Holy #$!%, We're Engaged!

Botox for the bridesmaids?

2008-07-24T10:43:00.003-04:00

Holy #$!%, this New York Times article blew me away.

Skin Deep -- It's Botox for you, Dear Bridesmaids

I was planning to write, at some point, about how ridiculous a lot of brides are about a lot of things when it comes to bridesmaids -- forcing everyone to match is one thing, but forcing them all to match in $300 dresses that they have to pay for? Demanding they all get particular hair styles when they've managed to choose their own hairstyles for at least 20 years on their own? Freaking out about a bridesmaid's pregnancy and "how it will affect the wedding" instead of just saying "congratulations"? That's what I was going to talk about.

But this is 100 times better. Asking your bridesmaids to get boob jobs for the wedding??!? Suggesting that everyone gets Botox -- even if the bride pays for it?!?!?

I don't really have the words to talk about this issue. I just hope that all the sane people in the world realize that this is really f*cking ridiculous.

Real Men Wear Gowns

2008-07-24T10:02:00.003-04:00

So... it turns out I'll look at anything that shows a woman wearing a veil and a white dress.

I was browsing through CNN.com today and noticed an ad off on the sidebar that showed a woman wearing a veil. The ad read, "Real men wear gowns," and standing in front of her was a man wearing ... not a wedding gown, but a hospital gown.

Weddings AND health? Now you've got my interest!

I clicked on over, and it brought me to the website of AHRQ (the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality), which I am already familiar with (they publish healthcare data and put out guidelines for preventive health screening; I use their electronic preventive services selector on my PDA regularly). But I hadn't heard about this health campaign before.

Real Men Wear Gowns is aimed at middle-aged men, it appears (based on the images, information, and videos), but its message is important for all men. It shows guys doing normal things -- playing with their kids, walking their daughters down the aisle, dancing with their wives -- while wearing a hospital gown. You can watch the videos here.

A screenshot from one of the videos.

Men are notorious, as a group, for not going to the doctor until they're very sick -- at which point, valuable opportunities to prevent disease onset or provide early treatment have been lost. It's a stereotype -- but one I've seen numerous times -- to have a male patient say, when asked why he came to the office/ER, "I wasn't going to, but my wife made me." And these are guys who often are in the midst of a serious problem -- like an active heart attack!

Too often, men try to "bear the pain," or "see if it will go away." But they shouldn't. Know the warning signs of heart attacks and strokes, and get screened regularly for overweight/obesity, high cholesterol, hypertension, colorectal cancer, STDs and HIV, depression, and AAA. Tell your fiance, brother, father, FFIL, and anyone else you know the importance of these tests. Really.

It's perfectly reasonable for a young person to have a cholesterol test done once before the age of 25 -- you should know your cholesterol score! It's better to start cutting out a cheeseburger a week and replacing it with something high in fiber now than it is to wait until you're 40 and have 20 years of damage built up.

And women, don't think you're out of the loop; there is a site for Real Women, too. Get Pap tests regularly, get the HPV vaccine, and see an Ob/Gyn before you get pregnant -- there are a lot of things that ideally should be done before a woman gets pregnant, but since so many pregnancies are unplanned, they aren't done until the first obstetrical visit. Start taking a folic acid supplement now; there's no reason not to. And of course, get all the same screening tests as the men -- hypertension, high cholesterol, colorectal cancer, HIV, etc.

Because you're planning to marry your sweetheart for life, and I know you want it to be a long and healthy one.

Miss Manners says

2008-07-23T09:42:00.003-04:00

I love Miss Manners. In fourth grade I read all of her books. Her well-hidden sarcastic wit is just awesome. That's why she's in my Google Reader. To be honest, I often don't read the columns, especially because they are fed as headlines-only, and it's kind of a pain to click over to read the whole thing, but every now and then I catch up on a backlog of them.

Today, it was the headline that caught my eye: Tentative Steps at the Wedding Reception

So naturally, I clicked on over.

Dear Miss Manners:

I am curious about the tradition of wedding dances. We have the happy couple's first dance. Then there is the father/daughter dance followed by the mother/son. By now, all the guests at the reception are happily chatting among themselves, no longer paying attention, and we segue into the son and mother-in-law, etc.

What is appropriate for an evening wedding with a band or DJ? How long should the dances be, and how many should there be?
The idea is for the bridal couple to open the dancing, not to give a private dance featuring their relatives while the guests' function is to stand around admiring them.

Or not. No wonder couples confess to nervousness about the simple act of dancing with each other. Getting married is not a sufficient qualification to stage a dance performance before an audience.

Miss Manners gathers that you have heard about those lists in which the order of dancing is specified for a long line of relatives, regardless of whether they are on speaking terms. Such overplanning arises from the suspicion that the gentlemen of the wedding party are innocent of the requirement to dance with the principal ladies instead of only following their personal preferences.
The idea is for the parents to dance with the couple and one another, and, by the way, it would be nice if the gentlemen asked Granny to dance, too. And for the guests to be treated as guests.

Guests should not be kept waiting, even the full length of one dance. Halfway through the bridal couple's dance, the bride's father cuts in to dance with his daughter and the bereft bridegroom turns to his mother. (This can also be done with the respective in-laws first.) At this point, the bridesmaids and groomsmen should take to the dance floor and encourage the other guests to follow.

Presumably, the bridal couple's enjoyment is in gazing at each other, not in being gazed at.

I believe Miss Manners has presumed correctly. In one wedding I was in, we (the bridal party) were instructed to begin dancing halfway through the first dance, on the DJ's cue, and then the DJ encouraged everyone else to join in as well. It worked really well, because the song was on the long side for a first dance song (Call and Answer, Barenaked Ladies). Other couples have advised us to choose a short first dance song for the same reason. Another way to divert attention? Do what Mrs. Hibiscus and Mrs. Eggplant (from Weddingbee, DUH!) did and have voice-overs played during the first dance. You get to dance, but your guests will most likley be paying attention to what's being said (just go listen at the links; you'll understand more clearly what I'm talking about).

In any case, it appears Miss Manners has spoken, and just as I always eat asparagus with my fingers as she says (go Google it yourself!), I will keep this in mind as well.

Not that we can decide on a first dance song, anyway.

Any first dance song suggestions, or other ways to make it less embarrassing?

Photographer!

2008-07-22T20:15:00.006-04:00

We booked our photographer a few months ago, but I realize I never told you! There are tons of photographers in our area, at all price levels and styles, so it was a huge headache for me to sort through them all and pick ones to meet with. Craigslist, especially, is a treasure trove of "budget" photographers. A big dilemma was the fact that I really really wanted good photos, and wanted a photographer I enjoyed working with (based on a wedding I attended a couple years ago and our experience with our free engagement photos), but was on a major budget. I like the "photojournalistic" style for the photos it produces, but I need some direction like a traditional photographer would do. Plus, the term "photojournalistic" doesn't really mean anything now, since everyone's using it.

