Progress post!
Hey y'all! It's been a really long time since I've posted anything here-- this is my intro post, but I can't find the other progress post I made. Anyway, we are under 100 days out from our January 7, 2012 wedding. 97 days out, actually. Eek! To recap: Evan and myself (Jen), getting married in the San Francisco Bay Area but living in Illinois.
So, here's what E. and I have been up to, planning-wise:
I know I posted this before, but to recap, both the ceremony and the reception will be at the Women's Club of Palo Alto:
We're going to set up the chairs for the ceremony and have the tables pushed to the back, and hopefully the transition from ceremony to reception will be quick and smooth. There's a park about one block away where I am hoping we can take a few pictures (there's also a super awesome playground, with a train and some swings-- I think those would make for awesome pics!). Up until I saw the park I didn't care too much about possibly crummy January weather, but now that I've seen it I'm really hoping it doesn't rain that day, so we can get at least a few pictures.
Speaking of pictures, our photographer is the fantastic Anthony Dimaano, who's our friend from college and very talented. His website is pretty limited right now but if you scroll to about the 23rd pic or so, you can see some of his engagement and wedding pics. We met with him in June and signed a contract; we decided against getting a 2nd shooter, mostly for financial reasons. Anthony's giving us a sweet deal (friends discount! yay!) and I am super stoked to work with him.
We also hired an officiant, finally, and yesterday E. and I picked out the readings we'd like our moms to do. Officiant: Lili, of Weddings of Heart. Terrible company name, but Lili seems like she'll do a great job with the wedding ceremony. We met with her over Skype (seriously, thank the powers that be for the internet... not sure I could plan this wedding otherwise!) and she's a very calm, open person, and also very organized, which is really important to me (I couldn't deal with a flaky officiant, and we Skype-interviewed a couple other people who were terrible).
Readings: My mom will read Union, by Robert Fulghum, and E.'s mom will read either Blessing of a Marriage, by James Dillet Freeman, or an excerpt from Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet.
We sent out our save the dates in June. I picked some free postcards from Vistaprint:
Seriously, if anyone is looking for cheap save the dates, go with Vistaprint postcards. We "splurged" and paid extra to get them printed on recycled card. Even so, it cost us under a whopping $40 for the cards, address labels, and postage (including 10 international postcard stamps). Woot!
These are our invitations-- we just bought them yesterday at Michael's, and it turns out they were on sale so they were even cheaper than we expected-- $60 for 60 invitations. Score! I had wanted my childhood friend to design something for all our paper goods (invitations, save the dates, programs, etc) but unfortunately he's not able to work with us. Luckily (?) it turns out the paper stuff is pretty low on my priority list-- there are other things I care about way more than the invitations. So I don't care that the invitations don't match the save the dates, and they won't match the table numbers, place cards, or programs either. But the invitations are cute without being overly so, and they will get the job done! :)
Stuff I do care about-- food, dress, flowers. I am extremely lucky to have a group of quasi-aunts who've offered to cook for the reception! Home cooked food? Hell yes. I met with them in June and we finalized our menu-- we're having a PASTA BAR! Basically, there will be four different kinds of pasta sauce to choose from: alfredo, meat ragu, marinara and pesto; plus two salads, breadsticks, and some roasted vegetables. We're going to have some appetizer trays set out immediately after the reception-- baguette slices with goat cheese, honey, walnuts and rosemary (omg, so amazing); and some fruit and cheese trays. For dessert, my mum and sister are baking cupcakes in 3 or 4 different flavors (vanilla, lemon and coffee chocolate). I just can't decide what permutations of those flavors I want-- vanilla with lemon icing, or lemon with lemon icing? etc. Such tough decisions... ;)
I ordered my dress a few weeks ago:
The Beverlywood, by Dolly Couture. (The same dress as silsbycarr!) It should be ready in early November and I cannot WAIT to try it on!
I have these shoes:
And I'm thinking of ordering these for later in the reception:
(Sweet lord, those are giant shoe pics. Sorry!)
I don't know what I'm doing in terms of accessories quite yet. As for hair, I'd love something like this, but I don't know if my hair is long enough. Sigh.
My mom made my sister's bridesmaid dress using this pattern. Her dress is a dark teal. Unfortunately my other bridesmaid is having trouble finding a dress that will coordinate or match. I don't really care if the dresses match, so long as they're a darkish blue-ish (dark teal, royal, navy, whatever). I thought me being open about the dresses would make it easy for both bridesmaids but as it turns out, this is one of the more stressful issues in planning this wedding!
