The One About Zoe

Warning: This is a pretty somber post. About death, and my feelings towards it. I know this isn't the norm for my blog, but I felt the need to put my thoughts out there.

A year ago today we lost my first true love and best friend. My niece-dog Zoe. For those who follow along, she has been very much apart of my life, including my little online corner. She was the namesake of my creative business. My "flower bully", and the tune to my families' song. Seriously, we have a "Zoe" song.

Quite honestly, I have never lost anyone I am close to. Never. I am ever apparent of how lucky I am. But because of this, some of my thoughts might be: welp, my time is coming. The next phone call I receive will bare bad news, I just KNOW it (because really, who calls anymore?). Or why has God spared me (and my family)? Does this mean that it will all hit at once in a few years?

I know that as a believer, these are common, but answered questions. I shouldn't live in the shadow of a dog's death, nor in the shadow of the promise of death and heartache to come. I just know that I will be comforted. That my darkness will become light. Glory will be revealed. He is my deliverer, my shield, my salvation and my stronghold.

A blogger I follow (Jones Design Co) posted this the other day, and it really hit home:

I seriously can't believe it's been a year without that chunk. She was so funny and had such a personality. Dogs are just the best. Here are some of my favorite pictures of my little Zoe-baby. How lucky am I that I have professional pictures of this beautiful dog on my wedding day? Seriously, these are some of my most treasured pictures.

Wedding: Chalkboards Galore

Chalkboard signs were a pretty big part of our wedding day. They are such an easy (and cheap) way to add a lot of character to your event. I got mine signs from my wholesaler (because I'm super fancy like that) but I know a lot of stores on Etsy or Hobby Lobby sell wooden signs. Then we painted them with chalkboard paint from Lowes (two coats) and I commissioned my sister and MOH, Hillary to do all of the writing for me.

I wasn't super prepared for this....I think I maybe gave them to her a week before our wedding. So looking back I wish I would have gotten a few quotes that meant more to us vs popular ones (such as F. Scott Fitzgerald one).

One quote that I have always LOVED is from Jim Halpert (The Office) about Pam. We couldn't fit it on one, so Hillary split it up between two signs.

Here are the rest of our signs. I had Hillary do smaller ones that said "Reserved" for our Family tables and sprinkled throughout the venue were signs with our hashtag "StewPartyof2" (I wrote a post here sharing why I think an event hashtag is a must) so people would remember to use it.

Wedding Vendor: The Venue

OKC Farmer's Market 

My venue. It was one of the very first decisions I made. It is a really cool venue...not in the greatest part of town, but I love how big it is and it has an amazing view of downtown OKC. I wouldn't say that I regret having my wedding there....BUT I kind of wish that I would have shopped around a bit.

I'm not writing this post to put the Farmer's Market on blast...at all! But, I want to share with you my wedding planning process, and venue was a major one.

We chose the Farmer's Market for many reasons. One, it was a huge space, and I wanted to get married and have the reception in one place (less decorating, right?). Two, they provided a lot! DJ, alcohol, soda, water, tea, 2 bartenders, security, tables and chairs (that they would set up for us). Three, it was such a cool and unique venue.

All of those provided were great (if you were there and saw any one of my family members, you KNOW the alcohol was working :) )... except that the chairs were super dirty and we had to wipe them off.

Our venue is not specifically just for weddings. It is a farmer's market, antique store, concert hall, roller derby rink and apparently and MMA fighting ring. Through the entire 10 months we were told we could set up the Friday before. That way on Saturday we could somewhat relax. Well...the week before the venue told us there would be an MMA fight held the Friday night before our wedding, til 2am (it was supposed to be the weekend before, but was rescheduled due to weather). (Cue my one, major freak out of the wedding process...sorry, Jake!) So, we gathered my family and friends and worked our asses off Saturday morning getting everything prepped. It was a lot of hard work, but in the end, it came together because we had some ALL STARS helping us out. It sucked, but stuff like that happens, and again....if that was the worst thing to happen during the wedding planning process, no big deal in the grand scheme of things.

Another thing that bothered me was one of the staff called my mom a few days after the wedding and "scolded" her because our guests wiped Vaseline on the bottom of some of the chairs. Now....lets take a second and think about this one. Who at a wedding uses Vaseline? No one. Who at an MMA fight uses Vaseline? Everyone. Mystery solved. Maybe if they had cleaned the chairs in the first place, they would have figured that out.

