everydaysmiles

Whoopsy Daisy

2009-12-31T16:46:00.001-08:00

So, you know what's great? When you *think* you were only slightly a slacker & haven't posted anything since you shared the final version of engagement pictures, but in reality - that post never really hit the internet - so you're even more of a slacker than you thought you were. Yay!

Yeah, that's me. :-)

So, soon I will post more pictures along with thrilling stories about our engagement pictures & family pictures. I think I need to do it from home, though, because the wifi connection on the train is strongly reminiscent of the dial-up we had in St. Louis in 1995.

In the meantime, though, I wanted to tell everyone that I'm back! I did take a break from wedding planning (but not wedding-thinking) over the holidays. While it was always on my mind, I got very little done - which was nice (thinking about random little details counts as fun in my book - yes, I'm a sicko) and frustrating (because I didn't get any sense of accomplishment).

In general, the break was good & necessary. We had a great holiday season, got to see lots of family & got to spend good time together as a family. We found something that all five of us like to do (skiing/snowboarding); which, while not the cheapest sport in the world, is incredibly awesome to do together. Yay!

And now, the wedding is less than 3 months away. So, I have to start doing. The list of things to do is as long as my arm - but hopefully that means I will start posting some fun wedding details on the blog.

The first things we have to do are finish invitations & favors. There's some pre-work we can do for the centerpieces that we'll have to do. Also - a head's up - soon we will need addresses from everyone! Although, if you're reading this, you probably got a Save the Date & we don't need your address. So, you can ignore the head's up - it's all of the people not reading this that need to be prepared. ;-)

This is kind of a nothing post, but I wanted to let everyone know I'm out here & haven't forgotten about the blog. As a reminder for the out of town guests - don't forget to make your hotel reservations! The discounted rates will go away soon.

Happy New Year to everyone out there...here's to a great 2010!

Kids Aren't an Accessory

2009-12-01T22:15:00.000-08:00

I believe I mentioned this earlier, but one of my biggest issues with the Wedding Industry* is how they treat children. In general, children are treated like accessories. I read posts about how cute little girls will look decked out in tutus, fairy wings or insanely expensive dresses. Or articles about dressing little boys in little suits with baby Converses, or preppy sweaters and khakis.

All of this outfit obsession makes sense - wedding planning has a tendency to make a person pay attention to the craziest details. It makes me kind of sad, though.

The thing is, clothes are all people talk about regarding the kids in many situations. Or, they obsess about what could happen if one of these little people doesn't perform as the bride expects.

The thing that no one is talking about is the fact that these are kids! They're not trained animals or dolls to dress up and set on their way. They're little people who have feelings, and to include them in a wedding is not just adding one more accessory to the bridal party.

For us, having kids in the wedding has meant involving them in both the planning process & the ceremony. I'm frequently trying to find the right balance between having the kids involved and making sure the things that are very important to either one of us happen the way we want them to.

To start with, we picked something for each of the kids to help us with & then asked them if they'd help with that item. Now that we've settled on what they were helping with, they have pretty free reign on what that will look like. It also gives us the opportunity to really work closely with them. S is going to be helping us pick out the food for the reception. That's something we'll all get to do together. P is building the candy buffet & we've already had some fun brainstorming the different types of candy. C is going to really own the kids area & I'm hoping to get to work on some DIY projects with her for that.

We've also involved them in other activities beyond their "assigned" ones. We took them with us when we went cake tasting, listened to their opinions & made decisions based on them; we include them in random wedding errands & listen to their opinions. I'm not always good at this, I have a tendency to make up my mind & then be stuck in it & not listen to any other ideas.

It breaks my heart when I hear about a little girl who fell in love with a beautiful dress, but it wasn't exactly what the bride wanted - so they spend time & tears convincing the little girl that she can't have it. I wonder if it really matters - is it more important that the bride loves the dress or the girl wearing it loves it?

I would love to see brides thinking more about the kid involved & how to make them feel like a special part of the wedding. Dressing a child up & sending them down the aisle doesn't make them feel like a special part of a wedding. Letting them choose their dress, their basket, having them help you choose the ring bearer pillow they'll carry, does include them. It tells them that their opinion is important and takes them from being an accessory to contributing something substantial, that they may remember for years.

*When I say "Wedding Industry", I mean the websites, magazines and blogs that I've read. I'm generalizing, based on my impressions of what I've read. As we all know, generalizations can be a bad thing & frequently don't apply to at least one individual reading the generalization. My apologies if you're that individual. Just assume I'm not talking about you.

Rethinking the blog

2009-11-20T17:47:00.000-08:00

Wow! It's been a long time since I posted...time goes by so quickly. I feel so old when I say that; I remember being a kid & hearing adults say that and think they were crazy...time went SO slowly...I couldn't wait to be an adult. And now, here I am, and it all just slips away - that probably says something about how many things there are on my to do list vs how many there should be. ;-)

Anyway.

Part of the reason I started this blog was to do what I've been doing so far, share wedding planning with all of you out there that aren't in my head. I wanted to be able to provide everyone with as much update as they wanted, without overdosing anyone & talking about the wedding constantly.

The other driver was a blog I'd been very inspired by, Weddingbee. In fact (and this is reasonably unlike me) I wanted to be a contributor. I think that I have a really unique perspective, because the transition I'm going through isn't just about K & I, but it's about S, C & P too. I wanted to share that with people, because I don't see a lot of my peers out there when I read blogs. Kids are treated like a decoration or an accessory, not an important piece of a new family. I wanted to share a different perspective.

Getting back to the point - in order to apply to blog at Weddingbee, you have to have a blog. So, I thought I'd give it a shot. I wrote for awhile, trying to post what I thought you'd care aboud and what they'd care about. Then, late last month, I submitted my application.

And I was rejected. :-(

Total bummer.

Around the same time - I think it was after I'd submitted my application, but before I heard back, I started to get slightly burnt out on it all, Weddingbee especially. I thought that maybe it was just that the contributors I liked were married, so they weren't contributing as much & so I "missed" them. I also just felt less interested in posting here. I knew that was silly; I was getting great comments and this was what I thought I wanted to do.

So, I let it percolate, as I often do when faced with something that doesn't feel right.

Recently it hit me.

The reason I liked those contributors was because their posts were about more than just what color flowers they would use in their centerpieces. They had those posts, but they also talked about how forming a healthy marriage was hard. They talked about tough situations within their family and pre-marriage counseling and money.

I was sitting over here prattling on about girlie things - which is great - but totally isn't me. I mean, don't get me wrong, I really liked sharing about the cake buying experience & my many, many, many interations on centerpieces. It's just not all of me, though, and it got to the point where it didn't feel like me at all.

So, I'm going to try to make this blog more "me". More of a mixture of the meaningful stuff & the pretty stuff. It will still be all about the wedding - but I'm going to stop avoiding how S is handling the wedding, or how K & I are still trying to figure out communication.

This feels a little wierd, to be honest. I have an idea of who's reading out there, but I'm not sure of everyone. I am worried about either offending someone or feeling like I have to censor myself to the point that the whole thing is pointless. I'll figure it out, though. I will warn you, though, there may be some posts where I don't allow comments. I'm hoping that will let me feel more comfortable just putting my thoughts out there, without worrying about how it will impact the reader.

So, we'll see...but that's the plan. :-)

PS - if you're interested, one of my absolute favorite Weddingbee bloggers now has a personal blog: Not Quite Betty Crocker

You are cordially invited....

2009-11-07T11:52:00.000-08:00

Part of our November 15 list is to have the invitations completely designed. Since we did the Save the Dates together, we're planning on doing the invitations as well. I want to get them done early in case I do the same about face I did with the Save the Dates & get the urge to completely redesign them after I think they're done. :-)

I've been having fun, playing with paper and colors and postcards and pictures and all kinds of lovely things. The place I've gotten stuck, though, is the wording. Who knew there were so many ways to say "please come to our wedding"? I know I want to start with:

Together with their parents

M's full name & K's full name

And this is where I get stuck. I could do something really formal like:

request that you honor us with your presence

invite you to join us as we are wed

ask that you join us

Then, there is the question of how to say "when we're married". There are so many ways to say it! And some of them sound so hokey:

as we become one

as we are married

as we exchange our wedding vows

as we are joined in marriage

as we are united in marriage

Sigh...I don't like any of them. I'm also trying to include our "celebration of love, laughter, family & friendship" tagline into the invitation. So, I'm playing with things like this:

Together with their parents

M & K

invite you to join us

as we are married at a celebration

of love, laughter, family and friedship

Together with their parents

M & K

invite you to a celebration of

love, laughter, family and friendship

as they are married

The "as they are married" part sounds dorky to me, though. Although, at this point, I'm frustrated enough that I'm tempted to say:

Yo, M & K are getting married

You should come

It'll be a big party

And then I wonder if anyone will actually read those words anyway, or will they skim them to get to the good part that has the date & time & stuff on it?