In my usual OCD style, I compiled a spreadsheet with every photographer's info and prices -- again, just as it had been with venue searching, it was hard to compare apples to apples. Some photographers worked for 4 hours, others for 8, others for an unlimited amount of time on the day of. Some included an engagement session, and others didn't. Same with printed proofs or albums. To be honest, albums weren't high on our priority list, but a decent amount of time and rights to the digital files of the final photos were, so that was taken into account as well. Finally, I narrowed it down to five.

I met with Photographer #1 with my mom when she came to visit a few months ago, and she was really great -- very sweet and easy-going, with a great portfolio, but she was a little out of our price range. I then met with Photographer #2 on my own -- she was based out of Cincinnati, and her website looked good, and she sent me a DVD of some of her portfolios in the mail. She was unable to meet with me at any halfway point between Cincinnati and Louisville the weekend I wanted to meet, but I drove up to Cincinnati and met her at a Starbucks. I arrived a little early and got a coffee; she called to say she was going to be late, which was OK. She finally arrived, explained that she had had babysitting issues with her daughter (uh oh), handed me some albums to look through, and went up to get a coffee. This Starbucks was SOOO crowded, though, and by the time she came back with her drink, I had looked through the albums completely, and twice. The fact that she was newer to the business than I thought, combined with an already-bad first impression having to do with an inability to find childcare (although I am totally understanding of people having kids and plans changing at the last minute!), combined with the fact that she seemed more nervous than I was during our meeting, all left me feeling like I had driven to Cincinnati for nothing. I should have visited the then-brand new Ikea to make the trip worth it, but instead, I drove home (although I did get Chipotle while I was in Cincy, since there isn't one in Louisville!).

Then I met with Photographer #3 on my own as well, and I liked him. I did have a few reservations -- he was just getting started, although he had a lot of photos to show me, and something about his personality wasn't quite right for the person I wanted shooting our wedding day photos. Like, he'd be fun to hang out and have a beer with, but that personality quality wouldn't necessarily have a calming effect on me, which I think I'm going to need on the wedding day. Nevertheless, his prices were cheap, and I've heard over and over again from people who have booked photographers before they were well known and ended up with amazing photography at great prices. So when Eric came to visit a couple weekends after that, he met with Photographer #3 as well (also alone; I was stuck seeing psychiatric patients in the office).

Eric didn't get the best vibe from Photographer #3, and felt he didn't seem as qualified as he would have liked. He also agreed with me that I am a person who, if she doesn't completely trust someone she's working with, will attempt to take over and direct things herself -- and I don't need to be doing that on the day of my own wedding! So I definitely need to be working with someone that I trust and who will have a calming presence, because I'll most likely need it.

Together we interviewed Photographer #4, who was really great. It was James from J Higgins Photography, and we met him in his studio (he runs a framing studio as well). I liked everything about him -- he's been in business a long time, but has continually kept up to date with techniques and trends, and had lots of great photos. He was very calm, cool, and collected -- completely the opposite of Photographer #3! He offered a wide range of packages at different price points, and the one we were thinking of had a couple items we weren't interested in (like a signature matte), but he said it would be no problem to use them as credit toward prints or extra hours of service instead. We left that meeting feeling great and J Higgins was, at that point, at the top of our list.

We had one more photographer meeting scheduled for the next morning, so we put off the search for the night and headed off to see Avenue Q with our friends David and Amy. You should totally see this show, by the way. I loved it.

So who was Photographer #5 and who did we finally pick? Stay tuned to find out!

Honeymoon remorse

2008-07-17T10:21:00.002-04:00

A long time ago, I decided I didn't want a relaxing, beach honeymoon. We have beach access pretty much any time we want it, and my idea of a vacation is generally to tour new countries, not to lie on a beach and read. Eric went along with my thought, and we brainstormed places to honeymoon.

We wanted it to be somewhere that neither of us had been before; that knocked out Italy, London, Paris, parts of Spain, Brussels, as well as Hong Kong and Taiwan. We also didn't want to have to deal too much with a foreign language, so that knocked out most of the rest of Asia. I can get by in French, but I'd feel badly for both of us if I had to be translating menus for a whole trip, so I crossed other parts of France off the list as well; the same went for Eric and Spanish. The thought of me actually having to rely on my Chinese for an entire vacation was just headache-inducing, so that was off the table from the start.

Scotland was a good contender (and actually, I've had it in the back of my mind as a honeymoon destination for a while; I ripped out a feature on it from a 2004 issue of Modern Bride I got while helping to plan my friend Karen's wedding). We both have Scottish in our heritages (we both have Scottish last names), and I thought it would be cool to go explore a country that we both have ties to, as well as spoke English.

I kind of figured it would be expensive, but we also don't need to live in the lap of luxury for the entire honeymoon, so I figured there would be ways to cut corners here and there. I really liked the idea of renting a car and driving all over, exploring the lochs and the highlands and the lowlands. We could stay in a castle (maybe even a haunted castle!), and relax if we got sick of driving on the wrong side of the road.

Then I set up a honeymoon registry, on Honeyfund. I put a link to it on our wedding website. I set out to think of cute honeymoon activities to register for ($50 for Holly to try haggis; $100 for squeamish Eric to try it; $40 for a meal at McDonald's when both of us got sick of haggis). I registered us for GPS for the rental car so we wouldn't get lost while driving on the wrong side of the road; I calculated what a tank of petrol would cost. In doing so, I came across this blog, in which the blogger had already calculated petrol costs. It's over $8 a gallon. YIKES!

Then I even went so far as to buy plane tickets from Skyauction.com, a site I have used regularly in the past that has great deals. Back in April, I won an auction for 2 tickets on Virgin Atlantic for $1522. Woohoo! It was roundtrip from NYC to Heathrow (and we could leave from DC instead for only a small fee). I figured there would be an easy way to get to Scotland from London, and everything would be fine.

Then I got buyer's remorse. At that time, more than a year before the wedding/honeymoon, I couldn't even check plane ticket prices to see if I was truly getting a deal. I would have to wait until at least the middle of June, if not July (some airlines won't post tickets more than 11 months in advance). Oh my god, what had I done? Where had this sense of urgency to book tickets come from?

Luckily, in the weeks since, gas prices have only continued to climb, and I became confident that there was no way a plane ticket to Europe next May could possibly be LESS expensive than one this May (and I had gotten a good deal compared with this year's prices), so at least that was good.

But then, I got not just buyer's remorse, but honeymoon remorse. After spending a month in rural Kentucky, then driving to Philadelphia, flying to Brussels for a week, and freaking out about studying for Step 2 of my boards, applying to residency, and figuring out what I'm going to do for the rest of my life, I realized that sitting on a beach really isn't all that bad. I asked Eric if the whole "touring a new country is better than sitting on a beach" thing was his opinion as much as mine, and he confessed it wasn't. Sitting on a beach is just fine with him, as it turns out.

And think about all the cool places with beaches that still offer tourism opportunities: Thailand, South America, Africa, the South Pacific, the Galapagos Islands. The list is quite extensive. A friend recommended Thailand. Another recommended Honduras. Two of my cousins have gone to the Maldives for their honeymoons and can't stop gushing. Miss Coconut on Weddingbee yesterday posted about Costa Rica, and I checked out the hotel she was staying at, and it looks great. But how to get out of our plane tickets to London!?!?!?!?

