GUEST BLOG! Bliss in the heart of the Rockies

I am thrilled to announce our very first guest blogger: amazingly talented professional writer (and Annabel & Ruby bride) Anna Riling!  Anna was such a sweetheart and a pleasure to work with--we really bonded as we worked together to get the details of her dress just right.  It occurred to me that since she is an actual real writer (as opposed to a stream-of-consciousness rambling amateur blogger like...ahem...me)  maybe she'd be willing to share her special day with everyone--and she graciously agreed! Thank you, Anna, you're fantastic!

Anna's Story: I remember something a friend told me once after I had finally finished regurgitating some long forgotten boyfriend drama. He said, “Relationships take work, but not too much work.”
Whether it’s right or wrong, when you know, you know. In my experience, most of the time invested in the “wrong” relationships is spent righting it, or trying to. And when it’s right—it’s like you’ve spent your whole life hiking uphill, and finally the world levels out and you can just go for a stroll.

Enter Allen, my new husband. We met a year ago while rock climbing in a sun dappled scrub oak forest near where we live in southwest Colorado. Three weeks later, we moved in together. It was easy, but electric. He had this way, and still does, of stilling my mind and stirring my heart in equal measure. There was never any question that we’d get married. 

 When he proposed on a blustery Christmas morning in Michigan, where we were visiting his family, I was surprised more by the fact that his great grandmother’s ring actually fit my finger than by the proposal. Little did we know, slipping that ring on my finger was the beginning of a long sweaty journey through the jungle of bridal bliss, the final destination being the only thing of which we were sure. When we got home, we set the date for the summer, giving us about seven months to plan.

From the beginning, it was obvious that I would be micromanaging the crap out of my wedding. More picky than I am creative, if I didn’t know exactly what I wanted, I knew for sure what I didn’t. Not important to me were things like matching the color of the bridesmaids’ dresses to that of the table runners. What was important was infusing this dish of a wedding with a dash of the creative.

Via the wondrous, albeit somewhat overwhelming Google, I discovered the acronym “DIY”, and embraced everything those three little letters had to offer. I shamelessly pilfered ideas of brides more creative than I, perusing an obscene number of blog entries and conducting Google searches with titles like “bride pigtails” and “offbeat wedding readings”.

Soooo beautiful...gorgeous...breathtaking...and you can tell Anna really FEELS that way as well.  Plus comfortable and amazing!  Love it!

  Somewhere along the line, I learned of a little website called etsy.com. How I survived my life previous to the day I discovered that blessed URL I have no clue. Given that I can only sew in a straight line, my jewelry making supplies were the casualty of an overzealous yard sale, and my graphic design experience consists of Macgyvering Microsoft Word into a drawing program, the boon of having such a concentrated source of talent was epic. Within a day, my favorites list was in the triple digits.

Okay, let’s get down to brass tacks. The single most important item on my wedding list I probably share with every bride out there—The Dress. It had to be comfortable, for starters, and of course it had to make me feel like a pretty-pretty-princess. I’ve been in enough weddings to know that I didn’t want my wedding dress to fit like a bridesmaids dress. No cellulite-hugging chiffon, no strapless neckline requiring constant maintenance, and definitely nothing that would make we question whether or not to have another glass of champagne. When I entered “cotton wedding gown” into the search box on etsy, I found Rebecca’s shop, Annabel and Ruby. She was selling a dress that was a reproduction of a J. Crew gown I had seen and immediately coveted and just as immediately dismissed due to the exorbitant price tag.Her version was a fraction of the price, and she would make it in any fabric I desired.

 

The best part for me was that it would be made by an artist that would put her heart and soul into it, rather than by someone halfway around the world that couldn’t care less if I wanted ivory sateen or eggshell poplin.
 

This dress was it. I mean p-e-r-f-e-c-t. It had a gorgeous plunging V-neck, an empire waist, and a long, plush, very princess-y floor length skirt. Because of the cut and the gathered waist, I wouldn’t have to wear one of those gross Spanx things, or a bra—heck I wouldn’t even have to wear undies if I didn’t want to. One more glass of champagne? How ‘bout two?
 