What do you think? Anyone have any recommendations for less hokey wording?

The Center of Attention - Part 4

2009-11-05T22:02:00.000-08:00

Last time I talked about my inspiration for our centerpieces. Thinking of the table runners, I started looking around at fabrics. And I found these....

(source)

I love them! Love, love, love, love, love. I showed them to K; he likes them too. Of course, he also knows me well enough to know when I love something & so he may just be humoring me. :-)

So, I took pieces of each of the inspiration pictures and put together our plan. Or, at least, our current plan. :-) Curious? The current plan is to have two long tables at the venue with runners made from the fabric above along the table. There will be arrangements of spider mums along the tables with candles around them. Plus, I want to try to put together table numbers using pictures from our childhoods.

I wanted to get an idea of how it would all look together, so I used my trusty tool, MS Paint to put it all together. And I came up with this:

LOL - it cracks me up. But, this is the idea.....what do you think?

The Center of Attention - Part 3

2009-11-03T21:49:00.000-08:00

Centerpieces are becoming the bane of my existence. Who knew so much thought could go into the center of a table? I'm not sure if anyone will even notice them! (Hint to everyone out there coming to our wedding: notice the centerpieces....please....)

As you may remember, originally - well technically not originally, secondly, we were going to have table cakes on half of the tables and a lamp from Ikea as a candle holder. We'd thought about it & liked the idea, but we had to find sneeze guard ...ahem... I mean bell covers. Plus, I had to figure out how to make a lamp into a candle holder.

So, the last time we were at Ikea, I bought one of the lamps that we wanted to use. I sat down while we were watching Iron Chef to try to figure it out. I was working with pliers & got a little too enthsiastic. And...surprise, surprise...broke the lamp. Gar! (I'd have a picture here, but it was deleted in the great memory card debacle of 2009) Since it was broken anyway, we took a better look at the lamp & realized we weren't going to be able to make it work.

At this point, we were back to the drawing board and I was getting frustrated. We had also talked about the table cakes and realized that for it to look right, we'd end up with way too much cake. I decided to look around for more inspiration. As I went through my old bookmarks, I found this picture:

(source)

I'd bookmarked it awhile ago and I absolutely love it. There's something about it that makes me so happy. With that in mind, I hit Project Wedding to see what I could find. And I found some great stuff; check out these:

(source)

So, K & I took all of this lovely inspiration and made a decision (we think)...this has been the most difficult decision we've had to make so far. I'm really happy with what we've decided right now & so I think I'm going to start shopping for this stuff and then it will just be tweaking instead of completely re-designing. :-)

Oh! You're wondering what we decided on? Well, you'll have to wait until my next post for that. ;-)

The November 15 List

2009-11-01T21:34:00.000-08:00

I think I've referred a few times to the "November 15 list" recently. It's become a part of my daily vocabulary & so I thought I'd share what I'm talking about.

As most of you know, K & I work in retail. Starting about now, things at works start to get a little crazy. (Well, technically, my whole year has been crazy - but that was just a warm up) As more people shop for the holidays, the systems we own start to be stretched & anything that can go wrong will. This is bad, because we want to make the best impression possible for all of those lovely shoppers who are helping America out of our recession.

All of this adds up to general craziness. Things get worse (as you'd imagine) after Thanksgiving & keep going until the week or so before Christmas. We've spent the past six weeks at work talking about how to be ready for this time of year, what we refer to as "Q4". (dun dun duh!!!!)

Since this is a notoriously busy time of year, we try to keep our personal lives as calm as possible about now. This isn't just a goal, it's a way of life. We take this so seriously that within the first hour of being engaged, the first thing I knew about our wedding was that we were not getting married anywhere close to Q4. We chose our late March date so that there would be plenty of time to plan before Q4 & after Q4, so I wouldn't feel pressured to plan during Q4.

Which brings me to the Nov. 15 list....

There's a lot to be done left with the wedding. We're getting to the point where we're deciding on details and need to make progress on a lot of our DIY items. So, we made a list of things that need to be done by November 15 (as close to Thanksgiving as I want to get). I'm sure I'll keep working on wedding stuff throughout the year, and I have lots of things left to tell you about. Having the deadline is helping me focus, though, since the wedding still feels so far away.

Anyway, here is the list (Items that are crossed out are done. Items in italics are in progress.):
- cake figured out
- centerpieces figured out (watch out for an upcoming post on this)
- invitations designed
- talk to my brother about music (he's playing during the ceremony)
- rehersal lunch set up (oh! I should talk about that sometime)
- rehersal invitations designed
- send a Save the Date to our officiant (who's living in Zurich)
- meet with jeweler regarding K's ring (that's another blog post too!)
- make our hotel reservations for the wedding weekend
- ~~get the group rate for the hotel near our house in Sumner~~
- move K's money from one account to another
- favors designed & ordered (I'm going to keep those a secret until the wedding)
- ~~honeymoon squared away~~
- meet with our day-of-coordinator (Wendy)
- figure out what the guys are going to wear for shoes
- meet with the tux guy to finalize ties & shoes & shirt (we may order a custom shirt for K)
- order guys' ties
- update wedding website with updated travel info

Whew! That's a lot to do in the next 15 days! It also gave me a lot of ideas about what to post about in the next few weeks. :-)

What do you think? Did I miss anything? Is there anything else you'd like to hear more about?

Let them eat cake!!!

2009-10-29T18:31:00.000-07:00

I've been really looking forward to using that subject line. :-)

For the past few weeks, K & I have been trying to nail down the bakery for our cake. We'd started looking at cakes about a month ago & K called around to a couple places to set up tastings. It was an eye-opening experience. Some of the places he talked to charged an insane amount of money for the tasting - between $50 and $75. Of course, if you ordered the cake from them, the fee went against the cost of the cake. But, if you didn't, it was some really expensive cake.

K also mentioned bringing the kids along to a couple of them & they weren't really sure how to handle it. Some of them said things like, "Well, we can only fit 3 or 4 people in our tasting room." So, they're charging you $50 and they can't fit more than 4 people in the room? You've got to be kidding me.

Of all of the possible wedding tasks, this is the most kid-friendly. How could we not include them? Neither one of us wanted to work with a vendor that wasn't flexible enough to work with kids.

So, we kept looking...

A few weeks ago, we decided on Saturday morning that we'd see what places were available to have tastings that afternoon. We found one in Tacoma, Celebrity Cakes. They were flexible enough to work us in, which was really nice.

When we got there, the baker took us over to the "Wedding Room" which had some small 2 - 3 person tables in the middle and a lot of cakes around the room. It was great to see so many of their cakes in person. The baker also had a tray of cake that looked like this:

***screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech*** (insert the sound of a record scratching here)

So, I had some great pictures of the cakes & the plate after we ate them. I could tell you the flavors & what we liked about them.

But, Tuesday, as I went to download them to put them in this space - I accidentally deleted all of them. Ugh. I was so depressed that I didn't post; I couldn't face the poor, pictureless, boring page.

I've finally moved past it, but this post is going to be less exciting than I wanted it to be. I'm sorry. :-(

I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming...

***screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech***

The plate was a square gold plate with about 8 different slices of cake on it. The cake slices were about the size you'd see at a wedding - two layers of cake with a frosting in between & buttercream frosting. Our favorite cake was the red velvet & there was a white cake with a really good eclair filling. The carrot cake was pretty good too. Overall, we liked the cake but weren't completely blown away by anything. So, we left without signing up for anything.

One other thing K realized later was that all of the cakes in the room were decorated with fondant, but we didn't get to taste any of the fondant. It doesn't surprise me, because fondant doesn't generally taste that good. It seems like they should include it in the tasting, though, if that's what they predominately use to decorate.their cakes. Do you agree?

Last weekend, K and I took the kids to Sugar Rush Baking Company. We'd seen them at the Tacoma Bridal show we went to last month & really liked the personality of the people in the booth and their taster cakes. Plus, they work with Herban Feast (our caterer) a lot.

Sugar Rush is in a coffee shop, Coffee to a Tea, in West Seattle where they serve cupcakes & mini-cupcakes. We had a lot of fun at the tasting. We sat down & talked to the coordinator, Jillian, some about our colors & our ideas for the cake. Then, we showed her our Save the Date to give her a better idea of what we were looking for. Once we were on the same page, she took us to the display case and we got to pick out what we wanted to try.

