However, I’m finally getting around to it so… yay! ^.^ After this post I’ll have another one or two (eventually) so stay tuned! =D

Okay. Let’s get started.

Here is the church in which we were wed. It’s the church much of my family (direct and extended) attends each Sunday. It’s settled on a little hill next to the woods and I couldn’t have picked a more pristine and meaningful location.

Empty sanctuary, waiting to be filled with loved-ones:

Next are some pictures of us getting ready. Our photographer and his wife both took some amazing pictures. To see some more of their work, please visit cperkinsphotography.com.

Jeremy (my husband) in the headlights:

The guys just waiting. We were about a half-hour late to start the wedding. xD (from left to right- my father-in-law, our best man, my brother, my cousin)

At least *part* of that was due to me forgetting my jewelry at home— although my dad wasn’t at the church yet either so he was able to grab it for me after I called him. ^.^’

Little munchkins getting ready. I don’t know why but I just love this picture.

My sisters getting made-up by our cousin Anita. She was a lifesaver and they looked gorgeous! ;o;

All of the bridesmaid dresses were custom-designed by me (with help and advice from my mother and some friends) and constructed by various people. My bridesmaid Caroline (2nd from the left) even made her own dress. =) If it’s not obvious, I was going for a renaissance look with the sleeves and back lacing and because of that, we ended up forming a “lacing line” to get everybody looking fabulous. We made the sleeves sheer so that people wouldn’t overheat since this was a July wedding (although entirely indoors).

Lanterns, baskets, and pillows, waiting to be carried. =) I forgot to mention in my earlier post that we altered the baskets so that even when the little girls were done throwing the petals, they would still look like they had petals in them just creeping over the edge. I think it turned out really well.

The dress, shoes, and bouquet. <3 I looove how my bouquet turned out. :3

Putting on the dress. Ahhhh!!!

Staging a “mom getting daughter ready” shot. Haha. I am in LOVE with the back of my dress when it’s bustled like in this picture. You can see it more in some of the reception pictures. Also, the lighting in this picture is gorgeous. <3

Before everything started, I hugged my mommy who put up with me during the whole planning process. She did sooo much to help me bring everything together (and I don’t just mean financially). I couldn’t have pulled it off without her.

Alrighty, so those are the highlights of the “getting ready” part. The next post will be shots and commentary about the actual wedding so please stay tuned! Thank you for being so patient!

This week, we are all being given the chance to win a set of Kyary-inspired eyelashes! All you have to do is follow the directions on the widget at the bottom of the contest page found >>HERE<<. Good luck everybody!

So a while ago I was all ready to go posting some sneak-previews of my wedding. Well—guess what! It already happened! Life just took me and ran with me and before I knew it, it was all over. Weddings are so much hard work and planning but it’s such a reward to see everything work out in the end!

Just a shout out here—but this wedding would not have been possible without my mom (who took the reigns as the “wedding planner” essentially and helped me out with things that it was hard or impossible to do while at college.) A good friend Mary of ours stepped in as the wedding director and helped with rehearsal and all of that. Countless other friends stepped in to help when I needed them most—including serving food at the reception when it turned out they were short servers. I feel so blessed. Friends kept coming out of the woodwork and there’s just no way it was all coincidence.

Anyway, so I’m sure you guys are ready for some of the wedding details! Thankfully, I have many beautiful pictures from my photographer to share with you as well as many of the stock photos from the items that we purchased so you can see the details.

I will keep this post to the detail shots and little things I am proud of and/or that I think are beautiful. Perhaps some of you out there planning a cherry blossom wedding will glean some of this information and inspiration off of me? Cherry blossom wedding blogs are few and far between as I learned while I was searching for some help.

The idea for a cherry blossom wedding sparked from my personal interest in Japanese animation and culture. There are cherry blossom viewings that happen yearly in Japan as well as places in the US like Washington DC and California. The trees shed their beautiful pink petals while people picnic beneath them.

My inspiration for the colors came to me while at the wonderful tea store Teavana at the mall. My eyes passed over this lovely cherry blossom sushi set and I got the idea— pink, green, and brown.

After telling my mom what I wanted, we began scouring all of the local Walmarts, Jo Anne fabrics, Michaels, and Hobby Lobbies for anything and everything cherry blossom. We managed to buy out all 3 or 4 of the Walmarts nearest to our house as far as faux sprays go. x3 QVC.com was where we got most of our other great cherry blossom items. Their cherry blossom stuff seems to be somewhat seasonal but thankfully we had about 2 years to plan my wedding so it all worked out. We bought wreaths, a garland, and two huge sprays that all light up and have a sparkle option (stock pictures below). We also bought two huge candle holders (flameless candles of course) for the front of the church as well as two bird and cherry blossom candles for the table at the reception hall (stock picture below). Everything was perfect.

