Our Christmas - Winter Wonderland wedding

Our ceremony was held at my husband's hometown church and the reception was in the nearby small town (population 53 to be exact) since they have the only suitable venue within a 100 mile radius ;) Our theme was, as mentioned, Christmas-Winter Wonderland with theme colors of red and silver. There were about 80+ guests and more people showed up later, when the doors were opened for the general public. We had a dj to play a variety of music, so a bunch of people in their cowboy hats and boots came over to dance. Yee-haw! ;)

Here are some more photos of our wedding, as promised :)

The family photo :) We were married in a Methodist church, which already had the Christmas decorations on, so we really didn't have to do much there.

One of our wedding portraits :) I loved my Christmas wedding bouquet! The black magic roses and clear rhinestones worked really well for me. I wanted something simple and deep red and the rhinestones were there to give some sparkle to the set up. Loved it!

Our venue fully decorated! The photo was taken before we arrived and the guests were just getting settled. My sister-in-law did an amazing job with the place (here's her inspirational photos). I think she created the exact atmosphere I wanted; a Christmas-y Winter Wonderland. A lot of the Winter Wonderland themes had this "cold" feeling to them, which I wanted to avoid, so she used a lot of red and a good deal of warm light to create a not too tacky Christmas feeling. It was just amazing, I didn't even smell the cow dung that lingers everywhere in the Middle of Nowhere :-) I owe her big time!

One of the centerpieces. She did such an amazing job with these too!

The yummy dessert table. We had a salad and pasta bar for dinner with a lot of vegetarian options, which is probably something you don't really see that much in Nebraska :) Good thing the bride is foreign, so she is allowed her dietary quirks ;) For dessert there were cake pops, a variety of cheese cakes, white chocolate mints and a bunch of different candy.

Christmas Wedding Cake, which was a double chocolate cake with white frosting. It turned out pretty good, although I was hoping to have a bit different cake topper, but that ended up not working. This one was great too.

Groom's cake. This might not look as fabulous as the actual wedding cake, but it was even better! It was a German chocolate cake and sooooo good! I ate way too much of it :)

After the dinner and cake cutting we danced - a lot :D I love line dancing, although otherwise I'm not much a of dancer. But the dancing turned out to be such fun, loved it!

Here's one last shot of my gorgeous dress, this time of the back of it. The photos really don't do the dress justice, it was amazing! I know I sound like a horribly stereotypical bride here, but it was just perfect! :)

Year 2012 will be here soon, yay! <3

Christmas, twice

We celebrated Christmas twice this year, first in Nebraska and then in Finland.
I thought I'd share some photos from both :)

The first Christmas was at my mother-in-law's place in Nebraska. I took a ton a photos, but only two of them turned out okay :( I guess I was too focused on opening my huge amount of presents (I'm still surprised!) that I didn't focus enough on the camera work.

My mother-in-law's Christmas tree, she always decorates it so nicely! The cross-stitch tree ornaments are made by my husband's grandparents, they make one for everyone each year. Our lil man got his second tree ornament this Christmas :)

Lil man focusing on his presents :)

We spent the Finnish Christmas at my cousin's place in Southern Finland. We ate a lot of good foods, waited for Santa (who did show up!) and opened a bunch of wonderful presents :)

My cousin's gorgeous Christmas tree (real, of course :)

Getting the table ready

Yummy foods, and husband's Christmas beer :)

Santa came and brought presents!

Yay, presents! :)

Hope everyone enjoyed the Holidays! :)

Random Tuesdays 12/27/11

Christmas 2011 in Southern Finland. This was our first Christmas as a married couple and one of the cute presents we got was this adorable tree ornament. Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas weekend!

From all of us to all of you!

We Wish You Merry Christmas! Hope everyone is having the most amazing holiday season :)
Our lil man sure takes this present opening business seriously ;)

Married, twice

Yup, I've now officially married the same man twice, and I have the paperwork to prove it :-)
I have to say the second wedding was just amazing! I loved what my sister-in-law had done with the venue, I loved the foods, I loved the cake, I loved the party, I loved my dress and I love my husband. Everything turned out so great and lots of people came who I didn't expect to drive such a long way to Middle of Nowhere. My former roommates drove 7 hours just to be there and I really appreciated it!

I haven't yet gone through the professional photos, but here are some my bridesmaid took.

The venue in progress, which really was just your everyday town dance hall and looked like any old barn from the outside. My sister-in-law did wonders to the place, for example covering the ugly ceiling with sheets and hanging ornaments. This was taken the night before and we were still decorating it, but it gives some idea what the venue would look like. I'll post more detailed photos later.

Getting my nails done :) I usually just have gel polish on my natural nails, but of course I had a massive nail disaster while traveling and lost several nails (can you imagine! ;), so I had to get acrylics. They looked great for the wedding, but I broke one of them a few days later, shucks.

My hair in progress... I looked like Shirley Temple :) I got my hair dyed a bit darker for the wedding and I think it looked great!

Wedding hair all done! I had some red and clear rhinestones in my hair, but decided against the tiara. I also ended up getting new jewelry, I'll post pics later.

and here's the dress! I wasn't quite sure how it would turn out, but it was amazing! The silver color was just what I wanted and it was a perfect fit for our Christmas/Winter wonderland theme. I'll post some better pics of it later as well.

