Ch-ch-changes

I got a new job.

I thought about punctuating that statement with an exclamation point, but the sentiment behind it is still a little bittersweet. The new job is without a doubt sweet. It's a ridiculously opportune chance to take a big step up in my career, and I feel so lucky not only that such a perfect job for me came along, but that the powers-that-be chose me to fill that job. In this economy, I know that kind of serendipity can't be taken lightly, and I can't wait to prove myself to my new bosses.

The bitter part comes when I realize I'll be leaving the people I've spent every weekday with for a long time now. They actually remind me a little bit of the people I've spent every Thursday night with for a long time now.

(source)

No one here has ever grilled their foot or held a pizza boy hostage. But some pretty wacky things have happened here under the oversight of our own version of Michael Scott. (Sadly, there is no Dwight equivalent.) I've worked here longer than "The Office" has been on NBC, and leaving undoubtedly will be hard. I guess one upside is that all that guilt I've felt about not having enough space to invite my co-workers won't matter much anymore.

I'm excited by all the challenges and responsibilities my new job will entail, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried about the stress of taking it all on. Not to mention that with less than six months until the wedding (yay!), I know that the window of time before decisions must be made about certain things (food, chair and table rentals, cake, etc.) is closing quickly. I'm also concerned about accruing enough vacation days for the as-yet-unplanned honeymoon.

With this big step ahead of me, I'm grateful more now than ever for my family, my friends and, of course, The Backyard Groom, who have all helped me make this difficult decision to move forward in my career. Thanks, y'all!

Our soon-to-be official officiant

I'm really close to the officiant we will be using for our wedding. In fact, he is my dad! Now before you start thinking I'm a preacher's kid, I'm not. The Backyard Dad is getting ordained online (for free!) through the Universal Life Church, making him another Friendor (or Vendad?) we will be lucky enough to have.

The reasons behind this decision were (a) The Backyard Groom and I don't belong to a church in Austin, and (b) we both are a bit on the shy side. Having a stranger marry us just seemed like it would be wrong for the small and intimate wedding we're planning. We don't want to feel awkward and uncomfortable on our wedding day. So when we started discussing alternatives, The Backyard Groom suggested that we ask my dad. And he accepted!

Since this will be The Backyard Dad's first ceremony to perform, we'll pretty much get to design the whole thing from scratch. At first I was a little nervous about this, but then I kept reading recommendations over on Weddingbee for a book called "The Wedding Ceremony Planner."

(source)

Now I'm really excited that we'll get to plan and write every aspect of the ceremony ourselves so it fits us exactly. And we'll have an officiant who cares for us both to make it official.

Engaging photos

The Backyard Groom and I consider ourselves lucky to have such ridiculously talented friends. And we consider ourselves doubly lucky that these ridiculously talented friends are also ridiculously generous with their talents and time. Because of this, we've been able to secure the services of a few "friendors" for our wedding for free. Woot!

Friendor No. 1 is our photographer. The Backyard Groom is actually a professional photographer, and it took quite a bit of sweet talk to disabuse him of the idea that he would be shooting our wedding himself. This task became a little easier when a friend/former co-worker of his offered his services for free. I've seen some of this guy's portrait work, and it's fantastic. He wants to make the shift into weddings and build his portfolio, so he also offered to do free bridal and engagement sessions. I'm beyond thrilled about this. Honestly, I'm still on the fence about bridal portraits because I can't picture ever putting huge photos of myself around the house, but the thought of engagement pictures makes me giddy.

Because The Backyard Groom is a photographer, we have a ton of photos he's taken of us through the years. They're great photos, some of my absolute favorites, but they all have one common feature - they're all close-ups courtesy of The Backyard Groom's outstretched arm. I'm so excited that we'll soon have photos of us that actually include our bodies and don't involve any contortions to make sure one of us can hold the camera steady at the same time.

Now comes the job of choosing where to shoot these engagement photos. Austin is an absolutely beautiful city, where you can find any kind of backdrop you want, from bustling Sixth Street to the funky buildings of SoCo to the gorgeous lake views from Mt. Bonnell. Instead of choosing one of these locations at random, I'd like to choose an Austin landmark that has meaning to us as a couple.

