One sentence sum up of the wedding vibe: We had a wonderful party where our friends and family could be completely themselves in the most glamorous way.

The Info—Photography: LittleBat Photography (APW Sponsor) / Venue: SF City Hall, followed by a trip on SF Historic Streetcar 1807 to Starbelly restaurant / Flowers: Eleanor Gerber-Siff at Wallflower Floral Design / Makeup: Dwoira Galilea Scheffer / Erika's Dress: "Selma" from J.Crew / Erika's Sweater & Fascinator: Vintage a la Mode (who were completely wonderful to us) / Erika's Shoes: "Teeze" from Pleaser USA, yo! (and her flats are Eileen Fisher) / Tristan's Suit: Bespoke 3-piece suit and shirt from Al's Attire (who are AMAZING) / Tristan's Cufflinks: 20's vintage from Stuff / Tristan's Shoes & Tie: Had them since I don't know when / Rings: Custom made by RedStart Design

Other cool stuff we should know about: Everything in our wedding really fell into place from basic principles. We knew we wanted San Francisco City Hall, which led to a brunch wedding early in the week. Erika and many of the guests are sober, so alcohol wasn't particularly important, but we wanted to feed a small, select group of people really good food and come away with really beautiful photographs, and that's what we got. And we were really well taken care of by our closest friends.

Frankly, everything was just about perfect except I wrenched my ankle really badly at City Hall, and was walking around on it for the whole reception (feeling no pain thanks to endorphins and champagne). I came home and it was swollen up like an apple was stuck on it, and was limping all though our honeymoon, camping in Death Valley.

Favorite thing about the wedding: Erika: "That it was all done by four, and we got to take a nap after." Tristan: "It's a little odd to say, but for me the best thing was dressing up and being the prettiest princess at the ball, surrounded by people I love."

This week was spring break at the University of Maryland, where I work and go to school, so naturally I went to California to visit my husband. We got married last July and are currently living 3,000 miles away from each other. By choice.

You see, I had an amazing opportunity to pursue a master’s degree at the University of Maryland in College Student Personnel, where I get to think about all the things I love. I get to study counseling, and organizations, and how colleges work, and I get to do it for free, which is pretty unbelievable. I have an assistantship that lets me work in my field (student affairs, yay!) and gives me tuition remission, a stipend, and health insurance. My husband is also a smarty-pants and is working on his doctorate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, my alma mater, where we met (go Banana Slugs!). When I got my acceptance, it was unfathomable that I wouldn’t go. UMD was my reach school and, by far and away, the cheapest. No student loans and the best education? How could we turn that down? We got engaged, and I moved cross-country.

We got married the summer between the two years of my program for completely practical reasons. We wanted to be able to take advantage of the ease that marriage might give us when doing a national job search together. Since then we have spent about every other month together, since his schedule is very flexible while he finishes his dissertation. The last few months before we graduate and this long distance ends will be much harder, though, with less time together, and more time tending our separate homes.

I wish that this post could do something like what many other posts on APW do for me; give clarity, provide some a-ha moment about a shared experience, or analyze a phenomenon that some (or many?) of us experience. But in reality it is more an opportunity for me to lay this all out on the internet for others. Because it is at once the best and a totally stupid decision for us, and after eight months, I am starting to get tired of wrestling with it. Here are some things I think about often:

• How I talk about it with others: This is probably the most difficult. Very few people understand. Only others who have done it before, or who know people who have, don’t require a long explanation. These people are amazing and are a source of comfort, but I have stopped meeting them, because I have started to lie. I say “my husband is out of town” or “my husband travels a lot for work.” This is mostly for self-preservation, as it is tiring to have to explain the situation constantly. This all goes to hell though, when I want to tell a story about my husband's roommates. That phrase tends to get the most raised eyebrows.
• Regretting my own arrogance of simply thinking “we can do it”: I don’t think either of us fully processed how difficult it would be to live in different houses in different cities in different states. It’s not the big things that are difficult (although taxes are ridiculously complicated this year, and I guess that counts as something big). It’s hardest having to calculate the time difference and think about the other person’s schedule when you need to call in order to ask a little question like when some random person’s birthday is. And it's hard when you have a bad day at work and you only have an hour to Skype and you don’t want to blow it for the other person but you really want to vent, and you end up in this weird apology-anger cycle (I’m mad, and I’m sorry I’m mad, and I’m sorry I’m making you mad, but it makes me mad that this is the only time I can tell you about things and AGH I’M MAD AND SORRY and WHY ISN’T THIS WORKING?!). I remember telling people that this would “only be two years” and “we are really good at communicating” and blah blah blah. Those are nice things to think about, but I definitely did not know how painful this would be. Maybe it's good we didn’t know, so we could have this experience.

