THEY'RE HEEERE


That's right, ladies and germs, we have managed to upload the best of our wedding photos to Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/rslwn/sets/72157625297603353/. We hold the copyright to these photos; however, we encourage you to print as many as you want, comment on the photos, or share your favorites with others.

Vendor Reviews

Our vendor reviews post is very long, and has been pushed deep into the archives. Here's the link: Beaudrowen Vendor Reviews.

Pro Pics are Here! (Sort of)

Our photographer has put all 1800 or so wedding photos into an online gallery. We should be getting a DVD-ROM full of photos soon as well! Once we have those, we'll put together a "best of" collection so that folks who don't want to spend two or three hours scrolling through photos can get a feel for what they looked like.

Photos trickling in

So we've found out that our professional photos may not be ready for a good two months yet. Fortunately, it appears that some of you have your own lovely photos from the church and reception, and are uploading them to our Flickr group at http://www.flickr.com/groups/beaudrowen/. Please feel free to add your own photos to the pool, or to peruse the ones that other guests have contributed! We hope that these photos, and the photos from our engagement session and Ann Pearl's fabulous brunch, will hold you over.

Now the party's over...

Pictures will be forthcoming as soon as we receive them from the photographer; in the meantime, a few important items:
  1. We did a few things ourselves, but the vast majority of decorating, arranging, and general carrying to-and-fro on the day of the wedding was done by family. We want to take this opportunity to thank Ursula's parents and siblings and all the members of the wedding party for donating so much of their time and effort for set-up and take-down and everything in between. We barely knew what was going on where when, but everything happened amazingly smoothly. We couldn't have dreamed of better help.
  2. Thanks go also to the D.A.R. staff, Pyramid Catering, Kelli's Creations for the cake, D.J. Jeremy Hamel from Sonic Entertainment, and Becky (liturgist) and Rebecca (officiant) at St. Mark's Cathedral.
  3. Finally, thank you to all of you who were able to make it! We're so glad that people came from out of town (let alone across oceans!) to have a good time with us as we (ahem) take this next step in our lives, and hope that all of you enjoyed the day as much as we did.
In conclusion, thank you thank you thank you. Good night and good luck.

XOXO,
Ursula and Nick

Last Dance iPhone snap

It's A Party! And A Wedding! It's ... A Wedding Party!

Hello there! Welcome to BeaudrOwen.com, your one-stop shop for information on Nick and Ursula's wedding. We're excited to see everyone on the Big Day! You can RSVP for yourself, your date, and any schoolage (or younger) children right this minute! That way, every time you look at the invite on your fridge, you don't say to yourself "oh, man, I need to remember to send in my RSVP".

Yes, Virginia, the wedding is actually happening.
Here are some links that we suspect wedding guests will find useful:
  • Like we said before, you can go ahead and RSVP today.
  • Take a look at our online wedding registries.
  • Whether you're visiting from far away, or you want to play tourist in your home town,  take a look at our ideas on where to have fun in Seattle. We'll probably update it from time to time.
  • Visitors traveling from out of town will want to bookmark our page full of Travel & Lodging Information.
  • The DJ is happy to take suggestions, so if you have music that you'd like to dance to (either specific songs or just a genre), add a comment to our Dance Music page.
  • If you want to keep track of the updates made to our site, you can subscribe to our RSS feed. This feed has all updates (DIY tips, cries for help, shameless promotions for our totally awesome vendors, etc.), while this link only has updates that are labeled "for guests".
  • Did the last bullet point sounded like a foreign language to you? That's okay! Just visit www.beaudrowen.com every so often to see if there are any recent updates. We'll probably have something new to say at least once a week. The wedding info you see here will be at the top of the page up until the big day, so just scroll down to look for the latest news.
If you have any questions or suggestions, you can send us email at info@beaudrowen.com.

Did we mention you can RSVP using our website? You can!

Sports and Traffic

For tourists, this page is a way to know how to avoid losing precious hours of your vacation to getting stuck in traffic. For sports nuts, this page is a way to know when to head to the bar. Here are the major sporting events for Seattle teams the weekend of the wedding.
  • College Football: The Huskies play at home against Nebraska starting at 12:30 on Saturday. The University District, home of Husky Stadium, is not equipped to handle 75,000 tailgaters at all. It is best to avoid the U-district entirely on game day to avoid running the risk of being stuck in traffic.
  • Pro Football: The Seahawks are on the road.
  • Baseball: The Mariners are at home the weekend of the wedding.
    • Friday 7:10pm
    • Saturday 6:10
    • Sunday 1:10
    Despite their terrible record, the M's are a decent draw, especially on weekends if the weather is nice.
  • Soccer: Seattle Sounders FC are on the road. Yes, they're big enough to matter; the Sounders draw 36,000 per game, compared to the Mariners' 27,000 (and a lot of those M's fans come dressed as empty seats).

