. 5?" Yes, like Chanel No. 5. Really it was destined to be this way. I really was named after the perfume. When my parents were picking out a name for me, they wanted to name me after my mom's mother, Marjorie Jean. They weren't really keen on either of those two names and my grandmother was made fun of growing up as her sister taunted her singing, "Marjorie Jean, the village bean, dumbest little girl I've ever seen." Chanel No. 5 was my grandmother's favorite perfume and so, Chanel it was. Then, guess what! I was born on the 5th of November. So Chanel No. 5 it is!