Equinox Love: Goin' to the Courthouse and We're...

Gonna get married??

After leaving dinner with our families Monday evening, Mr. Bear Cub and I got the opportunity to spend some time alone, strolling the streets of downtown Portland.  This was such a welcomed breath of fresh air!  We talked for a little while about the days to come - last minute plans, tactics for avoiding stress - and then Mr. BC asked me the question.

"Let's get married!"

"Umm... OK dude.  Sounds fantastic.  How does Sunday work for you?"

"No, let's get married tomorrow."

We had planned to go to the courthouse the following morning (Tuesday) to get our marriage license.  My dear fiancé was suggesting we get the license and sign it at the same time!

This caught me a little off guard.  I mean, sure, of course we'd be getting married - what difference would a couple of days make in the long run?  The real concern was making sure our marriage would be legal before we left the country after our wedding.  We'd planned on leaving for our honeymoon the day after the wedding, and flying back to Chile two weeks after the wedding - what if we couldn't get the documents finalized before we left the country??

No matter when we signed the documents, our "wedding" would still be the one we had planned for so long.  Our real wedding - the date we celebrate for anniversaries, the one we share with family and friends, the one that links us in our minds and hearts - would be the celebration on Sunday.

I must remind you - we had done NO research at all on courthouse weddings!  We were blindly assuming at this point that you could show up, sign a document, and be done with it.

We decided we'd hedge our bets with the courthouse - if we could sign the documents Tuesday morning, great!  We'd be married!  No worries for legality later!  If not - oh well!  We'd be getting married anyways come Sunday!

This was all so EXCITING!  We might be husband and wife (technically) the next morning!  A courthouse wedding!  I'm not much for crowds anyways, plus Mrs. Mary Jane's courthouse wedding was so incredibly beautiful.  You know what this means?

CUTE COURTHOUSE WEDDING DRESS!!! :-D :-D :-D

 

I heart you, jcrew!

I had already bought this dress - the JCrew linen-silk rosette tussah - thinking it might be nice for a reception back-up dress.  All you short-dress ladies out there: this dress is SO beautiful!  And it has pockets!

So, Tuesday morning Mr. Bear Cub and I dressed in our nicest "we might be getting married" clothes, and hopped on over to the Multnomah County Courthouse.

 

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Even though the Portland Courthouse is downtown and surrounded by other buildings, I was still quite impressed with it.  Plus, Portland has trees everywhere downtown - even at the courthouse, you feel like you're in a park!

Inside the courthouse, we got to the task at hand - get those documents!

You get your marriage license in the tax collection office.  Oh tax collection room, you're so romantic!

Aaaaand... we got our marriage license documents.  And obligatory pictures in front of the courthouse.

Aren't we cute?  Young and in love!

As for getting the license signed, apparently you're supposed to plan ahead for that one.  When we asked if we could have a judge formalize our marriage that day, the lady behind the counter informed us that they were booked solid until the following month!  Yikes!  So much for romantic spontaneity.

At least we got our marriage license taken care of!  And I got an excuse to wear my short wedding dress!

Even though we had a walk-down-the-aisle-with-family-and-friends wedding, I still love the idea of courthouse weddings - they're so romantic and intimate!  Have you and your future intended ever thought about getting legally married before the wedding day?


Catch up on the tale!
Equinox Love: New Beginnings
Equinox Love: Through Our Friends’ Eyes
Equinox Love: Reticence
Equinox Love: The Tipping Point
Equinox Love: Preparations Before the Family Storm
Equinox Love: Meet the Parents!

Equinox Love: Meet The Parents!

Less than a week before the wedding, our parents had yet to meet!  This, I think, is among the strangest things about adulthood - the stark realization that your parents have yet to even meet those who will become deeply entwined with your future.  Your fiancé's parents - they will be your parents.  And your parents, the people who have guided you, molded you, counseled you, bathed you - they will be his.  For me, this truly solidifies the notion that you and your fiancé are really, and finally, becoming a family.

So naturally, I was a little anxious about the first meeting.  I mean, our parents made us, and we like each other - so they must like each other, right?  (Sorry, Juliet.)  Even though Mr. Bear Cub and I are astronomers, we're lucky not to be so star-crossed. ;)

Amidst the mayhem of preparations, my parents (Momma Bear & Papa Bear) and siblings (Sis Bear Cub & Bro Bear Cub) flew into Portland from Oklahoma Monday afternoon.  Mr. Bear Cub's mom and two sisters also flew in from Wyoming that day.  And then Mr. BC's step-grandma (his step-mom's mom, and also our officiant) trained in.

