Digital Ephemera
Posted: December 8, 2011 Filed under: wedding | Tags: Lancaster, photography, wedding, York 2 Comments »I feel bad. I said I was going to write reviews of my wedding vendors, and I did write about our PLANNER and CATERER, but I have been delayed on giving a HUGE shout out to our amazing photographers.
Source
We found Matt and Jess through a PA photographer who was already booked on our wedding day. As luck would have it Matt and Jess were free and totally fit our style. I wanted wedding pictures that were more journalistic rather than formal (which is actually really hard to do when you are are staging photos btw) and I wanted both Nick and I to jive with them. If your photographer does not get you as a couple, how can they capture the day you spent months planning? Matt and Jess also hold down full time jobs while they try and pursue their true passion of photography. Some might become uneasy with this idea but to me it meant that they truly enjoy photography with their souls instead of just happening to be good at snapping pictures. Oh, and they also love Maine! 
Over the months leading up to our wedding Jess and I crafted the best package for our day. Through multiple e-mails, I added a couple of hours to our day and we created photo credits instead of the original print sizes that came with the package. I’m not sure how many photographers are this flexible, but I liked the ability to take a bit of the pressure off. Jess even kept my updated when there was serious flooding happening in PA and the road to our venue was shut down on the day of our final walk through. If not for her we would have driven over an hour in nasty weather only to turn around.
Finally on our wedding day Matt and Jess were relaxed, there was no shouting of orders, just letting the day progress while keeping time in mind. They were open to hearing any of our photo ideas and gave the clueless couple some great shots. Looking through the pictures reminds me of funny things that were going on at the time of the shot, like how I cannot pull of that looking serious at the camera without looking angry, smiling or laughing.
Oh and I really wanted pictures with the fish at the B&B, while no one thought it was a good idea for me to be near a pond in my wedding dress, Matt cautiously snapped away.
Throughout the night they were super helpful and let me ask them to take pictures of a million people I had forgot to mention before. They even pulled Nick and I outside as the sun was finally coming out during the “magic light” hour to take some pretty cool shots (one of which I blew up and had printed on canvas).
Honestly I could go on and on about how great our experience with Matt and Jess was. They were seriously a perfect fit for our wedding. They even stop by the blog!
If you are looking for a photographer in the York, Lancaster, maybe even Baltimore area (?), please check out Digital Ephemera.
Patchwork Catering
Posted: November 2, 2011 Filed under: wedding | Tags: wedding, wedding caterer 2 Comments »I have been slacking with my vendor reviews. I have written a total of…one. Now that so many other Baltimore bloggers are engaged I feel like I need to step it up and get the word out!
Our vendor list was split between PA peeps and MD folks, so I am going keep with the MD theme and move onto our caterer.
Food was one of the things I wanted to spend the most time, money and effort on for our wedding. I am seriously passionate about food and I was not going to serve standard wedding fare at my party.
I found Patchwork Catering through my boss of all people. She had seen their ad in the Urbanite Magazine (awesome read by the way) and suggested I give them a call given that we were looking for a caterer with the same food values as us. From the beginning Jacki was super excited and energetic. She will basically take your vision and make it happen. For instance, I wanted angel food cake at our dessert bar, Jacki had never made it. She found her grandmother’s recipe and perfected it before our big day. I am pretty sure most caterers give you a choice of 3 desserts, take it or leave it. Some don’t even have dessert as an option (I guess most people get a standard wedding cake – we saved some $$$ here and no one missed the cake).
I did not want a sit down meal, nor did I want a buffet. I wanted guests to have the opportunity to move around the barn and not feel like they were chained to their table while they waited for the dinner to come. Thus the heavy appetizer option was approached and Jacki was on board.
To start, Jacki sent me about 40 different options from menus she had created in the past and we went from there, and whittled it down to 7 different dinner-appetizers as I call them. We had a wide range that would make both the meat and veggie lovers happy. As someone who has a code about the meat I eat, it was important for me to serve local humanly raised animals while having plenty of options for those that didn’t eat meat at all. I hate going to events where the only veggie option is pasta or there isn’t one at all. Jacki even went the extra yard and grilled up some tofu for my mother-in-law (she is a vegetarian) so that she would have some protein with her meal.
Not only did we get rave reviews for the food from our guests but the presentation was beautiful and everything was hot off the grill. We never ran out of food and the food options that were served earlier in the night remained out for guests to graze on. Have you ever been to a wedding were you miss one of the passed apps that you really wanted to try? I have and I didn’t want that. Jacki made it work.
If you are looking for a caterer who cares about the food they serve and their client, I encourage you to check out Patchwork Catering and tell Jacki I say Hi!
Most the above pictures are from our photographers Matt and Jess!
Cipollini Onions!
Posted: November 1, 2011 Filed under: food | Tags: farmers market, wedding 2 Comments »Yes!!!! Our wedding pictures are up!
