sweet memories

it's funny what stands out to me exactly a year from that whirlwind of a day.
here are a few of my favorite memories from our wedding:

{+}

sneaking off to grab breakfast with the mister the morning of our wedding, not telling anyone
where we were or what we were doing.  it was just us, hidden from the entire world during that hour.

{++}

i don't remember much from our vows except that dannon promised to take care of
any and all spiders for me. and really, isn't that the most important thing anyway?

the sidewalk chalk path of doom which one had to survive before reaching
"kim & dannon's sweet-ass wedding," courtesy of one of my favoritest friends ever.

watching my grandma rock the bocce ball.  seriously, she could not be stopped!

dancing at the "alter." instead of walking down an aisle, dannon and i decided to come in together and greet all of our guests {who were sitting on picnic blankets} on our way up to the front.  afterward, we ended up with some time while our friend sang the seu jorge cover of david bowie's "rebel rebel," so we shared a sweet dance.

the kazoo sing-a-long!  i've said it before and i'll say it again, hearing 50 people play along on kazoos to the tune of "i'm a believer" and "when i'm 64" was pretty much the most fun thing ever! and what was even more fun was how into it all our loved ones were.  i had made up a booklet of 5 songs from which we could choose, thinking we'd only do a couple, but our guests wouldn't have it.  we sang them ALL! and with such enthusiastic energy.

even with all eco-friendly, biodegradable table wear, and without any metal forks or glasses to
bang against, our friends still found a way to make us kiss whenever they wanted us to {usually
someone would just shout "kiss her!" and then everyone would start kazooing.}.

seeing all of our loved ones from different phases in our life come together on one small lawn.
we loved everyone that was there, and knew that if they all had the chance,
they would love each other too.  it was truly beautiful.

{+}

the rubber chicken.

the sharing of the picnic baskets.  we made up picnic dinners to be shared with 6 or 8 people,
so our guests would have yet another opportunity to mingle and connect.

hearing dannon play the violin with our wedding band and dancing with my mom.

dannon whispering in my ear as we danced "ready? let's get out of here," to which i replied "yup, let's go!" and off we ran from the dance floor shouting "bye! we love you!" we then hopped on our bikes and rode off into the distance.

{+}

how ALL of the hard work, late nights, and tears over the previous month planning our wedding came together that day.  i wish we could have spent so many more hours enjoying everything with our loved ones!

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thanks for taking a walk down memory lane with me over the past week.  if you'd like to read
more about our non-traditional ceremony and celebration, click on the "love & adventure" tab,
or you can scroll through all of my wedding posts by clicking here.

{right: ++}

{all photos by nataliya cole, except photos with {+} were taken by crystal, and {++} was taking by a dear friend.}

let's be honest {wedding outtakes}

let's be honest, when you have 50 million photographs taken of you within the span of a 

few hours, you're bound to end up with some hilarious outtakes.  

so if we're just going to be honest here...
it looks like i'm hanging out with my friends,...

on my wedding day,...

completely naked!

and let's be honest... i don't like taking formal photos,
and when i'm forced to... well, i tend to act out.

let's be honest... it's my wedding and i can fist pump if i want to,
especially when i'm being serenaded by kazoo renditions of herb alpert songs.

let's be honest... if you're going to invite a rubber chicken to your wedding,
you best be okay with it getting more kisses than you do.

let's be honest... kazoo's and dessert were never meant to be friends.

and let's be honest... no matter how carefully you plan your wedding,
sometimes you still get chased by zombies when riding off on your wedding bikes.

{last photo by crystal, all others by our wedding photographer nataliya cole}

the pre-wedding party!

there were several things we had to keep in mind when planning our wedding festivities. the first was that many of our family and friends were flying in from far away.  we hadn't seen some of these loved ones in years, and we knew we would only have a couple *busy!* days to divide up between them all.  second, dannon and i have always made very close friends with people of the opposite sex. that meant that i had to have my guys with me at whatever sort of bachelorette party we threw.  third, dannon and i also happen to have a ton of the same close friends from college and san francisco, which meant there was no way we could divide them up between the two of us in the same night.  

so the mister and i used our strategizing strengths and planned one night devoted to our families {allowing them to get to know each other, as well as spending long awaited quality time with us}, and a second night devoted to all our friends {in lieu of a bachelor and bachelorette party}.     

the night before our wedding we threw one great big pre-wedding cocktail bash with snacks, spirits, and all of our friends in our private courtyard.  i made several stations around the yard: a box where people could leave us advice, a table where people wrote their dirtiest jokes {we had a contest later in the evening with a very special prize for the winner}, and a peep show which i had made by drawing naked stick figures behind little doors.  we sang our most risque sea chanteys and i seem to recall real life interpretations from "the position of the day" book... hmm...  it was such a beautiful night laughing and catching up with our favorite people.  