To carry the pink and brown we purchased simple pink and brown pew ribbons from eBay. I would have liked to do more with them but I only had a short amount of time after getting back from college and I just never got around to it. I probably would have put flower sprays in the middle of the bows or something. Also, these bows did not come completely pre-made. I probably would have lost my sanity trying to put these together if it wasn’t for my Uncle John who stepped in and helped out when we (my sister and I) failed. xD

Here’s a shot of the pews. The wreath on the wall is not the one mentioned as that one was placed at the reception. The bouquets of flowers are the only other real flowers in the wedding next to my bouquet and toss bouquet. The table up front is for the sand ceremony that we chose in place of the typical unity candle ceremony.

Since cherry blossom decorations are few and far between, my family and friends helped out with a lot of the decorating projects. I chose to be different and have my bridesmaids carry lanterns instead of bouquets. We purchased the lanterns themselves on eBay and placed false cherry blossom sprays inside to surround the flameless candles (using wire and florist tape to attach the flowers in a mini wreath). My mother also purchased a caged candle on QVC which needed a bit of decorating. My best friend/maid of honor and I spent hours working on these. This was our end result:

We are rather proud of the caged candle as the top still opens and doesn’t disturb the flowers that are attached to it. =) We used simple wire to attach everything to the bars.

This next project I took on myself. I wanted to jazz up the guest book that we had purchased from Michael’s craft store. It was originally just the plain brown fabric covering both the book and the pen.

And in action…

Another of my personal projects was to make three cherry blossom and baby’s breath wreaths for my flower girls. The baby’s breath is real but purchased dried from Michael’s crafts. It even still smells nice. Here is a close-up of the first of those wreaths made for my smallest munchkin. =)

And here they are in action on my lovely little girls. I attached long strands of pink, green, and brown ribbon to the backs and formed a bow for that finishing touch.

My last major project was the wedding programs. Like most brides, I put off something until the very last minute. These happen to be it. The beautiful watercolor picture of the birds on the front was commissioned by a friend of mine. She also painted me an accompanying branch to use as an accent on the other pages of the program. The print-your-own programs were purchased at Michael’s Crafts.

I will have more for you in my next post! ^.^ Please feel free to comment with your thoughts or questions. I may not post on a regular schedule but I am most definitely reading comments!

The row our car was parked in at Universal Studios.

So it has been brought to my attention that I forgot to do my post about my visit to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Universal Studios: Islands of Adventure (Orlando). I completely forgot about that so I apologize!

This will be kind of fun though since I get to think back on my experience there and show you guys some pictures. Let’s begin.

In December last year I was in Florida visiting my fiance. We figured when I was down there that it might be fun to go to one of the local theme parks (about 40 minutes away from Jeremy’s apartment). I had been DYING to go to the relatively new “Wizarding World of Harry Potter” section at Universal ever since first hearing about it. I’m a HUGE fan of Harry Potter, plus I’d already been to all of the Disney parks in my childhood so I wanted to go some place I hadn’t had the chance to yet.

Jeremy and I waited in line at Universal: Islands of Adventure and paid an arm and a leg to get in (we wanted the express tickets which, due to the craziness of the park that day, was really a good investment.

This is just a random observation and I could be wrong but I don’t remember Disney charging for things the way Universal does. I’m not gonna lie but even after getting into the park I just felt like they were attempting to suck the money out of us every chance they could get. They’re too forward with their money-soliciting. At the front-most part of the park there are some normal name-brand stores and restaurants which I felt was rather tacky. I feel like Universal lacks a lot of the magic that Disney has. Their rides are great but I got bored waiting in line…whereas at Disney, even waiting in line can be fun and entertaining. At Disney, even in line there are things to see and do and touch and take pictures of.

Anyway, I did have a good time at the park and it was worth the money just to go visit the Harry Potter section. It was EXTREMELY crowded though and I sincerely hope time will cure that.

When we got to the park, we decided to do everything else first and finish with Harry Potter rather than starting there. The wait line for getting into that section was upwards of 2 hours which would have been a waste of our nice morning. We made it to every part of the park except the Dr. Seuss section (which I was kind of disappointed about).

Right before we headed over to the Harry Potter section to get in line, they announced that they had opened that section of the park to everyone so Jeremy and I scarfed our lunch and headed over there.

View of the Hogwarts castle…complete with British palms.

Tilted rooves.

Inside the park.

Waiting in line.

The train to Hogwarts. ^__^

I was kind of disappointed they didn’t have more shows or stuff to do inside the park. A lot of time was spent shopping so I suppose it was good that I had a lot of people to shop for and a decent amount of money with me (they really do milk you for all you’re worth there).

