Eight Weeks What?

I was just going to title this post "Another 9 1/2 Weeks" as a fun use of a movie title, and then I went and counted and it's actually 8 1/2! and not really much of a half, eight weeks and 2 days! so that's kind of insane.. in a good way. :)

Stumbled upon my officiant's new blog, here it is if you'd like to get to know her: http://marriagecelebrant-georgiana.blogspot.com/ I'm certainly looking forward to following it, hopefully she keeps it up! 

Things have been coming along since my last update - we've got rings ordered, rehearsal dinner's all figured out, we've started dance lessons, etc. Least favorite chore so far: cleaning jars. We've been collecting them for months, but we're just now getting around to cleaning the labels off and it's kind of a pain.

The last few nights we've been working on getting the invitations together, so they'll be in the mail soon!! That's very exciting. If I had to describe them in one word, that would be "crooked." haha. 

Oh and I had a great meeting with my mother and one of her bosses at Petal's Edge - they're awesome! We figured out the flowers we'll need for the bouquets and all that. I kind of knew before the meeting, but definitely decided after the meeting, that the farmers market flower thing is just not going to work. The MOG put it best when she said it would be a great idea for a very small wedding with like 20 people or something. Not really for one on this scale, when it's not exactly next door to the farmers market, etc. I'm fine with it, less stress = a good thing. We've got some great ideas up our sleeves for the centerpieces, I think it'll be fine.

Coming up, I have a meeting with our caterer on February 1st, to go over the details and look at place settings and all that. Oh and I have to take care of this tiny little detail of getting my dress to fit me properly. Turns out the shop I was going to go to for alterations has closed! So I need to find a different one, umm, very soon.

Poll: what's your top favorite song to dance to at a wedding?

woops it's November

heyyyyy sorry you inquiring minds got left out in the rain all these months. ..that metaphor probably doesn't work but it's raining right now so it's on my brain.

I can't really remember which things need updating so I'm just going to recap all that we've got worked out:

-venue, booked
-caterer, booked
-day-of coordinator, booked
-officiant booked, working on ceremony details now (readings, vows, etc)
-photographer, booked (not Gerardo but maybe he can be the second shooter, we're not sure yet)
-DJ, booked
-flower vendor, identified; centerpieces, conceptualized (theoretically)
-bridesmaid dresses, identified (hopefully to be ordered this month or early next)
-groomsmen attire identified (need to pick out ties)
-groom's attire mostly done (need to purchase vest)
-bride's attire mostly done (first dress sold off! haha. new dress bought, needs alterations)

big to-dos remaining:
-rehearsal dinner venue needs booking
-wedding dress alterations, bridesmaid dress ordering, MOH outfit TBD
-hair appointments need booking
-week-of/day-of schedules need working out (flowers and cake logistics in particular)
-programs, design & printing
-pick out and purchase wedding rings
-planning/booking mini-moon and/or honeymoon (depending on zp's class schedule)

And then of course there's the stuff like purchasing the wine/beer and delivering to caterer, and lots of other little details. Fun stuff. :)

Basically, everything is on schedule so far. But since we've just passed the 4-months-out mark, I imagine time is going to start speeding up and once we're passed the holidays it might start getting pretty hectic. soo.. weeee! Happy Thanksgiving.

couple updates :)

hey! we have a hotel! We went with the Hampton Inn, Fairfax, rooms are $79/night (plus taxes). My mother, zp and I went to inspect it a few weeks ago and we liked it a lot! It's about a mile from Old Town Hall so I'm hoping people will take a cab (or walk?! haha maybe not in heels) to/from the wedding so we don't have to worry about drunk driving..? :) Also I still need to ask the hotel if they do shuttles, that would be the absolute ideal. Once we send out the Save the Dates with our wedding website and all that, you'll be able to reserve your room in our block. I'm thinking Save the Dates will go out in September, via email (except for those we know don't do email)!

also we're pretty much decided on our officiant! I say "pretty much" but we're basically decided, it's just for some reason weird/scary/exciting to actually say we're settled 100%. We haven't informed the officiant that she's the one yet so I guess it's not checked off completely. But we like this woman. And she's a lot closer to our venue than A.C. I'm very excited to start working with her on the ceremony. eeee!!

The bridesmaids have pretty much settled on their dresses (those who will be wearing dresses anyway - Mary's outfit is TBD). I'm not going to share any of the details here, but I think they're going to look awesome. We're going to wait a while before ordering them since they're custom-made to fit each girl exactly, they shouldn't need alterations.

My mother let me know her employer, Petal's Edge, will allow her to order my flowers through them to get wholesale prices without mark-up, and she can use the shop (after work hours) to tie up boutonnieres and bouquets and stuff! So we'll be thinking about that. I still prefer locally grown if we can swing it, but it was an extremely generous (and unsolicited) offer, which I really appreciate.

Next goal is to book a DJ. Hopefully we'll hear from Gerardo next month about whether he wants to be our photographer? That will be good to have out of the way as well. I have someone who wants to be our "second shooter" for FREE, so we'll probably take him up on that offer, but we still need the primary.

UPDATE: we are officially booked with Georgiana - next week she's going to send us "homework" to start working on ideas for the ceremony. :) :) I also sent the email to A.C. letting her know she has not be chosen. SIGH. Not my favorite thing to do.

shoes!

ok moving on from the photos..

shoes! uh! you wouldn't think this would be that difficult, finding the perfect wedding shoes. but I need to whine for a sec about the shoe industry: what the HECK is with making shoes for big feet with ridiculously high heels? Ok I wear a size 10. And technically my feet would fit a 10.5 perfectly but that size. does not exist. *she said in a quiet voice full of rage* So my whole life I've been squishing into shoes that are Just A Little Too Small.