{this was the peep show.  i had it set up under a drape so people could have a little privacy. :) see the red tabs? underneath are some very sexy stick figures. oo-la-la!}


i was so glad we decided to throw one big party with everyone.  not only was it a blast for dannon and i to have our friends in one place without the adults {er, wait, how old were we last year? 28 and 30? oh right.}, but it was also a great chance for our different groups of friends to meet and mingle before the wedding day.  many of them still keep in touch, even though they only met in person once during our wedding weekend.  helping awesome people form meaningful connections? what could be a better bonus to a wedding?!



credits:  these fabulous photos were all from my dear friend devon... at least, these were the ones i could share here. ;)

love in all the details

there are so many great things you can do with a backyard wedding when you put in a little creative elbow grease.  we saw it as an opportunity to fully portray in every detail who we are as people.  going by the book {tablecloths, specific colors, etc.} was not important to us in the slightest. we prefer to embrace the uniqueness of who we are, so we pretended we had never been to a wedding before and made everything up from scratch.

it's all about the little things that made our wedding cozy & unique:

as we made our promises to each other, our friend wrapped our hands in a long chord made up of scrap fabrics sent to us by all our friends and family.  it was a beautiful symbolism of all of our past experiences and support group binding us together, literally tying a knot.

for the music, we asked our talented musician friend to perform "queen bitch" and "rebel rebel" by david bowie, as covered by seu jorge in "the life aquatic with steve zissou."  yup, david bowie songs sung in portuguese. most people probably had no idea what those songs were!

since our ceremony was so short and unique, we didn't need to have programs.  i wanted something, however, to let people know what to expect that day and to thank those who helped us prepare, so i made up a wedding map.  on one side i had a conceptual map of all the things our guests could enjoy at our wedding, and on the back i had thank you's, our list of vendors, and our families' names.  everything, including the writing and the doodles, were hand drawn.  there's nothing like real handwriting to give it that charming feel.

i had multiple stations around the yard where people could find cute or interactive things like a "living room" setting with books that i made about our love {a comic book about our love story, a flip book i made one valentine's day, and a book of favorite photos and love poems}. another station had cute love cards that people could take and share with a loved one {downloaded for free from kind over matter}.

some of the other things i made myself were: blankets and pillows for the picnic ceremony, cute paper fans to keep our guests cool, labels for all the food and drinks, menus and tags for the picnic baskets {which is how we ate dinner}, signs for all the different stations, hanging paper bird garland, poms strung above the yard, the hanging backdrop for our wedding ceremony, embroidery loops, and other miscellaneous decorations.  dannon made all the desserts {cake pops, mini pies, and cobblers in jars} and the drinks {ginger limeade, passion tea lemonade, and sangria}.  our friends and family made the picnic dinners {grilled veggies, grain salads, and cucumber cream cheese sandwiches}, and my dad chopped down some trees so i could have cute pieces of sliced wood to use as platters and decorations.

we really wanted everyone to have a good time.  it was a celebration after all!  so we planned plenty of fun.  we set up a couple lawn games {badminton and lawn bowling} and had a blast dancing the night away!

instead of a regular ole guest book, we laid out tons of art supplies and blank pages.  our guests made us all sorts of art!  if was funny and sweet and beautiful.  we love to laugh, so in another station, we put out a pretty typewriter with a variety of scrap cards and asked our guests to type us their favorite jokes.  after the wedding, we compiled them all into our first coffee table book!

