Love at the Lodge

Hurry Up Already!!!

2010-10-24T15:32:00.000-07:00

So, I just drafted a post on one of my favorite details from our wedding, and as I sifted through what little pictures we have from our friends and family I realized that we don't have any pictures of this detail. Waiting for our pro pics is putting a serious cramp in my blogging style! I know it has only been 3 weeks, but I want my professional pictures dammit!!! So that post will just have to sit in draft form until my photographer gets a move on.

Speaking of which, I'm friends with our photographer on Facebook and yesterday she posted that she was hard at work editing a wedding and I got a little excited. Please please please please please be our wedding!!!

How is it that I am actually less zen now that wedding planning is over? Something's wrong with me! LOL.

Wedding Day Weather

2010-10-20T07:41:00.000-07:00

So, remember how in the days leading up to the wedding I was freaking out about the chance of rain? The two days before the wedding it rained on and off at our house, which is only 40 or so minutes from our venue. It was that crazy and unpredictable kind of rain, where it would rain huge drops for a couple of minutes then go away, then there would be thunder and lightening with no rain, then it would rain for a split second while it was bright and sunshiney out. The day before the wedding we went to Lowe's and bought a ton of tarps just in case we needed them and just decided to move on with our lives. There was nothing we could do about the rain and we had too much other stuff to deal with to worry about something we can't control.

When we got up the mountain on Friday, it was overcast and sprinkled on and off. No bueno. It was never heavy enough rain to make you go inside though, so I didn't let it get the best of me.

When I woke up on Saturday morning, there was the typical morning mountain fog. But that cleared away to bright blue skies. And it stayed that way all day long. I was so relieved that I kept exclaiming throughout the wedding "It didn't rain!!!"

Details Details: Cake Stand

2010-10-18T11:14:00.000-07:00

Just like with the bar, we knew from the get-go that we wanted to do a cake / dessert buffet instead of a traditional tiered wedding cake. I had always envisioned something a la . . .

(via Snippet & Ink)

. . . but the Mister had another vision. One that actually made sense for the cake gazebo at our venue.* The gazebo could only hold a small round table, so the mister decided he wanted to build a tree-esque cake stand. Originally, we had grand plans to acutally make the cake stand look like a tree, but like many a grand plan before it, that plan got scrapped when things got down to the wire. I'll just cut to the chase and let you see the final product.

(photo by my Father-in-Law!)

We had a local cake shop make the four cakes (which were unbelievably delicious, I might add) and my Mother-in-Law baked the cookies and brownies. I grossly underestimated the amount of platters I needed to purchase for the cookies and brownies so they ended up keeping the cookies in the Tupperware. Not ideal, but I didn't even notice it on our wedding day. That's one of those things where you just end up having to say "oh well" and shrug it off. People were so excited for my Mother-in-Law's famous peanut butter cookies with Hershey's Kisses that no one even cared about the Tupperware.

So back to the cake stand. This was also a fairly simple project but time consuming because of all of the trial and error. The structure of the stand is made from metal pipe fittings from Home Depot that the Mister screwed together to form the "trunk" and "branches."

Those are pipe fittings all over the floor. The Mister spent forever and a day picking out what he thought he needed, and then we must have gone back 3 or 4 more times to return some things and buy some more. Photo by yours truly.

We attached the pipe fittings to a large wooden base that we covered in spare purple fabric. We then covered the fittings with clay to even out the surface and wrapped it in green ribbon. The platters that the cakes sat on were actually lazy susans that we disassembled so they couldn't spin and then attached to the "branches" with screws.

Sounds simple, but this project took a long time to complete, and we actually finished it two days before the wedding. It probably would have been easier if we were following a set plan, but we were really just flying by the seat of our pants.

And now, for a moment of sadness. The day after the wedding, when we were packing up the lodge, we decided to throw it away. It was heavy and took up a lot of space, and we couldn't think of a single reason why we would use it again. So a little birdie convinced us to toss it, and to be honest I regret that decision a little. Even though I'm sure we would have ended up tossing it at some point in the future, I could have at least got to the point where I didn't have so much of a sentimental attachment to it anymore. Sigh. You live, you learn.

* Yes, our venue had a gazebo just for the cake. It's a smart idea, really, when you've got a venue that's entirely outside and in the woods. No one wants sap in their wedding cake.

Details Details: The Bar

2010-10-16T08:49:00.000-07:00

While we are waiting for our pro pics to come (which may be a while), I am going to use this time to go back and fill you all in on the projects that I have yet to tell you about. I was waiting to tell y'all about these projects until they were finished, but it turns out that most of them didn't get finished until a day or two before the wedding so there was just no time. First up: the bar!

Way back in the day I blogged about how we wanted a self-serve bar, but our venue did not allow glass beer bottles. If we were serving beer, it had to be kegs or cans. After much research and deliberation about our options, we decided to go balls to the wall and build a full on bar with a dual carbon dioxide tap system so no one would have to hand pump the kegs.

So how do you build a bar? Turns out it's not that difficult - it's just time and labor intensive. The Mister designed the whole thing in his head. He never drew out any plans or looked anything up online. We went to Home Depot and bought some 2x4s, finish grade plywood and trim for the corners; ordered a CO2 tap system online; and finished it with some cherry wood stain and (the real key element for a classy looking bar) marine varnish. Neither of us had ever heard of marine varnish until we asked someone at Home Depot what we should use on a bar top to keep it fully sealed from moisture. Marine varnish is what is used on boats and it.is.no.joke. We both probably lost a few brain cells just being around this stuff, and we had to keep our garage door cracked open for about a week straight to get the smell out. But it works and gave the bar a super high gloss finish.

I know, I know, you're thinking JUST SHOW US THE PICTURES ALREADY!!! I could swear that took pictures of us building the bar, but I can't find them anywhere, so I just have the finished product. I looked through our friends pictures that we have so far of our wedding too, and could only find one of the bar. So here it is, sitting in our garage.

the front

the back

A close up of the taps and drip tray. The grate cover for the drip tray flew out of the bar on the freeway on the way to the wedding. Our friend made us a make-shift one cover the day of the wedding at his dad's sheet metal shop.

And actually set up at the wedding. Photo by our friend June. You can see the make-shift cover, and that we served Bud Light and Blue Moon.

Okay, time for some words of advice. First of all, we had one full sized keg and one pony keg and apparently dual tap systems don't like having two different sized kegs attached to it at the same time. I was oblivious to this during the wedding, but I noticed that the pony keg of Blue Moon was gone really, really early and asked someone what was up. They said that they couldn't get the Bud Light to come out until the Blue Moon was gone. So moral of the story: get same sized kegs.

Second word of advice - building a bar like this will NOT save you money. According to our receipts, this bar cost us $575.90 to build. But we were okay with the cost because we felt that the bar was one of the key elements in establishing the mood and look we wanted for our wedding. By far, the tap system was the greatest expense. That alone was about $340. We are planning on selling it to recoup some of our expense, though it breaks my heart a little bit. I'm attached to it at this point, so I'm hoping we can sell it to someone we know that way we can see it and use it again! We've actually had several friends and family members say that they want it, so hopefully that works out. If no one is willing to pay a good price for it, I'd rather keep it in our own backyard for all those keggers we throw (HA!).

We're Back...and I've Been Tagged!

2010-10-12T11:12:00.000-07:00

We're back from a blissful week on the Big Island! We got back home late Sunday night and pre-planned to take Monday off from work to recuperate. Actually, the Mister already had it off because it was Columbus Day. About half way through the day we both realized a second recuperation day was in order so we both called out today.

I'll fill y'all in on the details of our honeymoon later, but I'll tell you the best part now: SLEEP!!! I slept for at least 9 hours each night and one night I actually slept for 10 1/2 hours. I normally am an 8 hours and then I'm awake kind of person. I think I was able to sleep so well on our honeymoon because it was the first time I've been able to really relax in a very, very long time.

Jacin over at She Said Yes! tagged me with some fun questions to answer. I'm normally horrible about doing things like this. But since I took today off from work and am still in relaxation mode this sounds like fun. So here goes nothing!

1. what was the last movie you watched?

Dinner for Schmucks on the plan ride from Honolulu to LAX. It was not very good, and not at all what I expected, but anything that helps 2 hours of a 5 hour plane ride go by faster is great in my book.

2. what's your favorite food?

Tough one! I'd probably have to say Tiramisu. I don't eat it very often, but if it's on the dessert menu there's no question that is what I am ordering. But I love so many other foods. This question would be easier if it was what's your least favorite food. That's an easy one... HARD BOILED EGGS!!! Ewwww.

3. what is your happiest memory (not wedding-related) :)

Most of my happy memories revolve around hanging out at my maternal grandparent's house in Massachusetts as a kid. My mom has 10 brothers and sisters so the house was always full of family and fun times. Plus, they had a Sega Genesis and an in-ground swimming pool with a slide and a diving board. :)

4. what is your favorite song?

I have a confession: I'm not a music person. I hardly ever download music to my iPod. I'm content with my old music and just listening to the radio. But I love me some Pearl Jam, and I'd have to say that Pearl Jam's Betterman is one of my all time favorite songs.

5. if you could move anywhere in the world where would it be?

Right now, we're talking about moving to Hawaii. :) I moved a lot as a kid so moving is not very appealing to me. But I'd leave Southern California in a hot minute for some place a little cooler (but not with a full on winter...been there done that!) and with less people. Where that is, I don't know. It would be hard to leave our friends and family behind though. Making new friends sucks.

6. what is the last book you read?

The Wedding Ceremony Planner. It was a great resource for helping me write our ceremony!

7. what's on the wallpaper on your computer desktop?

It rotates throughout the day with different scenery of America. It came with Windows 7 and is pretty, what can I say??? LOL.

8. what is your favorite thing to do on a rainy day?

Just lounging around in my sweats watching trash TV. When it's nice out I end up feeling guilty if I do this unless I'm sick or have some other valid excuse.

Hello from the other side!

2010-10-03T15:26:00.000-07:00

At 4:30 p.m. yesterday afternoon, I married my best friend. The wedding was more wonderful and beautiful than I had even imagined. I don't even have words to really describe how I feel about the wedding. But what excites me the most is that I was able to really absorb it all. So many brides say that their wedding day was a blur, but mine wasn't. I remember every little bit. So I know that I will be able to find those words to describe it for all of you in my recaps.

So now we are resting up before we head out for our honeymoon! We're leaving bright and early for Kona, Hawaii for a blissful week of much needed relaxation. See you on the flip side!

The Time Has Come

2010-10-01T07:12:00.000-07:00

It's the day before our wedding. I can hardly believe it. I have a nail appointment in 2 hours, and after that I'm on a strict schedule so we can be on the road to our venue by 3 p.m. I will not have internet at the Lodge, except on my trusty Blackberry, so this is my last chance to tell all of you wonderful ladies how great it has been to share my wedding planning experience with you. I himmed and hawwed about whether I wanted to start a wedding blog because I wasn't sure I would have the commitment to blog regularly. But I soon realized that there are no rules when it comes to blogging and if I don't post it's not like someone comes and takes my blog away from me. I know I haven't been as prolific as many wedding bloggers out there, but to each there own, right? I did what felt right for me.

So thank you. Thank you for your feedback, thank you for listening, thank you for being a friend (Ha! Had to throw in a Golden Girl's reference.)

So this is it. I'm not nervous about anything. Though I am worried about the 30% chance of rain on our wedding day. And even then I'm not that worried about it, and I'm finding the silver lining. Scattered thunderstorms make for beautiful skies and an opportunity for fantastic pictures, right? Plus, there was a double rainbow over my house yesterday, so I'm taking that as a sign God is smiling down on us.

Don't Believe Everything That You Read

2010-09-27T07:44:00.000-07:00

My wedding is in 5 days. Obviously, that means I am stalking weather.com. But here's the thing, when I pull up the 10 day forecast it says a high of 81 degrees with a 30% chance of isolated thunderstorms, and then when I click on October 2nd to see more detail, it says 92 degrees, sunny and a 0% chance of precipitation.

So clearly weather.com is deliberately effing with me.

Oh, and wunderground.com says upper 70s to low 80s with a 0% chance of precipitation. This is also what our local ABC news says. Since weather.com can't even agree with itself about what the weather will be on our wedding day, I am boycotting that website. Okay, not really. I'll still check it but I just won't believe it.

It's party time, excellent!

2010-09-25T07:36:00.000-07:00

My bachelorette party was actually two weekends ago, but we've already established that I'm a slacker blogger so I don't feel bad about just telling y'all about it now. :) Part of the reason why I was waiting was that my camera died very early in the evening and was waiting to get some pictures from the other girls, but I never did (probably because I never asked...oops!). So I'm moving forward anyway!

I decided that I wanted my bachelorette party to be just a Saturday night out with the girls. I wasn't about road tripping it to Vegas or anything like that. The Vegas club scene just makes me feel like an old puritan because I can't party until 4 a.m. and don't dress or act like a hoochie. Plus, I decided I wanted to have my bachelorette party the same weekend the Mister had his bachelor party, and he was going out of town. Since most of our friends are married couples, us girls going out of town too wasn't really an option because people would have to arrange sitters. Baby sitters in a few cases, but in our case dog sitters.

So, a plan was hatched to get an early dinner and then head to a local dueling piano bar. We got a nice booth reserved for our group and were ready to let loose! If you've never been to a dueling piano bar, you should definitely go. They are hilarious and a great place if you have a mixed crowd of drinkers and non-drinkers because everyone has fun. I've been here with the Mister and he enjoyed himself even though he doesn't drink at all and normally hates going to bars because they're "boring." In this case, my friend Ashley was our DD - and 3 months pregnant - so she wasn't drinking at all, but still had a great time.

Our beloved DD is in the center. (Okay, I need to digress for a moment to rant about my Nikon Coolpix. WHAT IS THE POINT OF HAVING A "PARTY" MODE IF YOU CAN'T TAKE A CLEAR PICTURE WITH IT?!?!?! This camera blows and it's only 1 year old. You can never take a clear picture unless you use the auto mode. So you pay all this money to get all the bells and whistles and they don't even work? Thank god the Mister bought me a new camera for my birthday. But I let him take it for his bachelor party so I had no choice but to use the crappy Nikon.)

My friend Olivia brought glow sticks that we made into bracelets and necklaces. I had no idea how bright they were until I got called up on stage to be serenaded / publicly humiliated.

That's right, I got called up on stage. I kinda knew it was going to happen when I agreed to have my bachelorette party here. My camera had died by that point so I don't have any pictures. But my FSIL got it on video. Yeah, you're not seeing that. Let's just say that I was given a beer bottle to demonstrate some of the song's lyrics. It was a crowd pleaser.

We left around 12:30 and I was in bed by 1:30. Just my speed. As a parting gift, here is the one clear picture I have of myself at my bachelorette party. Yes, they made we wear a veil and sash, despite the fact that I made it clear I did not want any of that. Sigh. The things you do for your friends.

Weather! And a Question

2010-09-23T07:40:00.000-07:00

When I woke up this morning and turned on my computer, the first thing I wanted to do was check Weather.com because today is the first day the 10 day forecast is available for our wedding date! (I know our countdown says 9 days. In terms of actual days of the week, it's 10 days away counting today, in terms of actual hours to our wedding, it will be exactly 9 days away at 4:30 this afternoon). I was delighted when I pulled up the forecast and it read:

		High / Low (°)	Precip. %
Today Sep 23	Sunny	77.0°/48.0°	0 %
Fri Sep 24	Sunny	84.0°/52.0°	0 %
Sat Sep 25	Sunny	87.0°/53.0°	0 %
Sun Sep 26	Sunny	88.0°/55.0°	0 %
Mon Sep 27	Sunny	89.0°/56.0°	0 %
Tue Sep 28	Sunny	86.0°/54.0°	0 %
Wed Sep 29	Mostly Sunny	81.0°/51.0°	0 %
Thu Sep 30	Mostly Sunny	75.0°/50.0°	10 %
Fri Oct 01	Sunny	76.0°/49.0°	0 %
Sat Oct 02	Sunny	76.0°/50.0°	0 %

We're getting a heat wave but it will be gone by the time our wedding rolls around. The forecast couldn't be any more perfect. It's times like this that I love living in Southern California.

So the question for you all is, with an overnight low of 50 degrees, do you think we should rent heat lamps? I'm thinking that with this forecast the temperatures throughout the wedding will start in the low 70s and heading down to the low to mid 60s around 10 p.m. I'm thinking this may be warm enough that heat lamps aren't needed, but I run warm. Anyone who gets chilly will put on a jacket or sweater anyway, right? Advice please!

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

2010-09-21T07:39:00.000-07:00

Throughout most of the wedding planning, our friends and family have been very vocal about how they are more than willing to help. And now that the wedding is so close, I feel like people are asking me non-stop how they can help. It's a beautiful thing.

But I'm having a hard time finding things for other people to do. I go through my list and all I see is stuff that cannot be delegated, or stuff that is so simple that delegating the task isn't worth it. This weekend, I learned my lesson. On Saturday, my Mom called and asked what we were doing and if she and her boyfriend could come up and help us out. I said yes, and they ended up assembling the two patio furniture sets we bought for our lounge area. It only took the two of them an hour and a half to put everything together, but that's a hour and a half that the Mister and I can now use to do other things.

On Sunday, the Mister's Dad called and asked if there was any way he could help. The Mister said he could come help stain the bar we built (have I told you about that???) if he wanted but it wouldn't take too long so he didn't have to come over. Well, he did come over and he ended up working on the bar for several hours.

So when my sister called me on Monday and asked if there was anything she could do, I knew that I could find something for her but I just had to think about it. So now my sister is in charge of finding nail polish and making our mani/pedi appointments for the day before the wedding. Again, another little thing that I could do myself and it wouldn't take too much time, but all those little things that don't take too much time add up to a bunch of little things that take a lot of time.