Adding insult to injury, the few styles that are available in size 10 usually have 3 - 4" heels. ... Ok I'm only 5'7.5" but most girls I know with size 10 or bigger feet are even taller, more like 5'9" or 10". ... not that we should be afraid to stand tall.. but personally I am just not a fan of towering over people (and to be perfectly honest.. I prefer not to elevate the ghetto any higher than necessary).

Also there's that whole thing about being able to walk in really high heels. Not so much.

So generally I feel most comfortable in a 2" maybe 2.5" heel. And then I bought a sample dress that came at a length that's going to require me to wear definitely nothing higher than 2", better would be 1.5".

I think you can guess from the above rant that I am not having so much success in this department. Because I'm not really interested in "wedding shoes." I could probably go to Coloriffics and find a pair of ivory satin 1.5" heels in my size and they would look fine with my dress. Oh wait except I was just on their site and they explicitly state that shoes shown with 1.5" heel are size 8 and bigger sizes come with higher heels. WHAT.

Anyway I just really really want a more fun pair of shoes! I want to be able to wear them again after the wedding and always remember that I wore them at my wedding..

there's also the dilemma of working with my dress. It's a really pretty dress and I don't want to go Too casual/crazay and well, ruin it. BUT. one does want a splash of color.. a touch of vintage.. a bit of fun..

soo HALP!

here are some shoes I LIKE but they're either too high or just not quite right.




oh my word I've just been looking on endless shoe for these images and I just found these!! so cute! and only 1.25" heels! and there's a BUTTON ON IT. hmmm...

ok I'm still on the hunt but those are really tempting me.

got some photos!

Well, I finallllyyyyy got to talk to Meg. We caught up on gchat and she apologized for being incommunicado but agreed that it was probably best if we found a different photog for the wedding. She did post the jpgs online for us to download - but we're still waiting for the entire lot, she said she'd get them to us on CD at some point. Sooo we're kind of back to square one on the photog front, but we'll see what Gerardo (MOB's friend) says in August, maybe he'll want to do it. If not I've found a few other leads on not terribly expensive photographers.

I'm trying to upload a couple engagement session photos but it's taking forEvAR so I'll come back later and post them. thx k bye.

mmmmkay here's a couple! I added the color tinting myself, just to give them a little oomph. still waiting for the full CD of all the photos she took, hoping there are a few goofy candid shots in there..

we ended up sitting on a lot of animal statues that day haha

you can't really tell but we're sitting on the back of a giant eagle in this pic


wanted a few fun underground shots but the ones down by the trains didn't really come out.

engagement photos: uncheck

wellll I was hoping to share a couple of our engagement photos with you guys but, umm, I can't seem to get a response out of our photographer. I'm going to give her a call soon but I've tried email, gchat and facebook and she hasn't responded to anything.. and she's online all the time! So.. yeah. that's where we are on That. I have not called her yet, mostly because I hate calling people and I always put it off.. So I will make that my goal for the week, and hopefully will have an update on that soon.

In other news, I had a meeting with a woman about being our day-of coordinator and I liked her. She's going to draw up a proposal and we'll see if we can afford her - I think we can, she's trying to branch off into her own business so I'm pretty sure she's going to give us a good deal, as one of her first solo clients. It will be really nice to not have to worry about stuff the day of the wedding, and also not have to ask one (or more) of our guests to handle a lot of the coordination. I'll just need to make sure she understands exactly what I want to happen - actually more importantly, Not happen. There are a lot of traditional weddingy type stuff that we're not doing (like the bouquet/garter toss), gotta make sure everyone's on the same page.

Did I tell you guys we officially booked the caterer? Well we did. We went with The Purple Onion, they have our $100 retainer and a signed contract.

I'm really excited I can talk about bridesmaid dresses now! Kara's married! haha. I mean I'm super excited she's married just because it's awesome for her. Their wedding was beautiful, I had a great time being part of it, and obviously I wish them the BEST. But then yeah, I'm also glad she's free to talk about my wedding now haha. Bridal party: look for an email from me soon about dress stuff. :) I just ordered some swatches of dupioni silk to try to narrow down the colors..

and then, what else is new... Oh yes I built us a wedding website! :-o I decided I didn't really love the weddingwire.com site so I went through Google Sites and just built a new one. and then I paid $10 for our very own domain name, which will be good through June 2010. I will not be revealing the website URL here, it'll probably go out with the Save-the-Dates.. [speaking of websites MOM I need to show you what I did with ours because it's super easy actually, I think you could easily set one up for your artwork if you want.]

hopefully checking off the list within the next month: DJ and Officiant. no official meetings are set up yet but.. we're getting close.

I think I found my hair salon

Oh man I just happened to stumble upon this review when I was looking at Yelp.com for restaurants that could work for the rehearsal dinner.

SanDee's Hair Studio. Look at the pictures of the place! omg! Amazing! I've just sent her an email asking if we could book the place for the morning or afternoon of the wedding day.. such amazing potential for photo ops!

On the rehearsal dinner front, this place looks pretty neat, but I have no idea if it could accommodate us. I sent them an email, we'll see! Maybe it's just me but a dinner with wine pairings sounds Awesome.

This place also looks gooood, I'd be interested in doing some in-person recon there. mmm indian buffet... Their website says they do "onsite dosa parties." I don't want to sound like an idiot and ask them what the heck that means - anybody know? Wikipedia tells me what a dosa is, still not quite sure how you make a party of it... oh dang I just realized that website only shows locations in Gaithersburg and some other place in MD... phooey! I guess there's a difference between "Woodland" and "Woodlands." :-(