Wedding Wednesday: Invitations

I became addicted early on on to letterpressed invitations. I looked and looked but could not find a vendor that was not cost prohibitive and actually made invitations that looked like something you would want to make the first impression of your wedding. Then, on a random comment thread, I found Mercurio Brothers. The website leaves something to be desired, but their samples were great and the reviews I heard were overwhelmingly positive. The only problem, they have a ridiculously long lead time. We had to skip the save the date step and head right to the invitation.

I had a really concrete idea about how I wanted the invitation to look: two birds in a tree (a specific tree I had seen on another website). I also fell in love with the Veer font, but it was too expensive. I opted for the free and pretty Laurenscript instead. We wanted to acknowledge our families on the invitation so we started it "Together with their families. . . ."

Even though I knew what I wanted, I was having trouble executing. For this, I needed professional help. I turned to my good friend and graphic designer, Tobin Hagen. He eventually sent me a proof that would become this



It was EXACTLY how I envisioned! And I absolutely adored the thick paper and letterpressed images.

Then, to minimize our environmental impact, we decided to use a postcard for our RSVP cards and, rather than an inner envelope, Rod and I made collars to tie the invitation and RSVP card together. Here is the final product (ignore the awful pictures).


It was exactly what we wanted. Tobin also designed our logo, which we used on everything from invitations, to out-of-town bags, to favors.

Powderwhore

Every year, Rod and I go to the Avalanche Center Annual Fundraiser and every year we bid on something at the silent auction only to be outbid at the last minute.

But this year things were different. Kind of. We still did not learn our lesson to get their early enough that there is still food left, but late enough that we run out of people to talk to an hour before the silent auction ends.

We brought Rumba this time though. She loved coming out with us and had a good time running around and meeting other dogs. And at the end of the night, we were victorious. We had to stake out a position next to the bidding table. Here is Rumba sporting her new approach pack before our dusk hike on Wednesday.


If you missed the fundraiser and still want to contribute (or just want to check out some good ski porn), you can check our the Powderwhore fundraiser. The Pact will be screened at Brewvies tonight at 7 and 9 and tomorrow at 7. We're going to hit the early show tomorrow night if anyone is interested in joining us.

A Work Weekend of a Different Sort

Last weekend Rod spent all weekend with work people, but we did it in a very non-work environment. Friday was my firm retreat at Snowbird. Our retreats are always so fun because all the people that started the firm get together and reminisce about how the firm started and how it has changed. It is so fun to hear all the war stories and really gives you a sense of how far we have come and why Parr Waddoups (soon to be Parr Brown . . . Congratulations Clark!) is so different.

For those of you who are not familiar with Parr, it is one of the only firms I am aware of that runs on a democratic system. The first day you walk in the door, you have a vote on everything from paint colors, to hiring decisions, to salary. It is very transparent and really gives every attorney a sense of ownership and accountabliity. As a result, I think, it leads to a much happier work environment. I'm not sure if it is because we make very careful hiring decisions because we know that anyone we hire will be voting on all of these important decisions or because the democratic process leads to better decisions and, therefore, happier people, but everyone I work with is nice and seems happy (for the most part) to be there. It is really a great place to work.

After tbe meetings on Friday morning, which included a presentation by one of our founder Federal District Judge Kimball, I headed to the spa for some firm bonding time. A group of us went for massages and pedicures while most of the firm headed off to make their tee time. I had a really fabulous deep tissue massage. It was like a workout, but it hurt so good.



Rod drove up later and we headed for dinner. Our wedding band, Gearhead, provided the entertainment, and all the partiers spent the night dancing and singing.



We closed the place down and then headed to the resort's swanky bar. There, Jeff Hunt, had champagne waiting for us to celebrate the recent bar passage of our new associates, Allyson and Clem. It was so fun, but so hard to get up for meeting the next morning. At least there was a beautiful sunrise as a reward.

Saturday night, Rod and I agreed to host his work party at our house. It did not take too much effort on our part. We had it catered and all the lights were still up from the pre-wedding BBQ (they were so difficult to put up they will likely stay up until they no longer work). Rumba and I did go gather some sunflowers for our centerpieces, though, and Vonnie brought us some pretty red daisies as a hostess gift.

