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Friday, September 30, 2005

Wedding Photos -- Getting Ready

Let's start at the very beginning. It's a very good place to start.

(But don't make me sing, OK?)
That's me on the morning of the wedding. I was a little nervous. Even though I had gone to bed relatively early the night before, I didn't get very much sleep. So, after I'd showered and done everything I could reasonably do at that hour of the morning, I went out on our balcony and wrote a little in my journal. It wasn't very coherent, but it was a little bit relaxing.

For some reason, everybody (and by everybody, I mean Emily and Anne) thought it was really cute that I was sitting out there in my towel turban. I don't get it.

We had some breakfast in my mom and dad's hotel room. Everybody kept telling me to eat. I pretended like I cared.

Emily and I borrowed Allison's car and left to go get my hair done. Anne and Allison and the rest of the fam stayed behind to finish up the flowers and decorating the reception. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to everyone who helped. My cousins Cindy and Colette helped my Aunt Sharon make all the bouteniers and corsages while my mom handled the bouquets, and my cousin Olivia and my Aunt Leslie helped them gather greenery from the gardens outside our room to go with the flowers. No one could believe we had done the flowers ourselves, they looked so professional.


Em and I tried to relax in the bride's room at the church while waiting for everyone else to get there. Emily did my makeup and DAMN did she do a good job. I felt like a canvas, but in a good way. ;)

It seemed like FOREVER before everyone else showed up, but I know it was really like, twenty minutes or something. Mom and Allison and Anne arrived with the flowers and my dress, and then Leslie and Olivia came with lunch. Everyone tried to get me to eat. I pretended to care.

The photographer showed up at this point. Unbeknownst to me at the time, he had been with Brandon and Poppy (my granddad and Brandon's best man) for a while already, taking pictures.

When he had arrived, he presented Brandon with a print of a portrait he had made of me the day before. Brandon told me afterwards that he almost cried when he saw the picture.

Meanwhile, back in the bride's room, I was quietly freaking out. Luckily, my mom, my sister, and my dearest friends in all the world were there to keep me company. I was doing just fine until I put the dress on, then I started to lose it a little bit.
Emily was shushing me and trying to get me to laugh. She started singing, "Kumbaya my Lacy, Kumbaya!" I think because it was the only thing she could think of. It was great. Mom gave me an altoid to sober me up, and it worked pretty well.

Through all of this, the wedding coordinator at the church was absolutely fantastic. She kept checking on us, asking if we needed anything, pinning on corsages. She was calm and collected and really kept us going in the right direction.

And then she came to tell us it was time to go.

*gulp*

photo friday!

I plan to do the first of the wedding photo posts today, but just to get us started:

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

fyi

So, just FYI, the proofs page is up at the photographer's website! Email me if you'd like to see it and I haven't already sent the link.

In other news, thank you to everyone who's signed up for flickr! The next step after uploading pictures to your account is to add them to the Renner Wedding group. It's easy to do: when you click on one of your pictures and see it in it's enlarged form, there are a series of buttons over the top of the photo, and one says add to group. Just click it and select "Renner Wedding" -- then everyone can see all the wedding pics in one spot!

More picspam soon, I promise.

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Photos and Flickr!

Some of you will have received a message from me via flickr.com inviting you to join the group Renner Wedding. The idea behind this flickr group is that everyone who attended and took pictures can join and share their pictures with everyone else -- including those who were unable to attend or who forgot their cameras in the hotel room. ;)

It's easy to join. Drop me a line if I haven't already sent you an invite, and I will do so. The email tells you how to join, and registering with the site is free! Then you can upload some of your pictures, and see the pictures that other people have uploaded. Anyone can view the photos, even if you don't have any to share. And from flickr, you can download, print, or save whatever pictures float your boat. It's like a community photo album with unlimited reprints!

Speaking of photos, I am slowly but surely organizing all our pictures from France on my flickr page. Everyone is welcome to browse it now, just be aware that there will be more information -- titles (as in, "Which church was that again?"), descriptions, etc. soon to follow.