I emailed Skyauction a couple weeks ago, and asked what their refund policy was. I wasn't too optimistic, but I figured I could always explain that it was going to be a honeymoon trip and the honeymoon wasn't happening. I wasn't above breaking out the big guns and crying over email that the wedding was off and I didn't know what I would do if they wouldn't refund me my money, either.

In the meantime, it became possible to check ticket prices to London. It turns out that for our prospective honeymoon dates next May, NY to London on Virgin Atlantic costs between $800 and $1050/person roundtrip. So we did get a deal! It would still be a hassle to get from London to Scotland, but whatever. Our original-but-now-backup plan was acceptable, if not ideal.

Skyauction got back to me this morning, though. They can withdraw me from my auction (because while I had paid, I had never completed the process by submitting dates and receiving tickets) with only a $95 cancellation fee.

Normally, $95 is a lot of money to me. Especially for stupid shit like cancellation fees. But this morning, it might as well have been 95 cents, because that's how relieved I was. And no crying and fake "the wedding's off" stories needed, to boot!

The honeymoon registry link has been removed from the wedding website (I'm not convinced it's the best idea for us anyway, even once we decide on a honeymoon location). Scotland isn't completely off the table, but wouldn't it be nice to book a plane ticket that leaves from Louisville and lands in Glasgow, without us worrying about how to do all the in-between stuff ourselves? I'm pretty sure I want to go somewhere more interesting than the Carribean, but I've also never been to the Carribean, so maybe I shouldn't be so quick to judge.

So now the brainstorming begins all over again. Any suggestions?

EtOH!

2008-07-15T23:23:00.004-04:00

That would be ethanol, aka alcohol. Woohoo!

Last fall, my brother had a part-time job at a liquor store to make some extra cash. It sounded like a pretty easy job for him: some stocking, manning the cash register of a not-horrendously-busy liquor store, helping to run wine tasting parties, and learning a decent amount about wine. It was a great job for me, because he got to purchase things at wholesale, and I had a wedding to plan.

Going into venue hunting, we knew that we had to be allowed to bring in our own alcohol, to take advantage of our amazing hook-up. I had a pretty good idea of how ridiculously pricey catered alcohol can be, and I didn't want to have to skimp in this area.

[Glassworks actually is supposed to charge us a $300 fee for using our own alcohol, but we will still come out ahead. Plus, at this point, they haven't charged us the fee, and I'm not really sure how they are going to figure out whose alcohol we are using. Oh well. We'll see what happens come May.]

It was pretty fun to come up with our bar needs. We knew we were going to have an open bar, and wanted to offer liquor, wine, and beer. I had alcohol options from two different hotels I had (very) briefly considered, so I could see what they brands they suggested for their "house," "call," and "premium/top shelf" liquor packages.

Next I checked out online drink calculators. Evite has a drink calculator, and I also found this calculator and guide. I also found out that even though evite gives you results in whole liters, alcohol generally comes in either 750mL or 1.75L bottles, not 1L ones. It was a little stressful to try to run all the calculations not really knowing how many people we're going to have (150 is the number we're using, but it will likely be less than that), but in the end, a good rule of thumb is that too much alcohol is always better than too little :)

We bought the liquor first, back in January, because it was convenient for my brother to do so and I knew we could store the liquor safely for pretty much forever. I also figured that we should probably have enough for two separate bars, because I hate long bar lines, so I bought accordingly. Here's what we got:

Two 1.75L bottles of Smirnoff vodka
Two 1.75L bottles of Tanqueray gin
Two 1.75L bottles of Knob Creek bourbon
One 1.75L bottle of Bacardi rum
One 750mL bottle of Bacardi rum
Two 1.75L bottles of Johnnie Walker red scotch
(We also already had an unoped 1.75L bottle of Bacardi, so now we're saving that for the wedding as well.)

I didn't really feel any need to have tequila, since (in my opinion) they're pretty much best used for margaritas, and we'll have enough mixed drink options without margaritas, and the only other good use for them is shots, and, well... tequila shots and I do not get along. (Actually, we got along fabulously initially, but then things take a turn for the worse.)

The bourbon was a little stressful; Kentucky is obvious bourbon country, and we needed a good one. However, since a lot of bourbons aren't marketed aggresively outside of Kentucky, the store where my brother worked didn't keep a lot of them in stock. (And to be completely honest, he wasn't really supposed to be buying things at cost; as long as he was buying from the store's stock, though, the assistant manager didn't mind. Because of this, though, we were trying to avoid having him place any special orders.) But, Knob Creek is a good bourbon, so I'm happy.

We weren't planning to buy the wine or beer until next spring, closer to the wedding, because I was worried about storing it. However, my brother called me back in April to announce that he had given his two weeks' notice, and that if I wanted wine, I should act soon. Yikes!

When it comes to wine, I do not like merlot or chardonnay, which are the standard wine offerings at a lot of weddings I've been to. My go-to choices are pinot noir and pinot grigio, and I have a few other reds I'm partial to as well. Eric has a broader palate than I do, but in general we agree on wines, which always makes it nice when we order a bottle at a restaurant. Don't get me wrong, though; I am by no means a wine connoisseur, and if I were doing a blind taste test, I can't guarantee that I wouldn't declare a merlot quite palatable.

In the end, the wedding isn't all about me (shocker!), or even about me and Eric, so we're providing a wider selection of wine. Here's what we got:

Three 1.5L bottles of Rex Goliath chardonnay
Four 1.5L bottles of Yellow Tail chardonnay
Six 1.5L bottles of Fish Eye pinot grigio
Six 750mL bottles of Rex Goliath pinot noir
Six 750mL bottles of Yellow Tail pinot noir
Three 1.5L bottles of Rex Goliath cabernet sauvignon
Three 1.5L bottles of Yellow Tail cabernet sauvignon
Six 750mL bottles of Yellow Tail rose

These are brands (Rex Goliath, especially) that we like a lot, so I'm comfortable with what we got. I know they're not super amazing wines if you have much of a wine palate, but I'm also fairly certain that none of our guests is really going to be able to tell the difference. I also know that a lot of caterers offer simply a merlot and chardonnay in a "house" brand of some sort, so I feel that what we're doing is at least a step and a half above that.

We also went ahead and got champagne; just enough for everyone to have a toast. At first, my brother recommended Freixenet extra dry; it's a cava, which is a Spanish sparkling wine. I was able to get my hands on a bottle before my friend Jamie's wedding back in April, and we all had a taste. It was a little too dry for my liking, and I was going to stress about choosing one that I really liked, when again, I realized that at a lot of fancy hotel weddings (such as the black tie one that Jamie had), they simply offer whatever their house champagne is, and no one has a choice. So I let go, told my brother it was too dry, and when he suggested the St. Hilaire semi-sweet as an alternate, we went with it. In the end, it really doesn't matter.

