Details, details

We have just under 21 weeks to go. That's a bit under 5 months. Whew, okay, deep breaths.

photo by Faith West c/o Conroy Catering
We met with one of our fabulous event planning team over at Glen Foerd Mansion, today to hammer out some of the details of the event.

We started by discussing the bar. She definitely knows how to put us in a good mood. Turns out that if we use liquors included in the open bar or comparable to those included, we can get them at no extra charge, as long as they're not butlered. Woo! Also, we may well swap out the standard beers for a couple more to our guests' liking. We did decide to forgo the wine tasting in the special wine cellar, since I'm already concerned about trying to pack too many activities into one evening. And, since champagne will be offered at the bar, we'll be skipping the round of champagne for the toast, and people can drink anything they like.


Sorta what it will look like
Next was linens, where I was tempted to upgrade from ivory to white, but for the negligible difference it will make in a dim, candle-lit room, it hardly seems worth the expense.

Onto the timeline, which was one of the major areas in which we gladly accepted the guidance of our fabulous planner. The event currently runs 5 hours ceremony to getting kicked out, with an hour ahead of time for any photos before the ceremony. Between actually getting married, cocktail hour, various dances, various toasts, an entire meal, and dancing, that's a lot to fit in. We're hoping that we'll be able to move the start time up an hour to extend the entire event, but we won't know if we'll be able to until mid-October, as they have to hold the schedule open for other possible events until 3 months prior to any given date.

Then menu selections. Behold:
Butlered hors d'oeuvres
-Roasted tomato basil bruschetta
-Roasted petite potato with pesto cream cheese and roasted red peppers
-Miniature Maryland crab cakes with tartar sauce
-Sesame chicken with honey mustard dip
-Herb toast with filet of beef and brie (might get some of these without beef)

Cocktail hour stationary displays
-Tomato herb soup served in miniature cups with miniature grilled cheese dipper
-Black-and-white sesame-crusted Ahi tuna roll with wasabi aoli

First course
-Medley of wild winter greens with dried cranberries, stilton, and toasted pistachios with roasted shallot vinaigrette

Main course options
-Breast of chicken with rosemary garnished with fresh citrus fruits in citrus white wine sauce
-Poached filet of salmon with lump crab meat and lemon thyme beurre blanc
-Vegetable napoleon of portobello mushroom, roasted red pepper, and wilted spinach
-all served with young asparagus with parmesan butter and some kind of starch (which we're still debating)

Dessert display
-Mini cannolis, brownie diamonds, mini cheesecakes, and a great many other things that I was too busy salivating over to recall in specificity
-Coffee, teas, etc.
-Wedding cake (constitution tbd)

Regarding the cake, I've handed my design ideas over to the pastry chef, and we'll see if he or she comes back with any structural requirements (I'm thinking not), at which point, Fiance and I will pick a cake flavor and a selection of possible fillings to sample, since our original sampling didn't give us anything to write home about. Or write about really at all. I've also requested the dimensions of the future cake layers, which will no doubt eventually result in my constructing a cake of entirely recyclable paper products, crafting the ornamentation as foreshadowed previously, and photographing the assembly and final product for the pastry crew to work from.

Oh, and we also visited a couple of probable hotels had lunch, and made a couple of craft supply shopping stops.

Anyone else have a productive day?

How it all happened: Part 1 - First impressions

I could rush the story, but I won't, so settle in.

It was the first week of freshman year, 2001. At Drexel, that meant the tail end of September. My new roommate, a graphic design major from California, and I, a photography major from New Jersey, were becoming fast friends along with a classmate of hers, a charming young gentleman from elsewhere in PA. (As an interesting aside, all three of us are getting married in the next six months, though not to any of the others.) Kat, Jason, and I had been, to varying degrees, involved with theater in high school, and decided to attend the "Welcome Freshmen" performance of the shows that the theater department had prepared over the summer, which was to be followed by a meet and greet with the cast, crew, and faculty. (Above, me and Jason, 2005, obviously not freshman year. Note: water bottle does not contain water.)

When we arrived, the audience seats were on the stage itself, strangely intimate with the seemingly disembodied set only feet away. But then, we had no idea what we should have been expecting, so this was easily accepted by three teenagers whose only constant, lately, had been that nothing was familiar. The first piece featured three players, including a wiry, slight, dark-haired young man who compulsively shuffled cards. The second piece used the same three actors but expanded the cast by five, including one offstage player who produced squeaking bat sound effects. Strange as I am, I instantly decided that he was my favorite.

After the show, we moved to the room next door to get to meet the cast, etc, and I made it my mission to talk to "the bat." Meanwhile, the card shuffler, now out of costume and sporting a brightly colored bandana kerchief-style around his curling hair, bounded enthusiastically up to we three freshmen, to introduce himself as Peter. In my mind, I'm thinking "How nice to meet new and interesting people. Now, where'd that tall blond guy go?" Peter's thought, or so I am told, was "I can't decide which of the three of them is most attractive."

Shortly thereafter, we all found ourselves at the after-party for the show, in a huge old house just a block off campus where Kat and I would eventually come to live. At some point in the evening, I was chatting politely with the show stage manager, a Philadelphia native who would relentlessly hit on anything remotely female that didn't happen to be running too fast for him to keep up. Peter, meanwhile, was perhaps ten feet away giving a lapdance to the tall blond guy while the song "Queer" by Garbage played on the stereo.

This next bit requires a little bit more backstory (a flashback within a flashback, yes). If I had developed any sort of "type" of guys that I date, it would have to be guys of dubious heterosexuality, at least to the outside observer. I like to optimistically say that it was an interest in men confident enough to be flexible with gender identity without being threatened by what other people thought. Really, it probably had more to do with seeing my parents' relationship issues and needing to find someone enough like me that I wouldn't feel threatened (physically, or by gender roles). Occasionally, this would lead me to guys who would let me walk all over them, which wasn't at all what I wanted. Logically, you'd think this might lead me to date women, but alas, no. I would have to search for the elusive metro-sexual.

