Paul and I's Wedding featured on Off Beat Bride!

So this is SUPER cool....
I submitted a few photos of Paul and I's wedding to Offbeat Bride last week and tonight/this morning I discovered this:

And then this:

Pretty sweeeeet, huh?!

Here's the direct link to my bride profile.

Thanks Ariel for featuring us on your site! Your book was really helpful and a great read - and your OffBeat Bride site was super inspirational. Nathan - once again - thanks for providing us with such kick-butt wedding photography!! And Justin - for all the beautiful portraits and reception photos. And thank you to everyone (especially friends and family for the countless hours of indentured servitude) for helping us with our incredibly offbeat and extremely memorable wedding! We love you all.

From the Scrapbook

A few weeks ago when I was down in Florida my friend Laura created a really cool scrapbook page for a competition using Paul and I's wedding photos from Stephen's Gap. She won the round by the way, and right now is down to the final round!! Go Laura!!

The Traveling Shoelaces

So Paul and I's good friends, Jasna and Jason, who recently moved WAY out to Colorado, sent us these great pictures of the awesome St. Louis-made shoelaces we gave away as favors - and a trip they made up a mountain peak!!

If anyone else has photos of where our shoelaces or accessory cords have traveled - send them on over and I'll post them here.

Thank you!

Well we are on the very last set of thank you notes right now - have about 20 more to do. We still have a mystery gift that didn't have a note with it - Two white shirts that say "Every Day is a Caving Day" from Cafe Press. We think they are great! But we don't know who to thank for them. So if anyone knows - tell us. There were several donations to SCCi made on our name which is wonderful - the caves (and Paul and I) thank you!! Amazingly enough - all of our goodies on our REI list were purchased, except for a pair of socks. Several people gave us REI gift certificates - which went towards our brand new backpacking tent - a Big Agnes 3 person (or two people with gear).
We tried it out two weekends ago on the Jack's River Trail in GA. Weighs just under 6 pounds - including the footprint and is really quite roomy. I'm going to post photos from that trip on my regular blog (Brina Bat) this week. Still have to organize and put together photo albums of all the photography of our wonderful wedding weekend - to whit I am enlisting the help of a professional - Laura - in early September. Now all we have to do is go on our honeymoon at some point in time....

Bride Price Hiccup

Paul received these photos and official letter in the mail recently. Seems as thought the bride price (joke folks - joke!) sent to my father didn't get through. We're currently working on sending the Goat and Camel branch all of the necessary papers. Hope (Click on the pages below to read.)



My Dad and Paul kept teasing me throughout the whole time my parents were in Huntsville to help and put on our wedding.... the "price" kept going up, more camels, a couple more goats, etc. until they finally settled on a price.

A Little Kiss

Just a little movie I created from Nathan's "burst-mode" photos of Paul & I at Stephen's Gap cave right after the wedding ceremony. I added the running water sound effect, multiply the sound 10 fold and you've got the real sound of all that rushing water from the waterfalls behind us.

Plethera of Pictures!

A plethora of beautiful wedding weekend photos await you here from Justin Itnyre of HUE Design +Photo. Be patient while they load, it takes a little while.

There are photos of the set up, some snapshots of the cave trip to Tumbling Rock, the Family dinner, portraits of Paul and I on the 3rd floor of the Lowe Mill just before the reception began (that's why we were all dressed up when we popped out of the elevator), and then the reception.

Our grand entrance from the super cool freight elevator ....


...to our waiting guests... before we got changed and all comfortable.

My Mom & Dad, Paul and I and Paul's Mom and Dad

More photos to come and a short video from the wedding ceremony at Stephens Gap - stay tuned!

Portraits by Justin Itnyre © 2008
HUE Design +Photo

Bride Price vs. Dowry

My Mom, Dad, Paul and I kept calling it a dowry. I looked it up. Dowries are "property or money brought by a bride to her husband on their marriage." But the one Paul and my Dad worked out was the opposite - with items being paid to my father. That's actually called a "bride price." Bride price is defined as "a sum of money or quantity of goods given to a bride's family by that of the groom, esp. in tribal societies." It took over a week to work out, with heated negotiations - offers by Paul and counteroffers from my Dad, until finally they agreed. I think it was the "fire ant mound for my father's enemies" that really cinched the deal.

