trash the dress: waterfalls

via waxy at flickr, apparently taken with a fisheye lens! this photo actually makes the installation look a lot better than it actually does. and why two engagement rings? a stone's throw from davie street, is this making a social statement about lesbian marriages? they could have (easily) made a "diamond" encrusted wedding band to match. this is what greeted me at english bay last time i was in vancouver - it looked pretty gaudy against the backdrop of vanier park - as if these ugly metal sculptures weren't bad enough, juxtaposed against the iconic inuksuk. so, venturing well outside of vancouver, we find waterfalls:


i've always loved the slow shutterspeed effect on waterfalls that makes them all soft and blurry while inanimate objects like rocks are crystal clear. lynn creek, bottom right, looks super cool but i think we can thank photoshop for the green water. i imagine this is all glacier run off and would be beyond cold, even in august heat. photos courtesy of the kind folks at flickr.

dress shopping in bellevue

my lovely bridesmaid and maid of honor came down for a weekend at macy's, nordstroms, and whatever else bellevue had to offer. (jenn i think you ended up leaving the cake book here, which means you're due for another trip sometime soon). to date, they've tried on perhaps 10 times this rack of dresses shown here on the left - so they've been wonderfully patient and excellent sports. especially when it comes to jumping into ridiculous taffetta ensembles just for the sake of fun photographs:

i've got a few more photos to edit, and even some video! for now, here's vanessa's sleek new cut:

i've got a july birthday

a very kind lady at work that i barely know bought me a gorgeous bouquet of flowers for my birthday! hello, lisianthus!

i had decided to have my wedding in either july or august of next year, and it so happens that my july birthday falls on a saturday so that eliminated a potential date.



my parents made a big deal of my birthday even though i had just brushed it off. they smuggled a tuxedo cake across the border, with its strawberries and all - and it made me understand what cake shops mean by "mousse filling," which inititally conjured images of twinkies, but the cake told me otherwise: it had layers of chocolate cake/chocolate mousse/chocolate cake/white chocolate mousse etc etc. my mother expertly picked out a wonderfully large double boiler because i had mentioned that i'd wanted to steal my aunt's. yay for steamed spinach! i have the same handful of random pots my mother had lent me when i moved out for university at seventeen. two pots and one frying pan. i did fork out $12 for a large cast iron frying pan this fall but that was all. seriously. and i don't go out for dinner very often. i've somehow managed to avoid investing in le creuset pans and the kitchenaid mixer, as well as simple kitchen essentials like a garlic press, a decent bottle opener, metal measuring cups etc etc in the name of "i need to wait for the gift registry." i did okay through university, but when it came to moving to the US, and not only that, but dividing my kitchen supplies between my apartment and his apartment, it got a little tricky. gone are the days when we live at home till we say i do. women go to college, build careers, and get married down the road. i used the gift registry excuse long before we were engaged, and now that the wedding is another year down the road i'm just going to have to keep smushing my garlic against my cheese grater.

trash the dress ideas

here is a quintessentially "vancouver" sight of the mermaid statue ("girl in wetsuit" to be more correct) with the sulfur piles in the background. there's even a little rock for me to pose just like said girl in wetsuit.
i have this secret love for mimicking things around me - see my beau in this photo taken somewhere on the ocean between kawaii and oahu last summer
and so the concept of the sulfur piles is rather exciting to me, but unfortunately, amidst all the photos that i could find on flickr,
only one of them wasn't taken across the water from stanley park and so it leads me to believe that it's very off limits. or even if it wasn't, i'd have to don a hard hat.

so these north shore sulfur piles reminded me of the trainyards that i adore there. my father used to fish for salmon in capilano when i was young and before the natives overfished the area (yes i am aware that is a politcally charged statement, but it's my opinion). we usually came home via the second narrows instead of the lions gate and passed by these trainyards. i returned to these trainyards in university, hoping to have fun running through them at night time, but there were no tresspassing signs everywhere and even a night guard! (photos are courtesy of flickr)

wedding showers

yes. that is my underwear. sorry guys, i tried to find a nice online photo but came up with nothin'. it's one of my favorite pairs, right up their with my miffy the rabbit underwear, my mooshie (mushroom-like character) themed underwear, and my turquoise boy cut undies with the little bow in front. when i was younger i thought it'd be so cool to have a teddy shower, but then thought it would be way too embarassing to have my mother and other older female relatives present when i unwrapped feathery night-time wear. but fun underwear, i'm all for that (and if a few fun pieces from la senza make their way into the mix, bonus!).