After the game started (GO TIGERS!), the crowd cleared out pretty quickly. We had big plans to make appearances at all three of the other parties going on that night, but we had so much fun at Ari and Patty's Unwarming Party, we didn't make it very far. (Sorry Rob and Johnny!) We did, however, get these very stylish frames with autographed pictures of the soon to be famous Ashleigh as a white elephant gift. How fun!

Monet to Picasso

Even though last week was completely insane at work, I managed to fit a few cultural events in. Wednesday night, I spent a long, but worthwhile wait for the UMFA's Monet to Picasso Exhibit. It was incredible to see so many noteworthy artists in a Utah museum. I was really surprised, though, that my favorite was not a Picasso or Dali (usually my favorites), but Paul Gauguin, Woman in the Waves.
This picture doesn't do it justice. It is supposed to symbolize abandoning oneself to nature.

Other notable works included La Vie, Picasso
and The Dream, Dali.

It was incredible to see so many of my favorite modern artists in Utah. If you haven't seen the show already, it's gone. You will have to go to the Cleveland Art Museum to catch it. But from October 18-January 11, the UMFA will host the traveling exhibition Changing Identities: Recent Works by Women Artists from Vietnam. On Saturday October 18, the museum will host a mask-making seminar related to the themes in the paintings.

Also, on November 19, the museum will be hosting a lecture on the idealized femine figure as depicted in art. Here is what the UMFA website says about the lecture:
This lecture by Dr. Margaret Toscano, Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Utah, searches for the identity and nature of the “Divine Feminine” by looking at images that represent her in art and literature. Whether a person believes in the concept of the divine feminine literally or metaphorically, goddess archetypes can serve as a powerful mechanism for women claiming power and exploring personal identity and spirituality, as the contemporary art of a woman like Shauna Cook Clinger illustrates so well. I highlight Clinger’s work in my visual essay because of the many ways she examines the relationship between the inner and outer self, light and shadow, death and rebirth, active and passive, and the masculine and feminine principles. Like Clinger, I use archetypes to validate the centrality of “embodiment” for women’s personal identity without reducing them to their physical bodies. I emphasize the importance of women making their own self-representations to counter their historical objectification; and I explore the question of whether we can put the “feminine” on an equal footing with the “masculine” without falling into the very stereotypes that have restricted women to narrow gender roles in the past. While my emphasis is on female images, my slide presentation ends with a plea for balance, with the hope that men too can find metaphors for self-exploration in the nearly three hundred art works I examine.

Wedding Wednesday

If you feel like you have traveled back in time, don't worry, I am not planning another wedding. A few friends (you know who you are) asked me to blog about some of the details and planning process for the wedding. There were a lot of things that I didn't blog about before the wedding because I didn't want to spoil the surprise.

When I first started planning, I was all over the map. I bought new wedding magazines every time I went to the store and sometimes went to the store for the sole purpose of picking up another. I must have torn out thousands of pages of ideas. The problem, as my trusted advisor Kim pointed out to me, was that there was no cohesive theme. I knew that I wanted to have a low impact wedding, but I was having a hard time not using all of the great ideas that I saw. I decided that to focus myself, I needed to make an inspiration board.

Rod quickly shot down my first idea for a theme: wildflowers. I thought yellow and purple wildflowers would be beautiful and play perfectly into our earth friendly goals. I had idealistic notions of my bridesmaids and I going into the mountains and gathering flowers the morning of the wedding and putting them in vases we picked up at the thrift store. Rod pointed out, however, that I would most certainly be teased by all the Louisiana folks for using LSU colors. That statement along with the heart palpatations I started to get thinking about doing our own flowers along with everything else we had to do that day pretty much killed our wildflower theme.

Here are my next attempts:






I asked the three people I trust the most when it comes to style (Kate, Kim, and Mindy) what they thought. They all really liked both inspiration boards, which was great, but it didn't help me narrow down my theme any. In the end, I decided to use elements and colors from both boards. Our theme: Lovebirds and Tree Branches. Our colors: Chocolate Brown, Green Apple, Robin's Egg Blue, and hints of lilac.

An Easy Weekend

After so many working weekends, it was nice to have some time to do fun things. It was anything but relaxing, though. Friday night was a busy night at the fair and staying up late watching "Into the Wild." Saturday, we got up late, and went on a hike with Rumba. Saturday night, we started at Megan and Dasche's Engagement Party.




