"Pretty little angel eyes, I really love you so...

...Angel eyes, I'll never let you go." Angel Eyes by Curtis Lee, 1961.

Hello, lovelies!

I found this blog lying unfinished, and I though I'd go ahead and send it out. The pictures are of the wedding I did two months ago with my peeps over at the Cafe, and the musings were very appropriate for the time - and the book (which I draw from, below) was excellent all the way to the end. Enjoy!

All Photos Mine

All decorations by me (created along with a crew of amazing helpers!) going along with the bicycle theme of the wedding. I love all the tiny flags and pinwheels on the cupcakes! (And by the way, if you ever happen to be near the The Cafe in Columbia, KY, stop into the cafe for any of their baked goods - especially the cupcakes or cheesecakes - ok, actually, any of their food! Your life will never be the same.) All the pennants are white cotton, or, around the cake table you can see little paper roadmap pennants made out of maps courtesy of AAA - they went perfectly with the purple and pastel green color scheme!

As we decorated and planned for this thing, I was going through a new book called Girls Gone Wise by Mary Kassian, which is (so far) the best examination of femininity and godly womanhood I have ever found. It is perfect for our modern dearth of femininity and I think it speaks wonderfully to the 16-to-20-somethings who have been hit especially hard by the Hollywood image of a woman and the unbelievably over-sexed, neutralized, feminist generation now in their early years of womanhood.

The book examines Proverbs description of what a godly woman looks like as compared to the boisterous (or wild) woman. I went to their website (the link above) and found some very good and thought-provoking articles, as well as study-helps for the book.

One article particularly caught my attention.

As a woman, I am deeply interested in the concept of beauty. If you've read my blog for long, you know that the pursuit of true beauty in a myriad of contexts is one of my consuming obsessions. I've gotten a lot of flack for this, but I firmly believe that God created beauty and truth to walk hand-in-hand, and as such, when I can cause anything He created good to reflect beauty, I am reflecting Him. In this way, I would even go so far as to consider beautification (within a scriptural standard and guarding against vanity) a spiritual gift.

So anyhow, the Cafe was catering this wedding and I got to decorate for the wedding and reception. I got one, brief meeting with the groom and bride and MOB (brief like, 30 minutes) and I was tasked with budgeting and building a dream wedding. By God's grace it all came to pass and I was extremely pleased with the result - and mercifully, the Bride and Groom and both families were also delighted with it. But it took weeks of planning and three solid days of hard work with no sleep and some pretty back-cracking labor to make it happen--and that goes for not only me, but the entire crew from the Cafe who are an unbelievably talented, energetic, positive and useful group of people. From my Irish-Mexican friend/boss who coordinated the entire thing to the 2-year-old daughter of the sugary-sweet cake-baker, we had a blast and there was sweat and tears and it resulted in a lovely special day for this wedding.

And it was beautiful. (You can see some photos of the finished event here.)

We each had our areas of expertise (read: gifting) and it was incredible to see in this project how it all came together. There were areas where we did not have anyone with a special gift (and in these areas we found some creative ways to fill our insufficiencies!) and literally by the Grace of God somehow it all came together. Every little detail was done to the best of our ability and made as absolutely beautiful as possible.

Isn't that what God does? He gives people specific strengths and weaknesses, then puts combinations of people together for seasons and times to get things done--and no two groups can ever result in the same output because the combinations will constantly vary. The outcome is a kaleidoscope of fabulous things--every thing good and noble, and worth doing, in fact - from the small, fanciful things to the largest, earth-shattering.

Anyhow, that's my ramblings about this wedding and such.

Much love!