(Seen here, in captivity, 2002.)
But I assumed, as I observed the aforementioned lapdance, that Peter was gay. When I expressed disappointment at my conclusion and was informed to the contrary, I may have declared that if Peter wasn't gay, I would marry him.

And that's still the plan.

The great cake debate

I have been known to over-dramatize, on occasion. In fact, there was no debate whatsoever (at least not yet).

The cake has been left entirely up to me (this takes a brave man, and you'll see why in a moment), since I once mentioned early in our engagement that I'd always dreamed of a multi-leveled, sky-bridged, fully populated wedding cake complete with a flowing fountain of champagne lit by ever-changing colors to keep its inhabitants happily and constantly tipsy. Then I sadly awoke to realize that if I had such a cake, I'd also need a harem of bridesmaids with teased hair wearing teal or fuchsia gowns with poufy shoulders, a big rosette at the dropped waist and matching eye makeup. Or else the little backup singers on the cake wouldn't make any sense.

via FFFFOUND!
By the way, if everyone else on the cake needs stairs, how did the bride and groom get up there?

With a sigh of resignation, I joined the new millennium and decided to forgo a re-enactment of The Wedding Singer. The following were some of the images I found in consideration of my 21st century cake.




First three are from the knot - real weddings, and the fourth and fifth are from Martha Stewart Weddings. Then, from Rebecca Thuss via Martha, I found this:

Only the most lovely cake ever! Beautiful, simple, wintry, and even a tiny bit modern in its high-contrast linear-element sort of way. Unfortunately, the birds would definitely not fit into my wedding, and without them, it might seem a little empty. So the search continued, but with direction, this time. Looking for cakes with modern but twig-like elements led me to the snowman-like cake on red below found on Brides.com. It is primarily exciting due to its chai-flavored filling which I will have to try to make on my own, now. Mmmm.



Then finally an Aussie friend of mine pointed me to this cake on BudgetDreamWeddings.com. It is admittedly not the most glamorous cake ever, and I don't plan to use any acrylic flowers, but the cake-to-twig ratio is good, and it's the perfect opportunity to include these wire and crystal branches from White Aisle, as they finally just came back in stock! I'm also considering using the branches to form a little wicker-withes crown as an abstract topper, or as a wreath on a layer. I'll have to make some mockups...

More on that, when I receive my new crystal branches!

Ever wish for something hopelessly uncool?

Also, I've updated my publishing format to show everything back through the all-important 7/31 posts on the main page.

Confessions of an online wedding dress purchaser (Part 3)

(advance apology for lack of embedded photos...we are too far in the dress recap for me to post anything revealing that fiance might accidentally see.)

So back home, and this was definitely THE dress. Much online shopping was done, comparison of sites (definitely include shipping and taxes when considering these things), and I could have had a shop near me order the dress, but I would have had to pay sales tax and they also didn't have the best prices to begin with. The only benefit would have been to work with a shop which had been heretofore unable to assist me, though I did call the kindly L&H bridals to check their price. In the end, I decided on TheBridalShop.com, whose physical store is in New York (yay, no sales tax!). Not the fanciest web site, but definitely the best deal.

Next step was to phone the shop, for a number of reasons.
1) I didn't see anywhere on the site that specified whether they were an authorized dealer, so I wanted to ask.
2) I was hoping to get some advice on sizing and delivery time.
3) I wanted to request a swatch.
4) There was no way I was ordering something this important and this expensive without speaking to someone at the store!

I was not disappointed. The phone was answered by the store manager who was incredibly helpful. He assured me that of course my gown would be accompanied by a certificate of authenticity, I should be measured by a pro before deciding on a size, if I went with the size I thought I would, they actually had one in stock at the manufacturer so it would be shipped out immediately, and he would put a sample swatch (not exactly from my dye lot) in the mail right away. My swatch came a few days later, I was measured by a local shop, ordered my gown, and in about 5 weeks a surprisingly small box arrived with my dress and the promised certificate of authenticity enclosed. It didn't arrive exactly when the shop fellow said it would, but a quick concerned follow-up call revealed that it had been delayed from the manufacturer and would be coming about a week later than expected. With about 8 months before the wedding, this was no problem.

That night, I tried it on by myself (this went terribly, but I couldn't resist) and it's a good thing I spent that hour "assembling" the dress, because otherwise it would have cut into champagne-hazed bridesmaid dress trying-on the following evening. The evidence of this can be seen here and here. <---Fiance, do not click!

Since then, I've been looking for shoes, and it has not been easy. I will definitely be a two-shoe bride to accommodate the previously mentioned dancing and also my comfort for the majority of the evening.

Anyone else made a big-ticket online purchase? How did you go about it?

Confessions of an online wedding dress purchaser (Part 2)

So, I fell in love with a dress named Selena (ominously sharing the name of an evil ex-girlfriend of fiance's), but she was just too pricey and I wasn't crazy about the colors she came in. (me trying her on here) I look fine in white, but I think I was looking for something a little special. Ivory wasn't cutting it, and while the light gold was gorgeous, I'm not much for wearing gold of any kind. And the hunt continued.

An initial trip to a couple of consignment shops in New York in December was fruitless, but on the recommendation of a co-worker, we returned on February 1st to visit the Bridal Garden. They carry a variety of gently-used, sample, or totally new designer dresses at a deep discount with all proceeds benefiting children's charities. I took my MOH and my little sister who was back on break from teaching school in Taiwan. Overall, selection was good, staff was nice, shop was simple but got the job done.

