Meet the Oystercats [Yours, Mine, Ours]

When I first came to Weddingbee, I mentioned that I have four cats -- and it's true! I live with Mr. Oyster and four completely crazy adorable cats.

I have only had one pet in my life, and that's my little cat Patience. We think she's about 14 years old. She arrived on my doorstep right around the time I graduated high school, and that's how I ended up getting my very first pet at age 17. (!) Isn't she gorgeous?

My husband, on the other hand, has had cats and animals his whole life. I call him the animal whisperer, because no matter what the animal is, he can get it to calm down and communicate with him. It's a little creepy. He has three cats, and they all have different personalities and temperaments.

Snoot, named for a type of flash modifier, is 12 years old, wiry and weird and is very clingy. He's extremely attached to my husband and cries for him when he comes home late. Unfortunately, he showed this attachment by "marking" nearly everything of mine that smelled like my cat as soon as I moved into the house. I'll be honest and say that, while I try to be a loving and forgiving cat-stepmom, I'm still kind of miffed about this. This is the one you have seen in some of our wedding planning photos, since he's always around.

He helped us make the first DIY Flower.





Krazy, 13, is a big, round, lovable creature. He is also not too bright and doesn't see very well. He basically hangs around and sleeps. He's very social and comes out at parties. Here he is, having jumped on my father-in-law's lap at our engagement party:



Lucy, 5, was a stray kitten that my husband adopted a few years before we met. She is still kind of feral, and doesn't like people at all (except my cat-whispering husband). She's afraid of *everything*! Seriously. If you cough, she'll run and hide. Some of our more frequent houseguests, like our friends and in-laws and the pet sitter, have never even seen her.



So why am I talking about my cats? One of the most difficult adjustments to living with my husband has been dealing with all of these creatures.  It didn't help that one cat was visibly distressed and letting us know in a pretty nasty way. I have one pet, and she is very well trained (doesn't jump on the table, doesn't scratch furniture, etc.).

My husband's cats have had, shall we say, a bit more freedom (can anyone else see this as a metaphor for our future childrearing styles?). He calls it "the bachelor's cat syndrome." Luckily, he's been pretty receptive of my efforts to allow the cats their freedom without letting them eat off the kitchen table (or sleep in fresh laundry!).

Another big challenge was integrating my cat into the household. (Yes, we followed all the veterinary directions for integrating a new cat.) My cat is a tough little girl, and she wasn't necessarily afraid of the others. But they didn't accept her very readily. In the beginning, she would walk up to them timidly, like a kindergartener who's new at school, and she seemed to have a look that said, "Will you play with me?" The other cats would hiss at her, or run away, and she would lay down sadly (or hiss back!). This was repeated for a while until she basically retreated into one corner of the house and stayed there for eight months. Here she is on the day we moved in.



Now, after more than a year, my cat is pretty comfortable and is a fully integrated member of the household. Our big-round cat, Krazy, has really taken to her and they are sometimes found resting together. Also, my cat has recently gotten very sick (we had to shave off all her beautiful hair!) and has a dramatically smaller and more vulnerable appearance. I'm not sure how much the cats could sense her illness, but they definitely began to respond differently to her as as her health got worse. In fact, I think their response to her has helped make her more comfortable and more "herself--" she has even regained some of her energy and engages with them a lot more. She even fights for her favorite patch of sun, which we think is a great sign.

If you're looking for some realistic advice on integrating a new cat, we really enjoyed the book Cat Wrangling Made Easy.While simply adding a cat would be a challenge for anyone, it was clear that the biggest hurdle for my husband and I was our opposing "parenting" styles, which we'll surely think about more as time goes on. Maybe this is a little bit of practice. We've come to some compromises: I let him give the cats some tissue paper to play in, as long as he cleans it all up. And he doesn't mind me re-training the cats to be civil. :)

In the end, it mostly works out, and everybody has ended up friends.



Oh wait, there's more: Just as I was about to post this, we discovered a new (and very cute) habit that my cat has adopted. Since we had to have her shaved, she's been very cold and finds creative ways to keep warm (like resting in the sun, above). She's started hiding under the covers in bed! I couldn't resist showing you these adorable shots my husband took:







Okay, I promise: I'm done with the cute cat pictures. I'd love to hear your animal-combining adventures in the comments!

An Abundance of Albums

A while ago, someone on the Boards mentioned her disappointment that some Bees seem to disappear for a bit after we're married. She wondered why it sometimes takes us a while to write about the wedding after it has happened. For some reason, her comments were stuck in my head for months.