(In this case, you should picture a pretty glass pedestal with a bunch of beautiful mini & big cupcakes on it)

I loved everything and I think K & the kids did too. The cake tasted really good, and the frostings were really flavorful and tasty. Some of our favorites were the red velvet, the coconut and chocolate. The white cake was really good too, as was the vanilla. The frostings were all delicious; they had a great chocolate ganache and the mint buttercream was good too - which are more unique.

After all of the tastings, K, the kids & I unanimously agreed that we should go with Sugar Rush. So, we talked some prices. They were reasonable so we signed the contract & put down our save the date deposit. I am SO totally & completely excited. Not only is it one more thing off the list, but I really feel like this was a great choice for us.

One thing we talked about before we left was what we wanted the cake to look at. We decided to have a square cake and we're going to alternate the design on the layers between a piped decoration that looks like the branches of our tree and dots with a ribbon around the bottom.

As far as the size of the cake, there are two different ways we could go. One is a six-layer cake that is insanely tall and (not surprisingly) more expensive. It's pretty cool, though; it reaches over the head of the lady who sets it up. Sweet! The other (more practical and cheaper) way to go is to get a four-layer cake and then (depending on the number of guests) possibly get a sheet cake as well. This is definitely less cool, but more affordable & it will still be a really good, beautiful cake.

What do you think? Four layers or six?

I have one thing to say: sashay shante, shante, shante, shante

2009-10-23T21:54:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago it was the whole family's turn to go in front of Kris' camera and let our inner supermodel out. Not surprisingly, each of the kids has their own amount of super model in them. :-)

There was a long debate about having pictures taken in the park vs. a more urban setting. P wanted the urban setting, but she got out-voted. So, we ended up at the park. Of course, about half way through the shoot C decided that she wanted to change her vote & do "city pictures" but then it was too late. In the end, I was glad we were at the park because the wedding pictures will be a lot more urban. This way we'll have a great mix of pictures.

Not only did we get some great pictures & let Kris and the kids get to know each other, but I came out of the session with some great lessons learned. I'm partially recording them to share with you, but I'm also putting them here so that I can come back to it before the wedding & give myself a refresher course. :-)

Lesson 1: The kids have 30 min of good pictures in them. Not a minute more. - Kris' process is to take all of the pictures, go through & pick the best and then send them to us in an album online. Then, we can go & choose the ones we want. When I went through the pictures Kris sent us, they were almost all from the first 30 min of our 60 min shoot. The best ones are definitely earlier in the shoot. Hopefully, I can structure the wedding day so that the kids don't have to be there for all of the pictures or can take breaks to go hang out and then come back.

Lesson 2: P is a camera lover - This isn't all that surprising, but I'd forgotten the degree to which it's true. P wanted to be in every single shot. She was delighted to spend the entire time taking pictures & wanted to make sure they were all good. On the supermodel continuim, where 0 is hiding behind a tree and 10 is Giselle, P is about a 9.5.

Lesson 3: C will try to direct the shoot - Anyone who knows C knows that she's a girl who knows what she wants. She has strong opinions & wants to make sure they're heard. As she grows up, she's learning the right way to communicate those opinions & lead others, which is really cool to watch. How does this relate to photography, you ask? Well, she had a lot of ideas about where she wanted pictures taken & how they should look. There were a few times that she was either directing Kris or one of us. Taking that forward to the wedding, I think she'll enjoy the pictures more if we find a way to include her in the planning of the shoot.

Lesson 3: The good pictures happen - Family pictures usually end up being stressful for us somehow. I know that sometimes it's because I put pressure on all of us because I want those cheesy happy family pictures that you see a lot. You know - the ones where everyone's piled on top of each other & smiling and looking like they're all so happy and they love each other and never fight. For this shoot, I decided to try to let go of that. I told Kris that I wanted her to capture us how we are - and if we were killing each other, then I wanted her to capture that. We ended up with some great pictures; I think if I can just relax and go with it, we end up with good pictures.

So, that's it...my lessons learned and some of my favorite pictures from the shoot. If you're interested you can also check out the slide show of the pictures here.

Do you have any other tips for getting pictures taken with kids?

The Most Expensive Article of Clothing I'll Ever Buy

2009-10-21T16:42:00.000-07:00

Of course, I'm talking about my wedding dress. :-) I figured that since I've been talking about what the kids are going to wear & I've already mentioned what K is going to wear, I should round things out & post about my dress. I'm not going to post any pictures, or give any hints, because K wants it to be a complete surprise. I thought it might be interesting, though, to talk about my experience shopping for the dress.

Over Labor Day, I went to St. Louis to go dress shopping. Both my Mom & Maid of Honor (MOH) R live in St. Louis, so it seemed like a natural choice. This is really the only piece of planning I'll be doing out of state, so it was an interesting experience. I can't imagine how hard it would be to plan an entire wedding from out of state. The benefit (that I didn't even think of ahead of time) is that since they'll be shipping it to me here in Seattle, I don't have to pay sales tax! Yay!

Figuring out where we were going to go shopping was a lot more complicated than I expected. I'm didn't even realize how much living in Seattle has changed the way I shop; here everything I look for has a lot of information on the internet. We've used the internet to find vendors, find reviews of those vendors & ordered the raw materials for our invitations online so far & I expect we'll do more, including ordering our favors online.

So, when I was looking for dress shops, I sat down to do the same thing. I'd already added some pressure to the situation because we only had Labor Day weekend to go shopping and I didn't want to drive all over the St. Louis metro area. Unfortunately, I was really surprised when I sat down to start looking. Most bridal shops didn't even have websites. The places that had websites weren't always very good or useful. Plus, there were almost no reviews at any of my usual haunts! Everything came up blank. I even looked for a site specific to St. Louis brides & there was very little information.

Desperate, I started Googling the shops that I was looking at.

Which is how I found all of the hidden reviews. They're all at Citysearch! I never, in a million years, would have guessed that Citysearch was the site to go to. Well, it turns out, for St. Louis it is. After all of the searching, I found three places for us to go visit:

Karen's Wedding Boutique - This place was in a strip mall that I've driven past about a million times between where my Mom lives & where my Dad used to live. None of us had any idea it was there!

The store is about a medium size. It's run by a lady & her mother; when we were there (a Saturday morning) it was only the two of them plus the seamstress working. They were really busy. In this store, you walk around & pick out dresses that appeal to you. Then, once you have a good stack (I think I had 10 back there), you go back into the dressing room & try on the dresses. If you like the dress at all, you come out to show your audience.

This was a really interesting way to shop as my first stop. Since I hadn't tried on dresses at all, I wasn't really sure what I was looking for. Plus, I knew I didn't want a poofy dress, but they're all so big it's hard to tell what's going to be poofy & what isn't. They also had me put a petticoat on; this went directly against my "no poofy dresses" desire. I thought I'd give it a try, though, before I vetoed it completely. After a few dresses I asked the lady I was working with about going without the petticoat and she said that you need it to hold the dress out so that it looks right. Without any prior knowledge, I assumed she was correct & went with it.

In the end, I found a few dresses that I liked at Karen's, but nothing that I loved. So, we went on to the next stop, Town & Country Bride.

This was definitely the nicest place we went to; when I called to make the appointment, they asked me my price range. Once I told them, they said I was going to the right store. Their other store had dresses from $3K and up. Wow! Talk about out of my price range (especially for St. Louis prices).

Interestingly, when MOH R and I walked into the store, we almost walked out. I think all of the consultants were coming off of lunch (our appointment was at 1), but we didn't get any help at all for a good 5 or 10 minutes. In that time, we saw another bride & her mom walk in and get helped immediately. I was seriously unimpressed.

Luckily, MOH R took charge & got us the attention we deserved. They apologized & I got to meet my consultant. She was wonderful, so helpful & listened really well. When I told her I wanted something plain, she started out with really plain & then gradually changed things up when I wasn't feeling the dresses at all.

This was a completely different experience than Karen's. Not only was the consultant pulling the dresses for me, but the entire set up was a lot nicer and more relaxed. Another difference was my reaction to the dresses, though. At Karen's there were a lot I liked somewhat, but nothing I loved. At Town & Country, there were several dresses that I just wasn't interested in at all. They didn't feel like me.

Then, my consultant walked in with a dress. I immediately melted; I remember gasping "Oh, that's beautiful". I tried it on & as soon as it was on, I knew that was the dress. As stereotypical & dorky as it sounds, I just knew it. I didn't want to take it off at all (a pretty good sign that I liked it, don't you think?). It was lovely.

Once we'd found that dress, I was pretty much done shopping. My consultant recommended that I go to the other place I'd planned on going to just to be sure.

So, we ended the day at Robin's Bridal Mart. They didn't take appointments; the combination of that & the name "Bridal Mart" should have clued me in that it wasn't the nicest place in the world. It really wasn't, it was kind of sketchy. It was another place where you pick the dresses off the racks & then try on a bunch. I think if you knew exactly what you were looking for, you might be able to find a good deal there.