The guys don't have their suits yet and I don't know what they're doing. But, I made boutonnieres for E., his 2 groomsmen, and our dads, plus corsages for our moms and grandmas. Here's an in-progress pic:
I used preserved flowers from save-on-crafts.com. Five boutonnieres and four corsages came to about $4 each-- and that includes the cost of tools like wire cutters-- which is definitely cheaper than going through a professional florist. I just hope they look the same in January; they're just hiding out in a closet in my parents' house in CA right now so I can't check on how they're holding up.
I decided that I'll be doing the flower arrangements myself, with the help of whomever is available in the week leading up to the wedding (my cousin, my best friend, etc). I used to work for a bridal florist when I was in college, and I just love working with flowers, so I'm hoping this will be more enjoyable than stressful. :) I decided to keep things relatively simple: our main flowers will be roses, gerbera daisies, and alstroemeria in bold colors (red, yellow and orange, mostly) with green, white and brown accents. Yes, we are throwing any semblance of a color scheme to the wind, and just doing what makes us happy (green shoes, blue dresses, fun flowers). The table centerpieces will be in these bottles (also from save-on-crafts):
They're quite small-- under 6" tall-- and I don't think we'll be able to fit a ton of flowers in them, but that is fine by me.
For table settings, we're going to get these compostable palm leaf plates, compostable clear cups for beverages (beer, wine, soda, water), and we're going to get a bunch of mismatched flatware from thrift stores that we'll re-donate after the reception. We will have to rent linens, I think, unless I find a great deal on ebay or craigslist...
Finally, I bought my wedding ring yesterday (E. still needs to get his finger measured, so we haven't purchased his ring yet). Getting an eco-friendly ring is really important to me, but apparently rings made from recycled gold are quite a bit more expensive than new gold. Go figure, right? All I want is a plain white gold band, so when I found one in my size and desired width on Etsy I jumped on it. It's pre-owned, so no new gold was mined! Yay! And no, it doesn't bother me that someone else wore the ring before me, and it doesn't bother me that I don't know what happened to that person or their marriage.
Whew! I think that's just about everything. I'll end with a question / "show-me-your" request: show me your favors! I am so not interested in favors but E. really wants us to give something to our guests that they can take home with them. Right now I'm leaning toward getting some glass coasters to use as place cards (no picture of the bride inside, as shown...) and to double as favors, plus little bags or boxes of some kind of candy. Thoughts on that? If you were a guest, how would you react to those favors?
So, here's what E. and I have been up to, planning-wise:
I know I posted this before, but to recap, both the ceremony and the reception will be at the Women's Club of Palo Alto:
We're going to set up the chairs for the ceremony and have the tables pushed to the back, and hopefully the transition from ceremony to reception will be quick and smooth. There's a park about one block away where I am hoping we can take a few pictures (there's also a super awesome playground, with a train and some swings-- I think those would make for awesome pics!). Up until I saw the park I didn't care too much about possibly crummy January weather, but now that I've seen it I'm really hoping it doesn't rain that day, so we can get at least a few pictures.
Speaking of pictures, our photographer is the fantastic Anthony Dimaano, who's our friend from college and very talented. His website is pretty limited right now but if you scroll to about the 23rd pic or so, you can see some of his engagement and wedding pics. We met with him in June and signed a contract; we decided against getting a 2nd shooter, mostly for financial reasons. Anthony's giving us a sweet deal (friends discount! yay!) and I am super stoked to work with him.
We also hired an officiant, finally, and yesterday E. and I picked out the readings we'd like our moms to do. Officiant: Lili, of Weddings of Heart. Terrible company name, but Lili seems like she'll do a great job with the wedding ceremony. We met with her over Skype (seriously, thank the powers that be for the internet... not sure I could plan this wedding otherwise!) and she's a very calm, open person, and also very organized, which is really important to me (I couldn't deal with a flaky officiant, and we Skype-interviewed a couple other people who were terrible).
Readings: My mom will read Union, by Robert Fulghum, and E.'s mom will read either Blessing of a Marriage, by James Dillet Freeman, or an excerpt from Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet.
We sent out our save the dates in June. I picked some free postcards from Vistaprint:
Seriously, if anyone is looking for cheap save the dates, go with Vistaprint postcards. We "splurged" and paid extra to get them printed on recycled card. Even so, it cost us under a whopping $40 for the cards, address labels, and postage (including 10 international postcard stamps). Woot!
