Big Hats and Swords! :)

My father called me at 7 am this morning.

"You know what your wedding needs? Uniforms. And hats, big hats. And also medals."

He'd been watching the royal wedding, of course.

"We also need swords."

I asked if we were going to run around with the swords playing pirates.

"That is NOT how the royals do it."

Yes, but this is a family who wears napkins on our heads and calls ourselves Pilgrims ...

Ahh yes. "But now, it'll be Royals. We'll have a signal ... 1, 2, 3 ... BIG HATS."

Invitation Horror :)

The invitations have been addressed.

They all have wedding ring stamps.

The rsvp cards have stamps (despite Ryan's idea to just stick a stamp in the envelope, so people could use it for other things if they didn't want to send back the rvsp card, thus saving our guests .40 cents)

A "test" invitation was mailed to my friends, Julia and Ian, out in California and it arrived successfully.

Everything was going along very nicely ... Until ...

I started to seal the envelopes Wednesday after work. I had this perfect little schedule in my head, where I got my car inspected (with only a day or two to spare!) and then went home, sealed all the envelopes, took them to the post office, and still had time to surprise Ryan with a pecan pie. Ha.

But while it certainly took longer than expected to seal the envelopes, something even worse started happening ... the sealed envelopes started opening back up!

I hoped it was just a few problem envelopes. I stuck them under a heavy box, in hopes that the pressure would complete the seal. Then I stopped trying to seal the envelopes, in case I was doing something to mess them up.

Ryan tried to surprise me by sealing the rest. His surprise didn't work out. "Pick up some Scotch tape on your way home," he emailed me.

WE ARE NOT SCOTCH TAPING THE WEDDING INVITATIONS!

We had a debate about form vs function and whether our guests would be more insulted by Scotch tape than they would by not getting an invitation at all because it came apart in the mail.

Our compromise: I found little sticker thingies specially designed to seal wedding invitations at Michael's. They have a picture of a leaf, so they fit our theme. While they're not perfect, they'll do. It was an emergency situation! (By the way, Michael's has some really cute wedding stuff ... for my next wedding, I'm shopping there! lol)

Invitations are now in the mail. Cross your fingers they have no further disasters! :)

Involving Others :)

Originally, our plan was to have the pastor do all the readings at the service. I've just been nervous about asking other people to get involved. I was nervous about asking people to be bridesmaids and now I'm nervous about asking people to do other stuff, lol.

"What are we going to do about people reading at the ceremony?" I asked Ryan.

"Tell them to put their books away," he replied. "Shouldn't they be paying attention to us?"

Groan, lol.

I asked my cousin Cassie if she would be willing to sing at the ceremony and she agreed right away. She said she would be honored, which is really sweet. :) (Now if only I could figure out what song she should sing!!!!)

That seemed to go well, so I moved on to finding readers.

First, I emailed my friend, Elena, and asked if she would be willing. She said she would, especially if she could read it in Spanish, lol.

Then, I went to happy hour with my friend, Anielka, and I asked her. She, too, said she would be willing ... especially if she could read it in Spanish. :)

I think we have agreed on English, lol. But no matter what happens, it's all good. I'm just glad to have them involved :)

Bridezilla?

Lately I have been reading the "Dear Prudence" advice column and a lot of the entries have to do with wedding problems.

One person said they'd received a save the date letter and then never received an actual wedding invitation.

Someone else was scheduled to be the best man in a relative's wedding - as long as he shaved his beard and styled his hair the way they wanted.

And then there's all the destination weddings, where the wedding party is asked to pay their own way, bring a gift, and contribute $$$'s towards the whole affair.

I can't believe some of these people are still friendly with the bride and the groom after the wedding is over!!!! lol

Clearly I could have gotten away with a lot more!!!! :)

Although, at the same time, an acquaintance/friend of mine told me on Monday that she's going to the courthouse in June to marry her fiance, who is serving in the military, before he deploys to Iraq ...

Maybe I'm somewhere in the middle? :)

Planning a Wedding, La Casa Style :)

A lot of time and effort is going into planning the wedding reception, but the ceremony is, of course, very important. Also, we are getting married by our church pastor, so this is a religious ceremony and should be treated with the necessary reverence.

We planned our wedding at La Casa, over lunch, lol.

But it's fitting, it really is! We love that place, lol. We've had lunch there once a week for YEARS. We were regulars even before they moved from a little hole in the wall to an actual real restaurant. Of course we would plan our wedding there :) I even managed to keep spaghetti sauce off the papers :)

Cats Do Not Have Tuxedo Information :)

Look how cute that is, lol.

