So our Save the Dates mailed successfully the final week of September. They seem to have been a big hit, based on the responses we've gotten so far, which is great!
However, we have gotten two poor little lost soldiers returned to us. On one, the postal service marked "Address Unknown - Return to Sender." Hmmm. The address was one that was sent to me in an email by the intended recipient, so I'm unclear on how that works.
Another was sent back to us in a body bag. I went to the foyer to get the mail one day and found this:
A plastic bag with one of our STDs inside (hehe). As you can see from the photos, the portion of the postcard that had the address had been ripped off in one of the post office sorting machines. But, they cared enough to send it back with a bag saying that they cared. However, I haven't seen any reimbursement for the $0.75 stamp that ended up wasted as a result. Thanks, USPS!
Luckily, since the stamp was a seventy-five center, I knew the card was intended for one of our Canadian guests. So I emailed them all to see if they'd received theirs and one of them hadn't. In a funny coincidence, it was the card intended for a friend I used to date that didn't make it, which Justin thought was providential. ;) However, we sent him a new one and all's well in our Save the Date world.
At long, long last - you finally get to see the place where we're going to celebrate our wedding! This view is of our reception location, in a state park in coastal New Hampshire. The center has a large 40' x 80' tent which seats up to 200 people. It's erected over that large green rectangle on the right side of the photo. I'll post more about the site soon, but just wanted to share a photo of our beautiful location!
Popping in quickly to say . . . we're not writing our own vows, but if we did, I love this.
Sometime over the summer, I began our photographer hunt. I found someone in northern Maine whose work I really liked, and she even had a package that included a photo booth! However, after crunching the numbers a bit, I realized that her most basic package, plus the extra $600 for the photo booth, would make the final tally for her services a bit more than we wanted to pay (well over $3K).So it was back to square one. But not really, because now I had a better sense of what photographic style worked for us. After stumbling onto the New Hampshire branch of the Wedding Photojournalist Association, I realized I liked a photojournalistic style best. So even though our photographer is not listed on that site, I somehow managed to find him with that thought in mind (can't remember for the life of me how).His name is Aaron Rohde and he's based out of Dover, NH (just 12 miles up the road from Portsmouth and where we used to live until June). His website is really well designed and has a sweet, fun playlist set up for the wedding slideshow. Justin joined me in looking at it and was equally impressed.
After some email tag over the summer, we met with Aaron a few weeks ago. He's a chill kind of dude, someone who seems like he'd be a mellowing influence on wedding day. He showed us a slideshow he'd set up for us of sample wedding photos, including some detail shots that hadn't been on his website, and we talked a bit about the nuts and bolts. Currently (this will change soon), his 8-hour package is $2K and includes full rights to the pictures and a free engagement session!After we walked out of the Dover mill building his office is in, I said to Justin, "It's a no-brainer, right? We like his work, he seems cool, and his price is really reasonable." So in a few days, when I've sent him the contract and paid the deposit, bingo! We'll have our wedding photographer. Below are just some of the images I love from his site:
