Wedding Details - Flowers

Oh, flowers. So important to a wedding. They dictate the feel of the wedding, the colour scheme, the smells... I am really looking forward to getting down our thinking process with the flowers. And by "our" I of course mean Mareike and my thinking process. I really don't think that the Hons had much to say about flowers.



My wonderful mother-in-law helping with the flowers



If you look back through the blog, you can see some of the thoughts we had. Mareike did a great summary of all the different bouquets out there and I talked about my love for peonies. Since I was a kid, I had been thinking of what flowers I would want at my wedding and it took me quite a while to decide what I wanted. What made it particularly tough - I am quite partial to spring flowers. Not awesome when you are getting married in September. So, without further ado - here is the story of our wedding flowers. And now "our" is Patrick and I.





Just before I had my only wedding breakdown



The thought process:

I was determined to not spend loads on my flowers, which automatically meant taking what was in season at the time. Therefore: no peonies, no anemones. I also fell in love with a bouquet shape more down the lines of a fresh picked wild flower bouquet and less "clean lined". It was important for us that people felt at home at our wedding and really comfortable so we wanted the flowers to be as natural and unaffected as possible. To save money (and cause I think it is really beautiful) we collected 100 glass jars and used them as vases.

The jars were wrapped in lace, kept in place with double-sided tape

The Florist:



My mom and dad are kinda friends with a florist in Cologne. That's 300km away from Bremen. In a fit of soft wedding brain I decided that it would be a great idea to get our flowers from her. Not only was she going to give us a great price, but it would be good for the relationships and we were sure she would do a great job. We met with her, decided that the easiest thing would be if she gave us bunches of flowers and we put them into the glassses ourselves. She knew I wanted eucalyptus (we even had eucalyptus on our invites) and thistles and other wise was happy with natural flowers in green, white and purple. Three weeks before the wedding, we still had no idea how we were going to get the flowers from Cologne to Bremen. My mom suggested maybe finding a new florist in Bremen. I almost passed out and once I had gathered my brains from the floor said no, it's too late.

A few days before the wedding we still didn't know what we were going to do as flowers so we went to Ikea and bought a bunch of peace lillies that we used as aisle deco and some pretty 'purple-ish' flowers for the stage. After some fiddling, my parents brought the flowers down 4 days before the wedding and the lovely Preuß' brought us the button things for everyone and my bouquet the night before.



So pretty. Thank you, decorators!



The reality:

Oh boy. I am not good at putting flowers in glass jars the night before getting married. It pushed me to the edge. Thankfully, a bunch of lovely ladies came up and offered to help with whatever needed doing and I was more than happy to let them do this for me. Seriously, the edge and I were close friends that night because of these flowers. I was also seriously concerned when the flowers arrived that there wouldn't be enough of them, but it turned out to be the exact right amount. Always trust the professionals, eh? The only real issue was that they forgot to make Mareike's Maid of Honour bouquet so she had to pop off to the flower shop before the wedding with the Groom's button thing and 10€ and ask them to make her a bouquet to match. It ended up being beautiful. We used the petals that fell off the flowers for Aurora to throw and that worked really well as well. All in all, it was awesome. When I arrived at our venue for the evening and saw all the flowers lined up on the tables and the way they quietly made the room ours, I was so thrilled and grateful for everyone who helped.

Garden roses, thistles and other things I don't know the names of.

The flowers were such a huge collaberative effort and I am so grateful to everyone who helped. Another big thank you here!!!

p.s. see Patrick's ginormous button thing? I thought that was Mareike's bouquet! I had already started to take it apart to make it smaller when I was informed by many that as the Groom he needs a big bouquet on his chest. I listened and it is now useful as something for us to laugh about in pictures.





Wedding details - where we put the seating cards.

Finally!!! I finally got the pictures I needed off my dying laptop and can now show some of the projects I and Mareike (and sometimes even Patrick) did for the wedding. I wanted to do this as chronologically as possible (more for my sake than yours - I want to look back on this one day, you know?)

So - here is the first project that I did for our wedding. Now that I think about it, I was working on this pretty much a year ago this month. I did it originally to replace something Mareike took when she moved and liked it so much that I decided to use it in our wedding. I was originally just going to use it as something pretty on the table, but about a week before we got married we still did not have a nice way to show people where they are sitting so this became our seating plan.

I have had this shelf since before we moved from Canada. I painted it with my mom when we still lived there, so I was at the oldest 11 when I did it. It has looked like this ever since:



I am especially fond of the sponge technique

When I first moved to Bremen I sorted this puppy out and put it in our stuff for garage sale. It had been in storage for years, was yellow with sponged on white and really not quite my style. I lacked vision. Needless to say, nobody bought it (shocker!) so it sat in the basement. When Mareike moved out, I needed somewhere to put my keys and things that just always seem to need a ledge to sit on. Mareike had taken her Ikea chalkboard and moved so I had to get creative. I stumbled across this and decided to revamp it. I dusted it off, gave it a wipe down, bought paint and started painting. I didn't sand it cause I didn't have sand paper and I like things done NOW when I decide to do them. So above is what it looked like before. This is what it looked like at the wedding:

Pretty, eh?

