And the winner is....

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:

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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:

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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

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:

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This Kris Allen:

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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

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

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

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...

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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

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:

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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:

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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:

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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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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...

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.