Hello!
A couple of weeks before our wedding David and I found a box of film cameras and lenses at a fleamarket and since we wanted our friends to take the wedding photos and use different types of cameras we bought the entire box. There was one camera that looked especially good so when the day arrived we lended that one to our friend Aili so she could photograph her view of the wedding.
There was no time to test the camera before though, so we just had to cross our fingers and hope for the best.
We stayed in the house at Österlen a week after the wedding for a little honeymoon and we used the camera to document what we did.
Our plan was to develop the films as soon as we came back home but, not very surprisingly, we forgot about them until a week or so ago. I actually used the camera during autumn too and was very excited to send away three film rolls for development. Two colour films and one black and white.
The photos arrived on monday and I am so happy with the result!
Aili's photos from the wedding are absolutely beautiful and the ones we took during our mini honeymoon are so lovely and makes me remember all of it.
It is quite interesting how these, in some parts, "flawed" photos can fill me with so much joy and I think they are absolutely flawless in my eyes! Light leaks, over exposure, blur and all- they are just what I wanted and perfect memories from a perfect week.

Jonas reading our booklet with the cartoon that David and I made of our love story.

At one point during the celebrations my husband was replaced by a cat.

Taking paparazzi photos of my husband.

We went for walks in the nearby town Simrishamn.

Flowers saved from the wedding.

We went for walks over the hills. David in bright light talking on the phone.

One of the best things we did during our honeymoon was that we had a late night picnic at an old fort by the ocean. We brought sandwiches with fried egg, cookies left over from the wedding, coffee and beer and then we sat on that little fort for hours until it became cold.

Our lunch view on one of our trips to Simrishamn.

One evening at the beach of Knäbäckshusen.

We went back to the place of the ceremony.

I am planning a post for the autumn photos too in a few days. I am so happy with how all these photographs turned out and can't wait to take more photos with this film camera! I also want to try the other camera in the box we found at the fleamarket. That one is way simpler than the one we used for these photos but I am really curious to see what kind of photos it will take. I'm sensing a new hobby forming...

Today it's exactly 6 months since David and I got married!
Our dear friend Hanna took lovely photos of the day and I really want to show you all.
It was the most wonderful day and looking back at these photos makes me all teary eyed. And it was still summer! Gosh, how I long for the warmer seasons to arrive soon! Anyway, let's take a look at the lovely day 6 months ago, august 24, when David and I became husband and wife! Prepare yourself for the most photo filled post I've ever posted...

We all gathered in the garden to my parent's house and then walked together to the place where the ceremony was going to be held.

After a while David and I headed off in another direction than the rest of the party.

The guests had to climb a stile to get to the top of the hill.
Say hello to David's dad, Ulf!

David and I took a moment for ourselves halfway up the hill because all guests hadn't reached the top yet.
Lots of skirt for me to hold on to when the ground was covered in sheep poo and thistles.

Time to get moving again.

The ceremony conducted by our wedding officiant Else Beth.

It was very windy that day. Love how the ribbon in my hair gets caught in the air.

Jonas, one of our witnesses, with the pocket watches that we exchanged instead of rings. See and read more about our wedding pocket watches here.

David hanging my watch around my neck.

And then, after David got his watch too, we were married!

Look at my husband!

So married!

Looking fondly at the marriage certificate.

Gosh, I love these photos! Look at my parents and me! My mother and I are the same and just can't stop the tears when it gets emotional. It's happening right now, just looking at these photos.
David being congratulated by his parents, Agnetha and Ulf, and in the background, to the right you'll see my friend Johanna (who did my makeup and hair) in need of tissues too.
(Oh, and that's actually my three best and oldest friends hiding in the backround of this photo. From left to right: Becka, Lisa and Johanna.)

Us and everybody!

After the ceremony we stayed up on the hill for a while, drinking mojitos and mingling.

My beautiful mother!
She's made that gorgeous necklace and the earrings herself!

Becka with wind in her hair, looking all lovely.

Lisa and Björn! They got married just a couple of weeks ago!