The finds:


In the top left, you can see MOH with the camera and little sister looking...befuddled, I guess. The dress at the top right, I think was a Vera Wang, but really just too peculiar for me. The one at the bottom left was this beautiful hand-painted silk confection that fit like a dream and was twice my budget. MOH tried to talk me into buying it, to no avail. If it had cost less than the dress I was already in love with and couldn't afford, she would have had a better chance.

Throughout the process, I'd been dutifully looking at dresses online, and part of my ogling led me, of course, to the designer of my beloved Selena, Maggie Sottero. While there, I believe I looked at every single gown...and then moved on to related collections from Sottero & Midgley. Which is where I found her, looking like Selena's brunette cousin. See her here . And perhaps because of different materials and less ornamentation, she was about $500 less than the original dress. Oh, and she comes in silver.

Well, after striking out at the Bridal Garden, it was time to get serious. There was no way I was going to just order the new dress, sight unseen, as I really wanted to get a good up-close look at the beading, and no shop near me had it or could get a sample of it in the shop (supposedly). Though they did all try to get me to come in to try on the Selena gown which they claimed was very similar. Yes, thanks, I know. I called shops in PA. I called shops in NJ. I called shops in NY and DE before I finally gave up. No one had it for me to try on!

One of the last shops I spoke with (I believe it was L&H Bridals in NE Philadelphia) was really helpful and said I should try calling the manufacturer to see who had ordered a sample of the dress. Which would work great if there were a phone number anywhere. But through google-fu, cached pages, and some url magic, I was able to get into the merchant area of the Maggie Sottero web site to get their customer service number at headquarters in Colorado. Can we say "determination?" Well, I got a very helpful rep on the phone, explained my plight, and she kindly offered to check which shops had the gown. She checked by state...PA...NJ...DE...NY...no one. Well, at least it wasn't just that I hadn't been trying hard enough. Then we tried Maryland, just for good measure, and lo and behold, one sample in Severna Park, Maryland, at Bridals by Elena.

A few days, a few states, and a 3 hour road trip later, I was in the dress (though not in silver). They wouldn't let me take any pictures, and I actually won't get into detail about the rest of our experience there, but I do not recommend the shop at all. I didn't think to sneak a photo until after I'd taken the dress off and was alone in the dressing room, and it didn't really do it justice, but I was able to document the beading.

It was THE dress!

Next up: The actual price shopping and purchasing process.

Confessions of an online wedding dress purchaser (Part 1)

The dress hunt was strenuous, but I pursued with a mission, knowing that so many elements of the wedding would be built around the tone set by the gown.

I first went shopping the weekend after I got engaged, and I brought with me my MOH and a good friend from work who would eventually be added to the bridal party. I really had no idea what I wanted, so we went to a nearby David's Bridal with the plan to try on many different styles and hopefully narrow things down from there. At the time I didn't realize it, but it is wonderful to be able to try on dresses that actually fit rather than boutique-style where it's hard to envision the gown without utility clips keeping it from falling off. Our experience there was okay, and we found a few things that I liked, but it was really too early to make any decisions.

A few weeks later, I set up the wedding boutique gauntlet for myself, while I was at home visiting my mom. I started the day at Macy's bridal salon in the Menlo Park Mall, where I didn't even get excited enough to photograph anything, then moved on to Dolores Bridal which is right outside the mall parking lot and is one of those tiny little shops just jam packed with dresses. The staff there was so excellent that I'm seriously considering having my alterations done by them, despite the distance. There I found a bunch of dresses I really liked, and the one which eventually led me to THE ONE.

The vis-aids:


In the first photo, I test the all-important dance-ability of a dress. In the bottom left, I indicate that I like what's going on in the balcony area. In both photos on the right, my mom is in the mirror, capturing the moment. And by the way, none of those dresses actually fit, but the staff were so good with the straight pins that it looks like they do, right?

Then, lunch, and to mom's local David's to show her the stuff I'd found near Philly. We waited such a long time for someone to talk to us that we almost gave up, but in the end we stuck it out. This trumpet gown was the front-runner from DB.

Next up: New York, Maryland, a phone call to Colorado, and the great internets. How far will she go?

(for a sneak peek at the precursor to the real dress, see here. Fiance, do NOT click this.)

PS.

Round trip non-stop airfare for two from Philadelphia to London: $1,443
Round trip Eurostar train tickets for two from London to Paris: $384
Getting Fiance to go to the post office to get his passport: impossible

Anyone get their passport recently who can give me an accurate idea of how long it will really take for him to receive his...after he puts in all the paperwork?

Registration, please?

Fiance and I have been living together for over 4 years, and when we first moved in together, I'd been living by myself and had basically everything needed to stock a small household. Sure, we bought some new stuff when we moved, and my parents supplied a few "housewarming" items, but it wasn't anything we couldn't have lived without.

We have no plans to ever eat off of fine china, our towels are aok, and we already have a Waterford sandwich tray (don't ask). So the idea of a gift registry was really not for us. But we do like money.

Instead of registering for housewares, we thought we'd ask for money. Which would probably work out mostly fine, but as I investigated the issue a bit more and got an opinion from my bridesmaid who's known me the shortest amount of time and doesn't know better than to argue with me about things like this, wedding guests looooove a registry, and a lot of people will want to get something specific that also shows a bit of their personality.

Enter: Honeymoon registry.


allposters.com
Just kidding. We are really not tropical vacation people - in fact, our dislike for heat is a large part of why we're getting married in January. We've known for a very long time that our honeymoon would take us to Paris, with an option on London, and while we've got the wedding budget pretty well under control, the honeymoon will be held together with nothing but good wishes. Which is where the registry comes in.


via a-t-s.net
We love this idea because a) it helps us plan our trip ahead of time to come up with various activities that people can sponsor as a gift, b) we really don't need much in the way of house stuff, c) these sites accept credit cards for the ease of our guests (either attending in person or in spirit), and d) we can also add a line item to our registry so that guests can contribute to the house fund, rather than the honeymoon, if they desire.