If you would like to see our pictures you can visit the website of our awesome photographers Matt and Jess, but you are going to need to know our wedding date 
I need to have some backstops!
Anyway, back to our regular Tuesday programing of Farmer’s Market Tuesday!
Every week there seems to be one less vendor and my egg lady was gone today 
She said she would not be leaving until the end so I really hope she comes back! At least I have Springfield Farms for my winter eggs.
Today I got something new…
Cipollini onions! I usually stick with the yellow onion but I thought I would branch out a little bit today.
One observation of these onions is they make you cry like no other. They are also much stronger than my yellow onion, and this could also be due to the fact that they are from the market and have not been sitting on a shelf forever.
After I finished crying I cooked up the little buggers along with some yellow pepper, beans and mushrooms.
I topped it all off with some delicious blue cheese. I also added a lovely side of acorn squash coated in chili powder.
I can still taste the onion so I am not sure what to do with the other 3 I have…maybe if I caramelize them they won’t taste as strong?
Are you a big onion person? I didn’t eat onions until a few years ago and now I only eat them cooked.
One for for the books!
Jemily
Posted: October 22, 2011 Filed under: wedding | Tags: vedor review, wedding, wedding coordinator 1 Comment »After seeing Heather post a vendor review for her wedding, I thought I should do the same while I wait patiently for my pictures.
First up, Wedding Coordinator – let me just say you need a wedding coordinator if your site does not already come with one or you don’t have a family member/friend willing to take on he task. I wasn’t going to get coordinator at first and then I quickly realized that meant I would be the one laying out the table clothes, setting up the flowers, shuffling guests, managing the caterer, checking on the servers and bartenders etc. on my actually wedding day. As my mom says, “you can’t put a price on piece of mind”.
Now, let’s meet Jean and Emily aka “Jemily”.
These ladies are a hoot but keep it professional. They are extremely organized and have been in the planning business for a long time. They were always dressed to the nines, while I was all frump, but I was planning a wedding!
I hired Jemily for their day of coordination services, met them 6 times before the wedding and I had countless e-mail exchanges. I was also a little spoiled because they manage all of the rentals for the caterer I had selected, giving me access to more choices when it came to things like linens (I was given access to thousands of linen choices, could have been overwhelming, but I knew what I wanted). They had countless checklists and helped me focus in on the exact details of how I wanted my wedding to go. Do you know if you would want the groomsmen to come down the isle alone or with the bridesmaid? Crossed arms or just next to each other? Little things that don’t really matter in the big picture, but why not have everyone coordinate?
On the day of my wedding I probably missed most of the things Jean was doing to make sure my day was running smoothly. I had left our centerpieces for her to place on the tables along with table numbers and candles, given her our drink list to create our bar menu, told her about all of our vendors.
When I arrived 2 hours before the ceremony everything was geared up and ready to go. She made sure the DJ’s music was on time, our officiant was there, the tables looked amazing, the servers were even in coordinating ties of green instead of the boring black. The entire morning we were getting ready I didn’t worry one bit about what was going on at our barn. I guess this was sign that Jean had put me at easy, and what would be would be.
After the ceremony Jean made sure all of the decor used in the ceremony space was moved down to the reception space to make sure we got full use out of all of our hard work and dollar. At the end of the night Jean and her team collected all of items that were my personal belongings and boxed them up so that they would be ready for loading in the morning (It took us about 15min to clear everything out the next morning).
If you are looking for an event coordinator in the Baltimore metro area, I would highly recommend Boutique Events!
Minimoon!
Posted: September 29, 2011 Filed under: wedding | Tags: minimoon, wedding 2 Comments »We are back and married!
You can check out our teaser photos at http://digitalephemeraphotography.blogspot.com/
What I can show you is the minimoon in WV!!!
We rented a cabin in Lost River, West Virginia. Thankfully we stopped in MD for groceries otherwise we would have starved. Everything in Lost River is closed from Monday – Thursday. It was kind of a bummer not to be able to get a genuine WV souvenir, but we still got pictures!
Our lovely porch that we spent a lot of time on.
We did not have TV but we did have internet – Nick would have been lost for fantasy football without it. Nice office view.
First meal! Eggplant, cauliflower, onion, homemade garlic toast in a fiery pasta sauce. We made really simple meals while we were there because ingredients were limited.
Morning views looked like this from our loft.
Favorite spot.
Nature friends.
Our best hike! Half way up Nick left a note in the shelter’s notebook.
Cheers!
We were surrounded by farms (some of them factory farms…boo) and mountains
Up and up the gravel mountain – do not try this in a 2 wheel drive car.
I even made a fire!
We will always remember 695 Toms Knob Approach!
Work Wedding Shower
Posted: September 15, 2011 Filed under: wedding | Tags: wedding 2 Comments »Today was another special day in my wedding world! My coworkers (especially Elaine and Debbie) put together a really thoughtful shower for me.