I painted it a pale grey-green and covered the back in burlap. I love burlap. I made the little seating cards out of purple card paper that I found at ideeCreativ and wrote on with white pen, the names on the front, the table number on the back. I used round headed brass fasteners to hang the cards on to string that I had hung in the openings by folding down the arms at the back so that the cards could be hooked on. It was a tight squeeze (as you can see by the cards on the table) but I love it.

We have tried not to waste things from the wedding and this would be pretty hard to waste as it was made for my hallway before it was made for the wedding. So here it is now, in all it's messy glory. I think I'm going to try and take off the string now that it's not needed. Then it won't be so messy, you know?

Keeping it real.

So there you go. The first thing I made, not really for the wedding but it served it's purpose well. I love the green with the brown. And I love burlap. And that's all I have to say about that. Except that's not all I have to say about burlap. Plenty more about that to come!

p.s. my friend Chrissi took the 'wedding' picture. Gorgeous. her website is http://www.loeffler-photos.com/ check her out!

Tomorrow.

I've been in a funk recently. Can recently also mean for a really long time? It just sounds better. I find it hard to get on and do things, am much 'happier' (but not really happier) when I am sitting at home doing very little that involves movement. It's not great. Not how I want to live, but it is how I am living most of the time.

One step to change this I decided on before Christmas - for 6 months (so till the end of June, I guess. Or beginning? Patrick would know, I suck at math) I have decided not to be the one to turn on the TV. This includes anything that could be watched except for the odd short YouTube clip that someone posts on Facebook. So far, I have only been weak once, and then only got through half of what I was cheating with before the guilt made me turn it off. There are a few things that help keep this realistic: if I were to get really sick, then I could watch TV, if Patrick wants to watch something, then I can watch with him. This means that it is more of a conscious watching together and not some brainless activity. In order for me to have things that I can do instead, I decided to read a book a week, which so far is also going well.

However, it isn't quite having the effect I wanted. I am still in my funk. (Ok, ok. Let's call a spade a spade. Laziness.) And it is proving extremely hard to master. So. As of tomorrow morning I will be making a renewed effort at getting up earlier so that I can do my sports in the morning, and re-practicing self-discipline. I have a feeling this will be a life-long battle but I am glad I know that it is one that I will win eventually.

So tomorrow I will do the laundry, get church ready, clean the hall and my house, cook delicious food and do Jillian and lots more. One step at a time.

And my motto will be borrowed from Goethe: What is not started today, is never finished tomorrow.

Have I mentioned that I like winning?

Patrick and I got this game for Christmas:

I am always a bit skeptical about new games, never sure if I will like them. I like sticking to what I know, which is why I love Christmas 'just so' and, I think, have never been able to get into Mad Men. But getting games for Christmas is a great way to overcome that, because you can test it out immediately with the whole family. After playing once or twice, I still wasn't sure (and the rules didn't help either, making it really unclear as to how to actually play). We left for home, taking the game with us in it's nifty bag and played a few times just the two of us. I started to love it. Then, after a conversation with the In-Laws, we understood the rules better and then really started to play for reals.

As it is with all games we play, Patrick lures me in by losing at the beginning, making me think that the playing field is even. And by even I mean I get to win. And then, all of a sudden, I never win. Ever. It's so depressing. But I still play, because every once in a blue moon I will win and that keeps me going. Patrick knows that this gets frustrating for me (all the losing, not the winning every once in a while) but seems to get some kind of enjoyment out of my desperation to win. (Seriously, this one game, Manhattan, we have played so many times I cannot even guess but I know that I have won maybe 10 times. If that. So. Depressing. Why do I still even play with him?! [I was just reading this out to Patrick, got to this part and he screamed "What?! What?!" I thought he was going to tell me off for over-exaggerating my losing and that I had won more than that, but instead he helpfully pointed out that I have "won twice if that". Thanks, honey])

So, now you know the backdrop we can get on to the other day. We haven't been playing very much recently because I have been crocheting a blanket for my soon-to-see-the-light-of-day nephew (I actually just spelt that nefew. I like it.) Last Friday I was in the mood to try and win Qwirkle so we played. I lost. I got annoyed. Then I just sensed that I was going to win if I stuck with it and didn't mope around like the 12 year old Sarah used to (or cry because Matt and Grandma Bowles accused me of cheating when I didn't or cause I lost. For some reason that always happened at Grandma Bowles' house). So I challenged Patrick to the next game, confident in my victory, and maybe boasting just a wee bit. And I was really good! I was getting 6, 7, 8 point when he was only getting half that, I was getting Qwirkle after Qwirkle! It was awesome. But then, the inevitable happened. Patrick won. What the heck?! How does he do that?! And by like something stupid like 3 points or something (and to make matters worse I would have lost by more if he hadn't put his piece down in a way that I could get a sympathy Qwirkle in the end).