Delegating this task to my sister makes me proud of myself because the type A control freak in the back of my mind says but what if you don't like the nail polish she picks? What if there's one she doesn't buy that you would have liked more? But I just laugh at that voice and remind myself IT'S JUST NAIL POLISH!!! If I can keep that control freak in me in check it will go a long way in terms of preserving my sanity and letting me relax and be present on my wedding day, and I think I'm finally learning how to do it. Yay me!

Have you had a hard time delegating your wedding tasks? How have you learned to let go?

I'm Still Alive

2010-09-17T16:36:00.000-07:00

I've been a bad, bad blogger. We are two weeks away from the big day, and somehow blogging is just not that high on my priority list. Back in the day, every week I'd have one or two new things or ideas to share, and I'd get all excited to blog about them. Now, there are about 50 different things that I could be blogging about and it's just too much. I don't know where to start, so I just don't start.

But rest assured, I'm still alive and kicking, and still getting married. The Mister and I are running around like chickens with our heads cut off on the weekends getting shit done, and this weekend will be no different. Though to be honest, I'd say that we are busy but not overwhelmed. I still feel like we can get everything done that needs to get done without having to pull all nighters or anything ridiculous like that. Maybe my feelings on the subject will change come Monday. We'll see.

Have you found it tougher to blog as the wedding gets closer?

At Last!

2010-09-07T21:11:00.000-07:00

Remember when I blogged about our engagement session? No. That's okay because it was back in MAY!!! That's right. May 14th, to be precise. And finally, FINALLY, we have all of our engagement photos!!! I've been waiting for these bad boys for so long, and I love them. Our photographer apologized up and down for taking so long to get them to us; though to be fair, we had talked with her back in July and told her we weren't in a rush and that she should take her time with them. She's still somewhat of a newbie photographer and has some serious talent, so lots of people (like us) booked her while she was still pricing herself below market to build her portfolio. As a result, she is a busy, busy lady.

We did our shoot in the mountains, not too far from where we will be getting married. We weren't into using props or making them super stylized. We just wanted beautiful photographs of us...and our dogs. They are our babies, after all.

So I'll leave you with a taste of the yumminess that is our engagement photos. Me, the Mister, Max (little dog), and Chloe (big dog).

(photo by Julie Wilson)

Makeup Trial, or Getting Beautified for my 30th Birthday Party

2010-09-02T20:39:00.000-07:00

This close to the wedding, I try to kill two birds with one stone whenever I can. So last Friday (a.k.a. my 30th birthday) I figured since I would be getting all dolled up for the party the Mister was throwing me that evening I might as well have my makeup trial that afternoon.

I'm doing my own makeup on the big day, but decided to schedule a makeover at Sephora so I could have someone show me what I need to do to achieve the look I want and to figure out what products work for me. I showed my makeup artist some inspiration photos (including this one and this one and this one and this one...and about 5 others. I went overboard.) and she got to work.

Here's the canvas she was working with. This picture is horrendous, so I feel the need to explain how I got to look so fugly. My skin gets really red when I'm hot. It was 100 degrees outside and I had been at an outdoor mall in a maxi dress for 3 hours. I got a facial that morning and the esthetician managed to get product in my hair, so the one day I actually blow dried my hair I ended up having to pull it back into a ponytail. Plus, I stupidly decided to try jeans on just before my trial, so I was a sweaty ass mess by the time I got to Sephora. Oh, and I had a mojito at lunch (does anyone else get hot sometimes when they drink alcohol? No, just me? Okay then. Moving on.)

You ready to see the end product? We took this picture of me in our backyard right after I got back home from my trial, so my makeup was still nice and fresh. I took the picture outside because we're having an outside wedding and it's important the sunlight doesn't wash me out.

Not bad, eh? I wanted a natural look that made my eyes the focus, and I think I got what I asked for. I may tweak the eye makeup a little to make them a little more dramatic. I actually had on really thick black eyeliner but you can't tell because I have deep set eyes and they're hooded.* In person, I was concerned that the bronzer was too much, but I think it photographs really well. I had the makeup artist write down everything she used on me so I can go back and buy what I decide I want for the final look. I ended up buying the foundation she used on me (Makeup Forever HD Foundation in #117) but nothing else. I like the lips, but may play with some more berry colors before I make my final decision.

Unfortunately, I don't have any close ups of my face from later on in the evening. I was too busy having fun at my birthday party! But the makeup held up really well (except for the lipstick, of course). All in all, I am very pleased with how it turned out and think I can achieve this look (or something close to it) on my own. What do you think?

*hooded eyes are also called bedroom eyes, but I have yet to find a way to make my eyes look sexy. Squinty, yes...I've got that one down. Sexy...not so much.

Sometimes I Surprise Myself!

2010-08-30T20:43:00.000-07:00

I am no DIY queen. But the idea of being a DIY queen is alluring, and every once in a while things fall into place just right and it's like the universe is telling me to get crafty. This happened recently when the Mister and I were working on our centerpieces. Our original intention was to pretty much copy this centerpiece.

(From The Knot)

But I soon discovered that large succulents can easily run $5+ a piece, which adds up to more money than I want to spend on something that will get thrown away. So long story short, I decided to make the ubiquitous tissue paper flowers instead.

(photo from Martha Stewart, via Elizabeth Anne Designs)

I followed Martha's tutorial, which was my first mistake. It leaves a lot to the imagination, which is fine if you are innately crafty. But as we know, I am not. So, my first "flower" came out looking like this

What Martha's tutorial failed to tell me was to make the accordion folds using the short side of the paper. I folded the paper lengthwise, which resulted in approximately 5 folds and this deformed excuse for a flower.

Realizing my mistake, I gave it a second go around and produced this lovely

I made one more and then did a mock up of our centerpieces.

Whaddaya think? Hope you like it because I bought a ton of ivory tissue paper this afternoon from The Container Store! I'm thinking maybe we'll do three flowers and scale back a little on the river rock. I'm also wondering if maybe I should put some stuff inside the lantern around the candle too, but am unsure. I think it will look better, but since we plan on lighting the candles I don't want hot wax to ignite flower petals or whatever we decide to put in there. Most likely we won't end up putting anything inside the lanterns, though, because the wedding is a month away and I have enough on my plate!

It's crunch time!

2010-08-26T06:54:00.000-07:00

We've accomplished so many wedding to-dos over the past week that I've barely had time to blog about them! I thought about writing separate posts for each of these items, but that's a lot of work. So here's a run-down of all the major things we've accomplished over the past week.

We bought the Mister's ring on Saturday. Our jeweler called us late last week to say that they had gotten some samples in from the manufacturer of the rings the Mister was considering so we swung by to check them out. They had samples of two out of the three rings we were debating over. Unfortunately, the one I liked the most was the one that was missing. But as it turns out, the ring I hated before actually is really nice in person! I liked it way more than the other ring we were considering that they had a sample of. So we bought the ring I originally hated! Honestly, I really do like it now. In case you forgot, here's what it looks like.

After we left the jewelers, we realized that just a couple of doors down is a really well known (and really delicious) bakery that would be the perfect place to order the cakes for our dessert buffet. I originally thought I would bake all of the desserts myself, but quickly realized that baking four different flavored cakes and frostings from scratch was way more work than I wanted to undertake the day before our wedding. I tried asking friends and family to help and the response was "ummmm, how 'bout I buy you a cake instead!" So we scrapped the friendors route and decided we will be buying the cakes and baking the cookies and brownies and other desserts for the buffet, because cookies and brownies are way easy. So we set up a cake tasting for this coming Sunday. I am really looking forward to it!

While we were out and about on Saturday, we browsed around some nurseries and garden centers for succulents for our centerpieces. Long story short - large succulents are mad expensive. Realizing we didn't want to drop that kind of coin for plants that would most likely get thrown away after the reception, I considered my options and decided to make tissue paper flowers instead. No, they're not as nice as real flowers, but they're cheap and can be made ahead and don't wilt. My adventures with tissue paper flowers deserves a post of its own, because the initial results were comical, to say the least.

We also bought two sets of patio furniture for the lounge area we want to set up near the dance floor at our venue. We went with this set from Wal-Mart (I know, I know...but it was affordable and goes with our colors and had free shipping).

(The Delahey 4 piece conversation set. Picture from walmart.com)

Yesterday, we checked a biggie off of our to-do list: we got our marriage license! A good blogger would have pictures of this event, but seriously, standing in a crowded waiting room at the County Recorder's office doesn't exactly make me think "oh, I need a picture!"

I also scheduled a makeup trial for Friday afternoon. I'm doing my own makeup, so I'm just going to bring my inspiration photos into Sephora so they can help me figure out what products I need and show me how to execute the look. I took the day off from work on Friday because...

IT'S MY 30TH BIRTHDAY!!!

I'm getting my makeup did just in time for the party the Mister is throwing for me Friday night. Then Saturday morning we're heading up to Vegas to hang out with some friends of ours who live there. So with that, I'll check back in with y'all on Monday, a year older and hopefully a little more relaxed.

What would you do . . .

2010-08-19T21:34:00.000-07:00

for ceremony decorations? Right now, we have none planned. Our venue is outdoors and very pretty on it's own, so I have no problem with having minimal decorations. But for some reason I'm having a hard time getting passed the idea of having *no* ceremony decorations at all.

Here's a picture of the aisle. Pay no attention to the white fabric. It won't be there when we get married because we didn't want to pay $475 for the tacky "decorations package" that consisted of fake flowers and some tulle.

(personal photo)

See how I'm pointing to something in the picture? I have no idea what I was actually pointing at, but for the purposes of this post let's say I was pointing at the hooks on the outside of each post.

(personal photo)

So, if I were to do some ceremony decorations, the obvious thing to do would be to hang something from these hooks. I could do the ubiquitous tissue paper pomadors, but the Mister isn't a huge fan and I am hit or miss with them. When they're done really well, I think they look great. But I'm not going to fool myself into thinking that I'm capable of turning out pomadors as awesome as Heather's. Plus, the styrofoam balls at Michaels' ain't cheap, and I'd be pissed if I spend a ton of money (and time!) on something that I don't end up liking that much.

(image by Julie Wilson)

Then I saw this picture of the "altar" at our venue on our photographer's website and thought about maybe putting some large potted plants on the steps. I'd have to buy them right before the wedding because I have a black thumb. And I don't have freaking tree trunks to put them on, nor do I know where I would go to get tree trunks.

So I turn to you. What would you do if you were in my place? Right now I'm leaning toward doing nothing because I'm 6 weeks out, have enough to do already, and am so over all things wedding. This is one of those situations where I have to assess the time/effort/money/stress involved in doing ceremony decorations and compare it to what kind of benefit I think I'll get from it all. I want a pretty wedding, though, and fear that my laziness/over-it-ness may be clouding my judgment. So it's your job to smack some sense into me if I need it, m'kay?

And just in case that last paragraph didn't hint enough at the answer I want to hear, here's some pictures of a lovely wedding at my venue that was blogged on Green Wedding Shoes where there were no ceremony decorations in sight!

(photos by Hugh Forte, via Green Wedding Shoes)

Hairy Decisions

2010-08-17T21:14:00.000-07:00

I've talked about my updo inspiration before, but I've got another hair issue I've got to figure out: hair color. My hair is naturally a medium to dark blonde and I'm not a fan. Over the past three years I've gone from super light blonde to a dark reddish brown, and currently am au naturel with partial light blonde highlights. As I have been growing my hair out, I haven't been to the hairdresser in a while so my roots are beyond ridiculous. I'm thinking about going in for my final cut and color before the wedding at the end of this month or the beginning of September and I am on the hunt for some hair color inspiration. I know I want to stay blonde, and don't want anything that is too much of a change. But the question is whether I want to stick with the highlights or maybe do some allover color (with or without highlights for dimension???) because I'll admit it - I'm getting gray hairs - and the highlights alone don't really cover them.

So I turned to my trusty friend Google, and my newer friend Bing, in search of some inspiration. The first photo that struck me was one of the newly minted blonde Miranda Kerr. She recently went blonde and looks fab. I love her color because it is not one-dimensional. Since she has a mix of medium and light blonde, much like I have right now, I think I could pull this look off, though I worry that it might not be as flattering on my ultra fair skin. Though now that I look closer at her skin, I'm loving her makeup look too!

(Via MSN)

Then there is my longtime girl crush, Gwenyth Paltrow. I love her, even if she comes off as cold and snooty sometimes. She has rocked the ultra light buttery blonde hair forever and in my opinion few celebrities can work it quite like she can (except for maybe Reese Witherspoon). I love an ultra light blonde who doesn't look like a bimbo!

(Via Celeb Hairstyle Blog)

Then I saw this image of Uma Thurman and I died. Since I'm doing an updo for my wedding this image really hit me. I would be on cloud nine if my hair looked exactly like this on my wedding day. I guess Uma is also working the non-bimbo light blonde angle. As a side note, I had a professor in college who was good friends with the Thurmans and would tell stories about going on vacation with Uma and her family when she was a kid!

(Image from Beauty Riot)

Or I could take it in another direction and go more toward the "brond" look. You know "brond." It's hair that you can't quite tell if its brown or if it's blonde. Jennifer Aniston and Gisele Bundchen are the quintessential bronds.

(Via)

Decisions, decisions! I love the brond look, but I'm not sure I have the skin tone for it. Jen and Gisele both have that golden tan going on, and let's just say that I bought some new foundation this weekend and my shade was "Fair 0" - the absolute lightest shade Smashbox makes. When I was a kid, my hair was close to the color Gwyneth and Uma have, so maybe that would work for me. But there's something about Miranda Kerr's hair in that picture! Ugg, I can't decide. At least I have some time to make up my mind.

The Ring's The Thing

2010-08-16T09:22:00.000-07:00

After two weeks apart, I've finally been reunited with my engagement ring!!! Saturday morning around 10:30 I got a call from our jeweler that my wedding band was done and that I could come pick it up whenever I wanted. Naturally, we booked it to Claremont Village so I could have my engagement ring back on my finger for our shower later that afternoon.

The Diamond Center did a great job. They are a family owned company that has been in business for 40+ years and they make all of their custom jewelry on site. I found them online and they had great reviews. I was also influenced by the fact that they are located in a primo spot in Claremont Village and have been for years. Claremont Village definitely caters to a more upscale market and you can't survive there as a business without having good work. And after visiting them, I know the secret to their success: the best customer service I have ever experienced in my life.

So, without further ado, my wedding band and e-ring, together at last.

(personal photo)

While we were there, we looked through their catalog for men's rings. The Mister is actually really particular about what he's looking for, and we've narrowed it down to three contenders. All of the rings are from Unique Settings of New York.

The M365. I don't particularly care for this one, but the Mister likes it. I think it's cool looking as an accessory, but it just doesn't seem like a wedding ring to me.

The M442. The finish on this one looks a little funky, but you can customize the finishes you want, so he'd probably get a brushed/satin finish in the middle with a higher shine finish on the outer edges.

The M1217. This one is my favorite. We'd also get it in a satin/brushed finish instead of the high shine finish.

So, what do you think? Which ring do you like best for the Mister?

Bring on the pretty!

2010-08-12T21:09:00.000-07:00

Remember how I said in my last post that the reason why we went up to the mountains last weekend was to meet with our florist? Yeah, so I figured you might want to know what flowers we decided on!

Unlike many brides, I do not have strong opinions about our wedding flowers. I think that all flowers are pretty and you really can't go wrong. So when we showed up to our meeting with the florist and she asked me what kind of flowers I was thinking of for our wedding, I didn't really know what to say. Luckily, I had printed my flower inspiration board and she was able to identify some of the flowers in the pictures and lead me in the right direction. She had these handy little booklets that we could flip through and just tell her when we saw something that piqued our interest.

In the end, we decided that the main flowers we'll be using are white/ivory dahlias and roses

Though she may throw in some pale peach or lavender dahlias if she thinks they look good. Green hypericum berries will give a pop of color, along with lemon leaves at the base of the bouquet and some small aster flowers.

I'm going to be honest. I left the meeting feeling a little uneasy about my flower selections. But after sitting with it for a little bit I'm good now. I think that the uneasiness stemmed from the fact that I don't have a specific vision for our flowers, so I felt like I was just picking random flowers I thought were pretty from the booklets without any regard as to how they would look together. But then I realized 1) our florist is a professional and knows how to make pretty flower arrangements; and 2) flowers are pretty, and one pretty flower put with some other pretty flowers, equals a pretty flower arrangement. In other words, it's not rocket science and I needed to chillax. So I did. And now I'm just happy that I'll have pretty flowers on my wedding day and that I don't have to arrange them myself.

So now the only floral-ish item left on my to do list is to find succulents for our centerpieces. I'm cool with doing the succulents myself. I can buy them way in advance, ignore them for weeks and they'll still be alive and kicking. Now, that's my kind of plant.

Gratuitous Venue Pictures

2010-08-11T07:47:00.000-07:00

On Sunday the Mister and I took a trip up the mountains to meet with our florist and finalize our flower choices (more on that later) and while we were up there we swung by our wedding venue for the last time. We have a floor plan with measurements of our venue at home, but we wanted to see it in person again to figure out how we want to lay things out. We also timed how long it takes to walk down the aisle so we can figure out how long the processional needs to be (oh the joys of iTunes weddings!). Of course, I took a bajillion photos while we were there so we won't forget what it looks like.

This is the "entrance" if you will to our venue. I'm standing in a small parking area looking toward the venue. The guests will proceed down the staircase at the center of the picture. You can kind of see on the right edge of the picture another walkway. That takes you straight to the second story of the lodge.

A little landing area on the way down the stairs that I think is adorable. It looks like this is where the smokers will go, though I don't think we have any real smokers coming to our wedding.

This is the top level of the three level deck. The stairway we were just coming down is at the top right of the picture. We can fit 6-8 tables up here comfortably.

