Category: Wedding Wednesday

Eric and Clara got married (sneak peak)!!!

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This weekend, my friends Clara and Eric got married! Eric works in the lab next to ours and has helped me a lot with my complicated data analysis problems and Clara is his crafty bride. Every time I see her, she is making something awesome (a new wallet, cute stuffed mice for the children she nannies for, etc etc etc). One time, Clara and I escaped from a party to go to Michael’s Crafts and get painting supplies. It was an awesome adventure. Anyway, there’s something special about these wedding photos I’m sharing with you today. I often bring my fatty DSLR to weddings to take pictures of the bride and groom but this time Eric and Clara asked me to be their official wedding photographer! WOW! So Cobalt and I headed up to Rocky Mountain National Park this past Saturday with my DSLR and all three of my lenses! It was epic – generally I think photographers get more than 2 days notice about photographing people’s weddings so this one was a lot of playing everything by ear and herding family and bridal party members around to make sure I got pictures that I thought Eric and Clara would want. Overall I think it went smoothly – it was a beautiful day at the park and Eric and Clara were so happy and fun to photograph. They had a short ceremony in the morning and the rest of the day was spent frolicking with family and friends (and lots of eating). It was a great day and I feel so honored that I got to be such a big part of it!

Now onto the pictures! I took over a thousand pictures that I am going to be slowly editing when I need a break from science this summer but for now here is a sneak peak so you can see for yourself how beautiful this day was! :)





Because this was my first wedding ever, I thought I would write a little about my experience and give (myself and anyone else who is interested) some reminders/tips. First of all, I LOVED photographing the wedding. I’m not going to lie; it was kind of fun being bossy to get everyone positioned for pictures. Also, I relished all the thinking I had to do about poses, lighting, where I should be, etc. I was so happy and in my element being creative!

Finally, two lists to sum up my reminders/tips:

First: what to bring for a “survival kit.” I brought bandaids, tissues, water, and hair clips. I should have also brought sunscreen because we all fried to a crisp out there. >_<

Second: some things I think will be important to remember when prepping to photograph a wedding/engagement session.

  1. Get to know the bride and groom – I think this was easy for me because I work with Eric and I see Clara a lot too. This is really important though because I want to take pictures that capture the couple’s essence and I want to put them into poses that seem natural for their personalities
  2. Ask the bride and groom beforehand for certain pictures that they definitely want – this part caused some stress on my part during this wedding because I didn’t know which family members had come and I didn’t know who wanted to be photographed with whom. Also I think if the bride and groom and the photographer have an idea about the “set list” before the wedding, it helps the photographer plan the shots and the timing needed to get all of them beforehand.

That’s all! I hope you liked the pictures! I can’t wait to photograph more weddings/engagements/special events! Let me know if you want me to do something for you! :D

Congratulations L and J! :D

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The signing of the marriage license

Cobalt and I have been having a bit of a hard time these past few weeks (and not just because of my super sprained ankles so we were overjoyed to be part of something awesome last weekend: my friend L got married!

For the record, I am pretty sure that L was the second person I met here in Colorado because we were roommates during the biochemistry department recruitment weekend here at CU! My other friend LJ beat L only because I met her two weeks earlier at the UW recruitment weekend.

Geez stop reminiscing Potassium and get on with the pictures story already. So Friday was a beautiful day for a wedding! It was so warm outside that Cobalt and I didn’t have to put on jackets as we drove across town to the Boulder County Justice Center. There we met up with some of our other friends and L and her soon-to-be-husband J. We had some photo time in the courtroom before the judge came in so I hobbled around on my poor little ankles and got pictures of everyone pre ceremony. The ceremony was short but sweet and then we all got to sign the marriage license as witnesses! Talk about a special marriage license – clearly their marriage is highly approved of because it has not one, not two, but seven witness signatures. When Cobalt and I got married in California, there were some ridiculous rules about marriage license signatures (all of the signature must fit IN THE LINES OF THE BOX OR YOUR MARRIAGE LICENSE IS NOT VALID!). Yikes! So this was much better. :) After the ceremony and license signing we all braved the crazy rush hour traffic to go out for Korean BBQ. It was delicious and a really fun evening! Cobalt and I left full of food and really happy to have spent such a good evening with friends. Thanks L and J for letting us be a part of your special day. :D

One more thing I have to say before we get to more pictures: trying to hobble around on sprained ankles and get nice pictures without falling over/distracting from the ceremony was hard work. I was sad that I couldn’t put as much focus on the photo settings that I wanted to use as I usually do but I think the pictures turned out good anyway. See for yourselves!

