After The Wedding: How the Elephants are Growing Together

Hive - it seems like forever since I blogged about our wedding!

Photo by Lynn Michelle Photography

It's been a while (a good 3.5 years), so many of you may not remember me.  Mr, Elephant and I had an amazing blue and green, travel themed wedding in Texas back in April 2011.  We found our creative sides and added several DIY touches to our ceremony and reception.

Photo by Lynn Michelle Photography

Since our wedding, life has thrown us some ups and downs, but through it all we have really grown together as husband and wife.  We have become a team, working together to achieve the goals that we set for ourselves.

Last year was probably the biggest year of growth for us.  After an initial set back regarding a mistake with Mr. Elephant's electives he was finally able to finish his IT degree.  I don't think I've ever been so proud of my husband as I was the day he walked across that stage to receive his diploma.

Another huge goal of ours was also achieved that same month when we moved into our first home!

It took some time, a couple sacrifices and a lot of saving to make our homeowner dreams come true. Through the home buying process we learned about ourselves, our must haves and our wants for our first home.  We learned that we don't always have the same taste in decorating, and I found out my husband has several handy skills such as replacing toilets and the garbage disposal.  Although it seemed never ending, Mr. E and I really bonded over our late night painting sessions before we moved in.  

Oh yeah, and there was one other exciting event for us last year. 

Photo by Lynn Michelle Photography

Photo by Lynn Michelle Photography

That's right!  We found out we were expecting our first child!  Baby E was due to arrive in April 2014, but decided to throw us all for a loop by making his arrival 6 weeks early.

Photo by Evan Godwin Photography 

These first 7 months have been challenging, but also so rewarding. We are learning more about ourselves as parents everyday, especially how to function on less sleep than before. The birth of Baby E has brought a totally different aspect to our bond as a team.  While we are there for our child, we are also there more for each other than we were before as a couple. When one is struggling, the other picks up the slack.  I feel that we are more considerate of each other's feelings and try hard to always put our family first.

It's amazing to look back and relive the memories from our wedding day, and to see how far we have come.  I know that as the years continue to roll by, Mr. E and I will continue to grow as a team and as a family.   

Our First Year

Our first year of marriage has flown by.  I can remember April 23, 2011 like it was just yesterday.

Being surrounded by the love of our friends and family is something I will cherish forever.  From the amazing moments, such as looking into Mr. E's eyes as we said our vows, to the funny moments like the cake dropping - I treasure the memories we made on that day.

Our first year for the most part has been amazing!  I'll be honest with you, it had it's low points too (from an outside source), but it taught us that we are stronger together.  Sometimes we just have to step away from a situation, focus on the good that we have in our lives and hope that time will heal the hurt that they caused us.

But enough of that, lets get to the celebration!!  Our family cruise was planned for the beginning of April so we decided to celebrate a little early sailing the Caribbean.

On Isla Roatan, in our Mexican cooking class in Cozumel, enjoying a martini tasting on Carnival Liberty.

For our actual anniversary on Monday we kept to the tradition of eating the top tier of our wedding cake.  Here it is in all of it's glory on our wedding day.

And here it was a year later after defrosting for a couple of hours.

We never had a chance to taste it on our wedding day because our top tier was different from the two tiers that were cut. Mr. E and I love strawberries, but we didn't think that all of our guests would be big fans of strawberry cake/strawberry filling combo so we saved that just for us.  The cake part was a little dry, but the middle section with the filling was very tasty for year old cake!

After tasting the cake, we enjoyed dinner at Brio and exchanged gifts.

Since we're gearing up for a house hunt (yay!) we decided to keep it small and stick to the tradition of paper. Each of us came up with something to add to our future gallery wall (thanks for the idea Mrs. Cardigan!).  I finally printed a couple of our wedding pictures and decided on a double frame.  The top half has one of my favorite detail shots, our rings on top of our personalized cake topper. The bottom frame contains the words we said as we slipped those rings on to each other's finger, printed in the font from our invites and matted on the green and blue cardstock that we used in our DIY projects.

Mr. E's gift was amazing and touching as always!  He took passages from the book he wrote for our wedding day and incorporated wedding images into the words "Love Of My Life!".