one of my several wedding books i bought off amazon listed a few more great shower ideas. the only one i can remember right now was a recipe-based shower, where everyone brings their favorite recipe and one utensil to make it with, which i think is utterly wonderful! (but hey, i'd rather have cute undies AND recipes than 6 spatulas).

trash the dress part 2

when i think about local spots for a trash the dress session, nothing really appeals to me in the same way i was really bored with the overdone hotels and golf courses as reception venues. i love edgy photos which is why i drool over anything taken with a lomo and/or cross processed. my photography heros used to be heather champ, delicious blur, and quarlo, back in the day when i took more photos.


if i could have my reception in an abandoned warehouse i would be the happiest girl in the world! so on this dirty note, let's talk about trashing the dress....

to me, east hastings is an inextricable part of my vancouver. i took these photos years back with the squatters outside the old woodwards building, but if you're unfamiliar with the area, it's shocking but certainly not out of place.

i went down to hastings and main for about three years, spending 6-7 hours of my friday night serving food or singing worship songs at a small, upstairs place next to the balmoral hotel: street church. now it seems so far away, and so far removed from my life. i went back one christmas to revisit the smell of coffee mixed with hot dogs, mixed with an endless line of unwashed men and felt like i was perhaps the only one i knew who understood how i felt about it.
here's some photos i've gathered off of flickr. you'll see it really is skid row, and i think it's one of the worst places in north america. but it's safe. it's so safe. canadians don't carry guns, eh? and i used to leave street church at 1am.

i read about a trash the dress session where a "daring" bride/model posed on an alley mattress and it reminded me of hastings and main. i used to want to take portraits of the people there because there was so much story in each of their faces. give them a meal in exchange for a portrait. but i literally lacked the balls to do it being small, dainty, and female amongst a throng of drunken men and drugged up prostitutes.

enter crazy option number two: wreck beach. it's not the most beautiful beach as you can see, but it's a clothing optional one!

on the big island in hawaii we visited a black sand beach that also happened to be a nudist beach. our guide was incredulous that vancouver had its very own nudist beach (apparently it's more of a european thing i guess, but hey, canada definitely has a distinct british undertone).

now a video shoot running through nude people in a wedding dress (or for the more daring, in simply just a veil) would be a huge youtube hit, or at least a great sum41 music video.

trash the dress

my dad was somewhat shocked when i told him i really didn't care for a videographer, and i'm sure some guest will have some sort of video camera to get the ceremony at the very least. if anything i wanted someone like dan's brother or blair - someone that is either a little techie or would at least be somewhat excited to operate a super8 camera for all the big moments. but a post at weddingbee featuring a canadian trash the dress video shoot had me absolutely floored. here's a link to the post at still-motion.ca's blog. this photo doesn't do the filming justice, and i love how her dress billows in the wind (do they secretly bring around big fans to their locations or was the weather just fantasticly perfect...?). did i mention yay for feist and not kelly clarkson's latest song?

seriously. watch. this. video.

at any rate, this ontario based company even offers the super8 camera option! hah.

to get a feel of some super8 weddings in general, check out what youtube has to offer.

blackberries are an august fruit

believe it or not, i'm a bit wedding'd out. if i don't see any more dresses, photography, or venues for the next little while, i'll be happy. so onto other things - and the only reason i am even thinking about such a wedding-related thing is the possibility of owning a letterpress for my own endeavors.

i had originally wanted birds and branches as a theme - ie centerpieces/invitations etc, but that really lends itself more to a spring wedding. so it's tentatively set for august, and as i was walking home the other day it dawned on me: august, blackberries! they even have sweet little blossoms! i was thrilled.


i know nothing about letterpress, other than the fact that i love it. perhaps it's worth sending denise at patina an email, i believe she studied printmaking at emily carr. this thread over at myspace seems like a good resource for links with information. from what i gather, i have to hand carve wooden blocks, and i don't think i'm skilled enough to end up with the image i set out to do.

i'd always considered doing a sheet of unmounted rubber stamp for st*tchp*x*e with ready stamps because it's super cheap at $32 for a sheet, i believe you just send them a sheet of paper with all your images on them, and it supports cerebral palsy! this awesome post at the switchboards lists a tonne of places that do unmounted stamp sheets. in the end i'd be happy with simple, cream colored invitations stamped with black images and text. the stamped/embossing (with the heat gun and the powder) idea was abandoned after tiara said it turns out lumpy and too handmade looking - here's an image i found, and even jason said it's not crisp enough to tackle the text of an invite.

