January, 2014 - DIY Bride

Bianca + Rosie’s Peacock Wedding

For Bianca and Rosie’s summer wedding in Washington, DC, they handcrafted most of their items that made their day oh-so-special. The couple’s small, super intimate affair was big on capturing their love for each other, and of course, their DIY talents. Their photographer Holly Graciano did a superb job of catching all the little private moments Bianca and Rosie had throughout the day that really would make anyone smile.

Bianca and Rosie DIY most of the details: The bouquet, boutonnieres, hair pieces, programs, hand-embossed cards, gift bags, “bride” and “wifey” lettering on the robes, and the “love” box that they locked during the ceremony. The box, containing letters written to each other as well as a bottle of wine, is to be open on their first anniversary.

From the photographer:

“They had their emotional first look at The DuPont Circle Hotel, followed by an afternoon ceremony at Chelsea Gardens that was officiated by Tiffany Newman. Because their wedding was such an intimate affair without attendants, we had lots of time for photos at Meridian Hill, before meeting their guests for dinner at Lincoln restaurant.”
Wondering what the finger mustaches were about? They were temporary ‘stache tattoo that everyone wore on their fingers in honor of the real tattoo that Bianca wears on her finger. How cool!
Photographer: Holly Graciano Photography//Wedding Date: August 24, 2012//Location: Washington, DC, USA//Officiant: Tiffany Newman//Ceremony Site: Chelsea Gardens//Restaurant: Lincoln Restaurant//

Submitted via Two Bright Lights

Abbie & Javi’s Sea of Love Wedding

Growing up as a lobster fisherman’s daughter, what else can be served for dinner other than… well, lobster! It is of no surprise that this fun wedding is lobster themed, coining “Sea of Love”. And I want to eat that yummy crustacean so badly that I repeated the word “lobster” 4 times already in 3 sentences. OK, enough and onto the wedding. This adorable couple decided to get married at the bride Abbie’s family camp at Camp Wohelo in Maine. What makes this location so awesome is that this summer camp was actually founded by Abbie’s great-great-grandparents and has been run by her family ever since. It is where Abbie spent every summer as a little girl, and it is also where her great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother ALL got married. Talk about family tradition! So it goes without saying that Abbie and Javi had no trouble deciding where to host their wedding. Bethany & Dan Photography did an awesome job capturing all the fun and dancing, details, beautiful scenery, and of course, the yummy eats!

Since this Sea of Love wedding is all about lobsters, Abbie’s dad actually shipped 30 unpainted lobster buoys to the couple. Every night after work, they bonded over these buoys and put their creative talents to use and painted each one of them with something to represent every important aspect of their lives. What a special way to spend time and have fun with your significant other! Other DIY projects? Abbie spend months before the wedding embroidering, sculpting, sewing, and crafting just about everything else! Abbie wants to point out especially the lobster koozies, seersucker bunting, lobster cake topper, and her garter. How cuuuute was the lobster cake topper?! Definitely one of my faves for this wedding, next to Abbie’s awesome braided updo!
It’s always so much more meaningful when there is such a deep family history where the wedding is held. I love that for Abbie and Javi, it is their way of bringing their family together to continue a tradition via the wedding. There’s really nothing much that can go wrong when there is so much love at one place!
Photographer: Bethany & Dan Photography//Wedding Date: September 01, 2012//Cinema and Video: Aaron Steele Productions//Ceremony Location: Camp Wohelo//Bakery: Good Life Market//Hair Stylist:Lisa Michaud//DJ:Maine Platinum DJ//Equipment Rentals: One Stop Party Shoppe//Floral Designer:Raymond Village Florist//Dress Store: Vocelles | The Bridal Shoppe//

Submitted via Two Bright Lights

Moon’s Shine Rises upon the High Hills

They set noiselessly to work, and the Parsee on one side and Passepartout on the other began to loosen the bricks so as to make an aperture two feet wide. They were getting on rapidly, when suddenly a cry was heard in the interior of the temple, followed almost instantly by other cries replying from the outside. Passepartout and the guide stopped. Had they been heard? Was the alarm being given? Common prudence urged them to retire, and they did so, followed by Phileas Fogg and Sir Francis. They again hid themselves in the wood, and waited till the disturbance, whatever it might be, ceased, holding themselves ready to resume their attempt without delay. But, awkwardly enough, the guards now appeared at the rear of the temple, and there installed themselves, in readiness to prevent a surprise.

It would be difficult to describe the disappointment of the party, thus interrupted in their work. They could not now reach the victim; how, then, could they save her? Sir Francis shook his fists, Passepartout was beside himself, and the guide gnashed his teeth with rage. The tranquil Fogg waited, without betraying any emotion.

“We have nothing to do but to go away,” whispered Sir Francis.

“Nothing but to go away,” echoed the guide.

John Doe

They say what is said always remains there.

Nippers. Strictly this word is not indigenous to the whale’s vocabulary. But as applied by whalemen, it becomes so. A whaleman’s nipper is a short firm strip of tendinous stuff cut from the tapering part of Leviathan’s tail: it averages an inch in thickness, and for the rest, is about the size of the iron part of a hoe. Edgewise moved along the oily deck, it operates like a leathern squilgee; and by nameless blandishments, as of magic, allures along with it all impurities.

