September 10, 2007
We Did It!
(Thanks, Francis, for the photo! I know some more of you have photos, too -- since we're heading to Croatia without my laptop, maybe leave a link in the comments?)
Posted by csageday at 12:54 PM | Comments (2)
August 27, 2007
The Main Stretch
Recent wedding accomplishments: I have bought many, many potted herbs from greenmarkets for centerpieces (I just need to keep them alive for two weeks now). We have picked up our rings from The Clay Pot. I braved the makeup section of Macy's, had my face assaulted by various cleansers and powders and lotions, and was completely swindled there into buying makeup I won't even use for the wedding (Derek looked positively horrified by my face when I got home). I have braved the salon section of Ricky's and have had a very nice man who was closing the salon there give me a 10 minute tutorial on doing a French twist. I tried on my altered dress, only to realize that it needs to be altered in a different way, which means I need to drive to Bensonhurst again tomorrow. Time seems to be closing in, and I'm putting together various lists and documents with instructions for other people, but we're probably forgetting something.
Also, since many people use Google instead of their browser address bar, I'm going to make a textual reference to our wedding website URL here (click this if you're looking for the site): jjdayfamily.com/wedding.
Posted by csageday at 01:08 PM | Comments (0)
August 12, 2007
Flickering
While looking for invitation ideas, I searched Flickr and found a few sets with photos of invitation assembly, which helped me figure out my own. To contribute to the fun, I've uploaded my own.
In the world of Flickr, I have posted some photos of D's lovely new niece, Elisa.
Also spent some quality time with Jack, or, I should say, Jack spent some quality time with my hair.
What else? Derek has used his superior Interneting skillz to find some NYC photographers, I won a sailing race in something larger than a sunfish (!), and small brown envelopes are arriving in our mailbox, which signals the start of the phase of planning that involves decorating, meal planning, beverage purchasing, and, surprisingly, golf cart rentals.
Posted by csageday at 11:40 PM | Comments (0)
August 09, 2007
Faux is Me
There's really no way to have a wedding without committing half a dozen faux pas. There's the gift issue, where you're not supposed to blatantly ask for anything, but you're expected to inform guests of your registry. If you don't have a traditional registry, this becomes complicated and strained (um, sorry, but can you be creative and give us something unique and/or old?) and we sound presumptuous. There's the etiquette surrounding how and when to properly thank people for these gifts -- we feel tremendously grateful and lucky to receive the gifts we've gotten (again, friends and family have proven themselves to have fantastic taste) -- but it takes some time to thank people properly.
There's the LIST, which is still expanding and contracting on a daily basis, depending on room at the lake, regretted omissions, and the endless assortment of relatives on my side. There's the question of how to include significant others, how to spell their names, and whether they belong in a double bed or two twins. There's the requirement that the engaged couple display some amount of graciousness, despite their natural hermit-like, antisocial tendencies. There are simple rules of courtesy that should be applied
to interactions between vendors -- we should return the emails and phone calls of the many photographers, musicians, caterers, and rental companies we've contacted, but we have so many other pressing issues that we don't. I've learned to constantly tackle the writing of emails and thank yous and phone calls, but I have a job, too, and only so much can happen in the evenings.
These combined social obligations create a constant feeling that you've offended someone somehow (and we probably have), and that one of the many offenses you've committed may possibly result in bad blood or resentment later. Since we are also the main attraction, a good deal of lenience is afforded us (they're so busy, we understand), but I can see that we'll commit an embarrassing array of faux pas in the next few weeks -- it's inevitable. Hopefully the alcohol will help smooth things over.
In other news, we found plates we like at Michael C. Fina, which, despite the Fifth Avenue store location's propensity for flooding during rainstorms, has a wonderful assortment of plates and flatware. This should help with the registry faux pas situation.
Posted by csageday at 11:33 PM | Comments (0)
July 30, 2007
Haves and Have Nots
Have read the new Harry Potter (thanks, Nick!). Have seen the Harry Potter movie. Will not say any more for fear of spoiling something.
Have celebrated our engagement with many friends and family at a lovely party thrown by my parents (Francis remembered to take pictures).
Have seen a beautiful, brand new baby girl -- D's new niece, Elisa.
Have not found the camera cord, so cannot upload any photos.
Have not washed the camera case after spilling laundry detergent all over it, so am still carrying the camera around wrapped up in pajamas.
Have made an appointment to deal with the dress.
Have not decided what to tell the seamstress to do with the dress.