So... I got angry. And mopey. And maybe I threw a pen at him twice. He just wouldn't stop chuckling! "Ach, Schatz" he says in a loving, don't be stilly voice. "Ich bin so genervt, weil ich schon wieder verloren habe! (I'm so annoyed cause I lost AGAIN)" I said in my mopey annoyed voice. There was a pause where Patrick considered me and I waited for him to say something encouraging. And then came this, with a crooked smile - "Aber schon mit dir selber, ja? (Annoyed with yourself right)" I was gobsmacked. Let out a stunned 'Huf' and then shook my head in amazement at my husband's inability to know when NOT to say the truth, or remind me of the truth. I had expected some kind of "You'll win at some point" or "You're always a winner to me" but for some reason he always chooses the opportunity to make sure my feelings are what they should be and remind me that I have no one but myself to blame for sucking at Qwirkle and therefore can only be annoyed at my own self. Thank you, Patrick.

Boy oh boy. I think it must be something to do with me, though, cause when I told my mom a few weeks ago that I keep losing at the game she bought me for Christmas she responded with "Well, it is a strategy game..."



Crocheting and Qwirkle.

Oh. Earlier this same day: My loving husband poured water on my head while I was trying to relax on the floor by cuddling (after I asked him not to) because he "had made a commitment". It's a good thing he's pretty.

Gawking to Growing

Since the wedding, I have become an avid 'gawker'. While we were planning the wedding, Mareike found www.weddinggawker.com and we instantly became hooked. It developed into being my only real internet source, from whence I garnered all my wedding inspiration. Since being married I have moved on from gawking at weddings to gawking at foods and crafts. Oh boy. I'm sure I will be writing quite a bit about both of those new obsessions hobbies of mine. I have so many tabs open on Opera all the time that the Hons has decided, in order to relieve him of frustration and questions like "can you please close some tabs so that the Internet works faster!", that Opera is mine and Google Chrome is his. Fine by me! I am now free to tab it up all I want! And believe me, I do.

So today I'm going to show you one of the tabs that I have open, just waiting for the right moment (the right weather conditions, planet alignment, ok, just mood) for me to crack on and make.I would love 5 of these in total - 1 for our balcony where there is a blank view-blocker thing just begging for this to hang on it, 1 for our terrace and 3 for the blank wall against which our sitting area in the garden backs. (Whoa! Crazy sentence structure. I blame the german. Not the Germans. The German. Language. Not Patrick.)

Check out this loveliness! (I got all of this off of Design Sponge here)

Seriously.

I have a thing for vertical gardens since watching some of the classic Australian show The Renovators. Google it if you don't know what you were missing. They did this awesome challenge of making vertical gardens and it totally caught my imagination. It may have even started earlier when I read an article in National Geographic about buildings with vertical gardens and then I went to the new Anthropology store in London (where I would buy pretty much anything if I had the money) where they have a full triple height wall covered in living, breathing plants:

I found the picture here: http://weewhiskeywoman.blogspot.com in the archive

The building site across the road is slowly winding down and they have a bunch of these pallets kicking around so I am thinking of sending the Hons over to ask them if we can take a bunch off their hands. I will not ask myself because I am chicken and did not marry Patrick for no reason.

Once the pallets are acquired I will go about the business of following the instructions on the blog I found them on (cover back and bottom with landscape paper, fill with earth, plant with plants of choice, let rest for a few days, place in the vertical wherever appropriate). I would really love to have it look exactly like either of the walls I have posted on here, but who am I kidding. I could never afford that many succulents (unless I start growing them now for planting next year). But I will find something beautiful. Unfortunately veggies are not ideal because of the chemicals that are nesting in the wood, just waiting for some unsuspecting, vegetable-garden loving Canadian-German to come along and unwittingly ingest them in her body. Well not this time, you sneaky pallets.

Aren't they lovely? Do you have space in your life for a vertical garden? Would you go through the extra effort to line it well and then plant it with herbs or the like (ooooh I love that idea! Maybe that will be the terrace one...)

What are your gardening plans this spring?

Marrying the Hons, um wait, didn't you already do that?!

Yes I am married, and have been for, well, almost 6 months now. Any one want to work it out exactly for me? Maths was never a strength of mine. Nor was counting come to think of it. Anyways, I'm getting off topic. Geez, I let this blog slide, eh? Sorry about that. Getting married turned out to be more time consuming than I expected it to be and I am also just very bad at carrying things through. Yet another thing for me to work on - so far in just a few sentences: math and finishing things. I wonder how many will be listed by the time I'm done here tonight? There's a prize for whoever can find the most! Just kidding. There is no prize. Except honour.

