We're married!

One month ago, today (eek, sorry for the delay!), Mr. Bear Cub and I stood on a cliff overlooking the ocean, surrounded by our loving family and friends, and solidified our love in marriage.

photo credit: Susánica Tam Photography

It was wonderful, beautiful, and (honestly!) everything I had ever wished it to be.

I only have a few teaser photos from our amazing photographers (and a fab guest photographer!), but I can't wait to relive our amazing wedding weekend with you once I get the rest of our photos!


Much love and baby bear kisses,

Mrs. Bear Cub

Astronomers Do The Darndest Things

By the time you're reading this, I'll probably be on a plane... TO WEDDING LAND!!! :-D

So as I leave my adoptive country for my month-o-bliss, I'd like to give special thanks to my friends in La Serena - the ones Mr. Bear Cub and I live with (in a fishbowl of expats!), the ones we work with (in the same fishbowl..), and the ones who care about us enough to through us a surprise wedding shower!!!

Reelie?? I can haz party??

Our neighbors in expat-ville had invited us over to their home a few weekends ago ostensibly for "fried chicken". You don't get fried chicken in Chile. We were biting. Especially since we had planned to run 17 miles before hand! Anything fried tastes HEAVENLY after 17 miles on asphalt!

So we popped down to their home with party-food offering in hand, and this is what we saw:

Needless to say, I was quite shocked! And very happy :)

I couldn't believe our sweet friends here threw a party all for us! I'm not the easiest person to surprise! Mr. Bear Cub claims we must have been COMPLETELY oblivious to the plans the entire time. I've never been so thankful for good friends and my own spacey-ness. :)

There wasn't, in fact, fried chicken! But there were freshly-BBQ'd ribs! :-D

They're really that good. Plus they inspire sweet-n-smokey high-fives!

Astronomers are a friendly bunch!
Err... I mean.. We're a rather goofy bunch! ;)

But altogether, astronomers got your back when you need it!

Thanks, M!!

Mr. Bear Cub and I were super happy and relaxed all afternoon - finally a party we didn't have to plan! :) It was so nice to bask in the warmth of friends & camaraderie and celebrate! for once!

Let the celebration begin!

Was your "bridal" shower more of a "wedding" shower/celebration? Were you as completely shocked and elated as Mr. BC and I were??

Whether We'll Weather The Weather!

Hi Hive!

Meet Miss Bear Cub: Professional Amateur Meteorologist!

The forecast for the Pacific Northwest US over the next few weeks is:

...

I don't know. :)

But I do have a few tricks up my sleeve! Enter the Four Three Horsemen of precipitation and cold fronts:

Accuweather
As the name suggests, this must be the "accurate" weather forecast! I've been checking accuweather for their long-range (15 day!) predictions.

accuweather

So far, so good - sunny and clear! For coastal Oregon, this is a near miracle. But the forecast could change tomorrow!

That's why there's...

Weather.com
C'mon, you know you use this one. It's in the name. Even my dad uses this one. Standard, normal, not-too-daring in their predictions, yet just-enough of a sneak peak into next week!

weather.com

But meh... I wanna know about my wedding weekend now! Me! Me! Me! No! No! No! ... No Rain!

And sheesh weather.com - mostly sunny? Partly cloudy? Sounds like someone needs to grow a pair!

And finally, there's ol' reliable...

NOAA
This is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They know their poop. They're also really really conservative with their estimates. (7-day forecast? how passé)

noaa

This is good when you want accuracy (in your face accuweather!), but not-so-hot when you're a bride to be wishing to predict the cold fronts for oh, I don't know ... ROMANCE AND MARRIAGE! Gawh, NOAA!

Let's get real - no one can accurately predict the weather more than about 3-5 days out. That's why every day now I'm checking these three sites - one for reliability, one control group, and one to toy with my mood.

Have you gained a new hobby in forecasting the weather, conveniently near your wedding venue? What's your favorite hocus-pocus precipitation predictor?

Cover Up That Bear Cub Bum!

Bear Cubs are a bit shy - this little Bear Cub doesn't know the first thing about lingerie!

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It doesn't help that certain other Bear Cubs also don't know a thing about lingerie - a Ms Bear Cub, in particular, needs to find "sexay" bum-cover-uppers STAT!

Luckily, in this forest of Oregon called "Stumptown" (the trees became stumps? Oh bother. At least there's good coffee honey.) there seems to be a preponderance of cutesy lingerie stores!

Oh Baby has gotten great reviews on yelp!

Plus it's located within walking distance of another yelp crowd-pleaser, Lille Boutique:

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Aerie by American Eagle is quite cute, too - and definitely nicer on the wallet! The thing that's confusing this little Bear Cub so much is that her mister is really more of a sports bra kind of guy Bear Cub.

Patagonia definitely has some cute sports bras:

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But $35 for a sports bra? And $20 for undies? Hmmm... it's all so confusing! (Plus that cute green is all sold out in the undies! Pooh.)

Do you ladies know of some relatively inexpensive unmentionables of the sporty variety?