the same switchboarder referenced above has a decent blog, diybride.

if all else fails, i can go through the design*sponge letterpress guide and hand off the work to someone else.

dslr cameras

i've used my dad's minolta maxuum 7000 for years and years, and i've been meaning to step up to a d-slr since i started university.



so apparently there is no real nikon equivalent of the canon 5d. while most people compare the 30d with the d200, some people compare the d200 with the 5d. take this guy, for example, about the birth of his child:

"My D200 gave perfect exposure in all of the varied light conditions and compositions. My 5D would have necessitated me stopping and setting a different exposure compensation the hard way (trial and error) for each shot, meaning again I would have missed most of everything."

downsides for the 5D:
manually adjusting the ISOs
no built in flash (which was my biggest qualm with my minolta)

"If you want fisheye or ultra-ultra-wide shots, full-frame cameras win. Nikon has nada in oversize-sensor cameras."

okay...i'm not keen on ultra-ultra wide shots, but i'm all over fisheye. there is a nikon fisheye lens reviewed here, and then he basically says that the 5D's and up are the only canons able to enjoy the fisheye lens because they don't make them for the 30D, 20D, rebels etc!!!

i had thought i was leaning toward the 30d because i could make up the price savings with buying more lenses, but no fisheye? google seems to tell me otherwise

at any rate - i believe the nikon was available at costco.com last week when i checked, and now they no longer carry it!!!

so. if i can get a 30d, i can eventually upgrade to a 5d and share all my lenses. in the end, i'm sure there will be something bigger and better than the 5D in a few years to make the price drop....

my hair used to be so long....i went to a salon just twice in my entire five years at UBC, and only for just the slightest trim. i usually just hacked a couple inches off with my fabric scissors every 6-14 months. it looked totally awesome when it was curled, and i justified keeping the length because of that - although i never took the time to actually put rollers in - even in this photo it's just somewhat wavy because it had been in a bun all day. (that's actually andrew beside me in the b&w photo, but he asked to be cropped out because he looks like he has bells palsy).

it took a long time for me to chop it all off - and i put my trust in a great stylist in abbottsford last summer who gave me wonderfully chunky, volumous layers even though i'd sworn off the thought of layers since grade 8. however the awesome haircut only lasted about 3 weeks and that was that. so tonight i went to the shoppe downstairs and the little hair dresser said "this is the last haircut you're going to have before your wedding." see, now getting married right after graduation would have been perfect with my jessica simpson length hair - sans the extensions. however, when i look at the portrait that was taken at grad, it's so long it really resembles a horse's mane....or tail!

coming home from a lunch at feenies with the kidlios, ryan and madie (who ordered the best french toast i have ever had), i stumbled upon a small, unassuming bridal shop called vancouver bridals that i believe still bore the signage of the previous clothing boutique and was not technically open. it looks like the macdonald and broadway area of kits is slowly getting wedding fever - there's another bridal shop opening up across the street, and along with cupcakes and the sleek new flower shop a block down, in addition to the long-time floral fixtures of the neighbourhood and frocks up the road at arbutus - it's certainly becoming a bit of a bridal frenzy.

a courteous asian man named billy bi was happy to have me browse around at their samples, and then i realized with much glee that he would soon be stocking simone carvalli which isn't carried anywhere in the northwest nevermind seattle and vancouver. these are the dresses that really stand out amongst the hundreds of ads in the magazines. simone carvalli makes the mermaid of mermaid dresses - i think i saw a new one in martha's latest wedding issue - which looks to be a lot better than the spring one. carvalli's dresses look so gorgeous i briefly considered flying to some nearby state to try some on. even the poofy ones look so beautifully tactile. they'll also be carrying pronovias and palmona blanca



vanessa hunted me down that day and i managed to get her into the store to breathe life into the dresses. they're made in-house and so they run a very palatable $160 a piece (remember all other bridesmaid dresses have been $300-400 simply because you can get them in hot pink and all colors of the rainbow). they were slightly ill-fitting, but perhaps alterations could do wonders?

okay so orange is definitely out of the question.


although this "little black dress" was umpteen sizes too big and much too long, i starting to take a shine to black (although i believe this was a dark, dark navy).

and then i realized just how similar these dresses were to the melissa sweet ones: