Originally published at Our Wedding. You can comment here or there.
Well, I've been wondering and wondering when the last-minute stress is going to hit. I've got my answer. Holy crap, I woke up this morning and it has hit me big time, in all its jaw-clenching, heartburn-inducing glory. I'm not having panic attacks or anything, but there are just so many little things still to work out and Bo is freaking out a bit so I'm trying to be the non-anxious one for once. Hah! Anyone that knows me knows how ridiculous that is.
Tonight we are going over to my boss' house to check it out and talk logistics (she's hosting our rehearsal dinner.) Tomorrow we are taking the day off work to do our marriage license/venue walk-through, and then we'll stop by my office in the afternoon for a work shower/party. And since I'm taking the Wed-Fri off before the wedding, that means I have only five days in the office before the wedding, including today! Holy crap. Holy freaking crap.
Originally published at Our Wedding. You can comment here or there.
The To Do list is getting remarkably small, yet I keep forgetting what is on it. I'm writing them down here in the hopes that it will instill them in my brain a bit better.
1. FLOWERS. I keep forgetting about flowers. I'm planning to just do grocery store flowers for the bouquet and corsages/boutonnieres, but I still should get on that. Yeah.
2. Hair/makeup. I'm doing my own, but I need to do some trial runs for the hair and go to Sephora and buy some makeup and get some application how-tos.
3. Write vows. Gah. Hard! Scary!
4. Music playlist. Also hard and scary.
5. Book Alina for PetHotel.
6. Rent big old van/SUV to shuffle folks around.
7. Get marriage license. Yeah, kinda important.
8. Get in touch with venue for final floor plans, arrangements, etc.
9. Figure out Sunday brunch options and make plans.
Originally published at Our Wedding. You can comment here or there.
Things completed today from the comfort of the couch:
1. photographer contract signed.
2. invitations ordered.
3. favorite readings/poems/ceremony inspiration selected from deadly long thread on indiebride. not sure if we're doing readings or not but damn if i wasn't near tears the whole time reading them all.
Originally published at Our Wedding. You can comment here or there.
I just wanted to say thanks to everyone that sent us contact info or other ideas for finding a photographer. We have found several that are still available for this date and are waiting to hear from a few more. In fact, now our problem is narrowing down our list of choices, finding time to meet with them, and making our choice!
Originally published at Our Wedding. You can comment here or there.
Our cheap yet awesome photographer fell through, and now we are stuck, 4 months away, with no photographer. I might cry.
Originally published at Our Wedding. You can comment here or there.
I'm not going to post a picture of my dress here, because I'm keeping it a secret from Bo. But rest assured, I have one and it's pretty.
Now for the SHOES. I love shoes. I've been looking forward to buying some really awesome shoes for this wedding for a long time. Rather than get things done at work today, I did a little digging around on endless.com and zappos.com.
( Pictures behind the cut )The dresses arrived today and frankly, are lovely. I did the best I can taking pictures of myself with the timer on the camera, and the results are here.
I'm looking at tickets to Houston. Not sure I want to shorten the dress - surprisingly, I like it long - but even if not it still will need hemming and might as well get Mom and my sister's opinions along with their free sewing skills.
Dress
Originally uploaded by kazbo
Well folks, I went dress shopping with the help of the lovely and wonderful ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
cherguevarra yesterday. I did not find a dress I wanted to take home with me. But, I learned a LOT about what looks good on me (strapless! surprising!) and what I just don't like (huge heavy ball gowns with a 3-ft radius, not surprising). cherguevarra was kind enough to take pictures of every dress I tried on, so if you want to see them all just click here for the full set.
I'm still leaning towards having a dress made. I have some ideas about combining some of the dresses I tried on and liked and just asked my sister to sketch them for me. The only thing holding me back from this option is that the custom dress would be EXPENSIVE. I could talk to the dressmaker about possibly buying the dress with the bodice I like and altering it - that may or may not actually save me any money though.
I was there for an hour and a half. She works out of her home, and we sat at a table in her front living/dining room area. She kind of has this Earth Mother look about her - she's very overweight but has young skin and looks younger than her age (as I later found out). Her hair is long and wild and curly and dark with a generous sprinkling of grey. She didn't have any makeup or shoes on. Several kitties (she has three) came to join us throughout our meeting. Her husband came into the room as I was leaving and he was wearing a kilt.
She first asked to look at my sister's sketch. And, well, she clearly didn't like it. She said it looked like one of a dozen $200 bridesmaids dresses that she sees. She said it hid my sensuality. She said it was a lovely dress, but it was not My Wedding Dress.
She went on to ask me a lot about myself and about the wedding. She showed me binders with her work and the dresses were all amazing.
It's kind of hard to recap the conversation because it went all over the fucking place. She is very, very opinionated and does not pull punches. It was uncomfortable at times, but... well, I'll get to my impressions later. The main points were:
( More behind the cut )
Originally published at Our Wedding. You can comment here or there.
So, this girl at work and her husband do wedding photography and they finally sent us a link to their website with the portfolio. The pictures are fine, but don't wow us. But the price is really good. We're kind of stuck right now, trying to decide just how much we're willing to spend on photography. I really want awesome photos. I also really don't want to spend $2000-$5000, which appears to be the going rate. Gah, I'm totally stressed about it and I just know I'm going to have a stress dream about it tonight.