We don't like this idea because a) so many of the sites that offer this service are tied to travel agencies, b) many of them have cheesy interfaces, and c) almost all of them charge a service fee on the guest's gift in the form of a percentage. Ew.

Enter: OffBeatBride

One of my favorite wedding sites, though many folks there are a bit more offbeat than I'm interested in being (for example, I happen to like taffeta). I have somewhat conventional tastes, but I'm a free thinker. Anyway, that's neither here nor there.

OBB pointed me to BuyOurHoneymoon.com where fiance and I will eventually register for every fun thing we can think of to do in Paris and also create a house fund to which guests can contribute. They are not affiliated with a travel agency, so don't try to hawk that to you. They charge a minor setup fee to the registrants, which I have no objection to, and then leave my guests' gifts unmolested. I had some functionality questions that I emailed to their customer service people who were responsive, knowledgeable, and very nice. The service itself is very flexible and there's nothing I want to do with it that would be any trouble at all. In case you're nervous about sending your guests to "buyourhoneymoon.com," they offer a selection of vanity urls that sound a bit more genteel, including the-gift-of-memories.com and our-honeymoon-registry.com.

Bonus: Putting the registry together will also be a fun activity for us and our attendants!

Anyone ever used a site like this before? Was it a lot of fun?

The dreaded waste of (insert something of value here)

Time, energy, money, thought, breath, paper, perfectly good milk, whatever.

When Fiance and I suddenly (but not unprovokedly) decided that we rather want to move out of our rented house in a timeframe resembling RFN (right...now), there was a lot of people to talk to, a lot to arrange, and a lot to think about. One of the smaller and more irritating realizations that followed was that the 300 silver return address labels I'd just received would probably go in the trash. :(

Stick *This* in Your Button Hole!

Aka: Also Not Invitations

As I mentioned previously, I'd considered having flowers for just the attendants, but eventually decided that they wouldn't really fit in stylistically with anything else we have going on. What obviously followed hot on the heels of that decision was some serious muddling over what the various parties should have in their hands, if anything. In a now-famous-among-all-attendants email, I advised against live animals and open flame, but left the field otherwise wide open. Apparently my dad pitched in with a suggestion that each party member should carry an illuminated letter (meaning lit up, not prettily illustrated). Five members of each party, five letters in each of my and Fiance's names, this could never be coincidence! I think my sister refused to speak to him for the rest of the day.

So okay. When making my bouquet I found that I had some smaller pieces that I thought would work, but then decided would be overwhelmed by the scale of the other pieces. And I'd already figured that I'd be making a matching boutonnière for Fiance, but not long ago I decided that all of the attendants could have small bouts/nosegays/corsages/whatever that match the oh-so-neat bouquet. Sometimes I am that matchy-matchy bride at heart, and it happens so rarely that I need to embrace it when it does come out. Plus, an excuse to buy fun new tiny thingamabobs to incorporate into them.
So, without further ado (bottoms will be neatly trimmed, for most uses):



Each element was fairly similar in construction to the bigger bouquet pieces, but the big challenge here was to make small, flat, light, hug-weathering, attractive groupings. Some assembly guidance came from Martha but much more relevant to my non-flowery assemblage was this post from one Miss Green Tea on WeddingBee. My inspiration for the concept was seeing how very many different ways there are to wear a corsage, again from Martha.

It took me a couple of leisurely evenings to put these five together, though they had some rejected (and subsequently disassembled) brethren. Eventually, I will have 11 (or maybe 15 or 20 depending on how many other important personages we decide need "flowers" and how carried away I get) and our attendants will get to choose their own and how to wear them. I'm trying to make a variety so that some are suited more to specific tastes (more glass, more silver, more natural brown), and also because I expect some of our wedding party will need to fight (to the pain) to get the piece they want.

Which one would you pick? (hint: bottom left one is front-runner for the groom, right now) What special, non-attendant people should get "flowers?"

Not Invitations

Okay, I lied a bit about the step by step instructions on the invites coming soon. We're currently a little over 5 months away from the wedding, and there's actually a good bit of invitation content that is still tbd including the accommodations and menu! Since we won't be able to determine our final start time until 3 months before the wedding (we want to adjust the standard start time, but the venue won't let us trespass on a potential afternoon event until 3 months before the date), we're hoping to get everything except the front of the invite assembled and ready to go so that we have only the fronts to handle before the invites drop.

So rather than get too deep into that process now, I'll save it until I have my placeholder text all filled in and some slave labor to help me demonstrate.

Instead, let's chat about flowers. Sneak peek:

I've known since shortly after I got engaged that I would not be carrying real flowers down the aisle. While I like a bouquet probably as much as the next girl, the idea of such perishable decor festooned all over my wedding venue seems a bit wasteful, and not a little expensive for the enjoyment I would derive out of it. Fiance and I have a tried and true formula for deciding the value of any purchase which is roughly equal to cost divided by enjoyment (scale of 1-10) divided by time spent enjoying. And wedding flowers wouldn't do very well in that equation. Plus, options would be pretty limited for a January wedding, and the flowers would need to be DIYed in the day or two before. And, on top of it all, I got sort of interested in organic florists when I was in Australia, so I would certainly want to spend the extra money and energy to do things that way. For a while I was considering having flowers for the bridal party only (never for myself), but I eventually decided that they'd be a bit out of place with everything else I had planned.