• I wonder what it means to strengthen a marriage from 3,000 miles: Really, how do you make a relationship strong from so far away? I like to think that Robert and I are doing a great job maintaining our bond, but when you don’t see each other every day, and, during busy weeks, don’t necessarily get to talk to each other every day, how can you possibly do that? We Skype a lot, and we send each other lots of emails (Robert is the king of finding fabulous Willie Nelson/Lucha Villa/John Prine songs and sending them with the sweetest little love note). It makes me wonder if there is a best way to do this, or if our muddling along is really what everyone in this situation does.

• Wondering if this was the right decision: I constantly wonder if we made the best decision. But I keep coming around to the question of what were the other options? I wouldn’t have rejected UMD, and I wouldn’t have postponed the wedding, and I wouldn’t have made Robert change his path… There really is nothing else I could have done and retained all our opportunities. And so recently I have been changing my focus to look for affirmation of my choices. Affirmation comes much less often, I think, being far away, but in bigger doses than if we were together. When we reunite, I am filled to the brim with gratitude that I am his partner. When we have good conversations on the phone, it is so much more special than a good conversation in the context of lives that have already been woven together. I am glad to have these moments, and I will work hard to maintain my sheer joy at these moments when we live together. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe the pleasure of having our lives truly tangled up together will be better than the full bodied happiness I get from these once-in-a-while joys. I’ll have to wait and see on that one.

• Lastly, I wonder what will it mean when we do all the “married stuff” finally after a year of being married. Does it not count that we are married, that we do not have all our stuff in the same place? That we have not yet combined finances (a recipe for a headache if I ever saw one, and something for me that meant "real marriage"), and that we do not see each other every day? I think if anything, all of this is just an argument that marriage is way more than the stuff. It truly is a commitment to the "for better, for worse." It's much more than putting on a ring (if you so choose), and deciding whose set of silverware stays in the drawer, and who takes out the trash on what days. Those choices are important, but there is something else, something bigger, that survives across mountains and fields and months apart.

Maybe I’ll write back in August, when we will be done with school and will be living together, to tell you it was all worth it, and it was no big deal. I am hoping I’ll have some epiphany to share about strength and choices and balancing love and careers and everything else. For right now I’m not sure it’ll come, but who knows. And for all the people who are together and live together, please be thankful. Be thankful every time you lay down in the same bed (what a luxury!) and every time you don’t pay rent on two places. Be thankful especially every time you look up and notice your partner, having forgotten they were there, they are so familiar a sight.

Wedding Photos by: Joanna Waterfall

Last week, I got involved in a bit of a controversy with some Etsy vendors who didn't know my work. I'd written a post for the (awesome, awesome) Etsy blog team about hacking your wedding (an age old theme on APW). The post was about finding ways to work around high costs on items where you flat-out couldn't afford to go whole hog. The idea, as always in APW land, is that most of us decide to prioritize spending in a few key areas, try to get the best possible value that we can, and then cut spending like CRAZY everywhere else. Right. So. These random vendors were not thrilled. I was accused of a lot of things that are totally not true, including not wanting vendors and artists to charge what they're worth (artists charging what they are worth is, of course, a guiding principle of my work). So all this brought me back to thinking quite a bit about what it is I actually care about and promote with our amazing APW Sponsor and Vendor Community. I've realized that the core values I belive in are the things that I had a hard time finding in wedding vendor land: value (not cheapness, but real value for what I'm spending), sanity, and genuine customer service. (You know, people that really care about me as ME, not as a walking dollar sign.) In other words, the APW Sanity Pledge in action. So this week, I started chatting with Leah and Mark, our long term sponsor photographers out of Atlanta, who will shoot your wedding anywhere in the US... about what else? Value. And I got to thinking about what an awesome job Leah and Mark do of living up to APW values (and value).