I dumped Ryan off at Men's Warehouse and I went to the bookstore across the parking lot! :) It was perfectly innocent, I swear! The bookstore has restrooms! (And also books ... )

But I wasn't gone that long!

We didn't have an appointment (not being that organized,) so they gave Ryan a book of tuxedo photos and said they'd be with him asap. He was still there with the book when I came back. It's really hard to, from memory, figure out what colors would go best with the bridesmaid dresses. It's really hard to pick out a tux period, I think :P

I told Ryan I liked the ones that were buttoned up and looking neat.

"I think they all have buttons," he told me.

I guess I'm not that much help :)

We decided on traditional black and white. Can't go wrong with that, right?

"What color shirt?" asked the lady who eventually helped us.

"White," Ryan said.

"What color vest?"

"White."

"What color tie? White?"

"Um, sure, okay."

"What color cufflinks?"

He picked a black pair and she paused, so we switched to the white pair, lol.

Then we talked about cats. She is scared to death of cats because she had a relative who had tons of them and they'd just stare at her. She might like our cats, if they left her alone, but not if they stared at her while she was sleeping. She wouldn't last a minute at our house, lol.

Anyway, the point of the story is that we aren't exactly tuxedo experts :)

A week later, my mother called. "Don't you think the tuxes would look good with a sage vest and tie?"

That's how we picked out the tuxedos! :)

My First Fitting :)

First fitting for the dress: 4/16

Shortly after I committed to that date, my walking group scheduled an awesome hike for that same morning. And then my church asked for volunteers for a community wide Easter egg hunt. And then a coworker had an emergency and needed someone to cover. Argh, lol. In the end, though, the work situation got settled and everything else was hampered by the rain ... so this worked out for me at least, lol.

I was nervous. These things make me nervous. I wished I'd arranged to "kidnap" Michelle from Florida so I could make her come with me, lol.

But I was ready. This is what I brought along with me:



(The seamstress probably thought I was nuts, taking pictures of a pile of shoes...)

We decided not to hem the dress. The seamstress told me "Save your money - you'll need it for the shoes!"

And then I was done. From start to finish, the process took about 20 minutes and it was actually easy as can be. The seamstress was really nice and seemed to know what she was talking about. So that's one thing I don't really have to worry about anymore :)

I do have to go back in for another fitting. Ugh, trying to squeeze that into another weekend ... And then she says, "You know we're open until 8, right?" I did not know that, since their website, all their written paperwork, and the guy on the phone had all insisted they close at 5 pm. There's no way I can get there by 5 pm on a weekday, but before 8 pm should certainly be manageable. And it means I don't have to worry about losing another weekend. I don't have that many left!!!!

She asked if I wanted to take my veil home or if I wanted to store it there. I was tempted to take it home. I know it's bad luck for Ryan to see the whole dress, but can he see the veil? But ... "I have two cats at home," I told the seamstress and we decided we'd better have them keep the veil. Otherwise I won't have a veil by the wedding, lol.

Honeymoon decision

We have picked a honeymoon destination: Vancouver.

Ryan originally suggested Vancouver and I turned it down.
Then I suggested Vancouver and he turned it down.

We're so in sync, lol.

The deciding factor was the cost of airline tickets. It's just too expensive to fly to Ireland right now. Besides, it's too overwhelming to plan a trip to Ireland and a wedding at the same time.

So we are going to Vancouver. And I already have several pages of ideas of things to do. I am a little bit excited :)

Shoes!

Shoes ... shoes ... shoes ...

Just to set the stage here, let me explain my pre-wedding shoe situation. I have 3 basic pairs of shoes: black boots for work, sneakers for the rest of the time, and hiking boots to wear in the snow. (They are awesome.) If I hunt around in my closet enough, I can probably find some sort of flip flop or sandal or high heeled something or other from years ago, but otherwise that's pretty much all I have.

And I'm okay with that. I might even have considered staying that way - is anybody going to be peeking under my long dress to see what sort of shoes I'm wearing?

But our goal is not to have to hem the dress at all, which means I need to wear heels. And I need several pairs to bring to the fitting, so that I have options. Options are good.

I went to Macy's. I went to JC Penney's. I went (briefly) to Ross. I texted pictures of shoes to friends. I discovered that JC Penney's has much better prices than Macy's.

I even found shoes with bling:



(Which I did not buy)

But in the end, I came up with a bunch of nice, heeled, silver sandals ... so if I trip and fall while walking down the aisle, you'll know all the work which went into it :)