Have gone to the Hasidic bra shop, which, as someone else said, resembles the wand shop in Harry Potter more than anything else. You do not shop for bras, the bras chose you, with the help of a very perceptive and skilled staff. The bras may as well be made of dragon heartstring and phoenix feathers -- they actually seem to fit.
Have not found a photographer or musical group to help us up and down the aisle.
Have taken off time for the honeymoon.
Have not bought honeymoon tickets.
Have updated blog!
Posted by csageday at 08:03 PM | Comments (0)
July 28, 2007
Registry Ruminations
Because we've been together so long, and because my family, friends, and Derek have indulged my love of food by giving me fabulous kitchenware, we are well outfitted as far as household goods go. This, in combination with the fact that we feel odd about the whole registry business, is making it difficult for us to register for things. We would rather receive something old or unique, but it's difficult to say that (and you're not allowed to say you don't want anything). There's all sorts of etiquette weirdness, which I won't explore because I'm already breaching some sort of guideline just by writing about this in the first place.
I visited Williams Sonoma last week and found three things in the entire store that I thought we might need, and one was a balloon whisk. I followed that visit with one to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, thinking that they'd have a bigger selection. They do, but it's mainly the same good stuff accompanied by lots and lots of things of lesser quality that we don't need.
Those experiences pointed to Macy's or another department store, and that hunch was boosted by recommendations from friends. So we went there Friday night and introduced ourselves to Barbara. She told us all about their policy and presented us with registry swag -- a nice Swiss Army canvas bag. We learned about various perks, and she agreed to add a note about my preference for no gift wrap, even though any environmental impact will be outweighed by the mountains of styrofoam peanuts she said we'll get.
The registry experience is very retro. You are handed an absurd list of items that you "need" for setting up your home. You become familiar with words like "china" and "flatware" and "serving sets." You are encouraged to fill your home with the same stuff that everyone else has. You can make choices, but only within a limited range of items. The mother of the bride is meant to be the subtle purveyor of registry data. And as much as all of this feels a bit odd, we feel the need to follow protocol to make our guests' role easier, and so the process is perpetuated.
At Macy's, I started to get excited about the whole thing while chatting with Barbara. For my birthday, my mother gave me some lovely pieces from a Kate Spade dragonfly collection, and I could see it sitting right behind us in the registry area. Things seemed right with the world. They offered to hold our bags while we shopped and gave us THE SCANNER, which you kind of have to goof around with for the first 15 minutes, because it beeps and makes you feel sci-fi and silly.
We headed to the Cellar, where the kitchen things are. I think we spent an hour there, mostly wandering, because we could NOT find anything to scan.
Derek insisted on touring the freakish collection of commercial cookware (hot dog cookers, slushie makers, etc.) for no practical reason. I wanted so badly to scan things (and he badly wanted to scan ridiculous things for the sake of doing it), but you can't scan things you don't really want. When I finally decided that a big red pot looked kinda cool, the scanner didn't like it (I blame D, who scanned a sandwich label right before that happened, ostensibly in the name of scanner research for work.).
After visiting the linens and china floors (where we discovered completely distinct preferences for towels), we returned to the registry area with a sum total of TWO items on our list, wondering if Barbara might decide that we weren't worthy of the swag bag or the bag checking services after all. We had all of Macy's at our disposal for three hours and we couldn't pick things that we would want to receive for free. This says something about us. And Macy's. At least I didn't get lost in the store this time or succumb to the mall pretzel place.
We've investigated a few sites that let you register for things at any store, anywhere. We looked at myregistry.com (password is required for guests!?) and felicite.com (guests are charged a $6 "handling" fee and the items aren't even purchased -- they just collect cash and give it to you, I think?). We've looked at thethingsiwant.com, and even though it has the right functionality, the name is in such poor taste that we can't imagine telling people about it.
Update: I wrote the rest of this a couple of weeks ago and am just getting around to posting it. We've finally posted a page of the wedding website (after much debate) acknowledging the awkwardness of the whole thing and listing a) charities, b) a list of vintage items and one-offs from places like Greenjeans and VivaTerra, and c) links to traditional registries, where we still have a combined total of fewer than 10 items (finding flatware we like -- one thing we need -- should help that a bit). The page begins with, "Emily Post tells us that this page is in extremely poor taste..." Not sure how it will be received, but we're on a deadline. That said, the gifts we've received so far feel really special -- our friends and family largely have great taste, so we're lucky in that regard.