Last year, Julie of Up Up Creative (and now Aper & Pink) wrote an excellent post called Price is Not the Same as Value, and that, I think, is the core of the conversation. When Mark and I were talking about value, we were talking about Leah and Mark's skill and experience (honed over the years on you guys... they'd shot exactly two weddings before they started advertising on APW, and now they've shot just about a billion of your weddings, all over the country). We were talking about the quality of their photographs, but also all of the things that they include when you hire them to work for you.

I mean, seriously. Let's break it down (don't bother trying to figure out how they make a living giving you such awesome rates, because I can tell you how... Mark Never. Stops. Moving.) Their APW Only package is $3,650 for anywhere in the continental United States (and they are not raising their rates for 2013! High Five!) What's included is this:

• Travel in the continental US
• Ten hours of coverage
• Hi-res .jpg files on dvd with a personal use license
• A 2-3 minute Wedding Home Movie highlight reel (free for APW couples only)
• A full Wedding Home Movie for only $950 if you want it
• Rehearsal Dinner coverage included
• A second shooter for $450 (yeah, that's less than their cost) if you want it
• An Engagement Session (where they FLY TO YOU) for $400 if you want it
• Photographers you really want at your wedding

I mean. I know, right? That is value right there, and when you add in photographers who treat you right, and you want to hang around with, that's MAGIC.

So I'm going to let Mark tell you a little bit about why they've set up such a crazy (amazing) business, that lets us brag that wherever you are in the United States, we have an APW photographer for you. "We've always known that hiring photographers to fly across the country for a wedding is a little ridiculous. There are so many talented photographers out there and we are still grateful for every couple that takes a chance on us. Of course after three years of traveling across the country photographing weddings—we've kind of become experts at flying into a new city, meeting clients for the first time on the day before their wedding, and doing an absolutely amazing job—on a consistent basis. It's all a little bit crazy and so are our clients. We honestly believe that we are the best photographers to be shooting our clients weddings. We've been doing this for a while now and we confidently say that we're experts and we can handle any wedding in any location. We think that our creativity, and experience combined with our improvisation skills enable us to be our best, all the time, for every wedding. We say that in the most confident and humble way possible. When a couple hires us we want them to know that everything photography will be taken care of."

Last time we talked about Leah and Mark we got to introduce their Wedding Home Movies. They are offering simple and beautiful little movies (shot on the same cameras they're shooting the wedding). And seriously y'all, these movies are GOOD (just when you thought you couldn't afford wedding videography). And because things just keep getting better around here, they're continuing their awesome APW only Wedding Home Movie deals.

Mark says, "It's been a welcome surprise that so many of our clients are really interested in our Wedding Home Movies. Ever since our last sponsored posts we've booked many couples because they wanted video, but it just wasn't in their budget - and our APW offer of a free 2-3 minute highlight reel was a great bonus. So although we had originally planned to end the free highlight reel promotion at the end of May, but we're extending it until the end of June. Again—any couple that books us for photography, will also receive a 2-3 minute video highlight reel at no extra charge." Plus, if you want a full wedding home movie, not just the highlight reel, they are extending this offer as well, "We're offering our Full Movie package for only $950 for APWers—down from our regular rate of $1,750 (this is an add on to a photography package)."

So! If you want to book with Leah and Mark, now is the time to drop them an email. Except for a few dates left open, they are mostly booked for 2012. BUT! For APW couples, they are not going to increase pricing at all for 2013. So get on that, you guys. Enjoy awesome customer service and great value. And have fun.

One of my favorite things about APW is getting to witness other people’s vows, albeit remotely. Brandon and I said ours at City Hall, and, for us, that was enough—we are not including a second ceremony at our upcoming reception. But it’s fascinating to read about how other couples describe and declare their lasting attachment.

Right now, we’re preparing to describe our own attachment for a whole different audience: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, who are processing my application to stay in the States as Brandon’s spouse. For us, it’s not a vow that measures our commitment, it’s a list of documents we’ve been asked to submit in advance of our interview as “proof of bona fide marriage.”

What do you have to show for your love? A black orchid? (Nicolas Cage fans? Anyone?) In our case, we offered our joint Botanic Garden membership, though there was no room to tell about the times Brandon braved his allergies to let me photograph the late-Spring bluebells. We showed them shared flights to the UK for Christmas, but had no space to include the BBC Radio Four stream he puts up with round the apartment when I’m homesick. We have a family cell phone plan. Doesn’t that make us a family?