So. Anyways. I've decided to restart blogging, and to keep blogging on this particular blog. "But," I hear you ask in confusion, "this blog is called 'Marrying the Hons' and you've already done that. Doesn't that make the blog a bit passé? Shouldn't you just move on?" And that is where you would be wrong.

The other day Patrick and I were listening to a Tim Keller (ooooh we love Tim Keller) talk about marriage where he described sex as the act of renewing the marriage covenant with each other. How beautiful is that image? It also really resonates with me. From the very beginning I have often said that marriage for me is deciding to marry the Hons every day afresh. There haven't been times where that has been hard yet (the other day, ok today, I told someone that every day is Valentine's Day in our house. To which the man responded "You celebrate the beheading of a Christian every day?" ha. ha. No, Sir. We don't. And you just ruined the admittedly slightly sickening romance of my sentiments.) I do know that the times will come where it has to be married. I want to put in the practice now of actively making the choice to marry my husband every day. So that is how I can justify keeping the blog up on this place.

So much to that. What I really really really wanted to do is go through the craftiness I got up to before the wedding for the wedding but my laptop has bitten the dust and refuses to do anything but make me angry so I can't get at the pictures. I will one day though so be ready to read all about how Mareike did a lot of crafting. And I sometimes helped. This is not only for your amusement, but also mine.

So there you have it. Another slightly boring (sorry about that but I am hurrying. Why am I hurrying? No reason really except now my husband is done showering and I want to spend some time with him) "I-stopped-blogging-but-now-I-am-back" justification. I will post something much more thrilling tomorrow, I promise!

... making your speech personal!

These two are the masters of the perfect personalised speech. Not something for everyone but I love it! Patrick and I haven't really talked about things in that much detail yet but I wish we were Apple people so we could steal these guys idea. I love it that much. I am off for the weekend but Mareike is going to be here Sunday evening and Monday and I am looking forward to having my Maid-of-Honour here with me to to do wedding things! Yay! Hope you have an awesome weekend!


Tiffany + Brook • St. Regis, Ca from VisualMasterpiece on Vimeo.

And the winner is...

Oh, you think I'll tell you right away and not waffle on about how we made the choice, what made us choose against certain places and how we finally, after much, much thought we came to choose the place we did? Well, you think wrong. You got your hot drink of choice ready? Some nice music on in the background? Your reading glasses on? Then let's dive right in!

Firstly, thank you so much for all your suggestions and offers of help. They really made thinking of the Honeymoon fun and it's great to know we have such helpful friends (I'll remember that when planning the post-wedding clean-up team!).

Up first - the south of France. This was the first place we came up with and we thought long and hard about it. I went so far as to look for holiday homes in and around Carcassonne and a few places near there. Fazit: too expensive, and also somewhere we could go later and with a family. So for a Honeymoon? Non, merci!

Next serious contender - Malta. Hot, small, relaxing, where Paul was shipwrecked, English-speaking, blue water and lagoons. Yes, yes, yes. Touristy. And we just didn't get that excited. So, good-bye Malta.

The whole Honeymoon planning really started to annoy me after ruling out Malta. I just couldn't think of places for us to go that would fulfill my need to go somewhere we may never get to ever again and cheap, clean but cheap, as foreign as we can get but... are you getting the picture?

A few months ago, Patrick mentioned where his flatmate was going on her Honeymoon. It sounded adventurous, not too expensive, far away but still clean. Patrick seemed intrigued but I never really thought that it would be where we would end up.

About a month ago, I decided to just see where we could fly to from Bremen and see if we would be interested in any of those places. Two days later our flights were booked. Without much thought, as we would find out later. We, I am excited to share with you, will be flying to Morocco!

 

Morocco

Morocco!

Morocco!

Morocco!

 You know when you write the same word over and over again and it starts looking really weird? That just happened. But hey, I am going with the most wonderful Patrick Honsberg to Morocco! That's Africa! Africa! Africa! Where we are going exactly and why is a post for another day. Frankly, I think my Honeymoon is more interesting for me than for the rest of you, but I want to read about the planning one day when I have more laundry than I ever dreamed possible and 3 screaming kids and then I'll say 'Look at me moan about the planning process. How little I knew.' and then I'll chuckle patronisingly at the me of the past as the kids cry and Patrick writes the sermon for Sunday and I, wait a minute, hey, me of the future! Less blog reading, more work you lazy mom! 

Enough of this. It's late. Over and out.  

... this video.

I am much to busy actually doing something for our wedding tonight to write loads so how about another video, eh? This one is from 'Life's Highlights' and I love their work. Especially this wedding. I want all my lady friends to pray for me before I walk down the aisle too, please!

Kelly & Isom (West Palm) from Life's Highlights on Vimeo.

I cried when I watched this. And giggled. And sighed. I'm a suck.
Oh, and you want to know what I am so busy doing? You want to know what I have cramps in my fingers from and what I am quite proud of and am just dying to show you? Well, I won't tell you and can't show you until the time is right, so you will just have to wait. Or ask and then I will crumble like a house of cards. Like I said, I'm a suck.

