Hooray! Ryan and I got married!!! I know it was over a month ago, but now we have our professional photos (yay!) and you get to see them! Here are some highlights, all taken by Beth’s Photography, who also did our videography:

Lookit my pretty girls!

Meanwhile, the gentlemen discuss deep and serious topics.

Someone actually got Ryan and the ring bearers to sit still long enough to snap a photo!

Awwwww.

Part of my “bridal session”.

This cake was definitely not a lie.

The ring bearers were supposed to give their ring pillows to the Maid of Honor (my beautiful sister) and one of the Best Men (Ryan’s friend Chris). Instead, the boys gave both pillows to Ryan, and because it was so unbelievably cute everyone got a good laugh.

Here I am!

Havin’ a weddin’.

Eeeewwww cooties.

HEY GUYZ WE IZ MARRIEEEEEEED!!!!!1!

I posted additional photos on a Facebook album that I am just maybe, just maaaaybe, willing to share with you.

Hope you enjoyed these as much as we enjoyed being in them!

The final day of our honeymoon dawned gray and foggy, and it misted rain the entire day. Chicago is just as pretty when it’s raining as it is when it’s sunny, so I couldn’t complain.

The Art Institute offers free baggage check, so we packed up, checked out of the hotel, and trundled the three blocks to the Institute with our luggage in tow.

At this point in the week, we were almost overloaded with all the stuff we’d seen the previous four days, so I confess we didn’t enjoy it as much as we might have otherwise. Still, we made the best of our time and saw as much as our tired, stiff feet would let us.

Here are a few favorites:

We had lunch in the museum cafe, and then once we had seen all we could handle, we picked up our luggage and headed for the downtown library – a building a full city block in size and nine (!) stories tall.

From there it was time to catch the train back to O’Hare. We got there plenty early, and of course, our flight home was delayed. We landed back home a little after midnight, instead of 9:30 pm as scheduled, but we were just happy to be home!

The honeymoon is great, but our feet are getting tired!

Yesterday we went to the Shedd Aquarium and wandered around almost the entire day.

Some of the highlights:

We wanted to have dinner at Frontera, a Mexican restaurant, but apparently so did the rest of Chicago; there was a two and a half hour wait! So, we walked around the block and found Xoco, a “fast-food” version of Frontera. Pretty tasty, but no pics right now; we had forgotten to bring the camera.

Today we went to the Field Museum, and spent a solid five hours wandering around.

We had dinner at Santorini’s Greek restaurant; we walked from the hotel in the rain, and a block away the umbrella broke, so we were cold and soaked by the time we got there. The waitstaff was great and seated us by the fire, so we were warm and cozy in no time. Our food was delicious!

Tomorrow we’re tackling the Art Institute before we catch our plane home. We had planned to take advantage of the free evening tonight, but I had some sort of allergic reaction to something I ate and broke out in hives; plus we were both wiped out from all the walking we’ve done the last four days. I’m feeling better and this gives us more time to walk around the museum tomorrow anyway.

See you all when we get home!

So far our honeymoon has been delightful! The flight to Chicago went smoothly. We did wait about twenty minutes on the runway waiting for ORD to clear us for takeoff in Springfield, but otherwise we had no problems. We took a train to the hotel, and of course, line maintenance meant we had to take a bus partway. I’m glad we had my new iPhone or we’d've gotten lost somewhere in here:

The hotel is great; our room is decorated in our wedding colors! The only downside is that it doesn’t have a fridge.

Our first dinner was at Pizano’s; we had a Vegetarian Deep Dish pizza and it was possibly the tastiest pizza I’ve ever had.

For our first full day, we decided to trek to the Museum of Science and Industry. Of course, before we could do that, we had to track down a camera charger, because we got here without ours. Several Radio Shacks later, we ended up at Central Camera, where we got a travel charger for less than we expected. We took a train, and ended up waaaaaay further away from the museum than we thought we would. So, we walked, and walked, and… walked. It was a nice walk, but we caught a bus back! Some cools things we saw:

Dinner was at Singha, a Thai restaurant. The seats were designed to look like tables to kneel at, but you sat just like you would in a chair. One wall was mirrored in a lotus pattern – very pretty. We ordered potstickers as an appetizer and were glad we did; they were delicious and the dipping sauce was sweet and rich. The food was flavorful and filling, but not heavy. Dessert was Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups – yum.

Today we walked to the Adler Planetarium and watched the Night Sky Live! show.

Dinner was at Vivere in the Italian Village near our hotel. Ryan had lasagna and I had a spiral pasta and sausage dish that I can’t pronounce. Both were excellent. The interior of the restaurant was sort of oceanic, even though it was all shades of reds and browns. The light fixtures and design of the seats and wall made me feel like we were underwater! Dessert was Baskin Robbins. Mmmmmm.

Tomorrow we’ll tackle the Shedd Aquarium. Stay tuned!

Whew. It’s been a craaaazy couple of weeks. Luckily, I took pictures.

Ryan and I split Labor Day weekend between his family’s cabin in Forsyth and Kansas City visiting my awesome sister. in Forsyth, we sat around, watched TV, and went out for Barbecue.