Preparations for the reception and the interview have overlapped in unexpected ways. We searched through the same archived photos of the two of us together, first for our invitations, then to submit with Form I-130. I spent almost as much time on Visa Journey as on A Practical Wedding. Our marriage certificate became my second passport.

What’s curious about this overlap is that while weddings are so deeply personal, immigration is just the opposite. In that world, I’m not a bride; I’m an Alien Relative. And while nuptials are characterized by optimism, the immigration process is rooted in doubt. Marriage? They’ve seen marriage. What they want to know is: Is it bona fide? Unless you’re gay: Your marriage still lacks recognition under federal immigration law. Yes, it’s a system that’s dehumanizing at best, and unjust at worst.

Yet just as weddings work best at the sweet spot between self-expression and established ritual, I like to think my officially “immigrating” has allowed us some moments for Brandon and I to express ourselves through bureaucracy. “Fill up the vessel of tradition with yourselves,” as Meg counsels in a beautiful line in her book. Why not the vessel of USCIS too?

As it turns out, the person who understood this best was my mother, who trained as a lawyer. Strictly following the format provided, she put together an affidavit that was both legally sound, and a personal testament to us as a couple. “ITEM 12—We like Brandon very much and are very happy for them. They have a loving and caring relationship and share a lively sense of humor. He is an intelligent and sensitive young man and we are very pleased to welcome him into the family. He has fitted in very easily.”

My mother couldn’t be there for our vows. But having her witness our bid for my green card turned out to be one of the most meaningful steps in our marriage. Could there be a better way to reassure a foreign spouse that they are not an alien?

Photo of Madeline & Brandon's invitations from Madeline's personal collection

Today you guys are in for a rare treat. It's Intern Tuesday, times two. This morning we have Elisabeth, she of the conversion to Islam and super super long distance wedding planning, giving us her once a month long form update on her wedding. (She has a date! Congratulations to Elisabeth! Clang the bells of glee!) Then this afternoon we have Madeline here with a post so lovely it will make your eyes and heart fill. I'm in love with today. Let's begin our mediation on distance.

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Amin and I sat down to take the first step in planning a wedding: creating a guest list. This was the first wedding planning thing we ever did. We did it before we were even engaged. It was exciting. Look at all the people we love! Think what a great party this is going to be! That first day, we put down over 300 people, but over the intervening months we have, without too much bloodshed (yet), narrowed it down to something closer to 220, and we know that many of those will probably not be able to make it. So, from a mammoth list, we have entered the realm of sanity. (Don’t get me wrong. I know this is still a huge list. But Amin has more than a hundred family members, so there are limits to what we can chop off.)

We knew the next key task would be to find a venue, so once the engagement was official, that was where we started. And quickly discovered that there’s not so many places in London that accommodate more than two hundred people. Who knew. So while all through the Christmas holidays I trolled through wedding websites for venue options in London, we also cast the net a bit further afield and began to look at Dubai and Pakistan, where we hoped we could find something closer to our perfect imaginary wedding.

Unfortunately, Pakistan is too far, and politically tricky, for my American friends and family to be willing to brave it, plus we knew we were going to have a walimah there anyway (a sort of post-wedding-reception reception), in order to accommodate the Pakistani family who won’t be able to make it to the wedding proper (and to make sure we get to fully enjoy as many different cultural traditions as possible). Dubai turned out a) tough to arrange when nobody lived anywhere near it and b) almost as expensive as London if we went with the easy options. So after months and months of looking at options all over the world (we even checked out possible destination events in Greece) we ended up coming back around to London, which at least had the virtue of being geographically intermediate and a place where one of us at least had a home base.

Of course, the above paragraph simplifies what was actually a grueling months-long process where we seemed to come up with ideas again and again, only to find reasons they were impossible. Increasingly we talked about just inviting twenty people and doing something small, because it seemed like we wouldn’t be able to have the wedding that we wanted and also invite everyone that we wanted. But one of the very very first things I ever said was that I wanted to be able to have everybody there, so cutting the list more than we already had seemed like too much of a compromise, and I resisted vigorously. There must be some place in the world that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg and can hold enough people for a rockin’ party.

And time dragged on and on, and I wrote a frustrated post for APW about how bloody hard it is to arrange anything through long distance, and three days after that post went up Amin left London for a twelve-day ten-country whirlwind business trip, and lost both his phones, and suddenly we weren’t communicating at ALL except through business-like email exchanges with vendors and venues in the UK.

