2017 Favorites

2017 has certainly been a memorable year for me. This year,I married the love of my life. I took this photo of my wedding gown with my phone the night before the wedding.  Not my best photo but this shot means so much to me. Each time I look at it, I remember the excitement that I felt the night before our wedding. ❤ I was so exhausted from all the wedding preps and from entertaining out of town guests and yet I couldn’t sleep that night! I was totally freaking out but in a good way… ❤

Recently,I also shared some of our wedding photos here 🙂

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My DIY Rustic Wedding

Hello!

Yeah, I’m still alive. LOL I know, I know… it’s been a while. And I’m always saying this but I really do miss blogging and writing fiction. That said, I miss reading more. I miss looking at everyone’s photos, those gorgeous images taken from all over the world, taken by different people with different personalities and perspectives. I’ve never seen the northern lights. But I’ve seen it through your photos. Always through different lenses, always through different perspectives. And I will forever remain in awe at how beautiful that sight is when seen through your eyes, and his eyes, and her eyes… It just never looks the same way. Someday, I’ll get to see, no… experience… it for myself. But right now, thank you for letting me see what you see… For letting me in on the experience that is so uniquely yours. Thanks for sharing a little piece of yourself with me.

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I never said this but your photos here at the weekly challenges have gotten me through some pretty tough times. Somehow, they’ve provided me with  sweet, sweet escape from the mundane. Your images to me are like multiple windows and doors to different worlds and dimensions that I can just peer into, step into, and get lost in. More than that, your photos have given me inspiration. They’ve made me more ambitious, more eager to see the world. Knowing you has pushed me to travel more, to see more of the world, to taste more of life. So for all that, I’m grateful. I”m glad we connected via WordPress, that we became friends through photos.

Now, I get to return the favor big time. As you may already know, I tied the knot a few months back. I promised some blog followers photos and photos you shall get. 🙂 Here are personal pieces that only I can share with you. As much as I value my privacy, I’d just like to share with you a little idea of what the most important day of my life was like.

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The rustic theme is super trending so my fiance, now husband, and I really went for it. More importantly, we realized that it suited our personality as a couple. We wanted something simple but elegant, down to earth but generous… We toiled for months and months DIYing everything from the invitations to the souvenirs. Ariel designed the crates to be used as rustic decor and spray painted the wine bottles. I spent afternoons wrapping jute strings on more wine bottles and late nights sewing lace on burlap for our wedding invites. Together, we stamped wax seals on the envelopes. Together, we dressed up the little jars of homemade pineapple jam in burlap and jute. I plotted the seating arrangement like it was a battle plan. And I’ll never forget the sight of him steam ironing my dress the night before the wedding… Just remembering all that craziness paints a smile on my face. Neither of us have done anything like this before. It was his first time to make wooden pallets. It was my first time painting varnish on wood slices and wooden boxes. Our wedding organizer, who was fabulous btw, was really amazed at how much energy we put into the wedding planning. I can tell that he was super blown away by how OC I was about everything. LOL I gave the wedding suppliers printed handouts as thick as a baby thesis. hahaha I got backups of backups. I printed labels for everything

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Our organizer always be like: “Where did you buy this?” and we be like: “Oh, we made it ourselves.” Okay, it’s probably not wise to be experimental on your wedding day. For us, there was always this option to hire a stylist and then there’s always the risk of suffering DIY disasters. I mean, you only get married (for the first time) once… Ideally. If you screw up that photo wall, it’s screwed. But that’s the whole point. We only get to do this once. We only get to enjoy this once. So we figured, hey, if we make mistakes, we’ll make them together. And then we’ll just laugh at them together. It was kind of the same with this decision that I made to rock a face veil. I had a traditional church wedding and everyone urged me to wear a long veil. They said it looks better in photos and that it’s more appropriate for a Cathedral wedding. I was like: Screw appropriate. I’ve always envisioned myself walking down the aisle with my face bare and me smiling at everyone.

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In the end, the wedding was everything we wanted it to be and more… An intimate affair with us surrounded by our closest friends and family. It wasn’t perfect. It never is. But the feeling was.

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It was my husband’s idea that we should have tokaji (tokay) Hungarian wine for our wedding toast. Coz champagne is overrated, he said (though the ladies and I drank champagne at the bridal suite while getting dolled up). I said yeah, brilliant idea. My fiance didn’t know this but fans of horror will recognize it as the wine that the Count Dracula served to his guest, Jonathan Harker. It’s delicious.

Planning the entire wedding may have been experimental for us but our love is something that has been tried and tested over the years.

 

xoxo

K.Z. ❤

 

 

 

A Good Match

Everyone, meet Peachy and Jack…

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“He rises to his feet and pulls me up to stand beside him. My chin comes to his shoulder, we are both dainty, long-limbed, coltish: well-matched. I turn my face into his jacket. ‘Will you marry me?’ he whispers.

‘Yes,’ I say.”
-Philippa Gregory, The Kingmaker’s Daughter