I can't believe it's almost Christmas! Hope everyone has their holiday spirits on! :)

Random Tuesdays 12/20/11

Vermont, 2008. It's almost Christmas! I think Christmas trees should be real instead of fake, but after living in the Midwest I understand that sometimes a fake is all there is available. Fake or real, I love decorating them!

Random Tuesdays 12/13/11

Nebraska, 2010. Countdown to Christmas on Random Tuesdays! This is our lil man celebrating Christmas last year :)

Random Tuesdays 12/06/11

Happy Independence Day Finland! I'm really proud to be from this gorgeous country, and I will be celebrating across the big pond :)

Wedding/Christmas time!

We're getting married (again) in less than a week! We've spent the weekend packing and getting everything ready for our trip to the Middle of Nowhere. It involves three flights and about 7 hours of driving... I'll be flying on Panacod Airlines due to my back problems :)

I've been also getting my Christmas spirits on while wrapping presents for our family and friends in the U.S. I've been listening to Jouluradio, a Finnish Christmas music station, that you can listen to anywhere in the world. I love giving gifts and have been doing most of my Christmas shopping online to avoid the hassle (and back pain). We did go to the mall this weekend to do some grocery shopping and it was a bit chaotic out there. I've tried to think of some Finnish presents for our American family and they will be receiving some Iittala products like Tsaikka-glasses, Krouvi-glasses, Festivo-candlesticks and some Kastehelmi items. I've also bought some Marmorikynttilä-candles, since I really like them!

I won't be taking my laptop with me to the U.S so I won't be updating this blog as frequently as I usually do. Random Tuesdays will still go on, thanks to timed blogging :) I'll be back after Christmas, hopefully with some awesome wedding photos :)

Here are some festive photos to enjoy, Happy Holidays everyone!

Yankee Candle Village in South Deerfield, Massachusetts in 2006

One of Yankee Candle Village's many Christmas toy train settings

Christmas 2010 in Nebraska

Random Tuesdays 11/29/11

Helsinki, 2011. I took this photo at the Esplanadi park in downtown Helsinki last Saturday night. I love the Christmas lights in the city!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We won't really celebrate Thanksgiving this year, since we're living in Finland and my husband will be on a business trip to Austria during the actual Thanksgiving. Last year we celebrated Thanksgiving at my mother-in-law's place and the previous years I was either in Kansas, Vermont or upstate New York for Thanksgiving, so we've yet to have our very own Thanksgiving. Maybe next year?

This year I will most likely do some Thanksgiving celebrating with the other North American Studies students, if I'm feeling well enough (I've had the worst case of sniffles the last two weeks), but other than that, since my husband won't be here, Thanksgiving will be just like any other weekend.

Since I was born and bred in Finland, Thanksgiving doesn't have a deep-rooted meaning for me. I do nevertheless really enjoy the Thanksgiving spirit. I love the big family dinners and the delicious foods. It's like Christmas without the commercial gifting obligations :) I love everything that has sweet potato or pumpkin (really wish I could have some Dairy Queen Pumpkin Pie Blizzard right about now! Maybe I'll try this recipe instead).

Husband and lil man watching Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in 2010. I went to see the actual parade in NYC in 2005 and I have to say it was pretty cool :)

How majority of our Thanksgiving break is usually spent; driving :)

More on Thanksgiving on Wikipedia.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Random Tuesdays 11/22/11

My friend's grandma cooking a Thanksgiving dinner in 2007. I love Thanksgiving foods, especially the desserts ;) I'm a vegetarian for health reasons and can't enjoy the turkey, but I love the stuffing! I also love sweet potatoes and anything that has pumpkin in it. And I loooove the pies! Pumpkin, pecan, peach, apple, blueberry...you name it, I love it!

New Furniture

We're slowly getting settled in our new place and eventhough I was hoping we wouldn't have to spend a whole lot of money on new furniture, some purchases now seem necessary. We for example need a new rug for the living room. We went to Ikea today and I think we'll be getting one of their rugs, namely the ÅDUM area rug:

We'll be also needing some new lights, but I don't really have a clear image in my mind what kind of lights I'd like. So we'll keep shopping.

One piece of furniture arrived the other day and it was of course the very necessary vanity table for me :) I like to have a place to store my make up and jewelry, so I bought this:

I love it :)

3 weeks until the wedding, eeek! :)

23 nights and I'm getting married (again)

and 19 nights and we'll be on our way to Nebraska. How time flies! I have to admit that I'm more nervous about the traveling than the wedding. I think the flights will go relatively well since we'll be traveling with my parents, so there will be four laps for our lil man to sit on. I'm more concerned about entering the country since the U.S immigration officials can decide just about anything. I've never had any trouble entering the U.S, I've done it a dozen times, but now that I'm married to an U.S citizen, I'll probably be suspicious. I'm bringing proof of ties to Finland, proof of return flights etc. with me, so hopefully everything will go just fine.

My dress arrived a couple of weeks ago and judging by the photos it looks pretty good. A little bit darker than I expected, but I'll have to wait 19 nights to see what it actually looks like :) I also won't know how it fits until a few days before the wedding, so let's hope the measurements are correct!

My mother-in-law and sister-in-law have taken care of most of the planning, so I've gotten off easy this time. I'm sure they've done an excellent job, I'll share some photos later!

Our cake topper from the first wedding, loved it!