Posted by csageday at 01:31 PM | Comments (0)
July 06, 2007
Really Long-Winded Wedding Update
I got a little carried away with this post, because there are so many things going on and I've done so little blogging. I'm sure it's not very interesting for people not also planning a wedding -- sorry about that.
I'm learning that there are stages to each portion of the wedding planning. First, there's the amateur exploration of the new task. Then, after much hand-wringing and frustration (vented to friends, family, and strangers), there's a minor breakthrough, in which the solution becomes clear. Finally, there's a prolonged, anxiety and roadblock-filled stagger toward the finished product/decision. All of this takes time. I'm getting a little nervous about how we'll get everything done. I don't agree with the year-to-plan-a-wedding philosophy, which I attribute to marketing minds at bridal businesses, but I think I would have enjoyed taking my time with some of these activities. Here are some examples of the phases I'm seeing:
Save-the-Date
Phase I (Clueless): Stationary store visit
Phase II (Breakthrough): Realization that we can do it ourselves. Followed by: fruitless Photoshop and Googling sessions involving art deco fonts. Followed by: Breakthrough #2, when I thought of scanning photos of a family photo collection and tiling them.
Phase III: Stalling until we'd have a chance to get the photos. Paying absurd sums to use a Kinko's scanner when mine broke. Realizing Photoshop isn't ideal for publishing jobs. Agonizing over the green printer that doesn't offer hard copy proofs and charges too much. Asking for mad favors from people I barely know through work. Getting final product in wrong size. Finally sending the damned things.
Invitations
Phase I (pointless browsing): Four sit-down stationary store visits in two states, with many, many binders and some very strong opinions about postcard RSVPs (not allowed in NJ shop). No headway made at all.
Phase II: Do-it-Yourself realization, followed by hours in paper and stationary stores and several rounds of handmade invitations, which I carried around and impulsively showed to EVERYONE, from coworkers in the elevator to the checkout person in the co-op. Slowly, I moved toward a final design. By then, word-of-mouth recommendations had helped me uncover a second type of wedding invitation vendor -- the type that will print your design in letterpress. I feel like I've made it to some sort of inner circle. Both PrintIcon and Soho Letterpress have printing presses on site, cranking away. The visit to Soho Letterpress, which involves a poorly marked door, a buzz, and a climb up four flights of stairs (in one of those loft buildings where you can see all hundred or so stairs stretching ahead of you) felt like an induction into a secret, cheaper alternative for people who know their fonts and colors and may have attended art school (I don't and didn't, but I tried my best to act creative). The prices were a lot cheaper than PrintIcon, too, which was the first place I brought my little DIY mockup to. (Thanks, Marci, for the recommendation and the art-school help!)
Phase III: Major implementation-of-idea difficulties. The paper I like from Kate's doesn't come in normal envelope sizes and PrintIcon wouldn't even print on it. It tends to disintegrate. The foldovers I'm using have been discontinued. The alternative versions don't fit in standard size envelopes. The second-choice paper I finally find doesn't come in RSVP envelope sizes. And I'm only in the middle of this phase, so plenty of additional difficulties are ahead.
Caterer
Phase I (Clueless and pathetic): Web searches yield little. All the major places are booked. The local options are limited. When the food is good, the staffing is minimal. When the food is so-so, the staffing is exceptional. When you get both together... there's something else.
Phase II: Realize, after leaving potential caterers hanging because we have no time to call people during the day, that we need help. Discover wonderful wedding coordinator, despite conviction that wedding doesn't need a planner other than you. Finally, we're close to making a decision on this.
Phase III: Oh god. This phase is going to be difficult.
Dress & Tux
Let's not discuss the dress. Except to say that there are no shoes and the undergarment I'm supposed to be getting is hanging on a rack in a store somewhere (where??? The ones in Macy's were scary). I need to get both of those things before I can get it altered. We may be getting a tux this weekend.
Registry
Phase I: Search desperately for alternative to non-eco-friendly, boring, mass-market, consumerist alternatives. Love idea of places like myregistry.com, but find out they require guests to sign in (ach!). Are ashamed of domain names like thethingsiwant.com. Try to put together custom registry with things like a glass-blowing class, donations to charities, etc., but realize custom list is lame and gouache.
Phase II: Give up. We're heading to a chain tomorrow. Hopefully it'll be fun to use a scanner.