Poor Rebecca patiently and graciously answered each one of my prolific requests for status updates (“how’s the dress coming?” and “just checking in!” and “any update on shipping?”). Over the course of our “convos”, an etsy term for instant message, we exchanged little tidbits of our lives. I’m pretty sure that the guys over at J. Crew wouldn’t have shared the story of the first date with their partners, or asked to see pictures of the necklace that I had made for my wedding. I loved having my dress made
by this woman. She had a genuine kindness, and was just as excited about making the dress as I was about wearing it.
 

Anna made her gorgeous necklace herself!

 Allen and I agreed that the first time he saw the dress should be when I was walking down the aisle. I couldn’t wait!

With the dress nailed down, I rotated through a succession projects, beginning with invitations. I made about a dozen versions, dazing my poor prospective husband with display after display of possible designs. His go-to response after a couple weeks of this was, “Well, do you like it?” Once we settled on a design it was really out of exhaustion more than decisiveness. However, they turned out, if I may say so, awesome.

Assembling them took the efforts of both my bridesmaids, a couple of gluesticks, and a
ball of hemp twine. The color and theme of the invitations ended up setting the tone for a
lot of the decorations at the actual ceremony. I used grey art paper, brown packing paper
I got for free from the print shop, and ivory cardstock, enclosing it in a recycled brown
envelope that matched the packing paper.

For the wedding favors, I knew that I didn’t want to give my guests, the most
important people in my life, a packet of Hershey’s Kisses with our heads glued on them.
Somewhere in my internet stalking, I read about a bride whose favors were homemade
family cookbooks. In the invitation, I included a request for a family recipe, and from
those recipes designed a flipbook that matched the style of the invitation. With recipes
sent by good wholesome Midwestern folk (“Spaghetti Casserole”) and Allen’s climbing
buddies (“Guinness Stout Gingerbread”), it’s probably the most eclectic cookbook I’ll
ever own!

I decided early on not to think too much about the flowers. I didn’t want any
elaborate arrangements, and for my bouquet all I really wanted was a humongous
sunflower. My vision for the centerpieces was a sparse gathering of a few flowers in a
cluster of random glasses, vases, and jars. 

I set my friends and family to work hoarding glass bottles. A few days before the wedding, I visited a local farm and handpicked a very diverse selection of flowers including sweet peas, delphiniums, crazy daisies, and dahlias. As for my sunflower, I supplemented one I had planted in my garden with several chocolate colored ones from a florist. My arrangements were put together by my mom and Allen’s 12-year old niece. They were lovelier than anything I could have imagined.

The wedding was held at a hundred-year old miner’s lodge high in the mountains.
The lodge itself had so much character that it took some pressure off of us to have to
decorate it. We decided to turn the basement into a bar, which had a cool industrial feel
with its red concrete floors, corrugated metal ceiling, and massive rock walls. I printed
a few hundred photos of Allen and me as kids, and of our adventures together, and hung
them from the walls using clothespins and hemp twine. We strung Christmas lights to
soften the space, and rented several high top café tables to complete the bar feel.
 

For the ceremony, our church was the deep mountain valley the lodge was
situated in. We couldn’t have designed a more magnificent view, as the Animas River
rushed out of a gorge and into meandering glacial till, evergreen forested peaks rising on
either side.

It rained for the whole ceremony, but I hardly noticed, such was the tunnel vision
I had for my gorgeous groom. I was vaguely conscious of making sure this didn’t turn
into a wet T-shirt contest, but the dress held up like a champ. I know that the bane
of planning every outdoor wedding is the possibility of rain, but everyone I talked to
afterwards said the rain felt like a blessing, that it completed the organic feel of the
wedding.

Because I didn’t set out to master every minute detail of my wedding, I wasn’t
fazed by the inevitable hangups. Like the rain, or when the string quartet got whittled
down to a solo act, or when, fifteen minutes before the ceremony, my maid of honor
hadn’t even started getting ready.

Like my dress, my wedding was buttoned up in all the right places, and loose
and relaxed in all the others. A true labor of love, weddings, like marriages, should take
work, but not too much work.

Isn't that just the best thing you've ever read??  Anna's calm and relaxed attitude, coupled with her determination to make her wedding to Allen personal and unique, resulted in a gorgeous event that was entirely THEM.  I love it like mad crazy!  Congratulations, you two! :-D  Also, please check out Anna's website, www.AnnaRiling.com, where you can read more of her amazing writing.