We decided that a good common ground would be dinner at a restaurant - this was such a good idea.  We made reservations at a nice sushi place in the Pearl District (agadashi tofu OMNOM), and everyone trickled in around the same time.

And you know what?  The "meeting of the families" went fine.  I think I was anxious because as much as I love my family, they're weird.  For that matter, everyone's family is weird - in their own way, of course. :-p  I have this theory that the magnitude of familial eccentricities is directly proportional to the density of family members present (ie - my whole nuclear family + his whole nuclear family = A-bomb of eccentricities??).  Then throw more family (and friends) into the mix, and you might as well call it a "Manhattan Project Wedding".  ;)  I kid!

The dinner conversation was going smoothly for a long while (ie, everyone was talking about how awesome Mr. BC & I are ;) ), and then someone (I can't remember who) added the enriched uranium to the noun and verb soup: church and/or politics.

If Mr. BC and I are star-crossed in any way, it's that his family is staunchly progressive democratic (Oregon, hello!) and deist, and mine is values-voter conservative (straight outa Oklahoma!) and very Catholic.  Being the progressive humanist that I am, I've learned to choose my battles over church and politics very wisely.  Read: AT ALL COSTS, don't add this reactive substance at the first meeting!  (Subsequent tests are at your own discretion ;) ).

I think it was something about single-payer health care.  Someone on the left (literally - his family was sitting to the left of us) said something like "Why don't we have single-payer health care already?  It makes so much sense!"

I saw my dad (sitting, ironically, just to the right of Mr. BC's dad) suck in a long wind of air, firmly place both palms on the tabletop, and then retort with, "And raising taxes to pay for it makes sense? [grmblgrmbl]..." (this is largely paraphrased, by the way!)

Mr. Bear Cub and I froze, our chopsticks mid-air, sashimi halfway to our previously blitheful mouths.

There was some sshhh-ing on the left of the previously unknowing provocateur, the world [for us] stood still for a few seconds longer, and then it all passed.  Sashimi hit mouths, wedding chatter continued, and atomic warfare was averted!

All in all, it was a pretty successful first meeting for our families!  (Just add sushi!)

How was your Meet The Parents experience?



Catch up on the tale!
Equinox Love: New Beginnings
Equinox Love: Through Our Friends’ Eyes
Equinox Love: Reticence
Equinox Love: The Tipping Point
Equinox Love: Preparations Before the Family Storm

Equinox Love: Preparations Before the Family Storm

As you noticed in my last post, we had just a couple of things to take care of the week before the wedding!  We had so many things we wanted to do, let alone the things we needed to take care of.

For example, we really really missed being in the states and doing normal US-things.  So, on our list of "funbligations" (obligations that are just too dang fun to pass up!) were things like run in Forest Park, have coffee at St. Honoré Bakery, eat breakfast at the Screen Door (omg you need to go there - soul food heaven!), and take a stroll through REI for old time's sake.  I know this might sound lame.  It's amazing the little things you miss about your home country!

Anyways, we had a tight schedule in which our Portland gallivanting could also count as wedding prep - my family was flying into town on Tuesday, and that's when the prep would kick into over drive.

Saturday morning was a dream.  The first thing we did was run 5 miles in Forest Park.  Those were the easiest 5 miles I've ever run in my life - everything was so beautiful!  (Maybe the euphoria over getting married was kicking in?)

not me - but just as good!

Forest Park is right next to the darn cutest little neighborhood ever - what I lovingly refer to as the alphabet district.  All the streets run in alphabetical order, and they have the same names as characters from the Simpson's (these were actually the inspiration for the characters' names!).  Just blocks from the end of the trail is the St. Honoré Boulangerie - oh-so-cute, and delish coffee and pastries to boot!  (Maybe I should do a Honeymoon In My Hometown for Portland already?)  Sipping coffee after a run in the woods was absolutely divine.

After coffee and a shower, we bopped over to the other side of Portland to rehearse with our band, Terracoustic - I'll save those deets for the reception, though. ;)

We truly got derailed when, on Sunday, we tried to fit a 12 mile run in before visiting our venue for the final consultation (2.5 hours away!).  The plan was to run most of the Sauvie Island Foot Traffic Flat course (a protected 12 mile route), then stop by the flower farm to see what would be in bloom for our wedding, pick up lavender bouquets on the island, and top the day off with our visit to Westwind.