And we visited the docks where Ryan’s relatives were fishing.

In Kansas City, we ate Italian food, went to a bookstore, and then Mom taught us to knit. Yes, I’m doin’ it wrong (FAIL). I fixed it later.

There has been a monumental amount of wedding stuff getting done (less than a month to go!). We’ve been meeting with vendors, paying pills, nailing down details, and for me, having hair and makeup run-throughs and sewing my veil to my tiara. I really am as tired as I look here.

I’m making table runners for our reception tables, and have 5 of the 20 done. I’m going to give 5 pieces of fabric to my mom and 5 to Ryan’s, and I’ll finish the other 5 and they’ll be DONE.

Lea Ann and I attended Scrap-A-Palooza, where I worked on the guest book. I wanted to show how much I enjoy scrapbooking, and leave plenty of room for guests to write messages if they desire. My favorite spread so far:

Got to have some fun at work the other day. I’m in a leadership development program called University Staff Ambassadors, and September’s event was a campus tour. We got to go up into the carillon tower and see how the carillon is played. I even got to get up close to the bells:

and snap a photo of the JQH fountain from on high:

We toured all the property on the Springfield campus and then had a scavenger hunt that wore me out.

My souvenir for the day: my own hard hat.

I know, I look ridiculous. But, it was fun. Now, it’s bed time. Later, d00ds.

Ryan: The mayo in the fridge I put on my sandwich
Ryan: had an expiration date of 10/18/09
Ryan: so I believe that is a sign
Ryan: that our honeymoon will be
Ryan: like mayonnaise

… and I giggled.

Our wedding party includes two adorable ring bearers, the young sons of my bridesmaid Lea Ann and her husband, Kyle, who will be escorting me down the aisle. Rather than spending $20-$30 a pop on ring bearer pillows, I decided to try my hand at making them.

Materials

1 yd chocolate brown satin (I had a yard on hand; could probably get by with 1/2 to 3/4 yd)
1/2 yd ivory satin
1 roll of skinny chocolate brown ribbon
ivory thread
lots of plastic grocery bags (for realz! of course, you can use polyfill or an 8″ x 8″ pillow form)
sewing machine and needles for lightweight fabrics
shears, etc

Notes

Seam allowances:

1/8″ for edgestitching the ivory piece
1″ for constructing the pillow

Finished dimensions: 8″ x 8″

Needles: Be sure to use needles for lightweight fabrics. Even using them, I did notice some pinching of the fibers, but it’s not noticeable unless you look really close.

Making the pillows

The fabric is a satiny chantung in chocolate brown and ivory. I started by cutting out four 10″ x 10″ squares of the brown and two 5″ x 10″ rectangles in ivory.

I wanted to use the ivory piece as an embellishment like I had seen on some of the for-purchase pillows (my idea was to have the pillow look like the one from this set). So I played around with scrunching it into a bow shape.

Once I had the idea fixed in my mind, I un-scrunched it and hemmed the long edges; I didn’t bother with the short edges, because I planned to sew them into the seams of the pillow.

After hemming the long edges, I folded them under and ironed them so the stitching wouldn’t show.

Then I hand-sewed some gathers into the middle of the piece. I tried to keep the size of the stitches varied so it wouldn’t look like an accordion.

Next I marked the center of the top pillow piece by folding it into quarters and marking the corner. The invisible ink soaked through the fabric and left a good, easy-to-see spot.

I unfolded the pillow piece and with the right (shiny) side up, I sewed the center of the bow to the marked center just like I would sew a button.

Once the center was secured, I pinned the edges  as close to the edge of the pillow pieces as possible. Since the center is sewn, the outer edges will make a curve; I fanned the edges as much as possible to give it a good bow shape, and then topstitched the curve as close to the edge as possible. The plan was to sew this seam into the seam allowance of the seams I would sew to construct the pillow.

Once the top pillow piece was constructed, I flipped it over and aligned it with the bottom piece, right sides together. I sewed a seam all the way around, leaving a few inches to stuff the pillow. You can see here how I sewed the seam so that the topstitching from the previous step would be “hidden” when I turned the pillow right side out.

Before I turned it right side out,I trimmed the seam allowance with pinking shears and ironed the open section to make it easier to hand-stitch closed.

Now the pillow is right side out!

I stuffed the pillow with plastic grocery bags (they crinkle!) and hand-stitched the seam closed.

Next, I cut three long pieces of narrow chocolate brown ribbon, slide the pieces under the bow as close to the sewn center as possible, and tied a bow.

For the Big Day, I’ll untie the bow, secure the rings, and re-tie the bow so that the rings won’t get lost, but they’ll be easy to untie during the ceremony.

The two pillows took roughly six hours over two evenings and cost less than $10. They’re not as polished as a purchased pillow, but I’m pretty pleased at how they turned out.

Next project: 20 table runners for the reception tables. Wheee!

Coincidentally, the URL for this blog will change sometime this October, since we’ll have done the whole “go stand in front of a crowd and say some nice words and give each other shiny things” thing, and I will be changing my name. Stay tuned!