In Which Nick and Ursula Dress a Little Fancier and Get Their Picture Taken

Here's a collection of good shots from our engagement photo shoot earlier this August:


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Many thanks to Chris Gendron of Gendron Photography!

Last-Minute Hotel Reminder

We've picked out some lovely retro-ish hotels for your stay here. But you need to book now in order to get a good price!
August 18th, today, is the last day to make reservations at our discounted group rate. If you haven't made your reservation, now is the time! You can cancel your reservation at no charge up until a few days before the wedding.
More information can be found on our Travel & Lodging page.

So, You Want To Make Your Own Pocketfolds...

The pocketfold DIY tutorial is very long and has been moved. Click here to read it in all its glory.

What To Wear Around Town

Emily Post would shake her finger at us for telling our guests what to wear, but we've gotten a couple of questions about this, so a few notes on "dress code" and colors. Also, another reminder about the weather for visitors.

The judges from Project Runway will not be taking notes on anyone's outfit

Wedding night attire


Ladies who want to avoid being mistaken for a bridesmaid should stay away from royal or electric blue. However, this is more for your sake than ours; if it looks good, wear it, regardless of color.

As far as how formal/informal to dress, it is (after all) a wedding; vintage attire is encouraged for those so inclined, and cocktail/semi-formal for those who aren't. Of course, this is Seattle, so if guests manage a level of formality exceeding jeans and T-shirts we'll be pleasantly surprised.

Weather


Just one last reminder for the Southerners: nighttime here is going to feel cold. Whenever Nick complains about the weather, his dad uses the same Mark Twain quote about how "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco", even though Mark Twain never said that. But it's true—it gets cold at night year-round! The joke here is that summer starts on July 5th. September lows are usually in the low 50s or possibly the mid-40s, plus there will be a little bit of wind. Even during the day, the usual high is 70 degrees and on a cloudy day it might be 60 degrees.

Where to get your dresses


Now I'm not saying that you need to buy a dress special for this particular occasion; all's I'm saying is, if you ever need an adorable, perfectly-made retro-chic dress for a reasonable price, I would highly recommend Jiminie Hayward of My Little Black Dress. The bridesmaids' dresses she did for us just came in the mail today, and they are truly gorgeous. Jiminie does impeccable work and is very open to altering designs and switching things around to fit your needs. 223 positive reviews on Etsy can't be wrong.

Last Names

A quick note, having had a recently married friend who ran into this problem.

Ursula is not taking Nick's last name. Nor are we going to merge our two last names into one. (Ed: nor, may I note in the interests of completeness, is Nick taking Ursula's last name.) Cash gifts sent by cheque should be made out to "Ursula O & Nick B.", but using their current last names.

Note: mostly, this post is an excuse to use the word "cheque" and sound a little pauncy.

Charity Registry Update

For those who wish to make a charitable donation in lieu of gifts, if neither Habitat for Humanity nor the Lambda Legal Foundation are your cup of tea, we've added Doctors Without Borders to our charity registry.

It Don't Make No Money Don't Make No Sense / We're Gonna Invite the Prez-o-Dent

Here's a neat tip for any soon-to-be-newlyweds out there: send an invite to the President! If you do, you'll get a nice card back congratulating you.


Here are instructions on how to invite the President to your wedding. The White House will also respond to a number of other events, including the birth of a child, retirement after working at the same company for thirty years or more, a fiftieth wedding anniversary, etc.

British citizens can invite the Queen of England (but address the letter to the Secretary, not the Queen herself!); members of the Catholic church can invite the Pope; and anyone can invite Oprah. Or Mickey Mouse. Invitations sent to a musician's or actor's fan club can also result in a letter. Who knows, maybe one of them might even show up!

(Here's the song that inspired the title for this post, That Handsome Devil's "Rob the Prez-o-dent":)

"... and family"

Family members this size are also invited, even if the invite forgot to mention it.

Whoops!

We triple-checked our invitations, and while we did several reprints to try to get all the information just right, it appears we may have missed a few things. In particular, some invitations don't have "and family" printed on the invitation. This is a kid-friendly wedding; any and all children living with you are welcome to attend. The reception hall has plenty of space in the restrooms and changing rooms for diaper changing and/or letting the little ones have a quieter moment. If you don't see your child's name when you RSVP, please email us at info@beaudrowen.com so we have a proper seat for everyone.

