Front and back of our wedding Geocaching coin. The tracking code has been removed.

Each guest at our wedding back in March were given a Geocaching Coin as a party favor. This post is an update on the coins progress as they’ve traveled around the world, and they’ve been busy!

Geocaching is a geeky treasure hunting game where people hide and seek treasures hidden around the world. Someone starts it off by hiding a cache somewhere in the world and recording the cache’s GPS coordinates on-line. Then later others will try and find the cache with nothing but the coordinates. When they find the cache, they will take some treasure and leave some treasure, typically the treasures are: small toys, pins, or similar objects. The fun part of Geocaching is the adventure of finding the cache and exploring areas where you would not otherwise go. The best caches take you to an interesting spot; one with a great view, an historical place, or tell and story.

Geocaching Coins, like the one we gave as a party favor, each are stamped with a unique tracking code. The code is registered on-line with geocaching.com. When a Geocacher finds the coin they will log it on-line. Then when they visit another cache in the future they will leave the coin for someone else to find. Using this we are able to track the coin as it travels around the world.

View Geocaching Coins in a larger map

Our coins have been on the move! Only a few coins have been released in the wild. I suspect that many guests are holding on to them waiting for a vacation where they can release the coin at some exotic location. Or possibly they think the coin is too cool to release? Either way, the coins that have been released have visited some exotic locations: Las Vegas, San Diego, Hawaii, Canada, the Great Lakes, Ireland, Germany, and numerous towns around Texas. They have seen beautiful sandy beaches, the great lakes, awesome cities, and even spent the night in a castle. Someday, if we win the lottery, Tina and I may trek to all these places. Until then it’s cool to watch the journey from afar.

Total Miles Travel: 28,683 miles! (as of October 2011)

That is enough to traverse the circumference of the Earth.

Special thanks to all the cachers out there who have picked up one of our coins and placed in another cache, thank you!

Here are a few pictures taken by the Geocachers:

Tina: So…do you feel any different?
Scott: uhm. not really.
Tina: me neither.

So there you have it people, not a huge difference. Other than Scott getting used to wearing jewelry and me trying to change my name. The latter is more difficult, but Scott may have a different opinion. The name changing so far has been quite an experience. Note to other brides changing their name at the DMV, fix your hair and wear make-up. They WILL be taking your picture again. *Sigh* learned that the hard way.

Here’s my take on it. I would rather have it this way than feel like I’ve been transformed or something new. I didn’t view my wedding as a big pep rally (Team Awesome!) but rather a cozy celebration with family and friends whom we hope will continue with us on our journey. As of now, our journey consists of trying to get rid of over 200 peacock feathers… know anyone? I can hook you up people. That’s where I think true happiness lives… in the small little details of life. Scott and I can appreciate that, and that’s what makes our marriage awesome. Seriously, how many couples can discuss hamburger recipes and the best place to walk 2 little schnauzers?

The wedding pictures are available…we included anyone else who would share their photos on our website. BTW, I LOVE how well the moustaches went over before the ceremony. It was a last minute thing while preparing the programs, but I think it set a nice informal, but fun tone for the wedding. Thanks for making that work people. We’re all in this together so we might as well make it fun. We are going to try to get our wedding on a couple of wedding blogs just for fun. We’ll let you know if we make it.

One thing we’ve noticed though is people not hiding their coins. I knew it was a long shot to introduce this obscure hobby as a wedding favor, but seriously, try it… it is so much fun and you spend quality time with your loved ones.

Also, always bring your iphone. I’ve been getting hooked on iphone photography and hipstamatic, rocks! They even have a way to print your photos! just make sure your camera is set to high res and they can print up to 30″! I’m about to test this out fairly soon and considering using them for business cards.

Hipstamatic photo of Scott with two Schnauzers.

Scott and Tina after the ceremony

In addition to the traditional vows both Tina and I wrote personal vows to each other. Here are the vows:

From Scott to Tina

Tina I love you and promise to continue loving you forever. Our relationship will be a place of security and friendship from which we both may grow. I cherish your creativity and will provide you with the support to be courageous with your talents. We will face the challenges that fate hands us together just as we will celebrate our fortunes together.

From Tina to Scott

Scott, I love you and promise to continue to loving you forever. I know my life with you will be filled with love, laughter, and trust. I will always encourage you to be true to yourself. We will continue to grow together, and fall in love a little more each day. I promise to love and support you in all of our adventures in life.

Now we’re off to the reception!

Ceremony

The ceremony will begin at 6:45pm sharp. Please arrive 15 to 20 minutes early to allow time for seating and parking. We expect the ceremony to last 30 minutes with a reception immediately following. The ceremony site is out doors with an on-site alternative in case of inclement weather. However the weather forecast at this time looks good at a nice 77 degrees. Also, please remember we are requesting no gifts, as your presence at our wedding is all we need.