So what's a flowerless bride to do? Well, I decided to craft a non-perishable, sculptural, and largely inorganic bouquet. How I got there, I have no idea. I guess I hadn't yet been inundated with all of the wedding photos that I've seen by now showing muffs, pomanders, candles, books, sparklers, fans, parasols, etc, so I only thought of non-flowers.

I wish I had photos of the process, but then again, they probably would have been primarily of me on the floor in front of the tv, frowning, in pjs and glasses, so perhaps it's not so bad.

The supplies:

Silver solder - had this in my crafting arsenal for ages and have finally almost exhausted my supply. Bought a new spool and realized how darn expensive the stuff is. $20 for 1 lb! But I'm still using my legacy supply, so it doesn't count as an expenditure, yet. Get from a hardware store.
Various light bulbs - an assortment of sizes from medium small to very small. Got some "daylight" bluish looking bulbs and some high-power outdoor bulbs and a couple tiny colored ones, but the ones with normal light-bulb threading around the base are the easiest. Get at a hardware store or your local Target (pronounced Tar-jay, as French). The Target near me actually has more of the bulbs I like than the nearby hardware superstores. It's a good thing you know what these look like, because I've used mine all up, so there aren't any in the picture.
Clear glass ornaments - These are tricky because they're only easy to get around Christmas. I got some cubes, some flat ones, and some regular spheres at AC Moore just after the holidays, since I already knew I wanted to use them.
Crystals on wire - Yes, I copped out and got these at a craft store rather than making them myself.
Dried curly willow and tall grass - I originally intended to spray paint these a glossy silver (and I did try with a few pieces), but when I first tested them out au naturale with the silver and glass, I really liked the bare wintry effect of leaving them brown. Got mine on sale at Pier1.
Tools - Wire cutter, pliers, stem cutter

After really minimal wrapping and molding and considerable arrangement, my bouquet now lives in a vase:


I've tried to bundle it all into a bouquet that means business, but it gets a bit busy and difficult to discern individual elements.

Any suggestions?

Next up: attendant arrangements

Messages

There is hate on our street, and it looks like poorly scrawled marker on my front door.

And we will leave it there.

I will still smile at my neighbors, even though we do not talk, perhaps even more so, now that I am so very sorry for them.

Their children will eventually work up the courage to ask me what it means, and I will say that while I am happy to tell them what it means to me, they should probably ask their parents first, and then come back and ask me again, if they want.

If they come back, I will say that it means there are ignorant, bigoted, hateful people who make feeble attempts to control the world around them.

If they ask why we don't take it down or cover it up, I will tell them that it doesn't reflect on us, it reflects on the people who did this and on the people who allowed it to happen. It's a reminder to us of what emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually small people are capable of (though we would still see it there whether we painted it over or not), and it's a reminder to everyone else that while this time we were the target, it could just as easily be them, next time.

They probably have not realized this, yet.

Personal Wedding Prep

Ah, self-improvement, and the sick and twisted ways it manifests for brides-to-be. Obviously, many want to lose weight, and two other big ones are teeth whitening and growing long hair. But then there are the smoothing, shaping, waxing, contact lenses, and laser hair removal that live on some people's lists.

For Fiance and I, it's more about getting into good health and resolving some long-standing health issues that we've had be they dermatological,
gynecological, nervous, podiatric, or otherwise. For myself, I am back on my "Australia Regimen" which consisted of sufficient crunches to look extra nice in a swimsuit, though I've now added more regular pushups, since my arms are about the only body part that will show while wearing my gown. I think I've actually gained a few pounds in muscle mass, but I only ever get weighed when I go to the doctor, so I can't be sure. Fiance has a much more intense workout plan (which is therefore more difficult to stick to), but which is intended to set a lifelong habit and keep good muscle tone, rather than losing weight, per se.

The topic arises for two reasons. One, I had some very non-elective dental surgery today which Fiance joked was part of the wedding improvement plan. While this surgery will have no cosmetic impact whatsoever, it could definitely be included in the "get into good health by the wedding" plan. Second, we recently watched "Follow My Voice", a documentary which features the lovely Mey Bun

(via style.com)

and I got this crazy urge to shave my head. Now, I definitely wouldn't do it before the wedding, since my whole goal is really to look like myself, so I'll be keeping my roughly-chin-length hair probably through the very chilly honeymoon. After that, I'm open to experimentation...which is totally different from the relief that so many brides feel when cutting their hair back to its regular length after having grown it out for an elaborate up-do.

It's a fine line between being the best you and being a new you. Is the most photographed day of your life a great incentive to become a better version of yourself than has ever been before? Absolutely. But did you decide to get married to the people you were at the time or to the long-haired, white toothed, slim, muscled vision of beauty that you're hoping to be on your wedding day?

And if you've ever looked at bridal fashion photography, you might have noticed how angry some of the models look. It's because they're hungry.

(Reuters via heraldsun.com.au)

Hardcore DIY Invites (Part 2)

The paper is in! So I'd better get on with telling the rest of the process.

The pieces of the invitation were decided to be (in descending order of anticipated size): Directions, Menu, Accommodations, Website. The Response Card would be included as a separate card, along with its envelope. I'd originally pushed for eliminating the paper RSVP in favor of online and telephone response, but Fiance argued that we would end up having to phone the majority of our guests to get their replies, so I relented. Which is good, because while I won the battle over the invitation envelope (he wanted silver, I wanted dark blue), we still get to use silver envelopes for the response cards.



So, a mockup was created from samples of the actual materials we intended to use, real text on the invite front overlay, and placeholder text on the inserts. No response card for the mockup. We were really excited about it, and started demo-ing it to a couple of people. Unfortunately, the first two people that we handed it to almost ripped it trying to open it in ways that it wasn't meant to open rather than flipping it over to the reverse side. Clearly we had a problem.

