This week's Fab*Bride is quite famous! Her sister, Kelty of Portland-based Steep Street, takes absolutely phenomenal shots and is a wonderful designer, and Hannah (our Fab*Bride) is often times her muse; you can typically find Hannah modeling and showing off her b-e-a-utiful red locks. I've put together boards showcasing her wedding to her now-hubby Alex, their photographic shoot to create album art for wedding favors, a few shots of their snowing anniversary session, and lastly two very lovely modeling shots taken by Kelty. Let's dive in to all of this eye-candy because they have lots to share with all of our dedicated Fab*Bride readers! It's definitely worth the read so stay tuned til the end!
Kelty claims that..."as you can probably
tell from [her] website (TGIHs!), [she] love taking pictures of Hannah. One of the
reasons is that she's drop dead gorgeous, but the bigger reason is that she
helps me make every shoot we do together a totally fun and organic experience.
She doesn't seem to have a ton of preconceived notions about the process, which is liberating and inspiring. Her main hope for the wedding photos was that I
show her and Alex in their element with their personalities shining through.
She didn't limit me to certain "key" moments that HAD to be captured,
but wanted the photos to have a documentary feel as if it were through the eyes
of a guest, rather than the head of a giant, posed spotlight fixed on her. I
knew that she liked action photos to capture her and Alex's energy, and those
happen to be some of the most fun to shoot! When we were shooting materials for
the album covers, we turned on a Metric album super loud and I just had them
dance and do whatever came to mind. I never had to tell them when to kiss, when
to hold hands, when to jump... I guess it helps that they're both incredibly
creative, funny, and natural performers, but the lack of stage-y rules certainly
contributed to the spirit of the shoot and the resulting album covers. As a
bride, Hannah was incredibly laid back, creative, and fun-loving... which is
how I would describe her as a person as well. We've always worked well together
since our days of playing pretend as kids, and I consider myself extremely
lucky to still be able to collaborate with her on a weekly basis and even
luckier to be the one to help make her big day memorable!"
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Now it's Hannah's turn to take a stab at our grueling ten questions. (I must say she absolutely nailed it and has great advice for budding brides). Enjoy!
I've done my research a little bit, but tell our readers how you met your husband and your proposal story. How does it feel to live with your childhood sweetheart? Alex and I met on our neighborhood pool deck around 1991. Our families got to know each other because we were both on swim team, although Alex and I didn't exactly run in the same circles- he was a lifeguard, and a bit older than me at that. I was a rather outspoken nine year old swim patron, and the poor guy humored my silly stories and sass admirably. Alex went off to college a few years later and we lost touch, then both our parents moved from the neighborhood. I never expected to meet Alex again, and as I grew up, he became a distant memory of my childhood summers. Fifteen years later I was living in Barcelona, teaching English, and Alex was back in Portland, living as a starving musician/graphic designer. His brother made him a myspace page for his music, which led us to somehow bump into one another and reacquaint by email. And that was it, I guess! We wrote emails, then sent each other sound file monologues and guitar tunes, then the guitar tunes turned into love songs, then we talked by phone, then decided we had to meet. We met up in San Francisco just before Christmas and had our first date. Two years later we proposed to one another on Christmas Eve. Well, what actually happened was that Alex proposed to me while I was half asleep under the covers, and before I opened my ring box I grabbed a ring I'd bought him four months before and had hidden away in case he'd had the notion to pop the question... and gave it to him. I don't know how it worked out so well, but it was such a wonderful feeling to both be so surprised on our engagement day. I wouldn't necessarily call Alex my childhood sweetheart, but I still laugh sometimes when I think about how things have turned out. I sometimes wish I could go back in time and tell my chubby, chlorine-haired nine year old self "Hannah! You're going to MARRY Alex!". I don't think I would have believed it back then, and I still pinch myself now.
What was your number one priority throughout the wedding planning process? Our number one priority during the wedding planning process was to put together our kind of wedding: low budget, DIY and with our own distinct feel. We felt very strongly about not following tradition just for the sake of doing so, so we attempted to take what we liked from traditional weddings, add what we felt was missing for our particular one, and to respectfully leave the rest. It was a relief to come to terms with the fact that, for example, that we're just not cutting the cake kind of people, or that we didn't feel comfortable having a first dance or walking down an aisle during the ceremony. We love going to weddings that do incorporate those traditions, but it just didn't feel right for us, and I'm so glad that we stuck to our gut feeling with that. Instead, we served cupcakes as well as a Haribo candy-covered wedding cake, had a few pinatas for guests to take a whack at, said our own vows standing in hula hoops with our family/friends crowded around us, opted for Disneyland (honeymoon) donations rather than a registry, and ultimately enjoyed the unstructured, organic progression of the day. The location was also a priority for us, as we wanted to feel connected to the places where we said our vows and celebrated them. We had the ceremony under our neighborhood oak tree and the celebration at a relaxed brewery/barn nearby. We followed our own vision of what a wedding meant to us, and it turned out great.