The dress style for the ceremony is “Dressy Casual”. For men this means: Trousers with a polo or button down shirt and a sports coat if you prefer with casual driving loafers or boots. For women this means: Dress, a dressy pants look, skirt with a sweater, or blouse with nice shoes or boots.

Directions

Larger Version

The ceremony is a few minutes outside of town at the Greenbranch. Below is the address along with driving directions, make sure you double check your route if you are using a GPS navigation device because they are easily confused by the area.

From Bryan/College Station exit highway 6 at Briarcrest Dr and turn left away from town, you should pass a Cracker Barrel. Continue straight on the road, it will change names to FM 1179, for 2.4 miles. Take a slight right turn onto Steep Hollow Road. Travel for 2.3 miles and look for signs that mark the entrance to the Greenbranch.

I will be going to Design Camp in a few weeks after the wedding and one of the classes I’m taking is an iphone photography class using an iphone app called hipstamatic. Luckily, I started playing with it early to make sure I had downloaded all the fun stuff. It turns out that the makers of hipstamatic created a special free lens just for SXSW. I wasn’t able to go this year due to wedding circumstances….(design camp was the consolation, but I think I’m totally fine with that). Anyhoo, I’ve been using that free lens constantly and think it’s my favorite. We went to Wolf Pen Creek Park yesterday to soak up the awesome day (i keep looking at the weather and I’m very hopeful our wedding day will be just as pretty).

What a great day to do nothing. We did do a lot yesterday, but this was a break from it all. It makes me very grateful for all the awesome, wonderful people in our lives and our upcoming wedding. I keep pinching myself mentally (yes, it’s possible) that I get the honor of being Scott’s wife in just a week. I hope I can do it without crying. I’ve always been annoyed with myself for being overwhelmed with emotion for certain things. I just want to enjoy it and be happy…but the whole idea of it hits me at once and boom waterworks. I’m going to try to put most of this in writing this week, and hopefully I can emotionally wrap my head around it and just be relaxed and happy. Not a teary eyed happy. Either way, happy. I love you, sweetie!

First an update: T-24 days and counting. We’ve so far gotten first draft of the wedding vows, a list of signs I need to make and design, a final meeting at the Greenbranch, and a visit from Pastor Dan on Monday. (Dear Pastor Dan, please forgive me but everytime I see you, I hear Forrest Gump in my head screaming “Lieutenant Dan!”)

Last week was full of wedding stuff. Scott and I had a final meeting of going over final stuff at the Greenbranch. Alexi, my MOH, Sandee, my cake, caterer, and Michelle, our newly appointed wedding planner person came to the meeting with us. Michelle is a friend of a friend (well, I call her friend now too) who recommended our photographer to us awhile back and has since decided to begin wedding and event planning (www.craftedweddings.net) in Bryan/College Station. Not the overly frou-frou ones mind you, but the really fun and creative ones that are totally personalized and alternative, which around here, is hard to come by. She’s got great ideas and I’m totally happy she’s helping us out the day of.

Anyhoo, the meeting went very well. I actually got talked out of some of the lighting plans I had, but really, I’m a bit relieved as we’ll now have less to do the day before.  I bought candles so everything should be nice and romantic.

The rest of the week was getting prepared for the flower power party. I am so lucky to have friends who are willing to drive 2 hours to be put to work making flowers. We previously had taken a class in Austin at The Stitch Lab on ribbon flowers and were excited to put all that knowledge to work. I highly recommend the stitch lab..i will be revisiting future classes, my inner Martha is pining to make stuff.

Saturday at noon, Molly, Tara, Megan, Alexi and Beth came over and the assembly line began. Megan seems to channel Martha Stewart and everything she touches becomes like perfectly beautiful…we had her fixing everyone’s goofs or starting people out in addition to making pretty flowers.

Tara, Molly, and I made more flowers. Alexi was in charge of hot glue and creating stems (which I learned from Beth, styrofoam thingies are so not necessary. All you need is cloth covered wire and lots of hot glue to make stems) Beth was in charge of arranging flowers as we went. I have been making flowers since Scott and I got engaged, but you know the saying you have to be bad before you can be good? (yeah, lots of bad flowers were concocted…almost frankenstein-like..some survived and were incorporated into the bouquets) I also knew I wanted a variety so I bought some wood birch chip flowers from etsy at a store called accents and petals.