... watching strangers get married!

I watched the wedding. I watched all the coverage we could get in Germany. From 9-3. I watched it all. I held in my need for the washroom so I wouldn't miss a moment. I loved it. I loved seeing someone else's wedding and knowing that I didn't have to pay for it. I loved talking to Mareike and squealing with her when the Princes' left for the Abbey. That's also the only moment I shed a tear. It's also when I excitedly clapped, tapped on the screen, waved and repeatedly squealed 'You're getting married today, William!' I don't think he heard me though.

Like everyone else I was wondering what Kate was going to wear. I was hoping for something quite fashion-forward, something that would maybe be unexpected. It wasn't. It was beautiful, it screamed Grace Kelly, and the more I read about the idea behind it, the more I love it. Don't get me wrong, it's gorgeous, totally appropriate for her and a Royal Wedding, but it wasn't quite the 'gasp' I was hoping for. Her veil, on the other hand, took my breath away. Wa Wa Wee Wa. And her second dress is gorgeous. Really. I think I just expected something else from the fashion house that gave us this:

Now that would have been a 'wow'.

Want to know what my all time favourite thing about the wedding was? What I loved even more than the Queen's bright yellow outfit? More than the cartwheeling priest? More than Harry fooling around with William? THIS:

Every time I saw those trees, especially from above when you got a look at the whole Abbey, it took my breath away. Stunning. So beautiful. Perfect. I will go on about these trees to all and sundry for a while yet. So if you talk to me, you best steer away from this subject or I will not shut up.

Oh. I also thought the Bishop delivered the best sermon at a wedding I have ever heard. Well done, sir, well done.

If you haven't had quite enough of the wedding round up yet, click here to read a really good summary that I couldn't really agree with more.

Tomorrow it is on again with real wedding stuff. I can't wait to tell you all about our Honeymoon plans!

A film to kick us off again!

I love wedding films. There is hardly anything that gets to me like a really well made wedding video. Yesterday we all watched Kate marry William. We sighed and gasped but there was something... lacking for me. It was really fun to watch, but it was missing the raw emotion I love about weddings. I wasn't surprised, it was a royal wedding, orchestrated and awesome (with a brilliant sermon from the Bishop of London) but it doesn't come close, for me, to this video I found last week.
This is what the videographer had to write about the couple:

"This is the wedding of Sara and Rob. They initially had absolutely no intention of having a wedding film and for good reason… Rob, the groom is deaf. They were introduced to our work by their photographer and decided to entertain the idea. Lucky for us, they loved our work and decided to give it a go. We came up with the idea of close captioning their film and they loved it!
From the minute we first met Sara & Rob over Skype, we knew we were going to be in for a special treat.
 Mere words cannot express, what Sara and Rob share together as a couple and as best friends. It is infectious and will literally bring any one to tears...Yes even grown men! There was one moment just after they saw each other for the first time, when they literally just stopped and looked at one another... No words...because nothing needed to be said in that moment. They just knew..."

Already wonderful. Now grab a tissue and watch the beautiful video of Sara and Rob.

Sara & Rob Emotional Teaser from Fiore Films on Vimeo.

Now tell me that you didn't well up. I love Fiore Films work. Raw emotion, beautifully captured. There is more where this came from so stay tuned.

Herzen

Verlobungskarte

"Save the date" Kühlschrankmagnete

 

 

 

Brautstrauß aus genähten Filzherzen

Die passende Hochzeitstorte zum Thema

 

 

Gastgeschenk

Tischkarten

Kitschig?! Ja und wie! Aber passt zum Thema!

Preparations are picking up speed

Sometimes I forget that I am getting married. That hasn't been the case recently. Not. At. All. Seriously. When I started this blog, there were still 236 days left till W-Day. Now we have smashed through the 150 mark and have landed firmly on Terra -149. I have 148 days left of being Sarah BOWLES and will become, in 149 days, Sarah HONSBERG (by the by, 'Honsberg' conjures up many things in my mind that I am not but will magically become when I take the name - tidy, able to make wordplay, German).

Getting ready to be married takes work, as we have already explored here before. But now, 5 months away from W-Day, preparation are picking up speed.

On Tuesday we had an appointment at the Standesamt (civil buro? Is that what it is called in English? Am I a Honsberg already that I don't know?!) to official register our engagement, the date of our civil ceremony and hand in all the paper work. This was something that I was really looking forward to doing with Patrick. With him being in England the whole time, it often feels like I am the one getting married and that for him it isn't really a reality. This was going to be something that we could do together and would make the wedding seem really, well, real. It didn't work out that way. Patrick can't make it here till next week, so I called and asked to move the appointment. They are fully booked. Until 21st. Of June. So there was no changing the meeting, I had to go alone. Along with many other pearls of wisdom, I was informed that the wedding would not be able to take place if one of us were missing or if one of us were unconscious. Duly noted.