In my case, though, I just put some random dresses on & thought "nah, I like the other one better" every single time.

So, on Tuesday, before my flight back, Mom & I went back to Town & Country to purchase the dress. I tried it on again; Mom took some pictures (that I drool over when K's not around). And I bought it!

What do you think? Have you ever fallen in love with a piece of clothing so much that you didn't want to take it off?

Dressing for Success

2009-10-16T21:48:00.000-07:00

I have to admit, I never realized how much wedding planning involved clothing. I mean, I always knew I'd need a dress - but I never really thought about all of the outfits you have to pick out. It doesn't seem like that much when you start to list it: girls' dresses, guys' tuxes, my dress, his tux.

But, then, there are all these perfectly valid questions that people are asking us - what color shoes should they wear? What color should K's mom & my mom & stepmom wear? It hasn't come up yet, but what about my brother who's going to play guitar during the ceremony? I honestly never thought about all of the things before people started asking me about them. Dude, I have enough trouble dressing myself!

I don't want to sound like I'm complaining. I really appreciate that everyone is asking & interested. I was a bridesmaid once & the bride wanted to be flexible, so she kept telling us to do whatever we wanted. The problem was that our goal was to create the picture she envisioned, and we couldn't do that if she didn't communicate it. I love that people are excited enough about the wedding that they're already starting to think about it. I know I don't normally plan this far in advance. :-)

One of the decisions we haven't made yet is what the kids will wear. That's really a post-Q4 decision, so I haven't spent too much time on it. I do want to be prepared, though, so the kids & I can work together to find something that works well in the wedding. Here's what K & I have thought about so far:

S - One of S's biggest concerns about the wedding was that he really didn't want to wear a suit or a tux. At all. Not even a little bit. No matter what K & I pointed out to him about having never worn a tux before, he wasn't interested. So, about a month ago I told S he can wear whatever he wants to the wedding. We want him to be happy; we want him to be there & in to what's going on. That is SO much more important than what he's wearing. We did tell him that we're going to rent a tux for him - and he has to get measured for it - just in case he decides that's what he wants to wear. He told us it's a waste of money & we told him we're OK with that. So, we'll see. I don't think this will be decided until we're in the moment.

C - We haven't talked a whole lot to C about what she wants to wear. She brings it up periodically; she's concerned because she's not really a dress girl. I remember being about her age and trying to figure out who I was & what kind of clothes felt right to me. (Sorry to my parents for all of the money they wasted on clothes I didn't wear while I was trying to figure this out) Plus, she's a little big for girl sizes, but she's not quite mature enough for junior clothes. In the end, though, we're just going to have to look around & try things on to find something.

I've told her we want her to be comfortable and that everyone else will be dressed up, so she might be more comfortable in something dressy. I pointed out that she can wear a shirt & skirt instead of a dress as well. I just went to a few websites and found a couple dresses that I think might work well for her, but I'm not sure if she'll like them or not:

(source)

P - The first thing P told me about her outfit for the wedding was that she wanted to wear a big white dress. I told her white probably wasn't going to work, but that we could find something pretty. As I'm looking around, I'm surprised by how difficult it is to find blue or brown dresses for the girls. There are a surprising number of black dresses, which seems too old for the girls. Here are a couple that I found to run past P:

(source)

Please Don't Wait to Save the Date - Part 2

2009-10-12T21:49:00.000-07:00

Now that you know how we got the design and what the final product looks like, I'll show you how we put them together and a few other things we've included.

The first step was printing everything out. We got all of our paper at Paper and More. I ordered what I hope is all of the paper we need at once to save on shipping. I'll probably need to go back and order more once I figure out what our invitations are going to look like, but it shouldn't be too much. For this project, we used the cream card stock, copper card stock and navy card stock (that I can't find a link for).

I printed all of them out on our home printer &; then K got to cutting. We knew that we wanted to layer the two papers under the Save the Date, but we weren't sure about the layout. Did we want to center it, line up the bottom left corner? Do something crazy where one layer is centered & the other is off center? We played with that a bit (and of course I forgot to take pictures), and ended up with the one I showed you earlier. In case you've forgotten it's this:

Then, K got to cutting lots of paper & putting them together:

While I was fighting with our printer to get it to print on the envelopes correctly:

It took me forever to get it lined up. Then, it didn't like feeding multiple envelopes so I had to do them all by hand. Then, I noticed that for some reason it was randomly putting little lines on the return address instead of doing it all nice & pretty. Some of them were completely unreadable. Argh!

I will admit that I said a few choice words at the computer that night. I think K was glad he was in the other room with the paper instead of sitting next to me. lol

I finally got it clean enough. I figured that no one except me would notice if they were perfect, so I made sure they were all legible & went with it.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this yet, but we're also going to have a reception in North Dakota the summer after we get married. Most of K's family lives in North Dakota, Montana & Minnestoa, including his parents, and we know that some of them may not be able to make it out to Seattle. I thought having a separate reception would mean they'd get to celebrate with us & take some pressure of some people who may have wanted to come but felt like they couldn't. So, I also made a small note that I slipped into all of the save the dates for K's family indicating that we'll have something in North Dakota & an invitation for that will follow separately. I forgot to take a picture of one before I closed the envelopes, but here's one of the less pretty ones:

Once everything was ready to go in the envelopes, K stuffed and sealed them one night while I was in St. Louis dress shopping (which is definitely another post). We also had a custom stamp made of our logo from Impress Rubber Stamps and we used brown ink to stamp that on the back of the envelopes. It's not exactly the brown we wanted, but we had trouble finding ink we liked in the right size, so again - I just went with it. I'm trying not to let my perfectionist tendencies make this wedding more complicated than it has to be. Anyway, so here's what one envelope looked like:

And here's the front, just for fun:

Here are all of them laid out on the floor. We sent about 85 Save the Dates out.

What do you think? Did everyone's get there OK?

Please Don't Wait to Save the Date - Part 1

2009-10-08T17:27:00.000-07:00

K & I decided to send Save the Dates to our out of town guestlist. We wanted to give them the opportunity to start making travel arrangements before we send out the invitations in February; we also didn't want to go crazy and spend more on paper & stamps & such than we absolutely had to. So, we figured that sending Save the Dates to only the people on our guest list who live out of town was a good compromise.

Our Save the Dates are completely self-made (which I'm very proud of). I used a free program I found called Inkscape to design the Save the Dates & I'm very happy with it. There was definitely a learning curve, but it does everything I need it to do and the price was right. :-)

Our design process went through a couple steps. We iterated on one design until we found something that we both liked; I showed it to various people & we were ready to go. Then, I said I felt like something was missing. I didn't feel like it was as *good* as the Save the Dates I saw on the internet, nor did I feel like it represented us. I don't have the original design with me, but I'll update the post later to include it.

So, I started searching around and trying to figure out what was missing from our Save the Date. I found this invite and showed it to K:

(source)

We both really, really like it, and so I used it as an inspiration for ours.

I put together the basic layout and then I started looking for a quote to put at the top. Except, to me this couldn't just be any quote - it is *the* quote. As I see it, this is the quote that sets the mood for our wedding. It's the first thing many people will see (this is before we'd finished our wedding website). I was looking for a quote that defined us & what we wanted our wedding to be.

Yes, that was a lot of pressure.

Yes, it's likely I was being overly dramatic & I could have put any quote and no one would really have noticed.

Anyway....one night K & I were talking about this. I figured out that in order to find a quote that defined our wedding, I needed to know what we wanted our wedding to be like. I asked him what he thought, and he said something along the lines of "I want it to be a celebration. I want to celebrate our love, family, and friends. I want it to be a lot of fun with a lot of laughter." He nailed it. That's our wedding - that's us. (By the way, have I mentioned lately how much I love this man? How many guys would respond with something like that?)

So, I decided to give up on quotes from famous people & use a quote from one of the key people involved in the wedding - K. When I showed him the next design, with his quote at the top, I think we both knew this was it. It was exactly the feel we were going for:

(picture by me)

Next post...assembly!

The Center of Attention - Part 2

2009-10-07T17:44:00.000-07:00

Last time I blogged about the cake centerpieces that half of the tables will (probably) have (We reserve the right to change our minds - it's already happened about 500 times in the planning process) and I left you with a pitiful depiction of how the people at the other half of the tables might feel if we didn't do something to address their centerpieces.

The problem is, we're still not completely sure what we'll do. We could most definitely do flowers. I've tried to look around for floral centerpieces that I like, but I haven't found any yet. That's probably not a good sign for any florists that want my business. To be fair, though, I haven't looked a ton and really should spend some time digging around for inspiration.