Music
Derek is doing the music. Derek is very busy. Derek may do the music himself. I am grateful that a) he does A/V work for a living and b) the iPod exists. I think we're still in Phase I. Mom thinks Phase II will involve a realization that we like recorder music, so we can use people she knows. Recorder music reminds me of third grade.
Wedding Party
Jo and Nick: fend for yourselves.
Dessert
Phase I: There's a great bakery in the next town over. She's doing fabulous cupcakes.
Phase II: I had a breakthrough yesterday. I think we should also have rice crispie treats. I like rice crispie treats. I'm worried that this idea will be greeted with the same response that my corduroy wedding dress idea received.
Honeymoon
Greece, maybe? When are we supposed to plan THIS?Photographer
Phase I (Pointless dithering): Surfing Adirondack photographer sites. Good ones are booked. Rest are kinda scary. Prices all over the charts.
Phase II (Breakthrough): Flickr has AWESOME photographers. There must be some way of convincing one of them to come to our wedding. I plan to mine Flickr for info. Another suggestion from a very-organized bride-to-be-on-a-budget is to put your terms on a local Craigslist "Gigs" category and filter through responses.
Posted by csageday at 11:09 PM | Comments (4)
June 21, 2007
Google Spreadsheets
I can't say everyone is thrilled with it, but I am so grateful that Google Spreadsheets came around in time for us to use it for wedding planning. If you're not familiar with the app, it's web-based Excel, offered for free by Google. You can create and edit spreadsheets online, share them with friends, parents, and maids-of-honor, and edit them at the same time as your mother if you want to.
I have one sheet called "Wedding Task List" which includes an uber to-do list, a tab for vendors, a tab for potential photographers, one for food ideas, etc. If I need to call a vendor from work, I can log in and get the number, and then make a note of the conversation so everyone knows the outcome. Not that I'm actually making phone calls or anything.
I have two sheets for managing the invite list (which seems to be a bit organic, by the way, and possibly will be that way until the event itself). One sheet has names and numbers of adults and kids, sorted by how we know them. Another is for addresses, and includes more formal, full names. Again, the option to update the list from work or home or your parents' house is helpful. Whenever I get a new address, I can add it.
Posted by csageday at 01:06 AM | Comments (0)
June 13, 2007
Invitations
We mailed a good chunk of the Save-the-Dates this week. On the one hand, I felt a little bit irresponsible inviting people to an event that may or may not be catered or have a bartender (ahem), but on the other hand, I was excited to hear people's reactions. It was a bit anticlimactic -- people don't exactly get a postcard and call you up to say, hey great job cropping that photo and choosing that font! Instead, there's a mention here or there. We got a wonderful, wonderful phone messages yesterday, though. As I mentioned, the photos came from a family book, but we didn't know who the tennis players or swimmers were. I was using a bit of artistic license and hoping that the people weren't completely inappropriate. It turns out that the male swimmer is my great-great-grandfather, and the tennis player on the right is my great-grandmother in disguise. We got lucky. I couldn't be happier. It was like a gift to hear that from my cousin.
I've shifted my attention now to invitations, another excellent method of procrastinating on the larger planning issues and phone calls.
At first I didn't think a homemade invitation was really an option -- I wasn't sure I could pull it off and make it look anything but handmade. Instead, D and I spent hours poring over samples in binders at stationary stores. Nothing looked great, though. The letterpress options are lovely, but absurdly priced (see for some photos of the process), and nothing else came close to the natural look I had in mind.
Next, I looked at online sites like Paper Source and Wedding Paper Divas (thanks, Liz). It's nice to be able to mock-up a sample invitation easily, but I was worried about the hard proof and lack of person-to-person consultation, and nothing seemed really unique to us and our wedding. There are some lovely options, though.
In an effort to figure something out on my own, I went to Kate's yesterday and bought a bunch of sheets of lovely, deckle edge paper. I also found a dragonfly punch online. It's lovely to have an excuse to buy these things and spend hours in in Kate's and Lee's Art Shop, poring over papers made from pineapples and such.
Last night, I put together something that looks reasonably acceptable. With a slightly better printer and some details to make it feel more formal, I think we might be on to something.
Regardless of which method we use, I've been surprised by the lack of environmentally-friendly options out there. At Lion in the Sun in Park Slope, I thought we'd find something, but we heard the same thing we heard everywhere -- that Crane's is made from cotton, so that's preferable to trees, and there may be one other book with some recycled content, but it's not much.