All the liquor and wine is now sitting in my parents' basement, in the storage closet behind the Christmas decorations, and my brother even bought a dehumidifier for the closet to keep everything nice and un-damp (my parents' house is in Maryland, very near to two different rivers and the Chesapeake Bay, so un-damp is hard to come by), and someone will be driving it to Louisville next May.

It doesn't look like too much here, but I didn't open up all those boxes to take a good look; the Christmas decorations were in the way and I didn't feel like moving them all!

The only thing we have left to buy is beer, and we're definitely going to wait on that, because storing beer is asking for trouble. We're going to provide mostly Yuengling, which can't be bought in Kentucky, so someone will be driving more alcohol west come May. I guess we'll also provide a light beer of some sort, but we'll most likely just get that locally.

We'll also buy some mixers, like vermouth for martinis, and maybe some liqueurs, but maybe not. We'll also have sodas and something else non-alcoholic, like iced tea or lemonade, and we'll most likely buy all of that at one of the club stores in the weeks before the wedding. One of the caterers we're interviewing right now pointed out that to have both the ceremony and ensuing cocktail hour on the roof, an extra bar would either need to be pre-set up on the roof (meaning more money for another bartender and a bar in our ceremony space), or we should opt for passed drinks only during cocktail hour. I really like the idea of passed drinks for cocktail hour, because then we have an excuse to come up with signature drinks! Right now I'm thinking about mint juleps (naturally) and mojitos, as well as mint iced tea (sense a theme?).

All of that alcohol cost us about $750, and will create (roughly) 500 drinks. The hotel caterer, on the other hand, would have charged us $6 per drink! I'm pretty sure we have way too much alcohol (we don't even have the beer yet!), but better safe than sorry. I also know we have some groomsmen who would be more than happy to take some of the extra home.

Archivers Bridal Showcase

2008-07-14T16:04:00.005-04:00

Before I left Louisville for my extended trip all over every where, I went to a wedding craft workshop at Archivers. It's a pretty neat store, dedicated to scrapbooking, card making, and other paper crafts. The workshop was pretty straight-forward: a representative went through some pictures and ideas for wedding invitations and associated stationery projects, a lot of which I had seen before, but it was nice to see the emphasis on DIY. Some were really easy, and even someone with no card-making experience could pull them off; there were also a lot of projects that involved stamping, embossing, and other card-making techniques that I've never attempted, but again, don't look incredibly hard (but I bet it becomes an expensive hobby!).

Then we got to try out some of the fun stuff: paper punches, markers and pens with different types of inks and tips, and we got to ooh and aah over their line of invitation stationery. I do love touching pretty paper. We also learned how to line an envelope, and got to try it ourselves.

It's not too hard; Paper Source sells plastic templates for tracing out liners, and I've also read that an easy way to do it is to measure out a template that is exactly 1/8" smaller than the actual envelope. At Archivers, they suggested a different method: tracing the envelope directly to get the right curve for the flap, then trimming the two vertical sides down to fit. It worked really well, and here was my final product:

One important lesson I learned was to not use a liner paper with a line/graph pattern unless you're REALLY into being anal and making sure all the lines are parallel/perpendicular to the envelope. No, thank you.

The other cool tool I used to make the liner was the Scor-it, which allows you to score paper to create a nice fold. You can also use a bone folder, and while I've never used a bone folder myself, the Scor-it was SO easy to use that I was completely sold. It's a pretty solid example of a unitasker, and while Alton Brown might object, I may be purchasing one of these in the near future. Gah, what wedding planning can convince you to do!

The only real problem with my lined envelope above, which you can see if you look closely, is that the liner is kind of crooked. That's because the adhesive tape I used was really sticky, and I positioned it badly. Fortunately, I also learned that there is a repositionable adhesive that becomes permanent only after 24 hours, which would be very useful. I also have a supply of Zots and other sticky dots that I'm sure I'll be using for various wedding craftiness.

So all in all, I would recommend the Archivers Bridal Showcase workshop. They offer it on a continual basis (at least, I see it on the calendar through July), it's less than 2 hours long, and it's FREE!

And speaking of Paper Source, the Weddingbees all write about it like it's some sort of paper mecca, which definitely makes me to want to check it out. Unfortunately, there's not one anywhere near Louisville, but there is one in D.C. and another in Alexandria -- I think I'll be making a visit while I'm here on the east coast!

**Update: I forgot to mention another tip the Archivers lady shared with us. If you buy cardstock/paper that's pre-cut in small sizes, and you need to print on it, it can be hard to feed it through a printer easily. Instead, use a removable glue dot to attach it to a full-sized sheet of paper, then feed it through the printer that way. When it's done, just remove the glue dot and it should come out perfectly!

Bridesmaids

2008-07-14T10:51:00.003-04:00

I saw "27 Dresses" on the plane ride back from Brussels, and it was pretty good. My favorite part was the running line from the bride about the bridesmaid dresses she had picked out: "And the best part is, you can totally shorten it and wear it again!"

Haha. If only it were true.

My two younger sisters, who haven't been in any weddings before, are approaching bridesmaid dress shopping with "future wearability" in mind. I'm pretty sure the rest of my bridesmaids have given up on that tack. I certainly have never worn any of the three bridesmaid dresses I have again, although one has the potential to be cute if cut short, and the other was a two-piece, and the corset top does have some possibilities. The third one I'll probably never fit into again, even if I did want to wear it again.

Nevertheless, while bridesmaid dresses have little chance of being worn again, it would be nice to offer the ladies some choice, at least so they can pick something flattering on the one day they will wear it. Plus, at the wedding, the bridesmaids will be between 20 and 28 years old, some with skinny figures who would look good in a rag, and others with sensitive areas they'd like to display only to their best advantage. One will not yet be old enough to legally drink, and two will have children. It really wouldn't be nice to stick them all in the same strapless thing. So from the start, I've had the idea that I would pick a color, and they would pick the dress.

J Crew was a good possibility; they had a "spiced wine" color last fall that was pretty much perfect, and their special occasion dresses come in a variety of styles that would work well for everyone.

J Crew "Lydia" cotton cady dress in clover

However, by the time I started looking (which was last fall, and admittedly early), the spiced wine color was already on clearance, so there weren't a lot of sizes or styles left. I emailed J Crew and they said they would have a plum color that was similar to spiced wine that will debut next month. That certainly has possibilities, but the other problem with J Crew is the price -- those dresses retail for $250 and up, and while that's OK for some brides, I just can't do it. The only argument for it (which one of my friends has made), is that it might be better to spend $250 on a dress you will legitimately wear again (and these dresses are definitely great for that), rather than $150 on a dress you'll never wear again. I'm not sure. I'll wait until August and see what that plum color looks like, then see what everyone thinks, I guess.

In the meantime, I had been browsing designers, looking for a good purple color. I wanted dark purple, colors that are often called "eggplant," "aubergine," or "plum." I didn't want a true purple, like "amethyst," or a light purple, like "lilac." Let me tell you, I got quickly acquainted with color names, that's for sure!