This is on the second level of the deck. That's the sweetheart table on the right and the gazebo is where we will put our dessert buffet. I'll spare you the other pictures of the second level that just show empty tables. We can fit 4 or so tables on this level comfortably.

This is the lower level, which obviously fits only 2 tables comfortably. We're probably not going to put any tables there and instead set up the bar and card/gift/guest book tables. That's the ceremony area off in the background.

A view of the three levels from the bottom (aka the dance floor). We're going to string white Christmas lights through the arbor so the area has a nice glow at night.

The dance floor, with the gorgeous little walkway over the creek.

A better picture of the creek, bridge and swing!

The back of the lodge taken from the dance floor. I think we're going to set up patio furniture as a lounge area where the table and chairs are set up in the foreground. I'll be coming out through the door you see to start my walk down the aisle.

The ceremony area taken from the dance floor. I wish I had gotten a better close up picture of the alter area, but maintenance was there re-staining the wood. The creek you saw above runs along the left of this picture so if you are sitting in those chairs along the far left you are essentially sitting creekside. It forms a small pond that is right behind the alter area.

Check!

2010-08-09T19:28:00.000-07:00

The Knot's checklist is my b*tch. Oh yes, people. I have that crazy ass list on lock down. For the month of August, there are only 6 items remaining on the list. Of course, I went through it and got rid of all the stuff that doesn't apply to our wedding or that's duplicative, which got rid of probably 50% of all of the items, so that helps. Here's what I have to conquer in the month of August.

Choose and reserve all tables, chairs and any other wedding rentals you'll need for the reception (unless the caterer or site is taking care of it).

This is almost done. The only rentals we have to secure are heat lamps and a sound system, both of which we can rent through our venue and they told us that since they only do one wedding at a time is no big deal if we wait until the last minute to rent them. We might need to rent some extra heat lamps from another place though, because our venue only has five.

Shop for and purchase wedding bands.

Again, almost done. Mine is purchased, the Mister's is not. We've been looking for him, but turns out he's actually really particular about the style of ring he wants...he just can't seem to find it.

Order enough liquor, wine and/or champagne to stock the reception bar (if it's not included in the catering contract.)

This item is actually way overdue, which seems crazy to me. Why would I purchase this stuff before I have a close to final headcount???

Brides: Have your first wedding dress fitting

This will be done TOMORROW!!!

Set aside some time to write thank you notes for gifts received at the bridal shower.

Our co-ed shower is this coming weekend!!!

Brides: Attend final wedding gown fitting

Wait, what? This seems really early to me. But I'm hoping my first fitting will be my final fitting since my dress already fits me really well and doesn't even need to be hemmed. I think all I'll need is a bustle. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that I can check this one off tomorrow too.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

2010-08-08T07:50:00.000-07:00

I haven't worn my engagement ring for over a week now. Because the band on my engagement ring is offset, we are getting my wedding band custom made so they fit together perfectly. I dropped my e-ring off with our jeweler two Fridays ago and they told me my wedding band would be ready in 3 weeks and that they'd give me back my e-ring as soon as they didn't need it anymore. So, it is entirely possible that I won't have my e-ring back for two more weeks.

It's funny how this time apart from my e-ring makes me appreciate it all the more. I love my e-ring, but it was not love at first sight. As I've told the Mister, the ring is beautiful but if I had been the one who picked out my e-ring I probably would not have picked the one I have. What makes me love my e-ring is the fact that the Mister picked it out for me after much thought and deliberation. It reflects his style as much as it reflects mine. I love that he bought the ring because he felt it was the right one, even though his sister and the sales girl at the jewelry store told him not to buy it. For all these reasons, I could never see myself "upgrading" my ring down the line when we have more money, or trading it in for a different style. I love my e-ring because it's the ring he gave me as a sign of his commitment to me, and any other ring just wouldn't have the same meaning behind it.

I miss my ring. I want it back.

It's that time of year again

2010-07-31T07:48:00.000-07:00

(Source)

It's wildfire season here in California. You may have heard about a few that are raging right now in the high desert north of Los Angeles. We're getting married smack dab in the middle of wildfire season in an area that's most prone to uncontrollable wildfires - the mountains. I never even thought about this when we were booking our venue. We're having an unusually mild summer this year, which normally translates into less wildfires. I've been keeping my fingers crossed that we'd stay wildfire free this year, but that wish has obviously not been granted. So now, on top of all the other things I have to think about over the next two months, I'll have wildfires in the back of my mind too. I know that statistically the chances of my venue burning down or a fire impeding our ability to get up to the mountains are slim, but that's not the only concern. The smoke and ash from wildfires in nearby areas could put a serious hamper on our outdoor ceremony and reception.

My fear is completely based in reality. The particular area of the mountains where we are getting married was hit with a massive wildfire back in 2003. This fire actually came down the mountains and was stopped just a few blocks from my FILs house.

Sigh.

Do you have any fears about disasters impacting your wedding?

Guestbook ingenuity

2010-07-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

While eating lunch at our favorite local Mexican joint Sunday afternoon, the Mister and I were discussing our guestbook troubles. A while back we had settled on doing a Quaker marriage certificate instead of a traditional guestbook. We loved the idea of having our vows to each other written out and then having our guests signing the certificate and promising to support our union. But when push came to shove we were having trouble agreeing on the design and just weren't loving anything that we came up with. The plan was to print the certificate poster sized through Zazzle and hang it in our house, but if we don't love the design we won't hang it up, and it will just collect dust and waste precious space. So. We were both kinda over the Quaker marriage certificate idea.

The conversation moved on to our ceremony script. I just started drafting it this past week (more on that in another post) and we were discussing what we wanted to put it in for the ceremony so the officiant isn't just reading off of loose leaf paper. We were discussing moleskines and leather journals, when all of a sudden the Mister got really excited and said he knew what to do about our guestbook. Whatever we print out our ceremony script in will double as a guestbook, so once the ceremony is over we can sign it and then our guests can sign it. It encompasses everything we love about the Quaker marriage certificate without having to worry about aesthetics.

But this is where it gets good. I told the Mister I loved it and was 100% on board and he gave this huge sigh of relief. He was relieved not because he was afraid I wouldn't like the idea, but because he was afraid that I was going to say that I'd seen something like it before on the blogs and that it was a big trend right now. Kinda like I did with his family photos as decorations idea. When I confirmed that I had not seen anything like it before on the blogs and that it's not the hot trend right now, he yelled "Blog it! Blog it like you've never blogged before!"

So here it is. Just for you, honey.

Card box conundrum

2010-07-24T07:55:00.000-07:00

Early into our engagement, the Mister's parents bought us this lovely lil chest to use as a card box. They just happened to see it when they were out shopping at Home Goods, it was cheap, and they thought we would like it. We thought it was perfect for our rustic outdoorsy wedding, and I'm all about accepting freebies! So it has been sitting on a ledge along our stairwell for a good year now, and I'm thinking that after the wedding we'll use it to store wedding keepsakes like the invitation we mailed to ourselves, our RSVPs, etc.

So what's the conundrum?

Security. When they gave this to us, the Mister's Mom made a comment about how the only problem with it was that anyone could just reach in and take the cards. We've discussed various ways to make it more secure. The Mister and I decided a while back on just getting some cardboard and cutting a slit in it and fastening it over the opening. Easy peasy.

So last night I took the chest off the ledge and decided to start making this bad boy more secure. I quickly realized that our idea was not going to work. The base of the chest is not deep enough, so when people put a card in the slot it will not fall flat onto the bottom of the chest. This lead to the following conversation:

Me: I'm thinking we don't need to do anything to the card box. How concerned are you about people stealing cards?

Mr.: I wasn't concerned until you told me you were concerned.

Me: I wasn't concerned until your Mom told me she was concerned.

[crickets]

In all fairness, the Mister's mom isn't concerned about our guests. Her thinking was that it's the other people - wait staff and others - who we don't know and can't trust. But at this stage in the game, we've minimized our vendors so that the only people who will be there who aren't guests are our photographers (who we love and trust not to be thieves) and a couple of waiters. We both realize that the most we can do is make it harder for someone to steal cards; we can't prevent it entirely. If someone really wants to steal, they will. So all of this makes me think that modifying the chest is completely unnecessary.

BUT (and this is a big but) at the past two weddings I've attended things have been stolen!!! At the Mister's sister's wedding back in April, our friend was wearing a kick ass pair of Dior sunglasses that mysteriously disappeared at some point during the event. Then, at that same friend's wedding earlier this month someone stole the hand-painted wooden "wedding" signs they made to direct people to the reception location! Rather, someone stole one and left the other one broken into pieces.

So, this makes me turn to you, oh mighty blogosphere, for some advice. What would you do? Make the card box more secure or leave it as is?

Firsts and Finisheds

2010-07-21T13:42:00.000-07:00

Sorry I've been posting so little. Work has been cuh-razy the past two weeks, and when you add wedding tasks and attempting to have a social life into the mix it doesn't leave you with much time for blogging. So here I am, eating my lunch at my desk, squeaking in a blog post.

As I mentioned in my previous post, we mailed out our invitations this past Friday, and our first RSVPs have started to roll in!

Here's the proof! We have 6 confirmed attendees woot woot! Please note the care with which I redacted the sensivite information. :)

Yesterday, our first wedding gift arrived! The Mister found it on our doorstep when he got home from work around 5:45 p.m., and called me right away to tell me and we decided that he would wait for me to get home to open it. I had to attend a public meeting for one of our clients that started at 6 p.m. and was an hour away from where we live. These meetings typically run about an hour so I thought I'd be home by 8. Well, this particular meeting ran 4 hours long and I didn't get home until 11 p.m. The Mister stayed up and waited for me to open the gift even though I told him he didn't have to wait up and could open the gift without me. Awww...

A KITCHEN AID MIXER!!! Best.first.wedding.present.ever! It was from my grandparents who live in Florida and can't make it to the wedding. Sorry for the poor picture quality. It was 11 p.m. and I wasn't about to bust out anything other than my Blackberry to take a picture.

And now, the finisheds. Well, it's really only one thing that has been finished since I last posted. I printed out our paper napkin rings and with some help from the Mister we got all of them done in 3 days! That's acutally 100 napkins, even though it looks way smaller.

I adhered to the KISS philosophy on this project. I considered more detailed napkin rings but I just didn't think it was worth the effort to do anything other than a simple paper napkin ring with our names and wedding date printed on it.

The Finished Product

2010-07-16T07:42:00.000-07:00

My prediction was right...we got our invites done a day early. Tomorrow (Saturday) was our self-imposed and completely arbitrary deadline, but we finished stuffing the envelopes last night (Thursday) and I am going to drop the invites off at the post office this morning (Friday). We will be hand delivering a few of our invites tonight since we are having a get together with a bunch of our friends at the Mister's parent's house* and I am super excited to see people's reactions. Since my sister lives with us she opened her invite last night and was giddy with excitement.

Before I get started revealing the details of our invitations, I'd like to take this moment to dedicate this post to the Mister. He loves our invites, and we were equal partners in designing, printing, assembling, and addressing all 66 of them.** He is the only person in my real life who knows about this blog and he actually reads it! So, honey, since you were so anxious for me to blog about our invitations, here is the post you've been asking for.

We did a booklet style invitation. We bought all of our paper from envelopemall.com, and would definitely recommend them to others. It's not the fanciest schmanciest website but their prices were better than any others out there and they were the only place I could find invitation backings in a wide variety of colors.

We purchased pre-drilled invitation backings in Stardream Ruby and then bought some Stardream Ruby cardstock and cut it to make the cover to our invitation. Originally we were going to use a craft punch to punch a heart in the cover that would peak through to the colored paper underneath, but that got scrapped when we realized that, despite our numerous test runs to make sure this didn't happen, you could see the text of the invitation through the cut out. Then the Mister came up with the idea of the belly band and honestly I think it looks way better than our original plan. The design on the belly band was something I did for our napkin rings and we just decided to use it on the invites too. We just used leftover vellum in Kiwi (in real life it looks much greener than in this picture) for the belly bands and affixed them with double-sided tape.

Here's a close up of the "binding" for the booklets. We bought pewter eyelets from Michael's and a tool to secure them to the invites.

The first page of the invite is a vellum overlay in Kiwi. Again, it looks much brighter in person. Since it's vellum, you can read the text of the invite through it, so I had to block out our names was and retype the text of the quote over where the Mister's name was showing through. Sorry!

Then you get to the meat of the invitation. We staggered the length of the pages so they have a tabbed look. We used Honey Script and Balham for our fonts. Both were free from dafont.com! As I mentioned before we designed everything in Microsoft Word (except for the map, that was done in PowerPoint) and printed at home using our laser printer.

For the RSVPs, we did a postcard. We bought a perforating blade for our paper cutter and used that so our guesst can just rip the postcard out from the invitation. We also cut little slits in the postcard so we could slide one of our engagement photos in for our guests to keep.

Finally, our envelopes. I knew from day one that I wanted to use kraft paper envelopes. We addressed them pretty informally, just using people's first and last names and forgetting Mr., Mrs., Miss, Ms., etc.

These invitations were time-consuming, no doubt. They've been a work in progress for months now but we took things slow so we didn't burn out and get sloppy. We love how they turned out and love even more how cheap they were. Our budget spreadsheet says we spent a grand total of $217.50, but I don't think the Mister has updated it to include the postage, which was about $72. So, we're well under our $300 budget and still have a ton of paper and stamps left over. I actually let my sister use some of the leftovers to make our Jack and Jill wedding shower invites, which are also going out in the mail soon, and will use the rest for signs and other things, I'm sure.

Well, there you have it folks! Hope you like them, 'cuz we sure do.

*It was going to be at our friends' house who live in the same neighborhood as the Mister's parents, but it was 108 DEGREES yesterday and is supposed to be just as hot today and the Mister's parents have a swimming pool. Lordy. We went from "where's summer?" to "good lord it's so hot I can't breath" overnight. But I digress.

**Note that I did not include paper cutting in this list of shared tasks. I think he cut five sheets of paper and I did the rest. Don't worry honey, I still love you! But you owe me...bwahahahaha.

One Foot Out The Door

2010-07-14T21:39:00.000-07:00

Our invitations are almost done folks! We finished assembling them this evening and all that's left to do is print the envelopes, throw on a stamp, and send these bad boys on their way. Our target is to get them in the mail by Saturday, which is totally feasible. At the rate we're moving, we may even get them in the mail Friday!

Anyway, I don't feel like doing a whole post on the invitations since we're getting close to bed time here in California (yes, I go to bed at 10 p.m.), but I'll leave you with a teaser pic!

a beautiful stack of 67 handmade, home printed, designed in Word wedding invitations.

Yes, that is my wedding checklist underneath the stack of invitations. The wedding has almost completely taken over our dining set. I fight on a daily basis to keep at least one spot free for someone (namely me) to sit and eat dinner. If I'm having a good day, I might even try for two spots. I think most of you out there less than 3 months out can probably sympathize...

Lessons Learned

2010-07-12T07:00:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't noticed, I've been M.I.A. the past week. The Mister and I flew to Colorado Thursday morning and just got back Sunday afternoon to attend our officiant's wedding. The Mister was the best man, so we got in early to help them out as much as we could. And boy did we.

The lesson I took away from this weekend was that if you want to DIY a ton of stuff in the days before your wedding, you need to make sure you've got the appropriate amount of helpers to get the job done. And you need to make sure those helpers are reliable and will actually work instead of just sitting around and treating your project time like a social hour. If you can't secure the help, you need to scale your DIY plans back or else you run the risk of burning out those helpers you do have. While I was more than happy to volunteer to work (and work hard) toward making their day beautiful, I didn't just work hard...I was worked to the bone.

Case in point: The bride had asked 8 or so ladies to help out with cleaning, wiring and trimming $1100 worth of wholesale flowers, and I'd say that 80% of that work was done by me and one other girl, and we did it in one six hour marathon session. Most of the helpers didn't even show up, and one had the balls to show up four hours into the process, do about a half hour of work, then sit around for an hour and watch us work, and then leave because she "had stuff to do." The flowers were just the tip of the iceberg. My group of friends were not supposed to help out with setting up the reception, but when we arrived at the reception site to drop off the flowers two hours before the start time, they had done NOTHING and the people who were assigned to set up were (mostly) just sitting around talking. The 9 or so of us who transported the flowers kicked into hyperdrive and got.shit.done. And thank god we did, because I honestly think that they would not have gotten it done without us.

By the time the reception rolled around, I was exhausted and not in the greatest mood. Eventually I was able to relax and enjoy myself, thanks to some yummy champagne and good tunes. But when it was all said and done, the Mister and I were lying in bed and pretty much said to each other in unison that we were NOT going to do this to our friends when it's time for our wedding. Period, end of story. I'd rather let details and best laid plans fall to the wayside than put that kind of pressure and stress on our friends. It's just not worth it.

You Get It, Right???

2010-07-03T08:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we hit the 3 month mark for our wedding, and it was all kinds of stressful. I'm not sure if the stress had anything to do with the fact that we are 3 months away from our wedding or not, though. Maybe it played a part subconsciously, but the truth of the matter is that I had an epiphany: no one in my real life "gets" the wedding we are planning. I'm at the age where my friends are getting married left and right and no one is deviating from the Wedding Formula but me. You know the formula - it starts with one bride who knows exactly what she wants her wedding to be and one disinterested (or interested but afraid to speak up) groom. You mix up a bunch of "new" and "fresh" ideas and details from Martha Stewart/In Style/Real Simple/The Knot that the bride has decided she must have, and then spread those over the top of the traditional wedding format - ceremony, pictures, reception grand entrance, first dances, toasts, dinner, garter toss, bouquet toss, dancing, cake cutting, grand exit. It's like cheese and crackers. The traditional wedding format is your basic Ritz cracker. You can change up what cheese you put on top, but in the end it's still just a Ritz with cheese. But for our wedding, we're forgoing the Ritz and the people in my life just don't seem to understand it.

