Kathleen McGivney

Wedding photobook

Like my friend Ed, I'm an avid user of MyPublisher for photo books. My husband and I have made several, most notably one with our photos from our first trip to Italy last November that we gave out as gifts to friends and family. We're very happy with the quality of the books and the speed that they are printed; we had a rush order a few months ago and the books were printed and in our grubby little hands in 4 days (with overnight shipping, of course).

What I had overlooked until recently was the ability to share a completed book online. Ed highlighted that capability when he posted his comparison of online book printing services, so I figured I'd try it out for my wedding albums once it was completed. We had an absolutely AMAZING photographer and we love his work - believe me, it was difficult to narrow each book down to "only" 44 & 46 pages of photos each!

So, if you'd like to see a bunch of sappy photos of me blissfully gazing at my fella (along with some photos of friends and family and reeeeeally cute ring bearers), check them out by clicking the book cover.

The first version above is the one for family. The one below is a second version for friends that has more of them in it. If we'd tried to put every photo we loved into one version of the book, it'd easily be 60+ pages long!

They're both great and we really love both of them. We can't wait to see the finished product. We should soon, since the first book is already printed and on its way to us!

Wedding, part one: wedding planning ninja

It's been a month now since the wedding, so I figured it's about time that I wrote up a wedding recap. Unlike a lot of my friends that I've spoken to, I oddly remember quite a bit about my wedding, probably because I was so heavily involved in planning it, and because many of my friends blogged or Twittered the details, so they're on the internets for all eternity to help jog my memory. In any case, I start with part one: wedding planning ninja.

I'm a planner. I love planning things and being really organized, so when I set out to plan a 150-guest wedding in NYC in 5 months' time, I really didn't think it would be much of a challenge. And some parts of it weren't - in fact, most of the actual wedding stuff was easy as pie. It was coordinating the travel of a large percentage of the guests that took a lot of time and effort. I'd estimate that 75% of our guest list was coming from out of town, and a good portion of those had never been to the city before. I ended up negotiating and helping many of them book their hotel and travel reservations (again, something I love to do, as I am a travel ninja, but it was very time-consuming).

In the days leading up to the wedding, everything was running smoothly. Our friends had started to arrive - first, my daughter and her parents, then my best friend/bridesman and one of Atom's best friends. We had a full house for part of the week, and even though we had some last-minute things to do, we were still able to relax and spend time with our friends and family leading up to the wedding, which was nice and took my mind off the fact that American Airlines had grounded 300 of its planes, canceling hundreds of flights a few days before my wedding. Luckily, though almost every single one of our out-of-town guests who flew in flew on American, only a handful of the flights were affected. Unluckily, the people who were affected were my mother, my grandmother (who was slated to walk me down the aisle), my uncle (who was the minister officiating the wedding), and his son (who was the "team captain" of the ring bearers). So, you know. Awesome!

Wedding photos are up!

Our photographer just posted a sneak peek of some of our wedding photos to his blog. There are some really great images there. Lots of them capture how fun the reception was, which is exactly how we wanted it to be - a big party with everyone we love. I have a long, multi-part post planned to talk about the wedding, because it was totally freakin' awesome! But for now, the pictures (and cupcakes) will have to speak for me.