The Alice Themed Wedding

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So a month ago me and my better half got hitched. She said yes already back in 2009 but we kinda pushed the event in front of us for some years for various reasons. But now in January this year, when I was hospitalized for pulmonary embolism, we decided to get it done.

Invitations

The save the date cards my wife drew by hand. The actual invitations we ended buying and adding some extra touches by hand. This took a lot of time but was a fun part of the preparations.

Wedding website

We ended up using theknot.com for our wedding website. The actual invitations only included the link to the site and the password. All relevant information was put on the wedding website.

Theme

Whenever we've talked about the wedding during the years, we have always ended up wanting to have a theme and the theme has pretty much been Alice in Wonderland from day one.
Next question was. Which Alice? After a lot of pondering we decided on the old Disney version.
We made clear in the invitation that it was not a masquerade, but theme based details and accessories would be great!
We ended up buying 60 cat and bunny ears that people could wear, and everyone did!

Locations

For the ceremony, we decided on a local landmark bridge. Talked with the owner and got a yes of course!
For the party, we asked the brides sister if we could use their barn. And the answer was yes as well. They already had a bar and party area on the upper floor but we needed more room for the dinner and toilets etc. So we ended up building those during the spring and summer. Took more time then we anticipated and got a little stressful at the end, but damn, the best decision....

Rings. 

We went to the jewelry shop (the same that we got our engagement rings from) and decided on a pair of rose/white gold rings. No diamonds as she didn't want any.

Guests. 

52 guests decided to attend and that perfectly matched a deck of cards. So the place cards were just 2 decks of cards. One in the envelope and one at the place. I think we invited 64 from the start but as expected some were not able to attend.
We specified that there was a lot of time for families to find baby-sitters. Only the closest families kids were invited as well as some toddlers. So in the end 11 of the 52 were minors.

Party program

We did this ourselves as well. We ended up buying a laser printer and printing in black and white and adding extra color touches by hand. We colorized average of 7 programs per night, took 2 hours per night. So make sure you plan for the time if you decide on doing things by hand. It is a lot of work but gives in the end a personal touch to the party.

Drinks. 

Me and a friend brewed been in the spring, 26 bottles of IPA and 24 bottles of bitter. Together with home made mead and apple cider there was a variety to chose from for the dinner.
2 weeks before the party we went to Systembolaget (the Swedish alcohol monopoly) and ordered all other alcoholic beverages for the dinner and party.

• 4x4x24 33cl bottles of beer. Different brands, mostly lager..
• 2x4x24 33cl bottles of cider. Different brands and flavors
• 10 bottles of champagne for the toast when we arrive at the party
• 1 bottle of champagne (little more expensive) for us during the photo-shoot after the ceremony
• 4 red bag-in-box wine
• 2 white bag-in-box wine
• 10 bottles of bubbly rose wine
• 6 bottles of vodka for drinks
• 1 bottle of Makes me smaller, vodka and a lot of pulverized super sour hard candy (a lot)
• 1 bottle of Grows me taller, vodka and a lot of pulverized super salty hard candy (a lot)

+ a lot of non alcoholic beverages and water

We ended up returning 1/4 of the alcoholic drinks afterwards, but better that then running out during the evening.

Flowers

The bride decided to go to our local grocery store and order 200 roses. More than enough for the party and bridal bouquet (that she made herself)

Catering.

We decided to not cater anything. Instead we bought and prepared everything during the days before and handed out work assignments in teams during the whole night.

Photographer

We ended up hiring an upcoming photographer who didn't cost that much, but had an excellent portfolio to present us. A little bit more risky, but one tenth of a professional photographer.

She photographed the wedding ceremony as well as the wedding photos afterwards.

For the rest of the evening, we had asked guests that we knew liked to photograph to bring their cameras. Some excellent photos from these friends

We also bought 3 digital cameras (the cheapest ones we found, total around €60.) and placed on the tables, labeled 'Use me!'. Got an extra 400 photos of the evening from those.

Also, we had already 3 months before started to use a hashtag on Instagram (following patter #brideandgroomYEAR) and pushed our guests to post with that hashtag during the evening.

Photo booth

Hand made photo booth frame fitting the Alice theme and a Canon EOS 400 on a tripod to photograph all the guests during the evening! White veil as backdrop as well as flashlight and a large reflector in the ceiling.

Turned out good, pretty much every guest made an appearance.

Best man, Brides maid, Toast master

We decided to not have any. Instead the bride explained the idea of the evening, people were allowed to hold their speeches whenever there was time etc.
It turned out work good with our guests, plus we did not stress out our closest friends by giving them the most stressful jobs at a wedding.