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 Sauvie Island is located right in Portland and, lucky for me and my penchant for lavender, it has a bountious lavender farm on it!

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I thought that 12 miles would be a piece of cake by this point.  We'd already been running up to 18 miles, anyways!  Unfortunately, it wasn't so easy.  Jetlag does a number on your ability to run.  We were sluggish the entire run.  I began to think we couldn't run the marathon ("Would this be a metaphor for our marriage??"  I thought, defeated, as I gulped down air).  I even had to stop at mile 11 to cry on Mr. Bear Cub's shoulder.  I couldn't understand what was so difficult about this run.  We'd already come so far, we'd already set everything up like clockwork.

By the time we finished our run, it was way too late to drive out to Westwind.  We called the staff, and rescheduled for Tuesday, hopeful we'd still be able to get everything taken care of in time.

How did you juggle your last-minute preparations?  Were you able to maintain your sanity, or did you have to sacrifice anything along the way?


Catch up on the tale!
Equinox Love: New Beginnings
Equinox Love: Through Our Friends’ Eyes
Equinox Love: Reticence
Equinox Love: The Tipping Point

Equinox Love: The Tipping Point

Incidentally, while I was getting ready to leave Chile for our month in the states of wedding bliss, I was also in the middle of reading Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point.  This is a fascinating book, very light-hearted yet genuine (perfect for the week before the wedding!).  Mr. Gladwell posits that there is a "moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point" in which little things that previously seemed insignificant prove to make a big difference (as states the byline). 

source: wiki

Mr. Gladwell's first example has to do with the curious rise in popularity of hush puppies (holy cow are they popular in Chile).  As I was sitting in the La Serena airport, packed and ready to board my plane to weddingland, it became evident that I, too, was approaching a tipping point in our voyage.

Our flight was canceled.

CANCELED.

The plane that was supposed to take me and my loverboy (that's Mr. Bear Cub ;) ) to Santiago, to catch a 9pm flight to Dallas, to catch an 8am flight to Portland, had, upon landing at my airport in La Serena, sucked a bird into one of its engines.  My early afternoon flight was permanently grounded, and most passengers were being ticketed for a connecting flight the following day.

Sad Bear Cub.

 

stuck at the airport with my irony

For most travelers, this is an unwelcome inconvenience.  To a bride a week before her wedding, this is catastrophe.  We had carefully planned to arrive on Friday a week before the wedding.  This would leave us with a very finite amount of time in which to move mountains.  As it was, every single day before the wedding was already chock full of tasks - arriving a day late would derail my sanity and make it nearly impossible to finish important things like baking the wedding cake.

No joke - we were packed tight:
Friday (arrive midday, tired)
-- final dress alterations (hadn't worn let alone seen my dress for a full year)
-- 5 mile training run (remember that marathon we'd been prepping for?)
-- Mail my engagement ring to the wedding ring maker for final adjustments (he lives on the east coast!)
Saturday
-- 15 mile training run
-- visit flower farm, make final arrangements for u-pick flowers
-- pick up lavender bushels
-- get mason jars
-- organize decoration supplies to go to Camp Westwind
Sunday
-- visit Westwind (2 hour drive away), meet with camp director and head chef
Monday
-- 6 mile training run
-- get a makeup trial, buy some makeup
-- get a dang haircut already
-- buy some lingerie!
-- meet and rehearse with our band
-- buy plants from a nursery for special extra part to ceremony
(My family flew into Portland around this time.  As lovely as they are, this starts to add other important duties to the list, such as spending precious time with them ;) ).
Tuesday
-- 8 mile training run
-- get the wine (across town)
-- arrange for the beer (kegs) to be picked up
-- kill fires
-- eat sushi (this one's important)
-- FAMILY MEETS FOR THE FIRST TIME!!
Wednesday
-- 5 mile training run
-- bake wedding cakes with my maid of honor, sister, and mother all day (get supplies in advance)
Thursday
-- must have been busy, because it's a total BLANK
-- something resembling a bachelorette/bachelor party in the evening
Friday
-- Drive to Westwind!
Saturday
-- Prep for the wedding!
-- (12 mile run.  can you believe the insanity?)
Sunday
-- Wedding!!!
Monday
-- get the heck outa dodge.

... I was a bit stressed.  Mr. Bear Cub suggested we try to calm down in the airport by practicing our wedding dance.  When we told one of the gate agents that we were traveling to get married, the skies parted (less birds for air strikes), and they did everything in their power to help us get to the states by the following morning.  There was a late flight that evening, set to arrive in Santiago at 8:50pm.  Our original flight was set to leave Santiago at 9pm.  They told us we could take this late flight, and chance making our connection.