Thus ensued "user acceptance testing." Yes. I warned you that we are project managers. Since the first prototype clearly had a problem, we devised a rather involved solution that included a ribbon pull-tab attached to the top insert that would be apparent from the front and pretty much physically lead recipients to the back of the invite.
Okay, this is not a bad plan. But first, let's try something simpler and see if it works. So we tried gluing all the edges shut, and behold: success! Rather than insisting on opening the invite greeting-card-style, users would make a cursory attempt on the long edge of the card before realizing the futility of their actions and flipping the card right over. Some even turned it over without trying the edge. And no gluing of ribbons!

Next up: Step by step how-to and a glimpse of the project plan.

Ever done a user trial before releasing a craft project into the wild?

Definitely the Food of Love

Fiance and I are very musical people. He's a singer-songwriter trying to make it big when not working his 9-5, and I have 3 years of piano instruction, 5 years of dance, 6-7 years of voice, 9 years of clarinet, and nowhere to perform. Before we even started dating, he was serenading me digitally, and when he proposed, it was to one of our favorite songs (this is a much cooler story than you might assume). So when I say that picking music for the wedding is important, try to believe me.

First, wedding bands are a huuuuuuge no-no. We like songs, and when we hear them, we want to be able to sing along and know where the dance breaks will be. We want to harmonize. We want them to be in the proper key. And by the way, Madonna songs are performed by Madonna.

The DJ was an easy choice. We'd seen him at a wedding in Reading (yes, I know I'm a poet), and absolutely loved his set, so it was definitely worth a small travel fee to bring him to Philly. He's also amazingly affordable!

Cocktail hour and ceremony music proved to be another ball of wax, as they say. Unlike the dance music situation, "canned" music was deemed to be totally unacceptable, so we were in search of real live music-making people. At first, we were looking for a jazz trio or jazz combo of some sort to play funky tunes (standards are not really our style), but the guys we found weren't really doing anything special for us. Eventually fiance had the idea to hire some of the local talent we're getting to know and love and have them play some originals during cocktail hour. We were also investigating getting an organist to play the ceremony, since our venue has the biggest pipe organ in an American residence. But when we thought of having a solo cellist play the ceremony music, it was a done deal.

While the exact details have yet to be nailed down regarding the local act and the cellist, it seems certain that our love will be well fed.

How important is music to you?

This wedding brought to you by...

In my previous post, I refer to my sponsor (dad). He is actually the only contributor to our wedding, aside from fiance and myself, but he doesn't know that, and I don't really plan to enlighten him. He seems to assume that the future in-laws are chipping in, but in the final tally, I think it will come down to 50% us, 50% him. Let me tell you, the "hosting" situation along with our collective seven parental units would have made traditional invitation wording pretty exciting.

There is no sad story that goes along with this, as my dad (and all of our parents, actually) are meddling almost not at all in our plans. The future in-laws have been totally uninvolved, so far, aside from the vague influence by example of having attended fiance's mother's wedding a couple of months ago. Mom wants me to help find her dress, as does stepmom, my sister just wants to help (every time I see her), and dad's requests have been limited solely to guest list.

When I initially asked, his only comment was that it would be nice if I invited my cousins, which I was absolutely going to do anyway. Recently, the requests have gotten slightly bigger, though not insurmountable, and not insistent in any way. I think today is the first time I've had to tell him no...and it's especially difficult because his requests have been so few. I'm sure he won't argue about it, but I still feel bad.

I know that even those who are paying for the wedding entirely on their own sometimes have difficulty denying the suggestions of loved ones, and having those people as your "benefactors" makes the situation that much stickier.

Do you have "sponsors"? How much influence do they have over decisions? How do you handle their requests?

Hardcore DIY Invites (Part 1)

It's all about choosing your battles. Get a wedding planner: no; inclusive venue: yes. Hire a florist: no; DJ: yes.

When it came to invitations, despite my lack of serious print collateral production, the answer was "DIY here I come!" Now, I'd made concert programs, promotional posters, various cd booklets, and so forth before, but almost all to have professionally produced. As an art student, I'd made a great many cut and glue projects including a multicolor labyrinth-esque cube out of matboard, balsa, and acetate, a pristine white geometric landscape (matboard again), and variation upon variation of black/white or many-hued perfect one-inch paper squares mounted in grids to - you guessed it - matboard. But none of those were produced in any quantity. So this great intersection of graphic design, hand-crafting, and mass production is new territory for me.

The process started with brainstorming designs. And brainstorming for me involves paper, sharp objects, and a lot of measuring, using whatever paper I had lying around. The ideas below were the initial results:

We were definitely against the inserts falling out all over when you take the invite out of the envelope, so we knew they needed to be incorporated into the design of the invite itself. Yes, a pocketfold would have been the easy way to do this. But while I am not a print professional, fiance is, and he had his heart set on something mind-blowing. Unfortunately, I'm the designer of the two of us, so it was up to me to create something sufficiently snazzy.

So, one round of review later, I came up with this:


which is accomplished on a folded card with the open side edge glued shut and includes trapezoidal (or keystone-shaped) inserts hanging in die-cuts on the reverse of the card that keep the shapes from falling through to the inside of the piece. Some other time, I'll get into a step by step.

The paper selection process took ages, many sample books from paper shows,
and a couple of rounds of samples ordered from my new favorite wedding vendor, paperandmore.com. Then I designed the actual invitation portion of the wording & layout, which included four initial options, and then four options derived from the selected original, final edits and decision from us, and a backup option when getting sponsor (dad) approval.



(the initial four on the left, the final four on the right. You can see that the final four are very much in the same vein, since they were derived from the bottom left and top right of the initial four designs.)