I also wasn't completely in love with satin, and kind of preferred the soft, flowy look of chiffon. I ended up browsing through bridesmaid dresses by Eden, Bill Levkoff, David's Bridal, and a million others, as well as Mori Lee. I ended up compiling some dress pictures and sent them off to my bridesmaids for feedback. Some went through and picked out specific dresses they liked, some just gave general feedback ("prefer not strapless"), and others said, "I can find something I like in any of the designers you suggested," which was majorly helpful. So then I had to go out and actually look at these colors in person, because online you really couldn't tell what you were getting.

There is a long, drawn-out saga of events, confusion, and frustration that occurred between March and May that I won't bore you with; suffice it to say that Mori Lee has a color called "aubergine" (which is French for "eggplant") that is 100% silvery-lilac that everyone knows about, and another color, "eggplant" that is pretty much a perfect dark eggplant purple, even though their website doesn't really reflect it and some dress shops claim to know nothing about it. Have I mentioned how ridiculous the bridal industry is? Plus, Mori Lee dresses are on the more inexpensive side, starting in the low $100s at online retailers like House of Brides.

(I've used House of Brides before; I convinced my friend (and bridesmaid) Jamie to take a small risk and let us order from them for her bridesmaid dresses, because it was going to save us each at least $30. It was a great experience, the dresses came in quickly, and they were totally legit, so she was relieved, and I would totally use them again or recommend them to anyone.)

So as of right now, the girls are supposed to be picking out a Mori Lee dress (I even decided I didn't care about the slight color difference between chiffon and satin, and they can wear either), then calling Mori Lee directly to double-check that it comes in eggplant (I'm happy to do it for them as well), and letting me know what they've picked. Sorry, but I can't find any photos of their eggplant dresses online to share. I suppose if J Crew's "plum" turns out to be a great color when it "debuts" (they're word, not mine) next month, we might have some more decisions to make, but I really can't imagine that everyone wants to spend over $250 on a dress.

Then I saw these pictures over on And Stanley makes three:

...and I wondered if I should let go of any desire to match at all, and just tell them all to find any dress in purple. What great pictures, don't you think? Maybe I'd tell them no super-light lilac, but anything else would be OK.

On the other hand, two of my bridesmaids are medical residents and I haven't talked to either of them for more than 10 minutes in the last few months, and I'm sure they don't have time to go shopping for a dress of their choosing. Everyone else is also very busy. Believe me, I've even gotten, "just tell us what to wear, and it will be fine" from one or two of them, so I am led to believe that sometimes, too much choice can be a bad thing.

So that's where I stand on bridesmaid dresses at the moment. Same designer, same color, different fabrics, different styles. I think we can still set up that dresses-on-a-hanger photo with much success, don't you?

Ladyfingers Catering Tasting Event

2008-07-13T10:45:00.004-04:00

Looking for a caterer in Louisville? I got this email the other day (unfortunately, I won't be able to attend, since I'm still here at the beach):

LADYFINGERS CATERING

12901 Old Henry Rd

LOUISVILLE KY 40223

Ph:502-245-773

ladyfingers@iglou.com www.ladyfingersinc.com

For Your Upcoming Events…

Wedding, Christmas Party, Company Picnic, or Gala

We would like to invite you to our Open House Tasting

Thursday July 17, 2008

6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

Please RSVP include event date or coordinators name/company

*If you have any special request for the tasting please let us know when you RSVP*

Limit 2 tickets per Party – additional tickets available at $15.00 per person

Donna Brown
Marketing Director
Ladyfingers Catering
12901 Old Henry Rd.
Louisville KY 40223
502-245-7734

Proud Exclusive Caterer for The Barnstable Brown Party and The Kentucky Bourbon Festival

It sounds like it's free for up to 2 people. Good deal for free food (which every medical student is always on the lookout for)!

Brussels wedding?

2008-07-08T11:26:00.008-04:00

While wandering around Brussels last week, I couldn't help but think about a European wedding. The city gardens are a mix of the wild English type and manicured French type, the streets are crowded with tall, ornate rowhomes, and the whole city is so beautiful and quintessentially ... European. Gorgeous. If only there were money to fly everyone to Belgium. I'd have a ceremony with lots of French words thrown in, everyone would drink Trappist and lambic beers (mmmmm, beer), and we would dine on mussels and frites. Sounds good, non?

Here's some Belgian inspiration for you:

These are MASSIVE white hydrangeas growing outside the Eglise Notre Dame du Sablon (Our Lady of Sablon Church), which is at the end of the street where my parents live. I'm not normally one for hydrangeas, but these were so huge and luscious that I couldn't help but think of wedding bouquets when I saw them.

A Bruxelloise wedding dress boutique. We couldn't decide if the red dress was better suited for bridesmaids or a bride.

In case you were wondering what "wedding registry" is in French, it's "listes de mariage." This store on the Grand Sablon was so cute, kind of like an Anthropologie for household goods.

This store, also on the Grand Sablon, was chock full of adorable dishes with bright, bold, beautiful patterns. It made me contemplate registering for china, for sure. And I now have an urge to have multiple pie plates so I can display them on their sides, as in the picture above.

We aren't having a church wedding, but if I had access to churches that look like this, I might reconsider. (Clockwise from top left: the back of Notre Dame du Sablon, Cathedrale des Saints Michel et Gudule, unknown church on Rue Royale)

This is much more my style. The wedding party could walk up the Grand Sablon (top left) and bypass Notre Dame du Sablon at the end for the Parc d'Egmont behind it (top right). Egmont happens to be my favorite Beethoven overture, as luck would have it. Or how about having the wedding in Parc de Bruxelles, right across from the Royal Palace (middle left) or in the very French-looking botanical gardens (bottom left)? Of course, the most Bruxelloise of all would be the Grand Place, which is by far the most beautiful square I've ever seen (middle and bottom right).

It would be fun, that's for sure.

I was going to blog...

2008-06-25T05:37:00.002-04:00

... seeing as how I haven't really given you any updates on my own planning, or shared any of my inspiration, for a while now. And I was going to do it between 11 and 2, while waiting for my lost luggage to arrive. But voila, it's 11:40, my luggage came, and now I'm off to explore Brussels. Blogging (and reading all of the wedding-related blogs on my Google Reader) is going to have to wait.

Bon journee! (By the way, can I just mention how much I love being in a city that speaks French again? I understand and speak just enough to get by, which is perfect. Brussels doesn't have the main attractions the way Paris does, but it is so quintessentially European and I love it even though I've been here barely 24 hours!)

Wedding mishaps

2008-06-02T21:31:00.002-04:00

My Google Reader is mostly filled with health and science news feeds and wedding blog feeds, as well as some personal blogs of people I know. Every now and then, I wonder, in the midst of reading an article, why I keep coming across so many articles I find particularly interesting, then realize that I have created a completely selective reading experience and brush off my "this is too coincidental" feeling.

But sometimes I come across wedding stories in unexpected places, like CNN and NY Times (Science section). Today I came across two.

