We got married!

As many of you already know, we were married in East Burke, Vermont on September 21, 2013!! The wedding couldn't have turned out better, we have such amazing memories of that perfect day. The weather was superb, we were able to spend time with all of our guests, we had fun, our guests seemed to have fun, and all of our whimsical, DIY, and rustic details made it truly feel like "us".  We had about 85 guests total, and our wedding weekend began with a welcome dinner on Friday night. The ceremony and reception (complete with chairlift rides) took place Saturday afternoon and evening, and on Sunday everyone enjoyed brunch before heading their separate ways. We couldn't have accomplished such a fantastic wedding without the help of many friends, family, and amazing vendors, so to all of you, thank you so very much. Jackie at J. Harper Photography was our amazing photographer - you can view all of our professional wedding photos by clicking here.

Because we decided to keep our celebration small, we had a number of family and friends that we were unable to invite to our wedding. We appreciate your understanding and would like to take the opportunity to share our big day with you in this blog post. For those of you who were at the wedding and are reading this post, we hope you learn something new and enjoy the pictures! Thanks for reading :)

A "brief" summary of our wedding

Location & Date: East Burke, VT - September 21, 2013

The Wedding Party: We had four bridesmaids - my sisters Christine and Alex, my step-sister Ruby, and David's sister Katie. We had three groomsmen - David's two good friends Matt and Tyler, and my brother Sam. My cousins Ella and Olivia were our flower girls, and my cousin Anika was our ring bearer.

Lodging: Most guests stayed in the condos located right on the mountain, rented through Burke Vacation Rentals. David and I stayed in a two bedroom apartment at the WilloBurke Inn in East Burke. It was a very cute and comfortable spot.

Welcome Dinner: We invited all of our wedding guests to a casual welcome dinner at my mother and her husband's house in East Burke on Friday night. As with the wedding, this event was hosted jointly by David's parents, my parents, and David and myself. My dad's best friend and his best friend's wife grilled chickens in the driveway using Joe's Pond Association grilling equipment, and the entire family teamed up to make an array of appetizers (veggie and Italian meat platters, cheese and crackers, pita chips and dip, tomatoes with mozzarella), spaghetti with red sauce, salad, and brownie sundaes. Yum! We were surprised and delighted that the majority of our guests were able to attend the welcome dinner. It was a relaxing evening with enjoyable mingling and delicious food. Looking back, we can't imagine a better way to have kicked off our wedding weekend.

Before the ceremony: David and I did see each other several times the morning of the wedding because we still had to take care of a few last minute ceremony preparations. A handful of my good friends came over for breakfast, and we had my mother's hair stylist (Karen, from Inspirations Design Studio) come over to do the hair for many of the females in the wedding party. The morning was laid back and very enjoyable. David got ready with a couple of the groomsmen in his parent's rented condo. We opted to do "first look" photos at the ceremony site and take care of wedding party photos before everything started.

Pepper wanted to be right at my feet on a pillow so he could watch the action. 

The Ceremony: The ceremony took place outside at the Pavilion Landing, halfway up Burke Mountain. Chairs were set up on a level area of the Big Dipper ski trail, overlooking a gorgeous view of Willoughby Gap. We borrowed shephard's hooks from a family friend and hung mason jars filled with flowers that we arranged ourselves (purchased wholesale through the same family friend) to line the aisle. The bouquets and boutonnieres were beautifully done by All About Flowers. Burke provided a quaint wooden arbor with a rustic podium, and my uncle "manned the iPod" using Burke's sound system to play recorded songs for the processional (Pachelbel's Canon in D for the bridesmaids and an instrumental version of the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" for me) and recessional (Vince Guaraldi's Linus and Lucy). We created a crossword puzzle with trivia about ourselves for guests to do while they waited for the ceremony to start (click here for a link to the unsolved crossword and here for a link to the solved one), as well as apple cider and donuts (donuts handmade at Hasting's Store in West Danville). My father drove me down the mountain to the ceremony site in his BMW M3 track car, and David's father, Harvie, drove the bridesmaids down.