L and the girls
J and the boys
So serious during the ceremony…
Except here when they are giggling because we made them kiss again… :D

And now it’s your turn: During dinner, L asked me “Potassium, when do you start to feel married?!” and I said it took a bit. Not that I didn’t want to be married to Cobalt or wasn’t ready for it – mostly it was just so crazy how one day I woke up and wasn’t married but then I went to bed married. How did that happen so quickly?! My brain took a while to adjust to the rapid change! Now I am asking you! When did you start to feel “married?” Was it immediate or gradual? Did something happen (i.e. filing taxes jointly for the first time, moving in together, etc) or did you just wake up one day and feel married? :)

Minimoon ziplining!

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So that’s where my hotel key went…. :-/

Finally, a Wedding Wednesday post about Cobalt’s and my minimoon! Well after the wedding, we headed to the coast of CA to stay in this swanky hotel called The Inn at the Tides. Waiting there in our room was a fancy care package from my MOH, her family, and some of my other friends. My MOH’s mom made us this awesome shark wedding card:

Anyway, the next day we awoke to the world covered in fog. It was a bit awkward because I actually forgot my hoodie in the bridal suite the day before so now I have a super comfy soft hoodie from Inn at the Tides to remember our minimoon with… Here’s a picture of the hotel in the fog:

but don’t worry, as soon as we drove away from the coast a bit, the fog cleared right up.

Then Cobalt and I went ZIPLINING!!! It was so beautiful ziplining through the trees of west Sonoma County, California. Plus our guides were super informative about all the different kinds of trees (we learned that redwoods are kind of scary to zipline to because they have a crappy root system and tend to sway in the slightest wind. One girl in our group asked to go last if we were ziplining to a redwood tree because she didn’t want to be seasick while she waited for everyone else).

Some ziplining stories: The longest zipline went right over where people in later groups were getting trained so they told us to scream bloody murder as we flew across. Also, because it is the longest a lot of people can’t actually make it all the way across. If you end up stopping, you have to turn around in midair and pull yourself to the other side. I curled up in the tiniest Potassium-ball ever and launched myself to the other side and I just barely made it…

After going through a bunch of zip lines, we got to go up a giant spiral staircase that wound its way around an epic redwood and then we walked across several rope ladders high above the ground. Finally, we ziplined to the last tree and then had to belay back down to the ground. It was so fun!

Here’s an attempt at a picture of me and Cobalt while ziplining (the camera was tied to my vest so it was hard to get me in the picture…..)

After ziplining, Cobalt and I had to head back to my parents’ house to pack up the car with all our non minimoon stuff, wedding presents, and other fun wedding things (we even brought three of our cactus centerpieces home)! Then we went out to a congratulatory dinner with my family before starting our epic journey back to Colorado the next day… Sad… the minimoon was so short and Cobalt and I were so tired from all the craziness that goes into planning and then having a wedding… the drive back to Colorado was a slow one…

Hopefully Cobalt and I can have a real honeymoon some day (yeahhhh NYC and Paris!!!!) but for now, our minimoon was an awesome mini getaway. :)

Where did you/do you want to go on your honeymoon? Did you leave right after the wedding? If you did, Cobalt and I are amazed… :)

Professional Wedding Pictures!

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I remember being sad that I didn’t have access to my camera on my wedding day because I wanted to save the whole day in picture form. Thanks to Holly Carlyle Photography, Cobalt and I have access to the proofs of all 900 or so of our professional pictures that sum up the whole day pretty well! I put together a little post for you guys. It’s a little overwhelming to go through all 900 and pick out just a few! I am already sad about the others I abandoned so maybe I will post more pictures later! Anyway, here are a few!

One of the many pictures of me, my bridesmaids, and our Shark Bananas.

Table for the relatives who couldn’t come
Groomsmen being silly before the ceremony





So we may have given each other pieces that were too big…

The Father Daughter dance was much discussed… My dad and I are ridiculous…
A girl and her shark…
Kissing the bouquet shark goodbye
Rings and photobooth props… I think our photographers were having fun.

Thoughts? Is there anything that you wanted to see that I didn’t put here? I have soooo many pictures I could post for you guys. :) Let’s discuss! I miss getting comments from you guys…

In other news, today is my sis in law’s birthday! Yay! Happy birthday! I hope it is amazing. Also, Saturday was my mom’s birthday (Happy birthday again, Mom!) and my birthday is next Monday! Hurrah! So many November birthdays… :)

In other other news, my epic grant is getting reviewed tomorrow. Fingers crossed they like it!

