"You can borrow it"

The above picture reveals several things: I was at a wedding this weekend (not that the date or my presence is anywhere in the picture), my friend Annie got married, and my camera sucks. The sepia tone of the photo conveys the latter piece of information, as my camera's ability to render color seems to be in doubt, and the sepia filter was the only thing that turned the image into something other than a photo with color saturation from 1970 (which is fine if intentional but that was not my intention).

In any event, Annie and Daniel, the now-wedded couple, are extremely generous people who also pay close attention to the world around them. Many aspects of their wedding reflected their awareness of the world in which we live, including vegetarian food (for which I am eternally grateful as veg good at non-vegetarian weddings, especially kosher meat ones, is often lackluster at best), local flowers purchased at a farmer's market and arranged by their friends in recycled glass bottles collected by them and their families, and kippot made by Mayaworks (a non-profit supporting the work of Guatemalan artisans).

I loved the trail of color created by the kippot leading up to their chuppah, which Annie made. I went with her on one of her fabric-finding expeditions. And one of the wonderful things about her is that she lives in the moment, finds fabric she likes, and then makes it all work the way she wants it to work. She appliqued the fabric to canvas to create the image of mountains on their chuppah which is similar to that on their invitation, which she watercolored. Unfortunately I didn't get a close-up, but it has green mountains, blue skies, a bright yellow sun, and a multi-colored and multi-patterned border.

Their ketubah also reflects their mutual love of the outdoors. And the neat leaves, which are all different from one another (though that may be hard to see in the above picture) provide the inspiration for the gift I'm making them. That gift exists only in my head right now, but they (and you) will see it one day, hopefully sooner rather than later.

It may not be clear from the pictures I've shown, but Annie loves green. And thus green will comprise a large color element of said gift.

As those who know me in real life know, I am not a frilly clothes person. I like simple. Hence I really liked Annie's dress which is, lace-covering-the-shoulders-for-the-ceremony-notwithstanding, one of the simpler and less-"wedding-y" dresses I have seen. Also, I like sandals and Annie wore flat sandals with the dress. When I complimented Annie on her dress, which a local seamstress made for her, she said (as she's said so many times about other things), "you can borrow it." That pretty much sums things up, already offering to loan her wedding dress to someone else at her wedding. Pretty awesome.

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And about that camera, I may be in the market for a new camera soon. Any tips/favorites/recommendations? I'll be looking for a decent point & shoot that I can use for fun and in the archives (the turn off the automatic flash button is therefore a necessity).