Like I said before: our venue was so cool looking and unique. Here are some of the reasons I chose to get married there:

Giant windows with great light....

 

Great architecture...

and string lights everywhere that made our night magical...

All photography by the fab Caroline Rentzel Photography

Wedding Decor: Geronimo Balloons

Who knew helium would be such a big struggle during my wedding planning process. I don't think I ever cried because of it...(actually....I think I only cried like twice during the whole process....I have limited emotions....what can I say?) but they were a very stressful aspect of the wedding.

My little 2013 - Pinterest - wedding loving heart just could not NOT have giant balloons in her wedding!

I never thought that I would write a blog post about a chemical element....but here it goes.

The Helium: Helium is REALLY hard to find for decent prices. I called countless places trying to rent a tank but it was either way too expensive, or the company didn't have access to helium anymore.

In a perfect scenario, we would have blown up the balloons on site. Since we had 20 36 in. balloons (if you couldn't tell from pictures...my venue was HUGE!); it was going to be impossible to transport all of them to our venue without some geronimo fatalities. After many phone calls, we realized that our only option was to have them blown up off site and transport them ourselves (while holding our breath, of course). A lot of the decor and furniture was transported from Odessa to OKC, so we had an empty U-haul that we ended up using. Shockingly, that part was a success!

Since renting a tank was no longer an option, Homeland or Party Galaxy were what I had to choose between. I tried places like Dollar Tree but they would only blow up their own balloons, and wouldn't order what I wanted.

The Helium Source: Both Homeland and Party Galaxy would blow them up, but PG wasn't giving me straight answers on pricing or helium availability. Since I had such a large quantity of balloons, they were going to charge me more. So, Homeland it was. Plus they were willing to order the balloons for me! Score! (So I thought).

Issue #1: A few days before the wedding they called to let me know that instead of gold, they were sent silver balloons. In the grand scheme, not that big of a deal...but still, disappointing when you have a certain look in mind. Looking back at pictures, the silver balloons were fine. No one but me, my mom, or Tiffany and Taylor (our awesome planners) would have even known if I wasn't telling you now.

Issue #2: The other issue was that Homeland didn't fill the balloons up all of the way. Meaning that when we went to attach the tassels, they weighed the balloons down. That was frustrating, to say the least. Again, big scheme....no big deal. But it's one of the many reasons I wanted to blow up the balloons ourselves. So, we ended up having to pair the balloons in groups of 3 to be able to hold the weight of the tassels. (Tissue paper tassels, they were not very heavy in the first place!)

So, after saying all of that....here is what I WISH I had of done (or had the guts to have even tried!)...

Vintage Revivals bought these disposable tanks. They sell them at Hobby Lobby and Party Galaxy, and you might be able to use a 40% off coupon at Hobby Lobby. Anyways, according to the box and everyone I asked said that the tank would only fill up about 3 balloons, making it way too expensive to even attempt! Vintage Revivals said she got about 7 1/2 balloons filled with each tank. Too bad she wrote this post a few months after my wedding! Geez!

Balloons: Amazon has always been the best price I could find for the 36" balloons.

So, there you have it. What we did....where it went all wrong....and what I still wish I did today!

*I kind of feel like I should add to each Wedding related post that I realize all "complaints" are on the surface. None of these wrecked my wedding. I am still married and will remain married to my husband regardless of the outcome of some balloons, or the venue or any of the "pretty" things. I'm just sharing my experience with you, so that you don't make the same mistakes I did. Or you're reading because you have a general interest in my wedding planning process!* 

All photography by Caroline Rentzel.

 

Vanilla Wedding Favors

For our wedding favors we decided on little, 1 ounce tinctures of cooking vanilla. We both enjoy cooking and baking, so we thought this would be something fun and USABLE for our guests to enjoy.

There are about one million great wedding favor ideas out there. But most of them either seemed really expensive or something that would just be thrown out at the end of the night.

My budget was about $1 per guest.

Bottles      28 cents each
Caps         22 cents each
Vanilla      19 cents (for 1 ounce of vanilla)
Label        11 cents each (These were designed by my wedding planners, Tiffany & Taylor)
The twine is from Hobby Lobby and we already had that....but even if we had bought it, it would have cost about 5 cents per bottle - at the most.