Please note that at present we are at the limit of our reception hall's seating capacity, so we do not have space to seat your teenage son/daughter/stepson's date.

(cc photo by Flickr user Jon Ovington)

Save The Date!


Hello there! You may be visiting this website because we sent you a save-the-date in the mail. This is your one-stop shop for information on Nick & Ursula's wedding.
  • Out-of-towners can go ahead and make hotel reservations. For air travel there's always Orbitzor Kayak.
  • If you want to get regular updates from our wedding website, you can subscribe to our RSS feed. This link has all updates to the website. If you're not interested in our random musings about wedding planning, DIY updates, etc., this link will only send you the updates with information directly relevant to wedding guests.
  • For wedding junkies, our collection of links under "Useful Wedding Links" (to the right of this post) features lots of wedding resources that are some combination of pretty and amusing. Warning: Regretsy is hilarious, but occasionally Not Safe For Work.
Do you have any questions about the wedding, visiting Seattle, or anything else? Send us email at  info@beaudrowen.com!

The Present, as Envisioned by The Past, When The Present Was Still The Future

Since our wedding has a vintage tinge to it, I thought I'd share one of the most fascinating write-ups of what people living in 1900 thought the world would look like in the year 2000. You may have seen it before. The article is called "What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years" and appeared in The Ladies Home Journal in 1900. Since Nick works for Amazon, this one is particularly hilarious:
Prediction #22 Store Purchases by Tube. Pneumatic tubes, instead of store wagons, will deliver packages and bundles. These tubes will collect, deliver and transport mail over certain distances, perhaps for hundreds of miles. They will at first connect with the private houses of the wealthy; then with all homes. Great business establishments will extend them to stations, similar to our branch post-offices of today, whence fast automobile vehicles will distribute purchases from house to house.

They almost got it right. Trucks still deliver goods to your home, but you make the purchase via the Internet, which some people think of as a series of tubes:



Update: even more apropos, here's an artist's conception of what Seattle would look like in 2014, as drawn in 1914.

About that music stuff

Sure, anthems are great- but what do you dance to? (Please don't say "Ke$ha".) Nick and I have been going back and forth over first dance songs for a while now, but before he even popped the vague question, I was drawing up my own list of possible first dance songs:

Galaxies, Laura Veirs
In The Backseat, The Arcade Fire
The Swimmer, Sleater-Kinney
On The Edge Of, Low
Midnight Radio, Cyndi Lauper OR John Cameron Mitchell
Can't Get You Out Of My Mind, Everything Changed, Gentle, Aqualung
Angels and Angles, Isn't It A Lovely Night, The Decemberists
Middle Cyclone, Neko Case
A Heart Needs A Home, Shawn Colvin & Loudon Wainwright

Once we started planning for reals Nick listened to all of these songs, and said that they made him cry and we could not use them. :| So I looked at what I had, and tried to find a common thread, aside from that they all date me tremendously in terms of my music tastes. I came up with Naked As We Came and Each Coming Night by Iron and Wine.

But now that this is a Recession Wedding, with the '30s theming and venue, we've started wondering if lo-fi indie acoustic is really the way to go. Nick started digging through Ella Fitzgerald tracks; I offered I Didn't Mean A Word I Said because the vibe of that song is consonant with the vibe of our relationship (constant sass-fests), but Nick doesn't like it because it sounds bad (like we are constantly sassing eachother). Nick countered with Dream A Little Dream of Me, which I find a little chintzy. Here, as in every other area of life, we struggle to bring our differing sensibilities to some sort of agreement.

I guess this is where I'll open it up: which of these songs, if any, would you pick? What's your ideal slow dance song? (Please don't say "Ke$ha".)

Edited to add: This post originally credited the poster, Ursula Owen, for considering "Brighter Than Sunshine" by Aqualung as a possible first dance song. That song was, in fact, raised as an option by her fiance, Nicholas Beaudrot. We regret the error.

Service Music

In other music news, we're still looking for songs to play during the actual wedding as well. We already have at least one, but there's certainly room for more. Here's the Pacific Lutheran Choir performing Eric Whitacre's "A Boy and a Girl" (lyrics here):



And the same composer's "This Marriage" (lyrics here).



Sidenotes: separated at birth? Eric Whitacre (left) and Jesse Spencer, aka Dr. Chase from "House, MD".

Nick's favorite choral piece of all time is Morten Lauridsen's "O magnum mysterium" but it has nothing to do with love or marriage, really. Plus, it's probably too long. Still, it's pretty!