Another wedding favorite is candles. I like candles a lot. I originally wanted to do something like this:

(source)

We bought some wax & did a test run. They came out great, but small....like tea light small. I tried to figure out what it would take to make them about the same size we expect the cakes to be (8" - 10"), but I couldn't come up with anything. We're also concerned about any restrictions from the fire marshall. (Note to self: send email to venue asking about candle restrictions)

I know that you can have candles at Sodo Park because they had a lot at the open house. I really liked them and I think they added a lot of warmth to the space. I'm hoping that we can do these luminaries as small tea lights around the space. They're so cool looking, I'd hate to not do them at all.

My most recent idea came to me when we were at Ikea over the weekend. We were swinging through the lamps - well, to be more accurate, K was moving me along because he'd just about hit his Ikea quota for the day - and I spotted these:

(source)

Aren't they pretty?!?! Not only do they come in the size we want, but they also come in a smaller size that would be great for the small tables during the cocktail hour.

The only problem is that they're lamps. I'm reasonably confident neither Sodo Park nor the fire marshall would be crazy about us stringing extension cords across the floor of the venue to light our centerpieces. I'm wondering, though, if we can take the lamp part out & make them into candle holders somehow. We have to go back to Ikea soon to return some things we got & I think I'm going to pick up one or two and see if K can work some magic on them.

What do you think? Should I keep looking for flowers? Anyone placing bets on whether or not we can make the lamps look like candle holders?

The Center of Attention!

2009-10-06T17:47:00.000-07:00

One of the things K & I have been looking at a lot lately is the centerpieces. I mentioned the table cloths we found at the Sodo Park open house that we really liked. As a refresher, here they are:

(source)

We'll probably do navy long tablecloths under those. Then, we're thinking we'll do Sodo Park's standard white china. The question, then, is what do we do for the centerpieces? Since I realized that I really don't need a bouquet, we've been trying to figure out what we want to do for flowers. I've thought about everything from hiring a florist to create the centerpieces & all of the decorations to buying vases & sending someone to Pike's Place Market on the morning of our wedding to get flowers for the tables that need decoration. The Market has beautiful bouquets of flowers at incredible prices. Check out these:

(photo by Joe Mabel, taken from here)

(source)

And the big bouquets are all around $20. What a great deal!

Am I brave enough to leave it up to chance, though? Am I willing to accept whatever flowers are there instead of planning my own? Can I give up the control?

For those of you who know me, you can imagine what a challenge that might be! :-)

I think I could only go with this option if we decide to have non-floral centerpieces. I'd think like to have flowers decorating the gift table & bar, as well as possibly having some flowers around the seating areas. That way, we could take some of the money that we don't spend on flowers and spend it on lighting like they had at Sodo Park for the open house.

I'm sure by this point you're wondering what we'd have for centerpieces if we didn't have flowers...(ok, you're probably not wondering - but humor me). At this point, it looks like at least half of the tables are going to have...cakes!

I was browsing through my Real Simple Wedding Planner (this one) and it mentioned having table cakes as the centerpieces. We looked around at a couple bakeries and found some great samples. Check these out:

(source)

I love this idea. One of the bakeries we've talked to recommended having some covers over them. This would be perfect because it will keep people from touching the cake before it's ready to be served. Plus, it protects the cake from being sneezed on or something gross. So, that's the plan for half of the tables. I'll let you know how our search for a bakery goes.

But wait! There are still half of the tables left centerpiece-less....I can just picture the people at those tables now, wondering why their tables are so plain. In my next post, I'll tell you what we're thinking about for them...

Watch Out Tyra! Here We Come!!!

2009-10-01T21:40:00.000-07:00

About two weeks ago, K & I met up with our photographer Kris for our engagement pictures. While we may not quite be America's Next Model material, we had a lot of fun.

We decided to take some pictures by my office first. Pac Med is on a hill that overlooks downtown Seattle, which leads to some distracting views during meetings - but it was great for pictures. It was definitely odd kissing & hugging while Kris snapped away; we didn't have a good idea of what we're supposed to be doing & the traffic was loud enough that it was kind of hard to hear her. We didn't stay there too long; instead we walked up the hill to a park that looks over the stadiums. That was much quieter & we got a couple really good shots - like this one:

After that, we headed to an area of Seattle called Fremont. Fremont is where I lived when I moved to Seattle & when we started dating. We spent a lot of time in Fremont, walking to shops & restaurants, going to the outdoor movies & going out at night. I love Fremont so much & it was a lot of fun to walk around again and get our pictures taken there.

By this time, we were getting a lot more comfortable with Kris, and with the idea of our pictures being taken. I can totally tell our smiles are a lot more relaxed in the pictures, and there was lots more kissing. To be perfectly honest, this is probably the most that K & I had kissed in one evening for quite awhile. It's not that we're not affectionate, but really - when was the last time you spent 3 hours kissing someone on & off? (FYI - that's a rhetorical question...)

Anyway, I think I'd kind of forgotten the value of kissing & how important physical contact is. We're so used to being together (since we're together all the time) that it's easy to take advantage of it. Taking our engagement pictures reminded me how nice it is to touch K all the time & to be close to each other. Here are a couple of my favorites from Fremont:

After Fremont, we went to a nearby beach called Golden Gardens. K & I went there on our first date, so it was extra special for us. We walked around a lot on the beach and took our shoes off some. Kris loves feet photos - which is awesome because K & I do too (in fact, he has one of those credit cards where you can customize the background & he used a picture of our feet from our first vacation together). So, we made sure to get some good feet pictures too. I love so many of the ones from Golden Gardens; it's hard to choose only a few to show you:

Kris also put together this fantastic slide show with the full set of engagement pictures; of course, I can't figure out how to include the slide show on the blog - so click through to see it here.

*All pictures by Kris Allen of Kris Allen Photography.

2009-09-30T22:26:00.000-07:00

So, I was planning on blogging about our engagement pictures tonite, but tonite we went to a tasting at our venue, Sodo Park, sponsored by our caterer, Herban Feast. I'm really excited to share about that, so I'll blog about the pictures tomorrow. The tasting was absolutely fantastic. Not only was the food good, but it was great to see the venue again. We also got to get a sense of what it looks like at night. That really helped know what kinds of light we might need.

Plus, they had floor plans from some of the weddings they'd done before, which was awesome.

Wait...I'm getting ahead of myself...I'll start in the beginning...I haven't even talked about the venue here yet.

We're going to be getting married at Sodo Park in the Sodo area of Seattle. It's an old factory that's been refurbished and has great exposed beams, huge windows & some great character. It also has different seating areas, including a couch area with comfortable chairs that will be great for people who don't want to dance. Sodo Park is owned by the same people that own the catering company Herban Feast, so they'll be our caterers. Since then, Sodo Park & Herban Feast have gotten the 2009 Vendors' Choice Awards from the Seattle Bride Magazine for "Best New Wedding Vendor", "Best New Reception Site" and "Best Caterer". Here's a couple pictures from their website:

When we signed the contract with Sodo Park, they told us that we'd also get to attend their regular tasting events. The events would let us sample the options for the menu, as well as get to see what the venue looks like at night. Since our wedding is in late March, though, we're kind of in between seasons for the food. So, the things we tasted tonite may not be available for our wedding; we'll find out what's available once we get closer to the date.

A few weeks ago, we got an email from our coordinator, Reese, telling us that the first tasting was coming up. We RSVP'ed as soon as we got it. Heck yes we were showing up!

You see, our caterers opened up a restaurant, Fresh Bistro, in May and we've been going way too frequently. It's absolutely awesome.

Not only do we really enjoy the food, but the people there are so nice, friendly & genuine. The first time we went there, K was parking the car and dropped me off at the door. When I went in, they asked if we wanted to sit at the kitchen table. Well, duh! Of course we did!

So, that evening, we sat at a bar, over looking the kitchen and talked to the chefs. That was the first time we met Dalis Chea, the executive chef and co-owner of Sodo Park, Herban Feast & Fresh bistro. Chef Chea sat and talked to us, answered our questions, told us about the food & offered us samples of the various things. It was one of the best dining experiences we've ever had.

Since then, we've taken friends there, gone for special occasions (both of our birthdays) and attended their first wine tasting dinner. Every time we've gone the staff has been incredibly friendly and the food has been fantastic.

So, we jumped at the chance to try the catering menus, even if they wouldn't be the exact same as the Fresh Bistro menu. When we got there, we were greeted and invited in. The hostess recommended that we try their signature drink (a lemon basil martini - YUM) off of the "drink tree" they have or grab a glass of wine at the bar.

Instead, we walked around a bit & then headed for the food. :-) We didn't take any pictures of it, but boy was it good - as we expected.