I can't speak for every Bee, but guess what -- we can't write about the wedding unless we have pictures of it! And I have no digital pictures yet (except for a limited preview).

While we've had our proofs for several weeks, our photographer, like many others, doesn't send discs until the album is completed, which brings me to this post.

We chose our album photos this month! Out of nearly 900 photos, we had to choose 40. Yep. Forty.

The photographer in me believes that the story of any wedding can be told in ten images or less, but having to choose these images while I was still so emotionally connected to them had me wanting to eat my words (although I can definitely see narrowing these down to 10 memorable images in the coming years).

I tried to choose images that tell the story of the day, and are the most visually interesting. I had about 25 shots that are my absolute, most iconic favorites, and then I had another 25 or so that I kept rotating in and out.

Our album will be a handmade, matted album with one image on each page. It takes about two months to make and will end up looking similar to this (image from here):



When we chose our photography package, we had the option of a proof book or getting each photo printed as a 4x6. You might think we'd be overwhelmed with 879 little prints, but I loved it. I bought a cute, jumbo photo box (I'll get something more archival when all this is finished) and little dividers, and it was incredibly helpful. I got the chance to see each image up close and lay them all out to make my choices. I tried doing this on my little computer cart...



...before my husband took pity on me and cleared off the kitchen table (and put the leaves in!) so I could work.



At the end of this thing, I have the somewhat ambitious goal of making a few more albums. I hope to have them done before our one-year anniversary, and of course, I'll be sharing every step of the process with you.

1. An album with some prints from our engagement party and the rehearsal dinner photos from our photographer. I am really interested in the kolo series of scrapbook/albums. They look so nice, all of them there on the shelf!



2. A digital album with shots from our honeymoon (easy enough, since our photos are already online). I'm going to be using the adorama books, which Mrs. Cheeseburger had great results with.

3. Since our album is so small, I'm thinking of supplementing it with a simple scrapbook. I found this adorable wedding scrapbook that was reviewed a while ago by our very own Mrs. Bee! It looks easy enough to fill out, and it's nice to see an album/scrapbook that emphasizes that the wedding isn't just one day. This way I can put in things like my dress sketch, a flower or two, some notes from wedding planning, and a few of the more fun images that didn't make it into the album. Do you recognize the bride?

from Mrs. Bee's post

from here

I know lots of you are into scrapbooking, but if you hadn't guessed by my posts, I'm not too much into paper crafts (although I do like to work with my hands and sew occasionally). I do, however, love the idea of prints in an album that you can see and touch. Yes, I tend to be a bit nostalgic, and I imagine looking through these books with my kids and grandkids someday, like I used to with my mom.

Oh... and there's one more reason we don't have digital pictures yet. While we wait for the album, our photographers have decided to submit our wedding to a couple of publications, and we are waiting to see if they will publish us! I won't tell you which ones, because if it isn't accepted I'll be kind of sad and maybe embarrassed. Either way, I can't wait to show you our wedding. It was an incredible, wonderful day and our photographers captured it beautifully. Hopefully I can begin showing it to you pretty soon!

You can find me buzzing around on the boards, and I still have some other things to share with you, so I'll be here. In the meantime, I'll show you this box we got for our larger prints.



What a lovely box!

It's Pink!

Others speak of that "dress moment," and I think I had the "fabric moment." It was when I was in the fabric store, having just solidified the vision for my wedding dress, and I was looking for the perfect fabric. I was looking at all the ivory silks, and I saw this little glimpse of something and, as cynical as I can be, as I just *knew* that it was my fabric. And after realizing that, my inner girlie-girl screamed, "It's pink!"


My convictions about this wondrous fabric were so strong that, initially, I didn't think twice about wearing a non-white/ivory dress. Being somewhat of a traditionalist when it comes to weddings, I'll admit that I did think briefly about the implications -- what would my more traditional family members say? -- but honestly, I didn't think about it for longer than 10 minutes before my mind went back to saying, "It's pink!" and then I would do some kind of happy fabric dance.

Besides, I'm unabashedly romantic, and the only thing more romantic than a white wedding dress is -- think about it -- a pink one. The fact that it is visually and culturally recognizeable as a wedding dress means that the hint of pink color is just a little unexpected, and maybe even more subversive than going completely Offbeat Bride about the whole thing (although that's fine too, of course).