This epiphany came as I was thinking back to a conversation I had about a month ago with one of my newly engaged friends. She had just shown me her dress online and then the topic of garters came up. I said I wasn't going to wear a garter and she just had this look of disbelief on her face. She tried to persuade me by saying "but you can get a blue one and then it can be your something blue" to which I responded, oh, I'm not doing that either, and her look of disbelief grew into a look of horror. Looking back on this conversation then lead me to remembering all the times we've met some resistance to our tradition-bucking ways or heard a tinge of disappointment in someone's voice when we tell them that things aren't going to be as they expected.*

Then I started browsing the email I received the other day from a friend who is getting married in a week and realized how much effort she has put into all the details for their wedding. There will be gift bags awaiting us at our hotel, there will be a basket of flip flops for dancing, there will be bubbles for the exit from the church and sparklers for the exit from the reception, there will be framed family photos adorning the guest book table and, and, and.

The result of all of this is that I ended up feeling like a slacker bride and questioning whether deviating from the Wedding Formula will be worth it in the end. As strong and independent as I am, people's opinions do matter to me. I normally won't change my decisions because of those opinions, but it still pains me to know that people don't like or understand what I am doing, and causes me to second guess myself. Would it kill me to do a damn bouquet toss and garter toss? No. Nor would it kill me include any of the other ingredients in the Wedding Formula that we've omitted. But it's not what I want. And I'm already including so many ingredients of the Wedding Formula in our wedding that I could do without simply because the Mister wants them or omitting them is not worth the hurt it would cause (and I'm 100% okay with that). If I added back in all the things that we've omitted because they don't matter to us and just blindly follow the Wedding Formula, I would feel like our wedding is a performance for our guests instead of a deeply personal celebration of our relationship and commitment to each other.

Long story long, I'm struggling with fear that our guests are not going to understand our wedding and the decisions we've made to carefully craft it to be a true reflection of who we are. Instead they'll just see a lazy bride who didn't want to spend the time or energy to do the things she's supposed to do. Or worse, a bride who just doesn't care. I really wish I had someone in my real life (other than the Mister, of course) who got it. But I don't, so I turn to the blogs. So thanks for being there.

*Though, I'd like to clarify that by and large our families have been very supportive of our decisions. I'm not trying to paint a desolate picture here. It's more like a lot of little things adding up. Plus, for the most part they get over the disappointment when they realize they like what we've chosen to do instead. It's just that initial resistance/disappointment to not following the Wedding Formula.

Two Brides, Two Very Different Approaches

2010-06-28T12:47:00.000-07:00

As some of you may recall, the Mister's sister got married at the beginning of April, and we have another wedding coming up in two weekends where the Mister will be serving as the best man. We were heavily involved in getting everything set up for his sister's wedding, and we will also be doing this for the wedding coming up. But that is where the similarities end.

For his sister's wedding, she gave a list of things that need to be done to her informal "Day of Coordinator" (a.k.a. the Matron of Honor's husband) and that's it. Word spread around that help was needed in getting everything ready and people showed up, asked him how they could help, and went to work. Everything got done on time and we were no worse for the wear. Okay, I was a little worse for the wear - I changed into flats before the ceremony even started. There were a few occasions where he couldn't be found and people had questions for him, or people wanted to help but didn't really know what to do, or her instruction weren't clear so we had to wing it. But for the most part I'd say things went off without a hitch, and the Bride was certainly happy with how everything turned out.

On the other hand, I got an email the other day from the Bride for the wedding we will be attending in Colorado in two weekends. It was a detailed timeline of events and tasks starting the Thursday before the wedding and going straight through to the day after the wedding. I know exactly what is needed of me, when it needs to be done, and who will be helping me with it. Based on this timeline, I can plan ahead a little better. For example, I know that I am responsible for transporting all of the flower arrangements and linens from our hotel to the reception space after the ceremony (there's a 3 hour gap between the ceremony and reception) so I might want to change outfits to avoid getting dirty/sweaty in my nice new gettup.

I've yet to decide which approach I think is better for our wedding. From the perspective of a helper, I kind of like the more detailed approach better. But I don't think it's necessary for our wedding because we have a full 24 hours to get everything ready (we check into the cabin at 4 p.m. on Friday and the wedding starts at 4:30 on Saturday). Maybe a hybrid approach will work - assign tasks to specific people but not necessarily time frames for when it has to be done.

What kind of approach to organizing your helpers are you taking (if you're taking one at all!)?

It's funny how the universe works

2010-06-27T07:17:00.000-07:00

Thanks ladies for all your words of encouragement about getting up the gumption to just ask my Aunt about doing my hair for the wedding. Yesterday I went shopping with my Mom and asked her if she could delicately ask my Aunt about doing our hair. Later in the evening I got a call from my Mom saying that she called my Aunt under the guise of confirming her travel plans for the wedding and my Aunt actually brought the hair issue up. Apparently, she has been wanting to volunteer to do our hair but was afraid that I would feel like I couldn't say no! Can you tell we're related?

The icing on the cake is that my Aunt's best friend/business partner really wants to come out to California with her but didn't want to just up and invite himself to the wedding. My Aunt mentioned that he's a makeup artist and would love to do our makeup for the wedding. So my Mom invited him to the wedding. (Side Note: it's not a big deal that she invited him. Remember how we gave out parents an allotment of people they could invite to the wedding? No? That's okay, I forgive you.)

So now I leave you with some gratuitous hair and makeup inspiration photos.

(Kristen Bell via People)

(Mrs. Cowboy Boot via Weddingbee)

(Jessica Biel from here)

Asking is the hardest part

2010-06-24T18:16:00.000-07:00

One of the items looming on my to-do list for quite some time now has been to figure out who is going to do hair and makeup for the wedding. I've toyed with the idea of doing my own makeup, but there's no way in hell I'm doing my own hair. It's far too difficult to deal with to take on that stress all by myself on my wedding day. I've emailed dozens of hair and makeup artists in my area and received quotes that have been pretty consistent across the board - consistently WAY too expensive (remind me why I live near L.A. again???). I found a couple of places that are affordable, but their portfolio's are less than stellar, in my opinion. Since I just want simple hair and makeup they could probably do the job just fine, but I'd have to trek up the mountains to do a trial run, and I'm lazy.

This would put most brides in a really tough spot with some hard decisions to make. But for me, there's an easy solution. My Aunt has confirmed that she is coming to the wedding. This aunt has been doing hair for 20+ years and owns her own (very successful) salon. And a friend of mine is a makeup artist at Sephora. She was actually recruited by Sephora to help them open a new store near where we live. So, in other words, I've got friendors who can handle this situation and save me a ton of moola.

But I am having the hardest time working up the nerve to ask. The last thing I want is for them to feel like they have to say yes even though they don't want to. I hate the thought of making my Aunt feel like she's working when she's coming a long way, and spending a lot of money, to get to California for the wedding. But at the same time, I'd love it if she did my hair. It would be like old times. When she was in beauty school I was her test dummy. She even gave me a perm when I was 7 years old! (And yes, it was awesome). I do recognize the flip side, that maybe she would be really excited to do my hair. But still. It's hard to ask.

Maybe I'll have my Mom ask my Aunt to get a feel for whether she would want to do our hair. It's her sister, and she'd be more likely to tell my Mom the truth than me. This approach feels a little bit like a cop out, but whatever. I'll grow a pair some other time. My Mom is always asking to help with wedding stuff, so this can be her contribution!

What would you do if you were in my shoes? Are you having a hard time asking people to help out with wedding stuff?

Guys have it so easy, Part II

2010-06-21T07:00:00.000-07:00

This weekend all of the guys in our wedding party were in town, so we capitalized on the situation and asked them all to meet us at Men's Warehouse at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday morning so we could select and buy their outfits for our wedding. We had 6 guys to dress - the Mister, our dads, the best man, one groomsman, and the officiant (who is really a groomsman in disguise). We had dropped one of our dogs off at the groomer's earlier that morning and right when we got to Men's Warehouse the groomer called and said Max was ready to be picked up, so I left the Mister at the store and took off to get our dog and drop him off at home. I got back to Men's Warehouse around 10 a.m. and everyone had already picked out their suits. I was amazed. We got three different suit styles - a lighter gray for the Mister

(Jones New York gray stripe peak lapel suit)

a darker gray for "the Fathers" - my Dad, the Mister's dad, and our officiant

(Kenneth Cole charcoal multi stripe suit)

and black for the best man and groomsman

(Pronto Platinum black stripe suit)

You can't really tell from these pictures, but all of the suits are pinstriped and because that element carries through the whole thing looks really cohesive. The men folk did good!

Then the guys took off to go find shirts and ties and I barely had to participate in the process.* They found a light purple shirt that looked good with all three suit styles that we ended up purchasing and three different ties - one to go with each suit style. The Mister found a nice pair of slip on shoes that worked with every suit and voila - we were out of there by noon. It only took so long because everyone had to get measured and the salesman took a while writing up the order and figuring out what they had in stock and what needed to be ordered.

Did you do suits for your wedding instead of tuxes? Were you pleasantly surprised by your guys' fashion sense?

* I did have to put my foot down on one tie that looked like the tie version of one of Bill Cosby's sweaters. But other than that I didn't have to really speak up other than to say "yes" when they asked me if I approved of what they picked.

(All photos courtesy of Men's Warehouse)

One Year Ago Today...

2010-06-20T10:59:00.000-07:00

The Mister got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. I realize I've never shown off my ring on the blog before. He picked the ring out all by himself and did a fantastic job.

Happy one year engage-aversay babe!

Oh, and P.S. Yesterday the Mister took me to Macy's and we bought the earrings. He was going to try to buy them for me as a surprise but he spilled the beans, which was good because with my bargain hunting prowess we were able to get the earrings for almost 70% off.

A Decision Has Been Made!

2010-06-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

After waffling, and waffling, and waffling some more over whether I wanted to DIY my flowers or hire a florist, I finally made a decision - we're hiring a florist. I got a quote from a very lovely (and very reasonably priced) florist and decided that before I agreed to go with her I wanted to check out how much it would cost to get the flowers from a wholesaler in the Flower Mart instead. Long story short, I got an email this morning from the wholesaler saying that he couldn't give me any price quote until about 2 weeks before the wedding since prices fluctuate so much, and that I'd need to give him a list of exactly what flowers I want and how many I want. But that's the part I need help with!!! Grrr.

After getting this not very helpful response from the wholesaler, I was ready to throw in the towel on this zany idea of DIYing my flowers. I texted the Mister to make sure we were on the same page, and then promptly emailed the florist saying that we wanted to book her services. There, it's done. A decision has been made and I cannot waffle anymore!

In all seriousness, though, I consider paying a little more money for a florist to be an investment in my sanity. I sat back and thought about how my time has a value to it and that once I consider all the time I would need to put in to researching what flowers I need to order and how many, what supplies I need and how to care for the flowers so they don't wilt before the wedding, not to mention the time driving to L.A. to get the flowers two days before the wedding, it just wasn't worth it. Plus, since we're not having many flowers to begin with it's not like the florist will break the bank (though we will go over budget slightly). I'm willing to sacrifice some money if it means I can get rid of my flower-related stress because it's ridiculous. I mean, c'mon, flowers are NOT supposed to be stressful, they're supposed to relieve stress!

Now I can go back to being a normal person who can enjoy flowers. I already emailed the florist my flower inspiration board and that's all she needs. I don't have to think about flowers one more time. I'll have a bouquet full of flowers I think are pretty, but have no idea what they're called, and that's fine with me.

For My Dad

2010-06-16T21:56:00.000-07:00

In honor of Father's Day this Sunday, and my Dad's 55th birthday today, I thought I'd share with you all the song I chose for our father-daughter dance - Neil Young's Heart of Gold. The clip above is a live version from a show Neil did at Madison Square Garden.

I thought picking a father-daughter dance song would be hard, but once Heart of Gold came across my radar I was sold. It's just perfect. Enjoy.

2010-06-14T07:00:00.000-07:00

I'm contemplating getting a Brazilian Blowout. Before getting engaged, I kept my hair pretty short. In fact, I think the last time I had hair that was long enough to even hit my collar bone was 2006. When we got engaged I was already overdue for a haircut and decided to just let it grow out since I have known since day one that I want an updo. Just about a year later, this is how long my hair is now.

It's long, thick, dry, frizzy and hard to manage. I've read about the miracles of the Brazilian Blowout and it is so, so tempting. Luscious smooth and frizz-free hair without having to use products or blow dry? Sign me up! It only lasts up to 12 weeks so if I get it done now it will be pretty much worn out by the time our wedding rolls around. So, it will get me through these next 110(!) days, I can get my updo, and then get my Post-Wedding Chop when we get back from our honeymoon.

My local salons charge around $300 for a Brazilian Blowout, so I'm having trouble pushing myself to make the appointment. I keep thinking maybe I should try a home deep conditioning treatment or invest in some good anti-frizz products first.

What do you think? Just say pocketbook be damned and go for the blowout, or try something cheaper first? Any recommendations for at home products? Anyone out there had a Brazilian Blowout and have any words of wisdom for me?

Jewelry love

2010-06-10T12:41:00.000-07:00

I found these earrings at Macy's a while back and I tried my best to get over them. But I just can't quit them.

But at $1,200 they are not.in.the.budget. They are regularly on sale and I get coupons galore from Macy's, and even then I'd still be spending upwards of $400. Still not in the budget.

So I was torturing myself the other day by lusting over their perfection when I realized that there is a matching necklace too!

I'm not normally a necklace person, but I love this one. I love how these pieces are simple and understated, but still visually interesting. I'd love to wear these on my wedding day and then make them heirloom pieces that can get passed down generation to generation. But I just can't justify $1000 on jewelry. Sigh.

Perspective.

2010-06-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

The mother of one of the Mister's oldest and dearest friends suddenly and unexpectedly passed away this weekend. I had the great fortune to know this woman, if only for a short while. She was so kind and sweet and always welcomed me into her home with open arms. Her son is our officiant and is set to get married himself in just over a month. My heart breaks for what he and his family are going through right now, and it has been a real reminder to me about what is really important. This whole wedding we've been planning for the past year could crumble to pieces right before our eyes and it would all be okay. We could get married in someone's backyard in shorts and flip flops and it would still be beautiful because we'd be surrounded by our family and friends. I'd still have the Mister by my side in bed at night and we'd still grow old together.

Posting will be sporadic at best this week. I need to take some time to regroup and focus my energies on the important people in my life, not wedding details. Though I will say this, wedding details are the perfect way to distract yourself when you need to escape the pain.

Wedding Dreams

2010-06-04T07:53:00.000-07:00

My wedding dreams have turned into wedding nightmares. I haven't been having very many wedding dreams (that I can remember anyway) through the course of this planning process, but for the most part they have been pleasant. Last night was a different story. I slept like sh*t because I kept waking up from bad wedding dreams. First, I dreamed that I was at home on our wedding day (because apparently in my dream I was getting married at home) and I was all by myself getting the house ready for the wedding. All of a sudden I realized that the wedding was supposed to start in 10 minutes and I had done nothing - the house was a mess and I was in my pajamas - and no one was there to help me. I ran upstairs to try to get ready just as guests started to arrive...and then I woke up.

The second dream was even more dramatic. We were at a resort of some sort and the ceremony was about to start. (Side Note: what's up with none of my wedding dreams being at our actual venue?). I was in my dress and all made up and the processional had started and my Dad was M.I.A. Then, just in the knick of time he shows up to walk me down the aisle, but he's drunk as a skunk, eating pizza, and wearing swim trunks. I yelled at him to get upstairs and change, he got in an elevator, and then I decided to walk down the aisle alone. Just as I started walking I woke up.

Sigh. I think the first dream is obviously related to the stress of getting everything done and feeling like I'm shouldering the burden of doing it all. But the second dream is just out of left field. I don't think I have to worry about my Dad getting trashed and showing up in a bathing suit. That's a relief, because I have no idea how I'd deal with that.

Have you been having whacked out wedding dreams? Do tell!

Guys have it so easy

2010-06-03T07:00:00.000-07:00

The Mister, his best man and I went to Men's Warehouse yesterday after work to look at some suits. Since the Mister and his best man both had to go to Men's Warehouse anyway to get measured for tux rentals for their friend's wedding this July, we used this opportunity to see what we liked for our wedding. The Mister and I agreed ages ago that the men should wear gray suits instead of doing tux rentals. Tuxes are just too formal for our woodsy wedding.

So we started browsing the stock with only three criteria in mind for finding the right suits: a shade of gray, a two-button jacket, and flat front pants. They had suits picked out in 10 minutes. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but it certainly wasn't more than 20 minutes and it definitely was less time than it took for both of them to get measured for their tux rentals! Geez. I wish I had it that easy when I was looking for my dress! The Mister really likes a Jones New York suit that apparently isn't available online because I can't find it anyway on the Men's Warehouse website. It's pretty similar to this suit, except it's a two button jacket instead of a 3-button jacket (and no pleated pants).

(Source)

And for the groomsman/officiant we're leaning toward this Kenneth Cole number

(I wish I could find a better picture of this suit. Who cuts off the head of a male model??? Source.)

We didn't purchase anything yet because Men's Warehouse is having a massive Buy One Get One sale right now that lasts until July 4th and to capitalize on it we need to buy the suits at once (or at least two at a time). So we have a month get the measurements of the other groomsman and the officiant (who is essentially a groomsman...he's the one getting married in July and the Mister is his best man) and get the suits ordered. We'll probably also have our dads get suits, though we'll let them pick different ones. Obviously, nothing is set in stone but even if we end up picking different suits my mind is completely at ease because this trip reminded me of how ridiculously easy it is to dress men.

Was dressing the men in your wedding easy too?