Work assignments

In the party program leaflet that every guest received when they found their seat there was a list of jobs for the evening.

• Prepare starters
• Clean the tables of dishes
• Put leftovers in refrigerators.
• Prepare main course
• Barbecue duty
• Clean the tables of dishes
• Put leftovers in refrigerators
• Prepare desserts
• Clean the tables of dishes

During the evening we had also some more general assignments

• Bar assignment. Keep track of the drinks table during the dinner and server drinks after the party started.
• Music. 1 person selected who had access to the music

OK, this was a little controversial idea that turned out to be a good one.

During the years we have attended a number of weddings and it is always the same thing, you end up sitting at your table during the whole dinner (that is 4-8 hours) and only talk with the people seated around you. We did not want that.

So instead, by giving the guests work assignments in teams consisting of people from other tables they were forced to mix with people that they did not know from before and talk with them. As a grownup you grow to know other people mostly by working together and if you mix that into a party where people do not know each other from the start, they will end up making new connections.

The dinner ended up going on for 6-7 hours. BUT, after each course there was a natural pause where everyone not on assignment had a chance to walk around, mingle and chat with people. When the next course was ready, the bride rang a bell and everyone was seated again.

Lessons learned from the assignments was that some of the work teams could have had a couple more members to speed things up. But otherwise, turned out to be a fantastic idea to get people to talk with each other!

Conclusions

In the end, we ended up doing a lot of things ourselves and the project lasted 6 months. This probably saved us a lot of money, I have no idea what this would have costed if everything was catered, rented etc. But that doesn't really matter. In the end it was more true to ourselves to do it this way then letting someone else do it. It got a personal touch on all planes and having the dinner and party on top of a barn, the cozy and joyful atmosphere infected our guests as well. 

Planning a wedding in this way you have to know your audience a little bit, know that there are people who enjoy cooking, talking, bar-tendering, photographing etc. and wouldn't mind to be bossed around for an evening as a surprise : )

I guess I forgot to write about more then half of the stuff, if you have any questions then feel free to ask in the comments and I'll try to answer to my best ability.

Until next time: Work to Live, Don’t Live to Work

Abrupt reminder of mortality

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For the full story see:
An abrupt reminder of mortality.
Update, week 3 of pulmonary embolism recovery
Update, week 4 of pulmonary embolism recovery
Update, week 5 of pulmonary embolism recovery
Update, week 11 of pulmonary embolism recovery
Update, 12 months after pulmonary embolism
Another reminder of mortality (here we go again)

So last week was interesting.
2 weeks ago, Friday I felt really bad. Didn't have any go in the body at all and got really breathless walking a few hundred meters from my car to the office.
I didn't think much of it, once at the office everything went almost as normal. A little out of breath but nothing that stopped me.
In the afternoon when I walked back to my car, the same out of breath situation came up. So I decided to take it really easy over the weekend.
Saturday, couldn't walk the stairs at home without getting out of breath.
Sunday, the same thing.
Monday, decided to stay home from work. Felt a little better.
Tuesday even better, a little out of breath still. Was able to climb the stairs without any bigger issues. Decided to go to work the next day.

Wednesday, totally out of breath walking from the car to the office. Halfway (halfway is around 100 meters...) I thought about giving up. Somehow I still managed to get to the office and decided to call a doctor. Got a time the same afternoon. Sitting still in my chair was no problems. Walking to the coffee-machine turned out to be a big challenge.
At four in the afternoon I drove to the doctor, who in turn sent me to the bigger hospital for x-rays of my lungs and papers that told me to stay at the emergency room afterwards to wait for the results. The first pictures didn't tell anything, the doctor at the emergency room decided to run a CT scan of my lungs as well. They decided to take me in over the night and rigged me up with mobile ECG unit. At around 1 a'clock in the night a nurse tells me that I have pulmonary embolism in both my lungs and that I was to receive a fragmin shot to prevent future clots. Needless to say I didn't sleep that much that night, at an age of 33 this was not the thing I thought I'd get. Maybe later but not at this moment.

Thursday, not much happens. Talk to a doctor, he tries to get a time for another CT scan but it has to wait a week. Need to stay at least another night for monitoring.

Friday. Get rid of the ECG unit and can move a little more freely.
Walk up and down the corridor really really slow. Get information that I need to start eating a medicine called Xarelto, for 6 months to start with and then they will do a study and decide if I need to eat it for the rest of my life. At least I can continue to work-out normally.
Need to stay another night, doctor prepares papers so that the weekend doctor can send me home during the weekend.
In the evening during routing check, nurse asks me if I tend to have high blood pressure and I told her maybe? Most times when they check I have over. Turns out I'll get pills against that as well, starting immediately..

