Our invitations arrived in the mail today, and we hope to start sending them out this weekend!
In the meantime, we’re working on updating the wedding website with more detailed information. Those changes should be live by the time guests start to receive their invitations. So stay tuned!
It looks like we have our venues!
I should knock on wood there – we’ve verified that both locations are available on the date we want (November 15). We still need to turn in applications and deposits, but it all looks good, so we feel good about moving forward to send out electronic Save-the-Dates (perhaps you received one that led you our website, which led you in turn to this blog!).
So, barring unforeseen circumstances, the ceremony will held at the Rose Garden at Exposition Park in Los Angeles.
Photo credit: neplains.com
The Rose Garden first opened in 1928 – four years after The Culver Hotel, where we will be having our reception following the ceremony.
Photo credit: Culver City Historical Society
If our wedding had taken place in the 1920s, our guests might have been able to travel from the ceremony to the reception on the Santa Monica Air Line of the Pacific Electric trolley system (also, we would have been married for 85 years now and you would have missed the wedding).
Detail of a 1920s map of the Pacific Electric trolley system in Los Angeles, with the Santa Monica Air Line highlighted in blue. Photo credit: KCET.org, courtesy of the Special Collections, Young Research Library, UCLA.
Since our wedding is in 2014 and not 1929, you haven’t missed it, and you can get from the ceremony to the reception on the LA Metro Expo line, which follows almost the same route as the old Pacific Electric Santa Monica Air Line.
We’ve started looking at venues, and we’re realizing that we have a lot of decisions ahead of us.
But we have made one decision: crocheted flowers! At the very least, Carole’s bouquet will be made of crocheted flowers. She’s already started making some herself, and they’re looking pretty cool:
Her sister is making some too. She’s recruiting other friends and family members who know how to crochet (or want to learn). Let us know in the comments if you want to make some too – we’ll send you instructions if you like.
If we have enough crocheted flowers by the day of the wedding (which is still TBA), we’ll use them for the bridal bouquet, bridesmaid bouquets, boutonnieres for the groom and groomsmen, and table centerpieces. If we finish millions and millions of crocheted flowers by then, we’ll be able to yarn-bomb the entire venue (which is also TBA).
It’ll be awesome.
We had made plans to drive to San Francisco for the Fourth of July weekend to spend the holiday with Carole’s brother and his family there. On July 3rd, on the way up the coast, we stopped in Cambria – which is more or less halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Phil suggested we go on a short hike/nature walk along the bluffs. It was beautiful:
This was shortly before Phil proposed.
As we were hiking, Phil was looking for the perfect spot to propose.
A view from the trail where Phil and Carole got engaged
By the time we got to the end of the trail, he decided they were all perfect, and that he would do it the first time they stopped on the way back down the trail. Which was here:
The spot where Phil proposed
View of the spot from space
Phil got on one knee and asked Carole to marry him. She said yes. It was a lovely, perfect moment. And here is the ring:
Carole’s engagement ring
The Wedding Blog 