I am simply in awe of your wedding photographs. The creativity is explosive and their vibrancy makes me swoon every time I look at them. When working with your sister, you as her muse and a bride, how did you express to her what you wanted in terms of the overall look and feel. What advice do you have for brides searching for their photographer and the style they wish to portray? Isn't Kelty absolutely beyond incredible? I'm in love with my wedding photos- the first month after the wedding I swooned over them every day, and now I can't put down the album she made for us. It's hard to describe how her photos make me feel, and every bride undoubtedly has her own unique warm-fuzzy feeling for what Kelty does, but one thing that strikes me about Kelty is that she gets to the essence of a person and a relationship. She doesn't pull people out of what they're feeling, experiencing or doing, but somehow engages them even more when she takes their picture, if that makes sense. Not only are her photos works of art, but they are so intimate. When I look at my photos now, I can feel every emotion that was going through me at the moment, because she allowed me to be who I am when she took my picture. I can feel the heat of summer and smell the grass near the oak tree and I smile from the giddiness I felt at the time. Her photographs are like emotional time capsules! The ridiculous thing is that I never need to give Kelty any direction- she's so intuitive with what to photograph that most of the time I forget she's even taking pictures. My wedding was probably a tough day for her, as she was undoubtedly torn between snapping away and participating in all the festivities... she did an incredible job, didn't she? In terms of advice to give future brides about finding a photographer... try not to look at the style of the wedding their photographing, but rather the FEEL of their work. It shouldn't matter if they take photos of a $2,000 wedding or a $50,000 one - the energy and style should read the same. I realize that we women have a vision of how we'd like to look on our wedding day, and want to somehow pair that style with a photographer, but I think the most important element that a photographer needs is to simply be able to capture your wedding for what it is and you for who you are, so when you look back in 30, 40, 50 years, you won't say "really? that was me? what was I feeling, again?" but rather be able to reconnect with the look, feel and memory of that day, years later.
Your wedding palette is gorgeous. What was the inspiration by your wedding concept and how did color play a role for you? As a future bride, people would ask me random questions, in particular what my wedding colors were. I didn't know what to say at first, but finally I would proudly confess "the rainbow!" I knew from the start that I didn't want to limit myself to any specific color or theme, but instead wanted the wedding to be eclectic and unique, reflecting what Alex and I enjoy and what makes us who we are together. We decided that "vintage childhood fun" would be as close to a theme as we'd ever get, and had a blast going crazy collecting vintage tin and wooden toys, 50s boardgames, viewmaster cameras and 50s era Disneyland viewmaster slides in the months leading up to our wedding. When in Spain on vacation, we scored as much of my favorite childhood candy as we could and smuggled it back to combine with Alex's American faves to transform into a candy bar for guests. The check-in table had a beautiful witness signature board that Kelty and her man painted, and a spot to make your own goody bag out of bouncy balls and toys, inscribed colorful pencils, and bookmarks with our elementary school engagement photos on them. The table napkins were different colors, and we used huge bunches of local dahlias that spanned the rainbow for all the tables. You can imagine that these elements would never have fit under a traditional color scheme, so I was grateful to have kept my options open and my imagination in full swing!
How did your wedding invitations tie in with your overall look? Our wedding invitations tied in with our overall look in that they didn't take themselves too seriously and were informally fun, but also included our unique story as a couple and our own heartfelt message to guests. Alex busted out some graphic design skills and fashioned us in to Harlequin romance novel gods amidst the locations where our wedding would take place, and I whipped up a dramatic back cover description of "our story" that I hoped would get a good chuckle out of guests. The inside library card we used as an RSVP postcard, stamped with our elementary school library seal. They were a blast to make, and I think they let guests know what to expect for the wedding.
I must say that your dress is by far one of the most unique (in a good way) ones I've seen. Something about that deep olive hue makes it so bold, even though it is such a natural color. How did you decide to opt out of the traditional white gown and go for something a little quirkier? Tell us about your quest to find the perfect fit. I always knew I was never a white wedding dress kind of girl, but still wanted something formal, LONG enough (I'm 6'1) and utterly unique for my wedding day. Where on earth would I find such a gem? I didn't even know what this dream dress would actually look like until I started brainstorming with my good friend Caitlin, a genius dress maker and owner of Riot Siren, here in Portland, who volunteered to take on my Dream Dress design and construction. I was first able to tell Caitlin what I didn't want, and then tried to express my love for the past (Jane Austen!) and the future (50s/60s futuristic!) with examples from runway dress photos I'd collected, none of them of actual wedding dresses. Caitlin was impressively able to envision what I myself could barely explain, and she went to work making sketches and searching out fabrics with my other dear friend and craft/sewing goddess, Shola. The rest is history! They labored for over 60 hours and for many late nights, using onions to dye yards and yards of silk georgette just the right shade of pale yellow for my skirt and train, and finding a gorgeous olive silk taffeta to construct a high-waisted, strapless bodice with intricate green top-stitching. I'd go in for fittings/brainstorming sessions, bring them pizza and beer and cheer them on as they obsessively hunched over handmade patterns and toiled over stitching and hemming... And when it was all said and done, I looked in the mirror and felt so otherworldly, yet at the same time, so very ME. I feel immensely grateful to have been able to commission Caitlin and Shola to create the dress of my dreams, as I don't believe it ever could have been found on a rack. Alex and my wedding ensembles matched in a quirky sort of way (I labeled him as a sort of 60s German game-show host, he called me a space warrior goddess), but both ensembles represented our love of vintage, futuristic, non-traditional looks.
