It’s Friday, so you know what that means – time to look back on another wedding day!  We’re counting down to the day Martin and I got married and celebrating the core of every home (our families!) all in one.  Family is such a lovely thing to celebrate.  Every time we share another wedding on Making This Home, I find myself giving Martin an extra hug and racing to the phone to say hi to my mom.

Christy’s story today is no different.  She’s become a fabulous online friend of mine, and today her husband celebrates a birthday.  What a great time to look back on the day she married her dream guy, huh?  So everyone, meet Christy and her birthday boy, Matt:

You’re an American living in the United States, yet you got married overseas. Could you tell us about your decision to do this?

Sure – it was a super easy decision, actually. My husband (Matt) is Welsh, from a very small town in South Wales called Ystradgynlais, and his mother lived there. She was disabled, and thus unable to travel to the United States, so when we got engaged, I immediately ‘offered’ to get married in Wales! Matt was thrilled – as he had hoped his mother could attend our wedding, of course!

How did you make all of the arrangements from the US?

We got engaged in September, and were already planning on spending that Christmas with his family in Wales. His mother said she knew just the place for our fairy tale wedding – a castle just down the road called Craig Y Nos. It had just been refurbished as an events center, and was available for weddings! I completely trusted her, so we booked it in October, site unseen. When we did visit in Christmas, I fell in love with it and I began planning all the details with their wedding coordination, for our wedding just four months away, in April!

Wait.  You were married in a castle?  You’re going to have to expand on this.  It sounds too dreamy!

I know, right?! It was dreamy. Ours was the first international wedding to be held at Craig Y Nos – they flew the Welsh and American flags for us! And we rented out all the rooms – it was a small affair, only 28 guests including our parents. But it was perfect! A couple of our very good  friends came from the States, as did my aunt and cousin, and my cousin from Istanbul came with her family too. The rest were Matt’s closest friends and family members from England and Wales.

Will you tell us about your dress and how you got it there?

We wanted to pay for as much of the wedding ourselves as possible. So we did the whole thing for about $5,000 USD.  Seriously.  One way we saved a bunch of money was on the clothing! We bought Matt a tuxedo, which he has worn again, and I wore a bridesmaid’s dress in white!

You see, I found these red bejeweled shoes first. Aren’t they gorgeous? I’d never seen anything like them, and knew I just had to have them – but the only way I could justify them would be to wear them as my wedding shoes.

Once I had the shoes, I decided I needed to wear a short dress, to show off the shoes. I went to several bridal stores, but they were all too expensive, so I ended up in the Macy’s bridal salon, and found a beautiful, simple bridesmaid’s dress that came in ivory and fell in love. It cost less than half the price of the shoes! And I bought a spool of red ribbon to match my shoes, and used that around my waist, and had red sparkly earrings and a matching barrette.

Along with my veil, my outfit was complete! I carried my dress and veil over in a garment bag, and the lovely flight attendants put it in storage in the 1st class cabin, and bumped us up to economy plus!

Did you honor any Welsh traditions?

We did NOT serve fruitcake, much to many of our guests dismay! And we did NOT read our wedding cards aloud. To be honest, I didn’t even realize we were supposed to read the cards aloud until after the wedding was over. We did have all of family members wear boutineres and coursages, per Welsh tradition. And our ceremony was in English, and Welsh.

What were some of the hardest things about getting married overseas?

I can honestly say it wasn’t that hard – because Matt’s mom and our wedding coordinator were fantastic. One slight hiccup – I’m not a fan of the carnation flower, and that was my only request regarding the flowers – no carnations please. So of course, on the morning of the wedding, what do we find when they’re unloading the floral arrangements? Loads and loads of carnations! I just had to laugh; it was too funny!

Now you have to us about some of the best things.

The memories of gathering our families together to celebrate our marriage. Neither of my parents had ever been out of the United States before, so getting to see them explore London and the Welsh countryside was amazing. We rented a minibus and made it a three day affair. One of Matt’s friends came along with us and my whole family, and we drove all around South Wales for two days before our wedding exploring castles and pubs. It was a trip of a lifetime, culiminating in our wedding! It simply doesn’t get any better than that!

Thank you so much for having me Katie – it’s been so fun remembering what a great time our wedding was!