In addition, our photographer is working on a very special site where everyone will be able to view our proofs and order prints. For now, you can visit his website (click on "wedding portfolio) for a very nice preview!

More to come soon, I promise!

And, on an entirely more sobering note, please pray for all of Texas and Louisiana, but my baby sister and her friends in particular who have stubbornly bravely decided to ride out Rita in College Station.

=D I love you, babe. I know you think we're all overreacting, and I hope and pray that you're right.

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Brandon's 29th birthday was yesterday. I took some pictures of him opening his presents, but they are best viewed as a slideshow.

Enjoy! =D

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Bad juju

So, I'm guessing that because we had such a good wedding and honeymoon, we're due for a little bad mojo in our lives.

I just didn't think it would happen all at once.

It started Sunday morning when we got all ready to head to the beach with our bicycles. We put on sunscreen, donned our baseball caps, got change for the meters, and headed out to the garage, only to discover that our bicycles were gone. EFFING GONE.

They were there when we got back from our trip. I am sure of it. I am also sure that they are not there now. The only thing that remains is a severed bike chain still clinging to the post where it was locked.

The real pisser is that we KNOW that the apartment security people went by there Saturday night, because the car parked next to me had a parking citation on it. We did go to the apartment office to see if "security" (I use the term very loosely now) had reported anything. They hadn't. We told the people what had happened and they said, "That sucks."

What sucks even more is that we dug out our renter's insurance and discovered that we have a $250 deductible. The bikes together are only worth $200. But they were brand new and shiny and I liked mine a whole whole lot.

=(

Then, as if I weren't already pretty damned irritated with our apartment complex, we got a letter in the mail saying that they are raising our rent when our lease is up at the end of November.

Tossers.

That was all for Sunday, thankfully, but come Monday morning we were awoken by the telephone ringing at ten minutes of six. At the other end was some guy from the Georgia department of worker's compensation, calling to tell us that they had caught an illegal immigrant in Georgia trying to apply for work using Brandon's social security number. How scary is that??? The man gave us the guy's name and told Brandon to check his credit reports, etc., to make sure that the guy didn't try to apply for credit using his social as well.

THEN... (I know -- I thought these things were supposed to come in threes as well, but...) Monday night we went to Target to pick up the photos I had developed from our France trip. One of the rolls was BLANK, and another one had pictures of some handsome looking Mexican family having a party. Needless to say, I did not take any pictures of a handsome Mexican family on our trip to Paris.

Needless to say, I was hella pissed.

We went back and bullied the teenager in the photo department into looking through ALL of the photos for an order number close to ours, which turned up jack. Actually, he was pretty helpful for a spotty git.

In any case, about twenty minutes after we got home, he called to say that someone had brought back our pictures (I was smart enough to tell him that they were pictures from Paris, and he was smart enough to recognize the Eiffel Tower when he saw it). Unfortunately, they didn't make the digital CD of the prints -- which I paid for -- so we had to leave the negatives there so they could make it. I did, however, get the prints.

Sadly, it seems the last roll of the Louvre and Chartres and our assent of the Eiffel Tower is lost forever. Thank God we had a backup digital camera with us as well, or I would be SINGULARLY distressed.

We won't go into the talk I had to have with my boss lady yesterday (about the fact that, apparently, I mailed her insurance premium a day late and they cancelled her coverage while I was away) nor the fact that I accidentally sent the wrong (read: marked up, full of edits) version of a letter from our lawyer to one of our clients.

All in all? Not a great Monday.

(If you would like to see some of the infamous photos that we DID receive, you may do so here.

Sunday, September 18, 2005

Wedding Stories -- The Rehearsal

The Wedding Party at the Rehearsal


So, after being in Santa Fe for almost two days, Friday was the day that stuff finally started happening. I had a trial-run hair appointment at the salon, went and had portraits made (which is an entirely different story we may or may not ever tell) and finally, at 3 pm, we all headed to the church for the rehearsal.

Brandon and I got to go over the entire wedding ceremony with our priest here in California as a part of our pre-marriage counseling, so we knew what to expect, and we were ready. It was really very straightforward -- you stand here, you stand here, you say this, we move here, badda-bing badda-bang and you're married!

