Radiant Rachel Reflecting on Ruby, Rails, Righteous Rants and Random Rubbish
Posts tagged adam
My Wedding Vendors
June 1, 2011
in Wedding
I wanted to take an opportunity to thank the vendors I used to supply me with things that I included in my wedding. One of my most popular posts on this blog is when I mentioned Lollipop Workshop, and wanted to show off my finished cake-topper and rave about the wonderful things I included in my wedding ceremony.
Rings — David Levy
David was the one who designed my sapphire engagement ring with Adam. When we went to get our wedding rings, he was of course our first choice and he was more than happy to help us. He even gave us free engraving on our rings. He is passionate about great customer service and we’ve already recommended him to a few of our family and friends.
Custom Wedding Celebration Writing — Jessie Blum from Eclectic Unions
Jesse Blum is an incredible attentive, creative woman passionate about her craft. When we decided to have a destination wedding, we knew we wanted it to speak uniquely about our relationship and be as personal as possible. Jesse worked with us to construct a personal ceremony based on our religious and cultural beliefs as well as including new and interesting ways of showing the symbolism of our relationship.
Cake Topper — Lollipop Workshop
This was the first thing I bought for our wedding which sounds a little ridiculous, but I knew from the moment I saw these cute little guys that I needed one for my own wedding cake. Our topper now proudly sits in our glass cabinet with our other wedding paraphernalia.
Sand Ceremony Etched Glasses — Designs by Etch Art
I would have gone with a candle lighting ceremony but since we were on a beach, the candles would get blown out but I still wanted to symbolize two families coming together. The sand ceremony was a perfect match, not only because it was on a beach, but it goes back to the old adage that the couple will stay together unless each grain of sand could be separated and placed back in its original container. I chose a dark blue and light blue sand to pour in by each of our mothers and then Adam & I poured in our sands together. My uncle, the officiant, then included sand collected from Aruba’s beach. We were able to successfully transfer it home by carrying it carefully with us on the plane.
Ketubah — Naomi Broudo
When I learned about the Jewish tradition of a Ketubah, I immediately fell in love. I then took a look at Etsy and saw all the lovely options that artists were creating for their couples. I had set aside a few options but Naomi’s beautiful works always stuck out. I was quite late in ordering my work, but I begged Naomi and she graciously agreed to do one for us and was excellent about sending to us in plenty of time for our ceremony. We now have it framed and posted above our family room couch for all to see.
Dress — Fontana Bridal Salon
When I was choosing my bridal gown, the ladies at Fontana had picked out a few for me to try on. But it was the first one I got in that was “the one.” I didn’t have a huge budget for my dress, but they were flexible with the price and helped me by giving me a discount if I paid in full and got the alterations done on premises.
Bridesmaid Dresses (Bill Levkoff) — RK Bridal
We had found our dresses from a separate bridal salon but received awful service (which is why I will not put their name or website here.) Instead, we got ordered our dresses from RK Bridal in Manhattan. What is great about them is that if you can find a cheaper price somewhere else, they will take 5% off your order. You need to know what you want before ordering because they will charge extra for reserving time at the place and getting proper measurements. It wasn’t such a problem because my bridesmaids went to tailors afterwards anyway to get the dress to fit properly on them.
Stationary/Invitations/Menus — Wedding Paper Divas
Even though their site is seems to take care of everything for you, I was confident that there was someone behind the scenes taking care of every little detail. When they noticed a possible problem with the way I had ordered something, they contacted me and my mother right away to make sure it was the way we wanted.
Civil Ceremony Accommodation in Aruba — Lissy Lampe
Lissy was a blessing. After I got sick on my wedding day, she was able to still keep everything on track and was highly organized and such a professional. Can’t speak highly enough of her.
Beach Blessing/Reception — The Westin Resort & Casino, Aruba
We got married on the beach in front of the Westin Resort and afterwards had our cocktail hour on the beach. We were so lucky with an amazing sunset as we took our photos on the beach with family and friends. Our reception was then located in the Sirocco lounge over-looking the resort and pool.
Getting Ready for a Move
October 14, 2010
I hate moving.
Since the beginning of college, I’ve moved probably a dozen times between house moves with my family or moving back and forth from dormitories. This includes the process of deciding what crap to pack, throwing out crap I don’t need or don’t want anymore, the actual process of packing my crap, the physical moving of crap from one place to another, and then unpacking that crap, and figuring out where that piece of crap’s new home with be in the new location.
I DESPISE moving!
I’ve been in my current apartment for two years now and that’s by far the longest I’ve stayed in any one place for a very long time. That being said, I’m very eager to finally leave this place. My commute is a bit too long and being under the rule of a landlord isn’t exactly what I’d call ideal. It would also be a huge improvement to move to a place that gets an equal distribution of heat in all the rooms! 
In preparation of the impending move, I’m beginning to mentally go over all of the items I’ve procured over the last few years. I could stand to do without some things; especially since Adam and I will be coming into the marriage with duplicate items like dressers and desks! I’m a little disheartened to part with my old wooden desk that matches my bedroom furniture, but I can’t see us having space in the new apartment for a desk that is mainly used for its drawer space.