While I was figuring all this out, and my dress was being made, I thought back to my favorite "pink dress" brides while I was planning. I still subscribe to a few of the wedding blogs, and I haven't seen any since, so feel free to add them in the comments. Of course, I'm all married now, so the dresses I loved when i was planning are a bit older. Still, the Spring 2010 lines seem to be so much more romantic, and feature a lot more dresses offered in colors like "blush" or "rum pink" or some variation thereof; so I imagine a lot of you will be wearing some of these lovely rosy dresses!

The first "pink" dress I loved was this Alvina Valenta (Lazaro) dress. The ivory lace is really beautiful, and the pink color really shows it off well. The idea of contrast was what solidified my own decision for my dress, since I already had my own ivory beaded lace in hand. Alvina Valenta offers many dresses in what they call "rum pink." It was featured in Season 5 of Say Yes to the Dress, which aired this spring and again in the summer.


This Amsale really defined my vision of the wedding dress: the natural waistline, the embellished top, the swishiness, the romance. It's an older dress (spring 2008), but it's a classic. This is basically how I wanted to look, save for the pleated waist. I think of this as a "pink" dress. I've looked at it on several different monitors and all over the internet, and it still looks pink to me. Anyone else? Anyone?


One of the cool things about wearing a light pink wedding dress, especially if the fabric is a silk dupioni or taffeta, is that it will photograph differently in different types of light. Some people won't even notice right away (which is the "unexpected" factor). Is it pink? Is it white? It's a chameleon! (which is what my husband says about my dress.)

A good example of that is this spring 2009 Amsale: the Aurora. Here it is from a seller at preownedweddingdresses.com, and the same one as worn by Lisa Loeb (via Justine Ungaro/People Magazine).



It's not quite my style, but this very glamorous Priscilla of Boston (Spring 2010) is in a beautiful pink silk satin. I love that it's a little modern, which seems to offset the super-romantic factor.


When I had just chosen a fabric and was finalizing my design, I Googled "pink silk dupioni." I found this astonishingly talented bride from Australia that made her own wedding dress. Being a custom dress bride myself, I have a special affection for this particular example, and a whole lot of respect for her craftsmanship. An art/sewing student, she crafted her own strapless dress with minimal outside help. I think she did an unbelievable job:





You can see her wedding dress process here, and her more recent work at her current blog.
Perhaps my favorite is the bride who wore a pink dress to remember her grandmother, who'd passed away from breast cancer. It was a beautiful dress and a loving tribute.





If you'd told me at the beginning of my wedding planning that I'd be in a pink dress, I wouldn't have believed you -- and I'd have been a little worried. I believe it's a delicate line to cross -- too pink and too frouffy, and you won't look like a bride (which, admittedly, is a personal preference). To bright, and you might end up looking a little prom-ish or maybe like you're having your quince. And of course there's the matter of finding the right pink for your skin tone: not too dark, not too purple, not too Hello-Kitty.

Um...

As for my family, they never said anything weird -- positive compliments all around. I'm sure a few of them never noticed; a few knew because I'd told them. I'll never forget the guest who said that she was happily surprised to look twice and see that the dress was "butter pink," as she described it, and that she loved it.

You can see my own contribution to the pink dress trend here (and you'll definitely see more of it when we get our professional photos!).

What made my dress special to me is that the color wasn't anything I sought out -- it seemed to be a serendipitous, even magical find. My immediate reaction to it meant that it really resonated with me and with the aspects of me that I wanted to show at our wedding. So basically, it was perfect for me in the way that any bride's dress should be perfect for her, which is what makes my choice more personal and (hopefully) less of a romantic cliché.

I would love to hear from more "pink dress" (or other color dress) brides. I have not even seen any in real life. Are we really that rare? If you wore/are wearing a pink dress, what led to your choice?

The Oystermoon, pt. 3: Airport Zombies

I promised that I'd tell you about our crazy trip home, but I also realized that I forgot to share with you all the beautiful condo we stayed in. It was located in Princeville, the suburb on the north shore of Kaua'i. It definitely lived up to the pictures we saw online. It was a wonderful, peaceful place, and we could hear the ocean.


The bedroom, at sunset


The bed/bathroom, mid-day


The ocean, from the window


This is how I looked for much of our vacation. You can barely see the dining room/living room behind me.

Mr. Oyster and I prefer to rent condos as opposed to hotels when we travel. They tend to be located in residential neighborhoods, so if we're traveling somewhere we have the benefit of getting to meet more local residents; shop in local grocery stores, take public transit, that sort of thing. Also, renting a condo is often cheaper than a hotel, and you get more for your money (they usually have a full kitchen, for example).

