Wedding Backstory part 3

Part 3: The Pies

Everyone loves pie.



At the wedding we had multiple peach pies, apple pies, pecan pies, wild Maine blueberry pie, pumpkin pies, pineapple pies, blackberry pies, raspberry bavarian cream pies . . . oh my oh my.

Momma's Amazing and Never-Enough-of-it Raspberry Bavarian Cream Pie:



Step 1: Grow raspberries in your yard. This is important. If there are not little crushed up bugs and blood from your pricked fingers in the pie then it is no good. My mother's porch has a raspberry bush growing right up through it. Some litte volunteer seed was dropped and up sprang the most delicous and voracious rasberry bush ever there was. During the berry season you walk out onto the porch with a bowl and pick berries for breakfast- talk about joyism.

Step 2: Make the Graham Cracker crust. Or, ok, you can buy one.

12 whole graham crackers crushed
3 TBSP brown sugar
6 TBSP melted butter
Combine the crumbs sugar and butter. Press into the bottom and sides of a greased pie pan. Bake at 300 F for ten minutes. Cool and set aside.

Step 3: Eat some spoonfuls brown sugar and a handful of berries.

Step 4: Make the Filling
-Wet down a mixing bowl and pop it in the freezer
-Crush 1 quart of raspberries
-Add to that 1 cup of sugar
-Let this stand for 30 minutes
-Soak 2 tsp of gelatin in 3 tbsp water
-Dissolve that into 3 tbsp of boiling water
-Whip 1 cup of whipping cream in your chilled mixing bowl until it peaks.
-Stir water mixture into berry mixture
-Fold cream lightly into the berries before the berry/gelitan mixture sets up
-Pour the whole delicous mess into the cooled pie shell
-Put into fridge and wait patiently until it all sets up and holds its shpe upon cutting.



Yummmm

Mom made Joey and me a heart shaped half-and-half pie for our wedding. Half pecan (Joey's fav)and half raspberry bavarian:



Everyone at the wedding got a little sweeter!:

Wedding Backstory Part 2

Part 2: Mason Jars


In creating my dream 1930's country wedding, I knew mason jars had to be involved. Growing up, mason jars were everywhere. Mom canned everything in our garden. At any given time one could find mason jars of all sizes on the kitchen shelves, sink, refrigerator, laundry room or garage.

The Jams :
Mom offered to make jams and jellies for our table favors, perfect. I instantly printed a whole bunch of 'Spread the Love' and 'Relish Love' labels for the jars. All of the jams and jellies and relishes featured locally and home grown ingredients.

There was jalapeno jelly, mint jelly, raspberry jam, blackberry jam, blueberry jam, apple butter, "blue raspleberry" (which I think was a blueberry/raspberry apple butter), beet relish, basil green bean pickles, dill bean pickles, piccalilli (green tomato relish) and curried squash pickles...! Needless to say, one one left without their favors.
Jalapeno Jelly:
Follow measurements on jelly pectin box, but this gives an idea:
12 jalapenos
2 cups cidar vinegar
6 cups sugar
2 packets of liquid fruit pectin

Blend 12 jalapenos and 1 cup of cider vinegar until smooth in processor
Add remaining cider and all sugar
Boil over high heat stirring frequently for 10 min
Remove from heat, skim off foam, put immediately into jars and cap them.
Submerge 1-2 inches into boiling bath of water for 10 minutes

Raspberry Jam
2 quarts raspberries
5 cups of sugar
1 box powdered gelatin
1/2 tsp butter
Smash fruit with a spoon, measure our 5 cups of smashed fruit.
Mix with box of gelatin and add 1 tsp butter
Put on stove under high heat and stir until it has a full rolling boil
Add sugar all at once
Bring to boil again stirring constantly
Keep at rolling boil for 1 minute
Remove from heat, skim off foam, cap immediately and cap. Follow same water bath as Jalapeno jelly.

Dilly Beans:
Makes 10 1 pt jars
4 lbs snapped green beans per jar
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes per jar
1/2 tsp mustard seed per jar
1/2 tsp dill seed per jar
1 whole clove garlic per jar ;)
5 cups vinegar
5 cups water
1/2 cup pickling salt
Wash jars.
Put all 'per jar' ingredients into their jars
Boil water, vinegar and salt. Pour boiling liquid into jars.
Tighten lids and place into boiling water bath for 20 minutes.

The Flowers
So of course the flower vases had to be mason jars. Lots came from dad's garage. They needed cleaning.

Mom planted all of these beautiful flowers for the tables and bouquets, not to mention all the surrounding fields and ditches that grew an extraordinary amount of weedy wonderful wild flowers this summer (thanks WV). The morning of the wedding Mom, Martin and Hanna picked and picked and came up with this:


My bridesmaids and I sat on the cool porch a few hours before the wedding putting together the flowers for the table and our bouquets. Playing with flowers with my closest friends and family was such a calm and wonderful way to spend the last hours before such a big event. It turns out that Sherri had quite a knack for flower arrangement:

Our Process:
Put long pointy flowers in the back
Put bushy flowers in the middle
put big faced flowers up front
fill in with weedy flowers
cut stems at an angle
wrap with pretty ribbon
pin in place with colorful plastic headed straight pins

In the end, beautiful flowers abounded and our bouquets were completely unique to each lady:






If YOU love mason jars as much as I do, check out Jill's gift jars.

Wedding Backstory Part 1

Joey and I got married on August 15 2009. It was an amazing, laid-back and beautiful wedding. Here is the back story,

Part 1: Silhouettes

I wanted an old-timey style wedding- anything that felt like it could have found in the 1800's-1950's. I drew most of my ideas from 1930's era photographs of outdoor events like picnics. I saw a lot of beautiful silhouettes and cameo style paper crafts. I knew that I had to incorporate our faces into our save the dates and invitations somehow:
Our Save the Dates.
Made on photoshop, sent into wonderful and affordable zazzle to print:

These show our actual silhouettes. Making your own silhouette by digital camera and photoshop is easy. I tired doing it the old fashion way with paper and a candle.... but it was a failure.
There are all kinds of crafts that you can do with your own personal silhouettes. I am meaning to try one of these. Follow that link and you can see Jill's process. I do mine on photoshop:
STEP 1: Take picture


STEP 2:
I use the magnetic lasso photoshop tool to highlight my outline and erase all else:


Step 3:
Color overlay, print out, cut out:


For our wedding invites I bought a blank set of invitations from Walmart, printed the outline of our faces on the front, cut them out with a razor blade and glued on a piece of paper behind them:


More later on the bouquets, dresses, table favors and stage building!