4 Months

2010-06-02T08:15:00.000-07:00

In four months I'll be married! Considering that the Mister and I do not have a single fully free weekend in the month of June and two weekends in July are already booked with events, I have a feeling that these four months are going to fly by. Oh, and that's not including our yet to be scheduled shower and bachelor/bachelorette parties. And my 30th birthday party.

OMG. When am I going to get wedding stuff done???

Post Script: Laying down the (in)law

2010-06-01T08:15:00.000-07:00

Remember our guest list drama? We finally had the conversations with our parents about the number of guests they can invite to the wedding and everything went over swimmingly. We were waiting to have the conversation in person with the Mister's parents, but we could never seem to get them alone, so the Mister finally just called his dad and told him the deal: he and his wife can invite 8 people to the wedding. My parents will be getting the same amount of invites, but since they are divorced they'll have to split them 4 and 4 (or however else they choose to split them...my parents get along pretty well so I trust them to work things out amicably.)

We decided on 8 as our "magic number" for a few reasons. One, since my parents are divorced I wanted to pick a number that when divided in two still gave each of my parents an even number of invites. For example, we thought about setting the number at 6, but then that means each of my parents would get 3 invites so they couldn't invite two couples. Two, we had a feeling that we might get some resistance from my future in-laws if we set the number at 6 or lower. We had an inkling of who they would want to invite and figured that 8 would cover the important people.* Finally, we took a look at our guest list and we think that adding 16 guests will not put us over 100 people, though it may be close. If we go over 100 people, our venue site fee goes up, so our goal is to stay under 100.

All in all, I think we finally put this monster issue to rest. Thank god. I don't know if I could manage to deal with it much more without blowing up on someone. I've managed to keep my composure thus far, but at some point a girl's gotta let it all out.

* Our guesses as to who they wanted to invite in those 8 slots may turn out to be completely wrong. When the Mister talked to his dad, apparently he started listing off people who we assumed would not make the cut. But they don't have to get their final choices to us for a while, so it remains to be seen.

Hair me out

2010-05-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

You don't have to laugh at my stupid jokes. I'm used to being the only one who laughs at them.

Moving on.

As you may have guessed, this post is about hair. Well, it's sort of about hair. You see, I've known since day one that I want an updo for our wedding day, which means that I absolutely need to hire a hair stylist. I do not have any "friendors" who can do this for me, and I am completely and totally inept at styling my own hair. Because our wedding is in a rural mountain community, there are only a handful of local salons and most of them don't have websites where I can browse their portfolios. This leaves me looking at out of town stylists that do on location work. So many of these on location stylists have amazing portfolios and I'm totally falling in love with their work - including their makeup artistry.

Yes, I am second guessing my decision to do my own makeup. I am very confident in my ability to do great everyday makeup. But I'm not professionally trained, and I know that my skills are limited.

But then I think back to every time I've had my makeup done at a cosmetics counter and how I almost always hate something about the look, so that makes me nervous too. I know that's what trial runs are for, but I do not want to waste a ton of time and money (trial runs are expensive, yo!) on multiple trials. This thought then leads me to the people with the best portfolios I can find, people who I am completely confident will do a fantastic job. In other words, people who charge way more money than I want to spend on hair and makeup! You see the vicious cycle here???

Maybe I just need to do a hair trial with one of the salons up in the mountains and I will forget about the travelling hair and makeup roadshows. Then I can have my simple updo, do my own makeup, and all will be right with the world. But I have to admit, as a makeup lover I do love the idea of having my makeup professionally done.

Ack! I don't know what to do!!! I can't decide what I like more - saving money or pampering myself.

Why I Would Consider Eloping

2010-05-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

(Photo by Lillian & Leonard)

This photo sums it up. Just me and the Mister (and an officiant) vowing to spend the rest of our lives together. No white dress, no guests, no DIY details and absolutely nothing to distract us from what really matters - our commitment to each other.

There's a certain allure to eloping that I have not been able to shake. I wonder if the people in this photograph were able to feel and experience the emotions that come along with such a major milestone more fully and deeply because they stripped their wedding of all of the extraneous stuff. I worry from time to time that I won't be able to be 100% emotionally present at our wedding because of all stress that comes along with the stuff. I've even entertained the thought of eloping a couple of days before our wedding to hedge my bets, so to speak. But the Mister isn't as attracted to the idea of eloping as I am and I understand that. I love the wedding we are planning. I'll just have to work extra hard to make sure that I get myself into that space where I can ignore everything but the man I am marrying as I make my way down the aisle.

Lounging Around

2010-05-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

Lounge areas are all the rage right now in weddingland. I love the concept, but so far I've only seen it executed in a hip, modern, minimalist fashion.

( Source)

I love this look, but it isn't exactly the aesthetic we're shooting for at our wedding. Actually, it's the complete opposite aesthetic, and this kind of setup would look totally out of place at our mountain lodge venue. But the pull of the lounge area magic is too much to resist! I started researching lounge furniture rentals and realized that pretty much everything on the market is exactly like what is pictured above - stark and modern. In other words, a total no-go. To make matters worse, the one set I did find that was do-able was outrageously expensive. Like $875 for one sectional sofa plus delivery fees expensive. But it sure is purdy.

(Napa sectional from Designer8*)

Whoa Nelly! This put a crimp in our lounge area aspirations for a little bit. But then I started looking into just buying a couple of patio sets and realized that we could easily buy two (if not three or four) full patio sets for way less than what one sectional rental would cost. Granted, they won't be of the highest quality, but they'll work for our purposes. And hopefully we can resell them on Craigslist after the wedding to recoup some of the costs. Here are a few of the contenders.

(Wilson & Fisher Carrington Set from Big Lots)

(Mainstays Sand Dune Set From WalMart)

(Fontaine Urban Seating Set from Home Depot)

The top two are the cheapest, and a little bland in color. But that's nothing that a few throw pillows can't fix! Though I love the idea of a sectional, I decided that love seats and chairs will give us more flexibility in the floor plan (Is it a floor plan when it is outside? A deck plan maybe?). We're only doing the lounge area in a small portion of our reception space, so flexibility is good. Plus, sectionals are crazy expensive.

We're probably going to wait until September to buy so we can hopefully get some good end of summer sales. Plus, I have NO IDEA where we would store multiple patio sets for the next 4+ months.

Are any of you out there jumping on the lounge area bandwagon?

Details Details: Salvaging Our Napkins

2010-05-24T11:30:00.000-07:00

I don't love our napkins. But that's old news. After playing with them a little bit this weekend, I decided that we're going to live with our bad decision and use them anyway. After all, they're just napkins, right?

We inherited forks and spoons from the Mister's sister (hot tip: buying real utensils from Sam's Club catering section online is cheaper than buying decent disposable utensils) and spending a whopping $22 on knives, we've got everything we need to get our napkins and utensils prepared well in advance of the wedding. It just comes down to how we want to package them up. I like a simple rolled up and secured with a napkin ring look. Here's what I'm thinking may work.

(Simple Paper Napkin Rings from Good Housekeeping)

These would look great if you stuck a sprig of dried lavendar or rosemary or something in it too! I can think of infinite variations on these napkin rings, so they leave lots of room for creativity. Love it!

(From Lucky Me!)

These are made from Saran Wrap tubes, but paper towels, toilet paper or any other cardboard tube will do, I'm sure. My only concern is that with our napkins, in their infinite cheapness, won't fill out the napkin ring as well as these beautiful, heavy weigh linens. I'll have to do a test run first before I decide to embark on this project.

(Via The Budget Fashionista)

And then there's the tissue paper flower. I love the two-toned flower in this picture. My main concern with these is that the flowers will all have to be re-fluffed the day of the wedding because they'll get crushed in storage.

So in case you can't tell, I'm leaning toward doing napkin rings a la the first picture. Which ones do you like? Any other great ideas?

I Wish This Post Had Scratch & Sniff Capabilities

2010-05-22T07:39:00.000-07:00

Our meeting with a florist that was scheduled for last Friday got rescheduled to this weekend. In preparation for the meeting, I made this bad boy

An inspiration board!!! Eleven months into our engagement, and with just over four months left, I finally made my very first inspiration board. I'm so proud of myself. I used Mosaic Maker to put this together and it was ridiculously simple. The center picture is our centerpiece inspiration, which we are essentially copying. The rest is inspiration for my bouquet and for small miscellaneous arrangements for the guest book table, cake table, etc. etc. Unfortunately, I forgot to note where each of these images came from, but they're all from the usual suspects - The Knot, Weddingbee, and Project Wedding.

Happy Weekend everyone!

Priorities

2010-05-19T08:07:00.000-07:00

When you're planning a wedding on a budget (regardless of how big or small that budget may be) you've got to prioritize. You've got to pick the things that are most important to you, figure out what you can do without, and budget accordingly. When we sat down and put together our budget way back in the day, our top priorities were location and food. We were willing to spend more money for a location that we really loved and that gave us free reign to do what we wanted. And we've known from the get-go that we want BBQ catering and let the food quality drive our catering decision, not the price per head.

But then. Oh, but then.

(Source)

But then you start to get into the nitty gritty of planning and realized that you have a whole new crop of things that are priorities for you and we did not budget for them as if they were priorities. Case in point? Music. I budgeted $0 for music. That's because we knew we didn't want a DJ and would just use our iTunes. I knew we'd have to download music, but decided that any downloading costs could be written off. I didn't even budget for a sound system because I thought it was included with our venue. Well as time went on, the Mister had a brilliant idea to buy some jukebox software and a touch screen and fashion a DIY jukebox, if you will. We'll have regular playlists for most of the wedding, and then after dinner we'll unleash our guests on the jukebox. We both absolutely love this idea and it's a new top priority. Had I known, I would have budgeted for it. Another example is decorations. I was totally naive about how much it would cost to do the decorations we both had in mind from the beginning, and now with only tablecloths and centerpieces purchased, I have roughly $300 left in that category and it has to cover flowers AND all of the other decorations we want. Not.going.to.happen.

So where does that leave us? With a need to re-prioritize and reassess our budget. Luckily, when we first sat down and talked money we agreed on a budget range and our budget is calculated for the lowest end of that range. So we could go $3,000 over budget and still be within our original range. It still gives me a little heartburn, but we can afford it. But what makes it all better for me is that I know we are being thoughtful about it. Any budget increases will be for things we really, truly want. Things that are priorities. Things that will be memorable to us.

Have you had to re-prioritize and re-assess your budget? What unplanned priorities have you had to make accommodations for?

All the Small Things

2010-05-18T07:53:00.000-07:00

I've been tackling the small things lately. Those unglamorous, easily forgotten things that still need to get done. And in my book, the earlier they get done, the better. I'm trying to front load my to-do list so that as the wedding gets closer the only things on it are stuff that couldn't be done earlier.

So yesterday I spent my lunch hour talking to our insurance agent about "day of event" insurance coverage
and calling equipment rental companies to get quotes for patio heater rentals and rescheduling our meeting with a potential florist. This weekend we'll be taking a trip up the mountains to our venue so we can do things like take measurements, figure out where there are electrical outlets, do a rough floor plan and figure out what kind of sound equipment we need to rent. And hopefully this week will do a test print on the paper samples we ordered for our invitations to make sure there are no issues and I can go ahead and order the paper.

I find all of these little tasks oddly satisfying. They're "easy" tasks that can be done in no time. Not overwhelming at all! Oh, and I love that how fast checks are accumulating on my checklist. I'm a Type-A dork like that.

Spring Cleaning

2010-05-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

This weekend I got motivated to do some spring cleaning, mostly to make some room for our ever growing stash of wedding stuff. For the longest time our guest bedroom was ground zero for all things wedding related. After a while it started to look like a bomb went off in there, so I organized it a couple of months ago. Well, in those couple of months, the wedding merch grew exponentially. And my sister moved in with us and is occupying the guest bedroom. Needless to say, we were in need of a new location for our boxes, Rubbermaid containers, and garment bags. The garage was out of the question. We're heading into summer and I'm afraid the heat will damage our stuff. So that left us with one choice - the office. But the office was in worse condition than the guest bedroom! We literally still have unpacked boxes in there from when we bought this house two years ago. Aye aye aye.

We managed to get rid of a ginormous 30 gallon trash bag full of stuff and then some. We're not done by any means, but made some good progress. Here's the proof!

Yes, believe it or not, this is actually a vast improvement on what it was before. But there's still not enough room to move in all of our wedding stuff. Sigh.

Are wedding goods taking over your living space?

2010-05-12T19:30:00.000-07:00

I have a confession. I have never worn black eyeliner. Ever. In my life. I was searching the interwebs for makeup inspiration for our upcoming engagement shoot and realized that the images I was drawn to the most all involved black eyeliner - cat eyed black eyeliner, to be precise. So I decided it was time to expand my horizons. I made an impromptu trip to my local drug store, and got to experimenting.

Here's the inspiration I found. I love how the black eyeliner really draws the attention to the eyes. And no eyeliner on the bottom keeps the eyes from looking too small.

(Michelle Trachtenberg, found at Glamour)

(Taylor Swift, via Beauty Snob. Yes, you've seen this one before.)

(Rebecca Romijn, from InStyle)

Armed with these inspiration photos and a tutorial, I got to work. Unfortunately, it's impossible to take photographs of yourself while you're using both hands to apply eye makeup, so all I've got is a before and after.

BEFORE:

and

AFTER:

I realized how horrible the lighting in my bathroom is and decided to show you the "after" in daylight. And just so you don't think I'm reckless, I was at a stoplight when I took this picture!

Oops, I forgot the flash. But here's a close(ish) up of what I did. It's just a thin black line that gets a little wider as it progresses toward the outer corners and then extends beyond the outer corners and flares up a little toward the end of my eyebrows. For shadow, I lightly applied some deep gray eyeshadow and put some highlight in the inner corners and under the eyebrows. Add two coats of mascara and voila!

What do you think? Are you experimenting with different looks for your wedding/e-pics?

Laying down the (in)law

2010-05-10T18:33:00.000-07:00

Our wedding planning journey has been relatively drama-free, save for one hot topic: the guest list. I thought we had our guest list issues nipped in the bud some time ago but this weekend it reared its ugly head once again. Long story short - my future father in law asked us to add another couple to our guest list, on top of the 12 or so people he requested we add the first go around. The Mister told him we'd talk about it and get back to him, which was totally the right move because after a long talk with the Mister on our 4 hour drive back home from Vegas yesterday I think we've come up with an approach that will really put this issue to rest this time.

During the aforementioned long talk, the Mister and I really got to the heart of why the guest list is such a sensitive issue for us. It's not about having a "small" wedding, though our wedding will be on the smaller side. It's about being surrounded by the people that mean the most to us, the people who know us and love us. Whether that's 50 people or 200 people doesn't really matter. For me in particular, keeping the guest list to just those people who have meaning in our lives is extremely important. I am a private person (believe it or not) and don't share my emotions with many people. I fear that if there are lots of people at our wedding that I don't know that well, I'm not going to be able to really open up and experience a full range of emotions. I'm afraid that the day will feel less special. Valid or not, those are my fears. Realizing that I cannot let my fears control my life, I am willing to compromise and let our parents invite some of their friends to our wedding.

So here's the grand compromise. Each set of parents will get to invite a predetermined number of guests. It is their job to pick who they want. We haven't set the number yet, but it won't be huge. Right now we're thinking each set of parents can invite four or six people, but we need to sit down with our guest list and do some calculating to see where that would put us in terms of likely attendees. Money is a bit of a concern due to our venue's tiered pricing schedule. If we go over 100 people, our site fee goes up. So we'd like to avoid that at all costs. But once we set the number there will be no budging; no last minute pleas for extra invites will be granted. The Mister and I are a united front.

This approach works for us for several reasons. First, it lays clear boundaries for my future father in law. He is the only one who has made special requests for invitees. My parents have not asked us to add anyone to our guest list, and my future mother in law has had no problem telling her friends and co-workers that they might not be invited because we're keeping it to our close friends and family. That said, I think that my parents might be a little upset if they realize that we let my future father in law invite all of these people and that we didn't extend the same courtesy to them. So we'll head that problem off at the pass. Finally, after thinking things through, I think that letting my parents (my Dad especially) invite a few friends will make the wedding more enjoyable for them. There's no two ways about it - our wedding attendance is going to be lopsided with way more of the Mister's friends and family attending than mine. My parents divorced two years ago and I doubt anyone from my Dad's side of the family will be there. So it will be nice for him to have a few people he knows at the wedding that aren't from my Mom's side of the family.

So, that's where we're at. We haven't communicated this decision to our parents yet (and no, they don't know about this blog), so it remains to be seen how well it goes over. I think the Mister and I need to develop a strategy for how to deal with it if our plan blows up in our faces first.

Have you had major guest list drama? How did you lay down the law?

Viva Las Vegas

2010-05-07T18:00:00.000-07:00

(Moonlighting Photography via The Oceanside Bride)

I'm off to Las Vegas for the weekend! I love Vegas. It's like Epcot Center on crack. While I have definitely entertained the idea of eloping in the past, don't worry I'm past that now. I'll be back and blogging about my wedding plans for five.more.months. Gawd that sounds like a long time. Maybe I'm not past my eloping phase!

Nah, just kidding. My future in laws would kill me. Not a good way to start a marriage.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Coed Showers

2010-05-06T17:04:00.000-07:00

No, not that kind of shower. Get your mind out of the gutter!

My sister/MOH asked me recently if I wanted a Jack and Jill shower or if I wanted to stick with a ladies-only bash. It hadn't even crossed my mind to have a Jack and Jill shower, but once she mentioned the idea, it was like a lightening bolt hit me. Of course! A Jack and Jill shower will cure all of my apprehensions about having a bridal shower.