My niece Hilda meets Claes.

When we got cold we walked down the hill again and went to Mandelmanns trädgårdar who owns the land where we got married and the beautiful garden where our dinner and party was going to be held.

Inside one of the greenhouses everything was ready for the rest of the celebrations to start. The flowers are from my parent's garden and we had collected twigs and grass and wild flowers around the village. The table cloths are a mix of fleamarket finds, my mother's stash and sweet neighbours helping out. My mother and our friend Inger made it all look this lovely!

The seats of the bride and groom.

That's me! Love David's illustrations on the place cards.

Oh, and the 3D glasses were for the little booklet...

Hehe...
My sister Sara to the upper left corner, my niece Hilda in the lower right corner and then Thomas and Inger who are dear friends to my family and the wedding witnesses at my parent's wedding!

Everybody finding their seats and admiring the beautiful greenhouse.
We are so happy that we got to have our wedding and reception there because it's the most wonderful place and just being there made the day feel all magical.

We had popcorn, because that is my absolute favourite snack. We also had a big bowl of the chocolate candy Polly since that's David's absolute favourite kind of sweets.
The sign is for our guestbook, telling people that we are going to take their picture with a polaroid camera and put the photos in the book later.

In action!

Jonas and Aili. Our wedding witnesses and dear friends.

The dinner was absolutely amazing! Everything we ate was grown and made on the farm we were on and it was the most beautiful and tastiest food ever! Lots of colourful vegetables! That's one of the things people who were at the wedding still talk about when we meet, how incredible the food was. I wish I could eat food like that every day.

Checking up on internet. Facebook was a mad house of congratulations!

My nephew Alfred, who had been born just a couple of months before, in the arms of Thomas.

Sneaky bride squeezes into the picture...

A very cuddly cat found it's way into Ida's lap in time for dessert. We had apple pie and custard and it was heaven!

Ulf gave a really nice speech.

Aili and Jonas were Quiz masters. They had made a really great quiz with questions about David's and my tastes in movies, music, books and all things pop culture.

The evening came.

My dad gave a speech and then he sang a few songs. One of them together with my sister Sara.

And then together with Thomas who is my dad's friend since childhood.

It was such a nice evening.

Applause!

And then it was time for the cake! A cinnamon bun cake! Inspired by a scene in my favourite movie Äppelkriget that actually took place in this exact part of Sweden!

Oh, and the following photos might be my all time favourites...

The bride gets to break the cake.

David is excited.

It's David's turn...and look at David's friend Fredrik, haha! That look he gives me! He is not trusting me with the cinnamon bun cake!

Appearantly it was some sort of law that the bride should feed the groom with cake.

Oh and yes, that is wedding Smurf and Smurfette on top of the cake.

And that was that wonderful, magical, lovely day.
It was THE BEST!
I hope we get to return to the scene of the crime when it's our one year anniversary.

So, monday you say? February?
Well, I'm still in warm august memories, let me stay there just a little while longer.

Tjingeling!
/Lotta

Hello hello hello!
This is so exciting!
I have been wanting to show you how I made my wedding shoes for so long and FINALLY I've had the time to go through the photos.
I got the idea a long time ago, I wanted to upcycle a pair of converse style shoes for fun and to match my dress and, frankly, to get out of wearing uncomfortable heels that I just can't walk in. I don't wear high heels and since our wedding was going to be held on top of a hill among (pooping) sheep I needed my shoes to be comfy!
I decided early on to take photographs as I worked on the shoes so that if they turned out as good as I hoped they would I could show you all how I did it.
So, lets do that!

This is what you need for the dying of the fabric. I bought textile paint at the art and craft supply shop IN-EX here in Gothenburg. I found an old cotton fabric tote in my wardrobe and tested the colours on that before I started working on the shoes. The first time I had a synthetic sponge that was too sharp around the edges because you could see the exact shape of the sponge on the fabric. So I went back to the supply shop and bought these two natural sponges instead. They were perfect!
I definitely recommend that you "rehearse" on a piece of fabric and not get too daring.
I got the shoes really cheap at Primark in Glasgow when I was there in may. I thought that if I failed with these I was going back there agin in august and I could always find similar ones in Sweden too if everything went really bad.
I didn't have to worry though.