But! Last week, by the grace of God, we finally managed to cross the invisible line between nebulous “planning” with nothing to show for it, despite the hours and hours and hours of angsty discussion, and “Holy crap, we’re actually going to throw a wedding!”

Yes, folks. We have a venue. Which means we also have a date! Which means that the wedding, such as it is, will happen!! Suddenly everything seems a lot more real. And by real, I mean exciting. Haha! Now I just have to hold on until the ninth of September, and, knock on wood, the wedding will happen, even if it features me, in jeans, serving peanut butter and jelly to a room full of irate guests with no chairs to sit on.

Ninth of September, ninth of September. Remember, remember, the ninth of September.

Of course, this decision also means that the wedding is happening in less than six months, and we have the following things to arrange:

• Invitations
• The ceremony!
• Photography
• Music
• Clothing
• Decorations
• FOOD
• Hotels for guests
• All other relevant things I am currently forgetting about

Now my excitement takes on an edge of hysteria. But at least I have something concrete to hold on to. You have no idea what a relief it is (or maybe you do) to have found a date. At the very least, I can hold out the hope that, on the tenth of September, I will wake up and the wedding will be over and I can laugh and say, “Haha, wasn’t that fun? Just kidding, we are NEVER THROWING A PARTY AGAIN.”

It also makes it so much easier to make decisions. I’m not living in fantasy perfect-wedding-land, where I get married in a forest under the weeping willows on a carpet of four-leaf clovers. Nor are we getting married in a Tudor Palace. Nor (and this is a real tragedy) have I managed to convince Amin to throw a traditional Punjabi wedding and ride in on a horse, wielding a sword, to whisk me away from my family.

But, and here’s the (happy happy) kicker: it’s actually happening. Which somehow means I am free of the gluttony of choice that paralyzed me over the past months. This thing is real. And gosh darn it, even if I can’t have silk-wrapped hand-designed invitations personally delivered by pirates, at least the invitations will say the right thing: COME TO OUR PARTY. IT’S ACTUALLY HAPPENING.

Photo by: Studio Mathewes Photography (APW Sponsor)

One sentence sum up of the wedding vibe: A Scottish wedding, homegrown with lots of love, and a few confused/amused/eventually very drunk Americans in attendance (They had whiskey for the toasts! What were we to do? We were overwhelmed!)

The Info—Photography: Lauren's former roommate, Gabriel Hacker / Ceremony Venue: Govan Old Church / Reception Venue: Govan Cross Church / Lauren's Dress: J.Crew / Aidan's Suit: Kilt hired from Slaters in Glasgow

Other cool stuff we should know about: This wedding was mostly put together by Aidan's family (especially his sister) and members of his mum's church. I was a little freaked out ahead of time because it was nothing like what I imagined my wedding to be. I am not religious, I wanted a simple outdoor quaker style wedding, with all of my friends and family there, and with food and booze and dancing. When we agreed to get married in Scotland I had to do a lot of letting go. I wasn't keen to get married in a church, but Aidan's mum (a truly wonderful woman) is a minister and most of his family is religious, so it would have been hard for a lot of people if we hadn't been married in a church.

Most of my family and close friends couldn't make it to the wedding, so it was scary to walk down the aisle with one hundred people looking at me, only ten or fifteen of whom I had ever met before, and I was sad that a lot of people who were important to me couldn't be there. However, I'm really glad that I had a traditional Scottish wedding even though it was foreign to me in so many ways (though fortunately it did include food and booze and dancing), because it really pleased so many people. To this day Aidan's father gets emotional talking about what a beautiful day it was, and a lot of people declared it the best wedding that they had ever been to. To me that is more important than getting the exact wedding that I thought I wanted. In the end I realized that our wedding wasn't about me or even us, it was about being welcomed into Aidan's family, and it was about showing us what a generous and caring community we have supporting us and cheering us on. (Aidan would like for me to clarify that while this was not the wedding I had in mind, it was exactly the wedding that he had in mind—so there you go.)

