Reception

The flowers were beautiful!

The "Sweetheart" table =) Sans my bouquet

The Oak Room at the Cincinnati Club really was the perfect setting!
It reminds me of Hogwarts =)

My mom and dad =)

Photographers noted how the bottom of my dress nearly matched the gears

Our Best Man, Mark, and Maid of Honor, Myra, giving their toasts

The youngest member of the guests, she's adorable =)

We had a photobooth for everyone to take their pictures in

Taylor is a hoot. This is them waiting for us to exit to the carriage .

The B&B we stayed at that night.
The Halloween decorations added a nice bit of flair =)

Groom and Bridal Party

Mother of the Bride adds the badge
to the Groom's lapel

My regal husband-to-be

Before Shane (far left) spoke

After Shane spoke

Walking down the street in downtown Cincinnati

The Bridemaids' bouquets 

Maid of Honor

(left) AJ (Usher), Vincent (Brother of the Bride), Mark (Best Man)
Travis (Groom), Daniel, Shane (Right)

The Groomsmen are obviously very dignified and dapper

Maid of Honor and the Bride

Best Man and the Groom

Awaiting the Bride

The perfect setting for an elegant Steampunk wedding =)

The whole party comes together after the ceremony

The Maid of Honor and Best Man enter the reception

Best Man won Rock, Paper, Scissors, and gives the first toast

The Maid of Honor gives a very heartfelt toast

The Bridesmaids dress down for the party

The Overview and Video

After a long time of waiting patiently, here it is, the video for the Royal Steampunk Wedding!

Remember, this is the short version! There is also a hour+ long video that has yet to reach the point where I can upload it. It needs some tweaking first. Though, I imagine that throughout my life, as I continue to experiment with video editing and such, I will reinvent my wedding video several times.

This short version, I like. The longer version, not so much. There is a lot of video in the longer version, and finding music for it all has been a challenge.

The Sherlock Holmes movie soundtracks (I <3 Hans Zimmer) have been of much benefit.

Which, by the way, the longer version has the entire wedding ceremony included, though you can see Travis's vows in a previous post. The audio is a lot better in the new version, however.

Also, I made this for you all, I do hope it's Steampunk "enough", haha:

In the upcoming weeks I will be making individual posts with a particular topic in mind (i.e. the dress, the cake, the bridesmaids, the groomsmen, etc...). Under those posts there will be a lot more pictures relative to that topic.

Please comment if you like!

Why no pictures, Mrs. King?

So we throw this awesome steampunk wedding in Cincinnati, OH and then refuse the share pictures? How cruel!

And how not true!

You see, I want to wait to receive the images from the photographers. It may take a couple of months, actually, since there were three of them taking pictures the entire night.

I just received the video, which I'm going to possibly being editing soon. However, this also will not be shown until the pictures are ready.

Once I get these images, I will choose several of my upmost favorites. Those will be in a post, along with the edited video.

I've chosen this process for a couple reasons:

1. While there are pictures of the wedding already that I've retrieved from Facebook, I want your first impression to be perfect. There are a few great ones via Facebook, but a professional camera still captures the magics more than a cell phone :)

2. I'm not going to show the video until you have gotten a chance to really see my dress. I only have a few images from FB that showcase my dress at all, and you will want to see details. Trust me on this one!

After the initial post, I will be updating with several posts that focus on a single topic (i.e. the dress, the flowers, the cake, etc...)

Depending on how the video turns out, I may also upload bits and pieces that were edited out of the main video.

However, in a few minutes I will be uploading a video to youtube of Travis preforming his vows. You will get a glimpse of my dress from the back. I will update with a post (probably tomorrow) describing why his vows are so special that I would bother uploading them before the "big reveal".

For now, I'm not giving a link. You'll have to search for it in a half hour or so. ;-)

EDIT: ok, make that video a "tomorrow-night" thing completely. I want to import the file as best quality as I can, and that is taking awhile. So! Bedtime for me! ^_^;

July Updates

There hasn't been any big news for awhile now, but a few things happened today that I am allowed to share!

First off, we are doing a sand ceremony in the wedding - this is much like the unity candle ceremony, but instead of lighting candles, the bride and groom pour vials of sand into a central container. In our case, we have an hourglass, which we just purchased from T & K Young.

Why an hourglass? Well, first - I have a thing for them. Something about the elegance, history, aesthetics, sound of sand falling - not to mention the more nerdy aspects (i.e. "time in a bottle", time travel, the Time Tuner from Harry Potter, etc...).  In a more romanic sense, it symbolizes that we are combining our God-given time here on Earth because we feel He has brought us together to further His Kingdom as a couple.

We are capable of getting both ends engraved. We are suspecting that we might engrave one side with our names and the wedding date and the other end with Jeremiah 29:11, which has been my favorite Bible verse for the majority of my life.

"For I know the Plans I have for you," Declares the Lord,

"Plans to prosper you and not to harm you,

Plans to give you hope and a future."