We answered with an emphatic "SI!!"

They checked our bags all the way to Portland (normally you have to re-check your bags upon arrival to the states - this would also be a tight connection), and arranged for a gate agent to escort us to our connection.

We just made it.  They had put us in the first row of the plane, and as soon as the door to the plane was opened, a gate agent whisked us through all sorts of back hallways in the Santiago airport to our connecting gate.  We were literally running across the airport, movie-like, giddy smiles at our grand fortune plastered across our faces.

And we made our connection.

We were routed a little differently - through Miami - but we arrived in Portland only 6 hours late.

Blissful in our good fortune (I even convinced the rental car company to rent us a Prius for the price of a Chevy Aveo!  Wedding card score!), we regrouped to tackle the mountain of wedding tasks for the following week.

Equinox Love: Reticence

Hmm...  over three months since my last post.  I haven't really been on my blogging game, have I?  I've wanted so dearly to share with you my wedding.  I've composed entire recap posts in my head - the good, the quirky, the unmatched love.  But every time I spin the story in my mind's eye, I find myself saddened by the handful of ways in which my wedding embodied anything but love.  The painful memories burn in spite of the overwhelming adoration.

But I have to be real.  I could gloss over our wedding with just the pictures, but then where would the soul be?  Even the best wedding pictures can only aspire to capture the ecstatic and schizophrenic thoughts coursing through the minds of the bride and groom on the day of their wedding.

To wit:  I cried on the morning of our wedding day.  Not because I was overcome by the sight of my gown.  Not because my groom sent me words of love.  I cried on the morning of our wedding day because the previously misplaced decorative lighting had just been found.  LIGHTING.  I had wanted to create a perfect mood for our wedding dinner, but in its place I had fostered a sour mood over misplaced light bulbs.  I cried because I was so immensely grateful that someone came to my rescue, that someone understood my need for... light bulbs.

I am very embarrassed that I let myself care so much about something so insignificant.  Or rather, I wish I could reconcile within myself a personal battle.  I am a highly sensitive person, and throughout my life I have attempted to please everyone before myself.  For my wedding, I wanted (just once) for the people around me to show me they were trying to understand me and my wishes and intents as I have attempted to do for them in the past.

This is difficult territory to tread.  On one side of the battlefront, I wish I had had help and emotional support in certain instances from specific people.  On the other, I feel ashamed for even thinking these ungrateful thoughts.  We already had so much help in building our wedding day - it wouldn't have come to fruition without the hard work of our friends and family.

And yet, there's a strangely sour tone to my memory of our wedding.  I could have handled things better, taken over more tasks myself (could I?), I could have been more magnanimous in the face of my social anxiety (maybe?), ... I could have taken more deep breaths.

When it comes down to it, your wedding is the embodiment of your life and all the characters in it (even some you didn't know were in it!).  You can try to rebuild old bridges among family members, and you can try to fully embrace your growing family of friends.  You must, however, take these few days in your life in stride.  They are only a few steps (however large) in the journey that is your joined life with your husband.  Own these days for all they are, the good and the bad, but don't let them decide ad infinitum your life's path - this you have the power to continuously sculpt, with your new partner by your side.

My point in all this is that I've been reticent to post about our wedding.  I would be lying to myself, and I'd be lying to you if I said that everything went swimmingly.  Everything didn't go swimmingly, mostly because I was stretched immeasurably thin.

Despite this reticence, our wedding was irreplaceable - I deeply cherish my memories.  The lows, however infrequent yet painful upon hindsight, cast the highs in euphoric relief.

Equinox Love: Through Our Friends' Eyes

I haven't really told you much at all about our photographers thus far.  That's a shame - they're first friends, second fabulous photographers.

Mr. Bear Cub and I asked my friends from college to photograph our wedding.  I know this doesn't work for everyone (they aren't exactly "Uncle Bob" with a new DSLR & kit lens), but for us it worked out just right.

In college (at USC) I was a member of the climbing club.  Los Angeles is a great place for rock climbing!  There's Point Dume (on the beach!), Malibu Creek State Park (Planet of the Apes, anyone?), Echo Cliffs, & so many more awesome places it'd be silly for me to list them all.  Long story short, I had a blast with my fellow climbers!  One of my friends in the climbing club, Susánica Tam, was getting serious about photojournalism - she took her camera everywhere!  Susánica especially liked to capture action shots of us climbing in ridiculously gorgeous places, like Owens River Gorge and Joshua Tree.  After graduation, she became a sports photographer, especially for rock climbing.