Favorite thing about the wedding: We didn't have any money to spend on our wedding. None. So the outpouring of generosity from friends and family was incredibly moving. Aidan's sister planned the entire day as well as all of the decor, his mum married us, his sister's boyfriend (now husband) was our piper, his aunts cooked the food and baked cakes, church ladies that I never met bought flowers for the church and sewed table runners, my mother paid for my dress, my father paid for my airplane ticket, one of Aidan's cousins brought tons of food and loads of really nice wine, our guests all pitched in to do the dishes and help clean up, Aidan's brother and sister sprung for us to have room at a castle-y hotel, the Russian choir from the Russian congregation of Aidan's mum's church came and sang at our ceremony as a gift, my grad school roommate flew himself from L.A. to Scotland to photograph our wedding for free, and the list goes on.

The year that Aidan & I got married was one of the craziest years of my life. A timeline of that year goes something like this:

Me: B&B cook and aspiring wedding photographer. Him: Philosophy PhD candidate.

January: Aidan and I are engaged!

February: I photograph my first wedding and I love it.

March: People start booking me to photograph their weddings in the fall. I am thrilled.

April: Aidan and I get married in Texas.

May: Aidan and I get married in Scotland.

June: Aidan stays in Scotland while I move to North Carolina to live on my friend’s blueberry farm in the hopes of picking up some weddings so that we can have some money. I can’t legally work in Scotland and he can’t legally work in the States during the summers.

July: Aidan and I talk on the computer a lot. I photograph more weddings in North Carolina.

August: After two months, neither of us can stand being apart anymore, so Aidan flies to the farm, decides that he can not stand the heat, nor the insects, nor the lack of air conditioning (he is a delicate Scottish flower after all), so we drive back to Texas where it is hotter but there is AC.

September-October: I photograph lots of weddings.

November: I am laid off from my job. My new husband, still living on mere grad student salary, tells me not to look for another job, that I better make this photography thing work. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, I marvel over my good fortune at marrying such a person. I dump more money than I have ever spent on anything into advertising.

December: I start booking weddings like a crazy person.

January: Aidan is offered a Philosophy post doc… in Scotland.

Did you hear that? That record scratch? Is your neck tingling in sympathetic whiplash? Because what’s happening here is that both of our dreams are coming true—ON SEPARATE CONTINENTS.

When I met Aidan he was still a PhD student, and I had recently dropped out of grad school to work at a grocery store. I usually like to dress that up a little to make it sound more respectable by adding that it was a small neighborhood grocery store and that they sold lots of organic cereal and stuff. But whatever: When I met Aidan I was making seven dollars and hour working a mindless job at a lame grocery store. When Aidan finally came through my line, the first thing I did was add "Scottish accent" to the top of my list of sexy man things. After a few months of getting to know each other over brief one-to-three minute checkout line interactions we went out on a date.

A few months later we had a conversation where I asked him how serious he was feeling about our relationship. He made some very serious noises, but then he told me that the future of our relationship depended on me being willing to move wherever he got a job. That might be Canada, that might be the UK, that might be the middle of nowhere Alabama. At the time my career had progressed from grocery store clerk to chopping down trees with a chainsaw then dragging them through a chigger infested desert field as an Americorps volunteer, so I was like: Yeah sure, sounds good to me.

So it was harder than I had initially expected when just as I had finally started down a successful career path, Aidan was offered a job that involved us moving to another country. Of course it wasn’t just that I was successful, though that—really—was awesome. It’s also that I was good at it, and I liked it, and I liked the weddings that I was shooting. Let us also remember that I had just thrown a mountain of money into advertising for Austin, TX weddings and that it was paying off big time.

At the same time I knew that I would never have my career if it weren’t for Aidan. Say what you like about this, but I am the kind of person who functions much better when I’m in a stable relationship. Not to mention that the period of time when Aidan was a PhD student, while I was a grocery store clerk, or I was chopping down trees, or I was scrubbing toilets at a B&B, made me feel even more strongly that I needed a some discernable career goals. Aidan’s success motivated me to finally embark on a career that I could be proud of, and the fact that he loved me no matter what my job title was gave me the foundation that I needed to really go for it.

So obviously Aidan had to take the job. That was never a question. He told me that I had a say, but how could I say no? He moved back to Scotland in May and we decided that I would wait to move until the following November after I had finished photographing all of the weddings that I had booked in Austin. Thus ensued the one of the hardest periods of our marriage to date. We were separated by six hours and 4,600 miles. We tried to talk on the computer every day, but we often found that we had nothing new to say. We’d exchange greetings, inquiries, and avowals of love—then get pulled back into our separate worlds.