I'm going to try to chill out and remember that hey, tomorrow I'm meeting with a dressmaker and that will be happy and fun!
Originally published at Our Wedding. You can comment here or there.
Well, we just spent the day completely overhauling www.boandkaren.com. I think it looks great, if I do say so myself. We changed to a new (modified) Drupal template, created and added our own header image, and added a bunch of new content. Highlights include: "About us" pages for me, Bo, Kitty, and Alina; travel info; and suggestions for things to do in Chicago.
This was actually really fun to work on, although it took all day and that means that the Save the Dates aren't going out this weekend.
Originally published at Our Wedding. You can comment here or there.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are on the Berghoff's calendar for September 13! I am thrilled and also very very relieved to have a venue and a date. We haven't signed on the dotted line or handed over any cash yet, but that should be happening soon. The important part is we're on their calendar so no one can steal our date.
I've been turning my attention to the dress issue, and I have a feeling I'm going to end up with like 3 or 4 dresses before this is done. I keep finding all these pretty ones online, but without being able to try them on... Anyway, one is being sold by a girl in Chicago so I'm going to try it on this weekend. I suspect it will be too big for me (it's a 10, but she says it's a small 10 because it didn't fit her or a bridesmaid that's also normally a 10). But it will be nice to see it in person, if I like it I can either buy it and get it altered, or at least know if I want to consider ordering the same dress in my size. I keep forgetting to take my measurements which would make the online shopping part a bit easier.
Originally published at Our Wedding. You can comment here or there.
We had the tasting last night. It was totally delicious and wonderful. We loved all the food. The mini root beer floats were in mini beer mugs, it was so awesome. We got to take home the strawberry rhubarb pie (which was excellent and I kind of want to eat for every meal until it's gone). We could have taken home all the extra food (and there was a lot) but I would gain back all the weight I've lost so we just took the pie and some of the little cheesecake lollipops.
The space is pretty cool (many of the fixtures and stained glass and things are original since the rebuild after the Chicago Fire.) The staff were great, I just love the guy we're working with. He's super excited and full of great ideas and just really fun. We picked some linen colors and are really taking off with the fall theme. They even had some great ideas for favors and centerpieces that are inspiring me.
We still need to hear back from him about what dates are still available. Once we hear from him we'll be putting down deposits and whatnot. I'm so damn excited about the food I don't want to have to wait 6 more months!
And now it's on to the next stress - my dress. A sister of a friend works at Nordstrom's and is keeping her eye out for things I might like. She found one dress that I tried on last week. It's cute, but maybe a little too couture for me. There's a big ass bow right in front that I just can't get over. Everything else about it though - length, style, color - was great. Today I'm trying to get work done and do some online dress hunting at the same time. Not really working. I'm starting to get worried that my vision of a tea-length dress won't work for me because I'm too short. I think I'll just have to be careful and lean towards the shorter lengths, more like just below the knee. I have skirts and dresses at that length and know they look good, it's just if they get just a little too long it makes my legs look stumpy. The sister-designer thing is still an option - she *said* she was putting some sketches in the mail for me but they haven't arrived yet. Open to suggestions for dressmakers if anyone knows any.
Also starting to think about photographers, scanning Craigslist now and then. Again, open to suggestions/recommendations!
Originally published at Our Wedding. You can comment here or there.
Do not have a wedding budget freakout, spend two hours reading the Cutting Costs threads on IndieBride forums, then go directly to bed.
Result = first wedding stress dreams.
Originally published at Our Wedding. You can comment here or there.
In short, I'm pretty amazed. The food sounds great - incredible, really. It also sounds like there would be a ton of it. He even made sure to get my pie(s) in there for dessert.
He came in right on the high end budget I gave him - which given how much we would get is pretty reasonable, really.
Bo and I have to talk and figure out next steps, but I'm trying to reign my feelings in - currently I'd describe them as "jubilant". :D
Originally published at Our Wedding. You can comment here or there.
Feeling a little better about venues. I talked to a caterer from The Berghoff and their new restaurant 17 West. He had some great ideas and it would be kind of pricey but still within reason. The Berghoff is sort of classic Chicago, which is one of the things we've been interested in. Neither of our families are from here and we really want to show off our city.
Anyway, the best part was he said not to panic, we're not that late in planning. He said we're right in the middle really. That made me feel a lot better. The guy I talked to also seemed really cool and maybe even fun to work with, so yay! Proposal to come from him on Monday.
Originally published at Our Wedding. You can comment here or there.
Of course the biggest stress at the moment is finding a venue that we love and can afford and is available on our short time frame. I have to admit we got too wedded (hah!) to this Cliff Dwellers idea, and things are progressing very slowly on that front. I was told my CEO was a member. We were both out of town last week and he was out of town until today this week. I just found out that he's actually not a member but he "knows a guy". So, yet another layer of time and delay and complication. Meanwhile who knows if this place is still even available for that weekend.
So I really, really, really need to get on with the idea of other venues. We can't put all our eggs in this precarious basket. I just don't know where people find the time to do this stuff though. The last thing I want to do is stop enjoying my weekends and missing/cancelling D&D and other such weekend activities.
Ok, enough talking and time to start doing.
Originally published at Our Wedding. You can comment here or there.
Will this work? That'd be cool if it did!