When it was time to get working on the shoes I cut up a garbage bag and spread it out on the kitchen floor. I started with taping the rubber parts of the shoes with electrical tape so that no paint would smudge the white edges.

Looking neat and ready to be coloured!

The first touch of colour was so scary to make!
In addition to two containers (jar lids) with paint I also had two bowls of water to blend the paint with. I wanted an irregular and splotchy look and the two green paints were just too rich and thick to use as they were. That was something I learned in the Great Tote Rehearsing Part of this.
I used the lighter colour first and just sponged all over the shoes but left white spots everywhere to blend in the darker green later.

And here's what I look like when I think really hard.

I shifted a lot in how much water I used to get an irregular colouring.

And then I started with the darker green straight away. I wanted the colours to blend together so it was important to not let it dry in between. The darker green paint had a metallic shimmer to it that looked so good over the brighter yellow green paint. I used one sponge for each colour to not mix them up to much from the start and have more control of where the colour ended up.

A break in my work to speak with my mother who chose this moment to call me.

Talking on the phone about my shoes and looking at them fondly at the same time.

Back to work!
I went back and forth with the paints in the end to make sure that they were covered completely.

First shoe finished!

This fabric paint is meant to be ironed for the colour to be permanent but the lady in the supply store said that I could use a hair dryer instead because the important thing was heat. So here I'm blow drying my shoes with my grandmothers old hair dryer that is extremely slow but it did it's job anyway.

When both of the shoes were ready and dried it was time to look at the studs. I bought lots of different studs on ebay. Square, triangular, spiky, small and large ones.
I didn't make my mind up until this moment and I actually started with the large triangular studs but realised after a while that they didn't look good on these shoes and they where very hard to attach because the spikes in the back was too short for the thick fabric.
I went with the smaller square rivets instead.

That was a good choice! I loved it straight away.

It took some time with all the studs...
When I was finished I realised that the inside of the shoes weren't smooth anymore and my socks were going to be ripped and my feet would bleed. NOT good. I wanted comfy shoes!
I solved that when we were in Glasgow with epoxy glue and felt. I simply glued pieces of white felt over the rivets on the inside of the shoes and they were soft and lovely again! When Jennie made my dress I got some help from her assistant to find the strongest glue the theatre had and I applied that to my shoes. I don't think it needs to be THAT strong but yeah, it was good working glue, alright.

Here's what they looked like when they were finished but with the wrong laces. These are the white ones that came with the shoes. I squeezed some paint in them but it was just to have something until I had my real laces.

Pieces of the same fabric my dress was made off! I wanted the laces to look rugged so I just made a knot in the ends of them and left them be.

I am so incredibly happy with how they turned out!
I'm going to change the laces for something more sturdy so that I can wear them a lot because I will use these until they fall to pieces!
I have already bought another pair of white cotton fabric shoes that I'm going to re-do soon. This might turn into an addiction!

So what do you think about my green, sparkly, studded wedding shoes?

Oh, and have you upcycled any shoes? Let me know in the comments, send a link if you've blogged about it, I want to see!

OH! And today we've been married a month exactly! Already!
Married life is good. I like it. :-)

Hi everybody!
One very windy day last week David and I walked up the hill to the place where we got married (almost two weeks ago now). We wanted to take some photos of our wedding pocket watches. We bought ourselves a new camera the day before because our old Nikon D80 had been falling apart for quite some time and the day before the wedding it just broke. Since we have been wanting a new one for a while we took that as a sign and went and bought the Nikon D7000 that we'd been drooling over for quite some time.
I have been taking less and less photos with the old camera because it wasn't working as good anymore and that just took all the fun out of it. But now! Oh my, now I'm all back to taking lots and lots of photos again. This is one lovely camera. We are still learning but I think you already can see an improvement in crispness and clarity.
Well, enough talking about the camera: Let's start on the pocket watches instead!

