Sticky: Welcome to our Wedding Website


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This blog entry will stay on top for newcomers to the site.

Please be sure to read our Frequently Asked Questions page. Videos can be found here. The registry is linked to here. My collection of photos is here, and I also have a flickr group pool for photos here (if you use flickr and want to join it, let me know). There are more photos on Snapfish, but you have to log in to see them. For more information, including press inquiries, please email noahanderin (at) gmail (dot) com.

Photos from the Michigan reception can be found here.

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We’re one of the Biggest Wedding Moments of 2009


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…according to theknot.com.au – that is to say, theknot.com Australia. They put us on their Biggest Wedding Moments of 2009 list.

This morning the Brian Lehrer radio show on WNYC tried to put a positive spin on the decade. Because the 2000’s are framed by 9/11 and a Great Recession with Hurricane Katrina somewhere in the middle, it seems pretty bleak. Lehrer’s call-in show featured listeners talking about what went right on a personal level, and on a world level.

The 2000’s represent not just one third of my life, but the BEST third. I met Noah in 2000, and we started dating in 2002, living together in 2003, and got engaged in 2008 and married in 2009.

Also during this decade, different cities started competing to be Spaceports. In 2001, the first ever space tourist visited the International Space Station, followed by seven more people this decade, including our officiant Richard Garriott in 2008. It’s exciting! Here’s a list of private spaceflight companies.

The Zero G Corporation started offering weightless flights to the public in 2004. My wedding dress was designed in 2006, here’s a New York Times article about it.

Lots of great stuff happened this decade!

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Michigan Reception: More Photos


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This set has more of the wedding details, like the cake and the flowers. Actually if anyone got good close-ups of the cake topper, please email me your photos!

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Michigan Reception: The Silly Photos


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These are just the funny pictures. I’ll upload more serious photos later.

Note that at the end of the set, my bridesmaids participated in a “Bridesmaids Battle” – a tradition my friends and I made up where bridesmaids duel with bouquets, samurai style. The winner at my Michigan reception was Lauren – she is now a regional champion, and I will fly her to NYC to battle the New York bridesmaids in an ultimate showdown.

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Map to the [Michigan] Venue


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The venue website is here.

So that’s this Sunday, September 20th, beginning at 4 PM. The art museum will be open in the first hour or so for guests to look at.

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Poll: Mom gets to pick one obnoxious group wedding dance


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The Chicken Dance

The YMCA

Caramelldansen

It’s sweeping the nation:

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Finding a DJ


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The bulk of the Michigan reception planning has fallen to my mother, who is somehow managing everything and getting a Doctorate and being Dean of a college all at the same time.

I have taken it upon myself to hire the DJ. I went to a lot of Michigan weddings as a kid, and the DJ was often pretty lame. One or two weddings I attended had DJs with hair leftover from the 1980’s who were sure to play “Celebration” by Kool & the Gang and “Joy to the World” by Three Dog Night, along with two Michigan standards – the YMCA and the Chicken Dance (check out the link for a Lawrence Welk lesson if you’re not familiar).

I told my mom she can request either the YMCA or the Chicken Dance but not both. This never happens at NYC weddings. I also hoped to avoid the Michigan “Dollar Dance” tradition, but frankly, I need the money. In Michigan the money is collected into little bags and not pinned to the couple, thankfully. I think it’s a Polish tradition but my only source on this is the 1978 movie The Deer Hunter.

Here’s a tip for Michigan DJs: Update your webpages! It’s not 1998 anymore! I’m avoiding at least one company based on a really lame animated gif.

Fortunately, there is hope! This DJ sounds really fun, is highly recommended on bridal websites, and has a webpage from this decade.

I’m really picky about music, and I have a long playlist of songs about space I want played during the reception.

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Wedding Space Race


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Check out this photo of the inside of Branson’s ship:

WhiteKnight2 Takes Oshkosh

Doesn’t it look like the inside of the TARDIS?

Richard Branson said in 2008 that he would marry a couple in space.

It looks like “SpaceShipTwo” might start running some flights later this year, attached this plane, VMS Eve:

vms-eve-over-lake-winnebago_credit-mark-greenberg

I wonder if Branson will beat Cindy Cashman’s space vehicle? Ms. Cashman plans to get marred in 2010 in space.

At once point a tabloid-like British blog mistakenly thought Branson had married Noah and I. A single google search could have clarified that our millionaire officiant was Richard Garriott and our wedding was within earth’s atmosphere.

Our wedding may have sounded outlandish to some people, but I don’t think everyone – the media included – realized how just much we were engaged in a wedding space race! My dress was designed for Space Wedding, a Japanese company looking to sell low-earth orbit weddings starting in 2011. Rocketplane is taking reservations for their $250,000 flights – it looks like their webpage was redesigned recently.

Our zero gravity wedding was incredible, but you can expect quite a few more floating brides in the next three years!

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Michigan Reception Will Be September 20th, 2009


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We’re having it in the Community Room at Ella Sharp Park!

We plan to show the wedding video and then, you know, have a reception. Yes, the bride and groom will be wearing the same outfits as we did on the flight.

Our friends in the greater New York City area should plan on attending our dessert reception in NYC, date to be announced.

Our photos and the raw video footage finally arrived, yay!

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Hair and Make-up by Lambs Eat Ivy


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Before I left Japan, I promised the wedding dress designer that I would have my hair and make-up professionally done – I would anyway, it’s my wedding, right? But I knew with a Reuters photographer on the flight that I had to look really, really good, because my wedding photos would be seen around the world. According to Zero G’s PR guy, our wedding reached an audience of about 56.1 million people!

I did a google search for Orlando’s top salons and found Lambs Eat Ivy on Citisearch (here’s the official page). I called them up, and owner thought my wedding sounded really cool, and graciously offered to help.

fountainThe salon name is based on the song Mairzy Doats, and I called them first because I like the name. A character sings it in Twin Peaks.

The salon is in a really cool part of downtown Orlando, with cobblestone streets and neat little shops that reminded me of Ann Arbor, Michigan (cute, artsy, and cosmopolitan).

On Wednesday before the wedding I went in for “test hair”. The owner, Lisa Pirillo stayed late into the night coming up with the right hairstyle for zero gravity. In the end, she built futuristic hair with florist’s armature wire. It looked really cool, and I couldn’t be happier!

The day before the wedding I went back to get my hair straightened and talk with the make-up artist, Amelia Dray. My only request was that I didn’t want to look like Barbarella. On the day of, Amelia did a great job – and in record time! I’ve basically never looked so good in my entire life.

The hardest part about the entire wedding was that we had to be at the salon at 4:30 AM to leave for Titusville no later than 7:15 or 7:30. If we didn’t make it to the airport by 8:30 AM, the passenger manifest would be finalized by TSA and we wouldn’t be allowed on the flight!

So Noah and I got up at 3:00 AM and got to the salon at 4:15. All of the stylists were there waiting for us with coffee, and everyone was terrifically nice to us! They even fixed Noah’s hair to look better than it ever has before!

There are many people without whom Noah and I could never have managed to realize our ridiculous dream wedding. The Lambs Eat Ivy crew is at the top of the list! They really did an amazing job. How many stylists can claim that their hairstyle worked upside down and in space-like conditions?

So a big special thanks to:

Lisa Pirillo, Owner, Stylist
Amelia Dray, Makeup Artist, Stylist
Jacqo, Stylist
Brianna, Stylist

There are more photos below the cut:
Read the rest of this entry »

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