A puking bride, crazy squirrel and a fire
Wedding crasher flew in, and the lawn wore white

I'll keep my fingers crossed that none of these things happens at my wedding.

Proposal triggers UFO alert

2008-05-31T21:15:00.002-04:00

Story here.

Funny.

Actually, flying paper lanterns is a Chinese (and Thai, I think) custom that has made its way into North American weddings. Instead of throwing rice or birdseed or rose petals or blowing bubbles, some people have guests light the lanterns. Could be very pretty:

By the way, the site where I got that picture is a blog by a Philly-area DJ, Steve Croce, who has a pretty good blog. I'll definitely be reading it for music planning ideas.

Happy Negative Anniversary!

2008-05-24T11:52:00.002-04:00

365 days to go! Holy #$!%!

Tomorrow will mark the actual 52-week mark, since the wedding's on a Sunday. It's beautiful here today, 69 degrees and sunny, with a projected high of 72. Tomorrow should be 82 and mostly sunny. I'd be happy with either of those forecasts for the actual wedding day.

Things we've crossed off the to-do list since getting engaged back in August (wow, NINE months ago!):

Picked a date
Had our parents meet
Signed up for a wedding-only credit card (so we can track the depressing number that represents how expensive this is all going to be)
Booked a venue
Asked our wedding party to celebrate with us
Had engagement photos taken
Picked out my wedding dress
Booked a hotel block (it's not quite done; they can't finalize it until 51 weeks out)
Designed a wedding website (it will go live soon, I promise!)
Booked a photographer (details to come!)
Ordered our save-the-dates (yes, it's early, but there was a printing promotion going on, so I wanted to take advantage)
Started a wedding registry (no, I'm still not sharing)

(Big) Things we still have to do:

Book a caterer
Buy my wedding dress (I'm waiting to lose a couple more pounds, haha)
Interview and hire an officiant for the ceremony
Finish registering
Decide on a honeymoon destination once and for all (Scotland is looking more and more expensive, sadly)
Buy wedding rings
Work on all the millions of details that previously were too tiny for me to legitimately think about so far out from the big day. But did that stop me from doing it? NO WAY! I just get to talk about it now :)

It's crazy to think about, but it's only 1 year away!

Flowers

2008-05-12T17:17:00.009-04:00

I LOOOOOOOVE flowers. I used to work at a florist in college, and it was by far the best job I ever had. Of course, getting to work in the Annapolis ER was very cool as well, and it made for some awesome stories and amazing medical experience that has worked out well for me in medical school, but seriously, if this whole medical thing ever fails, I'm going to become a florist/wedding planner.

The nice thing about having worked in a flower shop is that I learned a lot about working with flowers. By the time I left, I had learned the basics of doing a vase or foam arrangement, the basics of making hand-tied bouquets (hand-tied = the kind that are very popular now, a round bunch of flowers that you hold by the bunch of stems), and how to make boutonnieres. Plus lots of other tips and tricks like bow making (very handy!), garland making, and probably most importantly, how to care for fresh flowers and get them to open the way you want them to.

So naturally I have grand ideas about doing a lot of my own flowers for the wedding. It's possible, believe me. But I'm still realistic. I don't want to make boutonnieres, and probably not my own bouquet (depends on what I want to get, but more on that later), so I'll get a florist for those. But bridesmaids bouquets, aisle decorations, centerpieces, and possibly even arch flowers, I (with help) can totally do. The first step is to order tons of flowers wholesale from the internet. At prices like those, I can afford to splurge and order lots and lots of everything I love.

But here's the problem: there are tooooooo many options, and I love them all. (Note: in the following pictures, if there isn't a visible hyperlink in the text to the source, then the photo itself is hyperlinked to the source.)

1. Ceremony arch. I don't have an arch yet, but there are lots of viable options out there. Black wrought iron is probably the cheapest, and then there are the gorgeous-but-expensive wood ones. Making a wooden one would NOT be hard (that's what strong fiances and guy friends are for, but as I don't have a yard, finding workspace is the biggest problem). In any case, I would love to have it be overflowing with flowers, like this one:
So pretty! Each chunk of flowers is arranged on its own piece of foam, then attached to the arch. Totally do-able.
Or this one, which just looks so pretty.

2. Bridesmaids' bouquets. These are going to be hand-tied, and therefore very easy to make. But what kind of color palette? I'm initially drawn to multi-colored bouquets, like the flowers on the first arch above -- various shades of pinks, as well as purples and greens. Like this:
Or I really like the funky, wild look of these (from The Knot):

But then I saw these bouquets and I really liked them, too:
They're actually Mrs. Onion's bridesmaids' bouquets from Weddingbee, and her florist featured them on her website. The white and purple is so clean looking, and the purple really pops against the white. On the other hand, if my bridesmaids are already going to be wearing purple, then it might not pop as much, and the white is what would be seen. And I do love the look of the first bouquets with the multiple shades of pinks and purples.

Either way, I like a loose, organic feeling to bouquets; nothing too stiff, manicured, or formal. "Lush" is a good word.

3. Aisle decorations. Floral pomanders on shepherd's hooks?
Paper lanterns hung from the chairs?
Or pomanders hung from the chairs or lanterns hung from shepherd's hooks? I like the look of shepherd's hooks, but since the roof of Glassworks is a deck, attaching them to the deck might be rather difficult, so hanging things from the chairs is probably a better idea. Lanterns would bring in the Asian feel that I'm having difficulty incorporating otherwise...

Or how about flowers in buckets hanging from the chairs?
I think they moved those buckets into the reception area to decorate the bar after the ceremony. Or we could put buckets directly on the ground. It's too bad tulips aren't in season at the end of May, or else I would have tons of them at the wedding. Oh well.

If I can make the arch and the aisle interesting enough, then I don't want to have to bother trying to decorate the fence that goes around the perimeter of the roof. I've seen some nice pictures from past weddings where they decorated with things like tulle or Christmas lights, but if I can avoid it, I think I'd like to.

4. Centerpieces. This is where there are just TOO many options. I intend to just make vase arrangements for the tables, with lots of colors and flower types. If you have enough flowers, then it doesn't matter if they're not professionally arranged, because they will just look amazing on their own (that's my opinion, anyway). But what kind of vases? There's the short round or square vase that holds a short arrangement:

This is from a wedding my bridesmaid and former roommate Marjorie went to back in 2005 (yes, I've been collecting pictures from weddings for many years now).

This is from my bridesmaid Paula's wedding last year. If you go short, you should make sure that the centerpiece won't block the sight line for guests seated across from each other. I think I read somewhere that they should be no taller than 12-14".

Or you can alternate short and tall arrangements on the tables to add some visual interest:
This is one of the tall arrangements that was on some of the tables at Paula's reception. It's VERY tall. The clear glass vase, although it's tall, still allows for people to see each other through it, thus not halting conversation.

Or, you can mix and match things on a single table: 3-4 vases each with its own bunch of flowers in it (sorry, can't find a picture right now).