Here are some pictures from inside Honeyduke’s and the joke store Zonkos. The most affordable items in the HP section of the park can be found here. The two stores are conjoined so you can walk directly from one to the other and you can check out your items at either store.

Bertie Bott’s every flavour beans in Honeydukes!

Beans of every color. ^.^

Stuff inside Zonko’s joke store.

You can find anything here from these pink pygmy puffs to the Comb-a-Chameleon hair transformation brush!

Jeremy isn’t a fan of roller coasters but he agreed to accompany me on the main Harry Potter ride called, “The Forbidden Journey.” The wait was about 1 1/2 hours but it was fun hanging out with other people who were as nerdy as I am and as anxious to get on the ride for the first time. It was one of those “experience” rides where they basically put you on this cart and whip you around through different parts of the movie. Jeremy could deal with it since it wasn’t a REAL coaster and I was glad. I will have to make more friends in Orlando that will go on the actual coasters with me though. ^_^’ I would have loved to go on some of them. As it was, we didn’t really have a lot of time to go on them this time around so it worked out.

The park closes rather early so the last thing we ended up doing before it closed was going to the Three Broomsticks for dinner. I guess I should have expected that it wouldn’t be as nice of a restaurant as I am used to because of the atmosphere of the place in the books. I’m assuming it was quite true to that. It felt like British fast food, really. They offer simple foods (including shepherd’s pie which was probably frozen and then put into a microwave or something.) I got a salad with chicken because everything else was too weird or too greasy for me. They had about 5 different meals to pick from everything was pretty average. It was hard to get pictures inside because of the dim lighting but here are a couple:

Cute snowman outside the restaurant. A small reminder that it was winter in Florida. Haha.

All in all, I had a great day and while I was slightly disappointed about some things, I had a wonderful time shopping and seeing some of the places I had previously only imagined from reading the books.

My souvenir— a plush version of Buckbeak. Isn’t he cute? ^.^

For a long time I had been wanting to try out lolita fashion. It’s inspired some of my jewelry line and just some of my creativity in general. I’m one of those people that likes to do a lot of research into things before I get started though because I like to know what’s involved and expected. This goes for all things from fashion to jewelry-making to acting to any other hobby that I might take up.

Lolita fashion is one that is definitely best embraced after research. If you’re not one who cares to be a part of the lolita community then it’s not as important but for anyone those who would like to make some new friends with common interests, it’s important to do the research first. Even if you don’t care what other people think (and you don’t mind criticism), checking out what’s generally involved and the background of the fashion can give you a good idea for what looks good together.

People who are unfamiliar with the fashion style often associate the word “Lolita” to Vladmir Nabokov’s book by the same title.

Nabokov’s book has been on the banned books list practically since it was first published due to the storyline including an older man who is in love with a young girl (whom he refers to as “Lola”). He at first attempts a relationship with her mother but then is, in his words, seduced by the young Lola. It’s the later events in the book that cause people to associate the word, “lolita” negatively. It’s probably due to this that the word has come to mean “underage girl” or “underage girl attempting to attract the attention of men.” Certain companies market their sexy short-skirt outfits and patterned tights under the word but don’t let that fool you.

The association to this is unfortunate for those that enjoy and participate in the fashion style. However frustrating, it’s easy enough to see why the style would be linked to it. The childish and doll-like nature of many sub-categories of lolita fashion could be and have been misconstrued and wrongly viewed as girls trying to be attractive to men. People seem to miss, however, that there are MANY other sub categories (including but not limited to elegant and aristocrat) that tend to include longer skirts and more mature outfits yet still fall under the title “lolita fashion.” This should be the first clue that lolita is more than its association with the book.

The ironic thing is that often times the girls are not trying to attract men at all, but are instead trying to hone their creativity skills and possibly in the process inspire and get the attention of other girls who are into the same fashion. Does it make sense for a girl wanting to attract a man to cover more of herself than the average young woman today does? Does it make sense for a girl wanting to attract a man to wear many layers, fluffy knee length skirts (as opposed to the short, tight mini-skirts of today), and modest blouses? A group of girls with the common interest of dressing in lolita fashion can become great friends.

Those that choose to post pictures of their outfits online are often looking for constructive criticism and feedback on their coordinates (or constructed outfits) as well. This is not to say that girls into lolita are purely into it for the attention but there is just something exciting about posting a picture and having someone say that it’s beautiful and that they like this and that (and illuminating some things that could be improved upon). It makes the amount of money that a lot of girls spend on their outfits even more worth while when they find out that some people seriously enjoy looking at the work of art (outfit) that they’ve created. Also, the art of lolita tends to cross over into the art of photography quite often so that photographers who are looking to hone their own skills can have a beautiful subject to include in their shots. Lolitas who have always wanted to dabble in modeling can potentially test their skills with these photographers.