Total: 80 cents per guest! 

Mom and I used turkey basters to fill up the bottles and it took us an evening of watching TV to do about 220. Extremely easy, but a little sticky.

We had them at each place setting during the wedding. The ONLY downfall was that some of the guests didn't grab them on their way out. So, I now have  A LOT of really cute bottles of vanilla that I bake with on the reg. If I did it again, I would probably just put them on a table by the exit. Then again....I'll probably never have to buy vanilla again in my life...so maybe it's not that bad of a downfall!

#stewpartyof2

Hashtag your wedding: YES or NO?

There are two sides, and I 100% understand and get both of them. 

Caroline Rentzel Photography

On one hand you pay THOUSANDS of dollars for a professional and you don't want your Great Aunt's - Second Cousin's - Dog walker to be front and center with their loud - bright flashing - out-of-date camera even looking at your wedding day. I get it. I toyed with the idea of having people drop their cell phones and children in a basket at the front so that my ceremony would be "perfect".

On the other hand, you have cool friends who get you. Some of them are even photographers themselves. They know how hard you (and quite frankly several of them) have worked on your wedding day and that it is impossible for that professional photog to catch every second of the day...regardless how much you beg. :) It's a great way to get your guests involved and capture some pretty cool shots of your day!

Caroline Rentzel Photography

Think of the hashtag as the current version of the disposable camera that brides used to leave on the table during the reception, but...like, ONE MILLION TIMES BETTER!

Here are a few tips, when and if, you decide to hashtag your wedding: 

1. Be creative. We used #stewpartyof2 for ours. The "party of 2" thing is very popular, so unfortunately another couple has used it as well. I wish I would have thought of something a little more creative so that I wouldn't have to worry about our hashtag being littered with a bunch of stranger's wedding pictures. 

2. ...but not Complicated. There is a fine line between creative and a hashtag too long for Twitter. If it's too crazy your guests will misspell the hashtag and you'll end up with a lot of weird variations of #jakestewartandmallorymcguiretogetherforeverandevernovemberthirtiethtwothousandandthirteen :) (Bonus points if you can figure out what it says!)

3. Start Early. I know that once you get engaged your wedding hashtag isn't your first priority. Something about getting distracted by shiny things...ya know :) Anyways, start using your hashtag early. On any and every piece of stationery that pertains to your wedding, add it! This way once your day has arrived everyone is already used to the hashtag, from using it while you're dress shopping, at your showers, rehearsal dinner, etc. I follow Kirsten Blowers on Instagram and not surprisingly- she rocked her wedding hashtag. She used #stuckeypartyof2 for EVERYTHING...even asking her bridesmaids and for her bachelorette party getaway. 

If you ever are wanting to full on stalk a wedding, plug her hashtag in...you'll be on Instagram ALL NIGHT LONG drooling over every detail!

4. Signage. According to Wedding Chicks, we did this pretty well :) I had painted a few pieces of wood with chalkboard paint and had my sister Hillary write #stewpartyof2 on them. Then we placed them around so people wouldn't forget to use it. We had them in our lounge area, by the bar, on our head table, sign in table, etc. 

What we really enjoyed was during our honeymoon, we would browse the hashtag to see if anyone else had added new pictures. It was so much fun!

After going through our #stewpartyof2 hashtag, I decided I would give out awards to my favorites! 

First place in capturing our decor: Janelle Boston! It is always a wonderful feeling when someone "gets you"...and Janelle got my wedding decor. Love it.

First Place for most creative/hilarious pictures: John McElvany! No surprise here. John's picture of our first dance with Zoe might be my favorite of all time. And the smooshed face (us reenacting what parent's do to their babies in photos these days) make me laugh EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Plus my makeup looks on point (S.O. Molly!).

 

 First Place for "In the moment" pictures: Lindsey Hodous! Along with her mom and sis, Lindsey rocked the BTS of our wedding. They drove in from Arkansas to help with the set up and the flow during the wedding. They were champs and our wedding WOULD NOT have been as amazing without them. Lindsey captured some really special moments, but the first look takes the cake. 

 

Honorable Mentions:

So many wonderful memories! Excuse me while I continue to blog about our wedding for the rest of my life ;)