Chef Chea was there; when he saw us, he shook our hands and was genuinely glad to see us. He took the time away from what he was doing and chatted with us for awhile about the food and the wine tasting dinner we went to recently. He also said not to worry too much about the food because they'd have a private menu tasting for us closer to the date. I thought that was the absolute sweetest thing. I feel honored that he remembered us; I know they serve a lot of people every day. The fact that he remembers us - he remembers that we're getting married there - and he knows that our wedding is between seasons & is willing to do something special for us speaks to his personality and customer service. Here's a picture of our favorite chef:

We sat and ate the food we chose and then walked around the venue to try to imagine what we'd want. I think we now have a general idea of how we want the ceremony & reception set up, and where the kids area, candy buffet, escort cards, gift tables and DJ will go.

Plus, some of the rentals companies had binders there with sample linens and I think we picked out our table cloths! We'll do these as an overlay over either white or navy floor-length table cloths. I'm so excited. It's neat to see the copper coming out as a major color in our wedding; I was concerned it would become an accent against the navy instead of equal to the navy.

(source)

K took a bunch of pictures of the venue with his cell phone (I forgot our camera) so that we'll remember what it looks like & get an idea of what we need as far as flowers & decorations. I've included some of them above, here are the rest. (Sorry that some of them are blurry, but you can get an idea of the space.)

So, what do you think? Any ideas of how we could decorate?

And the winner is....

2009-09-29T23:35:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody!

(Can you tell I always feel weird about starting a blog entry without a salutation? It feels like I've just walked up to you & started talking in the middle of the conversation. Anyone ever felt that way before? lol - probably not...anyway...)

Some exciting wedding(ish)-related news: K & I went to a bridal show at the spur of the moment on Saturday. It was at the Tacoma Convention Center, and it had maybe 20 booths. It was kind of cute, actually & not at all overwhelming like I thought it would be.

We were talking to somebody (I think about ice sculptures - lol) and all of the sudden K said, "Honey, we have to go - we just won something!" It turns out, they'd called our names for door prizes! The prize was a huge basket from the Ram restaurants- I should have taken a picture. In it, there were several gift certificates for free deserts, appetizers and drinks at the Ram. There was also a free brunch at their restaurant on the Tacoma Waterfront, CJ Shenanigans, and two $60 gift certificates to their new Mexican restaurant in the U-Village, Sonrisa. Sounds great, eh?

But wait!
There's more!

In the basket there was a bottle of wine, a t-shirt and there was also a growler & a membership to their growler program. What's a growler program, you ask? Well, clearly you don't go to as many micro-breweries as my fiance & I do. ;-) Basically a growler is a big jug for beer, like this:

(source)

The growler program gives you a discount on beer when you buy (or receive in a gift basket) a growler. It's a great way to get to try different beers at a decent price.

K & I were totally psyched. In fact, we felt a little guilty that we didn't need any catering (which is what the Ram was there selling). I told K that at least we got something we could use - I was afraid we'd get something we already had, like a discount for a bridesmaids dress. Of course, now that I think about it, maybe we could have used that to look for a dress for C (I have *no* idea what the kids are going to wear).

After that, the bridal show seemed pretty boring. ;-) We did talk to a bakery that we're probably going to go look at. They already work with our caterers a lot, and they were totally psyched about our idea for the cakes - which was a lot of fun. Their sample at the show was pretty good, but the real test will be taking the kids over there & seeing what pleases their discriminating pallates.

We also talked to the Partylite people. It was pretty funny, we kind of got trapped because K's a nice person & has trouble saying "no" when people start talking to him. So, we stopped & looked through the displays they had. The lady tried to sell me something that we could use if our venue doesn't allow candles to spray a scent. I decided it would be tactless to tell her that I'm generally very anti-scented things (except soaps). It was kind of odd to be sold something that looked like a fancy version of this:

(source)

She did give me a good idea for our aisle decoration, though. I'd been thinking about doing something like this along each row, except bigger (I couldn't find the picture where I found this originally):

(source)

Except, I found these floating candles that look like the flame is actually floating on the water:

(source)

The only problem with those is that they're smaller than I would want the vases to be (for stability sake & looks), so I thought they might look funny. The Partylite lady told us that their tea lights float, though. So, now I'm thinking that we may do that - with lots of little flames instead of one big one.

So, all in all, it was a pretty productive afternoon - which I completely didn't expect. Has anybody else ever won a cool doorprize before?

All I Got Is This Photograph

2009-09-29T23:19:00.000-07:00

Mad props to anyone who knows what song that's from (no Googling!) Now, the lucky few of you who know that song have it stuck in your head; just like I have since I thought of the title. ;-)

Anyway...today I thought I'd talk a little more about one of the vendors we've selected.

The vendor that's been the most difficult so far has been our photographer. That wasn't because we're photography snobs (we're definitely not); it was because there were so many factors we had to consider.

One important factor in this decision was K's kids. There aren't very many wedding photographers who showcase kid pictures on their websites. Those that do, don't always have very good kid pictures. The kids are a big part of the day; it's very, very important to us that they feel comfortable in every part of it. The pictures are something I'm concerned about, since it will take up so much time on the day of the wedding. We definitely wanted to hire someone who has a lot of experience working with kids & taking kids' pictures.

We also had a very generous offer from a close friend (BM M's wife), who's a wedding photographer, to take our pictures. In the end, we decided that we wanted her to be able to relax during the wedding. I'm confident that Christine would have handled the "frendor" relationship beautifully & professionally, since I've seen her do it before, but I was concerned that I wouldn't handle it as gracefully. Despite our decision, if you're looking for a wedding photographer in Houston, I highly recommend her. You can see her work on her website here.

Once we'd made that decision, K and I started looking around at local photographers. We looked at a bunch and narrowed it down to two. We met with both of them, and decided to go with Kris Allen. No, not this Kris Allen:

(source)

This Kris Allen:

(source)

Our first meeting with Kris was insanely comfortable; we met her at Sorci's, a restaurant down the street from us, with the girls. We didn't necessarily have an idea of what we wanted, but (as per our usual decision making process) we were both confident we'd know it when we saw it.

Kris was definitely "it". She takes great pictures. She's a former project manager, which totally appeals to me & gives me confidence that she knows how to manage the complexity of a wedding shoot. She's really friendly and easy to get along with. We had a similar sense of humor & at the end of the first meeting, it felt like we were talking to an old friend.

The ringer for Kris, though, is that she does family portraits most of the time. So, she understands kids (well, as much as anyone can) & knows how to get good pictures of them. We've seen the pictures she takes of families and they're really good. I think that with Kris' experience working with kids, we're more likely to have fantastic wedding pictures. Here are some of my favorites from one of her recent shoots (all from www.krisallenphotography.com)

To help the kids be more comfortable with Kris, we're having family pictures taken in a few weeks. That way the kids can get to know her and we can all get more comfortable having our picture taken together. K & I definitely think this will be helpful, since we got so much more comfortable with her during our engagement shoot last week. I'll talk more about that later, but here's a teaser:

Ring a ding ding

2009-09-26T23:55:00.000-07:00

One thing we skipped over as I dove right into wedding stuff is my ring. K got me the most incredible ring; it is absolutely perfect in my completely unbiased opinion. ;-)

How did he find this ring, you ask?

It all started (like many shenanigans do) at the Sumner Wine Walk. For those of you who've missed this, Sumner (the town we live in) sponsors a wine walk twice a year. Each of the shops hosts 2 wines and you go around to each of them tasting the wine. K & I usually have a bunch of friends over for some pre-walking festivities. We eat some food, drink some wine & then head out shopping. One of the shops is the jewelry store on Main Street.

In one wine walk (I have no idea which one), we were looking at the engagement rings display and saw one with sapphires on each side of the setting. It was gorgeous & absolutely perfect. They offered to take it out of the display, but I declined.

As K & I got more serious, we'd keep an eye on that ring. One Wine Walk, it was gone. I was completely bummed. The owners didn't even remember the ring, but we did. A few weeks later, K mentioned that in order for him to get me a ring, he had to know what size. So, I went into the same jewelry store and tried on a few of their rings. One of them was a setting with square diamonds on each side diagonally.

Fast forward a few months and K proposed. (It's a good story, but I think most of you have heard it - leave a comment if you haven't & I'll retell.) With this...

The diamond is a 1 karat radiant cut in a platinum band. I love it. I had it sized a few months ago & after I got it back (and it was all shiny) I played with it some in the yard & around the house to get these pictures. I hope you enjoy them:

So, there you go - that's all about my ring! Is there anything else you've been wanting to know about that I haven't mentioned yet?