I can't wait to see what the next year brings us!

For all of those that have already or are close to celebrating their first anniversary, what did you exchange for gifts?

Wedding Cake Ornament

Guess who's back?  Ok, it's just for one holiday post, but I loved coming back for the randomizer series and wanted to drop back in and share one of my recent projects.

I have been intrigued by polymer clay ever since we ordered our cake toppers from Etsy seller Mud Cards.  Keren did such an amazing job on the first topper, that we had her make a second one as well.

Since our engagement in 2009, I've tried to get a different ornament each holiday season to remember that year by. With Christmas around the corner, I started to think about what our ornament for this year would be.  Being our first newlywed Christmas, I wanted this ornament to be special and DIY it.

But what should I make?

I threw around a couple of ideas, before I circled back to my original (and favorite) idea, a replica of our wedding cake!  After a quick stop at Michael's, who was having a sale on clay (originally $2.29, on sale 4 for $5), it was time to get started.

I rounded out the white cake base and then started to work on the mini suitcase topper.  I didn't have a darker green for the round suitcase, so I changed it up with a swirl of the two colors.

I worked the black into handles and the mini monogram on the front of the center suitcase.

Next up was the little green plaques that mapped out some of our destinations together.  There was no way I would be able to write on them, but that's OK - they still give the same effect.

Rolling the tiny blue balls for the path between the plaques was a little tedious (and I lost more than a couple along the way), but I favored the 3D effect over drawing them on.  The finishing touch was to stick in a wire loop so we'll easily be able to hang it on our tree with ribbon or a hook.  I baked it for 23 minutes at 225 degrees and out came this little reminder of our wedding day. 

 And for a little comparison, our cake on our wedding day and the ornament.

Picture on the left taken by Lynn Michelle

With all of the left over clay I feel the need to make something else, but for now I'll just sit back and gaze at the little masterpiece.

What do you think?  Does is it look like a mini replica of our cake? Do you have any special ornaments from the year you were engaged or your first married Christmas?

Randomizer Series: Elephant Wedding

I loved the idea of revisiting our wedding day with a random pick of pictures.  Here is a random snapshot of the Elephant Wedding starting off with our first look.  Not the prettiest of faces, but it shows how emotional I was to see Mr. E for the first time on our wedding day.

Our photographer had a fun time getting our custom Chucks to balance on a mirror for this shot.  You'll also see one of the bee charms that have been a part of several bee weddings since then.

Right after Mr. E dropped my first piece of cake, I was sure to have a little protection under his piece.

This next shot is of Daddy E and his best friend from childhood who traveled all the way from Trinidad and Tobago to celebrate our wedding day.

One of our readers for the ceremony is someone who has known me all of my life.  Ms. M is the mother of BM Philly and our parents have been friends since they met in Lamaze class with our older brothers. She read The Art of a Good Marriage by Wilfred Arlan Peterson.

I loved all of the travel themed DIY projects that we completed for our wedding including our suitcase card box.

Love, love, love the blue that my friends wore, it popped so well against the green outdoors!

We had an anniversary dance for all of the married couples at our reception. The longest married couple was my aunt and uncle who have been together for 49 years. 

Love this shot of GM Runner & BM Aggie (who are married) with our friend M.  It reminds me of the fun we had the semester that we pledged our business frat.

And last, but not least, this picture was taken as Daddy E and I waited to take our walk.  I guess we misjudged the timing of our bridal party because we had to step it up to get downstairs and out the door.  Oh well, can't start the ceremony without us, right?

If you would like to see more of our blue and green, travel themed wedding you can check out the recap links at the bottom of this post.

For those still planning, what has been your favorite aspect so far?  For the married ladies out there, have you gotten around to printing out any photos from your wedding?  7 months later and I still have not done that.

It's So Hard To Say Goodbye

Not only to yesterday, but also to you - the hive.  I held off long enough to share our album and video with you, and now it looks like it's time to say goodbye.

I can still remember the rush of excitement I felt when I received that acceptance email from Pengy a little over a year ago.  Your warm welcome and incredibly sweet comments as I shared with you our blue and green, travel themed wedding truly made an impact.  Not only on our special day, but also in my heart.  I don't think there are words to express how much this experience has meant to me.