While I'm in Portland next week (NEXT WEEK!!!! :) ), I'll try to hit up these two local lingerie shops! The only thing I don't know is if I should go alone or not. Do you think it's better to go lingerie shopping with a gal pal, or solo?

Tweet Tweet!

Remember way back when? When I had lofty plans for re-creating Lauren Alane's cutie-patootie felted birds cake topper?

Consider this project DONE suckah!

please forgive the crappy photography! I just discovered photobooth :) - and no tengo tiempo!

It took me a couple of tries, but I finally finished a pair of birdies I was happy with!


Mr. Bear Cub is obviously the taller red birdie! He always wears red, plus he's a ginger ;) (I love me some red hair - can't wait for the cute ginger babies one day!). My little birdie is actually a very light lavender color! Ha! I totally <3 the lavender.

Special thanks to Miss Poodle for supplying me with the correct wire for their legs! :) No hablo the spanish well enough to find the right crafting knick-knacks in my town. ;)

I've still got enough time to dress up the bridal birdie a bit! What do you think, should I go for a little hair flower? Maybe an über-tiny, über-cute bow in her "hair"?

How did you put your cake topper on your cake? I was thinking of just sticking the wire legs into the buttercream! :)

Too Much Bridal Glow

Wow, that was stupid.

Mr. Bear Cub and I were out on our weekly super-long Saturday marathon training run (you don't want to know how many miles), and Mr. Sunshine (not to be confused with Mr. Sunbeam!) decided to peak his little head out of the clouds.

Ladies, I have two weeks until my wedding. I now look like a raccoon.

ALWAYS

WEAR

SUNBLOCK

TWO WEEKS. TWO WEEKS!!!! I don't particularly want to be sporting the 'coon eyes on my wedding day!!!

...although, I am quite a sexy raccoon!

(sexy raccoon)

Seriously, these are about the worst burn lines one could hope for. If I was wearing sunny-g's, you'd think I would have thought to wear sunblock, eh?

comes with complimentary neck-burn!

It gets worse:
Halfway through the run, I rolled up my sleeves a bit. Ruh-roh! Bear Cub has sleeve lines! Sad Bear Cub. :(

I'm no stranger to burns - normally I wear SPF 50+!! The last time I got a bad burn (worse than this), the burn line lasted for about 5 months.

My wedding is in 2 weeks.

In the meantime, I'm slathering on the aloe, drinking lots of water, and taking some ibuprofen!

How long do you think it will take before the burn fades to my normal lovely pale skin?? What's your fool-proof method to reducing/minimizing burn and tan lines?

Lavender, Poppies, Treasure Maps, and Viking Ninjas

Our invites were sent out almost a full month ago, but I only got to see them in real life for the first time a little over a week ago!  While I was in California for my MOH's wedding, I had my mom mail me my own copy of our wedding invite.  Ladies, it's a wonderful thing to hold your wedding invitation in your hands.

I had dreamed up the idea for our invitations almost 6 months ago!  I knew I wanted the prevailing theme to be fields of lavender and poppies (you could say I have a thing for France), I wanted real pressed lavender, I wanted seed paper, and I wanted it to all be bound up nice & sweet in a little book.

Because I was a bit... particular in what I wanted, I knew the process was going to take a little bit of time, especially long-distance from Chile.  Truthfully, making the invitations myself had been one of the things I desperately wanted to do.  I wanted to press the flowers myself, I wanted to learn how to screen-print, and I wanted to try my hand at design.  At some point I came to the realization that wouldn't be possible from South America - I couldn't get the supplies in time, I didn't have the equipment (or the resources) to learn new skills, and both US and Chilean customs are a little iffy on importing biological products.

With all this on my mind, I turned to a designer in Eugene, OR who's still fairly new in the invitation making & letterpress business.  Since I would no longer be supporting local artists in Chile with my invite project, I wanted to support artists local to the Portland/Eugene area.  Kristin Walker of Twin Ravens Press was very accommodating to both my budget, design wishes, and eco-conscious wishes.  I wasn't very familiar with contracting the design and printing of invitations for a wedding (who is, before they get engaged??), and there are a lot of things I wish someone had told me about the process beforehand.  I'll give you guys a list of the tips & tricks I learned along the way in a future post, including the steps in the design of the invite!

We had Kristin letterpress a single lavender sprig with our return address on the flap of our Waste-Not cream envelopes.

When you open the envelope you see that someone's sent you a whole BOOK of an invitation! :)

The book is bound in hand-made Nepalese Lotka paper - 100% tree-free and it feels almost like leather!  Kristin found a local supplier of lavender for the pressed flower on the front of the book.

The first page of our book features a poem we wrote together specifically for our wedding...

 Our ideal of love is sitting together in a meadow,
the last rays of daylight fading beyond the horizon
as we look into each others eyes
 -- and feel in one moment --
the soft breeze of the summer wind
 -- and the next --
the first prick of the coming autumn,
causing us to nestle together for a little extra warmth.

 We wanted this poem to help our guests to feel the emotion in the changing of the seasons with our nuptials - since our wedding will be 2 days before the equinox, the astronomical equality and changing of the seasons are going to play a significant role in our ceremony.