In my lifelong quest to improve myself, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m an avid reader of blogs like LifeHacker. Today they posted a link to another blog outlining “Nine Quick Tips to Identify Clutter.” It’s good every once and a while (especially when moving!) to assess our material possessions and ask ourselves why we keep these things around?
I’m slightly envious of the minimalist home owners out there that are able to run their entire household on the very bare essentials. I’m a sentimental person and enjoy doing things like creating scrapbooks and am susceptible to holding on to mementos which in turn take up space. I also anthropomorphize objects easily which makes it hard to part with things, but that’s a problem unto itself.
Penn State University Homecoming
October 11, 2010
in Adventures
This weekend, Adam and I made the 4 1/2 hour trip from Long Island into Pennsylvania for the Penn State 2010 Homecoming. No, neither of us are alumni, but one of my sisters and my dad are and as a perk for being in the Alumni Blue Band Association, they have the option of buying 2 tickets to the homecoming game. Adam and I took up the offer and the other two tickets went to my godfather and his son visiting from North Carolina. It’s always nice to see him because my dad and him have been friends since the second grade and I am bound to hear silly and embarrassing stories about my dad’s childhood.
The past few weeks/weekends have been quite busy for Adam and I due to work, planning for the wedding and our impending move to Park Slope – it wasn’t really an ideal weekend for traveling to Penn State but since we already bought the tickets, it would be wasteful not to go! To begin with, Adam had a crisis going on at work and we left Manhattan quite late and then we got home and tried to have some semblance of a dinner while Adam continued to work. I then suggested to him that we might as well buy a MiFi (I admit, it’s because I’ve been lusting for one since I heard those existed) so he could work through the evening in the car while I drove. The MiFi is pretty cool, you can buy it at full cost without a contract for $150 and then pay $40 a month for unlimited service. It worked pretty well along Route 80 going through Pennsylvania but there were obviously some pretty big gaping holes in service in a few areas. Unfortunately, our car isn’t outfitted with an AC power converter and he failed to charge his laptop before getting in the car so he only got to do some real work for a few hours of the trip. This meant I did most of the driving and he stayed up until 6am that morning working on bug fixes once we got to State College.
We left Long Island around 10pm Friday and only made it to State College around 3am which meant we missed the free pizza and booze with my dad and his college friends. I went right to bed and, as I mentioned earlier, Adam stayed up to work and then we woke around 10am to try and navigate ourselves to Beaver Stadium for the game while still half asleep. I have to mention that I do not miss living in a dorm at all. We were very lucky to have the opportunity to stay with Jennifer’s boyfriend, Hitesh, who lives on campus because our alternative was sleeping in the RV my dad’s friends rented for the weekend. Both meant uncomfortable sleeping situations and questionable restroom facilities, but at least there was enough room to move around in the apartment.
The game was a huge disappointment and the Nittany Lions lost to Illinois but we still sat there in the boiling sun until the conclusion of the game. The Blue Band, as always, was enjoyable, but I think I was experiencing mild heatstroke because I can’t really remember what they played and only that I took a few snap-shots for Jennifer’s scrapbook of the weekend. Afterwards, my dad did his traditional tailgate, albeit on the smaller side, and we attempted to play an awful game of ring toss interrupted by a few curses and the occasional “I hate this stupid game! Why are we playing this again?” We also visited Hitesh’s tailgate and munched on paneer and chicken marinated in yogurt sauce. We were also treated to the drunken antics of his tailgate neighbors who also reminded me why I chose not to live in Pennsylvania anymore.
We wrapped up the night hanging out with the “Hedgehogs” at the RV made up of my dad’s friends from college. Please don’t ask me where that name comes from because I don’t know, and I’m quite certain they don’t remember either. They held their yearly homecoming meeting, inducted new members into the sacred order of the hedgehog and I think I was assigned the task of creating a web site for everyone and coming up with members only t-shirts. Sunday morning we hopped on over to the RV again for brunch and said our good-byes before heading off back north (but not before we stopped at a RadioShack and purchased an AC converter which promptly blew out our car’s cigarette lighter’s fuse whenever Adam attempted to charge his MacBook!)
It was nice to see everyone but I think I would have also enjoyed staying home instead of spending the time driving just because of everything that’s going on. I know we’ll be attempting to recoup our lost sleeping hours this week!
Engagement Party
September 27, 2010
in Wedding
Practice for when we cut our wedding cake.
Yes, it’s true, we’ve been engaged since May and we originally had the party planned for August but it had to be moved. We finally were able to celebrate it with many friends and family this weekend in Island Park, NY at The Coyote restaurant down by the waterfront.
Luckily for me, Adam’s mom did the majority of the planning and logistical decisions. Since she was paying for it, mostly my job was just to show up. A couple of the tasks I had to do was invite any friends I wanted to attend, come up with a music playlist (the restaurant had an iPod hookup) and come up with a scrapbook for people to sign while they were there.