All Tied Up

2009-09-25T17:48:00.000-07:00

First things first, the title for this post was K's idea because I was stuck. I'd say something about how if you think it's cheesy, blame him - but all of mine have been cheesy too. So, I'm not saying anything other than "that was K's recommended title."

Anyway - getting on to the good stuff....

I'm a details person. I love details; I think the details are what makes something special. When my MOH, R, & I went to Spain together, the thing that I loved the most (besides spending time with her) was the incredible detail in the buildings - the tiling, the archways - it was incredible.

I've been trying to show the same sort of attention to detail in our wedding. It's an interesting balance, though, because I don't want to create more work for us than absolutely necessary; nor do I want to invest time, energy or money into a detail that isn't really meaningful. For example, we're not going to have personalized napkins; I know people do it & it's a detail that can make the wedding more personal. To me, though, it's not worth it. It's not worth the money or figuring out what font, or where to get them from, or where to put them, or what to put on them....

As I've read blogs & browsed websites, though, I have looked for the details that are either meaningful to one or both of us, serve a purpose or bring everything together. One example of that I found while on Weddingbee. There was a woman talking about ties they'd ordered from a website called Cyberoptix; the description intrigued me so away I went to browse around.

They have some pretty cool looking ties that I can't figure out how to save pictures of. So, you have to click through & check them out. They're so cool; I love how they have fun with the ties like this and this. There are a few darker ones too, like this.

They also make scarves that I think are big enough to double as wraps. They're gorgeous too, check out this.

So, as I was nosing around I came across this tie; and I totally fell in love with the picture with the browns & coppers. I sent it to K and he was totally crazy about them to.

We ordered a sample tie & scarf to see what they look like. They are incredible; so we decided to get them for the wedding party. They look great, fit with the color scheme and we'll be supporting a growing business. One of the coolest things was when I got my order confirmation email, it said something along the lines of "This isn't an automated email. There's a real person sitting on the other end of this address, so if you have any questions at all, respond & we'll get right back to you"

For the wedding, we'll give all of the grooms/brides men, plus some of our family members, ties that look like the one above. K will have one color (maybe orange?), the groomsmen will have another color (maybe brown?), my bridesman M will have a color that closely matches the dresses & our family members will have a 4th color. Oy. We haven't exactly figured out the colors yet, but Bethany from Cyberoptix sent us a swatch card with a bunch of options and we just need to make a decision.

We'll also be getting the women in our lives (brides/grooms maids, family, etc) scarves that match as well. I think they'll use them as wraps & hopefully that will help keep them warm. March in Seattle is pretty unpredictable; it may be beautiful or it may be cold & rainy. (Clearly, I'm hoping for - but not planning on - beautiful)

What do you think? Would you wear any of the Cyberoptix ties?

It Suits Him Perfectly

2009-09-24T21:14:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone!

Sorry it's been so incredibly long since I blogged. Work has been more insane than usual & so we haven't been doing too much wedding work. That's no excuse, though, because there are tons of things to catch you up on.

So, now I'm back! Watch out. ;-)

When I left you, I'd outlined what the bridesmaids are going to wear, and teased about what we're going to do for the groomsmen & bridesmen.

This was a really tough one for us. We originally wanted a navy pinstripe suit. We thought the stripe would play well with the lighter colors of the bridesmaid dresses and a suit would fit the mood we are going for better than a tux would.

Well, it turns out (and this probably won't surprise most of you) - you can't rent suits. So, there went that idea.

Then we started looking for pinstriped tuxes....nada. All we could find were zoot suits or something that looked like P-Diddy (is that the name he's going by right now?) would wear it. Like this...

(source)

or this...

(source)

Finally, I emailed a tux store asking about options and the owner pointed me to a navy tux that was cut very much like a suit. I'd actually found it when I was first looking, but we wanted the pin stripes so badly that I forgot about it.

(source)

Tada! That's it!

K & I ended up working with the rental place pointed me in that direction, Wall Street Custom Clothiers. We really liked the owner and the store when we went to visit. One of the big perks is that they'll deliver the tuxes to the hotel & pick them up after the wedding. So, all we have to do is make sure the guys get us their tuxes the day after the wedding and it will be taken care of. How wonderful is that?

Another perk is that they also do alterations, so I'll be getting my wedding dress altered there. The owner recommended that we look at having a custom shirt made for K as well. I think that would be neat - seeing as how I get a whole dress made for me. ;-)

So, that's it - our tux decision. What do you think? Anyone who knows me surprised that they're blue? ;-)

Next up, I'll give you some of our thoughts about how we'll finish out the outfits for our parties.

Attire-ing decision Part 1

2009-08-29T13:37:00.000-07:00

Figuring out what our party is going to wear has been one of the more difficult decisions so far.

I think I went completely out of the order you're "supposed" to plan in and started looking for bridesmaid dresses first - at about the same time I started looking for the venue. I knew I wanted to pick the length & color of the dresses, and then let my bridesmaids pick from one of many styles. I decided on tea-length quickly, but the color was more elusive.

Originally, I was looking for a dark grayish-blue. Then, I found this dress:

(source)

It was the coppery color we were also thinking about - and really pretty. The only problem was that there was only one cut. I wasn't sure that all of my bridesmaids would like it.

It seemed really hard to find the color I wanted, though. I could see it in my head, but there weren't actually any dresses that color. I kept looking and came across the bridesmaid dresses at Ann Taylor. They have pictures on their website of weddings that used the dresses. I saw this picture:

(source)

and I was in love! The color wasn't perfect, but it was freakin' close. So, I browsed around the Ann Taylor site and I found these dresses:

(source)

Plus, they were all about $150 - which is a lot, but not too bad. And, while I don't pretend my bridesmaids dress up frequently, the dresses aren't so formal that they would have to be going to prom to wear them again.

I had the only bridesmaid who lives in Seattle, B, order one to see how it looked in person. It took a couple months for us to make it happen, so I didn't actually get to see the dress until July. Once I saw it, I was convinced & emailed the other bridesmaids to get it. It was a good thing we got it when we did, because when my stepmom called to order the dress for my little sister (who's my junior bridesmaid) - they told her they were discontinuing the dresses.

Luckily, all of my bridesmaids got one - and some of them got them on sale! That's one thing that's completely checked off my list. Yay!

Once we had the girls squared away, it was on to the guys...which was much more difficult. I'll post that story next. In the meantime, what do you think of the girls' outfits?

Logo Permutations

2009-08-21T21:02:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to write! In my last post, I talked about how we picked our logo & I said next time I'd talk about the permutations we went through. The trick was all of my pictures are at home & I kept wanting to blog on the train during our commute.

I finally found some time to sit down & blog, so here I am! :-)

As I said, we wanted to include our names and colors more. The trick was that we hadn't completely decided on our colors. We had a color palette (built at another site a blog pointed me to), but we weren't completely sold on it. Here it is:

We knew that our colors would have some combination of our favorite colors (blue & orange). We liked the slate on the far left, but weren't crazy about the orange. We couldn't find anything better, so armed with these colors, we started playing with our logo. Here are some of the things we tried:

In the end, we realized that the tree stood pretty well on its own & adding anything else cluttered it. What do you think?

Loco for Logos

2009-08-18T22:32:00.000-07:00

I've talked some about the decisions that we're making right now, and I thought it might be fun to go back over the decisions that we've made. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about the bridesmaid dress post I promised earlier (I know you're all on pins & needles). I realized, though, that going in chronological order probably makes more sense.

After K proposed, I started reading wedding blogs. I'm not sure how I found my first one, but (as you can see to the right) I've built up a list of blogs I try to read on a daily basis. When I started reading, I knew that we'd need colors, but I started reading about "inspiration boards" and "monograms" and all of these other things that I had no idea existed.

One that really struck a cord with me was the idea of a logo. I liked the concept of having a graphic that would be consistent throughout the wedding, essentially a unifying theme we could use wherever we felt necessary.

One of the blogs led me to iStockPhoto.com a site that allows you to buy the rights to graphics and use them as you see fit. K & I searched through a lot of pictures and ended up buying three different ones to play with:

I really liked this one. The sailboat is great since K sails & we've spent so much time together on the boat. I also liked the idea of taking the waves and using them in different places as a graphical element on their own. I could envision these waves going across the bottom of our menus & programs, for example.

We thought one of these would be great too. It was a lot closer to the idea of a logo we could use different places. Plus, the combination of the heart and the tree really stuck with us. We liked the idea of building a family represented by the tree and the heart in the middle of it.

This is the graphic we ended up choosing as our logo (in case you didn't guess from the header). It has the symbolism of the tree and heart that I talked about earlier, plus you can also think about it as two families coming together where the shadow joins the main tree.