They tied in the bunting that we are having at the wedding, all of the baked goods were homemade with all real ingredients including organic pumpkin and zucchini!
I sampled everything! Pumpkin coffee bar with chocolate chips, zucchini ginger bread with hazelnuts, apple blackberry cobbler, angel cake and fruit salad.
Elaine even made signs so people would recycle but it didn’t really happen 
Thanks for trying!
The entire event was very special, no spotlight and just hanging out with lots of interesting advice.
Thank you ladies!
Yes, were were mocking the skinny arm here!
Peachy Keen
Posted: September 13, 2011 Filed under: farmers market | Tags: farmers market, peach, wedding 1 Comment »I am going to make this addition of Farmers Market Tuesday short because I have been up since 4:45AM and to Lancaster and back. I know lasts week’s was short but we are in wedding crunch time and things are cray cray in crunch time.
If you have not enjoyed a summer peach or stone fruit, get on it. They are leaving soon and it is sad. The week of rain we just had killed a lot of the tomatoes too, so get on those too.
One peach and one nectarine. Fuzz vs. no fuzz.
Which one do you like better? I have to say I am leaning towards the nectarine. I remember as a kid I liked them better too but nothing beats a fresh local peach.
Nectarine = winner!!!
Besides hitting up the farmers market, I checked on our growing wedding flowers, had my final walk through at Rock Ford (which got me flusters because there were so many details coming at me fast…), 2+ hour in the car annnnnd my final hair cut and color!
I also threw in a 6:30AM yoga class just because I was already awake so why not?
Final sprit woot woot!!
Place Cards
Posted: August 28, 2011 Filed under: wedding | Tags: wedding Leave a comment »Well Irene is over, the windows are open and I am trying to work on some wedding DIY stuff while Nick is at his third fantasy football draft of the weekend.
I spent a couple hours working on the bunting while watching Bride Wars (totally not my types of wedding, but it seemed to fit the theme) and then I moved onto testing out our place cards.
Place cards are something I did not want to spend a lot of money on so I picked up two packs of black boarder cards at Michaels for $4.99 each and tested out some ideas today. I like the font because it looks like how George Washington would have written, which fits the barn and the time period in which the planation was built. I also wanted to use one of of our stamps from the invitations and went with the bucket, split between two names.
When you bring the couples together you get a whole bucket!
Now, I didn’t plan it out to be like that. Do you think it is supper cheesy or kind of a cute idea? Single people coming to the wedding will still get buckets too!
Sissy helped out a lot…
Bridal Shower
Posted: August 25, 2011 Filed under: wedding | Tags: wedding Leave a comment »Last Saturday I had my bridal shower. At first I was totally against it because I hate being the center of attention and a lot of people coming to my wedding live very far away and could not attend. I did however have some very special people there!
Katie (BM and Nick’s sister), me and my MOH Katherine. We missed you Rugge!
Momma Beans and I
Joanne (FMIL) and her beautiful table display. Lovely farmers market flowers! Fingers crossed they will be as nice in September!!!
Katherine, Katie and Joanne did a great job getting all of the food together, even with a 5 hour flight delay.
Tulle makes a great headpiece.
Lots of boxes!
Cake cutting – yes my hair was a mess because I got hot opening presents and had to put it up.
The cake was designed after our mailbox and had N+H “carved” on the branch. Red velvet cake, indeed.
One special who I hadn’t seen in a year was my pledge buddy from my sorority in college!
Ms. Lindsay Bothe! She drove 5 hours through tons of traffic just to be here. No one had easy travels last weekend, but lets hope all of that is out of our wedding karma system.
Thank you everyone who came to my shower, traveled many miles and made it such a special day. A special thank you to my FMIL, Katherine, Katie, and my mom for putting this whole thing together!
p.s. I cannot wait to cut my hair! Gross and long.
Wedding Invites
Posted: August 10, 2011 Filed under: wedding | Tags: wedding 1 Comment »So sorry I missed farmer’s market Tuesday yesterday!!! I actually do not have much to report except this cute little sugar ‘loupe that I got for Nick.
I like cantaloupe but it is not my favorite. Nick loves it and he can eat this little softball size melon in one sitting and I am not eating the leftovers. Perfect!
Something else I wanted to share, our invitations!
I wanted our wedding invitations to be simple and not expensive. I also wanted to do an online or call in RSVP to save money and the environment! This was actually a save the date card that we made into an invite. My mom and I stamped all of the invites with the barn before stuffing.
I got the stamp from Etsy and the designer told me it was made after her parents barn that had been torn down many years ago. Looove stories!
After the barn we need to do the envelope.
My mom really liked the idea of lined envelopes but they are crazy expensive and we already had the stamps because of our old stamping hobby.
The bucket is set to pour out the stars and leaves to give it a fall touch without being too much. I like them a lot and we were able to put the money saved towards more important things like FOOD! Our tasting in on Monday and I am so excited!
