the wedding planner.

Right now my real life is half-way packed into cardboard boxes. I’m moving out of my apartment on Tuesday and flying to San Francisco on Wednesday, to begin festivities for Laura’s wedding! It’s the sparkling light at the end of my bubble-wrapped tunnel. Boy do I ever have her big day on the brain. So, I put together three days of wedding-themed posts. Let’s call it Wedding Week! 

First up, we’re going back in time to last summer (it’s amazing the things you find in the moving process!) when Tessa and I planned a wedding. Yes, the title of this post is a reference to the Jennifer Lopez movie. What young girl didn’t watch it and think to themselves: that’s what I want to be when I grow up! We already had a habit of throwing extravagant parties – mostly for ourselves – so we thought we’d give it a go.

The venue was the Surf Sand Resort in Cannon Beach, and the Oregon Coast is notoriously overcast. So, we planned the wedding in tones complimentary to gray : turquoise and sea-shell pink.

the design elements we included ...

• Carnation Pomanders : hung on the aisle chairs for the guests of honor (video how-to)
• Flower Cones Made of Map Paper : lined the rest of the aisle chairs 
• Alter Curtain : The coast also gets windy, so we wanted something with a lot of movement. We dip-dyed white sheets and thrifted for coral-colored floral sheets, which were torn length-wise and tied on a ribbon for hanging. 
• 750 ft of Bunting : We thought that dip-dyes and color gradients would really create that washed-out ocean look. So the bunting was done using four different shades of each color in succession.
• Peaked Edge Dip-Dyed Round Table Runners: We cut the pattern using this Martha Stewart How-To, and dip-dyed the outer edges using a clothes line and buckets of RIT dye. It was placed over standard banquet linens. (here’s a close up of the dye-job … it turned out so pretty) 
• Floral Cake Centerpieces: Each table had its own gluten free cake from Sweet Pea Baking Co in Portland. They were set with a cake-stand and cake-cutter which was tagged with the words “wait, wait – cake cutting at 8:30”. The floral cake toppers were done by a family-friend, using mums, hydrangeas and garden roses. 
• Hand Painted Driftwood Signs : we collected the driftwood when we came out for the menu tasting with the caterer, the Wayfarer. The signs – for the guestbook, the reception, and the present table – were hung with vintage lace ribbon. 

it all made for one happy bride and groom! 

(design element photos) by Samantha Shorey, on film with Pentax K1000. More on my Flickr!
(photo of the bride and groom) courtesy of David Tureson

a bit of news :

Change - real change - always happens in a single minute. The capacity of sixty seconds in astounding. 

I was at home by myself when I opened this letter. And I will never ever, not in a million years, forget the feeling. I put on The Wizard and I (from Wicked) because a musical number was the only thing that could possibly compare. 

I know how rare minutes like that are: minutes when things work out better than you allowed yourself to hope for. Maybe someday I'll be able to write about what this means for me. About the way things aren't fair for those we love - about how we lose them, and they lose their jobs, and we become fearful of wanting, of asking, of reaching. But for now, I will try to be factual. 

I was accepted to the Communication masters program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (a program ranked in the top 10 by NCA)!!

I don't know what it was - other than luck and work - that brought me to this minute. But it came. And heavens, am I grateful.

to achieve the marvelous.

"To achieve the marvelous, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought." 

Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

(photo) on film with pentax k1000 | Jack Kerouac Ave, San Francisco

portland places | A Lunch Cruise on the Portland Spirit

I can make a production out of just about anything. Give me an occasion, and I'll give you an outfit. I'll also show up late to the occasion, for a little dramatic flair. Because boarding the Portland Spirit on time wouldn't be nearly as fun as holding up a ship full of tourists as I sprint down the waterfront in full cruise-regalia with my heels in my hand as my blue-blazered date waits on the dock... now would it?

Logan and I both work at the hotel, so we're always recommending day trips and activities that we've never actually done ourselves. Saturday we changed all that. Logan took me on a lunch cruise on the Portland Spirit, where we enjoyed a whiskey press while sailing up the Willamette River. 

I wore wrist-length silk gloves and nobody got left on shore ... so I'd say, it was a winning day all around. As Holden Caulfield said : "If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody."

weekend song | Go Slow

this song reminds me of sitting in the front yard at the end of the day, when the windows are open and the fans are on - but the house is still too hot to handle. I've played it over and over this summer. Something about it sounds like old-school Annie Lennox, ya? 

The stripped version on the Warby Parker Citizen Sessions is absolutely brilliant.  

(song) listen here / buy here (photo) on film with Pentax k1000

portland places | Sauvie Island Lavender Farm

This is the second lavender field we went to. 

The first one boasted "a hundred different varieties" in their Lavender Festival write-up ... and I don't want to say that was false advertising - because maybe they had only one plant of each variety - but their "farm" was a front yard with three rows. And their official Lavender Ambassador was a man with no shirt on (my sisters reaction upon seeing him : well, that's not very professional) They also advertised "herbs" with "calming medicinal properties" - which retrospectively makes me think that mayyyybe they specialize in another kind of growing.

After some quick googling we found Sauvie Island Lavender Farm.  Even though it wasn't as expansive as I had dreamed, I was happy. The lovely lady-owner let us pick our own bunches, and she tied mine up with a bow for my birthday. 

There's nothing like the smell of lavender and lowered expectations to sooth the soul. 