There are still many girls enjoy simply dressing up at home and not even wearing their outfits out in public. Many lolitas will attest to the fact that there’s just something about feeling beautiful in your clothes that is inspiring in itself, even if you don’t show other people. Outside of that, wearing lolita casually (and perhaps without petticoats) can be extremely comfortable.

Lolita can be even more than dressing up in beautiful clothes. It can mean living what some people refer to as a “lolita lifestyle” which includes being beautiful and experiencing the beautiful in many different ways on a regular basis. This can be anything from having lovely manners to writing in a flowery notebook. Here’s an extremely informative LiveJournal post with 101 ideas for living a loli lifestyle.

101 Lolita Lifestyle ideas

I’m not sure if I’m living a “lolita lifestyle” or not. I’m not even sure if I believe that there is such a thing…as few of these ideas are particularly attached just to lolita fashion. Cultured people could live a lolita lifestyle without even knowing what the fashion is. However, I will say that I think this compliments the style nicely and power to anyone who lives like this. I don’t know if I live a “lolita lifestyle” I’ve always loved colorful, cute, and fluffy things so at least I fit in well. I’m a fan of kittens and unicorns. I love drinking tea and eating tea cakes. I love writing and receiving letters. I make stuffed animals, jewelry, and other crafts. I love soft beautiful music. I love playing the piano. I love fashion and I love my friends.

Lolita gives me an outlet for participating in these activities with people who share like interests and appreciate creativity. I’m not the richest person and I’m getting married in less than 50 days so I have those expenses sitting at the top of my list. My dresses are not brand/burando but I do hope to own at least one brand dress some day in the future. For now, I’m happy and content with my wardrobe and Bodyline dresses. They make me smile and are fun to wear and I think that’s what’s really important.

In March of this year, I took part in the Gothic Lolita Wigs (a sub-company of CosplaywigsUSA) contest. I made it into the top 40 and into round two which was all I really wanted. Some fabulous people won and I’m so happy for them! Here are some shots from the two contest photoshoots my best friend Lauren and I had.

Round One:

Round Two:

Extras:
Pictures from my first-ever event! I attended the 2nd to last FYE anime day at Eastview Mall in Rochester. I won 3rd place in the cosplay contest without even entering. I didn’t think I could enter my outfit because it was a fashion style rather than a costume but…I guess somebody wrote me down. Thank you, whoever you are!

Houghton Film Festival 2011

So next on my to-do list will be my extremely belated Tora-con 2011 entry and some fun and interesting wedding sneak peeks in a subsequent entry! Can’t wait. ^___^

Please feel free to share your thoughts on any of my entries. I would love to make this a more active blog and it’s so much easier when I have people writing responses.

Have a wonderful day! ^.^

Today, Monday May 1st, 2011 (or actually, yesterday as it is 12:07 AM on the 2nd now), it was announced that Osama Bin Laden was killed.

I remember where I was on September 11th. I was in 7th grade technology class (the class where we built wooden bridges and attempted to hold weight with them). Teachers wheeled in a television and we watched the two buildings smoulder (before the second plane hit.) Teachers stood and watched with us with their hands over their mouths. I didn’t really understand what was going on. I had never been to New York and to me it just looked like any other city.

Then the second plane hit. There was a gasp and some more silence and then before we knew it, the buildings were crumbling. I still didn’t fully understand what was happening or the weight of it. I didn’t understand that there were thousands of people in those buildings. Even after switching classes and watching more coverage for it, I didn’t understand.

It wasn’t until I went home and watched it on my home TV with my family that I understood. There had been people waving white cloths and papers out the windows, hoping someone would come to save them. There were people hobbling out of the building and vacating the area. They were covered in people dust, remnants of those who died in the fires as remnants of the buildings. It was like holocaust dust. It smothered everything in the general vicinity. I suddenly not only became afraid and upset for everyone there and their families, I worried that the war would come to my town. That a plane would crash into my house. It was an irrational fear, but something that was very real to me. Those people didn’t do anything to deserve it, after all. What’s to stop it from happening to us too?

Today is the day that the man behind it all was killed by US troops in a military operation. A true sign of the times is that I found out via facebook. A friend of mine said she refreshed her page and there were 54 notifications of his death.

It was well thought out. Well planned. The troops and the government did a wonderful job. As much as it sounded like Obama took a lot of the credit, I think the potential was always there. This is the success of everyone—Bush, his administration, the presidents and administrations before them. Osama was crafty but not crafty enough.

God bless all the families of those who died in 9/11. Today is a joyous day for you and all of us.

I only hope we won’t have to worry about security too much. My biggest fear is that this will cause some kind of backlash. Please keep praying, everyone!

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