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And thank you, too, Christy!  Wasn’t her wedding dreamy?  (And I don’t just mean because they bypassed the fruitcake tradition, either.)

Peek into all the international weddings our friends and family have shared on Making This Home (from Vienna to Japan) on the International Wedding Page.  Of course it includes our wedding, too!

When I proclaimed last week that I like to keep my desk simple, I meant it. A couple of readers asked me a few questions, namely about my computer and – guess what! – one of my postcards.

Yes sir, I pulled out one of the postcards from my old childhood collection and just knew it had to go on my desk.  Our internet connection goes out on a daily basis.  It was kind of frustrating until I found this card by Duckboy Cards Inc.  The text says:  Along Montana’s “Information Superhighway”.  Is it not the funniest?

Oh and in case you’re wondering, I used a binder clip to prop up the postcard.  It’s the perfect temporary display case.  (Binder clips are fantastic for holding up recipe cards in the kitchen, too.)

Then on the left of the desk is my computer.  We’re another one of those hooked-on-Macs-can’t-imagine-ever-EVER-going-back-to-Windows kinda families.  You know the type.  My laptop is the simplest of MacBooks.  We got it over three years ago with the help of a 10% off student/teacher discount the company always offers.  That was before we knew just how important it would be to have a laptop that’s easy to slip into our carryon bags.  And then slip back out at security over and over.  (We’ve had to go through security check points up to three times just coming back to the US.)

The little black dot on the top center of the monitor is my favorite part.  It’s a little camera for snapping goofy pictures of ourselves and video chatting with our families who also use Macs.  Nothing beats a virtual face-to-face when you live far away from one another.  Okay, sometimes we even do it room to room… or video chat across the exact same room.  Don’t tell me your family doesn’t do the same with cell phones or instant messages.  You do, don’t you?

When we video chat from here in the Tire House, it is kind of weird seeing someone else in your house, chatting with you from your desk.  (We video chat with our family living in our Berlin apartment, and yes, we’re totally trying to peek over shoulders to see how our kitchen looks.  Is it clean?  Did they put away the milk?  Are they cooking meat in there?)  Ahh technology.

So that about wraps up the greatest going-ons at my desk because let’s face it – old college desk lamps and mouse pads… not that exciting.  (My whole work space is right here in case you missed it.)

I’d love to hear about the fun little bits hanging around your desk or house that make you smile.  Dorky family shots, silly statues.  Hey – whatever gets you back on the happy side.

And stay tuned.  I think I’ve got a solution for storing envelopes – the biggest organizing conundrum this side of the Continental Divide… at least at our house.

Back in the day, I thought I was the cleverest kid in the world.  Almost every kid has a collection of some sort (be it seashells, comic books, or yes, even trolls).  I was sure my collection was not only the coolest but also the most compact.

Every time my family went somewhere, I picked up a few postcards.   They were cheap, easy to fit into my suitcase, and even easier to stash in my bedroom.  And stash I did.   Twenty years later and I still have all these postcards that were hiding out in my parents’ house:

You can probably guess it’s time to part with my collection.  I’m willing to bet you might have some surplus postcards laying around the house, too, right?

The bad news is that we can’t really send people a “hello from the nation’s capital!” postcard when – hello – we’re not there, and haven’t been there since who knows when.  My collection is really bad.  Some postcards are from places I’ve never been.  (I was dorky enough to ask people to bring me unused postcards from their vacations so I could add them to my heap.)

It doesn’t make sense to toss these cards.  So I’ve been brainstorming and weeding.  Here’s part one of the plan:

A half dozen postcards are the perfect care package to give to people heading off on vacation if you have cards that match their destination.  Tied with a ribbon, it’s the perfect bon voyage gift… as long as they understand they should not be sending you one of these souvenir postcards!

I think it’s going to be a while before people hit up all the bazaar destinations in my collection, though.  So short of tossing all those great postcards, I’ve come up with a few ways to declutter.  If you’ve got extra postcards laying around, gather ‘em up.  We’ve got some projects coming…

And while we’re at it, wanna share what your childhood collection used to be (or still is if you’re like me)?  I seriously doubt it could get more embarrassing than the postcard I have from the backside of Mount Rushmore where our past presidents are showing their bare backsides, too.  Take us back.  What did you collect?

(Images for Making This Home)