Eustress, distress, we all stress...

As we enter the home stretch (less than 2 months to go!), I feel increasingly as though everything is under control. And also as though it will come crashing down into a pile of twitching nuptial rubble at any moment. With me at the bottom.

I'm sure part of this has to do with my amazingly fickle partner in crime who, despite any decision we might have collectively made months ago, could on a moment's notice declare that something is no longer acceptable, that we should in fact start from scratch, and why did we ever think such a thing was a good idea in the first place? Examples: having a honeymoon, having a wedding ring, having the maid of honor sing harmony on our wedding song, parent dances, choosing whether to be walked down the aisle, getting married in the presence of family and friends. You know. Nothing major.

At least he still likes me.

Random

As we approach the T-minus-two-months mark, I feel like I haven't crossed so many things off of my list since the 4 month mark.

My dress alterations - with seamstress; final fitting scheduled.
Fiance's tux - initial foray with solid results complete
Attire for male attendants - initial foray with somewhat less solid results complete
The rehearsal dinner - um.... we think it will be the Thursday before the wedding. Does that count?
Contract signing for shuttles - Done! Sent! With accompanying check!
Contract signing for ceremony musician - Will be drafted and be accompanied by deposit.
Cocktail hour musician(s) - Acquired. Contract & deposit as above.
Finish learning to dance - yeah, about that.
Honeymoon plans (and Peter's passport) - Plane tickets purchased, decided to go with an apartment in Paris, since timeshares fell through. Passport happening Friday.
Wedding bands! - Ordered! One ready for pickup, happening Saturday.
Select readings for the ceremony - Decided to leave this to readers.
Ask readers to participate - Not yet, but we have everything so we're ready.
Registry - A living document, but quite sufficiently done.
Build wedding website - Same as registry.
Finish invitations - DONE. Couple of B-listers still potentially getting invites. 50% response from A-list.
Reception decor (centerpieces, guestbook, card box, etc) - I've thought about this a little more, but that's about it.

Other fun stuff:
Seating chart!


I warned you that it would end up being a large system of stickies. Well each of 10 (or 11) sections the size of the area marked in blue represents a table of ten. Couples were written on stickies twice the height of individual people. Then we just moved and moved and moved people until it all worked out well. Silver dots represent members of the wedding party, black dots represent those who have RSVP'd affirmatively. Some tables are currently set with 11 guests, but we expect someone at those tables to either not attend or not bring a guest, bringing those tables down to ten. Some tables only have nine guests at them, which is okay.

So I guess we really are making progress.

A Wedding Destination

I take my job a bit too seriously. It's probably true in many senses, but the one I mean to use is that I let it flavor my thinking and strategy in many other areas of my life. So naturally, our wedding would need to have an online destination associated with it, full of useful content and social networking for our guests while giving them answers to wedding FAQs (how do we get there? where are you registered?) and helping them to make attending our wedding greener and more affordable.

A lot to ask of a wedding website? Perhaps.

And let's not forget that it also has to aesthetically match our invitations.

While there are some very serviceable wedding website services out there, some even for free, nothing offered the level of customization that I wanted. Well, let's be honest. Needed. So it was time for me to build website number 4.

It begins with the user experience and information architecture. What will guests want to know, what features will they want, and what supplemental information do we want to provide? My initial list included the backstory of Fiance and myself, who's who in the wedding party, directions, hotel info and nearby attractions for out of towners, gift registry info, details about the actual wedding and any additional brunches/dinners/whatever, and ways to reach out to other guests to share hotel rooms or rides to and from the wedding. There was more, but you get the gist. Then all those ideas were sorted into general categories, and everything was given a name. We're currently considering updating the site to include "Featured" participants of the wedding (readers, officiant, live musicians) and possibly a who's who of the bride & groom's families, since our family trees are somewhat convoluted.

Next, the design. I made a simple sketch of the general layout of a standard page, commonly known in the biz as a wireframe. Then I mocked up the homepage in photoshop, pulling in design elements from the invitation, specifically colors, fonts, the trapezoid shape, and the interlocking squares motif. Sorry folks, no sparkles.


Setting up the template took ages and didn't hold up to initial cross-browser testing, but eventually I got it hammered out and went on to develop the content and functional bits. For example, the screenshot (with blurred personal information to protect the not-so-innocent) on the left shows our wedding party. Each member is clickable which expands a layer showing their role in the party and a mini-bio. In this image you can also see the navigation on-state, which highlights the user's current location. That, by the way, is quite annoying to set up. That strange conglomeration of letters at the footer is the middle of a flash animation that has resolved in the first screenshot (thus the blurred out-ness).

Not to be forgotten are a couple of third-party applications that are connected to my home-grown site. (Part of good project management, and any good management really, is to know when to DIY and when to outsource.) An installation of phpbb3 powers a message board encouraging guests to connect with each other for fun, for the earth, and for their wallets, and a link to the previously mentioned buyourhoneymoon.com registry helps guests to gift us our Eurostar tickets or dinner in Montmartre. For some cosmically ironic reason, my future mother-in-law sent me an email to let me know how much she loves our website...especially the registry. Which I'm pretty sure means that she thinks I built it, not that she likes what's on it.

Now back to the part where I take my job too seriously. I knew when I designed the response cards that there was more information I wanted from our guests, but in the interest of giving the important stuff enough space and getting it back correctly filled in, I let it go. But it seems that now that we have affirmative responses, it might be a good time to find out where people will be lodging (our reserved hotel or elsewhere, if at all), when they will be arriving (important for delivering out-of-town info packets), and whether they will take advantage of our shuttle between the hotel and the wedding both before and after. Well what better way to collect this info than through an online form? And what better way to prompt them to let us know than with a highly stylized html email? And how great if we also took the opportunity to a) show off, and b) confirm receipt of their RSVP and give them a save-able reminder of their meal choices?

I can't imagine.

So, project-the-next: design and build an html email that is dynamically filled from the guest list database holding responses and meal choices and that offers a link (tagged with the respondent id #) to an online form that preloads their name and email and asks them for the additional info. Really, I might make it less complicated than that, since this plan is almost as difficult as building the online RSVP system that I wanted earlier but could not squeeze out of the fiance. But we'll see.

Have I totally lost my mind?

Guest list update

A quick update for anyone interested (and you know you are):
-There have been a total of 9 postal delivery days that we could possibly have received responses.
-On one of those 9 days, we received none.
-Today, day 9, we received the first RSVP from someone biologically related to either the bride or the groom.
-Of 62 invitations sent, we have received 17 responses, equaling just over 27%
-32 of 104 invited guests have responded on those 17 cards, which is to say that over 30% of our guest list has RSVPed.
-Over 50% of those attending have chosen the salmon. Obviously we didn't make everything else sound good enough.
-Of those who selected the non-meat meal, none are vegetarians (I think).
-100% of responses are "accepts"!

It really validates our guest list method to know that we've invited people that we want to attend and who also want to be there. Or maybe the "declines" are just dragging their heels about letting us know. :)