I have also been doing lots of crafting. Ok, maybe lots is exaggerated but I have started doing one of the many DIY projects that I have set as goals to help make our day more special, personal and hand-made. I am really enjoying doing it, except that because I am currently not watching TV, I was crafting to the sounds of a Dan Brown audiobook. I have discovered that Dan Brown and I are not a good match. I can't take him. I won't get into this here, it's too upsetting and this is a happy wedding blog.

I also was blessed to be able to have a short stop-over visit with my brother and sister-in-law who is baker, make-up artist, and hairdresser at my wedding. We practiced make-up and boy did I look good! It was so exciting to test out what I am going to look like and what style we are heading towards etc. I think it's pretty awesome being a girl.

On a side note, well not really cause shoes have to do with being a girl, right? My lovely Starbucks barista Felix has offered to buy my wedding shoes. He has also asked if he can be my flower girl and wear a tutu. I said thank you and yes to both those ideas. Sadly, I don't think he is serious about them. Well, maybe about the flower girl one.

Back to what we are up to: Patrick comes on Sunday and the next week will be full of wedding prep. We are going to jewelers to look at rings, we will be continuing with the plans for our Honeymoon (yes, we know where we are going and I will blog about this soon!), and we will be going to the party venue to chat about the details. This has been under new management since the beginning of April so I am hoping and praying that they will not suddenly want to paint everything orange. You can pray with me.

I am so excited to show you all the little DIY projects I am working on. I won't, obviously, until the wedding is over, I don't want to spoil it for those coming, but as soon as it is done and we are back in normal life I will show you all of them!

Day 11 of 30 Day (death) Shred

It's day 11. I have made it through days 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (after which I took a 2 day break due to 1. death pain in my thighs 2. being away all Saturday and coming home way to late to Shred and not having the service ready for Sunday), 8, 9, and 10. Today was day 11. Last night, a little debate started in my head after shredding. I was making it through everything all right, I no longer felt like either jumping off my balcony, no, not jumping, too much effort, rolling over and never moving until my neighbours wondered what the smell was in the hallway or seeking and destroying Jillian and I could do pretty much all the exercises at 'Natalie' level (Natalie being the toned caramel godess who Jillian holds up as a model of work-out ethic 'If you want to look like this (pointing to Natalie's toned, perfect body) you need to work like that') barring the push-ups and the stupid side-squat arm lift moves. So, should I move on or stick with level one until I could win a head-to-head race with the Natanator?

I wrote my cousin Robin, who started shredding 2 days after I did, but who now drew level with me due to my wimpy inability to push through the pain. Was she moving on? She was debating too, but I read last night that she had decided to move on and found it quite easy. Wait a minute, I'll find her status on Facebook, just so you have a comparison. Hm. Can't find it. Anyways, it went something like this 'Moved on to level 2 today, wasn't as bad as I thought it would be etc' you get the point. Not that bad. I took this as a good sign and decided today that I would move on as one is supposed to and do Level 2.

Words cannot describe how misleading my cousin's cheerful, deceitful status is. Right now, I am lying on my couch, a full 20 minutes after shredding, and I can barely find the will to type, let alone get off the couch to find my Hairspray DVD so I can listen to the soundtrack while I type. I really want to listen to that. It would be perfect right now, and yet, I am afraid that if I try to move off the couch I will topple head first onto the floor, in a kind of plank position that Jillian has now grown so fond of, minus the arms holding me up. I almost threw up during cardio session 2. I'm not kidding. I was debating how fast I could run to the washroom or if I should just run out onto the balcony and heave off there.

 It didn't come to that. But almost. And that's all I have to say about that. Except - this is Natalie:

And even she cheats once or twice.

Day 2 of being shredded

I can hear you asking yourselves already 'Is she going to post about this every day? Cause if she is I'm just going to pop back here once she's married to see the pictures.' My answer to you is - I don't know. I will, however, also post about other things, I promise, it's just that this is so new and shiny (shine-y? Is it a requirement that I know how to spell to have a blog?) and painful deadly that it just makes it so deliciously interesting to write about and maybe even to read about. Ok? So keep it together, it's only day 2 and I promise I will post about Rachel's wedding (I asked and she said yes!) sometime soon and just to make it worth while, I will find something beautiful as a little treat at the end of this post. So, on with being shredded !

I stayed in bed a little longer than I normally have recently today, partly for fear of the pain I knew I was going to have to face when I got out of bed. Last night, whilst writing yesterday's first Shred post, I slipped into a little googling. This is always a mistake if you are googling symptoms of an illness, words that could be misinterpreted or torn ligaments (that one is from experience. Ok, all of them are) but please add to your list Jillian's fitness DVD. The back of my DVD tells me that for the past 3 years, 30 Day Shred has been number 1 on the US Fitness DVD charts. This means lots and lots of people have bought it. And wrote about it online. It means I could read about what to expect over the next few days as I torture my body with things it has never done before. It means I knew that I wouldn't be able to move properly this morning.