As many of you probably know already David and I chose to have engagement rings in wood, made by the lovely people at Stout Woodworks. In Sweden it's custom for both the man and woman to get an engagement ring. At the wedding only the woman gets a new ring that she will engrave and the man will engrave his engagement ring. Since we weren't able to engrave our wooden rings and I didn't really want another ring we thought we could do something different as a sort of memory to keep and have engraved.
A pocket watch is beautiful, perfect to engrave and as a gift it sort of symbols that you give the person you love your time as well as a pretty object.

We started to look at ebay, esty and different antique shops everywhere we went. We quickly found that we both really liked the pocket watches in the early 1900's art deco style, preferable with arabic numbers instead of roman. They are so gorgeous in design, clean and simple but still with something extra. Like coloured hands, symbols along the edge, different materials and texture.
David found his in an antique shop one day in may and I found mine on ebay shortly after. We won it without anyone else bidding and the seller had described it really well with lots of pictures and details. It was in a great condition!

The watch arrived when I was in Scotland the first time and to our great dismay it wasn't working. David went to a watch maker close to our house and asked them if they could see what the problem was and if the watch was newly broken or if it had been like that for a long time. They couldn't really help without taking it in for a closer look and then we would have to pay them much more money than we bought the watch for in the first place.
David sent an email to the guy selling the clock and he was super helpful and repaid us directly and asked us to return it so that he could see what the problem was, because it was working when he sent it away.
I was so sad because I'd already fallen in love with the watch and to find something similar would be so very hard and time consuming.

A week or so later we got an email from the seller and he had found the problem. The watch was highly magnetic, probably from getting stuck in customs and their x-ray machines. Apparently easy to fix!
He asked if we wanted to buy the clock again, for a lower price, and hope for it to arrive in better condition this time. Of course!
Before he was going to send it though he wanted to carry it around in his pocket for a week to see if it wasn't sensitive to movement just to make sure.
We crossed our fingers and waited.
And then he wrote us to let us know it was working perfectly and he could send it, in a metal tin this time. We didn't have to pay him anything until it arrived and was working.
Isn't that amazing customer service!?!
It got caught in customs again and we held our breath.
One day it was here and it was working! Hurray!
I don't think you can understand how happy I was. This watch had already started to mean so much to me. It was my wedding watch. No other would have worked.

So by july we had our watches and the next step was to find somebody who could engrave them. It seemed like every engraver in Gothenburg was on vacation and couldn't do it before we left for Österlen.
Some of them didn't even want to do it becuase they were nervous of working on our old watches.
Luckily we found one that promised to have it ready in time.
When we came home from Glasgow our watches waited for us, newly engraved and ready for the wedding.

I wore mine in a short chain for the wedding but I want to have it in a longer one for everyday use because it's not really clever to have a watch in a way that makes it hard to read the time...

David had his in this chain for the ceremony but he is going to find a pocket watch chain so that he can keep the watch in his pocket instead.

At the moment in the ceremony when the wedding couple usually exchange rings we exchanged watches instead. It was really emotional when we hung the watches around each others' necks. I cried, obviously (I am a big cryer in emotional situations).

And here you can see my wooden ring as well.

My husband!!
One of the few photos I have of David smiling. He prefers to stay behind the camera so usually when I take photos of him he sort of looks really annoyed or he's making a funny face.

(Like in the picture of him a few photos above this when he thought he was smiling. HAHAHAHAHAH! No, that's not a smile. THIS is smile!)

Here you can see the inscription in the back. This is David's watch but mine is the same.
The date, our names and then Vi hör ihop, du och jag which means We belong together, you and me.
Words that mean a lot to us since we have quite the love story with us being a couple when we were 11 years old for the first time.
I think I will tell you that story some other day.

And now some silly and/or cute photos of us taken with the cameras' self timer:

I hope you liked to see and read about our pocket watches. I've been wearing mine almost every day since the wedding because I love it so much. It's really a token of sorts, and that was what we wanted.