One drawback is that there is usually no maid service, but that's okay... I live without maid service every day of the year! I don't mind sweeping a bit. Especially since this means there will be fewer people running around with the key to your room (and access to your stuff).

The other obvious drawback is that you can't always guarantee that your condo will be perfect or that your renter won't be less-than-scrupulous. I usually do a ton of research on vacation rentals, and try to go through a reputable site. We found this one through TripAdvisor's new service, Flipkey. I have found others through VRBO.com.

So on the last night in our lovely condo, we were feeling kind of sad, completely rested, and almost ready to come home and show our photos of the trip to all our friends and family. But I found a mysterious rash. I had a series of things on my back that looked like bug bites and itched. As we went to sleep, I wondered what they were, but Mr. Oyster suggested they were bugs, and we fell asleep.

But I couldn't sleep. I pulled out my little iPad and Googled my way to near-hysteria: it seems that someone from our lovely condo wrote an internet post a while back about an unwanted souvenir they'd brought home -- bedbugs!

Oh, crap.

If any of you have dealt with bedbugs (I haven't, but oh, have I heard about them) you'll understand the fear at this realization (if you don't, a look around here will tell you what you're in for). Mr. Oyster, realizing I hadn't slept, woke up to ask what was wrong. We spent the rest of the night trying not to panic, wondering if they were actually in our condo (we looked, but couldn't find any evidence), and making a plan.

The last few hours in our condo, we made multiple trips to the local grocery store and laundromat, trying to launder clothes to wear on the plane, and packing nearly everything we owned in plastic bags. It was a stressful nightmare. When we'd done all we could, we finally left.

The worst part was that we still had nearly 10 hours to kill until our red-eye flight. We drove around Kauai and went to the top of the beautiful and breathtaking Waimea Canyon. It certainly gave our rental car a workout!


It was windy up there.

Finally, it was time to go to the airport. Upon arriving, we found that our flight had been delayed -- by four hours. Four! This meant that we would almost certainly miss our connection in LAX. I didn't think we'd ever get home. I had a suitcase full of plastic bags, I was itchy, and I hadn't slept in nearly 36 hours. I burst into tears.

The tiny Kaua'i airport only has 10 gates, and I'm sure delays happen all the time. Luckily, the airport's weekly concert series helped pass the time for us and the hundreds of passengers also delayed.



These guys were very good. They played our last-dance song ("White Sandy Beach") and many other favorites. They also played a version of "Hawaiian Wedding Song" for a couple celebrating their 50th anniversary. I didn't get to hear it; I was on the phone with India getting us re-booked on another flight. Mr. Oyster said it was a very nice performance, though.

We eventually arrived in LAX, one minute late for our connecting flight. That's right, one minute. I know it was one minute, because when we ran to the gate, they'd just closed the doors. The woman at the counter ignored us, then laughed in our faces when we asked if she could open it. Such unnecessary meanness really seems par for the course with this airline, who already canceled and re-routed our flight three times since we purchased it in February, canceled our upgraded seats with no refund, and more.

The next flight to Dallas wasn't for six more hours, during which we saw several gate agents opening the doors for harried people who'd barely made their connections. We never saw "laughing woman" again.

Fail.

By now, it'd been a day and a half since we left our condo, and for me, more than two days without sleep. This is when I started to lose it.

from MarthaStewardess

Mr. Oyster and I were holding up the walls as we staggered through the airport trying to find food and buying blankets. We could barely stand. Our suitcases were oddly puffy. Passengers were staring at us. I started thinking this was hilariously funny. I called us the "Airport Zombies." I started making terrible jokes that I found incredibly funny. This was Mr. Oyster's favorite:

"What did the airport zombie say to the TSA agent?"
"What?"
"I'll show you a liquid!"
Followed by near-hysterical giggling from me and a nervous, but amused, look from Mr. Oyster.

We finally got home, two days after we left and without any sense of time or space. Not only that, but we it took us another day to deal with our possibly bedbug-infested clothes.

Oh, and those bedbugs? I emailed the condo owner upon our return home; she was shocked to hear from me. The guy who'd posted on the Internet signed with his real name, so she tracked him down. He never had bedbugs -- he found later that he had a skin disease. He just never updated the web posting. I guess we were lucky this time, but if these bugs keep spreading like everyone says they are, it will be good to take precautions on future trips.

Surely, we won't be the only honeymooners to encounter this. If you find yourself in an infested hotel, here's what to do.