First up, the Texas State Capitol. (I forgot to bookmark the source pages for these images. Sorry, copyright holders!)

The Backyard Groom and I met and fell in love while interning for the state. (Yes, intern fraternization was frowned upon so we kept it a secret from our co-workers all semester.) We didn't actually work in the beautiful Capitol building, but we walked by it to get to our office a block away. The grounds of the Capitol are so pretty, especially at this time of year, so I'm sure we could find some pretty places to snap some shots.

Next up is the University of Texas campus. We were both UT students when we met, and we both graduated from UT, so maybe we're a bit biased in our opinion that the campus is awesome. Just take a look at the Main Building tower facing the South Mall and the Littlefield Fountain.

When you're a UT student, you inevitably spend a good chunk of time hanging out at the shops and cafes on The Drag. The storefronts have changed a great deal since The Backyard Groom and I were in school, but some of the most famous places are still there, like this mural by singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston. Jeremiah the Innocent is one of Austin's many unofficial mascots.

One of the 10,452 things The Backyard Groom and I have in common is that we are BIG movie fans. Several of our early dates were at the lovely historic Paramount Theatre during the Austin Film Festival. I think the marquee and building facade would make a pretty background. Plus it's only a short walk from the Capitol.

On any given weekend, there is probably an 92% chance that we will go see a movie, and about a 97% chance that the movie will be seen at one of the Alamo Drafthouses. We are admittedly obsessed with the luxury of chowing down on burgers and beer while watching a movie, and the Alamo is the best. Their Ritz location on Sixth Street also has a cool marquee for a photo backdrop.

Austin is compact enough that we should be able to pose for pictures at a couple different places, but I'm still having trouble narrowing it down. What do you think? Are they any Austin places we should be sure not to miss?

A wedding and a party without a wedding party

Because The Backyard Wedding will be so small, only our closest friends are invited. Those same friends would without a doubt be the ones we would want to include in a wedding party, but when you're having a guest list of 20, it seems a bit ridiculous for half of those guests to be included in the wedding party. Then we'd have no guests left but our family (several of whom already will be involved in the ceremony in other ways).

Even though we won't be having a traditional wedding party, I still wanted to tell my friends how special they are to me and how much I appreciate that they will be using valuable vacation days and hard-earned money to come watch me wed. Since I wouldn't be asking them to be bridesmaids, I thought I would ask them to be non-bridesmaids instead. A very crucial component of being a non-bridesmaid involves not wearing anything like the ladies below.

Luckily for me, they all accepted! Even though they won't be wearing matching dresses (ugly or otherwise), my ladies will be there supporting me and shaking their booties with me, and I couldn't be happier.

Thanks, ladies!

D-I-Why? Project #1 = FAIL

I mentioned before that I am not a crafty gal. Well, now I've got proof.

Both because of the budget and because it just keeps things simple, I want to make my own bouquet. Here's a reminder of my inspiration photo, except I'd like a solid red carnation bouquet.

I had a long lunch break last week and after doing a little damage to my debit card at Sephora, I decided on a whim to run over to HEB to pick up some red carnations. All they had were some mini ones so I picked up the two tiny bunches they had and decided to stop at another store on my way back to work. No red carnations, mini or otherwise. Instead, they had some mini red and white carnations. I'm a big fan of natural-looking florals (i.e., no lime green carnations or blue gerber daisies) and I know I want a solid-color bouquet, but I also knew I'd need more blooms to work with so I went ahead and bought them.

This is what the two kinds of mini carnations look like.

Unsatisfied still, I stopped at yet another HEB on my way home that afternoon (seriously, you can't shake a Mexican martini without hitting an HEB in Austin) and finally found some full-size red carnations, what I'd wanted all along. There were only three small bunches but I figured I could just mix them all together. (Spoiler alert: I figured wrong.)

Here is a photo of the full-size carnations. Aren't they gorgeous?