There are some online invitation retailers that are eco-friendly (thanks again, Liz), and Treehugger has suggestions, but I haven't found the paper colors I'm looking for in recycled or eco-friendly versions yet. Will have to keep looking.
Posted by csageday at 01:01 AM | Comments (2)
May 31, 2007
Wedding Woes
Gaaaaah. The nice, pleasant Save-the-Date solution mentioned below was sent to a friendly, InDesign-savvy person for print-prepping, who kindly did the work (and redid it so certain relatives weren't cropped out) for free. Then, I found a printer online called GreenerPrinter that seemed perfect. They have a fantastic interface, real-time price quotes, and 100% recycled paper. I was so happy to have a solution like that, even though the cost was, oh, five times that of the local print shop.
I placed my order, approved the proof, and waited for the agonizingly long two-day shipping period for my masterpiece to show up in print form. I printed labels ahead, even though I haven't exactly figured out the whole invite list yet. Today, the package arrived (as UPS said it should -- the tracking tool is quite addictive when you're waiting for something important). Cute label, cute stack of postcards. But. The damn cards are 1/4 inch to short on BOTH sides. All sorts of things are chopped off. No one else will notice, but for that price, and a very standard size, the damn things could at least be cropped correctly.
I called and complained in a rather ridiculous way -- I claimed I was doing this for "a person" when it's obviously me, since my name is on the damned card and the order. I was offered corrected cards via overnight mail the next day, but I'll be on a plane to another city tomorrow, so that's out, and it would sort of defeat the eco-friendly purpose anyway, although it's such a small thing it doesn't really matter. I was also offered a measly 10% discount, which I took.
I'm thinking that this may be the beginning of a LONG string of similarly disappointing wedding-related mishaps that I take too seriously, though. Expensive mishaps, too. I really don't think I should be allowed to have a wedding. I'm too detail-oriented and obsessive.
Posted by csageday at 07:04 PM | Comments (0)
May 22, 2007
Status
I meant to write about our gradual descent into wedding mania here, but the mania makes it hard to keep a blog up to date.
I'll stick to the highlights.
1. Wedding dresses are scary. The wedding industry is scary. In ads, brides in the most expensive gowns routinely look like they are miserable (think drugged, depressed, angry), and one designer includes a gratuitous naked man in all the photos. Or maybe the dresses come with naked men? Another dress has a "removable modesty piece" -- can't remember what that was, exactly. Wish I had time to write about all the ridiculousness.
2. We have a date: The easy-to-remember and rather close 09.08.07. We were hoping for a small, simple, fun wedding upstate -- you know, a simple dress, some good wine and decent food on a lawn somewhere near a lake, tipsy family, etc. Riiiight.
3. The wedding industry found us out. I was hoping to wear my Mom's dress (very simple, very 70s), but I somehow landed myself a brand new dress from the most commercial, ridiculous, Cinderella-style wedding emporium in the world (Kleinfeld's, for the uninitiated, which Mom and I were ostensibly just going to for kicks). The dress is vintage-looking, but new and not cheap and I'm still conflicted about that.
4. We are now in the land of tent rentals and Save-the-Dates and caterer meetings. I have this reminder on my Google homepage, that is counting down at an ungodly rate:
5. With the Save-the-Date, we had a brainstorm. We thought we'd do a vintage style travel postcard. We'd find something on the web, alter it, and impress our friends with our clever retro kitsch-iness. We never found quite the right graphic, though, and so a simple project has taken over a month and is just now starting to look like this:
No, I'm not sure who all the people are, but I think they're related. At this rate, we may get the invitation out before the event itself.
6. On theknot.com (which assumes at least a year of planning, naturally, and is really not a site I should be looking at), the majority of my "checklist" items have little overdue exclamation points next to them.
7. We love indiebride.com's message boards. Sane people!
8. We're trying to be eco-friendly about this. A book called "Eco-Chic Weddings" was just published and has been helpful, and I really meant to follow all the advice, but then I ran off and had an affair with Kleinfeld's, so who knows how things are going to turn out.
9. I seem to be in a state of constant anxiety, but I'm not entirely sure what the next steps are. If I had my way, everything would be like the STD (a wedding acronym that is actually used!) -- I would just wait around until the right solution presented itself, instead of settling for the first thing that comes to mind. Three months doesn't really allow for this sort of flexibility, though. At least the website is done, since building a website was a great way to procrastinate on the more important tasks, like figuring out how to feed people in the middle of nowhere.
Posted by csageday at 01:36 AM | Comments (1)