Saturday, start with Xarelto . Doctor sends me home. On sick leave for 2 weeks.

So.. I don't know. Just feels like a really abrupt reminder of mortality. I don't think that I've managed to process the implications of this fully yet but for starters I need to decide if I'll continue riding my MTB or to sell it. Evidently head injuries are really really bad when eating blood thinners so probably not worth the risk. Maybe buy an adventure bike instead, just stay clean of the single-tracks from now on.

But first. 2 weeks of reading books, sleeping a little extra, taking it easy and posting cat videos online.

Thanks for reading, here's some cat-tax:

For an update after 3 weeks go here.

Until next time: Work to Live, Don’t Live to Work

2016 in hindsight and outlook for 2017

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Another year passes by. What will I remember of 2016? What was good and what was bad? And what is to come?

The House

From the top of my mind, I think that the biggest personal project that we undertook this year was to renovate our kitchen. We basically ripped out the old one, opened up for a new door, re-walled another and installed the most amazing kitchen from IKEA!
2 months without a proper kitchen, doing pretty much everything ourselves (not counting water, electricity and carpet layers) with the help of our families. Hopefully we don't need to do that again for a decade or two.

We finished the kitchen just in time for summer vacation and the arrival of our third cat: Prime

Now we have 3, Tiger, Pixel and Prime.

Smaller projects: 

relocation of living room. We moved our TV room to the upper floor and remodeled the living room into a dining room. Turned out great, the old yellow wallpaper was really ugly.
See before and after images:

The before picture is cluttered, but so was the rest of the house as well during the kitchen project.

New dining/living-room was completed just in time for Christmas. Much IKEA here as well, but for the fireplace area we actually ordered a 1.5 seat love-couch with really high arm rests from another store. It is to arrive in the beginning of 2017, something that I am looking forward to a lot.

Training

Was a great start this year in preparation for Billingeracet MTB, the only race I participated in this year and plan to do the same next year.
After that, our house projects took all of my time and training was a second priority.
There was also a real low-period that lasted for most part of the autumn where my resting pulse was 15-20 over normal, more on that in another post that I am planning.
From mid December, I think I am back on track again in preparation for 2017.

Brewing

First time brewing, cider. Turned out great, tastes good and hopefully next year we'll be able to make a batch of beer as well

Investing

Investing has been a good year, my favorite bank was on sale for most of the year so I was able to collect more shares than planned. And also putting away more cash into investing at the end of the year than at the start of it. A good sign that perhaps the investment plan will fulfill itself a little faster. But it is still too early to predict. :)

Outlook for 2017

Lots of plans, we would like to redo the facade on the house and add an extra layer of insulation. We fell in love with the Swedish Falu Rödfärg in the lovely color of black. But we shall see if it will happen in 2017 or 18.

For investing, I'll be keeping close track on both the UK and US, not much happened in the global economy during the vote for Brexit nor the presidential election in the US. But 2017 will be the year when both are implemented, so hopefully some stormy months in the market. For me, I don't mind. Red numbers would be good for me, meaning that I could buy up cheap shares in great businesses.

A long post, but I think I've covered it all. At least the most important parts.


Until next time: Work to Live, Don’t Live to Work

Disclaimer. I am in no way an expert on capital management or investing. On this blog I only wish to share my findings, ideas and comments on current events and fields that interest me. I hope that my thoughts can entertain you. I expect that everyone reading take their time and do their own research before acting on anything read on this blog. Investing is not for everyone. E&OE.

Work to Live, Don't Live to Work

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Six years ago I worked in another city and spent 2 hours each morning and evening to commute and putting in the extra effort every time it was needed. After a summer vacation when I sat down in my car I wondered what the hell I was doing with my life. As the fall moved on I decided to look for a new job and found one 10 minutes from home. It was one of the easiest decisions in my life to just take it.
The day before I signed the new contract I ended up in a meeting with my current manager, it was the kind where you try to figure out what your future is at the company. After 45 minutes of me trying to not answer straight we decided to discuss the elephant in the room. I told her that I was going to take another job and probably hand her my resignation the day after tomorrow.
It turned out that she was a good boss, and she understood and told me to remember that

We don't live to work, its the other way around. We work so that we can live.

After that we had a quite good and relaxed discussion about life in general and future plans.

Thought I'd share, maybe it motivates someone out there. For me, it was the advice I needed and it has helped me with work/personal balance questions from that day onward. :)

Take the first step to financial freedom: Stabilize your economy,
Brew your own beer and start doing stuff on your bucket list.