This weekend I was honored to be part of Amanda Womac and john johnson's Wedding in the Woods! It was quite an adventure and much much fun, but I don't have many pictures of the wedding itself since I was very busy and had little time to snap pics. I should have given my camera to Tommy to take photos, but he was busy too! I don't doubt that other photos will surface so next weekend I'll do another post about the wedding and fill in the holes I have today.
Kristina and I packed up after work on Wednesday and headed to Moonshadow to fetch Amanda. We stopped at Mama and Daddy's for supper and to pick up a couple of things, and I played a trick on my Dipsey!
one of these logs is out of place. dipsey is fanatic about his woodpile and when they were waving ki and i goodbye i saw daddy notice the wood awry and say something to mama about it hahhahaha
we stopped for ice and i bought too many bags to go into the cooler. instead of a refund, i was given a handwritten iou from the flying j for three bags of ice hahahhahaha
We get to Moonshadow and have a nice family hour visiting with Carol and Johnny, owners and residents of Moonshadow:
carol, ki, amanda and me enjoy fellowship
i check my email in the living room
the happy couple share a smooch
Kristina was deathly afraid of all things outdoors. It is a testament to how much she loves Amanda and John that she faced all sorts of fears this weekend. She was very brave!
enjoying a cocktizzle before bedtime in amanda and john's abode for the week
We stayed in a structure called Earth Shag. The next morning, we got a wakeup call in the form of one Mr. John Johnson! He scared the pants off me. Here is a photo of what it looks like to wake up in Earth Shag:
our feet
We get up and get moving!
cheese! this is before we go take our showers for the day.
Carol makes us nice breakfast!
eggs and all sorts of goodies from the garden were in it - including flowers! i never ate a flower before!
john and amanda chow down
Then, bachelorette party time!! We first go and get pampered at a spa.
kelly (friend of bride), emily (sister of bride) and amanda (bride) get dis party started
we ply amanda with presents while she gets a pedicure. actually, ansley does. i didn't buy that gal nuttin'.
kelly enjoys a pedi from our hard-working nail tech, lori
emily and i visit (my hair looks awful. this is what i look like without a blow dryer, peeps)
i don't care so much. i also had my first facial. folks, that's the way to ROLL. a lady washed my face for an HOUR.
we got to our hotel and visit in the hot tub after the spa!
emily and ki ham it up. see that sign that says 'watch your head?' well, we did NOT. two of us bonked our noggins, myself included.
next we clean up and go out to fancy supper! i felt like i was living in massey hall all over again.
we stayed at the chattanooga choo choo! how fun! here we are before supper: ki, emily, me are in the front row, rachael (friend of bride) and barbara jean (sister of groom), ansley (friend of bride, amanda, and kelly all say 'all aboard!'
this was in the restaurant - i took this picture standing up, looking up. jealous much, dipsey?
we had a wonderful time ordering food
visiting (new friend hilary shows up - she's on the end!)
laughing
toasting
this is such an amanda face....
emily loves her big sis
My fave dish of the evening:
sweet corn bruchetta with prosciutto and gruyere. nothing i can complain about here, peeps...
We finish supper and head back to the train.
whoo whoo!
i swear the wine had nothing to do with these photos. you'll notice i'm not in any - i ran around and snapped pics of everyone acting like clowns.
i'm a huge fan of lying down and taking pics of people looking down at me. this is in the lobby of the choo choo.
We get back to our room and Emily puts us to work! We rubber cemented popsicle sticks to the back of the wedding programs to make funeral parlor fans. Since the wedding was outside, Emily had this bright idea to keep folks cool.
we get busy in our jimmy jams
the ladies are drunkenly industrious (we WALKED to and from supper, mama and daddy...)
The next morning I was sent out for caffeine and look what I found!
diet coke in a glass bottle! i'm a sucker for cokes in glass bottles. how refreshing!
Next, back to WORK! We head home to Moonshadow to get ready for the big day.
we start serious work on cleaning and transforming barking beetle into wedding reception wonderland
marti womac (mother of bride), emily and ki string lights
here we are during wedding ceremony rehearsal
Next, Mr. Smith shows up!
here is tommy's face after i told him how much work was left to do
Friday night was rehearsal dinner party, john johnson 40th birthday/graduation celebration.
tommy, ki and beth get ready for fun
The party was a make your own pizza party. They had a huge outdoor oven that one of the Moonshadow residents ran - you grabbed your crust (homemade sourdough, yum) put on whatever toppings (mine included the shiitakes grown on-site, yum the sequel) and baked in the oven over a wood burning fire. I think it goes without saying... a perfect trifecta of YUM.