The settlement visa process wound up taking much longer and being much more intimidating than either of us ever could have anticipated. November turned into December. I was finished with all of my Austin weddings and couch crashing in North Carolina. I waited for my visa while sitting on an ever-growing mountain of angst. My computer conversations with Aidan went from us exchanging pleasantries to him saying "Hi" and me crying dramatically over the hopelessness of our situation into my keyboard.

In the meantime I’d put every spare dollar I had into advertising in the UK, and while I wasn’t expecting my business to be quite as booming as it had been back in Austin, considering my success had happened fairly early on, I was optimistic. It turns out that moving your business to a whole new country is harder than you might think. Or perhaps you saw this coming, but I was blindsided. When my visa did finally come through, and at long last Aidan and I were reunited two days before my thirtieth birthday in the Glasgow airport, I believe I let myself be happy for about a week before I descended into full blown panic mode over only having four weddings booked for the following year.

At the end of January of my first year as a full time wedding photographer in Austin, I had at over twenty-five weddings booked. At the end of January of my first year in the UK I had six weddings booked. My feelings of panic started turning into resentment. Being successful had given rise to a certain amount of positive feelings about my self, and moving to Scotland had replaced my newfound confidence with a whole lot of doubt. I felt guilty because I wasn’t pulling my weight financially, I was worried that I would have to go back to working jobs that I didn’t like, and I felt rejected by my new home. The situation was made worse by the fact that I was cut off from all of my friends and everyone I knew, and the cultural differences between the UK and the States made me feel like a clumsy adolescent again. I was ill at ease, unsure of myself, and floundering.

Finally Aidan and I had a conversation. He told me that since I had given up so much to move across the world to be with him, and now that he was earning a bit more—that it was okay if I wasn’t able to contribute as much money to our household right away, that in fact I shouldn’t expect to. I needed to let go of my expectations that weddings would come to me as easily as they did back in Texas. I stopped panicking all of the time, and I focused instead on thinking up ways to build my business anew. I got in touch with Meg, and she put me in touch with Cara (of Lillian & Leonard) and she saved me. She gave me advice, she referred clients to me, and she expressed her general approval of me on the internet, which made other UK wedding industry people begin to take me seriously. As January turned into February and then March I booked more and more weddings, a lot of them APW weddings, and I began to breathe easier.

Now a little over a year and a half after moving to Scotland, both my business and my marriage are doing really well. We have weathered some hard times, but we have never wavered in our commitment to our relationship, or in doing our best to make sure that we are both happy with the direction that our shared life is taking. Aidan recently accepted a tenure track position at the University of Edinburgh, which is a great move both of us personally and career-wise. I still have moments of panic about the business, but I have also learned a few things about being patient and putting the energy that I have during down times into being productive instead of freaking out. My calendar is already completely full for 2012 and I’m steadily booking weddings for 2013. Aidan makes me laugh every day, and we both try to be good to each other. Really, I couldn’t ask for a better life.

Texas Courthouse Polaroids by: Lauren & Aidan's friend Amelia

It's pretty rare that we have a brand new kind of sponsor that I've been secretly hoping and praying for for years, so today is a special kind of day. Very special. Today is the day that I get to introduce a brand new, APW approved (and then some) indie print shop, Aper + Pink, catering to all your needs. Aper + Pink was started by Julie, the powerhouse behind Up Up Creative. You'll remember her from her crazy (beautiful) name your price experiment, and the results. Well, Julie realized that all of us DIY and indie types and independent designers (and um, business owners? me?) didn't have a good print shop to use.

Like, say you're ordering printable invites from Printable Press or e.m. papers. Or, perhaps you'd LIKE to be ordering your invites from those talented ladies, but you really cannot handle the idea of getting them printed. Well, that's where Aper + Pink comes in. They offer super high quality flat printing (and she can work with you to make letterpress happen). Julie says, "For most people, printing is the un-fun part. It’s the tedious, error-ridden part. It’s the part that brings swear words to their lips and tears to their eyes. It incites arguments between otherwise happily engaged couples just trying to keep invitations personal, practical, and affordable. But I love it. I love learning the tricks and figuring out how to avoid the troubles. I like discovering new methods and new substrates. I mean, I read blogs about printing. We take your designs and give them the print treatment they deserve. We aim to provide the kind of quality you’d expect of your own self if you had all the tools & time in the world." What'd I say? FINALLY.