I was conflicted about my guest list since Adam’s mother’s family is absolutely huge and she has many, many close friends that she already invited. After the invites were all sent out, our guest list was well past 80 invitees. I was so overjoyed at the amount of people and just general love that we got this weekend. All but two of my friends from high school and college from Boston were able to make the long trip from Massachusetts to Long Island, many of them driving in that day!
I must admit, where I’m from, we’ve never heard of engagement parties and my parents and siblings were confused as to the purpose. After Ventz & Erica were engaged last fall they had a small one in Boston but I wasn’t sure what to expect from a Long Island, NY engagement party!
Some of our friends from way out of town!
When I was tasked with coming up with a music playlist for the party, I wasn’t sure what to pick. Though my favorite music, I’m sure the older attendees wouldn’t appreciate hard rock, alternative and metal. I also couldn’t fit an entire playlist of Lady Gaga. After looking through my library of music, I realized that I’ve been sitting on a couple great Mashup albums organized by BootieMashup.com that I was saving just for the day I’d have a house party. After listening to the playlist for a few weeks and removed anything that would make Grandma blush, I had a pretty good set list prepared! I ended up getting a lot of compliments from my friends who said they really enjoyed the new twist on music. Of course, a few of them were pretty surprised I didn’t throw in some Nine Inch Nails for good measure. 
My final task was to prepare a sign in book for the guests. I subscribe to the OffBeatBride newsfeed and was very impressed with some bride’s take on the photo booth idea (I will also admit that I originally thought of this in the winter when Trent Reznor married his wife and they had an old time-y photo booth at their wedding and had people put it on paper.)
I’m also quite into scrapbooking and Adam’s mom picked up a white beaded album a couple months ago for me to use as I wish. I put together a packet of wedding themed stickers, brought my photo-friendly pens and a little Polaroid instant printer that I picked up the day before at the RadioShack. I was a little anxious wondering if people would be able to figure out how to print from my digital camera, but after demonstrating it to enough people, I think the rest were able to catch on. If I could do one thing over, it would be to get a different album. Unfortunately, all the pages were in plastic which meant people had to pull the paper out of the plastic wrapping before sticking their picture on and signing the paper. Some people didn’t take pictures and instead signed the plastic. The markers weren’t meant for plastic so the ink wiped away as soon as the page rubbed up against something else (usually the page right next to it.) I think I’ll try to do something like this again for the wedding reception in Pittsburgh next June but try to make it much more streamlined and maybe even get props!
One of my least favorite tasks was opening all of the wonderful gifts we got from our attendees. By the end of the day I was absolutely beat from running around meeting people and being generally sociable that I just wanted to pass out. Adam’s sister Stacey and the rest of our family prodded us to open the gifts we received and write down everyone’s names so we could get thank yous out by the end of the week. I had been watching our wedding registry for the past few weeks so I had a good idea about what we would potentially be getting but I was delightfully surprised by some of the off-the-cuff gifts we got. I hadn’t yet decided on when/if I’d change my name and one of the reasons I gave was that everything about me online is “Rachel Ober.” Ventz managed to bid on new domains for Adam and me! We are now the owners of RachelAKaplan.com, RachelAKaplan.net, and AdamJKaplan.net, hah! With a very Jewish name like “Rachel Kaplan” and “Adam Kaplan,” it is damn near impossible to get a domain! Another gift we are really excited about getting is from my high school friends Scott and Pat. Scott usually brews his own beer in his basement and they gave us Cabernet and we are looking forward to opening it once we get all moved into our new house!
Custom Cake Topper from Etsy
September 13, 2010
in Wedding
Sample Custom Beach Cake Topper from Lollipop Workshop © lollipop workshop
I haven’t done a lot of planning for my wedding, but when I saw this, I just knew I had to have it!
While I haven’t chosen everything for the wedding yet, I was dead set on at least ordering this. It made me think about the colors I wanted for the bridal party, what I might wear, how I might do my hair and what Adam and the groomsmen might wear on the beach. All of this was going to be reflected on this tiny pair meant to represent us on top of our wedding cake.
I finally decided that I wanted at least one of our colors to be sapphire blue. It’s Adam’s favorite color and my engagement ring and birthstone is a sapphire so it makes a lot of sense. It will also go quite well with the beach and ocean theme of the wedding.
I also can’t see Adam, or anyone else for that matter, wearing a suit jacket. I envision everyone being very comfortable in khakis and a nice white shirt. I don’t even want to wear a veil, much to the chagrin of my mother. I’d rather just have my hair tastefully pulled back into a nice up-do. It’s quite windy on the island of Aruba and I don’t want my hair flying every which-way while I’m trying to speak my vows and take pictures.
You can find other Lollipop Workshop cake toppers on their Etsy store.
I’m also considering commissioning a friend of mine who has been making anklet/toe jewelry for my bridesmaids. We’re going to be married on the beach and I would think heels would be a nightmare! Of course, everyone is free to slip into shoes once we go to the reception but it would be a nice gift to give to the girls.
Within the next month, my mom and I will begin the arduous task of selecting a wedding dress. I’m pretty keen on having something offbeat and would love to have colors splashed all over the place but I may be complacent on just having sapphire blue accents decorating the dress.
At the very least, I have already decreed that I will be wearing a tiara!