ki loves her make your own pizza
All community meals at Moonshadow go something like this: close to eating time, you wander in the kitchen and ask if anyone needs help. One person is in charge of the meal and you might get told to chop something or peel something or slice something... it depends. Then, when the food is ready, it's tromped outside to a big glass table. Everyone lines up and grabs a plate. Then, you drop your dirty plate off and everyone takes turns for awhile washing and putting away dishes. Since I was busy with wedding stuff so much I didn't have a lot of time to do prep work, but I did hold my own when it came to washing and drying dishes.
scrub scrub scrub
After supper we all wanted to see what the lights looked like in the dark, so the girls secretly did this 'one, two three!' thing and...
the photo doesn't do it justice, but it was seriously pretty
the naughty boys did a 'one, two three' of their own in john's honor. to their credit, they did voluntarily remove the banner before the wedding.
here we are post-supper. my last job for the evening was to make sure the bride got to bed at a decent hour. i succeeded... sort of. i passed her off to someone else, and am told she did go to sleep at a decent hour.
side bar - so so SO enjoyed getting to know new friend hilary!
The next morning, Mr. Smith enjoys a cup of cowboy coffee:
good to the last drop
And Amanda starts freaking out.
breathe, repeat... breathe, repeat
We work on final details for the wedding reception. Barking Beetle has been cleared of crap, cleaned and decorated.
moonshadow is seriously a boots on the ground kinda place. i started working and five women wandered over and asked how they could help. it was awesome. it rained in the morning even and i had to leave to get ready for the wedding and even left them instructions in a 'please get done by x o'clock' manner. THANK YOU LADIES!!!
new discovery: chalkboard paint. this door indicated the turnoff point toward moonshadow.
tommy smith gets into the action (he would *not* give me a ride rickshaw style though, btw)
There is another house on property that is on the grid. We went there to get cleaned up and blow dry our hair so we looked pretty for the ceremony.
trish and amanda. trish had snacks and tea waiting for us! thank you, trish!
amanda chillaxing before her moment in the sun
Then, time to primp! In the second floor of a house with no A/C. Carol brought in three fans and we all had a good time getting beautiful for Amanda and John's big day!
thank you for the air, carol!
caterers in the kitchen at moonshadow
emily puts on amanda the necklace that their recently deceased grandmother bought specifically to give to amanda to wear on her wedding day. *a tear* i am so all about business that emily had mentioned to me she would like me to safety pin her dress to her bra and i was in the middle of doing that while she and amanda were in the middle of their moment.... um. i didn't realize. when i did i stopped nagging emily with a safety pin and took a photo.
*NEEDLE OFF THE RECORD*
My photos stop here. Girlfriend was busy, yo. I'll fill you in on the wedding later, but for now let me tell you about the I DID IT part of the blog.
Some of you may remember that a few months ago I took a trip to NC with Amanda to buy material for her wedding dress. If you would like a refresher, please visit here. As I mentioned, Amanda lost her grandmother recently, and her Granny had always said she'd like to be the one to make Amanda's wedding dress. Since she couldn't, I offered to play second fiddle and try to fill that role as best I could. I did my best.
I have made one other wedding dress; my own. Pleasing myself is WAY easier than pleasing someone else, BTW. I wanted this to be perfect for her and worked harder on this sewing project than any other in my life. I was actually terrified to cut the material (I'll go ahead and say that. I took it home to my mother's and had her help me - I was really scared despite the fact that I bought three times as much material as I needed).
Also, I didn't want to make a mock-up. It's personal superstition, but it seems anytime I make a mock-up and try to recreate it, the original is always nicer than the actual garment. Again, I bought enough material I could have a re-do, but my intent originally was to start with a mock-up.
here it is laid out on my parent's dining room table ready to be cut
here i am about to go in for the kill
In the vein of "no one really cares, i.e. skip ahead if this is boring," I began to sew together her dress. The pattern I got called for five pressure points for a corset back but Amanda's got a bigger chest so I did seven. In actuality, I could have done with five, but hey. Seven is a magically powerful number and no one was the wiser. I sewed the corset in as such:
the back
The front we had three iterations of. First was too cleaveagey:
the second was... well... too weird... the third i took two pattern pieces, taped them together, then cut where i felt i should cut. it worked. WHEW.
i made the body of the dress according to a pattern, then took the top i created from two different patterns and pinned the heck out of it, then sewed the two together.