I have lots of random little vases hanging around, and I know I can always find a ton more at Goodwill, and I know I don't want everything to be completely matchy-matchy, so I think I might just start collecting vessels and then fill them all with flowers when the time comes and have them go wherever they look good. Tuesday Morning and Big Lots both have lots of vases as well -- in fact, I was at Tuesday Morning this week by chance and they have lots of really tall vases -- like at least 20" tall. They're a little pricey, but I'm pretty sure I could sell them after the wedding. If I'm going to do tall at all, then I probably need a full 50% of the tables to be tall, so things don't look odd. But if I go all short/medium, then I can definitely make every table completely different. I could also start looking for colored or otherwise more interesting glass, to play off the fact that we're having the reception at Glassworks.

And again, the paper lanterns come into play. We can hang things from the ceiling of the reception room, which I think is a good idea, because otherwise it's a little too industrial-looking:
Booooooring.

I've seen pictures where they hung fabric/draping from the ceiling, which looked gorgeous, but I'm going to admit it's probably a little beyond my capabilities. But here's another opportunity for those paper lanterns to come in... we could hang them from the ceiling. There's so many pretty ones, too...

Here are some inspirational pictures:
Pictures Miss Penguin from Weddingbee collected
Another picture from Weddingbee

All these lanterns are from Luna Bazaar.

I could hang them all over, or if I did some tall centerpieces, then the lanterns could just go over the tables with short centerpieces. Plus some over the dance floor as well. There are lots of options for lighting them -- I already bought some battery-operated tea lights from Target months ago because they were on clearance. I figured that even if I didn't use them, I could re-sell them. Plus, there is a new craze sweeping Weddingbee: LED throwies. If I go this route, then this is a DIY job for the groomsmen to help with, as I can think of at least two of them who will find this amazingly cool, and the girls are already going to be apprentice florists.

So anyway, those are my decorating dilemmas. Any thoughts?

Mint favors - update

2008-04-29T20:21:00.008-04:00

You may recall that at a month ago I had tried to start growing mint for the wedding favors. That trial of growing mint from seed officially failed, so a few weeks ago I found Thienemans, an adorable nursery in town (seriously, I wish I had a yard to plant all that stuff in!), and bought a 4" pot of Kentucky Colonel mint from them.

The internet and the lady at Thienemans said that rooting mint cuttings is ridiculously easy, so I cut off a little bit and stuck it in a pot of dirt. After about 10 days it looked like this:

Not good.

So it was back to the Internet. The problem is that most gardeners find mint to be a royal nuisance, so when I found a thread on a gardening site asking how to root mint, it was full of sarcastic responses like, "All you have to do is sneeze and mint will root!" Which was why I had been so cavalier with my first cutting.

So instead of searching for "how to root mint" I searched more generally about how to root... anything. And I got some more helpful ideas. Using bits of information I gleaned from various sites, I came up with this plan:

Soak peat pellets (which I have, to start herb seeds with) in rooting hormone or fertilizer (which I have, to fertilize my herb window pots, since I never add new soil to them), then stick the plant cutting in the peat pellet. Cover with a plastic bag or dome (a ziplock bag is fine) to keep the humidity high -- since the cutting doesn't have any roots yet, it doesn't have a way to take in water, so keeping the environment humid will help the cutting survive until it sprouts roots. Let sit for 2-3 weeks in a warm, humid environment, then when you're fairly confident you have roots, you can plant the peat pellet in soil as you normally would. Be sure to use a very sharp knife to take your cuttings (I'm using a brand-new X-acto blade), and you want to cut below a node (you can Google it; but a node is essentially the spot on a stem where new branches divide from).

Which gave us this:

Mint cutting in a peat pellet in a little metal pinch/spice dish from the kitchen, covered with a plastic bag that a cat toy came in.

And four days later, when the first cutting hadn't died and the mother plant was thriving and sprouting lots of new shoots, I cut four more:

If they all continue to do well, I'll plant them in the 3" pots in a couple weeks. I already bought a couple bags of potting soil, 100 3" green plastic pots, and spray paint primer and purple spray paint to paint half of the pots purple. The mother plant is doing well, and continues to send out new shoots:

But it also seems to have brought some bugs from the nursery, which is what ate that hole in that leaf you see there. I've seen some of them; they look like tiny, translucent green grasshoppers. I kill them as I see them, and I also bought some organic bug killer, because I really don't want grasshoppers in the apartment. The organic stuff is cool, it's just oils of all these different plants, like thyme, clove, and sesame, that bugs apparently don't like. Good stuff.

I do think I'll probably buy another mother plant or two, though, because I do need to make 100 of these things, and I don't want to over-prune the one plant I have. If I have a few, I can spread my harvest needs around more.

So: 5 down, and 95 pots and 13 months to go. No idea where I'm going to put these things, or what I'm going to do with them from June-September while I'm gone, but those are problems for another time...

I will admit that as cool as this idea sounds, I am already having visions of my entire crop dying next March suddenly. That's why it's good that this is a relatively cheap experiment (the mint plant was $2.75, the 3" pots were 6 cents each, the spray paint was $3-4, the dirt was $8, and the bug spray was $5).

Grow, little mint plants, grow!

A link!

2008-04-29T19:35:00.003-04:00

DIY Bride has listed me as someone who links to them! And now I'm just linking back... and the circle continues...

Well, in case anyone ends up here because of DIY Bride, then Welcome! Please leave a comment!

And I promise there are updates coming.

Jamie's wedding - recap

2008-04-28T12:28:00.008-04:00

On April 12 one of my best friends, Jamie, got married in Baltimore. It was a really beautiful wedding, and of course, I took note of all the little details to obsess over myself.

The wedding was at the Renaissance Harborplace at the Baltimore Inner Harbor. The suite where we got ready (and where I got to stay for free -- sweet!) was up high, overlooking the harbor. This was the view from our windows:

Gorgeous!

The night before the wedding, the rehearsal dinner was held at Chiapparelli's (Jamie and Tim had a 16-month engagement, but deciding to have the rehearsal dinner there was one of their first decisions!), and it was delicious. We received our bridesmaids' gifts at dinner, which consisted of a little black insulated lunch bag embroidered with our names (mine was embroidered in purple; I think someone knows what I like!), inside of which was a picture of all the bridesmaids with Jamie at her bachelorette party in March, a gift certificate for manis and pedis the next day, a gorgeous rhinestone necklace to wear with our dresses, and an assortment of things that constituted a wedding day emergency kit, like chapstick, Shout wipes, bandaids, antacids, mints, and mini liquor bottles. Pretty cool.

Three of the four bridesmaids stayed with Jamie in the hotel suite where we would be getting ready the next day (the other lived in town and was post-call, so she opted to sleep in her own bed), and the next day we all piled into a limo to be chauffeured around to all the various appointments. In addition to the bride and four bridesmaids, we were joined by the junior bridesmaid, Jamie's mom, and the wife of the best man. After breakfast in the limo, our first stop was at the nail salon for manis and pedis.