Last but not least, Scott and the men folk grilled fajitas with all the fixins for the ladies. Scott would like his ancient fajita secret shared….Tecate marinade. yes just simply drown the raw chicken in Tecate overnight and you have the best chicken fajitas ever…super juicy. The men kindly did us a favor and left to hang out at a bar for a few more hours while we finished. T’was a productive day and I definitely am very grateful for such awesome friends. I will be extremely happy when Katherine can take pics that do these bouquets justice…. :)

Again…I’ll try to stay on subject here. When we first got engaged and my brain was thinking we had TONS of time to do all kinds of DIY projects (you can stop laughing at anytime now) I had the brilliant idea of having a really nice funky chic background for wedding pics and for anyone who wanted their pics taken at the wedding ..possibly for the photobooth inside. My MOH, Alexi, who is the downtown Bryan Horse Drawn Carriage lady reminded me of a stash of doors collected by a building owner in Downtown Bryan. Zane Anderson currently renovates old buildings and tries to leave the charm but saves as much of the original hardware as he can. Sadly, many of these doors are in somewhat poor shape and their only hope is that some insane bride comes along to rescue them with a coat of paint and put them in her wedding. “Score!” Zane sold me about 7 of these doors for relatively little money. We stored them in Phil’s (BM) Garage till we found time to deal with them. We hired a guy to sand them down for us and clean them up a little before painting.

After Thanksgiving, we set to work the rest of the weekend painting and re-aging the doors:

Tina painting and then distressing antique doors to be backdrops for wedding pictures.

Door Gallery:

I found a great tutorial on aging furniture at Design Sponge. The colors are bright and gorgeous…no light pastels at this wedding. I think with the photographer we hired there will be some beautiful bright pics with these doors as a background. I managed to find an old bench too off of craigslist that should be a nice contrast. My bridesmaid, Molly, and I spent and entire evening sewing paper garland…I learned oodles about my sewing machine and I’m excited about it. There will be lots of colored paper garland over the doors and photobooth. We’re going for a casual fun atmosphere. I encourage people to wear bright colors and not expect a huge amount of formality after the ceremony. ;) I will add pics of the garland as soon as I get home.

Coming soon….the uber-bouquet making party of ’11. It’s gonna be crazy.

The Dress

When we last discussed “the dress”, I had received the mock dress, and a large piece of paper to draw the design for the dress. After several tries of taking measurements and realizing that some of my undergarments were ill-fitting (thanks to a video skype with Katherine), the dress was out of my decision making realm and into Katherine at Whirling Turban’s creative and capable hands. I was a little timid in my design as I know nothing about dressmaking, and I certainly didn’t want to frustrate Katherine and wanted her to be able to express her talents. I drew something simple following her instructions. My first design was very line oriented which actually worked against how the ribbon design worked for her dresses so I tried toning it down a bit. She took my simple design and ran with it…I love it when people get to enjoy a project and I hope Katherine enjoyed working on mine. She requested to take artistic license and I totally agreed. It also meant that I really didn’t know what the final was going to look like. To some this may have been a bit scary, but seeing how talented whirling turban staff are, I was simply more excited to see what they would come up with.

When I was told the dress had been shipped, it was like waiting for Christmas. Turns out my wonderful post office claimed to have given me a notice which I NEVER saw. After a bit of tracking, I noticed that the dress had been here for 9 days at the post office….immediately went to rescue the dress that morning. Scott made me wait yet another hour before I could open it since he had to film me opening it. It sat on my office chair…waiting…..and just sitting there unopened. Try not to laugh at my hair in the video.

The first picture right after opening the dress box.

One last thing I need to do is to get the dress hemmed. I’ve contacted one lady but haven’t heard back yet… so spoiler alert….below :).

The Crinoline

The other big thing to talk about is the crinoline. Whirling Turban recommended a place for crinoline, but because of the color of my dress, I wanted to find something that would go perfectly. White was out, since the dress ribbon is black. Black was not ideal because it is my wedding and that much I think would have been disturbing. I wanted to be different, but not shove it in people’s face.

I found a wonderful shop on Etsy (if you don’t know Etsy, get to know Etsy. Your life will only improve) called Swank Underpinnings run by a lady named Ann Swank. I contacted her and sent her a piece of my sample fabric. She custom dyed and made a crinoline just for me. She also took the time to find just the right color of ribbon for the dress (which the ribbon makes all the difference if you look at plain crinoline versus Ann’s creations). She made a 4 tier crinoline which is a bit fluffier than the 2 tier. She’s made some for rockabilly weddings where the dresses stick way out with stiff tulle, but we decided the softer crinoline would work best for me.