As for the rash, it turned out to be my first-ever sun rash, accompanied by my first-ever sunburn. Don't forget your sunscreen, no matter how dark you already are!

To be quite honest, it has taken me about a month to be able to look back on our honeymoon without it being overshadowed by the craziness in the last two days of our trip. And I'm still upset at United Airlines. I hope I never have to deal with them again.

But eventually, I was able to get some perspective. We had a beautiful trip, a wonderful time for us to react to all the chaos of our wedding, and lots of incredible sunsets and sandy beaches. I would love to visit Hawaii again, but I think this time we'll (a) bring plastic bags and (b) spring for a direct flight.

I kept wondering the whole time if I'd get to see a rainbow in Hawaii! I finally did, toward the end of our trip.

And a flower in her hair

I'm not much of a DIY bride, but I had one project I absolutely loved.

I'm not sure if it was the romantic "idea" of a flower, or my belief that a bride should always have something beautiful on her head, but I loved making this. I loved it so much that I didn't want to finish it, so I didn't, until the week of the wedding.

From the beginning of my wedding planning, I saw these beautiful hair pieces and was disappointed that they cost so much, when they looked like something I could learn to make. So I pledged to teach myself how to do it, and now I'll teach you, too! (I'm very excited about this.)

I actually made this project twice. The first one was made hastily the night before my bridal portrait (photos by Heather Essian).




 
It looked okay in photos, but quickly frayed and fell apart.  I knew I had to start again from scratch.

I had a million inspirations, but I decided that I wanted a big, fluffy flower with a presence, since I didn't wear a veil at the reception. I also wanted it to match my dress somewhat, so I used some leftover fabric scraps from my seamstress, as well as different fabric scraps I had lying around, which included some off-white and white silk dupioni, and some silk taffeta. These were rejected samples from when I was trying to choose the fabric for my dress.

For this, I used my own variation of the Martha Stewart Fabric Flower method, which I have previously attempted. This one was a little more successful (and there have been several practice flowers in between).  Other options include the "layers of fabric" method, and the "silk flower take-apart" method.

I used:
- a good pair of fabric scissors
- About 1 1/2 yards total of silk dupioni/shantung/taffeta fabrics in various shades of champagne, ivory and white
- some pieces of tulle
- swarovski crystals and stray beads (from my dress)
- Aleene's Stop Fraying glue
- sewing supplies (needle, thread, pins, etc.)
- Time (I returned to this project off and on for several weeks, but could probably do it in two weekends)
- A hair clip to attach it to
- a beautiful earring or brooch for the center

I cut the scraps in oval/kidney shapes. I varied the sizes a bit to give the flower dimension. Here are the petals lined up (mostly) by size:

For added fluffiness, I gave some of the shapes different "petals" on each end. This one has two:

After each shape was cut, I put some of this "stop fraying!" gel/glue around the edges. It got a little sticky, so use an extremely small amount. I used one of Mr. Oyster's extra paintbrushes to apply it.

This took me about an hour, and I left them to dry for a day. Actually, they dried in a day, but I left them sitting here for a week. I used my stacking cookie racks for this. Mr. Oyster kept saying, "The cookies are done, honey! When can I eat them?" Silly Oyster!

In the middle of each flower, I folded the flower roughly in half and stitched once or twice in the middle.

Then, I layered the flowers on top of each other, from largest to smallest, in kind of a circle pattern. To see what it looked like, I stuck a sewing pin through it and fluffed out the "petals." Here you can see the blending of the different shades of silk fabric. I took this picture in natural light so you can see the colors better.

I don't have photos of these next steps, because they happened two weeks before the wedding when everything was crazy.

I took the pin out, turned the flower over, and stitched each flower to the one(s) below it, one at a time. I know you can just sew all the way through the whole thing, but that won't work with this many "petals." I wanted to make sure they all stayed in place.

On a few of the "petals," I sewed on a few Swarovski crystals (found at JoAnn's), and then "hidden" in places I added a few extra leftover beads from my dress. I only used a few, because I just wanted some extra sparkle, and didn't want to weigh the fabric down too much.

While shopping at Anthropologie, I found a beautiful (beautiful!) pair of earrings. You can't see in this picture, but underneath the rhinestones are tiny holes -- perfect for sewing! I took one of the earrings, bent the post under, and sewed the earring onto the center of the flower.




And here it is, my finished hair flower in action! I forgot to fluff it out when I put it on after the ceremony, but I think it still looks nice. I'm so proud!