I felt fine in bed. It was the getting up that worried me. But then I got up - and felt fine. It was when I went to pick up my pants (trousers for the British, no 'lost in translation' here please) that I felt it. My thighs. My arms. Ouch. Still, not quite as bad as I expected. Walking down to work was a bit of a reminder that I had moved in unnatural-to-me ways yesterday but it was still bearable. It got worse as the day progressed and led me to begin fearing my fitness programme later on.

Half past five p.m. I knew it was time to head upstairs to start getting my shred on. Between seven and eight o'clock I was expecting some people to come pick up a bunch of clothes that we had sorted out from downstairs and I didn't want to wait until late to get fit and I also really didn't want to meet people I had never met with a red, sweaty face. I got changed into my running shorts, shoes and a t-shirt and strapped my running gear on - I wanted to see how my pulse did and how many calories I burned in one session and started the DVD. Twenty-one minutes in, the doorbell rang. 'Please, oh please, please. Not the clothes men!' I begged as I ran to the doorbell after pausing Jillian. 'Hello' I gasped (Twenty-one minutes in means I had just finished the last 3 minute strength training and was moving painfully into the last 2 minute cardio) 'It's Stephanus!' answered a man. Oh geez. The clothes man. 'Oh! I'll be right down!' I answered and ran as fast as I could into the washroom where my jeans still were from getting changed. I threw them on, pulled me fleece on over my t-shirt, one I have had for years that used to belong to my wonderful friend Sadie, and ran downstairs. My legs did not like those stairs but I didn't let them complain. Stephanus looked a bit... disoriented at the sight of me. I'm sure my hair was crazy, I had just been doing jumping jacks for goodness sake, and I am more than sure that my face was still red from the strain of these weird side lunges with weights that totally kill. Poor Stephanus. We loaded up the truck, he left cheerily (with his teenage helper, who also looked at me with bewilderment) and I dashed back upstairs. 'I'm sorry, Jillian! I know you say 5 seconds is the only break I get but I just hauled a bunch of sacks of clothes to a truck. That counts as cardio, right? No?' The DVD went back on, cardio and abs were completed as ordered. Shred 2, done.

I have now learned to wait till after the clothes men have come.

Here is the promised something beautiful:

Yes, please.

And last but not least, here are a few quotes I found while googling, all taken from here.:

“I took a first stab this afternoon, and I'm crippled. CRIPPLED! I try to do something exercise-ish every day (excluding weekends and major holidays, of course!), so I thought I could hack it. I'm really [expletive] scared for the pain that tomorrow will bring. I'm scared of that AND this Jillian chick. She's pretty damn scary. So, I'm not sure if I should thank you or curse the day we ever met!!” (sms to the lady who recommended Shred to her)

"... walking back to my office after the workout? I almost fell going down the stairs. i had to literally HOLD ON to the rail"

“ … the first attempt left me so crumpled and sore that I couldn't even roll over in bed without wincing for nearly a week. I seriously wondered if only insane people did this workout, because me? I'm no good at it,”

Now you know.

30 Day Shred.

Blog Readers, this is Jillian:

Jillian, say hi to the Blog Readers.

We've posted about her before, here on Marrying The Hons, cause she is the reason Mareike and I started running again. She's as uber-fit as she looks and a hundred times more tough. She could beat Chuck Norris up. That's how tough she is.

I haven't written much in our 'fitness' area here, mainly because I hate sports. Or at least I say I do. I do. I hate them. My knees hurt, I hate feeling like I can't breathe and my heart is going to pop, along with my eyeballs... it's just not nice. I don't like getting sweaty (which the good and gracious Lord considered when He made me. I don't sweat easily) which again makes it tough for working with Jillian because she says if you're not sweating, you're not working. It's a good thing she can't really see me.

Anyways. So I don't like sports so there hasn't been much to post here. Until today. Since taking over the leadership of Bremen Corps on top of my other job, I just have not been feeling up to jogging. It's just another thing on my To-Do list that feels like work. So I've been looking at alternatives. A couple of months ago, this girl I know in Canada posted on Facebook that she was starting the '30 Day Shred' which piqued my curiosity. I googled. I read about Jillian Michael's fitness DVD, how tough it is but also how effective and that it is all based around a 20 minute workout etc and filed all this information into my brain under 'look at this again later'.

Well, ladies and gentlemen (hello, boys reading my wedding blog!), today is 'later'. I ordered my very own 'Shred - Schlank in 30 Tagen' as it is called in German on Tuesday and today it was delivered (on a side note, why do the people who translate titles into German always feel the need to bland them up? Seriously - '30 Day Shred' has mystery and allure. 'Shred - Schlank in 30 Tagen' makes me as the consumer look lame. C'mon guys!). Along with my watered-down be-titled DVD came my bright red, 1 KG weights and, not fitting in the fitness category at all, my Capote's In Cold Blood that I have been dying to read for years but someone keeps taking it out of the library! At least that problem is now solved.