Yes, I have apprehensions about having a bridal shower. Mostly because I have had almost no fun at every single baby and bridal shower I have attended. No offense to any traditionalists out there, but the idea of getting a bunch of women together so you can play asinine games (I'm looking at you inventor of the toilet paper bridal gown game) and coo over spatulas makes me throw up a little in my mouth. And don't even get me started on the lingerie gifts. The thought of opening up a gift bag full of thongs in front of a room full of women makes me die a little on the inside. Okay, okay, I'm exaggerating. And I don't mean to sound ungrateful. While I may be very excited to receive the cookware we registered for, I don't expect everyone else to share my sentiments. And as for the lingerie...well, I'm not exaggerating on that one.

(My sentiments exactly. Source)

If my sister were to attempt to throw me a ladies-only shower, I would give her specific instructions to eliminate all games. Period. End of Story. And while she's at it, she could just forget about giving the shower a theme (why is it that every shower I have been to has had a theme? Isn't the theme - congrats, you're getting married!?). While just mixing and mingling and enjoying the company of the guests is fine with me, I know that many of the (cough *older* cough) ladies who will be invited to my shower would come with certain expectations and might actually vocalize those expectations. Now, these ladies know me and know I can handle whatever they say, but they don't know my sister. I do know my sister, and know that she would NOT be able to handle it. Not from strangers, anyway. And I don't want to put that on her. The last thing she needs is to feel like she didn't do a good enough job.

But a Jack and Jill shower eliminates all of those expectations! So I can have my game-free, laid-back shower without running the risk of my sister having a nervious breakdown. It's a win-win, folks.

What kind of shower are you having?

I need a stylist ASAP

2010-05-04T07:00:00.000-07:00

It's May already??? Crap.

We've had our engagement picture session scheduled for Friday, May 14th for a long time now. We scheduled the session so long ago that I never really thought about what we were going to wear for the shoot because, you know, there was PLENTY of time to think about stuff like that. And now our engagement picture session is less than two weeks away. And we're going to Las Vegas this weekend with the Mister's family for his cousin's graduation. Read: I have no time to go shopping for new clothes for our e-pics.

That means I'll have to rely on the tried and true "shopping in my closet" method. You know what I'm talking about - when you go through your clothes and re-discover items you forgot about and pair up items that you never put together before to create whole new outfits. I think I can pull it off. I'm thinking we'll need two outfits - one casual and one a little more dressed up. The casual should be easy, though I may have a hard time deciding between several contenders. After going a quick run-through, here's a few options I have.

Depending on what outfit the Mister picks the jeans will be either a dark wash trouser jean or a cuffed straight legged jean. Do you have a favorite?

It's the dressed up outfit I'm really concerned about. The Mister really wants to wear a classic suit for the dressy pictures, which means I should wear something that is more classic and less fun and funky. I have a great Calvin Klein LBD that fits the bill, but not much else. I'm concerned that all black is too drab. I could pull a Michelle Obama and throw a cardigan over it to give it some pizzaz. Another drawback is that I don't really like my legs, so I'm afraid if I wear a knee length dress I'm just going to end up hating every full body shot.

Sigh.

I guess I'll just have to keep digging through my closet and keep my fingers crossed that I can find something.

Invitation Mock Ups

2010-05-03T07:09:00.000-07:00

The Mister and I finally put together a mock up of our invitations and they are looking pretty good, if I do say so myself. I'd love to take the credit for these babies, but they're really a joint project. I found the inspiration, the Mister did (most) of the actual design, and then I provided (ahem) "constructive criticism," which got us here:

THE COVER

We decided on a booklet style invitation. For the purposes of this mock up, we used deep purple cover weight paper we picked up at Michael's, but for the real deal we are going to order actual invitation backings with matching paper for the cover. We're leaning toward Stardream paper in Ruby. We used a craft punch to put the heart into the cover, so that white you see is actually the first page of the invite.

THE FIRST PAGE

You can see the craft punched heart concept a little better in this picture. The first page of the invitation will be printed on a colored vellum, but we haven't picked one out yet, so we just used regular copy paper. We tried printing on some tracing paper and that was a disaster. The quote we selected to print on this page is from Herman Hesse - "If I know what love is, it is because of you." It was the Mister's idea to have a quote printed on vellum for the first page of the invite, but I found the quote. I actually found about 10 different quotes I liked and he shot down every single one except for this one.

THE INVITATION

Now we get down to the nitty gritty. We decided to tab our invitation a la Mrs. Lime so the invitation page is actually the shortest page in the booklet with each page thereafter a little bit longer. I came up with the wording for this page and the Mister designed it.

Caveats: this is cheap-o paper from Michaels and is not what we'll be using for the real deal, and I am not 100% sold on the fonts. The Mister and I are still debating what kind of paper we'll use for the meat of the invitation. And as for the fonts, well this has been the one source of disagreement in the invitation design process. He never likes what I pick and I never like what he picks. Sigh. We'll find something we both agree upon eventually, I'm sure.

DIRECTIONS

The map was made in PowerPoint by the Mister in about 15 minutes. This was after I spent about 2 hours trying to make a decent map and it was a complete and utter FAIL.

INFORMATION

We have a really comprehensive wedding website, but we figured that we should include some of the more important information in the invitation itself. I know my paternal grandparents (who live in a town of 500 people in Kansas that is literally in the middle of nowhere) don't have internet access so I never want to make the assumption that people will just go to our wedding website for information. And the Mister really wanted to include the menu because the food is that important to us.

RSVP

My original idea was to have the RSVP page be a full page like the others but perforated so the RSVP postcard could be ripped out. The Mister thought this was too much work so we decided to just attach the RSVP postcard to the backing with clear photo corners. The design of the RSVP card isn't complete. We decided that we didn't like what we had on the left hand side as we were getting ready to do do the mock up.

TIPS
- It seems like every DIY invitation suite I found online was done in Photoshop or Illustrator or InDesign or some other fancy schmancy software. These bad boys were made in Microsoft Office. So don't sweat it if you don't have access to specialized software!

- I'm not gonna lie. This was our second mock up. Our first one came out so bad that the Mister actually wondered if we got in over our head. I assured him that we didn't, we just needed to make a few tweaks to the design and it would be much easier. We did, and it was. So don't panic if your first mock up comes out looking like a kindergarten craft project. That's the whole point of doing a mock up.

- Fancy paper goes a long way if you are printing at home. We have a laser printer, and even though we haven't picked out the actual paper we will use yet, we do know that we need to nicer paper to make up for the fact that most (if not all) of this will be printed in black.

So...what do you think?

It Fits, Thank God

2010-04-29T20:06:00.000-07:00

(My sister/MOH modeling in my foyer.)

The MOH dress saga is complete. For real this time, not like that time I said it was over and I totally jinxed myself. The top is loose and billowy and we may get it taken in just a touch but that's nothing. My sister likes it, I like it, the Mister likes it. Done.

In other news, I bit the bullet and bought the Calvin Klein "Nadia" sandals and the Charles David "Twisty" sandals (which I blogged about way back in the day) from Zappos (hello free shipping!) to see which pair I like better with my wedding dress.

(Calvin Klein "Nadia")

(Charles David "Twisty")

They arrived today and the Calvin Klein's are hands down the winner.* My personal style is "simple but not plain" (the Mister phrased it that way when he was describing my engagement ring and it describes me so perfectly) and these shoes fit the bill while still having that something extra special to them. I like the Charles David's too, but they don't feel extra special to me. I bought both pairs with the intent of returning the one I didn't pick to wear on my wedding day, but I think I'm going to keep the Charles David's and wear them this summer. I wore my last pair of everyday strappy gold flat sandals until their untimely death last fall and am in *need* of a new pair. These fit the bill. So now I have wedding shoes and new summer sandals. I love it when I kill two birds with one stone.

*I should let you know that I haven't actually tried either pair on yet. I should probably get on that. I think I'm afraid they won't be comfortable and I'll have to start all over again.

Our Right to Bear Arms

2010-04-25T09:11:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, the Mister and I exercised our right to bear arms. No we didn't go to the shooting range, we traipsed around Bed, Bath and Beyond with the ever popular scanner gun. The store opened at 9 a.m. and we got there around 9:30 a.m. After getting through the paper work and the explanation of how their registry works, we didn't really get started until 10 a.m. I thought we'd be done by noon, and boy was I wrong. We left the store at 2:30! Granted, we did take a break and grab some lunch and we did get started about an hour later than I thought we would get started. The process was way more time consuming than I had anticipated, but it didn't really bother me because registering is F-U-N. It reminds me of when my sister and I were kids and the Sear's Christmas Wishbook would come in the mail and we'd sit there and pour over the pages and dream of all the toys we wanted. Except now, the 29 year engaged homeowner version of me dreams about different toys, like

(KitchenAid 5-Quart Artisan Stand Mixer in Silver)

(Calphalon Contemporary 10 piece cookware set)

(Yamazaki Median Flatware)

I also really love the place settings we picked out, but since they are all white the picture doesn't really do it any justice. We spent FOR-EVER looking at knives and couldn't decide what we wanted, and there were a few things that we want but didn't find at BB&B, so we'll need to start another registry. We still would like to register for new bedding but didn't see anything that really works for our super deep California King bed, we're also thinking about some larger mugs and cereal bowls, since the mugs and bowls that come with our place settings are are a little dainty for when you need a big cup of joe and bowl of Lucky Charms to get your day started. But where? I'm thinking maybe Amazon, Williams Sonoma or Crate & Barrel. But we haven't decided yet. I'm giving the Mister a break since yesterday was pretty exhausting. :)

Oh, and just for kicks we added this bad boy to our registry.

(Dyson Air Multiplier)

If you have not seen this thing, you need to hightail it to your nearest BB&B or Best Buy. It's a fan with no blades, and it's seriously awesome. I would never in a million years pay $330 for a table fan, but maybe someone will buy it for us? I doubt it, but we put it on our registry just to see. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

You Win Some, You Lose Some, Or The Trials and Tribulations of Online Shopping

2010-04-21T19:57:00.000-07:00

Win: The ModCloth Grecian Green Dress arrived yesterday and everyone is in agreement - it's awesome.
Lose: The Extra Small is way too small and we need to exchange it for a larger size. Recall that I tried to order it in a larger size to begin with.

(This picture doesn't really do the dress any justice, but I never claimed to be a good photographer.)

Win: The size we need is in stock!
Lose: I tried calling ModCloth three times to process the exchange and no one answered. Afraid that the size would sell out, I just went ahead and bought it and incurred the additional shipping charges that would have been waived if I had waited to process the exchange.

Win: My 100 Ways Bra arrived in the mail today and it works with my dress.
Lose: The purchase was totally unnecessary. That's what I get for blindly believing the salesperson at David's Bridal when she told me that my dress required a bra that was low-cut in the back and the front. Only when I tried on my dress this evening with the new bra did I realize that most of the bras I already have work with the dress.

Win: The shoes I want to wear on my wedding day finally went on sale at Macy's, marked down from $119 to $84.99. Plus they're giving an additional 15% off at checkout, and I have a coupon for 20% off on top of that!
Lose: Their online store doesn't have my size and when I called my local Macy's to check where I could find them in store I discovered that the only store in the entire United States that has these shoes in the "Platino" color in a Size 10 is in New Jersey, and they only have two left. I live outside Los Angeles.

Shopping Spree!

2010-04-19T13:53:00.000-07:00

(Ok, I now that's a shopping spree. Maybe mine was more of a mini-spree. Source.)

Someone needs to take my credit card away from me, because I'm a woman on a mission. A wedding shopping mission. You all know about the the MOH dress saga, and according to UPS it's scheduled to arrive on my doorstep tomorrow! My sister should be at my house at some point this week so I won't have to wait too long to see if it fits.

I've been looking and looking for a good low-back bra to wear with my dress, and posted on the Weddingbee boards to see if any other brides who have worn my dress had any suggestions for me. Someone responded that the 100 Ways Bra from Victoria's Secret works with my dress, so I ordered that baby online too! I hope it fits. I have so-so luck with VS. Sometimes they fit just right, sometimes my cups runneth over, if you know what I mean. They don't make a larger cup size in the band width I need, so I'm really keeping my fingers crossed that this one works out. Plus, I need new bras in general so if I like this one I might just write it off as a non-wedding expense (something that our budget could use right about now).

The online shopping was just my warm-up. On Saturday, the real heavy duty shopping began. The Mister was gone all day and the electricity went out at our house around 8 a.m. I couldn't vacuum. I didn't want to grocery shop if the fridge wasn't working. It was like the universe was ordering me to get out of the house and do some real shopping. So I hit up Bed, Bath & Beyond with a ubiquitous 20% off coupon and bought a 3 gallon beverage dispenser for the wedding. We're providing the drinks at our wedding to keep costs down (our caterer would charge us $2.50 per person just for lemonade...can you say ripoff?) and we plan on buying one or two more of these dispensers so people can serve themselves some iced tea and lemonade and maybe a pre-mixed alcoholic beverage.

Next stop was Michael's. They were having a super mega blowout sale of epic proportions last week. I bought 5 glass vases on sale for $2 each to use for various flower arrangements, a 50% off bypass trimmer for when we start printing and assembling our invites (so we don't have to trek into my office to use the one we've got there), and a couple of completely awesome non-wedding related purchases - gallery quality picture frames for the photo wall we want to put up along our stairs. The frames were 50% off, plus I had a coupon for an additional 25% off!!! What a deal!

After a quick refeuling at Rubio's, I made my was to Sephora. I spent an eternity browsing through all the makeupy goodness. As I've mentioned before, I plan on doing my own wedding makeup and have been asking for Sephora giftcards to help fund my purchases. Armed with $100 in giftcards, I was ready to make some serious purchases. After much much deliberation, I bought some Benefit eye makeup primer and Nars Orgasm Illuminator and, the biggest purchase of them all, a Clarisonic Mia! So far I am LOVING the Mia. I struggle with breakouts from time to time and have really sensitive skin. My breakouts are almost always related to either hormones or a change in my environment (traveling almost always causes breakouts) and the products that I use. The Mia came with the sensitive skin brush and I can use my regular sensitive skin soap. It's only been a couple of days, so we'll see how things really pan out. As for the other products, I'm using the primer for the first time today and so far there's no creasing of my eye shadow and my eyeliner is still in place. So far so good for that product. As for the Illuminator, the jury's still out. I think I need to play around with it some more.

On a side note, I've also been on a mission to find a perfume to wear. While at Sephora I did some sampling of scents and I think I have it narrowed down to four contenders: Chanel Chance, Marc Jacobs Daisy, La Vanille Vanilla Grapefruit, and Viktor & Rolf Flower Bomb. Flower Bomb was a late addition to the group. They were passing out samples of the scent and I was really surprised how much I liked it. I'm waiting to pull the trigger on this purchase though. The problem is that the little paper sticks that they give you to sample the perfume need to be clearly marked with what scent has been sprayed on it! I had a handful of these and after a while I couldn't remember which one was which. It's alright though. At this point I had spent enough money and decided to quit while I was ahead.

As if all these acquisitions weren't enough, there's one more I need to let you in on, and it's a biggie. But what's best is that it cost us ZERO DOLLARS. This Mister's parents have a treadmill that they never use so the Mister decided to see if they were interested in letting us take it off their hands. They said yes, and now we have a treadmill in our living room! I'm beyond excited. I just started running again and I've always been an outside runner, but we are just a month or so away from being in sweltering heat here in Southern California and that heat will last through to our October wedding. The treadmill will make it so much easier to get motivated to work out, and the icing on the cake is that I won't have to worry about slathering myself in sunblock to avoid the dreaded tanlines every time I exercise. Keeping it in the living room is not optimal, but I'm willing to let it slide if it means that the Mister and I will be more diligent about exercising.

Have you made any great wedding-related purchases lately?

So Simple, Yet So Expensive

2010-04-14T16:11:00.000-07:00

I've been putting off thinking about our wedding flowers with any degree of detail. Why? Because I'm afraid that if I start putting too much thought into what flowers I want our flower budget will go out of control. I haven't budgeted much for flowers. In fact, I just lumped them in with decorations generally and I have about $300 left in that budget category. If I end up getting my heart set on flowers that are out of our price range I'll either a) splurge and be mad at myself for spending too much, or b) settle for second best and not be very happy with what I've got.

After coming to the realization that I should not DIY my flowers, I contacted a florist based in the mountain community where we will be getting married to get an idea on prices. To get two basic rose bouquets, four boutonnières and maybe one or two small rose arrangements will pretty much eat up the rest of our decorations budget. So I know I can forget about upgrading my flowers and staying within budget. She asked me to email her some pictures to give her a better idea of what I'm looking for. I bit the bullet and started looking at photos of bouquets, and sure enough plain rose bouquets are not what I'm drawn to. Here's what I sent her way.

(all images from The Knot)

After doing this legwork for the florist, I realized that my dream flowers are probably out of my budget. I was feeling a little deflated, and then I found out that the Mister's sister spent only $340 on her flowers by ordering them direct from a wholesaler in the Flower District, and that got her enough flowers (tulips, to be precise) for two bouquets, 10 or so boutonnières, centerpieces for 20 something tables and rose petals for the flower girls. And she had flowers left over. Sure the flowers had to be assembled the morning of the wedding, but to be honest it wasn't hard at all. So I can only imagine how much easier (and cheaper) it would be for my wedding since we wouldn't even need half of the flowers she had at her wedding. The only negative was that she got up at 3:40 a.m. two days before her wedding to drive downtown and pick up the flowers.

So I'm left in a conundrum. I could DIY my flowers and afford the pricer blooms that I'll inevitably want or I can hire a florist and save myself the stress of having to DIY my flowers.

We have a meeting set up with the florist on May 14th, when we'll be going up to the mountains to get our engagement pictures done. No decision will be made until after that meeting and we get a firm quote on what the flowers we want will cost. My fingers are crossed that she comes back with an amazingly low quote and I love everything in her proposal. (A girl can dream, can't she?) Until then, any advice for me? What would you do if you were in my shoes?

The Universe Is Playing Games With Me

2010-04-13T09:40:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning to this lovely little email in my inbox from ModCloth regarding the dress I ordered for my sister/MOH.