Sacred Harp singing, or shape note singing, is distinctly vintage. Though the original Sacred Harp hymn book dates from the 1840s, the music remained popular through roughly the start of WWII in many parts of the country:



Of course, if we're looking for popular-at-the-time, regal standards, we can do that too. Here's "Jerusalem", the alternate English national anthem (it's played at Cricket matches instead of "God Save the [gender-specific monarch" ...:



... or this piece by Herbert Howells (probably wouldn't pick this, but it gives you a sense of the period style in England):

Dance Music

Do you want something like this to happen at our wedding?



Neither do we. Use the comments to suggest genres or even specific songs for the dancing hours.

Can't Tell the Players Without a Program

Here are the four brave souls who have agreed to be in Nick's half of the wedding party.


The Best Man: Zach

Nick met Zach through a mutual friend in ... wait for it ... fourth grade. He was having trouble finishing Zelda II: The Adventures of Link. At the time, Nick had more or less memorized the entire game, so he ended up lending him a hand. Since then, Zach has repaid that initial favor in spades. Zach lives in Atlanta, GA with his girlfriend fiancée Sara; he works for a public defender's office in the exurbs.
Donald

Donald and Nick were on the same neighborhood swim team starting at age 8. After five years of hiatus from swimming, Nick and Donald reunited when Donald realized he still owed Nick for a candy bar he bought half a decade ago. Donald paid back the debt and promptly routed Nick in a 50-yard breaststroke sprint. The two of them dominated the 13-14 and 15+ age bracket over the coming years. Donald currently resides in London, England, where he is a men's fashion consultant and soon-to-be reservist in the British Army. He responds to "The Donald" as well as "D-Mac".

Jordan

Jordan and Nick were college roommates in 1999-2000. The worked together on a clever but ultimately futile attempt to reproduce an old Mac game called robowars that would let people program robots to battle in an arena. In the end, these robots rose up against their creators and destroyed mankind. Jordan works in the financial sector in New York City, where he lives with his fiancée Heather.

Jonathan

Jonathan was the next-door neighbor of one of Nick's few non-college friends when he first moved to Seattle. As a fellow Southerner and sports fan, the two of them instantly bonded over the weakness of Pac-10 football, the lack of sweet tea, and other assorted perks of living in the South. To make the long, gray Seattle winters more enjoyable, the two of them took up snowboarding, which led to many hilarious trips in the coming years. Jonathan has since moved back to Palm Beach, FL, where he is now managing his father's jewelry shop.

Menu Jackpot

The LA public library has a fairly comprehensive collection of restaurant menus from the days of yore. There's a good mix of high-brow hotels and more run-of-the-mill cafe fare. Apparently people in the 1930s ate lots of peas.

Fun In Seattle

Visiting from out of town? Here are some of our favorite places to take visitors when they come and see us. For a more complete list of local attractions, check out visitseattle.org's suggested itineraries as well as their explore Seattle page.

Food: We each picked out five of our favorite restaurants to recommend:
  • 663 Bistro ($). The best of Seattle's many hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurants. Get at least one curry dish. Also, the food is incredibly filling; two dishes plus a fried rice dish will be more than enough for four people. For Dim Sum (say, on a Saturday Brunch), try Jade Garden ($).
  • Pike Street Fish Fry ($). Anything and everything that is delicious fried. Try the oysters and the menu of sauces for your fries.
  • Elysian Brewpub ($). Good variety of pub food with excellent rotating tab of in-house microbrews.
  • Molly Moon's Ice Cream ($). A great place to stop on a sunny day.
  • Julia's on Broadway ($$). A nice late breakfast or brunch spot. Vegetarians may prefer the all-vegetarian Cafe Flora.
  • Long's Provincial ($$). A diverse menu of regional Vietnamese food with a great cocktail menu.
  • Maneki ($$). The best Japanese restaurant in the best city for Japanese food in the U.S.
  • Coastal Kitchen ($$). A combination of regular favorites and a rotating menu of cuisines from around the world.
  • Wild Ginger ($$$). A regular on "Best Seattle Restaurants" lists, they serve up the oft-maligned "asian fusion cusine" but manage to get it right. Reservations recommended.
  • Lola ($$$). Our favorite of the five restaurants owned by Seattle superchef Tom Douglas. Reservations recommended during peak hours.
Fish tossing at Pike Place Market is always a treat. Cafe Campagne ($$) is our favorite restaurant in the Market, and probably just outside our top ten.
Our Top Picks for things to do while visiting:
(If you are local and have other suggestions feel free to leave them in the comments).