The ceremony was officiated by Jane Larrabee, a justice of the peace, the owner of Hastings Store in West Danville, VT, and a family friend. We worked from her wedding script to create our own personalized (albeit somewhat lengthy) script. We were thrilled that Jane took the script we gave her and further added her own personal touches and humor. David's mother read the children's poem "I like you" by Sandol Stoddard and my mother read an excerpt from Da Vinci's notebooks on the definition of arches. My grandfather wrote a wonderful and thoughtful speech, delivered after we said our vows. David and I wrote our vows together, and each read a version of them to each other. Instead of a unity candle or sand ceremony, we asked each guest to bring a small object to place in our "memory jar" that would remind us of them. We had originally planned to display this jar in our living room, but have since discovered that the objects are too hard to distinguish in the jar. Our current plan is to display them on the wall in a typeset tray. Click here if you would like to read our ceremony script! One of the most memorable parts of the ceremony (aside from actually getting married of course) was when the wind blew my veil off my head and over the side of the mountain (everyone laughed, myself included). Miraculously, David's cousin recovered it.

The social hour: While David and I were having more photos taken with our photographer (and ironically not being social), our guests were at the base lodge enjoying appetizers, wine and beer, and chairlift rides. The chairlift rides were a last minute addition on our end, and we are so glad that we chose to include them. Any guest that wanted to could ride the chair lift up the lower mountain and back down - we have a lot of great pictures of different groups doing this! Burke had a room in the back that they set up with complimentary champagne and extra appetizers for all of the wedding party. It was really nice to convene here and relax for a few minutes after the ceremony before heading out for the reception. The short time spent back here just soaking in the reality of being married and having the impending celebration to look forward to was a great thing. After our "break," we walked out in pairs as the band introduced us, and the night began.

The Reception: The reception was held at the Sherburne Base Lodge at Burke Mountain. The exposed wooden beams, chunky wood paneling, huge brick fireplace, and wall of windows overlooking the mountain gave this room the exact rustic charm and warm atmosphere that we were striving for. We had only 85 guests, so the setup included nine round tables. We did all of the flower arrangements and decorations ourselves. Each table had a floor length white table cloth, a burlap table runner, three small birch log stands of differing heights (courtesy of David and his father), 1/2 pint milk bottles filled with flowers that we arranged ourselves, votive candles, wax preserved leaves (a group family effort), and paper straws that looked like birch bark. We strung white lights around the room for ambiance and hung paper lanterns over the dance floor. David's sister, Katie, hand-made each name tag in the shape of a maple leaf. Our wedding favors were homemade book marks containing pressed fall leaves and homemade birch log coasters with a Vermont state brand on them. I made the bookmarks with leaf collection help from many family members, and David made the coasters with his dad - they dried the coasters in the microwave!

We hired Union Street, a southern Vermont wedding band, to provide music for dinner and dancing. They were really great! Very energetic and nice music selections, though they did have a noticeably high number of guitar solos! For our first dance, we asked them to learn Jack Johnson's "Better Together" because the lyrics really resonated with how we feel about our relationship and our marriage. We set up a "photo guestbook" using my dad's dSLR camera, grandfather's tripod, and a white screen constructed by David's dad. Each guest wrote a message on the provided chalk boards and snapped their photo while holding the board. We thought it would be really nice to not only look back at everyone's well wishes, but to remember what they looked like in Sept of 2013. Everyone got really creative pictures with their pictures and messages, making it really fun (you can see them all by clicking here - beware, a couple are a bit "off color")! David's mother, Susan, made our wedding cake. Per our request, she used my favorite chocolate cake recipe, David's favorite butter cream frosting, and kept the decorations simple. I made a stick figure cake topper (inspired by something I found on Etsy) using craft wire. The cake was perfect - several guests commented that it was the best wedding cake they had ever eaten!