Next up was the hair salon, where Jamie has been going for years. I kind of wish I had that kind of long-term relationship with a hairstylist (unfortunately, my mom doesn't count), not that I get my hair cut that often anyway (hence why it looks long and wild and crazy right now).

Here's Jamie getting the veil put in her hair. She had her hair in a really pretty low chignon-type thing and the short veil complemented it well.

I treated my updo as a wedding hair trial, so asked for half-up/half-down with curls. The stylist asked if I was planning to wear a veil, and in a split-second decision, I decided to wear one. So she apparently made the half-up part of my hair conducive to putting a veil comb in:
What it felt like she was doing was taking alternating strands from the right and left side of my head and sort of pinning them up so they lay horizontally across the crown of my head, then letting the ends fall down in curls. So the horizontal parts made loops... kind of like a shoelace with lots of loops? She curled all the ends more when she was finished. I had a side sweep in the front and some volume at the back/top, although by the time she had finished putting all the bobby pins in, she had killed some of the volume. I think it looks nice, but not particularly amazing, but I'm sure it will look nice under a veil and will certainly serve its purpose of keeping a veil secured. And of course, I did buy a veil when I got back from the wedding as a result. But do I maybe want an updo that's a little more visually exciting on its own? Plenty of time to ponder.

After getting ready, we went down for pictures. By that time, the florist had assembled the chuppah:
Each post of the chuppah had one of these arrangements on it, and there was really pretty up-lighting from the floor. Gorgeous!!!!

This was the view as you entered the ceremony room. Those tall arrangements had the largest calla lilies I've ever seen. They were absolutely stunning. After the ceremony, they were moved into the ballroom to flank the sweetheart table.

We did the girls' pictures in the Harborplace Mall, which is attached to the hotel we were in. The mall is in a 4-story atrium with tons of natural light. It was kind of weird to be taking photos in a mall with actual mall customers walking around, but it was also kind of cool. Everyone was looking at us like we were celebrities or something. Some of the cooler shots we took that I can't wait to see included one where the photographer went down an escalator, then pointed his camera up, and we all lined up on the escalator and he shot as we came down; another set was taken in front of this really gorgeous fountain in the mall lobby; and another set was taken in front of Victoria Secret's, with Jamie looking sexy and all the bridesmaids looking shocked -- except I just cracked up hysterically. The photographer took the guys into the mall as well, and took shots in front of Brooks Brothers and sitting at the shoe shine booth. I can't wait to see the photos.

After photos we had some time to kill before the ketubah signing and we were hungry, so we made the wedding planner that came with the hotel get us McDonald's. I love this picture:

That's Jamie and her sister, the maid of honor, chowing down on nuggets and fries. Mmmm.

At the ketubah signing, I started to cry, but we also at that time discovered that our dresses had pockets, so I was able to stash some tissues for the ceremony (which I needed). Our camera is getting on in years so Eric wasn't able to take any good photos of anyone during the processional, but here's Paula and I being escorted by the groom's brother during the recessional:

I have almost no pictures from the reception, since I was dancing so much and having such a good time, and that's fine, except for the fact that I didn't take a picture of the cake, which was done by Duff of Ace of Cakes! We were taking bridesmaids' pictures when the cake was delivered, which is a shame, because Jamie had been told that Geoff was going to deliver it, and I would love to have talked to him in person. He has such a dry sense of humor, I love it.

One thing I did get a picture of was our table. The tablecloth was white and it had this sheer overlay with that black vine pattern on it. I was very jealous, because as I may or may not have mentioned (possibly not; I can't remember anymore and am too lazy to go back and check), a vine pattern is going to be the theme of our wedding! It can't be that exact pattern anymore (and it probably wouldn't have been anyway), and I want more color (Jamie's wedding was all black and white and very formal), but I still had a pang of "Oh no, I can't use that idea anymore!" before I snapped back into reality.

They had a photo booth at the wedding that served as both the guest book and favor. You went in, had 4 photos taken, and it printed two copies of the set of four. There was an attendant from the photo booth company who cut the two strips apart, put one in the guest book and let you write your message, and gave the other to you as a favor. There were lots of great, silly and cute photos, and tons of great messages as well. A surprising number of people (us included) kissed for the camera, too!

It was a great wedding, and I'm sad it's over, because for the last year wedding events for Jamie have been the only way we've all been able to get together! It's up to my bridesmaids now to plan events for our wedding so we can continue to get together for fun times in the next year...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And since I never posted about Jamie's bachelorette party, here's a quick update: We met up in Pittsburgh, which is where Jamie lives, and we organized a night at Bar Louie in Station Square. They had an awesome bachelorette party deal where for $20/person we got 2 group appetizers, 2 drinks of our choice, a round of lemon drop shots, a champagne toast, a huge chocolate cake, and beads and bachelorette games and assorted accessories. Plus we were in a private corner of the bar up on a raised platform with curtains we could pull to make it all VIP and exclusive. There were a lot of fun girls there who haven't known Jamie for quite as long and therefore were more willing to make her do embarrassing things (the bridesmaids, on the other hand, were in mortal fear for our lives if we tried to make her do anything too crazy). We had a guy come take off his shirt and flex for us, and a few more came over and sang to her (You've Lost That Loving Feeling, a la Top Gun). Good times. If you're planning a bachelorette party in Pittsburgh, I highly recommend Bar Louie as a starting-off point. Plus we waited for a Restaurant.com sale and got a $75 gift certificate for only $15. We totally should have gotten the $100 gift certificate, but I chickened out and wasn't sure if we would meet the minimum (but of course we did). Anyway, it was a good, good night.

eBay is addictive

2008-04-19T00:44:00.003-04:00

I went on eBay the other day to buy a new phone charger because I left mine in Maryland. I ended up watching/stalking about 20 eBay auctions for tiaras/hair combs.

I won a hair comb tonight. Who knows if it will look good, but it was less than $10.

At the last second, I lost out on another auction, for a barrette. Why oh why didn't I just make my maximum bid higher to begin with?

And just now, I bought myself a veil. I stayed up an extra 40 minutes to watch the auction close and bid at the last minute. Only $18, score! Does anyone else see a problem with this pattern of behavior?

And oh yeah, I still haven't bought a phone charger.

Other things that are tempting to buy from eBay:

Old (unused) 27-cent stamps (perfect for postcards now; damn you, Martha Stewart for that great idea!)
Cake toppers (thankfully most are trashy or ugly so I'm not too tempted)
Fabric by the bolt to make my own table runners. Can you say "CRAZY"?
Pretty, pretty ribbon. Just because.

And he thought he was smart already

2008-03-26T19:03:00.002-04:00

A running joke between me and a group of people that includes Eric and his two best men references a habit I have of identifying things (especially Internet articles) as "interesting" and forwarding them on to people. Can I help it if I want to share the interest?

Looks like it's for Eric's own good, whether he likes it or not, haha.

How marriage helps your brain

I will admit that having blogging and using Google Reader have both decreased the number of "interesting" emails I send out; I feel I have gotten the urge to share my interest in dorky things out by simply posting them on the blog or sharing them on Reader. It's quite an urge to try to ignore, let me tell you!