Adventures and Elsa hair

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The bride of Frankenstein is wondering where her wedding pictures are…

Remember last week when I said I would post my wedding pictures this week because I would have them by now? Welllllll… as of 9:30 pm on Halloween, we are still without them. It’s been an awkward process between our photographer and her third party host for the past two weeks. Apparently our pictures uploaded last week but the third party host said that half of them were corrupted. She got them reuploaded over the weekend – not corrupted this time – and we still can’t see them. It’s so bad right now… we can see the link to our gallery but when we enter the password, it says the gallery is not ready for viewing. Third party host, what are you doing?!?! We are also going to get all our pictures on a jump drive in the mail so we’re also checking the mail crazily every day…

Needless to say, it’s been a bit frustrating. So that’s why this post is late – I thought for sure we would get our pictures some time on Halloween so I waited and waited and waited but Halloween is over. :( About the picture – I didn’t want to go through the trouble of redoing all my makeup and costume for Halloween but I just had to do the hair again… :)

We’ll end this post on a higher note – Tuesday was the 5 year anniversary of Cobalt’s and my first date! There is such an adventure between that first date and the two of us actually getting married but I think that might be a story for another time. Wow… 5 years of adventures with you, Cobalt… Can’t wait to see what craziness the next 5 bring! :)

The ring debacle

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That blue ring seems mighty small…

I promise, professional wedding pictures are coming soon… The proofs are supposed to be uploaded any time between now and tomorrow. It’s making me ridiculously impatient now that I know that we will almost have them. I check the website pretty much every hour…. Hopefully, next week’s Wedding Wednesday will be filled with glorious wedding photos. If not, never fear, the post will still be interesting. :)

Anyway, today we are going to talk about rings! I have been wanting to do this post for a while but I decided I would wait until the ring debacle was over and now it finally is. So here we go!

Cobalt and I ordered lovely titanium rings from Minter and Richter and they arrived in California shortly before we did (thus, my mom was too impatient to wait for me to get home and opened the package without us… :-/). They were packaged in wonderful red and black tissue paper (the effect was only slightly ruined by my mom’s sneaking around with the package ;)) and nestled inside a little tiny black envelope in the center. They were so awesome! One problem… my ring didn’t fit.

Apparently I had totally underestimated the sizing when we had had the sizers a few months back and I had still guessed the wrong size! The wedding was in just a few days at this point and I was a stressed out bride who couldn’t deal with the idea that her ring didn’t fit. So we got married and poor Cobalt had to shove my tiny ring over my fat knuckle at the ceremony. After the wedding, I wore it on a necklace until we got back to CO.

It might sound crazy but I was actually really upset about my ring not fitting. Maybe it was the lack of sleep that goes into planning and executing a wedding but regardless, there was some major unhappiness on my part. Meanwhile, Cobalt contacted Minter and Richter about the issue and they said they’d send out a new batch of sizers and make a brand new ring FOR FREE (these people are awesome, seriously). They sent me four new sizers that varied in 0.25 sizings for me to try out and wear. I found that my ring size is actually about 0.5 sizes bigger than my original ring! We ordered my new ring and it finally showed up last Friday. It was packaged again in an envelope in the middle of that red/black tissue paper, which meant that I got to open it (so it’s okay that you opened that other one, Mom)! I am so excited. Now I’m legit! ;)

Did you have any wedding drama? Did you have to get your ring(s) resized? Do you want Minter and Richter to make your wedding rings? We have a coupon for you… ;)

That awkward moment

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when you realize you can’t be two places at once.

Let’s start up the Wedding Wednesday posts again! First of all, I think we are supposedly going to get our professional wedding pictures soon (finalllllly) and second of all, there is stuff that I never finished talking about.

So let’s start. We’re married now (yaaaaay!) and the holidays are quickly approaching… What are we going to do about Christmas? For those of you who don’t know, Christmas is a big deal to both of our families. However, Cobalt’s immediate family is in NM and my immediate family is in CA. Every year before this year, Cobalt has gone to NM and I have gone to CA for at least Christmas Eve and Christmas Day so this year marks the first year we will be together on the actual Christmas holiday. The problem is… which family do we spend the holiday with? We already decided that we want to try to see both families during the Christmas season but of course only one family can see us for the actual holiday. Cobalt and I have been stressing out over this issue… mmmm since we got married… because we know that at least one family is going to be sad and one of us will be sad because we won’t be spending Christmas proper all together. That said, we love both of our families a lot so Christmas is still going to be special… just… different. However, it’s time to stop freaking out about it and actually buy tickets because holy crap they are getting really expensive.

Now it’s your turn. Any advice for the newlyweds? What did you do your first Christmas together?