The pattern I had called for a zipper. Amanda only needed like a two-inch give to the base of the dress, and the shortest zipper you can buy is like 7 inches. You can shorten a zipper but this material was so delicate.... I sewed in the zipper and it looked AWFUL. I pulled it back out, sewed the dress to the top I made hoping the corset back would have enough room that she could wiggle in and wiggle out. I tried to pull it on my dummy and it wouldn't go on. Since Amanda was pliable and the dummy was rigid I held my breath while Amanda tried it on, and voiced all sorts of disclaimers that it might not fit. When she wiggled in and it popped on....
she loved it. um... i will confess to crying at this point.
it's gaping a bit up top see? but i fixed it, no worries.
Next up, sleeves. She wanted to incorporate her Granny's mother of pearl buttons into the dress. There is one on the top, but the sleeves I designed went more like this:
they button under her arm pits and go down her arm - i made them removable since it's a june wedding outdoors
see the buttons? there are four of these panels that run down her arms.
one of the last fittings
with the added detail - lilac and sage ribbons around her waist
SIDEBAR *read: boring detail*: I mentioned that Amanda had a lot to work with in terms of a chest, and she had to wiggle in and out of the dress each time she put it on. At one of the last fittings, I noticed some of the seams were getting stressed when she would wiggle in and out. Once it was on it was fine, but the stretching off and on was wearing on the seams. We agreed she wouldn't try the dress on anymore until the wedding. BUT THEN, amazing friend and former wedding dress designer/seamstress Carrie McConkey suggested ironing interfacing on the seams to reinforce them. Sigh. What an incredibly simple and effective solution. Again, I doubt anything would have happened, but I definitely breathed easier during the wedding knowing those seams were ok.
We also searched high and low for a bra to go with this dress and came up with zilch that she could wear and not have the bra strap show in the corset part on her back. I ended up cutting up and sewing into the chest part an old bra of hers and it worked like a charm. It also helped with the wiggling in and out of the dress - instead of forcing the dress over a bra, she could slip in and out with MUCH more ease.
She had a short train on the dress too and the question arose on how to bustle it. I thought of two or three iterations before the light clicked on... one of my favorite shows growing up was the Lawrence Welk show (ahem... no comments please...) and I used to pretend to be one of those ladies with the bubble machines, singing with a corded mic and MY LONG DRESS OUT OF DANGER FROM STEPPING ON BY A STRAP AROUND MY WRIST.
Eureka.
i made amanda wrist strap by knotting a thin ribbon to a granny button, opening and reinforcing a small hole in the back seam of the dress, then slipping the ribbon through. ingenious. it took all of 15 minutes to create - the button kept the ribbon from popping through the seam and amanda could slide the ribbon on her wrist and keep the dress train out of harm's way.
Only one minor mishap - one of the ribbons holding the sleeves to the dress broke during the photos after the wedding. No worries; she was able to keep them on until the pics were done and then the sleeves came off any way. I. Freaking. Did. It. I seriously am so happy I could cry right now.
Back to the wedding! Thank you for indulging me in my explanation of my creation!
the happy couple dance the night away
me and jenny jen enjoy the reception
mr. smith and ki. i love his tee shirt...
this is not what i wore for the wedding; i am comfy and having fun at the reception!
me, barbara, hilary and amanda
Those of you who don't know me... might not know that I'm totally a pyro. I love to set things on fire. Not in an insane, burn-a-building-down way... but. I like fire. The yard at Moonshadow had a stump in it they wanted removed so they built a bonfire around it to assist in its removal. After the reception, I started bugging everyone I could about lighting the fire, and...
pa-WOOOOF!!!! FIRE IS COOL!!!
tommy and dixon; tommy's new bff visit at the bonfire
me, mr. smith, dixon and ki love bonfires!
Next up, Kelly starts hoop dancing. That's right; hoop dancing. I. Am. Intrigued. I should have tried to get video - it was seriously mesmerizing.
i will learn how to do this
emily hoops it up
tommy is seriously good at hula hooping for realzies
dixon is not
And I wasn't kidding about wanting to get my hooping on, because I hula hooped for LIKE AN HOUR. The photos stink, but the proof is here:
there's a hula hoop where?
i'm working it... and failing....
still learning
watch out before you get whacked!!!
it clicks... please check out my hooping prowess
I went to go hog the hoop again this morning... I hooped so much last night that my tummy is SORE. I could only handle a few minutes but I'm serious - I gotta learn more of this *read: broken furniture in the house.*
Had a wonderful wonderful time with friends and family, and am so happy to have been part of this incredible weekend. Photos are already starting to arrive of the actual ceremony and reception, so look forward to one more wedding blog next week!
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