It was that verse that really spoke to me in the times when I was lowest. More relevantly, the times when I thought I would spend the rest of my life by myself. Wondering why I felt so unloveable, ugly, different, and unwanted. Now it reminds me that God comes through, and while I felt that way about myself, it wasn't true at all. It will stand to support us as a family, as we fully understand that the rest of our lives won't be gumdrops, rainbows, and unicorns.

The other thing is that I bought my shoes, but that's really not too big of a deal. I mean, "Wow, I have something to wear on my feet, everyone!" Bought from Bethany's Pageant/Tux/Dance Wear.

I have the sketches of my dress and the bridesmaids dresses in my possession along with a couple of swatches of the fabric/colors. However, that is something for me to know and the majority of you to find out when you see the pictures, haha.

I need to update the wedding site a bit, since I realized that I don't have a link to this blog at all. We will also be updating it with directions. Those will also be available in the invitations - which I will upload pictures of those when they are done.

My mother is in Florida right now with a friend who is sick, so we will be finishing the invitations when she gets back.

We visited the Photographer, Jen at Essenza, again the other week, which was lovely since I hadn't seen her since the beginning of this journey. I feel like she is just as excited about the wedding as I am, haha!

Speaking of which, publicity. Jen has said that she will already be blogging and sending pictures to magazines from the wedding. My steamstress, Stephanie at Vintage Modiste, has informed me that the curator of the Bridal Dress Expo at the Cincinnati Art Museum is sad she couldn't have my dress for the event (which Travis and I went to see, it was absolutely lovely and I would have been honoured to let my dress be apart of it!). My mother said she will be calling local news stations, and apparently a lady in Pennsylvania is working on getting it national attention(?). There was something else, too, I think... but I don't know. It's just kind of crazy, and I'm really honoured that so many people are interested in my wedding.

I owe a lot of the thanks to my mother, who has given me so much. This wedding really is as much for her as it is me, but I still feel that she has kept it 'my day'. Thanks, mom, you're really the best!

Only 3 months to go. For over a year now people have been telling me "it will be here before ya know it" to the point where I want to take that sentence away from humans. Maybe rocks will start saying it to me then. Creepy. Anyways, they are right. It still seems so far away... like I totally have time to lose 50lbs, haha. 

I wonder if this blog will skyrocket in views after the wedding? That will be interesting.

I should make a legitimate vlog soon... not one of those 3am things that I seem to keep doing where I look like I've just rolled out of bed, haha.

Also, Travis has been making some awesome chainmail stuff lately! Be looking for a link to wear you can buy it!

Getting ready for the Party

The engagement party is inching closer and closer, and it's in our sights! It seemed so far away when we first talked about it, but I guess that's how it goes. I'll be saying the same thing when the wedding comes around.

Can I be honest with you for a minute? Of course I can.

I'm just crazy with emotions and thoughts. I like to blame it on stress of everything going on in my life, and that does add to it, but a good chunk I think is that... well... I'm nervous.

And don't get me wrong. It's not the idea of spending the rest of my life with Travis, because he is the only one for me. If you've seen me and him together, you understand. Everything in him is everything I've ever hoped for.

Even when I was younger, when I said in middle school, "The man I marry, I want our first date to be going to church and then hanging out afterwords." In which everyone replied to, "You're getting your hopes pretty high for that, dear, you'll scare him off if the first thing you do is go to church." or some other negative comment.

Our first date, we went to church. We then went to the Cheesecake Factory (a relatively expensive restaurant, if you didn't know), which he paid for (I wasn't expecting him to).

What I think I'm nervous about, is if I'll be a good wife. I mean, I've spent the majority of my life being the child, living in my parent's basement. I know I'm ready to be out of here and on my own, but it's like I'm skipping a level of life.

Or maybe it's more like... I'm a growing balloon and about to burst into independence and I'm afraid if I'll be good at it. I'm just a bit scared, I think. It really has nothing to do with Travis and that "is he the one" crap, because that's never even crossed my mind as a serious question. I couldn't even say I was compromising anything for him. He has a heart for God, he's intelligent and creative, he is financially stable and capable, I'm attracted to him beyond all belief, and I still can't believe how lucky I am.

I just feel out of my element. It's like this whole "wedding" thing is just some big party and nothing more.

I'm going to cry at the engagement party. I really think it will be then that something inside me pokes a hole in the balloon of my emotions and I start accepting that my life -is- actually this perfect and I -am- worth it.

God is good, and I am blessed beyond all belief.

So yeah, glad to get that off my chest. A little scared of "growing up" is all, right?

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I drew this up for you all, since the majority of you won't be at the engagement party.

It's really bad, and done quickly, but it's a basic idea of what the tables at the wedding will be set up like. We'll have the tables at the engagement part set up the same way.

...the big grey squiggly thing is a mirror, haha. Beads are inside the bottom of the vase that match the runner linens.

And then the silver wear at the wedding will be gold. I think we're using some silver plasticwear at the engagement party, though.

My dress that I will be wearing also arrived. A couple alterations have to be made, but overall I'm very pleased with it :-)
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I took some awesome pictures at the Wild West Fest this past Saturday. I also had a new costume, but I didn't get any pictures of that. Anyways, here are some that I did:

 That's all for tonight! I'm going to go dream sweet dreams of Travis ;-D