Rehearsal 1


What we weren't quite expecting was that Father Coleman would have us recite our vows then and there, to get used to saying them, I guess. He was great, having me recite that I was marrying Brandon "for richer or for poorer -- preferably richer..."

I was doing great until Brandon was reciting his vows and started to cry. There is nothing that will make me cry faster than seeing him cry, let me tell you. But we pulled it together and made it through the service.

Rehearsal, Lacy's Vows


We practiced the vows and such first, and then did the procession. Emily had been distinctly worried that they would make her do the whole step -- PAUSE -- step thing, but they told her to just walk slowly, much to her relief. My dad walked me down the aisle, and when Father Coleman asked, "Who presents this woman to be married?" he answered "I do."

There was an audible throat clearing from the audience and I heard my mother's voice saying, "Um, EXCUSE ME?"

Her MOTHER and I do...


He was SUPPOSED to say, "Her mother and I do," and we teased him relentlessly that if he forgot on the day he would be in some SERIOUS hot water.

At some point in here, Emily, Anne, and Allison decided to dub themselves "Team Lacy" and even came up with a secret handshake. There were Team Lacy tee shirts to follow. Oh yes. With sparkly gangsta letters on. Emily told Brandon that his team had better "Bring it!"

Ahh. There is nothing funnier than watching my incredibly white sister try to represent.

They even made me carry the paper plate and ribbon bouquet that Emily had made from the ribbons on all our gifts at the bridal shower! (For the record, I actually had TWO paper plate bouquets -- one from each shower -- but Emily was just a tad touchy about there being more than one, so we used hers which, I assured her, was far FAR superior! Notice the superior-nicity in the following picture of my mom, Team Lacy member Anne, and Team Lacy member Allison -- holding the bouquet for me.) =D

Wendy, Anne, and Allison at the Rehearsal


You like that? Here's one of my dad with the infamous -- I mean! Superior! Far superior! -- bouquet.

Lacy Wedding 001


Brandon and I signed the marriage certificate with Emily and my Poppy as our witnesses, and that was IT! We were OUTTA there!

Rehearsing the Kiss


All told, the rehearsal took 28 minutes. Father Coleman said it was a new record. He even mentioned it in his sermon during the ceremony: "The rehersal only took about thirty minutes -- I didn't know what to do with myself!" What can I say? We are just that good.

To see some more pictures of the wedding rehearsal, you can go to my flickr page. I'm slowly uploading and organizing pictures there, and I'll make a post whenever I have a new set to share! Up next: the rehearsal dinner. All I can say is pizza and beer, baby. Pizza and beer.

Friday, September 16, 2005

wedding ramblings part one

Weddings are weird. You spend, quite literally, months and months planning for a single day (18 months in my case) and it's all over in the space of less than 12 hours.

The consensus, however, seems to be that it was one hell of a party.

I didn't end up actually having to do all that much. One of the first things Brandon said when we were planning this wedding was that he wanted us to be able to just sit back and relax -- to not be so stressed out that we couldn't enjoy our day. I think we accomplished that. We had planned everything well enough that when we actually got there, we just sort of sat back and let everyone else take over.

A great heaping mound of thanks has to go to my bridesmaids -- my sister Emily, and my two best friends Allison and Anne -- or "Team Lacy" as they took to calling themselves. They had tee shirts and a secret handshake and everything. It was awesome. But quite honestly, without their help, I simply couldn't have pulled this off. They took care of me when I got weepy (which involved mass quantities of chocolate and, for some reason, Emily singing Kumbaya at me a great deal), they decorated -- and un-decorated -- the reception site, they kept things moving, and they kept everybody in high spirits. I cannot even begin to imagine what would have happened if they hadn't been there to help me out.

I've got so many stories I want to tell from those few days, not to mention the stories I want to tell from the past week in Paris. I hardly even know where to begin, but I'll try to tell a bit here, a bit there until I get the whole story told over the next few days.

Pictures will be forthcoming. =) For now, all I can say is that I am happy. Deliriously happy. And everything seems to have worked out exactly the way it was meant to be.