Weddingbee inspired me to find my inner DIY crafter and create various projects as well as all of our paper products from our invites to those infamous programs.  You weren't just there for all of the fun, pretty stuff.  You were there when vendors fell off the face of the planet and when the stress became just a little bit too much.  And for that, I can't thank you enough.

This may be my "goodbye" post, but I'll still be around here and there.  If I can find any wedding related posts up my sleeve, you know I'll be happy to pop back in.  I'm kinda hooked on this whole blogging thing, so you can find me over at Oh Lordy! where I talk about our married life and the future hunt for our house.  Hopefully I can incorporate some of these DIY skills to turn that house into a home.

I can't believe that we've come to the end of our wedding journey, which you can catch up on over on the Elephant wiki page.  If I could say thank you a million times, I still don't think it would be enough for all of the love and support you have given me over the past year. Before the tears start rolling down my face again, I better wrap this up.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart, and I hope you all have absolutely amazing, love filled wedding days and beautiful marriages!

Love Always,

Mrs. Elephant / Mrs. E / Lauren

Wedding Memories

Our album & wedding video are in and they are AMAZING!!!

Part of our wedding package included an album for us and one for each set of parents.  After seeing the pictures on our online gallery, I knew we would end up adding a couple of additional pages to our album.  Our fabulous photographer Lynn mentioned that our wedding, with all of it's details, would look pretty awesome in a unique 20 x 8  flipbook style and after seeing a couple of layouts we agreed and upgraded.

We debated between green and brown for the cover, even put it to a vote on Lynn's blog.  As you can see green won out (which is what we were leaning towards from the beginning).

The title page will always remind me of reading Mr. E's book while getting ready.  We love all of the different layouts Lynn and Vivie designed for our album.

But my favorites are the full page layouts.  Maybe that is also because they are my favorite pictures, so seeing them in 20 x 8 size just makes me smile.

I love how thick the pages are, as well as how they lay flat.

The green lizard skin wraps from the front all the way to the back.

I'm a big fan of the metal cover!  I couldn't figure out how to get the best shot, but I think you can kinda tell from this one.

And just for comparison, here's the album with little Gypsy.   It's longer and heavier than she is, not that that is very difficult since she is less than 10 pounds.

It must have been the weekend to relive our wedding because we also received our video montage!  I'm not gonna lie, I've watched this thing more than a handful of times. It's kinda cute how nervous Mr. E was when he was reciting his vows.  

Will you be getting an album with your wedding pictures?  Is it included in your package, or will you DIY one? Did you have your vows recorded on video (by a videographer or family/friend)?

All photos of the album are personal.  Pictures in the album are from Lynn Michelle

Rock Me Like A Hurricane

This past weekend Mr. E, the fam and I traveled up to Philly to celebrate the wedding of BM Philly and her husband D.

The weekend was filled with wonderful events from the welcome BBQ on Thursday, to the rehearsal and cocktail party on Friday to the big event on Saturday.  Of course the weather was a big topic of interest as Hurricane Irene was heading our way.

BM Philly and her mom worked so hard on the beautiful purple and green wedding details many of which were DIY such as the programs, flip flop baskets, ceremony decor and cake pops.

BM Philly even surprised D with a Boston Sports themed groom's cake at the cocktail party on Friday. I like to think she got that idea from all of her dedicated reading of Weddingbee :)

Unfortunately their plans of a gorgeous garden wedding were dashed by the torrential downpour and wind thanks to Irene.  Their wedding was still amazingly beautiful even though the tornado warnings shut the party down a little early.  The food was amazing, the cocktails were flowing and we made more than one trip to the photo booth not worrying about the rain until the very end.

With warnings of the hurricane approaching and transportation in the Tri state area shutting down, there were more than a handful of guests that understandably decided not to make the trip to the wedding.  If you were a bride in that position, would you want to receive cancellation calls and texts ahead of time, or after the wedding?  Was anyone else's wedding effected by the hurricane this past weekend?

*I know that weddings are more of a first world problem.  My heart goes out to those that lost loved ones or their houses in Hurricane Irene.