(photos) on film with Pentax k1000

David Foster Wallace | we are the real rebels.

“the next real literary ‘rebels’ in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching. Who treat plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in the U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Too sincere. Maybe that’ll be the point.

The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of the gifted ironists, the “oh, how banal.” To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness.”

David Foster Wallace, E Unibus Pluram
An essay on the role of irony and television in U.S. Fiction.
Written in 1990, long before blogging began.

gatherings | Lily's Birthday (and big proposal!)

On Friday morning, Lily's boyfriend called me at work. The conversation started with small talk, thought I had a feeling he wanted to talk about something substantial. And he did. He was asking to marry my sister. After a lot of squealy excitement (mostly on my part, but not entirely), he let me in on the plan to propose the next day at her Birthday Boat Bash. Which worked out perfectly, since the hoopla of her birthday would hide every hint that something even bigger was about to happen ... and I only had to keep the grin off my face for a few-hour car ride. My part in the big plan was to make sure Lily left for the lake before 9:00 ... no easy feat, since the Shoreys can be a little slow moving in the morning and she would be spending the night in the nearby town after a wedding. 

But the next day, I caught the bus under a highway overpass (where I watched a bum wake up - gooood morning), commuted to Clackamas, bought bagels and coffee and was ready to go by nine am! on a Saturday!

To get some alone time - proposing isn't a three person activity - AJ told Lily he had planned a "birthday" hike for them and that I could stay to decorate. I asked myself : how would I feel if Lily was actually skipping out on setting up for the party to go on a hike. answer : annoyance, thinly masked with enthusiasm. Luckily, years of passive aggressive behavior primed me for the roll of a lifetime - I nailed it, and Lily was none the wiser.

By the time they got back the decorations were done, making the whole day feel like magic for her. She was so excited she got a bloody nose.

My other pictures from the day were a blurry blownout mess, but the proposal was captured on a Go-Pro. The recording survived for three whole hours before it was accidentally dropped in the lake when her new fiance dove off a bridge in a burst of enthusiasm/manliness.

So, the rest of the day will have to live on in memory. and it will.

(photos) on film with Pentax k1000 

two for | Red, White + Blue

Film photography makes my life a twilight zone of timing. For example ... the photos I posted on the 4th? actually from last year.  But, I liked these too much to sit on them for another 354 days so I thought we'd have a little redo.

Luckily, my sister and I dress in navy blue every other day of the year so it's pretty much like the Forth of July all the time. Except we're not at the lake. I'm working in an office with no windoww torturing myself with photos of the lake. and I didn't get to eat a hot dog for lunch. and I'm wearing a bra (ughhh.) instead of a bathing suit. So, not like the Forth of July at all.

(photos) on film with Pentax k1000

two for | The Merit of Meaning It

1.

"the merit of originality is not novelty, it's sincerity"

Thomas Carlyl

2.

"If something inside you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write towards vulnerability.

Don't worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent or fraudulent."

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

I want to be interesting, but I'm always erasing because I find myself mushy, and frilly, overly descriptive, and trite.  I liked these two passages - because they reminded me that the important thing is just to mean it.

(photo) on film with Nikon FM

weekend reading :

are there fireflies where you live? I've only seen them a handful of times on summer vacations back East, and I think they are just the most magical creatures on planet earth. The quote above (from Neil Gaiman's Stardust) describes a shooting star falling over a forest, and I thought it was such a rich description. To me, fireflies always look like they're foolishly falling in love - lighting up and going out - over and over again. So, today's "weekend reading" is dedicated to the best bug around.

for the f i r e f l i e d 

• catching fireflies in a jar ... fills me with childlike wonder just looking at it!
• Yayoi Kasuma's mirror and light installation Fireflies on the Water
• I have a secret/silly dream of wearing matching t-shirts on a camping trip with friends like you do at Summer sleepaway camp. I'd pick this one from Kin Ship Press.
• jar + cut open glow sticks = fun project for a music festival
• the Robert Frost poem Fireflies in the Garden has always spoken to me about confidence

"That though they never equal stars in size,
(and they were never really stars at heart)
Achieve at times a very star-like start"

• below : breathtaking time lapse photos of fireflies by Yuki Karo

gatherings | Laura's Bridal Shower

Laura's getting married a month from yesterday, so I guess it's fitting that I finally processed the film from her bridal shower. It was nice to relive the real excited of opening a toaster and all the little details from the day, right down to the monogrammed ribbon.

Her wedding has given me so much to look forward to this year: Las Vegas and Chicago, with the big day up next! Every couple of months we all get together, and it's become so clear why each of these ladies hold such a special place in Laura's heart. I'm really going to miss seeing them- and Laura's handsome future husband - after she ties the knot . 

... which is why I'm trying to get included in her anniversary. C'mon Radley, whatdya say?

(photos) on film with Pentax k1000

Mary Oliver | let the world have its way with you

"Heart, I implore you
it's time to come back from the dark
it's morning, the hills are pink
and the roses whatever they felt
in the valley of night
are opening now
their soft dresses, their leaves are shining
why are you laggard?
Sure you have seen this a thousand times,
which isn't half enough. Let the world
have its way with you, luminous as it is
with mystery and pain-
graced as it is with the ordinary" 

Mary Oliver

a reminder I must constantly give my heart, to come back from what I've felt. To open up - again and again - to all that is a part of life : the wonderful, the hurtful, and the everyday.