Cat | You May French Kiss The Bride

Mar 2014

Anni + Rauno

Fall Inspired Wedding from Estonia

I confess, I am totally obsessed with their car. But not just that; they also have a super cute cat wearing a bowtie, and all the little touches of yellow and orange are just perfect for this fall inspired wedding! The very nice pictures were taken by Gerry Sulp, out of Estonia.

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The wedding took place on October 5, 2013. The ceremony was held at our home-town’s (Tartu, Estonia) railway station, an old building which was recently renovated.

Our wedding car belonged to my grandfather, then to my mother, and now me and my husband. Rauno started to fix it (it was a bit dented and rusty and… well, an old car) about 6 months before the wedding and it was his major project. It was Rauno’s most important wish that he could be the one driving it on our wedding day.

We were very close with my mom, Rauno thought of her as his own… and we both don’t have very good relationships with our fathers. My mom passed away, sadly, in January. One of her biggest goals in life (she was fighting cancer) was to see our wedding day… which she did.

We wanted a fall wedding and the day before and the day after our wedding, it was raining and cloudy but on the 5th of October the weather was sunny and perfect!

So we started to plan the wedding, we made to-do-list by month and we kept to the list. We had wedding meetings with my mum and my two best friends the weeks before the wedding day, we thought about where the cars were gonna park, who was going to be sitting in whose car, etc. We really thought about every little logistical detail. We were joking that we (me and Rauno) did all the hard work for a year and two months (all the pre-planning and handycraft) and my bridesmaids Kairi and Maarja did everything on that one special day. I had written a 10-page long vision of the wedding with every little detail for my bridesmaids Kairi and Maarja, so that they would know our wishes exactly. It worked out perfectly because EVERYTHING (and I mean EVERYTHING) went according to plan. And that’s what made it special for us. I’m a big planner in life as well, I like my things organised, and the wedding day of an organised person has to be very well organised. :)

I recommend envisioning the day in your mind and really thinking through the details. That is how I found out the “critical” things and was able to think about them in advance. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. And even if things go a little south, it is still the best day of your life!

Name on thing you regret…

Regrets? I think it is safe to say: NONE! It took many sleepless nights and many discussions and many-many-many hours of working, buying things, making things, talking to people etc – but everything was exactly like we wanted it to be. As I said… we didn’t have even the slightest glitches or mishaps, although we were prepared for almost everything. HAHA! I just remembered one thing. Since I’m not big on make-up and hair-do’s or all that girly stuff, I like it quite natural, I didn’t want to use any hair products on my hair-do (actually it wasn’t that I did not WANT to, the thought just never occurred to me since I do not OWN any hair products). But in retrospective, the wind was pretty strong that day and maybe a little hairspray would have been necessary. But like I said, I like everything natural, so it really didn’t bother me that much.

… And one thing you’re really happy about/ proud of.

I’m HAPPY about all the things about my wedding day. Even the stressful planning. But the thing I’m most proud of – is my world’s greatest husband! When we were planning the whole thing, I read about many weddings and many girls/women planning their wedding. And somehow it always seemed… that the wedding (for the most part, there are always exceptions) is more important for women. And not so much for men. And it is totally normal because men are not really that into this – they just want to hear the “I do” from the person they love most in the world. But not my man! Rauno was always 100% involved, thinking about every little detail, spending many nights with me and the paper cutter… I literally did not have to do anything alone, I always had my maid of honour – my Rauno (that was I joke I often made, that I didn’t need a maid of honor because I already have Rauno).

May 2013

Sonia + Tony

Parisian Jazz Musician Wedding

If I say Paris, you’ll probably start telling me how beautiful the city is, you’re gonna mention one of those famous jazz clubs and the way all couples look so in love everywhere… But you know how it is when you actually live in such a place; you don’t really take the time to enjoy these little things that seem to make the city so special to everyone, and end up thinking all those stuff are for tourists. But when I was preparing this blog post it hit me again: Paris is fabulous! And if you like all the clichés about this city, you’re probably gonna enjoy this post.

Second, when you’re preparing your wedding and decide to go for a music themed wedding because, say, you’re both musicians, there are many options. One of them is to put miniature instruments on your tables, old vinyl records in a corner, and all kind of music-related details you can think of. Which is great. One other choice is to decide to live your theme and be the detail that will make your wedding so special: Sonia and Tony rented a houseboat to host their party, had a very intimate/ jazzy atmosphere, and during the night, started an ox with some musician friends of them! Now how does that second option sound? Photos: Photography by Winter.

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Let me tell you a bit more about today’s couple, or even better, let the bride tell us a bit more about them.

We’re both jazz musicians and met at a concert organised by the Conservatoire. At the end of the repetition, we went to a restaurant and I found myself in front of Tony at the table. After 2 minutes, he said something really funny and quite unexpected. I looked up… a few weeks after we were inseparable, and here we are now beating all odds (we were both against marriage) a bit more than 5 years after that night, married! Never say never, as for me, I even had a veil.

And here’s about all those “music-related” moments of the day.

In the end it was an artists’ wedding – we had MC friends rapping a very beautiful text at the city hall (they even managed to involve Tony and everyone ended up following their lead), and my friends from the batucada waited for us outside with their drums and literally set the court of the city hall on fire! On the houseboat later that night we played a few songs with our friends who brought their instruments, and our dear friend Chris—DJ and funk singer—made everyone dance like mad to songs inherited from the 60s… This is what I like to call a party.

Name one thing you regret…

No regret! Everything was as we wanted it to be.

… And one thing you’re really happy about/ proud of.

It was a wedding with a lot of friends and very few family members, which is what we wanted. Our families were the best: no pressure, no expectation, no one telling us what to do. We really appreciated that, even if this may be the result of long years of “we’ll never get married” speeches… But still, it was a quite unconventional wedding in the sense that we got rid of everything that didn’t make sense to us: no paper invitation but an email instead, no traditional sugar-almonds, no wedding cake, no church, no wedding list, no seated dinner, no table map, no folding paper crane workshop… The least possible stress for a maximum of pleasure, that was our idea. (But hey, I’m not saying we didn’t work on that wedding!)

Mar 2013

Animals

Some Great Photos of Animals at Weddings

I think you already got it: I LOVE animals. All type of animals. Ok, I fear some of them (like sharks, snakes and for some reason, worms), but in general I will find anything they do super cute, so that this theme was for me more than an obvious choice.

But, besides just loving or not animals, I’m amazed by the creativity that’s needed to get one photo like that and I really congratulate all photographers represented here for the opportunity they seized and for pushing the trigger at the perfect moment.

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# 1 by Granin Photo