Crinoline made by Ann Swank of  Swank Underpinnings

The final conclusion

I absolutely loved this experience. I feel my dress expresses me rather than some tired tradition that I have no connection to. I would recommend this to anyone who is actively interested in making a dress that is unique. I do think being web and computer savvy helped a lot though. Definitely brush up on the interwebs communication like Skype and Google video/chat if you want do this. The video Skype with Katherine was a huge turning point for the dress IMHO and made me feel very good about the dress progress.

Ok so the last couple of months have been packed with finding vendors, writing checks, and cutting fabric. Lots and lots of fabric and making decisions about that fabric and then starting over with different fabric…unfortunately, that’s the creative process. I’m learning to trust it as long as I keep budget in mind. Making fabric flowers was a LOT harder than I thought. As this was my inspiration from Milkpod Studios on Etsy.

Their shop is closed until Aug 30…guessing because they’re so busy after being featured in Bride’s magazine. I found them a bit pricey but people have to make a living, but i need to save some money so I decided …YES I CAN! (famous last words, no?)

My first attempt was “fairly clunky” it’s the only way I can describe it. Scott was supportive, but I wasn’t totally feelin’ it and when that happens and i’m not real confident I tend to be slow at it. I have 5 bouquets and centerpieces people. This is not for the faint of heart. I started to scour youtube on tutorials and other bride blogs etc. I came across Princess Lasertrons pretty flowers but wow that’s a LOT of sewing…a talent I haven’t quite grasped. At least her earlier work anyway. I needed something inbetween. Some of her later stuff is actually what I decided on. I’m thinking all that emroidery may have gotten to her as well as it seems to fading from her recent bouquets.

So anyway, Here’s a look at my salvageable ones after i figured out how these crafty ladies were producing these. I’m quite partial to them:

Fabric Flowers

What’s really cool is that I’m using our old jeans in some of the flowers so it’s very personal :). I’ve found some unique buttons on Etsy that I’m waiting on right now so the flowers aren’t all wood beads and plastic. I’ve discovered that buttons are a unique art in itself and can be quite pricey if you don’t scour places like etsy for a nice deal.

Onto how these are made: A company called Sizzix is a creator of all things scrapbooking. They actually make the heavy duty versions of die cuts for schools…I always thought my teacher cut out that stuff, but no the secret’s out. They’re diecuts that go through a manual press type of machine. They’ve since created a cheaper version for the masses for soccer moms to make overly visual scrapbook pages with one photo in them. I never really got into scrapbooking as that stuff gets very expensive if you let it. There’s a digital online thing anyway now called scrapblog if you’re interested. They can print books too. No more cutting! sorry, I veered off…It turns out Sizzix had a couple of manual machines that with the right die could cut through fabric. About 7 dies later, I’ve managed to get the above. It’s sooooo much easier too. I just spend time cutting out shapes out of various fabric…make little stacks of each kind then assemble each flower as I go. Each one is different but from the same fabric colors. I’m quite excited about it, especially since I got all the pieces and dies about 40% off. My dress maker also said she would send me extra fabric to include in the flowers. *happy dance* I will post more pics once i get more done. I just hope I can make enough. I have about 40 so far.

The dress and the peacock feather post I think will have to come later. I just thought I’d tease everyone a little bit :). I have the fabric and color of the dress picked out but nothing really to discuss just yet. Did you catch that? I said “color”…I decided not to wear white as I never wear white anyway so it would make me feel self-concious and not me. I should feel comfortable and pretty so color will be quite prevalent throughout the wedding methinks. As Martha would say…”it’s a good thing”.

In ancient Rome March was the first month of the year. In the Mediterranean climate March is the first month of spring, a logical beginning of the year. It was not until later Gregorian calendar was invited. Wikipedia also tells me that March is American Red Cross Month, Colorectal Cancer awareness month and the month of Texas Independence.

What else occurred on March 26th?
1484 — The first English translations of Aesop’s Fables are published
1830 — The Book of Mormon is first published in New York
1953 — The Polio Vaccine passed trials , two years later it was given to every child in the United States
1976 — Queen Elizabeth II sends the first royal email
2011 — Scott Phillips and Tina Messinger are married

Tina and I met while working for the library at Texas A&M University. Tina is a designer helping make the library look good; I am a software developer working on digital library projects. We went on several Geocaching expeditions around the local area. Geocaching is a geeky treasure hunting activity where you explore your local neighborhood and other places by simply finding caches that other people have left. Not many people can say visiting Aunt Jemima’s (Yes, the syrup) gravestone brought them closer together. These expeditions culminated in our first date, with a Geocaching trip to Port Aransas for Sand Fest. Walking along the beach we first expressed how the felt about each other. Just a few days shy of two years later walking along the same beach is where I proposed.

After telling both of our parents the first question was do you have a date set? Nope, we don’t have a date or a venue set, but we are aiming for this fall or next spring. Check back here for details later.