As a side note, I highly recommend keeping all of your scraps, when attempting a project like this. My scraps turned into embossing tests, glue tests, transparency tests, calligraphy tests, and for the response card, a what-writing-implements-will-even-work-on-this-stuff test. It's also environmentally friendly not to waste anything...more on that in future installments.


Who's making your invites?

Why selecting one dress for a quartet of 20-somethings is easier than selecting one dress for the MoB

Because your female attendants are 20-something, it probably won't be perfect for any of them, so you're aiming for really good on all of them, and they have professed no hopes of wearing the dress again.

Mom, on the other hand, needs something age-appropriate but not frumpy, shouldn't settle for something less than lovely as we're picking it just for her, and will hopefully be able to wear it to the marriages of all her children (at least if she wants to). Plus, she works at a hardware store, and she's not very used to dressing up, these days.

Since she lives at least an hour drive from me and I don't have a car, the internet was my first resort. These are the finalists:
a) Nordstrom.com

b) TJFormal.com

c) OnlineWeddingDeals.com

d) OnlineWeddingDeals.com

e) HouseofBrides.com

f) HouseofBrides.com


We did go shopping in person once, but we didn't find anything great for a winter wedding.

Thoughts? Preferences? Suggestions?

Two years and change is a really long time - and unfortunately, I'm back with an ulterior motive.

When I started to plan my wedding, I thought that I'd be one of the more organized, punctual, proactive, efficient, and generally with-it brides-to-be out there. Not that I was as deluded as he was that we'd have everything done after the first few months, but I figured that when project managers marry, it can't be too bad.

When project managers marry. That hearkens uncannily to "when (insert animals here) attack."

Well, let's start in media res.

We're attempting to learn to dance. Not that we don't know how to dance, actually we tend to tear it up at parties to the extent that total strangers will comment to the hosts. And usually in a nice (if slightly embarrassed on our behalf) way. But I mean dance in the official sense.
Luckily for us, my little sister, who is of many talents, was a competitive ballroom dancer in college, and she mostly remembers how to do it all. So, based on our first dance song of choice, she selected the International Foxtrot for us, which I'm told is an incredibly difficult dance, but the American Foxtrot is supposedly its very plain (read boring) cousin, and after one lesson, we had basically learned how to do it without turns. Not that I have any idea how difficult it will be to learn the turns, but obviously this dance is not enough of a challenge for us.

Really. What else are we going to do with ourselves for the next six months? Plan a wedding? Pshaw.

I am all for celebrations...celebrations of life and love and achievement. When you celebrate your own birthday, it's really just an occasion for a party, but on other peoples' birthdays, you get the opportunity to remember and be thankful for the wonderful people in your life and to celebrate the very fact that they exist.

And I am grateful.

At 9:15 I woke up, and by 9:17, my teeth were brushed, my contacts were in, and I was checking the time. By 10:15, I'd started my first load of laundry, wiped down the leather couch and removed some blue ink from it, washed the dishes in the sink, eaten breakfast, and washed those dishes too. By 11:30, the front walk had been shoveled (despite some kind soul clearing 10 inches of accumulation from his car onto my pavement) and heavily salted against the still falling snow, and my wet boots and other winter stuff were set out to dry. By 11:41, the second load of laundry was in the dryer, and I was sitting in front of my computer.

I wish I could just travel back to last Wednesday to give a few people a little advice. I’d tell my boss to take the day off and go to his mother, and then I’d tell him to keep his son home, make him rest, and feed him vitamin C. I’d tell myself not to go to that party so I could keep a friend. I’d tell my co-worker to get herself checked out right away. I’d tell Mary not to take Lincoln Drive. I’d rearrange the refrigerator so that bottle wouldn’t fall out and break on the floor. I’d start thinking about an audition song earlier, and I would send Lindsay flowers. Which I might do anyway.

First homemade soup of the season. Thinking of you.

I love group performance art. Theater, music, dance. Like I’ve said before, I have no artistic impulses ripping themselves from my screaming flesh. It’s fun, but equally importantly, it’s productive. When you rehearse with a group, the goal is almost always to put on a performance, else why spend everyone’s time? If you sing or play an instrument solo, in your own home, it’s entirely likely that you’re just goofing off. Maybe nothing will ever come of it. It’s really kind of like some other individual activities I can think of that please no one but yourself.

And who would want to give up performing? When you’ve been in ballet slippers since the age of five, you can suffer from severe limelight withdrawal.

Mixing the cd has given me some satisfaction, though it involves no actual performance…at least I get my group art project fix.

As of today, it has been six weeks since I last worked with an ensemble.

The occasions on which I have run up against my own limitations are so few, far between, and happen under such extraordinary circumstances, that I’m not entirely sure what those limits are. I am a multitasking superpower.

Am I confident because I think I am capable of anything or just because I don’t know enough to make me timid? Does that make me innocent?

Whatever the value of bravery, I hope that it is high.

I am fearless.

When I was a senior in high school, I was invited to the senior awards ceremony. Along with all my friends, so it was no big deal; it was the ceremony for awarding all sorts of different scholarships that the students had received that year. Some people got money, some just got certificates, but my friends all received the same award; they were presidential scholars or something like that, and I think they got a hundred dollars each. Many of the awards were from private funds or organizations. So we sit through this whole evening (we were sitting in rows on the stage, and I was way in the back), all my friends got their awards, lots of other people got theirs for writing some essay about what it’s like to be the victim of prejudice or whatever, and I’m sitting there in the back wondering why I showed up, since it didn’t look like I was getting anything at all. Well, I’d just about given up on receiving an award for anything academic, and I knew I hadn't submitted any essays, so when I finally received an award, and it was from the entire art department of the high school, I barely knew what to do with myself.