{"when you are married remember that love is a verb and it can conquer almost everything. except rent. make sure you pay that. oh and it doesn't do anything about STD's but that's why you're getting married. so good thinking."}

i decided to make the wedding favors interactive too.  one of our favorite things to do is mull cider on a crisp autumn evening.  we provided all the supplies for DIY mulling sachets with the idea that we would continue to share in an experience over the fall season, even though we all lived far apart.

most of our friends are big into swing dancing, so we hired a fantastic band {noto d}
to play through the evening.  dannon even jumped in on a song!  

for the whole weekend, i made gift packages for our guests staying at the house complete with granola bars, tea, post-plane ride yoga cards, and a cute hand-drawn map of the neighborhood where they could find coffee shops, restaurants, etc.  i wanted our guests to feel right at home, even if they had just come from across the country.

these beautiful photos were all taken by our friend crystal of crystal chanel photography. check her out!

a backyard wedding

this weekend will be our one year wedding anniversary! the excitement of surviving the first year has brought with it lots of reminiscing, time spent with our photos, and a few traumatic flashbacks to that week-before wedding stress {if you've had a wedding already, you probably know what i mean}.

dannon and i were only engaged for about 4.5 months, and the month before our wedding i graduated from grad school and we moved from san francisco to LA.  we had done a teensy bit of planning in those first 3 months of our engagement, but for the most part, we planned, booked, and made everything during that last month before the big day.  one of the few things we had done ahead of time was book a beautiful rental on the coast of malibu, only to have it fall out from under us four weeks before our wedding.  that meant even our venue had to be put together at the last minute!  stressful? yes. busy? yup. possible? definitely!

we ended up finding a big vacation rental house with a beautiful backyard in the hancock park neighborhood of LA.  now i know a lot of brides who prefer to let the venue handle everything, and that's fine.  i, however, loved having complete control over the space.  i also strongly believe there's absolutely NO reason to spend thousands of dollars on that one day.  it's all about your love right? and money can't buy love.  which means, going the route of a backyard wedding was conducive to saving us thousands of dollars AND providing an intimate environment in which we could celebrate our union.

  reasons i loved having a backyard wedding:

- we had our venue for an entire weekend {3 days} at a mere fraction
of the cost of what other venues charge for 6 hours.

- our families and friends could stay at our wedding house for free, saving everyone money on hotels.

- we had plenty of time before and after our wedding day to set up/take down the decorations.

- we had access to beautiful furniture that we could set up around the yard, giving it
a cozy feel without having to buy vintage pieces for that one day.

- we had access to a full kitchen where we could store and prep wedding food
{we saved money by doing it ourselves, no caterers}.

- the yard was surrounded by gorgeous flowers {even lavender!}, vines, and trees, which meant we needed very few extra flowers from the market {saving more money - yay!}.

- it was completely private, no worries about strangers wandering in, having to be out at a certain time for the next group, nor dealing with other people needing to access our space.

- no need to deal with venue rules {liqour licenses, music constraints, required vendors, etc.}.

- we were able to make the best use of our space with lawn games, a picnic area, multiple photographic settings, and dancing! 

- i had complete control over the environment we wanted to create - cozy, intimate, creative, and
most of all fun!  {things that are often missing at other venues}

over the next couple days, i'll probably share more from our wedding.  it's sort of a shame that all that hard work and fun was only experienced for one short day, so i'm going to relive it all again here. okay? okay.

ps - aren't these photos great?! they were all taken by our friend crystal of crystal chanel photography.  she wasn't our official photographer, since we wanted her to enjoy our wedding as a guest and not be working all day, but she's a fabulous photographer and available for your wedding!  i'll be posting more of her photos from our special day, so stay tuned.

a few of my random favorites {a wedding recap}

here are just a few more photos from our wedding that i couldn't resist posting.

they're just too darn fun!

{the wedding map i made in lieu of a program}

{our lovely picnic!}

{ivan, our ridiculously talented musician friend. click his name to have a listen!}

{this is katie. she's the evil genius behind the sidewalk chalk path of doom which our guests had to survive in order to get to the wedding. i love her.}

{simmer down ladies, he's taken}

{that's right, cake lollies that dannon made himself! we have about half a dozen in our freezer right now - yum!}

{the rubber chicken was a big slut. wait, what did i say? pardon me! i meant "hit." the rubber chicken was a big hit.}

{there were lots of giggles in our wedding. that's how we roll.}

{me and me mum}

{me and me pops}

{little did our guests know... me: i'm having the best time at our wedding! dannon: boy me too! me: i don't want to ever leave this party! hey, what if we held all our guests and the jazz band hostage and barricaded this house rental and just stayed here forever?! dannon: geewhiz, that's a great idea! but i think we better end on a high note. me: so just to be clear, we're not kidnapping our guests? dannon: um, no.}