blog 009: our wedding (part 1)

earlier this year we celebrated our civil ceremony with some friends..

we both come from hugh latin/caribbean/indian families so obviously we're still having "a big wedding." with big families come social awkwardness and drama, so we wanted something small-scale where we could just focus on doing things we love doing. we over the course of a weekend, we ate a lot of food with our friends (including an elaborate homemade latin/caribbean/indian fusion meal made mostly by our best man abdullah...... which was the best food ever...), saw the 4K restoration of kurosawa's seven samurai at our local indie theater, saw streetlight manifesto + botar (the orchestra people dem) (this wedding was ska and our next one will be jungle. more details to come.), played some video games, and got married. that weekend i also got hacked on discord and anne hero world was deleted but it's back now >_>

my outfit details

okay maybe i used my wedding as an excuse to buy a few vintage vivienne westwood pieces.. but i made sure they were all pieces i'll rewear later on.. my purse, shoes, and necklace were purchased secondhand on mercari and ebay from people who had anecdotes about where and when they purchased them. i also choose designs that i recognized as older, to minimize the chances of receiving a counterfeit. i also used a vivienne brooch to secure my vintage genuine fur stole. mr. hero wore a wonderful and tasteful vivienne tie.

my dresses were deadstock purchased directly from the designer, Shareen, in her studio in NYC. she was really great and her archive of vintage gowns made me realize i needed to go 100% secondhand with my wedding wardrobe (which is currently four dresses, but I still need two more; we have a hindu ceremony planned as well now.) as you can imagine the wedding dress process is daunting, humiliating (i was naked all over new york city trying things on in front of people), overstimulating, and also emotionally loaded (i went with my step mom and my friend's mom, whom i described as "two of my many mothers." everyone assumed my mom is dead, but she's just weird and in another country or something. we don't keep track of each other.) I also feel disconnected from a lot of feminine activities, so both dress shopping and ring shopping seemed not for me. but Shareen completely shattered my expectations. she is an expert. i walked out of her eclectic studio-showroom and immediatelly cancelled my three other dress appointments in the city. she measured me correctly with her eyes and hands, and every single dress she handed me (1920's through 1970's and then her personal brand's deadstock) fit almost perfectly. she wasted no time. she read my expressions and constantly moved in the correct direction. she treated these dresses as being an extension of my personality. she made me feel single.

when i first asked mr. hero out six years ago i told him that "i want to feel single forever." at the time, i didn't really understand what i meant by that but now that years have passed, i think i meant: i don't ever want to wonder what i could have accomplished if i wasn't married. i don't want to wonder how i would have dressed, what i would have eaten, or where i would have traveled if i were single. it was important for me to feel like i didn't have to compromise myself. while he has been an excellent and attentive husband, he's been great at letting me do whatever i want. i believe i was able to reach my potential with his love and support, not just in spite of it.

i find most wedding rings gaudy and impractical; there was not a single ring i saw online that spoke to me. once i found a local jeweler who makes simple, practical wedding bands and engagement rings using recycled precious metals and traceable secondhand or deadstock gemstones, i knew our search was over. Kimberly had me look at maybe 500 gemstones (Kimberly explained the origin of EVERY SINGLE GEMSTONE i picked up.. i was so happy to work with someone who is this invested in ethically sourcing materials!!) and I picked a beautiful snot green chrysoberyl and we paired it with a tiny hot pink spinel. one is fully traceable to a mine in north america and the other was purchased deadstock from a deceased jeweler in the pnw. (originally, i didn't think these colors were reasonable but Kimberly was like.. "you seem like a snot green and hot pink type of girl to me so you should just do it.. fuck it.." and she was right!) my concerns were: i want to game comfortably with these, i HATE wearing rings, and i don't want them to snag my clothes. so we used those constraints and she came up with a simple low profile design for me. Matt also bought his wedding band from this jeweler: a premade platinum and diamond band with a funky uneven grid etching. it's pretty awesome. our rings were incredibly under budget as well (i thought custom rings would be more expensive than premade.. and i was wrong!)

we keep our rings in a little handmade dish with green fur and an unpolished petoskey stone (an ancient coral from lake michigan) given to us as a wedding gift from our dear friend benjamin.. thank u benjamin....

the wedding dinner

our guests' 1980's acrylic glasses were perhaps the talk of the evening. almost everyone asked about them. i was eager to tell them that these designs were featured in star trek: deep space nine.. it made us happy to incorporate some sci-fi design in our special day. the rest of our decor was constrained by the weird colors and geometry of these glasses.

since we had 12 people over on our roof, i ended up combining various vintage napkin lots from ebay because i didn't want 12 of the same thing.

i also found solutions that i could reuse or compost, including vintage buffets and serving trays, bamboo disposable plates and a compostable cooler.. i didn't know that was a thing!

i also found a beautiful navy windowpane french linen tablecloth for the food table and some funky acrylic insulated buffets for food. for the 12 person seating, i bought a few yards of plain off-white linen from a fabric store down the street from me. honestly, it wasn't cheaper than buying an actual tablecloth because of how much fabric i needed.. but at least i can reuse it..

other photos

thanks for all the messages these past few months,

-AH

31 sep 2024