Christine (my maid of honor) and Matt (David's good friend and best man) gave wonderful and heartfelt toasts, as did David's father and my father. We had a soup, salad, bread, and choice of hanger steak or statler chicken for the meal. As we were cautioned, neither of us managed to finish our meals because we were too busy chatting with guests. The night was warm enough to allow people to mingle about on the patio if they wanted a break from the music, and many of our guests chose to spend time out there talking among themselves and catching up with old friends. We had planned to have a grand exit with sparklers, but we were having so much fun spending time with guests that we just kind of anti-climatically stayed until around 11 pm when we asked the band to play the last song and said goodbye individually to the guests who remained. After Alex and Ruby drove us to our rented apartment, David and I sat at the kitchen table and soaked in the reality of being married. We ate complimentary chocolate covered strawberries (they were absolutely delicious) and I munched on a piece of bread given to us by our officiant during the ceremony. This quiet time of reflection and conversation is one of our favorite memories from the entire event.

Sunday Brunch: My mother's parents celebrated their 57th wedding anniversary on September 8th and my grandfather turned 80 years old on September 23rd. To celebrate, they invited all of our wedding guests to a brunch held at the Tamarack Grill the Sunday morning after the wedding. It was super generous of them and a lot of fun. We liked having another opportunity to chat with our guests and the chance to say goodbye at the end of the weekend. I wrote an "article" summarizing my grandfather's life as a thank you (you can see it in some of the pictures). Click here if you'd like to read it!

Thanks: Overall, we had a wonderful time at our wedding and couldn't have asked for more. It really drove home what a great family and group of friends we each have. We are so thankful that everyone made the effort to visit our rural home state and celebrate our marriage with us. When we stop to think about it, we find it hard to believe that we've been together for the last 8 (almost 9!) years - since we were both still teenagers! We are super excited to "go exploring" and continue our lives together as husband and wife. Before I end this post we'd like to give a special thanks to our parents for helping us make this day possible. We would also like to thank our wedding party, all of our local vendors: J. Harper Photography, All About Flowers, Karen from Inspirations Design Studio, and Union Street Band, and Emily (our coordinator) at Burke Mountain. The approach we took to our wedding was very much DIY and we couldn't have pulled of the wedding we did without the help of our family and friends. We thank you, with a big hug!     

The Christmas cheer begins

This past weekend we kicked off our Christmas celebrations with David's company's annual holiday party. The first couple of years we attended this party, getting ready was always chaotic. We never started getting ready on time, things always took longer than anticipated, and there always seemed to be tons of traffic slowing us down on the drive to the location. As a result, the first few years we always missed drinks and appetizers and only made it to dinner with minutes to spare.  My mom will never forget the year David drove her Tahoe through Boston like it was a race car just to make sure we arrived in time for the first course. 

The last couple of years we have improved our holiday-party-time-management skills and have calmly arrived on time (even early sometimes!). That doesn't mean we don't have our own quirks - like David always takes longer tying his bow tie than he thinks he will (30 min does not equal 5 min) and I always say I'm ready and then think of five things that need to be done as we are walking out the door. This year's party was held at the Boston Science Museum. David has never been there before (it's on our Boston sites to do list), so we tried to arrive early enough to have some time to walk around the exhibits. That didn't prove to be possible, but we did spend some time wandering the halls (and playing with the musical stairs!) before enjoying the party. Here is a picture David's sister Katie (our chauffeur) took before we left. Notice that my mother's dog Coal doesn't want to be left out. 

Saturday we took it easy and began to organize for Christmas. We first had David's work friend and his wife over for waffles (they stayed at a hotel in Boston after the party), and then we went Christmas tree shopping. We had talked about cutting down our own tree, until we learned that all cut-your-own trees in the Boston area were $65! That might sound like a reasonable amount to other city dwellers, but this seemed high to us. We decided to first give a local flower market a shot, and ended up with a nice narrow tree for $45. This is still much higher than we are used to spending for an equivalent tree in Vermont, but that's not unexpected :) We spent the evening listening to Christmas music and decorating our living room. The ornaments are a collection of things each of us have been given (or made as the case may be for many of mine) throughout our lives. We purchased the snowmen stockings last year at Michaels. The green stocking with no name is Pepper's - we got it last year expecting it to be be temporary! Now that he is officially part of the family, we'll write his name on there as well. 