If you could pick one song as the theme to your wedding, what would it be? One song is impossible! I'd have to choose the three goofy tunes Alex and I covered and recorded for a CD wedding favor: Time After Time, Our Lips Are Sealed and Champs-Elysees. DIY, silly, eclectic and so very much us.
What were some of the more creative projects that you or someone else) made for your wedding? Any DIY tips you might have for crafty brides? I'm afraid I've been terribly lucky in the DIY department, as most of my creative projects were more like DIK- Do It Kelty! I can't even begin to describe how much time, energy, and talent Kelty put in to helping with our wedding projects. She designed the album covers for our CD favors from photos she took a few days before our wedding, putting us into these faux real worlds that I wish I could actually visit! She also had them printed on 12 x 12 boards to hang in the barn. She designed our bachelor/ette invites, my bridal shower invites, our wedding bookmarks, our gift and play table signs, and oh so much more. My mom made bright colored construction-paper garlands to drape on the chairs during the ceremony and around the barn and designed the cupcake names/sign and flower arrangements. We wrote most all of the signage on chalkboards, including the table numbers. My mother-in-law made our delicious three tiered cake, a tradition Chilean wedding cake with Hannah/Alex-inspired decoration. In terms of DIY tips for future brides, my only advice is to utilize the talented people in your life. Let them contribute! I consider myself extremely lucky to be surrounded by such creative and inspirational loved ones, and I took full advantage for my wedding, which allowed me to focus more on logistics and purchased decorations. In terms of things I bought, my advice would be to start early, do your research (to save the most moolah and prevent impulse buying), and buy things that you and your guests will treasure. My wedding was the perfect excuse to expand my vintage toy collection, for Alex to peruse and buy vintage viewmaster slides, or for us to have awesome record covers of us printed to eventually hang at home. We wasted very little, and I'm really proud of that.
What surprised you most about your wedding day? That it would become completely out of my hands at that point, and something that would, with more and more people, grow beyond me and my perfectionist to-do list or any preconceived notion I'd ever had. I realized I had to go with the flow at that point, and I enjoyed myself all the more for it!
What is the most important thing that marriage has taught you that you keep close to your heart everyday? It's hard to put into words what I've learned in four measly months of marriage, but I still marvel at the fact that it does feel different, despite so few logistical and environmental things having changed. I will say that a wedding is an immensely important beginning to a marriage, but it's not the marriage itself. The hard work, fun and adventures have just begun, and I can't wait for what's next. =)
Describe a Fab*Bride (you!) in three words. Imaginative. Flexible. Unique!
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I would like to thank Kelty for taking such wonderful and inspiring photographs. It's people like Kelty in the world to truly open up one's imagination. To Hannah, thank you for such wonderful advice for future Fab*Brides. You are truly candid and have such optimism about you; great qualities for certain. There is much more of Hannah to see! Please visit Kelty's blog for incredible works of art. Here you'll find Hannah and Alex's journey through this year's events: from the Proposal, the engagement photos, the Bridal Shower and Rehearsal Dinner (and invitations), the Bachelor/ette parties, the Untamed Vows, the Celebration, as well as the Faux Real album art, and finally the snowy anniversary photographs. It's quite a lot to see, so put your readers on! :)
...and YES, Hannah has been featured before! (I told you she was famous). From the looks of it, Rock 'n Roll Bride and Once Wed saw something special too!
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If you would like to make a nomination, please contact me at antoinette@invitationconsultants.com, or DM me on Twitter @atelierantoinet. Feel free to leave a comment, as well. The rest of the crew would love to hear from you too! Until the next 
post, stay Fab*ulous!
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sooooo weird that i just spent lunch gushing to my husband about hannah´s wedding album that kelty blogged yesterday. then, we pop into this internet cafe and the fab*bride blog apparently read my mind!
Posted by: marissa moss | Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 08:12 AM
fab!
Posted by: whitney | Friday, January 15, 2010 at 05:13 PM