The poem is immediately followed by the formal invitation:

I had Kristin blind-emboss some lavender sprigs to give the design a more three-dimensional feel - as if you're looking close up at some lavender and poppies, but there's more lavender in the distance. 
The next three pages of our invitation are three individual maps - one of Camp Westwind, one of northwest Oregon, and one of Portland.  Luckily, Mr. Bear Cub loved the idea of having a map made for our wedding!  Crystal Kluge designed all three maps, and made the calligraphy for the poem and our names on the main invite.  Crystal's maps and calligraphy are among the most unique I've seen in my 15 (!!) months of being an engaged woman.  Originally we weren't interested in calligraphy at all (it seemed a bit too froofy for us), but we (I) adored her quirky cute penmanship.
Plus her maps are exquisite.  When she sent us the mock-up for this map, we originally had our wedding date as "09.20.2009".  Then I noticed that if we arranged it the European (and South American... basically non-US) way, it would appear as "20.09.2009"!  I thought that was just so cool. :)  What an easy way to remember our anniversary!  Our maps truly deserve a post of their own; we're having Crystal watercolor a set of the maps that we'll frame for our home.

The final page of our book-invite is a sweet request to RSVP via our webpage.  We live in Chile, my parents live in Oklahoma, and even though Mr. Bear Cub's dad lives in Portland, we didn't want to deal with the stress of lost RSVPs long distance.  AND we get to cut down on extraneous paper and envelopes and stamps and such! 

Mr. Bear Cub's favorite part of our entire invitation can best be described as the "hallmark crown on the back".  You know how all Hallmark cards have that little crown on the back of them?  Mr. BC wanted to include his favorite fictional character, a viking-ninja, on the back of our invitation.  I'm sure most of our guests didn't see this, but that's ok - little dude is pretty stealthy.
What's a viking-ninja, you ask?  Well... I can't really tell you!  Mr. BC has plans for our little viking-ninja friend in the future, so I can't spill the beans too much.  All I can tell you is that it's a little viking boy who found himself in Japan, and was befriended by ninjas...
Even though the process of making the invites took a lot longer than I thought it would, I'm really very pleased with them.  The day Kristin sent me pictures of the finished product, I burst into tears.  I had had a pretty rough day at work, I was really stressed about the wedding coming together, and there I had in front of me our finished invitations - something had finally come to fruition, and it was just what I had been envisioning.  

Mr. Bear Cub was also admittedly skeptical about having our invitations made - originally he wanted to just send emails to everyone.  While this would definitely be the most economical and ecological option, I really wanted to have a solid invitation to our wedding, I wanted something I could hold in my hands.  My mom framed my parent's wedding invitation; I remember looking at it as a kid, and thinking that she must have been so happy to send her invites to her family and friends for her wedding day.  

I now understand that feeling, and I can't wait to show my children our framed invitation one day.

How To Adorn The Balcony...

Um... I'm the worst decision-maker ever. I still don't know what necklace I'm going to wear with my wedding dress!

Remember my wedding dress? Good.

I know this is obviously the most important part of the wedding, and why am I not spending more of my time on silly things like venue insurance and lighting, but you ladies like jewelry & style, right? Can't go wrong with the hive! :)

Here's the dish: I have a rather particular look I'm going for. Call it grandma-boho-chic, flapper-tastic, or waterfalls of pearls dripping from my nape. Call it whatever you want, but it looks kind of like this:

photo credit: Ashley Garmon, via OnceWed

photo credit: Julie Harris, via A.Mountain.Bride

More like the bride in the first pic, I love it when the pearls drape past one's balcony. It adds beautiful length to your torso - especially for Shorty McShortcakes like me!

Also very important is the neckline of the dress I'll be wearing. I love how the bride in the second & third pics layered her necklaces - it makes her look so carefree and rich with life! - but my dress isn't strapless. It definitely has "straps", not unlike the bride in the 1st pic (no peaksy, Mr. Bear Cub!!).

So here's my deal - I love the look of long, layered pearls, but I just don't know which gosh darn necklace to get! I've been poring over etsy for the past few days, and it's just getting worse.

I bought these necklaces a few months ago:

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I love both of these necklaces - especially the non-white aspect - but I think the second necklace doesn't really come down past my balcony far enough (and it clasps behind the neck, it's not one super-huge necklace doubled up). BTW that dress I'm modeling the 2nd necklace with is NOT my wedding dress - just an example. But remember that my dress isn't strapless!! We must lengthen the torso, and draw attention to my balcony! ;)

all photos from etsy.com

I think the style I'm going for is called "lariat" - the necklace on the bottom right is most like what I'm looking for, but I'm not sure it'll ship in time (from asia!). I'd prefer real pearls, if possible, but this necklace has caught my eye:

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... Layered, perhaps, with the two necklaces I already have. Maybe pearls strung on a long piece of ribbon would work...

If I'm to wear anything around my neck, my frame needs length. Then again, I could just forgo a necklace altogether...

Which of these necklaces would you pair with my wedding dress? Do you have any other necklace suggestions for me? How would you best achieve that grandma's pearls/boho-chic look?