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When last we left off, Andreas and I had just finished our photo shoot on the Greenway and Beacon Hill and were headed back to the Wang for the ceremony.

First though, we took some pictures with our fabulously dapper wedding party. Here’s Andreas with his guys.

And me with my unbelievably gorgeous ladies.

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Hi friends. Time to continue our journey back through the wonderfulness that was our wedding in September. I know these wedding recap posts have been a bit slow coming, but you should count yourself LUCKY because we still haven’t finished our the thank you notes yet, which for me, I assure you, is excruciatingly guilt-inducing, but we’ve just been far too scattered and busy to tackle such a project! Honestly.

So, where did we leave off? Ah yes, my dapper groom and I were off to frolic around sunny Boston for pictures and get my dress all kinds of dirty but me in my freakishly calm I’m getting married today nothing can bother me state of mind of course didn’t care. In fact, it was one of my favorite parts of the whole day, when we got away from the wedding madness for an hour and paused to revel in the moment.

We’ve gotten lots of compliments on this picture (curiously, the one where I am least visible… just saying) and some have even observed an Abbey Road-esque quality about it. Dave snapped this up in the approximately seven second gap in traffic. Brave photographer, he is.

We started at the carousel on the Rose Kennedy Greenway, which our wedding planner had suggested at the last minute as a possible good place to shoot. We went, not really knowing what to expect or how it would work. When we got there, a ride was just ending, so we went to the booth to buy some tickets (Andreas thinks I look sad in this photo but I think it’s more emo-chic, non?).

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When we finally got to see the full set of professional photos from our wedding the response so far from our family and friends was overwhelming. People loved them. They made people cry, if you can believe it. And what’s more, they made people cry and I LOVE IT, I do. Cry some more, people. There, there. I know. They’re amazing. Just let it out.

So before I continue with the next part of the chronological recap (you can read part I here), I want to rewind a bit and share some more favorites from the “getting ready” part of the day.

First up, my pretty pretty dress. Just hanging there, prettily. Waiting to steal the show. For those who are curious, it’s by Modern Trousseau. Got it at a sample sale for more than 60% off!

Getting ready with my mom and mother-in-law. Will always remember these moments.

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I’m not really sure how to begin to summarize our beautiful wedding, where to start putting into words the emotions I experienced that day.

It was a shiny, bright blue day in Boston. Warm, but with the first strains of fall detectable in the breeze. I remember driving from the hair salon to the hotel to get dressed and my cousin observing that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

We woke up together, in our own bed. Nerves steady. Smiling, we stared at each other. Trying so hard to hang on to this moment, to be in it. It’s our wedding day, baby.

Exchanging our gifts for each other, then walking together through our neighborhood to pick up bagels and cream cheese. Back home, we toasted with mimosas I made with the champagne I’d been saving since my trip to Napa this past spring. We practiced our first dance. Then I twirled around the apartment to the Dixie Cups’ “Chapel of Love”.

Spring is here, the sky is blue,
Birds all sing, as if they knew,

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So I got a question the other day from someone doing research on Boston wedding venues, wondering if  we found any other venues in Boston (as in, other than The Wang Theatre where we got married) during our research that were really cool too. And the answer is yes. While the Wang provided the look we were going for in the location and price range that we wanted, there were several other great venues we strongly considered.

First of all, if you have the budget for it (and by “the budget for it” I mean $25,000 to spend on the venue alone [jaws up people, these things to do happen]), check out the Boston Public Library. This was actually my original “dream venue” before we found out the cost. After that, it became my inspiration when looking for new venues. Can’t you just picture it? The marble courtyard, the great reading room, the grand staircase. It’s all so wonderfully romantic and charming. So Boston. Check out these photos from a wedding that was held there last year to see what I’m talking about.

We looked at some of the museums in the area as well but ruled them out for various reasons. I would have DIED AND GONE TO HEAVEN immediately if we could have had our wedding at my favorite of all favorite museums in Boston, the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum, but tragically, they don’t allow weddings there! (They do allow other events to be held there so keep that in mind.) Neither does the Museum of Fine Arts allow weddings.

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I’m still waiting for the official pictures to come back from our photographers (although they have given us a sneak peek!) so I thought I’d tell you all a little about our rehearsal “dinner”.

When it came to planning the rehearsal dinner, I was a bit stumped. I was trying to organize so many other details that it wasn’t a big priority for me. I thought I might like to have something outdoors (a BBQ maybe), since our wedding was going to be entirely indoors,  but when I looked into the details of renting a space and getting all the food out and our guests out to a park, plus plates and cups and napkins etc., I got overwhelmed and figured we’d just make a reservation at an interesting restaurant and be done with it.

Then we hired our wedding planner, Danielle, and once we told her that most of our guests were from out of town, she had a great idea. Why not take them on one of Boston’s famous Duck Tours? Since we hadn’t been on one either but had heard great things, we were all for it. She also thought of having a caterer set up in a public park and suggested Christopher Columbus Park on the waterfront, which is one of my favorite parks in Boston.

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First and foremost, I want to thank everyone for offering their beautiful portfolios and photography services to me the last week!

I cannot thank you enough for all of the kind emails and inquires. It was a very difficult decision and I wish I could’ve picked each and everyone of you to share in my Wedding Day.

We decided to go with someone from the Boston area and have them travel over with us. This will make the planning process that much easier and more fun!