We don't have an abundance of holiday decorations, but we are slowly acquiring more. I personally like the house to look festive but still simple. This candle was a gift at the Milne Family Party last year and it is officially the only scented candle that David has ever liked. It smells like Christmas trees :) 

More Christmas decorations! 

David and I have had seven Christmas's together. Several of those Christmases were spent physically together (we have found an arrangement that works where we spend two days before Christmas with my Dad, Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with David's family, and Christmas afternoon/night and the following day with my mom), and one of those Christmases was spent as an engaged couple. This Christmas doesn't feel a whole lot different, but it does make us smile a little bit more often to think about it being our first Christmas as husband and wife!

Has anyone else gotten their tree yet? Do you like to decorate with homemade and "random" decorations collected over the year, or do you like to decorate using "theme" decorations (e.g., balls and/or bows of all the same color)? We hope you all find some great holiday cheer this year!

Kitchen Drawers

As a reminder, we bought our kitchen cabinets used and as such, had to live with the modifications the previous owners had made to them. Other than a few holes in the back (covered by a new panel), the major modification was that the drawers in the cabinet next to our sink had been removed where a range had previously been installed.

No drawers, just a left over slide on the left. Ugly pulls are still on in this picture!

Now, these drawers are prime real estate, being directly next to the sink and on the side of the kitchen that we use 90% of the time. I decided that it was time to add drawers to it.

I heard from my dad that David Hurwitz (of Hurwitz Originals) that buying premade drawers was a lot easier and overall cheaper than trying to do them yourself. I'm pretty sure I'd struggle making perfect dovetail joints, so I was more than happy to get drawer.com to do them for me. I later found out that newenglanddrawer.com is probably a lot cheaper, but they didn't reply to my online quote request. The drawers looked great when they came, and with shipping and drawer slide hardware, were just under $100 per drawer. Expensive, but worth having the storage space there.

The drawers looked good when they came, and were right on my specification. I later found out that I should have asked for them 1/4" wider, but all that required was a small shim between the slides.

I took off the drawer faces (held in with a block of metal channel) to inspect what I was dealing with. You can see an old slide on the left. You will notice that on the old slide, the slide actually starts about 1/2" back from the face of the cabinet. This means that the style drawers we have, with the face having a protrusion which fits in to the opening, don't work with the new drawer slides I bought. Most modern drawers have the face entirely exterior to the cabinet, which is why the slides are designed to go all the way to the edge of cabinet face.

You can see how the old face extends beyond the side of the drawer, but still fits in the opening.
New drawers don't do this.

I got around this by making little blocks to attach the slides to inset in the cabinet. I used Knape and Vogt soft close slides. They were a little difficult to get lined up correctly, even when I followed a youtube video on how to do it. The video suggested loosely attaching the rear, installing the drawer, and then tightening. Sounded good.. However, it bound like crazy. I ignored the directions for the left drawer and it is a lot smoother! I simply did it all using measurements and tightened it all down. I adjusted the right drawer but it still isn't as good as the left. Having some weight in them also helps have enough mass to make sure they close and hit the soft close mechanism when you give them a shove.

Finished Product!

All in all, they came out pretty well. I both screwed and glued the faces on to make sure they weren't going to loosen up over time. I've also put together some key points I learned doing this in the hopes that I'll remember for the next time.

What I learned:
- Lining up the drawer slides is hard. I think there was a jig I could have bought for like $7, and it would have been worth it.
- I didn't go with undermount slides to match the other slides in the room. In hindsight, nobody would have noticed and I would have had an 8% larger drawer.
- Pick out the drawer slides and then measure for the drawer. I did it in the opposite order and then had to shim as my drawer was a bit too small.