These are our invitations-- we just bought them yesterday at Michael's, and it turns out they were on sale so they were even cheaper than we expected-- $60 for 60 invitations. Score! I had wanted my childhood friend to design something for all our paper goods (invitations, save the dates, programs, etc) but unfortunately he's not able to work with us. Luckily (?) it turns out the paper stuff is pretty low on my priority list-- there are other things I care about way more than the invitations. So I don't care that the invitations don't match the save the dates, and they won't match the table numbers, place cards, or programs either. But the invitations are cute without being overly so, and they will get the job done! :)
Stuff I do care about-- food, dress, flowers. I am extremely lucky to have a group of quasi-aunts who've offered to cook for the reception! Home cooked food? Hell yes. I met with them in June and we finalized our menu-- we're having a PASTA BAR! Basically, there will be four different kinds of pasta sauce to choose from: alfredo, meat ragu, marinara and pesto; plus two salads, breadsticks, and some roasted vegetables. We're going to have some appetizer trays set out immediately after the reception-- baguette slices with goat cheese, honey, walnuts and rosemary (omg, so amazing); and some fruit and cheese trays. For dessert, my mum and sister are baking cupcakes in 3 or 4 different flavors (vanilla, lemon and coffee chocolate). I just can't decide what permutations of those flavors I want-- vanilla with lemon icing, or lemon with lemon icing? etc. Such tough decisions... ;)
I ordered my dress a few weeks ago:
The Beverlywood, by Dolly Couture. (The same dress as silsbycarr!) It should be ready in early November and I cannot WAIT to try it on!
I have these shoes:
And I'm thinking of ordering these for later in the reception:
(Sweet lord, those are giant shoe pics. Sorry!)
I don't know what I'm doing in terms of accessories quite yet. As for hair, I'd love something like this, but I don't know if my hair is long enough. Sigh.
My mom made my sister's bridesmaid dress using this pattern. Her dress is a dark teal. Unfortunately my other bridesmaid is having trouble finding a dress that will coordinate or match. I don't really care if the dresses match, so long as they're a darkish blue-ish (dark teal, royal, navy, whatever). I thought me being open about the dresses would make it easy for both bridesmaids but as it turns out, this is one of the more stressful issues in planning this wedding!
The guys don't have their suits yet and I don't know what they're doing. But, I made boutonnieres for E., his 2 groomsmen, and our dads, plus corsages for our moms and grandmas. Here's an in-progress pic:
I used preserved flowers from save-on-crafts.com. Five boutonnieres and four corsages came to about $4 each-- and that includes the cost of tools like wire cutters-- which is definitely cheaper than going through a professional florist. I just hope they look the same in January; they're just hiding out in a closet in my parents' house in CA right now so I can't check on how they're holding up.
I decided that I'll be doing the flower arrangements myself, with the help of whomever is available in the week leading up to the wedding (my cousin, my best friend, etc). I used to work for a bridal florist when I was in college, and I just love working with flowers, so I'm hoping this will be more enjoyable than stressful. :) I decided to keep things relatively simple: our main flowers will be roses, gerbera daisies, and alstroemeria in bold colors (red, yellow and orange, mostly) with green, white and brown accents. Yes, we are throwing any semblance of a color scheme to the wind, and just doing what makes us happy (green shoes, blue dresses, fun flowers). The table centerpieces will be in these bottles (also from save-on-crafts):
They're quite small-- under 6" tall-- and I don't think we'll be able to fit a ton of flowers in them, but that is fine by me.
For table settings, we're going to get these compostable palm leaf plates, compostable clear cups for beverages (beer, wine, soda, water), and we're going to get a bunch of mismatched flatware from thrift stores that we'll re-donate after the reception. We will have to rent linens, I think, unless I find a great deal on ebay or craigslist...
Finally, I bought my wedding ring yesterday (E. still needs to get his finger measured, so we haven't purchased his ring yet). Getting an eco-friendly ring is really important to me, but apparently rings made from recycled gold are quite a bit more expensive than new gold. Go figure, right? All I want is a plain white gold band, so when I found one in my size and desired width on Etsy I jumped on it. It's pre-owned, so no new gold was mined! Yay! And no, it doesn't bother me that someone else wore the ring before me, and it doesn't bother me that I don't know what happened to that person or their marriage.
Whew! I think that's just about everything. I'll end with a question / "show-me-your" request: show me your favors! I am so not interested in favors but E. really wants us to give something to our guests that they can take home with them. Right now I'm leaning toward getting some glass coasters to use as place cards (no picture of the bride inside, as shown...) and to double as favors, plus little bags or boxes of some kind of candy. Thoughts on that? If you were a guest, how would you react to those favors?