My bride price:

13 Strong Female Goats
6 Two-humped (or Bactrian) Camels that don't spit
1 XL Fire Ant Mound to put in the tents of enemies

The goat futures market went down a bit during the week of negotiations, the original offer starting out at 5 goats and eventually climbing to 13. And there was much discussion as to one-humped (Dromedary) or two-humped (Bactrian) camels, with my father refusing the single-humped, citing that two-humped camels are always better than single-humped. Spit-free camels allowed Paul to save and only pay 6 instead of 8. (As an aside - you have no idea how hard it is to find XL fire ant mounds. S and M are easy - but XL is really tough - not to mention all the fire ant wrangling involved with all those little buggers.)

We've managed to procure several crates for transportation of live animals. This afternoon they'll be promptly shipped to my father, chief of the Greywicke tribe.

Eat at Joe's

After our brilliant wedding ceremony at Stephen's Gap our little band cleaned up and hiked out of Stephen's Gap.

My wonderful hubby, Paul, and Michelle behind him, adjusting her ponytail.

Our resident cave photographer extraoidenere, Nathan and myself, Tommy and Lea in the back.

Tommy and Angela

What everyone expect to see hanging in a tree at Stephen's Gap - two formal dresses!

Angela was taking photos of wild flowers behind me, so we paused for a minute, allowing me to shoot this set of three. The last one makes me laugh.

Lea (surviving her first caving experience/wedding in a cave) showing off her jacks with Tommy in the Stephen's Gap parking lot.

Angela called in our orders and we enjoyed a wedding ceremony repast of most delicious pizza. We ate at Joe's - Joe's Pizza that is, off 72. I highly recommend it! (its marked on the map I posted on Feb 21st).


Mmmmm... pepperoni, olive and extra cheese.

The bride and groom's toast

And yes - and the tradition of feeding each other wedding pizza!

More photos of the wedding weekend soon...We're just getting started here folks!

Get Me to the Cave on Time!

Announcing the long awaited photos from the wedding ceremony at Stephen's Gap from the morning of May 1st, 2008.

My "something blue"

Angela starting the ceremony

Lea reading

Paul reading his vow to me

"You may kiss the bride"

Lea, Michelle, me, Paul, Tommy and Angela on the pedestal at Stephen' Gap Cave.

More kissing practice.

A long shot of Paul and I. You're looking at about 100ft of waterfall, then the pedestal hides about another 30 feet down to the floor.

The whole nutty crew: Michelle, Angela, Tommy, Nathan, Paul, me and Lea. All packed up and ready to hike out after a successful wedding and pit bounce!

I think all of us really had an incredible time at Stephen's Gap. The day was so mild, the timing and light just right, the perfect words exchanged and everyone was all smiles (despite getting a bit chilly while taking photos).

These are just a selected-selected few of the keepers. I have 8 CDs worth of photos from Nathan, so I'd be posting for days if I even tried to post 1/2 of them! I will post at least a couple more items from the ceremony - And then after that I'll have photos from the cave trip and reception when I receive them from Justin so check back in the next few days.

All photos in this post by Nathan Williams. (thank you, thank you, thank you!)

Everyone else's pictures

In the aftermath of the wedding weekend, there were several who posted their own photos:

Annamaria:
post #1 - Aunt B
post #2 - venue
post#3 - family dinner
post #4 - Monte Sano

Christin:
I fell into a crevasse
Brina's Wedding Weekend (TONS o Pics!)

(and by the way I feel utterly horrible for you Christin! I'm sorry! ... she was walking when she left on Saturday... I so didn't know ... and she made it out of TR ok, or at least we thought - heal up Christin!! Feel better!)

The Basics

Here's a little teaser leading up to when I'm able to post some of the professional photos back from the wedding which took place on May 1st at Stephen's Gap (Nathan) and then the Reception from May 3rd (Justin). Hoping to get some of them in the next couple days.

So lets review what it takes to have a wedding:

1. Love


(now I have "All you need is love" going through my head.. "love, loooove, love is all you need")

2. A letterpress invitation printed on our 1924 Chandler and Price press (Preston) to join in on the wedding weekend fun


3. A wedding license and an officiant to marry Paul and I (thanks Angela!)


4. A (slightly nutty) Bride and Groom who want to get married in a cave


5. A group of (equally nutty) awesome friends to help with the wedding-in-a-cave.
Including (but not limited to) sherpa-ing, marrying, reading, photography, rappelling, witnessing, signing and of course laughing about it all.

Lea, Paul, Sabrina, Nathan, Michelle, Tommy and Angela

6. A bouquet of the orange-est Gerbers I've ever seen, and boutonnière for Paul


7. A really pretty dress for the bride and a tux for the groom (We told the rental place it was an outdoor wedding .... oh if they only knew!)


8. An incredible venue - Stephen's Gap Cave - with perfect weather - complete with complimentary 100'+ waterfalls and an after-wedding 130' rappel.