It turns out the tree has been really inspirational. Instead of thinking about how to "fit it in", I've found that things (like our Save the Dates) looked like they were missing something when the tree didn't take a prominent position. We spent a long time working on the header for our website (which I also used for this blog) and we finally found the right one once we started with the tree.

When we first bought the tree, we thought we'd be making some changes to it to incorporate our names & colors more. Next time, I'll show you what we played with before ending up with the header you see now.

Now Open: Our Own Little Corner of the Internets

2009-08-18T22:01:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if anyone else noticed, but my bridal party gave me a hard time about the website in the comments for my last post. What the heck is that? I thought they were supposed to be supportive!

;-) Just teasing....

The reason they gave me such a hard time is that I've told them about the website & I've made them write blurbs for the website, but I haven't actually showed them the website. This is partially because there are a few things there that we were tying up, but mostly because we had to move our domain name over and it took about a week longer than we expected it to.

It's finally done, now, though! The URL is www.[my first name]and[K's first name].com Please go check it out!

I've decided that I'm not actually going to put the URL on this blog at all. I feel like this is a little more exposed than our website & so I'm not sure I want everyone who can read the blog going through our website. This is probably completely arbitrary & anyone who tries can figure out our URL. K looked at me like I was crazy when I told him all of this. That's the plan, though.

If anyone has trouble finding the website, feel free to leave a comment & I'll reply to you directly. :-)

Head on over there - happy browsing!

It's a party!

2009-08-13T08:40:00.000-07:00

I started to write about the bridesmaid dresses I chose today and then realized that if I didn't tell you about our wedding party, it would be rather confusing. So, I'm saving the dresses for another day (just wait - I have a *great* title for that one) and instead talking a bit about our party.

You can read more about each individual on our website in their blurbs, but I wanted to talk about one slightly unconventional decision K & I made.

We each have a very good friend of the opposite gender that we wanted to stand up for us. Typically, I see people switching friends or siblings around so that each side is all one gender. Instead, K & I each asked one friend of the opposite gender to stand up for us.

That means I don't have a group of bridesmaids; I have a bridal party. My bridesman, BM M, and I have known each other for years; I love that he'll be standing on my side for the wedding. K has a grooms' party with his groomswoman, GW C. They've also known each other forever and she was really touched when he asked her (she started crying, although that may have been from relief that he wasn't asking her to cater).

The situation has led to some interesting conversations - trying to picture BM M in the bridesmaid dresses, for example, has cracked us all up. He also didn't have much feedback on the links to wedding dresses that I sent out. I'm confident the bachelor & bachelorette parties won't be uncomfortable - neither one of us is really into the explicit stuff that can go with those parties.

Figuring out what they'll wear has been the most difficult. I want them to fit into the party on the side that they're on & not look like people switched places, so we're still working on it. Are there any other things we may have to handle differently?

Warning: Blogging N00b

2009-08-11T09:27:00.000-07:00

There are a few things I've been reminded of in the past 12 hours:
1. Waking up at 5:30 AM is much harder when it's raining outside
2. When you put a story out there on the internets, be sure that you fully tie the bow on the end of it
3. K & I have the most awesome, supportive, incredible friends & family in the world. Thank you!!!

We've gotten so much feedback on the blog & the posts already. I don't want this to become all about family drama, but this whole "creating a family" thing isn't easy and I want to recognize that and be true to it. In that spirit, I have a few clarifications I need to make...

K and I are still getting married. That was *never* a question. When we talked about moving out, it was to take a step back and get some perspective. We both know that change is not easy for kids, and they sometimes adapt much more slowly than adults. While dating a year & then getting married is perfectly normal for most couples, kids need more time to adjust than that and we've worked hard to give them their time. Neither one of us believes that forcing the kids will make our situation better or easier.

Having said all of that, we've decided that K & the kids moving out isn't the right next step. The kids clearly didn't want that, and we didn't really want it either. We have taken a step back and thought about how to manage our every day dealings with the kids. Right now, we're thinking carefully about the battles we choose to fight. K & A will be taking to the kids about this situation together (we're still working out whether or not I'll be there) to make sure the kids are giving both of them a consistent message.

This isn't something that's resolved; it's a work in progress. Our hope is that S will be ready to accept this by next March. In the meantime, though, planning is continuing and we're very, very happy to be together. Many couples never have to face anything truly difficult or hard before they get married, K and I have gone through this - and we know that we're stronger together. That's a great feeling to have.

On Bouquets

2009-08-10T21:19:00.001-07:00

For some reason, bouquets have been on my mind recently. We're not even looking at flowers yet, so I'm not sure why they keep popping up.

Here's the deal: I'm not sure that I want a bouquet. That probably seems really anti-bridal. The thing is, I don't really see the point. They seem like a pain - you carry it down the aisle, then hand it to the maid of honor - so she ends up double fisting bouquets. But then, she's also supposed to be helping me with my train. So, does that mean she hands both bouquets off? Does the next person in line end up holding 3 bouquets? That seems a bit much.

If I don't get a bouquet, that probably means I won't get bouquets for my bridesmaids either. I've read some posts that talk about having bouquets so that the bridesmaids have something to do with their hands. Then I started wondering if they should have purses or something that they could hold but wouldn't be as cumbersome and they could potentially reuse them. A purse seems odd, though, it may look like they're getting ready to leave! Plus, the groomsmen never have anything "to do" with their hands, they just stand there & they seem to survive.

So, if we don't have any bouquets at all, then do we need boutonnieres for the guys...or for the family? We found these cool boutonnieres here. I mean - WOW! How freakin' cool are they? I'm almost afraid to ask how much they are. If we do those for the guys, what do you do for the women?

Moving Forward

2009-08-04T17:05:00.001-07:00

So, K & I talked a lot. We talked about what this meant, we talked about whether or not there was an issue. We talked about how to handle it & came to the conclusion that he needed to talk to the kids. And that if they didn't want us to get married, they had to move out until we could figure this all out.

It was hard; the idea of living without K was hard. But, if the kids aren't happy in the house (fundamentally unhappy, not the "I'm in trouble so I hate you" unhappy), then we owe it to them to get it fixed. Our relationship won't be successful if the kids aren't bought into this too.

Then, K talked to the kids. K asked the kids if they wanted us to get married & the girls said yes. S didn't say anything. K asked the kids if they wanted to move, the girls said no. S didn't say anything; K let it sit for awhile & saw the tears well up in S's eyes. When K asked again, S said he didn't want to leave. K asked him what needed to change for him to be happy & he said he didn't know. I don't want to force him into anything, nor do I want to bribe him; I want him to participate in our family, have fun and be happy. I worry that no matter what I do, he will decide to be miserable and there's nothing I can do to change that.

Based on the conversations, wedding plans are continuing and hopefully I can start writing what I originally wanted this blog to be about - wedding planning fun. In the meantime, I want K & A to talk to the kids together, and get one answer to some of the questions. And we're going to put a bigger focus on K doing things with his kids - individually & the four of them.

The question is, how do you handle a thirteen year old who isn't willing to give anything a try?

He didn't come...

2009-07-31T17:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I thought that I'd try to start blogging my wedding planning experience. I thought it would be a good way to keep our families up to date with the decisions I'm making; a piece of me thought I might be as good at it as the wedding blogs I read. I thought maybe I could represent a different viewpoint.

Then, last night S didn't come over. He told his dad that he didn't want us to get married. He said that I yell too much, that I'm too mean, and that he didn't want to be at our house when we're there. K & I thought that S was just being 13 and acting out. Then, K talked to A - who said that C had to leave the house last weekend because she was so upset & wanted to get away from me. What we thought was a trip to the library, was C escaping me.

...and everything came tumbling down...

I've told K from the very beginning that if his kids weren't happy, things would change. And now we know they're not happy. Not only that, but they're hiding it from us. And all A hears about me is that I yell at them all the time. So she thinks I'm a terrible person & evidently says mean things about me to the kids.

So, I started looking for apartments, figuring it would be easier for me to leave than him - with his 3 kids, even though it's my house. K broke down. I've never seen him like that. So, I stopped looking - and said we could talk about it. I had to convince him that there's a problem; he doesn't want to believe that his kids don't love me as much as he does.

And now the plan is for K to talk to the kids. Tell them that it's OK that they don't want us to get married; that we understand & we'll take the time to figure this out. But, in the meantime, they have to move out. It's not fair to K & I for them to stop the wedding & expect everything to stay the same. Although, the thought of having an empty house hurts me more than I know how to say.

I don't know if that's the right thing to do. I don't know what the right thing to do is. I don't want to teach S that if he throws a big enough fit, he'll get his way. I do want the kids to be in a happy and safe environment. I don't want them to feel the way I did growing up. I don't want to live without my K.