Picture: One of the many crochet sharks I made, “Licky shark,” licking an ornament on my family’s Christmas tree last year. I took this picture when I was playing with the out of focus light so you can see that the reflection on Licky shark’s eye (and all the other out of focus light) is in the shape of a star. I like it…

Beautiful wedding in Santa Fe

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This weekend, Cobalt and I headed south to Santa Fe (Do you know the way… to Santa Fe?) for K and M’s beautiful wedding. Everything about this wedding was so perfect for the two of them, from the well thought out vows and touching ceremony to the adorable bride and groom rat caketopper (not to mention their tower of whoopie pies instead of a traditional cake). We had so much fun with these two. We ate delicious barbecue and then danced the night away with all our friends… Plus it looks like they had quite a bit of fun themselves:

Congratulations you two! We’re soooo happy for you!

In other wedding news, our friends D and D are getting married this weekend! Yay! Congratulations to you guys too! :)

Finally, in other happiness, Baby L was born on Monday morning this week! Yay! Congrats B and T too! :)

One Frozen Shark

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Don’t judge this shark cake. It’s been through a lot…

Well… it’s been a month since our wedding (officially on Tuesday). To celebrate our one monthversary, Cobalt and I went out to a tasty dinner last night and then came home to try our frozen wedding shark cake. Our cake lady suggested that we eat our cake on our one month anniversary instead of on our one year anniversary. This turned out to be a fine suggestion because I am not sure this cake would have been very tasty next year. As it was, this poor shark cake got dragged 21 hours across the US and then shoved into our freezer so it had seen better days. It still tasted pretty delicious; it just had a hint of freezer to each bite. Awww sharky…

I actually got really sad when we were trying the cake because I feel like all the celebrating for our wedding is officially over now. I mean, it’s been over for about a month really but this just seemed so final. Just reminds me that Cobalt and I should never stop celebrating and enjoying each other’s company as husband and wife. Just because the wedding is over doesn’t mean that we should stop partying yet. We’ve got a whole lifetime of celebrating ahead of us…

I think I’ve only got one to two more wedding posts until we get our wedding pictures back from our photographer so I think this blog is going to go back to more of a photojournal of a day in the lives of Potassium and Cobalt. I hope you’ll stick around to see what happens next!

And now it’s your turn. If you’re married, did you eat frozen wedding cake on your one year anniversary or are you like my parents who have 27 year old wedding cake somewhere in the bottom of their freezers? How was your cake? If you’re not married, would you want to eat year old wedding cake? Yummmm…

I find the name ‘fascinator’ fascinating…

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It’s been almost a month sine we got married. How crazy is that?! Our apartment is still a total disaster though. Maybe this weekend we can finally get things together.

Anyway, for today’s post, I am going to talk about my veil/fascinator that my awesome friend The Chocolate Pudding made for me. I think it was about a year ago, TCP and I were looking at all the crafts at the Taste of Colorado festival and we found a booth dedicated to tiny hats with veils on them. We liked them but I knew I wanted some sort of birdcage veil/fascinator thingy for my wedding. TCP said she could try to make one for me and thus began our quest to make the best veil/fascinator ever!

In May, I got various types of fun French netting and a comb from Britex Fabrics in San Francisco. Then I ordered some pretty anenome flower clips off of Etsy to go with the netting. Due to life craziness, it wasn’t until the Tuesday before the T and I left to go to CA for the wedding that TCP and I had time to meet up and work on the concept of what the veil would look like. That is what that top picture is from (and yes… we were working on my veil/fascinator in a bookstore… points if you can guess the bookstore…)!

Fast forward to two days before the wedding. After the bachelorette/hen party, TCP brought over the almost finished veil/fascinator and I had a prewedding panic attack. The veil/fascinator looked great but I was freaking out so much that I wouldn’t like it that I couldn’t even decide if I liked it. TCP told me that she was just going to finish it and then I could decide on the wedding day whether or not I wanted to wear it.

Fast forward to the wedding day, I got to see the finished product and I fell in love with it. Originally, I was planning to keep the veil/fascinator on for the ceremony and pictures and then take it out and leave the flower clips in for the reception but I loved it too much to part with it… Yay! Thanks TCP for making pretty much the best veil/fascinator ever and thanks for putting up with a crazed Potassium while you did it. :)

And finally, a picture that I stole from my friend T from the reception (Thanks T…)

One more thing. My super awesome grad school friend PV is getting married this weekend to the lovely PD. So excited for you guys!!!! :)

And now the typical Q and A time. What did you do for your veil (if you are married)? Would you have a veil (if you’re not)? Tell me your thoughts on veils… Or tell me something different. Whatever you feel like doing is fine with me. :)