Anyways. So everything I need is now here for a workout that is anything BUT jogging. There are 3 Workouts in total, the idea being you do one for 10 days and then level up. They are built around circuit training. 3 minutes strength, 2 minutes cardio, 1 minute abs. I got my Amazon pack at the end of my workday. Perfect timing. I came upstairs and put it on to watch it through once. 'This doesn't look that bad' I naively, oh so naively thought to myself. I went and got changed, moved my little table out of the way and started. And then I died. About twice a minute. Holy crow. Oh my. Jeepers. Oh no. I used to do jumping jacks when I was a kid! What happened?! They were nearly the death of me. And there is out-of-character cheerful Jillian telling me 'If you think you're going to die watch Angela (or whatever her name is, the jumping jacks killed my brain) and she will see you through' Whatever, Jillian! I don't believe a word you say, you skinny exercise dictator!

I finished. Having done more push-ups than I ever have at once and shaking all over. I am still shaking. And it's been 40 minutes. Apparently I am now on my way to being 'shredded'. All I can say is - it feels like it sounds and I better have abs like Abigail (or whatever her name is) by the end of this or I am suing for grievous bodily harm. You've been warned.  

p.s. if this hasn't put you off and you are brave enough to join me and letting Jillian beat the crap out of you, you can order Shred - Schlank in 30 Tagen here.

p.p.s despite my griping and moaning, it was quite satisfying, I'm sure I'm going to like it and Jillians comments are encouraging without being cheesy. I like it.

Zum Thema Holz

Die "Save the Date" Karte

Die Einladung

Die Location

oder doch lieber diese hier?!

Die Tischordnung

Die Tischnummern

Das könnte die mögliche Tischdekoration sein:

Die Tischkarten

Eine Möglichkeit um Bilder des Paares zu zeigen

Hier entstehen die Bilder für das Gästebuch

... THE dress

The dress. Oh, the dress. We were going to have to touch on this at some point and I have a feeling that this is the first of many, MANY posts about the dress of all dresses.

I have been dreaming, thinking, planning about THE dress since I was a little girl playing M.A.S.H.  Remember that post? Well that's when it started. The absolute  horror when you ended up with a green or blue or, shudder, multi-coloured dress. Of course we always crossed our fingers and hoped that white would be the last colour standing in the dress category. Beyond that, there weren't many thoughts at the age of 10. However, as the years marched on (and march on they did) I became a bit more, for lack of a better word, creative with my thoughts. White was no longer quite enough. Of course my dress should be white, but what shade of white? What material should it be made out of? What silhouette should it have (I would have asked exactly that question if I had known that word back then). The answer to these questions changed regularly depending on mood, taste, weather, season and boy that I liked. I'm very fickle. When I lived in London, a friend of mine and I went through a phase (oh the shame) of googling 'wedding dresses' and discovering designers. That was when I discovered Vera. I love you, Vera Wang! We would call each other, send links over MSN and generally just enjoy the anticipation (not so much the frustration) of waiting to get married. Neither of us had boyfriends. I feel the need to add that in order to be honest and transparent.

I have bought my dress. Seriously. And not, like, yesterday. I bought it in November. It was a complete surprise. We were having a family weekend and I had always wanted to go dress 'shopping' with Lisa and Mom (and, although I can't say that I 'always' wanted to go with her, the beautiful Aurora) so I jumped at the chance, booked an appointment at a bridal outlet store and we happily made our way there. I was given white gloves, shown the racks with my size on them and told to shove my way through and pick out any I liked. I picked out 7, I think, and number 4 was THE one. The reason why I really, really wasn't expecting on getting a dress that day was because I had already found a dress. I had already called the only store in Germany where that dress is sold. Wait, more accurately, I made Mareike call them and pretend to be me to ask how much the dress is and when it will be sold and had made plans to make my way to that city 3 hours away. Here is a picture of that dress:

Oh the pockets!

Ok, here is another one.

Do you see what's different? Removable flower-strap! Oh, dress perfection.

 Now. I love this dress. I still do. But I don't regret not getting it because I love my real wedding dress. (What I am, just a wee teeny tiny bit sad about is that my dress doesn't have pockets) That love, though, is not enough to protect me from wedding dress... well I guess you would almost have to call it lust. Why do designers keep doing this to me?

Priscilla of Boston. I love the pockets. And the Swarovski belt.

Modern Trousseau. This reminds of the Vera Wang I fell in love with years ago. But it still doesn't come close. 

Yet another from Priscilla of Boston. I love the transparent collar making the 'necklace'. And pockets. Of course. 

Vera Wang. 

Believe me, this is only the tip of the ice berg. I still haven't shown you Jesus Peiro, Jenny Packham, Ivy and Aster, and my all-time personal favourite, even beating Wang, Monique Lhuillier.

It's totally alright for me to get married once a year, right? Someone send help. I think I need it.