DIY — Blog — Toqu Tigu

Yesterday, Facebook reminded me that eight years ago, my husband and I celebrated our marriage with a small group of friends at our friends’ backyard here in East Greenbush, NY. Now looking back and looking through these photos, I’m awash with a lot of emotions. I thought now is a good time to revisit this day and share some memories with you all because I’m guessing you’re knitters (or craftists in general) yourselves and probably are also into DIY projects, which our wedding had plenty of.

A little backstory: Phil (my partner) and I dated for 2 years while I was in grad school in Albany, NY. After my studies were completed, I went back home to Kazakhstan (KZ) with plans to come back to the US to pursue a Ph.D. degree sometime in the future. As I loved my work and being home in KZ, I didn’t rush to return to the US, so Phil and I broke up after trying to continue our relationship long-distance for a year. After about 1.5 years of being apart (during this time, we still kept in touch as friends), we got together in London, where I was visiting for a professional development opportunity and Phil came to see me there. We got back together and five months later, Phil came to KZ with a ring. We started the long process of applying for a fiancée visa for me to be able to come back to the US, which took us a whole year! We got married two days after I landed in the US, at a local town hall, with a couple of friends as our witnesses. Btw, I was still very jet-lagged when we were saying our I-do’s! A month and a half later, we had this backyard wedding party to celebrate our marriage with our friends (who were mostly friends from Phil’s work).

Moving to the other side of the world, leaving my established life, family, and friends was very stressful for me (for Phil too, I guess). So, I directed all of that stress into DIY’ing this wedding party, which means I basically turned into a DIY Bridezilla! Anywhoo, I have no regrets, except that I wish we had our parents there (it was too complicated to fly my parents from KZ and Phil’s from Chicago).

Our friends’ backyard was perfect: big enough to put up a tent to fit about 30 people and with lots of mature trees to create that cozy “garden-party“ vibe. We were/are so grateful to them for hosting our party and helping with the set-up and clean-up. Speaking of set-up, we hung mason jars and handmade pompoms (made from the tissue paper I found in Phil’s apartment) from the big tree on the right. Inside the mason jars are battery-operated tealights, which looked magical as it got darker outside. Our friends lent us their Christmas string lights, which we hung on the inside of the tent.

I had hand-sculpted all the flowers for our wedding from air-dry polymer clay. I had previously taken classes to learn this craft just so I could make my bridal bouquet in advance so that it looked exactly the way I wanted it to look and also to keep it as a keepsake afterward. I took these classes and made my bouquet (photo on the left) in KZ while I was waiting for the fiancé visa paperwork to finalize. The centerpiece flowers (photo on the right) and the big rose on the birdcage for collecting cards (middle photo) were made after arriving in the US. Also, those bunnies you see in the photo on the left? I made them in KZ and stuck them in the package I had to send Phil with all my paperwork while we were applying for a fiance visa. So yeah, those poor bunnies also had their fair share of stressful journeying across the world and deserved a central seat at our party!

This is our photo gallery with photos from our childhoods and important moments together, one of which was meeting Tom Hanks in person in LA!!!

I love this photo of my brother and I. I remember my mom kept saying “Smile!“ and that was my best attempt :D

London Reunion 2012: this is when we got back together! Btw I LOVED that store-bought sweater I’m wearing here because it looked handmade and reminded of a similar sweater my mom knitted for me a while ago.

“Hugs and Kisses, from Mr. and Mrs.” - so cheesy, right? I LOVED it though! These are Hershey’s Hugs and Kisses (chocolate candies) that we put custom stickers on (ordered from Etsy) with that cheesy line and the wedding date. We put them inside these little jars that we decorated with tea-dyed fabric and raffia. You are probably sensing the whole rustic-vintage aesthetic we were going for.

The friends who hosted our party were into brewing their own beer at the time and they generously supplied us with this delicious, homemade beer!

Our wedding invitations looked like this. Well, not exactly, as this is one of the many ruined ones. The iron-on stickers that I had printed the text on were such a PIA to get to work properly, and I ended up ruining about a dozen of these napkins/handkerchiefs. The ones that worked well (i.e. with all the text transferred clearly and nothing burned) were hot-glued onto cardstock and put into brown envelopes with decorative enclosures. I have a few of those saved somewhere as keepsakes, but I can’t remember where I put them at the moment. (I’ll edit this post later to add a picture of one of those).

Btw I sewed these napkins in KZ while awaiting my fiancée visa. I had previously dyed the fabric (100% cotton) and the lace trim (also 100% cotton) with black tea to give it a bit of an aged, vintage look.

I created this wedding sign by distress-painting a wooden plaque and stenciling the signage on it.

Looking back and looking through these photos, I can’t help but laugh at how intense I got about creating all these DIY projects. Crafting has been a way I have dealt with stress and uncertainty since I can remember myself, so it only makes sense our wedding party had to be this way!