Curt's Manly-Man Bachelor Weekend

So the mister is gone all weekend for his bachelor party.

The boys essentially kidnapped him Friday afternoon, told him what to pack, and put him in the car for a long ride to the middle of nowhere.

I've been left in the dark about the whole thing, but Curt finally got a chance to call me this afternoon and I found out that they're camping and fishing in the mountains somewhere near Bishop. Definitely not your typical bachelor party, and if you read his blog you know that Curt's not exactly a rough-and-tumble mountain man...

But they're sleeping on the ground in tents, bathing in a stream, and apparently they hiked about 4 miles today to get to the lake to go fishing. I would looooove to see that.

Dear Dane, Dan, and Ryan: Thanks for not taking him to Mexico. Or Vegas. I appreciate it.

On a completely different note, this episode of It's Me Or the Dog is playing as I type.

Yeah, Corrie, that one's just for you.

Grab a Comfy Seat.

'Cuz this is a looooong post.


I'm so excited to finally share our engagement photos with you! Our awesome photographer, Sarah K. Chen, met us at the Orange County fair on a hot sunny afternoon at the end of July. We had SO MUCH FUN taking pictures and pigging out on delicious fair food. There are almost 150 pictures on the disc we got from Sarah, and it was hard to pick our favorites, but here's a nice little sampling...

Ok, yes. The oversized-balloons-at-your-engagement-session thing is getting a little cliche around the blogs. I realize that. But at this point I had been obsessing over Joanna's pictures for, like, a year, so whatever. We had to have them. And they were perfect for the fair. And it was FUN, damn it.




What we learned from this, #1: We look kind of funny when we're kissing. We need to work on that.


Always a sucker for shoe shots...


Y'all.

I LOVE Curt's face in this next one. Doesn't he look SO happy? Every time I see it I just want to give him a big squeeze.



We brought Corrie and Ryan along so we'd have some extra hands. They were life savers. (Thanks guys!) Unfortunately, we had an escapee when trying to transfer the balloons from one pair of hands to another...



We tried to get a good shot of our silhouette but you can't tell people at the fair what to do! This one guy had no clue what was going on, and we couldn't get him to move. So his shadow is in the shot too. After several failed attempts to get a clear shot, we just got over it.



That thing we're standing on? It's the middle section of this big planter with a small brick wall all the way around it, and of course there were like 20 people sitting there, but Sarah was determined to get us up there, so we just asked really nicely and people let us squeeze through them. It was not easy to climb up there in a dress and heels. But so. worth. it.


The lucky recipients of the big yellow balloons! They were so cute :)


Hands-down FAVE:




For me, the fair is really all about the food. And the roasted corn? Like Mr. Pibb and Red Vines, it's crazy delicious.



While Sarah adjusted her settings, we got down with our bad selves.



Dying to see more? Click here.

Our invitations!

We sent these out a couple weeks ago... sorry it took me so long to get the pics up here! We decided to keep it really simple with our invitations. Our Save-the-Dates were a true labor of love, and we had fun designing and creating them, but this time we wanted something a little more streamlined. No RSVP cards, ergo, no inner envelopes, no double postage = huge savings. And so far, no one has made a fuss about using our website to RSVP (except our grandparents, who don't own computers, and that's ok, we still love them!) Curt used Photoshop to design these, and his dad was kind enough to take them to work with him and print them for us. The whole project- including postage- cost us less than $100 (for 80 invitations). No joke.



One of my favorite bloggers, Erin of Erin Ever After, has this great little Etsy shop called Haute Off the Press... our invitation design was inspired in part by her "I Heart You" invitation suite. We love the clean, modern aesthetic!


I'm no calligrapher, but I actually had a lot of fun addressing all the envelopes, and they turned out great! Seriously, you could have the worst penmanship in the world and it wouldn't matter. Writing with a shimmery silver paint pen makes everything pretty.



A7 Solid Dark Purple Envelopes from paperandmore.com
Silver Shimmer A6 note cards from Paper Source
DecoColor Silver Paint Pen: Paper Source

Also, if anyone cares, we used these stamps. Nothing spectacular, but they fit the fun, contemporary style of the invites and looked great against the purple envelopes.

It felt SO GOOD to put the last batch of these in the mail... the RSVP's have been trickling in but we still have no clue how our final guest count will look!

Sufjan Stevens is planning on giving us a belated wedding gift.

Click here. It's gonna be epic.

(Curt knows that if he wasn't in my life, I would be finding a way to marry Sufjan. Or at least have his babies.)

good question.

via I Can Read.

Thank you, Mr. Bovitz.

Lucky us! Curt's boss has season tickets to Dodger Stadium, but was in Oregon yesterday for a business meeting and offered us his seats. Hooray for one of our first rites of passage as responsible Angelenos! So we got to watch the Dodgers lose to the Colorado Rockies 3-0. Sure, it's a bit of a bummer that they lost, but the seats were great! And everyone knows that baseball is all about the food anyway...



World Famous Dodger Dog! (Not the most attractive picture, sorry about that...)

The coolest part was that they let everyone on the field after the game and put on a great fireworks show. Complete with Patriotic songs. You know that Ray Charles version of "America the Beautiful"? It ALWAYS reminds me of The Sandlot.


Brand new shiny shoes ($30 at Marshalls, yo!) on the most beautifully maintained grass in Los Angeles... Seriously, that stuff is so strong, you'd think it was fake.

excited for fireworks!

Are y'all doing anything exciting for the 4th? I'm SO looking forward to having a Saturday off!

Heather and Michael's Wedding: Sneak Peek

Just got off the phone with my big sissy. She and her brand new hubby just got back from their honeymoon in Cabo! Apparently it was pretty crazy... they both got stung by a jellyfish and Heather's reaction was so bad that she almost ended up in the ER... but other than that it sounds like they had quite a bit of time to just relax and enjoy being newlyweds.

Heather and Michael "hired" Curt to do all the photography. He took almost 1300 shots so there is still a lot of editing to do... but I thought y'all might enjoy a little sneak peak while you're waiting for the full recap. Enjoy!





I just have to say... how EPIC is that last shot?! I love it.

Complete recaps (and lots of pictures!) coming soon...

This makes me so happy. And so sad.

Pleeeease don't die, Polaroid! I need you so I can make a display like this and put it by the cake table. Poladroid is nice but it's just not quite the same.

Curt's got quite a collection of polaroid cameras but we have to ration what little film we have left. We'll probably use most (if not all) of it at the wedding, and it just kills me to think that after that, the polaroid joy will be all gone... I was hoping to use the display in place of a guest book, but I don't know if there's enough film for that so we may have to rethink that plan.

Here are some of Curt's shots with his SLR 680 and Polaroid 300... maybe we can just incorporate these into the display? Not as utilitarian but it could still be a nice touch...












first image from Nicole Hill photography, the rest from Curt's flickr.