Dear Erica,

This is in reference to your order #_____. Unfortunately, due to an error in our inventory count, we are sold out of the Grecian Green Dress and will not be able to fulfill this part of your order. I've refunded you in FULL. Please allow a day or so for the funds to appear back in your account.

Sorry again and please feel free to contact us if you have any questions. I hope you'll shop with us again!

FML. I totally jinxed myself when I announced that the search for my MOH dress was finally done, right? Actually, no. Right after I got this god awful email, I went onto ModCloth's website and the dress was not out of stock, it was just out of stock in the size I ordered. They still have an Extra Small and a Large. Since I was concerned the Medium would be too big for my sister anyway, I went ahead and ordered the Extra Small. All the reviews of the dress say that it runs really large, so I'm not too concerned that the Extra Small will be too small, though if it is ModCloth has a good exchange policy.

Disaster avoided! Hopefully. If I get another email from them in a few days saying they actually don't have the dress, I just might have to write a strongly worded letter!

The MOH Dress Search is O-V-E-R!

2010-04-09T10:08:00.000-07:00

I hope. If it's not I just might cry.

After being tormented yesterday by the ridiculously expensive yet absolutely perfect MOH dress for my sister, I decided to check in with ModCloth again to see if my original perfect MOH dress was in stock yet. Here it is again, if you don't remember

(Grecian Green Dress from ModCloth)

If you recall, I had signed up for a notification from ModCloth for when this dress came back in stock. I never heard anything and kind of gave up on it. Then one day I just decided to check out the dress again and lo and behold it was in stock! But only in Large and Extra Large...much too big for my size 6-ish sister. Boo! And double boo because ModCloth's notification system clearly doesn't like me!

I started checking their site sporadically after that and it was always out of stock. I even checked again yesterday and it was out of stock. This morning I decided to check again on a whim. I had just finished talking to my sister about the dress hunt and it was on my mind. When I got to the site there it was, in big bold orange:

1 Item Left In Stock

And it was a Medium!!! Hallelujah! I bought that sucker faster than the speed of light. It was $90, and I found a 10% off coupon. With no tax on the sale and only $7 for shipping, my grand total was $88. A much better deal than the $450 very similar Tara dress, no?

Now I just have to pray that the Medium fits her, or at least needs only slight alterations. Oh, and that she likes it. Girlfriend has not actually seen the dress. Oopsy. :)

I hope this is a sign that I will be productive this weekend on the wedding front. I think I'm going to start making some tissue paper flowers and see how it goes. I don't know what I'll do with them yet - maybe make napkin rings or pomadors or a garland. I'll just wait and see how I feel about them once I start making them.

Happy weekend everyone!

ABC7 Morning News Found My Perfect MOH Dress

2010-04-08T07:40:00.000-07:00

Every morning I have the same routine: get up, make some coffee, feed the dogs, make some breakfast, and then watch the ABC7 morning news and check my email and blogs while eating and drinking the aforementioned food and beverage. This morning was like every other morning except the news had a story on "wedding trends" and how you don't have to spend a fortune to have a stylish wedding. One of the "trends" was bridesmaid dresses that are re-wearable. (Really, that's a trend?) Anyway, the news story featured bridesmaid dresses by Joanna August Bridal, including this beauty

(Tara by Joanna August)

Ummm, it's everything I've been looking for: high neckline and back, chiffon, flowy, not too short, and green! And after visiting Joanna's website, there are a few other dresses that fit the bill for my MOH dress too. Like this one

(Erica by Joanna August . . . we share the same name, it was meant to be!)

The problem? The Tara dress is $450!!! And the Erica dress is $395. In fact,. almost all of the bridesmaid dresses on her site are in the $300 to $500 range. Ummm...how is this an affordable wedding trend? Sure you can re-wear it, but I'm pretty sure my sister would never buy a $450 dress for a night out on the town. And I cannot justify asking my sister to buy a dress that is more than half of the cost of my wedding dress.

Sigh.

And the MOH dress search continues.

Paralyzed By Options

2010-04-07T15:56:00.000-07:00

I've got this feeling right now like I want to get crackin' on a wedding project. Something arts and craftsy, for sure...but that's as far as I can get. I've seen so many DIY projects and been inspired by so many images, but as I sit here I realize I have not made very many decisions on the details. The big things were easy, but the little things . . . not so much.

My inner monologue goes something like this:

I ~~need~~ want some decor for our aisle. The arbor that covers the aisle has hooks on the outside we can hang stuff from. Tissue paper pomadors are all the rage, maybe I'll make some of those. But I hear they're hard to do. What about silk floral pomadors? Yes, that should be easier. But it might end up being pricier than real flowers. Hmmm...what about a garland instead. We could drape it from hook to hook on each side of the aisle. Better yet, we can drape fabric over the top of the arbor to give it a tented feeling. Or maybe something else? Maybe I should look online for something better. Yes. That's what I should do.

Then, after hours of browsing and searching, I'm nowhere closer to making a decision. And it's not that I don't want to do these crafty projects. I really do (for now anyway...check back with me in a couple of months). I just don't know what to do. If this were just any old party, I'd probably just pick a project and if I don't like the end result just toss it and do without. But for some reason because it's my wedding I'm having a hard time letting myself be so laissez-faire.

What about you? Have you been crushed by the paralysis of having too many options?

One Wedding Down, One To Go!

2010-04-05T13:56:00.000-07:00

We're back home after a fantastic weekend in La Jolla, California, for the Mister's sister's wedding. The Mister and I are both playing hooky from work today because we completely underestimated how exhausted we would be from this weekend's events. We didn't get a moment of rest beginning Friday afternoon through to Sunday night. Even our sleep wasn't really restful because the thermostat in our room was broke and it was about 100 degrees in our room on Friday night. But that's another story.

Anyway, since this is only the third wedding I've attended as an adult and the only wedding I've attended since getting engaged, I was able to really get some good perspective on what I do and do not want for our wedding.

I want to be a chill bride. While the Mister's sister was off getting her hair and make-up done the rest of us were scrambling to get everything ready for the wedding. A small handful of us were working on the flower arrangements in one of the guest rooms. When I had to leave to go get ready for pictures, I swung by the rooftop of the hotel to see how the set up for the ceremony and reception were going. There was a full on army of our friends and family there making sure that everything got done. I was actually a little overcome by how many people showed up to help. And all that help made the Mister's sister the chillest bride I've ever seen. She had nothing to worry about because the people who love her the most just took control of the situation. I want that.
I do not want a videographer. I've never really had the desire to have a videographer at our wedding, but as people I know kept telling me that they are so glad they hired a videographer I started to wonder if maybe I should just bite the bullet. This weekend sealed the deal - there will be no videographer. The videographer was so intrusive and distracting. I know that it's just the nature of the beast and it's not like he was trying to get in the way, but still. I'll be perfectly happy with a home video of our wedding shot on a portable camcorder. It's just not a priority for me.
I want a photobooth. Who knows if we'll actually do this, but I want one that's for sure. Words cannot even describe how much of a hit the photobooth was at the Mister's sister's wedding. The photos that came out of it were priceless. I mean, how else are you going to get a picture like this

and like this

(All photos from the Photo Booth Pro)

Besides all of this, what I really realized this weekend is that our wedding will be amazing no matter what. Because joy of that magnitude transcends all of your best laid plans.

P.S. I did do that makeup trial this weekend and took pictures of myself, but the pictures didn't come out right. I think I needed more light in our room. You can hardly tell I'm wearing any makeup! I'll redo it at some point soon, I promise!

The Nerve of People

2010-04-01T06:58:00.000-07:00

The other day one of the secretaries at my work came into my office to bring me my mail. As she walked into my office, she read my full name off of an envelope: "Erica Lynn [short and very common English last name]" Then she asked me what my new last name is going to be once I get married. I almost wanted to say I was keeping my maiden name just to make her realize that she shouldn't assume that a woman will always change her last name when she gets married. But I do plan on changing my last name, so I didn't want to lie to her. Plus, knowing this particular secretary fairly well, I know I'd get a whole heap of judgment about not changing my name and a barrage of questions such as "what about your children?" Again with the assumptions. So I told her the Mister's last name and then she said aloud: "Erica Lynn [short and very common Hispanic last name]." Swear to god, the next thing out of her mouth was this "eh" sound with a slight look of disgust, and a comment that it didn't flow as well as my maiden name but that "I'll have to make it work."

WTF???

First of all, my new last name will "flow" with my first and middle names just as well as my maiden name. In fact, I think my new last name will actually sound a little bit better with just my first name than my maiden name does. Together my first name and new last name have a sort of singsong quality to them that my current name does not. So, she clearly doesn't know what she's talking about. Which can only lead me to think that the reason she thinks that my new Hispanic last name doesn't "flow" is because I'm not Hispanic and couldn't even pass as Hispanic if I tried. I mean, it's not like "Erica" is an uncommon name for Latinas, so it certainly can't be that I have a super Anglo first name that doesn't "go" (whatever that means) with a Hispanic last name.

Whatever. Since I already knew this particular secretary is pretty ignorant (don't even get me started on the misinformed things I heard her say during the Prop 8 campaign) I shouldn't really be surprised. But still. The nerve of people sometimes.

I don't need an excuse to play with makeup

2010-03-30T20:13:00.000-07:00

. . . but I found one anyway! The Mister's sister is getting married this weekend and since I'll be getting all gussied up for the big event, what better time than to do my first makeup trial! I love makeup and wear it almost every day so naturally I'll be doing my own makeup for my wedding. I even went so far to ask for gift cards to Sephora for my last birthday and Christmas to fund my wedding makeup purchases.

Even though I wear makeup regularly, I don't get the chance to do special occasion makeup very often. And my wedding day is the most specialist of all special occasions, so I need to step up my game.

That's right, it's time for some inspiration photos!

(Photos of Cameron Diaz and Kristen Bell from PopSugar; Naomi Watts from Australian Broadcasting Corporation; Reese Witherspoon from Girlznight)

I tried my best to stick to images of women with similar coloring as mine - blond hair, blue eyes, fair skin. My eyes are my favorite feature and I really want the blue to pop. I'm really loving the picture of Reese. The eyes stand out, she got a warm glow to her skin, and the lips are just the right shade of pink. But what Cameron, Kristen, Naomi and Reese don't have in common with me is deep set eyes. My eyes are much more like Taylor Swift's than these ladies. As a nearly 30 year old woman, I generally don't look to teenagers for style inspiration, but she's so classy. Maybe a look like this would work.

(Photo from BeautySnob)

Now I know that as someone with blond hair and blue eyes I have nothing to complain about when it comes to finding makeup inspiration photos of women with my coloring. But honestly, the pictures I'm the most drawn to are of women with a slightly darker complexion. Maybe it's just because Bones and Dexter are two of my favorite shows, but I think Emily Deschanel and Jennifer Carpenter look fantastic in both of these photos. Emily Deschanel has bone structure that's to die for! And I love the look of the pale shimmery pink lipstick on Jennifer with that super dark hair and dark eyes.

(Photo of Emily Deschanel from Sodahead; Jennifer Carpenter from About.com)

I dyed my hair a shade similar to Emily Deschanel's once, but it just felt weird and I felt like it made my skin look even paler than what it is (which is already so pale that most of the time the lightest shade of foundation is too dark for me). So I guess I'll have to stick to the towheads when it comes to beauty inspiration.

Stay tuned for before and after photos of my first makeup trial!

Details Details: No Cake Wrecks Please!

2010-03-28T09:12:00.000-07:00

We're jumping on the cake buffet bandwagon. Well, that's what people will think anyway, though in reality I've wanted a self-serve cake buffet since the first time I heard about cake cutting fees. I've got a massive sweet tooth so you don't have to convince me that having multiple cakes and other assorted goodies in lieu of a traditional wedding cake is a good idea.

(This picture makes me drool a little. Via Snippet & Ink.)

But there are details that need to be hashed out. Who will make the cakes? What flavors do we want? How many do we need? Do we want non-cake options too? What about cake stands? Yikes. So this cake buffet thing is definitely more work than ordering one big cake and being done with it. But it's totally worth it to a) have all that deliciousness at our wedding, and b) avoid the cake cutting fee racket.

I briefly entertained the idea of hiring a local baker to just make all the cakes and deliver them to our venue the day of the wedding. But when I calculated the cost, I realized that we could do this much cheaper on our own. So, the plan right now is to make a couple of the cakes ourselves and maybe some cookies other non-cake sweets, have a close friend and the Mister's mom, who are both amazing bakers, make a couple of cakes (assuming they're willing, of course), and then maybe pick up a couple of cakes at a local bakery. I figure cakes can be baked a few days in advance and then frozen, so this project won't be adding too much to our day before/day of to-do list and it's fun and totally within my limited DIY capabilities.

So now that we've got all that squared away, we can get to the fun part - picking recipes! The Mister is adamant that we must have a carrot cake and a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. That's fine by me, and I'm thinking that we should have some cookies and brownies for people who don't like cake that much. Plus, I definitely want a coconut cake and a bundt cake (or maybe even a bunch of mini bundt cakes!)

(Yummy and portable. Maybe mini bundt cakes will be the new cupcakes. Via Simply Sweet Home.)

Other than that, it's all up in the air. Any tips on great recipes are appreciated! What desserts are you serving at your wedding?

What the hell is an indie wedding anyway?

2010-03-26T16:51:00.000-07:00

In the wedding blogophere there seem to be two types of weddings: "traditional" and "indie." I think we all know the hallmarks of a traditional wedding - think Shelby in Steel Magnolias but updated for 2010. But the concept of an indie wedding confuses me a little bit, and to be quite honest when people talk about "indie" weddings I just nod my head and pretend like I know what they're talking about. Are all non-traditional weddings "indie"? Is "indie" just the catch-all category for everyone who decides to march to the beat of their own drum? What if my drum likes some tradition?

It's all so confusing.

(If we wear Converse to our wedding, does that make it indie? No? Okay. Moving on. Source)

Real weddings I've seen featured in the blogs that get labeled as "indie" all seem to have the same elements- lots of vintage, lots of mismatched, lots of handmade, and completely styled. It's definitely a different aesthetic than traditional weddings, but underneath the bunting and mismathced thrift store china how are these weddings any different than a traditional wedding? I can't think of anything, can you?* No matter what your personal aesthetic and attitude toward tradition may be a wedding is still a wedding - a ceremony that unites two people in marriage that is in most cases followed by a party celebrating the new marriage.

So why am I sweating the "traditional" and "indie" labels? I think they are completely unhelpful and really do a disservice to those of us who don't fall into either category. People seem to have this need to label and categorize and these categories just aren't cutting the mustard. Huge swathes of people are being left out. I am not having a traditional wedding, but I'm not having an "indie" wedding either. I'm having an "us" wedding - a wedding that uniquely reflects me and my Mister. I just really wish there were more resources out there that celebrated "us" weddings. To be sure, there are a few great ones (A Practical Wedding being my personal favorite) and I am very lucky to have found these resources early on in my planning. But I cannot even imagine how much more stressful wedding planning would be if I hadn't a support system online early on, especially since not all of our loved ones really understand what we're trying to do with our wedding and seem mystified by the fact that we're not doing things like every other wedding they've been to. But once they see it they'll get it (hopefully) and they'll enjoy themselves (hopefully) and then they won't be so confused the next time someone they love plans an "us" wedding.

* Well, I guess I can think of one difference. Hipsters. For all my confusion about indie weddings, I definitely associate them with hipsters. Hipsters have "indie" weddings. And for this reason alone I cannot fathom having an "indie" wedding. I know and love many a hipster (though they'd probably cringe if they knew I thought they were hipsters), but do not have an ounce of hipster in me. If you have any confusion on what constitutes a hipster, check this out.

Reality Check

2010-03-24T16:42:00.000-07:00

In case you missed it, I'm reposting this DIY Reality Check Flowchart featured on 100 Layer Cake last week in a post by guest blogger Rachel from Heart of Light.

This flowchart is a lifesaver, especially if you're like me and have never been particularly crafty but have been bitten by the DIY wedding bug. DIY fabric hair flower? Totally makes it through the flowchart. (Good thing, because I already did it!) DIY flowers? Ermmm...notsomuch. Question 1 on the flow chart: Do I have skills in this area? Hells no! I have a total black thumb. I mean, I guess I could put together a bouquet if I didn't care at all what my flowers look like. Question 2: Do I really want / have time to learn? No and no. There. Problem solved. I will be hiring a florist.

The flowchart is a total sanity saver and helps me keep my burning desire to save money in check with reality. The only reason why I would DIY my flowers is to save money. What did the flowchart help me realize? Besides the fact that pretty much the last thing I'd want to do the day before my wedding is drive into downtown L.A. (on a weekday during rush hour no less) to go to the Flower District, I don't know how much money I'd actually save by doing my flowers on my own since we aren't having a ton of flowers in the first place. Oh, and let's not forget the fact that after picking up the flowers we'd have to actually make time to arrange them without it looking like I assigned this task to a couple of kindergarteners. Will hiring a florist put me over budget? Probably. Silly old me thought I could DIY practically everything back in the day when the budget was made. But this is definitely one of those projects that's worth going over budget for because it will save my sanity. I can scrimp elsewhere, if need be.

Plus, now I can have a bouquet that looks like this*

(Photo from The Knot)

Instead of like this

(Photo from Kelly McWilliams' blog)

*This is just one of the many bouquets I love. A post on bouquets is soon to come. Patience, my dears. Patience.

Our 1st Hidden Cost

2010-03-22T15:10:00.000-07:00

Our venue has a built in speaker system. Our venue contract says that all DJs must use the built in speakers and that if we hire a DJ that's not on their approved DJ list an extra fee of $50 will be charged and an extra security deposit will be required. The contract says nothing else about using the speaker system. Our contract came with a list of extra things that we could rent from them for an additional fee, like space heaters, tablecloths, etc. The sound equipment was not on that list.