But to learn all about these recondite matters, your best way is at once to descend into the blubber-room, and have a long talk with its inmates. This place has previously been mentioned as the receptacle for the blanket-pieces, when stript and hoisted from the whale. When the proper time arrives for cutting up its contents, this apartment is a scene of terror to all tyros, especially by night. On one side, lit by a dull lantern, a space has been left clear for the workmen. They generally go in pairs,—a pike-and-gaffman and a spade-man. The whaling-pike is similar to a frigate’s boarding-weapon of the same name. The gaff is something like a boat-hook. With his gaff, the gaffman hooks on to a sheet of blubber, and strives to hold it from slipping, as the ship pitches and lurches about. Meanwhile, the spade-man stands on the sheet itself, perpendicularly chopping it into the portable horse-pieces. This spade is sharp as hone can make it; the spademan’s feet are shoeless; the thing he stands on will sometimes irresistibly slide away from him, like a sledge. If he cuts off one of his own toes, or one of his assistants’, would you be very much astonished? Toes are scarce among veteran blubber-room men.

Inside Fashion

Now, by reason of this timely spinning round the boat upon its axis, its bow, by anticipation, was made to face the whale’s head while yet under water. But as if perceiving this stratagem, Moby Dick, with that malicious intelligence ascribed to him, sidelingly transplanted himself, as it were, in an instant, shooting his pleated head lengthwise beneath the boat.

The Sounds That Always Echo

Dropsik Chill Beats by Jordan Agaran Riley

Gurry, so called, is a term properly belonging to right whalemen, but sometimes incidentally used by the sperm fishermen. It designates the dark, glutinous substance which is scraped off the back of the Greenland or right whale, and much of which covers the decks of those inferior souls who hunt that ignoble Leviathan.

Maria

Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered about a table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of SKRIMSHANDER. I sought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be accommodated with a room, received for answer that his house was full—not a bed unoccupied. “But avast,” he added, tapping his forehead, “you haint no objections to sharing a harpooneer’s blanket, have ye? I s’pose you are goin’ a-whalin’, so you’d better get used to that sort of thing.”

I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed; that if I should ever do so, it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be, and that if he (the landlord) really had no other place for me, and the harpooneer was not decidedly objectionable, why rather than wander further about a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put up with the half of any decent man’s blanket.

An Amazing Yet Simple Image Post

Nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, ‘and what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice ‘without pictures or conversation?’

So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.

There was nothing so VERY remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so VERY much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, ‘Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!’ (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually TOOK A WATCH OUT OF ITS WAISTCOAT-POCKET, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.

Baking the Good Stuff

“Queequeg no care what god made him shark,” said the savage, agonizingly lifting his hand up and down; “wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god; but de god wat made shark must be one dam Ingin.”

It was a Saturday night, and such a Sabbath as followed! Ex officio professors of Sabbath breaking are all whalemen. The ivory Pequod was turned into what seemed a shamble; every sailor a butcher. You would have thought we were offering up ten thousand red oxen to the sea gods.

In the first place, the enormous cutting tackles, among other ponderous things comprising a cluster of blocks generally painted green, and which no single man can possibly lift—this vast bunch of grapes was swayed up to the main-top and firmly lashed to the lower mast-head, the strongest point anywhere above a ship’s deck. The end of the hawser-like rope winding through these intricacies, was then conducted to the windlass, and the huge lower block of the tackles was swung over the whale; to this block the great blubber hook, weighing some one hundred pounds, was attached. And now suspended in stages over the side, Starbuck and Stubb, the mates, armed with their long spades, began cutting a hole in the body for the insertion of the hook just above the nearest of the two side-fins. This done, a broad, semicircular line is cut round the hole, the hook is inserted, and the main body of the crew striking up a wild chorus, now commence heaving in one dense crowd at the windlass. When instantly, the entire ship careens over on her side; every bolt in her starts like the nail-heads of an old house in frosty weather; she trembles, quivers, and nods her frighted mast-heads to the sky. More and more she leans over to the whale, while every gasping heave of the windlass is answered by a helping heave from the billows; till at last, a swift, startling snap is heard; with a great swash the ship rolls upwards and backwards from the whale, and the triumphant tackle rises into sight dragging after it the disengaged semicircular end of the first strip of blubber. Now as the blubber envelopes the whale precisely as the rind does an orange, so is it stripped off from the body precisely as an orange is sometimes stripped by spiralizing it. For the strain constantly kept up by the

Megan & Jeff’s Old Books Charm Wedding

This Pennsylvania wedding brought to our attention from photographer Rebekah Pillmore @ Pill Photography is nothing short of charms. What else can you expect from a writer and an antique collector? Megan and Jeff chose Friedman Farm as their picturesque venue with a beautiful old barn to decorate as they please. They adorned the barn with choice antique pieces collected by Megan herself, and lit the whole place up with a romantic chandelier and draping lights on tree branches. Everything was just so… timeless.

Megan collected vintage cameras as center pieces, old library card catalogue used as seat assignment holder, and framed covers of their favorite books as table signs are all part of what makes this wedding so sweet and charming. To personalize their wedding some more, even the menu was catered to their health-conscious choices: salmon, roasted veggies, and lean meats!

Before I end this feature, I want to share something special about this wedding. It’s nothing new when a couple wants to write their own vows… or to have a family member to preside over the ceremony (it’s an uncle in this one), but it’s super sweet and special for all guests to feel involved when the couple surprised everyone to ask all who came to marry them via what’s called a Quaker Wedding or Self-Uniting Marriage in Pennsylvania. They created a special paper and ask all to sign to witness their wedding!
Photographer: Pill Photography {Rebekah Pillmore}//Wedding Date: June 08, 2013//Floral Designer:Creedon Flowers//Reception Venue: Friedman Farms//Linens and Coverings:Lavender Linens//Bakery:Lynn Sandy’s Bakery//Dress Store:Something Blue Bridal Boutique //Caterer: The Epicurean Delight Catering Co Inc//

Submitted via Two Bright Lights