Did I tell you I nearly completed a double major in French in college?  (It boiled down to a semester studying astronomy in Chile or a semester studying in France!)  I got to know Jonathan Moore in several of my upper-division French classes (he was also in the climbing club with me & Susánica).  By the time we graduated, I knew he was actively pursuing a career in sports photography.

When Mr. Bear Cub and I started planning our wedding, I began to see how beautiful wedding photography could be.  It's kind of redic - you're basically paying a PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER to make you into a model and paparazzi-shoot the entire day.  Um... heck yes I want to be a model.  Who doesn't?  Make me perty!

But ho-lee cow professional wedding photography is expensy!  The Bear Cubs' salmon stock isn't all that bountiful - Mr. BC said we didn't need professional photography.  He said we could do fine with just our friends' pics.

haha!  srsly??

Ok, deal Mr. Party Pooper.  I'll ask our friends to shoot our wedding. ;)

Luckily, when I asked Susánica if she would be interested in photographing our wedding, she told me she was transitioning from sports photography to wedding photography, and she'd love to shoot our wedding!  And when she suggested Jonathan come along as a second shooter, I knew we'd made the right choice.  Both Jonathan and Susánica are very talented sports photographers & photojournalists - it was obvious that their style of shooting would translate well to wedding photography!

Susánica Tam and Jonathan Moore are both working very hard to grow their wedding photography businesses - hopefully you'll see through their photos the talent and hard work I saw when I asked them to shoot our wedding.

A few months before our wedding, a little dessert named Mrs. Cherry Pie asked if she could come to my wedding with her husband Mr. Cherry Pie.  Mrs. Cherry Pie was totally one bee blogger I followed religiously - I was thrilled to have her come to our wedding!  Plus, she's the genius behind Persimmon Images wedding photography.  I knew she was bringing her camera, but I didn't realize she was going to take so many wonderful pictures!  Plus (even though I was super busy!) I had a great time getting to know her more - she's very natural behind a camera, and makes you feel like your best friend in 2 seconds!

I wanted to take the time to tell all of you about our photographers a little more, because they were so much more than photographers.  They were our friends first, and awesome photographers second.  I never felt uncomfortable in front of the lens, because I was already comfortable with the dude (or dudette!) behind the lens.  We cracked jokes, shared stories, commiserated together about crazy last-minute wedding crap, and they took care of me.

And, they took some pretty bad-ass pics of our wedding.

How did you choose your wedding photographer?

Equinox Love: New Beginnings

Hi!  Let me introduce myself.  My name is Mrs. Bear Cub, and once upon a time, I blogged (relatively) consistently for this super-rad wedding site called Weddingbee.

No me recuerdes??  :)

It's ok, I'll catch you up!  I live in Chile (Ms. Poodle's home country!) with Mr. Bear Cub.  We met in New Mexico, got engaged in Thailand, and decided to marry in Mr. Bear Cub's home state of Oregon, at a summer camp.  I had some crazy DIY plans along the way.  And an even crazier plan to run a marathon with Mr. Bear Cub a week after our wedding!

How did it all pan out?  It was crazy, wild, emotional, torrentuous, healing, but most importantly, perfect in every way for us.  And although our wedding day was certainly and undeniably one of the happiest moments of my life, I'm very glad it's over.  It's just a day, and now we get to cherish our memories, while building our future together.

Before I jump into the recaps, I have a little slideshow to show you that one of our wedding photographers made for us.  I almost (almost) don't need any other token from our wedding; this selection of images completely encompasses the feeling of our wedding weekend - community.

When I think about the events that happened over the weekend of our wedding, the thing that makes me cry tears of happiness (every time!) is thinking about the incredible effort and support provided by our guests.  Our guests were much much more than guests.  As our friends, our family, our loved ones, they made up a community of love surrounding our wedding.

Every time I see a picture of our friends and family helping us create our wedding day, I cry tears of happiness.  I can safely say that every single person in our wedding community truly made our wedding day happen.  They helped create the event, just as they helped create us through all their previous years of support and love.

Jonathan Moore Photography

I can't wait to share with you how everyone helped make our wedding day happen.  Hopefully I can make you feel like you were there with me, too.  I sure wish you could have been. :)

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!

source

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:

source

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.