From this, wouldn't you assume that the use of the speaker system is included in the venue rental price? Well technically it is. But what isn't included is the equipment to connect to the speaker system so you can actually play music. If you hire a DJ, they bring their own equipment to connect to the speaker system. We, however, will be self DJing. So we have to pay an additional $375 to rent their equipment to connect to the speaker system. Le boo.

This would be easier to swallow if they gave us self DJers the option to bring our own equipment to connect to the system, but I don't think they do. (Side Note: I say "I don't think" because this is what I think the wedding coordinator said, but one of our cell phones was cutting out intermittently and I was in the car with background noise when this conversation went down, so I'm not 100% sure. Dammit. I don't want to have to call her again. Maybe I'll make the Mister do it.) If a pro DJ can bring their own equipment, why can't I? I don't get it.

I kinda want to argue this with our venue but don't want to do anything that could end up damaging our otherwise good relationship with them, which could come back to bite us in the butt later. Have you run into hidden costs in your wedding planning? How did you handle it?

I need a vacation

2010-03-20T07:56:00.000-07:00

This month has been crazy. My weekends have been busier than my work weeks and this weekend is no exception. I'm attending a bachelorette party today; we're going wine tasting in the Temecula Wine Country. It should be fun and I'm sure I'll enjoy myself, but right now as I sit here in my pajamas all I can think about is how I would really love to stay in my pajamas all day long. Alternatively, I'd like to take my honeymoon now, s'il vous plait.

Ah, the honeymoon. It's already fully planned and has been for months. You can tell where my priorities are.

(All photos from Hilton.com.)

Thanks to my Dad and his fantabulous timeshare, we'll be staying at the Hilton Grand Vacation Club at Waikoloa Beach Resort on Hawaii's Big Island. This is our kind of place. It's fairly small (120 units) and every unit is a 2 bedroom suite with a private lanai. We've got one that overlooks the golf course. Nice and serene. But there is still plenty to do in the area. Hilton has a much larger hotel resort nearby and we have full access to it, plus we can always head into town for some sightseeing. We plan on taking a helicopter tour of the island, scuba diving, kayaking, golfing and perhaps going sailing if I can convince the Mister that he won't get seasick. Besides that, the goal is to R-E-L-A-X.

Relaxation. What a novel concept. I'll get to it one of these days.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that there is a poolside bar. I may never leave.

Do you wish you could push up your honeymoon? Where are you going?

Ginger Pride!

2010-03-18T20:15:00.000-07:00

Alas, I am not a ginger. But my sister is, and she is beautiful both inside and out. She will be my maid of honor and my one and only attendant. Since our colors are purple and green, it was a no brainer that she should wear a green dress to our wedding. There's nothing quite as stunning as a true ginger in green. :)

I thought the task of finding a green dress for my sister would be easy peasy. I could waltz into any old department store and pick one up off the racks. Boy was I wrong. Finding a dress that's a shade of green I like, that's affordable and that goes with the style of our wedding is hard! A little more elbow grease is definitely needed. So, here's my version of elbow grease: go to Google, enter different variations on "green dress", and wade through a ton of crap to find the few gems.

Here's one I just found today that actually inspired me to put this blog post together because I LOVE it. It's a great shade of green, it's classy, understated and a great cut for my sister's body. The one problem? It's out of stock. But if it comes back in stock I just might swoop it up.

(Grecian Green Dress from Modcloth)

I love this one too. The shade of green is nice, though a little less bright than what I was hoping for. My only hesitation is that it's a "bridesmaid dress" that needs to be ordered through an authorized retailer so you can't really just go and try it on. I was hoping to avoid that whole mess by having just one attendant!

(Jasmine Belsoie L3013)

I like the cut of this dress, but I'm not so sure about the shade of green. In case you can't tell, I'm partial to high necklines. And it's a David's Bridal dress, so I can easily see the actual color and dress in person. Plus, I since I bought my dress there, I have a coupon for bridesmaid dresses! I love me some coupons.

(David's Bridal dress in Clover)

I like this one, but don't love it. I'm not sure I want her in a strapless dress, but a cute cardigan or shrug over this might make it work.

(Donna Morgan dress at Nordstrom via ShopStyle)

So far, the first dress is the only one I'm 100% sold on, but like I said, it's out of stock. So I have to just keep looking. Any suggestions?

Details Details: Beer Me!

2010-03-16T18:30:00.000-07:00

From the get-go, we new we wanted a self-serve bar at our wedding. I envisioned beer bottles sitting on ice in galvanized tubs, one or two pre-mixed signature drinks in glass dispensers along with iced tea and lemonade, and water and bottles of wine on the dinner tables. One of my standard questions when researching venues was whether they required a bartender or not. So when we fell in love with our venue, the fact that it also did not require a bartender was just icing on the cake. Everything was rainbows and butterflies until one day I happened to be looking at our venue contract and realized it states loud and clear:

NO GLASS BEVERAGE CONTAINERS

What the what??? I got some clarification from our contact at the venue and she said that what they are concerned about is people walking around with glass containers and dropping them, shattering glass all over the wood deck and getting glass between the planks and in the soil. So wine bottles are fine and glass drink dispensers are fine, but no glass beer bottles. My vision of galvanized buckets full of assorted beers was scrapped in one fell swoop. I will be having kegs at my wedding.

So we're going to have to find a way to hide or prettify the kegs. Of course, I turned to my trusty internets for inspiration.

Option 1: We could make no attempt to hide the kegs and instead play up the casual, outdoorsy vibe of our wedding by doing something like this:

(Victoria and Fritz's wedding featured on Once Wed)

Beer in a canoe? Pretty unique. And I like the sign.

Option 2: Hide the kegs in plain sight by putting the kegs in something like this.

(Val and Garth's wedding featured on Once Wed)

I think this is so cute! And they even dressed up the plastic cups by putting little chalkboard name tags on them. This idea is definitely a keeper.

Option 3: Build a box to cover the kegs with holes on the top for the taps to stick through. A homemade bar if you will. I couldn't find a picture of this, but there was a thread on the Weddingbee boards that suggested this idea. This would only work if we got the kind of keg taps that don't require you to pump the keg.

Which brings me to my next point of concern - serving the beer. I have a confession to make. I do not know how to tap a keg. Every keg party I've been to (all 5 of them) the keg had to be pumped, but I know that you can get special taps so that you don't have to pump. Since I don't know how to properly serve beer from a keg, I don't want to jump to the conclusion that my guests will either. So I'm thinking that we'll definitely want to get the CO2 taps to eliminate the pumping.

Are you having kegs at your wedding? What are you doing to prettify them?

An Organic Wedding

2010-03-15T19:12:00.000-07:00

We want our wedding to be organic. I'm not talking about food or flowers or fabrics, though. I'm talking about timelines and scripting and programs. We will not be adhering to a strict timeline for our wedding; just general guidelines on the flow of things. We want things to happen naturally and not feel forced. We want to enjoy ourselves on our wedding day instead of being micromanaged by a Day of Coordinator (DOC). We want to do what feels right in the moment and not blindly adhere to a list of things you must do on your wedding day.

(Loved Frank in the movie, but on my wedding day, notsomuch. Source)

To accomplish this, we have made a series of calculated decisions. Our venue doesn't require weddings to start or end at any particular time. We have the lodge for 2 nights so we can rehearse if we feel like it the night before the wedding, and on our wedding day we can start as early as we want and end as late as we want. So long as we're out by Sunday at 10 a.m., we're golden. We've decided not to hire a DOC, but instead have asked the Mister's sister to operate as our informal DOC. That way we have someone to step in and provide some direction to our guests as needed, but we don't have to worry about someone telling us what we "need" to do next at every turn.* Finally, we're scrapping a lot of the typical things that you see at weddings, at least in our neck of the woods. No bouquet toss, no garter toss, no dollar dance (don't even get me started on this one), no slideshow, no grand entrance, no forced "making the rounds" during dinner. Besides our somewhat traditional scripted ceremony, the first dances and the cake cutting, I can't really think of any "traditional" elements we are incorporating. And I like it that way. I'll "make the rounds" when I damn well please thankyouverymuch.

*Well after we decided not to have a DOC, I ended up having a conversation with a DOC who was trying to convince me of all the reasons why I needed a DOC. The conversation pretty much consisted of her telling me how she would be there rightbymyside the whole time making sure I stuck to the schedule. Barf. The only good thing that came out of this convo was that I'm pretty much guaranteed to never second guess my decision not to hire a DOC.

When Life Gets In The Way

2010-03-14T19:14:00.000-07:00

I feel like I have been completely unproductive on the wedding planning front the past few weeks. Life is just getting in the way. The Mister's sister is getting married in a few weeks, so our weekends are busy with bridal showers, bachelor and bachelorette parties, and lending a helping hand. On top of that, the Mister is turning 30 tomorrow and I threw him an epic party last night. So yesterday was shot (though it was totally worth it!) and today . . . well, you can imagine how I'm feeling today.

In reality, I haven't been entirely unproductive. I signed our catering contract and finalized our menu and service options. I scheduled our engagement photo shoot. I just haven't been able to start tackling any new big DIY projects . . . and I kinda want to (invitations, I'm looking at you). I may regret what I'm about to write, but I look at these projects as a stress reliever, not a stress creator. Maybe it's because I'm in a high stress profession, but I am really looking forward to just vegging out and doing arts and crafts. I can't imagine crafting being more stressful than arguing before a judge. But then again, the collective widsom of brides before me says that I'm fooling myself on this one. DIY projects almost inevitably create some stress.

But for now, I'm choosing to ignore that collective wisdom. I'm sure this decision will come back to haunt me, but for now I need wedding projects to be a stress reliever in my mind. If I think of them as a source of stress, it might just tip me over the edge.

The Evolution of Our Centerpieces

2010-03-13T08:50:00.000-08:00

Centerpieces. For some reason, I latched onto centerpieces early in the planning process as a critical decision. I don't know why I did this, but hey, at least I got something done early. At first, I was liking the idea of galvanized buckets.

(source)

The Mister and I both have an aversion to tall centerpieces, so we wanted smaller buckets than the one pictured above. But after search and searching and searching, we were completely unable to find buckets that we liked. In person, the metal was splotchy looking and after buying one and seeing how it looked with our purple tablecloths, we just didn't like them all that much. So we moved on to other ideas.

At some point in the hunt for galvanized buckets, I started thinking about potting plants inside the buckets instead of using cut flowers. It's cheaper and more environmentally friendly. Plus, we plan on DIY-ing our flowers, so eliminating cut flower centerpieces will dramatically decrease the amount of work to be done the day before the wedding. With this in mind, I started thinking about using planter boxes for centerpieces.

(source)

This is gorgeous! Obviously, the flowers are cut, but it still gave me an idea of what would look good in a wood planter box. Low blooms with bright colors. Ikea sells a strikingly similar planter box (it might even be the same one, actually) for only $3.99, too!

(Bjuron planter from Ikea)

One morning we trekked out to our local Ikea to buy some DVD storage boxes and decided to pick up one of these planters to see how it looked. The Mister was not a huge fan, mostly because of the uneven stain on the wood. We picked one up anyway just to see how it looked with our tablecloths.

Right across the aisle from the planter boxes was the candle section. And we both instantly noticed these awesome lanterns.

(Borrby lanterns from Ikea)

We bought one of each color and headed home. After placing each lantern and the planter on one of our purple tablecloths, the decision was unanimous - the Black Borrby lantern was it. We bought a bright green pillar candle to go inside it and it just looked fantastic with the purple tablecloths.

But the centerpieces needed something else to feel complete. I started searching for lantern centerpieces to get inspired and found this gem on The Knot.

(source)

It's the same lantern! I found some river rock at The Dollar Store for, well, $1 per bag. Instead of using succulents, I think we will use the heads of large blooming cut flowers, like mums or dahlias. I bought some mums one day at the grocery store and popped the heads off of a few to see how long they would last and was pleasantly surprised that they looked good for a couple of days. Yay!

Centerpieces can now be checked off the to-do list. And without further ado, a picture of our centerpiece mock-up.

(personal photo)

Sorry for the poor image quality. It was taken on a Blackberry and the flash totally washed out the colors. What do you think? Would you add anything else?

Invitation Embellishments for the Craftiness Challenged

2010-03-12T09:38:00.000-08:00

Last night around 9:30 p.m., I decided to open up Word and start fiddling with our invitation layout. We've decided to go with the booklet style invitations, but haven't put anything down on paper yet. According to the PaperSource tutorial I told y'all about previously, I should be able to print two invitation pages on one letter size piece of paper. So the first step would be to create a template that sets the margins where we need them to be and puts two invite pages on one letter size piece of paper.

Long story short, I suck and would be lost without the Mister when it comes to computers. Around 9:50, the Mister heard me grumbling and asked what was the problem. I told him what I was trying to do and he did it in approximately 30 seconds. It is nothing more than a table consisting of two cells fixed to the size we need for our invitations. Why didn't I think of that?

By the time the Mister came to my rescue I decided to quit while I was ahead so I never actually got to the fun part. But I did start thinking about affordable ways to embellish our invitations.

EMBOSSING
The Mister and I are both big fans of desk embossers. You can customize the plates to have your monogram, return address, or whatever your heart desires! Plus, in the grand scheme of things they are fairly affordable. You'll spend around $50-60 for the desk embosser and one custom plate. Plus, we'd totally reuse this after the wedding. What a great way to jazz up Christmas cards! The only downfall is that the largest desk embosser I've seen can accommodate up to a 2" plate, so this isn't really an option if we want to do something larger.

(PaperSource desk embosser)

Heat embossing is another option. I've never done heat embossing before, and it scares me a little bit. And I have to admit, I had never heard of heat embossing before I started researching DIY invitations. Since I've never heat embossed before, far be it from me to tell y'all how it's done. I defer to Ms. Fondue's tutorial on heat embossing. There are plenty other tutes out there though, so get your Google on!

(Martha Stewart's Heat Embossing Kit)

STAMPS

Step one of heat embossing is to stamp the paper with the design you want to emboss. But if heat embossing is too much work, why not just leave it at that and go have yourself a glass of wine? You can buy cute rubber stamps at any craft store and use the ink to impart some more color to your invitation suite. Or you can even order custom rubber stamps online! Here's an adorable one from an Etsy seller.

(Etsy seller lovetocreatestamps' creation)

I've also heard that you can buy special stamp pads where the ink is translucent so you can use the stamp as a watermark and print right over it.

WAX SEALS

The picture of that stamp reminds me of another embellishment . . . wax seals! I think these are great for sealing the inner envelope on your invitation suite, but I don't think we're going to do inner envelopes, so let's move on.

CRAFT PUNCHES AND PAPER CUTTERS

Cricut is obviously the mother of all paper cutters, but since a Cricut is not exactly affordable I won't tease you all with all the amazing things it can do. But don't worry! There are other options! There are handheld craft punches that punch out different preset shapes and sizes. Here's a heart shaped one I found at Save-on-Crafts for $8.30. You can also get other basic shapes like circles, rectangles, and tags. If you want a custom shape, this obviously isn't the route for you, but if you're like us and just want a cheap way to liven things up a bit, the price can't be beat.

(Fiskars Squeeze Punch)

That's all this not-too-crafty bride can think of for now. I'm pretty satisfied with these options. They're simple and accessible, and I think any one of these embellishments will give our invitations that little something special to make them stand out. What do you think? Any other suggestions?

Go With Your Gut

2010-03-10T07:24:00.000-08:00

I love food. The Mister also loves food. But when it comes to the foods we love, the Mister and I differ quite a bit. My perfect dessert is tiramisu, the Mister's is peanut butter cups. I think you get the picture. Yet, when the time came to discuss what kind of food we want to serve at our wedding, we were both on the same page.

(Mmmm....that's what I'm talkin' bout! Source)

That's right. We'll be serving down home, mouth watering, stick to your ribs BBQ. Once we came to this agreement, I started looking for BBQ caterers all across Southern California. We had a couple of delicious local BBQ restaurants on the list - Lucille's Smokehouse BBQ and Canyon City - and the rest were all foreign to us. My main criteria were that they were affordable, full service, and (most importantly) absolutely delish. Obviously, to figure out whether the delish criteria was satisfied we'd need to do some tastings. Life is tough, what can I say.

Our first outing was on my 29th birthday. I decided that if a big group of us were going to get together for my birthday dinner, why not go to one of the BBQ restaurants on our list and kill two birds with one stone. So we all met up at Joey's BBQ, a BBQ joint really close to where we live but had never been to before. I'd heard really great things, but in the end no one was very impressed with the food. Oh well.

After the experience at Joey's, the Mister and I had a good talk. And by "good talk" I mean the Mister talked some sense into me. It went something like this:

Mister: In theory, we could continue to drive all over Southern California tasting BBQ with no guarantee that we will like what we taste. But is that how you want to use your precious spare time?
Me: Not really.
Mister: Will engaging in this wild BBQ chase end up saving us a ton of money?
Me: Not really.
Mister: So what's the point of tasting the food at every BBQ joint from here to San Diego?
Me: Ummmm.... (cue crickets chirping)

So, we looked at Lucille's and Canyon City's offerings a little closer, spoke with someone at Canyon City and found out that they only offer pick-up or drop-off catering, not full service or grill-on site, and BOOM the decision was made. Lucille's Smokehouse BBQ will be catering our wedding.

Don't get me wrong, it was hard at first for me to suppress my deep-seated need to bargain hunt. But the Mister was totally right on this one. Deep down, we both wanted Lucille's to cater our wedding from the get go. Our guts, both literally and figuratively, were telling us Lucille's was what we wanted to eat at our wedding. But there's something about wedding planning that compels me to research things to death, even when it is totally unnecessary. That's where the Mister steps in and reminds me that if this were any other party we were planning I would have gone with Lucille's from day one, no questions asked. So why should our wedding be any different? It shouldn't. Thank you Mister.