By the time, we made it to Lily's 3rd Birthday Party, Lily was too tired to open presents. Tara sent us this picture of her opening our gift the next morning.



Sunday, we went to the shooting range. It only took me three boxes of bullets before I actually hit something. Towards the end, though, my aim really started to improve.
Then we took Rumba on a long walk to Canyon Rim and Tanner Park. She had a blast splashing in the creek and meeting new dog friends.
Later that night, we had John and Allyson over to meet Rumba and be guinea pigs for our new peach cobbler recipe. Monday came too fast.

Blasts from the Past

State fairs and amusement parks always fill me with a sense of nostalgia. As a kid, my family went to both every year. Between the two, my favorite is the fair. Both have rides, great people watching, and yummy deep-fried fare (admittedly my favorite part), but only the fair has freakishly large or small, horse races, and the latest and greatest gadgets.

I was not able to make it to the Idaho State Fair this year, but the Utah State Fair was an acceptable substitute. There are no horse races, but there was plenty of people watching, freakish animals, deep fried food, and . . . ELVIS! Okay, Elvis was not that great. Horrible, actually. It was billed as the American Idol of Elvis contests to determine who would go on to the national Elvis contest. It ended up being only three men, two of which only had a sequinned jumpsuit in common with Elvis. The only one that was any good lost to the one that threw out a bunch of scarves. He was robbed!



Luckily, the rest of the fair did not let me down. There was a steer that was over six feet tall,

a three-month old calf,


a surprisingly serene pig with more piglets than I can count,
lots of fried food (twisted taters, funnel cake, and a scone for me), and, of course, the latest and greatest rides.


Earlier in the summer, I went with my family to Lagoon. It hasn't changed much. There are a lot of new rides, but the Collosus is still the best ride. There was some sibling drama early on. This picture says it all.
But after a couple hours at Lagoon-A-Beach all was well again.

Rumba is making herself at home

After some touch and go moments early on, Rumba and Ani are getting along like gangbusters . . .


sometimes too well.



When Rod was out of town two weekends ago, Rumba came back to Idaho with me. I took her to work with me that day so that I wouldn't have to go all the way home before heading to Idaho. Everyone loved her! Most people didn't even realize she was there because she is so quiet and well-behaved.




We walk her twice every day, but we have only had time to go on a couple of longer hikes. One of them is a trail we just discovered a couple of blocks behind our house. It is not the most picturesque, but it is convenient and better than walking around the block.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

During the wedding planning process, our lives were so busy. Even though I only live three hours away from Idaho Falls (my hometown), I did not go home for seven months. I felt awful for neglecting my grandparents and little brother and told them both I would come visit during the third weekend in August (the only weekend in August that I didn't have a wedding to go to). I told my grandparents I wanted to go on a long drive through Annis and LaBelle, where they grew up. Just before that weekend, though, my Grandma was hospitalized. Instead of spending the weekend spending quality time with my grandparents. I spent most of the weekend in the hospital.

Although my Grandma has been in the hospital before and had problems with her legs for awhile, this was the first time I was truly scared that she might die. My Aunt told me that she had been diagnosed with TTP, which affects the platelet and red and white blood cell counts. As soon as I started to research, I realized that this is a terrible disease that has an extremely high mortality rate (80%) and can lead to sudden death. I barely left my Grandma's side. I put on a happy face for Grandma, but I was heartbroken and inconsolable as soon as I left. It seemed so unfair that when I finally have a chance to spend time with my Grandma, I lose her. I was so angry at myself for not making more of an effort during the wedding process.

When her doctor got back on Monday, I talked to him to ask some questions about her treatment. After a few minutes, it became very clear that we were talking about two different diseases. It turns out she has I-TP, not T-TP. ITP also affects the platelets, but it has a low mortality rate. Within a week, she was out of the hospital and running around the house cleaning and giving Grandpa "honey-dos".

We re-scheduled our trip down memory lane to the first weekend in September. Grandma and Grandpa showed my where they grew up, where they went to school, where they met (rollerskating), and told me all about their courtship. Most of the buildings were either gone or abandoned. The ones that were still standing had not weathered well. It was so fun to see these places that I had heard so much about. I am so grateful that we had this opportunity and that it was not really too late. We ended our trip with a visit to the Annis cemetery to visit their parents' graves. After spending the morning talking about how they grew up, it brought things full circle to hear them talk about where they would be buried. Life is too short!