I'm going to let Julie explain business in detail, so I can just focus on her amazing prices for a second. On her two most popular papers, here are some baseline prices:

• 100 invitations (5x7, one side) would be $83.30 on recycled cover, or $143.50 on thick cotton paper.
• 100 save the date postcards would start at $110.70 for the same recycled stock, or about $170 on the thick cotton paper.
• 300 business cards would start at $59.50 for one side on 80lb recycled cover stock. On luxurious cotton paper the same would be $102.
• Plus she does one-off prints like art prints and posters from 8x10 ($8.30 each on mid-weight cotton paper) up to 16x20 ($28.80 on the same mid-weight cotton paper).

I mean, if you've taken more than two seconds to look at print prices before, these prices with this amazing quality and customer service are going to make you want to make out with Julie (though she'd like to just stay friends).

But enough of my blabbing. Let's let Julie talk about her new business. She says:

Aper + Pink is a brand new off-shoot of Up Up Creative—a small print shop located in Rochester, NY, catering to stationery designers, letterpress printers, and home-grown DIY-ers looking for top-notch service and print quality. Started by a stationery designer who was frustrated with the options out there for high-end, small-scale short-run printing, Aper + Pink is dedicated to providing easy, awesome, high-quality printing on cool, eco-friendly papers (like 100% cotton, sugar cane, bamboo, and even 100% post-consumer).

What this means for APW readers, in a nutshell: The invitations you've designed for yourself, or that your mom's friend did, or that printable you bought off etsy or from the lovely Kimi at A Printable Press, the ones that you've maybe tried to print at home to the great consternation of anyone within swearing distance, now you can send them off into the capable hands of someone (me!) who cares about how they turn out. Someone who cares about whether they're done right. Someone who is happy to walk you through the process, help you format your files if needed, even match the color of your bridesmaids' dresses if you send her a swatch. Someone who will save your sanity and keep you safe from your own DIY-spirations.

You can order via an online order form, where you can provide all of your info and upload your files, or via email.

So basically, not to put too fine a point on it, but BINGO, am I right? And not just bingo for those of you out there trying to figure out how to print your wedding invitations (though, this might be the jackpot of all jackpots for you). But also BINGO for those of us who want to order business cards, or a print, or newsletters, or goodness knows what else. And indie designers: go crazy.

Have fun with Aper + Pink y'all, because Julie will take damn good care of you.

Design Credits: Photo 1: paper dahlia, kristie kern, up up creative / Photo 2: up up creative / Photo 3: pounding mill press / Photo 4: Julie's Studio / Photo 5: up up creative / Photo 6: up up creative 

As I told you when I did my own wedding flowers, creating full floral centerpieces is a Project. It's not that centerpieces are hard, it's that there are many of them (unlike a bridal bouquet, where you have, at max, two). So if you're undertaking this project: A) Get help (and realize you may need some quality control), B) Allot time for it, and C) Do your bouquets first, because chances are you care more about them.

If you remember a million years ago (ok, two months ago) when we did the wild floral bouquet, the key to making these arrangements is to have a whole bunch of different types of florals (think six to ten types). We bought the flowers from the San Francisco Flower Mart, so we could have access to as big a selection of flowers as possible. We selected flowers all in the same color story, with a wide variety of textures. But if you're going to use a variety of colors, keep the textures similar. Remember to always select a few highlight flowers from across the color wheel to make your main colors stand out and not fade together.

First focus on the middle: create the height that you want, with a mix of florals. Don't worry about making it perfect, or filling it in. Then, move to the edge. Create a line of flowers dripping over the edge (hint: select some drippy flowers at the flower market). Then start placing some filler among the brighter flowers. Once you've set up this structure fill in the flowers (and have fun... it's flowers, not a midterm).

Walk around the arrangement and make sure it looks good from all sides. Then BAM, lady friend, you rocked it. Don't let anyone convince you that this is way too hard for you. It's not, but it may take a little bit of time (and possibly a tiny bit of practice). But man, the results are lovely.

Photos by Emily Takes Photos, Crafting by Elizabeth of Lowe House Events, Graphic Design by Michelle Edgemont (all APW advertisers). Chairs, linens, glassware, dishes, silverware, all provided by Encore Event Rentals in Petaluma, CA, who were awesome.