A really close friend of mine was getting married. We were a little older than the typical 20 or 30’ish year old bride-to-be; but then women are getting married at a more mature age today. Meeting your soul-mate just takes a bit longer for some, and then sometimes circumstances interfere. What matters is that you have fallen in love, and you want your wedding day to be your dream come true and you want it all to be encapsulated and portrayed in a wedding book and album spun together with storybook memories. We always were romantics … still are.

We were lounging one afternoon: my friend thinking about her color scheme, her wedding theme, her lifelong dream: me constantly interrupting her thoughts with questions about caterers and menus; venues; music; how many people she wanted to invite; printers; photographers: the whole cornucopia of making her wedding wonderfully special; wonderfully romantic. Most of the time, she ignored me nodding her head, smiling at me: kind of treating me like the child I was acting like. She knew me: she put up with me.

She was a very sensitive and gifted artisan. Her professional world revolved around designing and/or redesigning children's rooms. She created magical feelings of wonder and joy that a parent could appreciate, but only a child could feel and believe in. I knew she’d do the same for her wedding; and her guests would appreciate it, but she and her husband would walk in, marry in and dance in her dream-like creation.

She needed a wedding book and album that would come to life every time she opened it; and I knew how she could have that. I looked at her, told her I needed her full attention for a few minutes, and then I told her what I had in mind. I suggested that rather than have a wedding book and photo album separately, she should have a wedding book album replete with wedding book memorabilia and moments – time - captured in photographs. She had the right contacts to have an oversized wedding book/album made with removable and insertable pages.

She could have a “temporary” wedding book for her guests to sign and leave messages for her and her husband during the wedding. She would have a photographer there taking pictures – posed and candid - from start to finish. There had been so much flashing going on she would probably stop and occasionally think, “I don’t remember renting strobe lights …” With all the planning and doing, she will have collected all the meaningful and important things such as the program, the invitations (wedding, bridal shower, bachelor party et al). Her “work” would come post wedding, post honeymoon, post all the head-spinning euphoric delirium of recently, ever so recently, having gotten married.

Est (my friend’s nickname by me) looked up at me, kind of gaga eyed, hugged me, and said she absolutely loved the idea. She knew just the person to custom design it according to her specifications, and I would help her put it all together and she would surprise her husband with it when we finished it. I couldn’t say no: I wouldn’t say no.

We talked about how we would do it. We – Est - finally decided we would intersperse messages, invitations, photographs, dry flowers – especially one from her bouquet – almost anything that we could include in the album book. We would place photographs next to their respective message writers; and other photos in a time sequence, and throw in the “almost anything” else things among the more time-lined ones. Her wedding album book was going to spotlight her wedding day and all the people – family and friends – and happenings that together made it so beautifully memorable, so beautifully hers, so beautifully romantic.