Even though I love fresh flowers, I rarely buy any so just having some in the house was really nice. So nice, in fact, that I let a couple days pass before even attempting my DIY bouquet. (You can call it laziness, but I prefer inertia.)

Here is what they looked like sitting idly on the table.

Finally on Sunday afternoon, the alternative of watching the NBA playoffs led me to try to make something out of my pretty flowers. Instead of finding a YouTube video or reading past Weddingbee posts on the subject, I decided to just wing it.

Big mistake. First off, after I cleaned and cut the stems, I realized I hadn't even remembered to get floral tape or wire or ribbon or those lovely pearl-topped pins or anything to hold this sucker together. Ooops. I decided to try and make due with the rubber bands they came with.

Next, I began positioning the full-size carnations into a bouquet. I thought they looked pretty good, but could have been fuller so I reached for the mini carnations. Mistake #2. The mini carnations were two to three blooms per stem. I don't doubt that someone with only a slightly higher skill level could have arranged them so it would work, but I couldn't. In order to keep the height the same, I had to remove the smaller blooms from the longer stem, and then there wasn't enough stem to keep them all together with the larger flowers.

So all in all, I spent $22 and 20 minutes on my sad little Charlie Brown bouquet.

I still love the color and the look of the flowers, and I'm sure it would look better with more flowers packed more tightly. You can see how uneven and sparse it looks from the top.

Even though my badly-planned attempt didn't yield stellar results, I still ended up with three small flower arrangements to scatter around the apartment. And that makes me a happy Backyard Bride.

Anyway, what is it people always say? If at first you don't succeed, buy more pretty flowers and try again? I think that's right.

Plus one. And one. And one. And one.

When we initially planned out our 15-person guestlist, we forgot something. Namely that some of the friends we want to invite have these people in their lives called wives. And husbands. And fiances. Ooops.

Because the backyard is so small, we decided to nix plus ones all around and extend invitations only to include those who are married or engaged. I know it's a controversial decision, but we think it's best for such an intimate ceremony.

That brings our guest count to 20. Luckily all our vendors are either friends or family (score!) so it will just be us and our guests in the backyard. Including us, that's 22, probably the most the backyard can handle.

Well, that's not totally true. There might be one late addition. The Backyard Groom is gunning for an invitation for The Backyard Cat. (Lest the nomenclature confuse you, The Backyard Cat has never stepped paw in an actual backyard and is strictly an indoor kind of gal.)

That's right. We have officially become those kind of people - the ones who actually consider including their pet in their wedding.

(Warning: gratuitous cat picture ahead.)

How can I say no to that face?

Something(s) Old

When I walk down The Backyard Aisle, I plan to have those four famous things with me - something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. In fact, after the ceremony I will have actually have two things that fit into the first category, because both my engagement ring and my wedding ring are old. I decided to take some photos of them after reading a tutorial on Weddingbee. I used my Canon 20D, natural light from the window and a few props - some carnations used for my (terribly ill-fated) first DIY bouquet attempt, a squishy Dwight Schrute head and a colorful toy borrowed from The Backyard Cat.

First up is my engagement ring. The diamond came from my mom's engagement ring, which she generously offered to The Backyard Groom last summer. (For those of you counting at home, that does indeed mean that he got the diamond last summer but did not propose until February, so you can imagine what a stressed wannabee Backyard Bride I was for many months.) He had the diamond placed in a new white gold solitaire setting that he picked out all by himself, and when he proposed, I couldn't have been happier with what he had chosen.

From the angle below, you can see a little more of the setting's details.

I swear we have the most generous relatives. Not only did I get a gorgeous diamond from my mom, but The Backyard Groom's aunt gave us the wedding band that belonged to his late grandmother. It's a white gold band with small diamonds set into it.

The coolest part about the ring is that it's engraved with his grandparents' names and their wedding date in 1944. They met while he was a soldier and she was a nurse during World War II and married in Italy, where, coincidentally, we got engaged 65 years later. I tried to get a good shot of the engraving, but it's in script and my focus skills are not up to snuff.

I'll post about my something borrowed soon, but I'll have to make sure The Backyard Groom isn't looking before I share my something new and something blue.