Immediately, we fell in love with Lisa Rigby and her style of photos! Lisa is incredibly sweet and full of a great creative energy. I knew right from the beginning that she was our photographer.

image via Channing Johnson {source}

I am so excited to showcase some of my favorite photos that Lisa took from Nisa & Will’s Wedding at the Beehive in Boston.

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With our venue booked and our date secured, we needed to move quickly to lock in our other vendors. Reserving the Wang took a little longer than we thought, but luckily I had been researching and inquiring with other vendors all along, so within the span of a week after the Wang was done, we locked in our caterer, band, photographer, and officiant.

Wedding planning is a bit like trial by fire. You learn as you go, but you’ve got to be a quick study. Dilly-dallying on wedding decisions can cause you to stress out, lose money, or worse – miss out on booking a killer vendor.

Fortunately, my philosophy when it came to to finding and securing vendors rapidly became, “If we like what they do and it’s in budget, book it.” I wasn’t out to research every single photographer in the Boston area. That task alone would take months. We met with four and even that felt like a lot. Sure, you may find something out there that’s even better. But the precious time and effort it takes to get to them usually cancels out any added benefit.

So, ask yourself, “Do I like/trust this person/company?”

“Do their services fit into our budget?”

If the answer to both of these questions is yes, book them and be done.

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Hey everyone,

Hope you’re having very happy Saturdays. I’m currently off on a cake tasting with my Dad and Andreas! More on that to come.

Thanks again for the warm welcome last weekend. I have to say though, I’m glad we got the introductions out of the way! I’m ready to get you guys caught up on all my planning.

The very first thing we had to figure out after we got engaged was where the wedding would be. We knew we wanted to get married in the fall, and after having been together for almost seven years, we certainly weren’t going to wait until fall of 2010. That left us with just about nine months to plan the wedding, which is a perfectly suitable amount of time… but we did need to get moving.

I always knew I wanted to get married in Boston. Even though most of our family is in the D.C. area, Boston is the place we live and have come to call home. As Andreas said, it’s where we grew up together. I also wanted to be able to plan my wedding first hand. Plus, I’ve always felt that Boston is just such a classy and charming city – perfect for a wedding.

Photo from author’s collection

So Boston it was! But where in Boston?

Well, here’s what I knew:

-We wanted some place unique. I didn’t want a function hall or what I call “wedding factory.” One of those places that turns over two or three weddings per weekend and has a tidy package deal all tied up for you. Not that I haven’t seen amazing weddings at those types of places but to us it felt somewhat impersonal and unromantic. The same went for hotels (though I know there are some lovely hotel venues floating around out there). I couldn’t really get comfortable with the idea of getting married in the same place board meetings and conferences take place.

-We needed to be able to have the ceremony and reception at the same place, since we weren’t getting married in a church.

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Hello hello EAD world!

When Ami asked me a couple weeks ago if I wanted to become an EAD weekly columnist after I sent along our engagement photos, I couldn’t believe my luck. I’ve pretty much been reading this blog since I got engaged, so I’m THRILLED to be sharing my wedding planning journey with you all over the next few months. Many thanks to Ami for bringing me on board!

Today marks 112 days until our September wedding here in Boston (eeps!). Like most brides to be I’m feeling excited, frantic, emotional, nervous, overwhelmed, but mostly – happy and full of love.

With only three full months left until our wedding, I’m happy to say we have most of the major things checked off the list, but there’s still tons of little details to coordinate and decisions to make! Before I take you through our tireless search for the perfect venue, my newfound talent for negotiation, the ordeal that was outfitting my bridesmaids, our decision to finally hire a wedding planner and everything in between, from making our save the dates to choosing all our vendors and booking our honeymoon, I’ll tell you a bit about me.

Well, us.

Andreas and I met at a football game during our senior year of high school in Maryland (if you can bear the cliché). We were in the same psychology class together that year and I noticed him from across the room on the first day of class. I had heard nice things about him and wanted to meet him but didn’t have the chance until I noticed him standing nearby during the first football game of the year. That’s when I asked a mutual friend to introduce us and from that night on we’ve basically been inseparable.

Though we have crazy different interests and come from very different backgrounds (he was born on the other side of the world of Ethiopian and Russian descent and I’m an east coast American girl through and through), something about being together just made sense and always felt so natural to us.

After being together for almost seven years, it was hardly a surprise to our family and friends last Christmas when Andreas got down on one knee proposed in a parking lot. (“Can you not tell anyone how I did it?” Sorry, darlin’.) But as I wrote on my own blog after we got engaged, When you’ve been dating since high school, when you’ve grown up together in college, when you’ve seen each other through deaths and depression and semesters abroad and graduations and first jobs, it ceases to be a matter of “if” and becomes a matter of “when.”

As you’ll learn, the wedding planning process hasn’t always been the easiest for me. But I’ve learned a lot. I’m still learning.

And I can’t wait to share the journey with you.

Next week: finding the perfect place to tie the knot and the beginning of planning our “not-your-average” wedding.

Stay tuned!

What do you get when you cross an awesome EAD reader (Shelley and her husband-to-be Andreas) with a beloved-and-featured-on-EAD photographer (Allegro Photography)?  An awesome engagement session in a Massachusetts bowling alley AND a new EAD bride blogger, that’s what!

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