There was really nothing artistic that I didn’t have a hand in (with the exception of string ensembles), and yet, I really never thought anyone had noticed, as I myself had never thought anything of it. It was what I did. For me, it was about building a toolbox. I didn’t have any special message in my art, but what I did have was an arsenal of expressive means.

College was a strikingly similar experience, in a way. I learned how to do a great many things – from delivering a monologue to selectively toning a fiber-based print – but in some cases, my professors were angered because they couldn’t hear me in the work. They thought I wasn’t to be found there, because my voice didn’t ring through. And I don’t argue that fact; my voice was not in evidence – but my hand was. Perhaps I’m just an aesthete or a formalist or even just a craftsperson, but I put my spirit into the effort of making something lovely. To make a beautiful object is one of the greatest achievements to which I aspire. Maybe that’s why I put so much effort into making my home attractive.

This didn’t got at all where I thought it would, but I’ve figured out some of my theory on art. I may not have anything to say, but that’s all right. And if I do ever wind up with some statement that I need to unleash upon the world, I’ll damn well know how to deliver it.

I’ve been remembering some friends that I knew from high school. Mostly people I was in marching band with, and how we didn’t think very much of the ones who wanted to be music teachers. But the reason for this was that we had never really had any good music teachers.

The marching band director also taught the beginners, back in the 5th grade, and honestly, I think he was more suited to the ten-year-olds. He had taught the marching band for years but had only managed to usurp the high school concert band and select band the year that I moved up to the school. The old concert/select director had been a saxophone/clarinetist and was often spoken of as the greatest band director of all time; he was allegedly forced into retirement, for some reason. The marching band director was a tuba player, by trade. As we said then, “’Nuff said.”

At the junior high, the band director was a clarinetist, and a very good one. And he knew his stuff about every other instrument, too, but he really never had the patience for the age group that he dealt with. For the generally well-behaved and attentive students (especially clarinetists), he was marvelous and an excellent instructor during private lessons. But during class, when the drummers and saxophone players reinforced all stereotypes about drummers and saxophone players, he couldn’t quite keep control. All told, not such a great music teacher.

In middle school, the band teacher was another tuba player. You’d think that would be enough said, but I’ll have to add that there was nothing wrong with him, and he picked good music, but he just didn’t make any sort of impression on me.

One of the girls that planned to study music ed. was a singer as well as a trombone player, and I know from my scant experience with her that the choir director was phenomenal. The boy, Colin, was a clarinetist first and a low brass player second, and one of those strange people whose actions always surprise you, even though you should have long since begun to expect the unexpected. So when he declared that he was attending the marching band director’s alma mater to study music, we were all slightly stunned and then said to ourselves, “hmm…I guess maybe that does make sense.” But I do think that he had had a number of private lessons with outside instructors who must have been better musical inspiration than what the rest of us had been subjected to.

So, when I examine any tentative plans I might have to become a music teacher along with my musical instruction history, it becomes clear why it took me such a long time to figure it out. The instruction I received during my college years in university choir, in select ensembles, and in my first piano class showed me, by example, what teaching music can be and how it can positively affect the students. When I came across some slightly sub-par music teachers, I knew them for what they were: examples of what not to do. And when I began to instruct my own musical ensemble, during junior year, I had good examples to work from and bad examples to keep me from being the kind of director I hated.

I am thankful to every one of you.

I would like, if I may, to relate a thought experiment that I observed over the summer. It was given by an ethics professor who bears an uncanny resemblance to Buzz Lightyear, and it went as follows.

You are participating in an experiment. You are seated at a table in a room with another person of the same age, race, gender, social class, whatever, as yourself. For all intents and purposes, they might as well be you. You have no feelings or prejudices towards them whatsoever, and you have never met the person before.
The experiment goes like this. You are given a hundred dollars. It is your job to split that hundred dollars between yourself and the other person in any way you choose. The catch is that if the other person is not satisfied with the way you split the money, they can call the whole deal off and you both walk away empty-handed. How do you split the money?

Second question. If you were the other person in this experiment, how much of the hundred dollars would you settle for?

Now what if it was a thousand dollars instead of a hundred? Same two questions.

Your response to the question of how you would split the money only tells us a little about your generosity and how much you think you can get away with. The question of how much money you would settle for before you were willing to walk away from it all is quite revealing. Some people say they’d settle for a dollar, cause hey, it’s a dollar more than they had before, and if they were the one splitting the money, they’d try to take all of it, too. But some people think, “Why should I have only a dollar when the other person gets 99? That’s not fair at all, and I’m going to let them know just what I think of that be seeing to it that they don’t get any money. Serves them right.”

Say the person tries to split the money sixty-forty with you getting forty. Well, maybe you still don’t think that’s fair, but still, it’s forty dollars. Tough call. If you give up those forty dollars just so that the other person gets screwed out of their sixty, what do you gain by it? Will they change their outlook on life and become kinder people? Not likely. Are you doing it for the pleasure of seeing their unhappiness? Not really. So what you have the opportunity to purchase with those forty dollars or however many dollars is fairness – knowing that what happened was right. Forty dollars was an acceptable price for you to pay for justice.


The point of this is putting a price tag on something intangible. I don’t think at the time I experienced this lecture I had any idea how valuable it would be. Buzz Lightyear to the rescue.

Finding her was like finding a part of myself that, for eighteen years, I had never known was missing. It was a wonderful surprise. People have left my life before…people who were important to me, but in time, the space they left behind filled with other people and pursuits. With her, it’s different. Even now, two years after she left me and this city for Costa Rica and the misty coasts of California, there is still a place for her, the edges healed over like an ear piercing or a belly button – proof of an event that fundamentally altered what once was. This space determinedly refuses to be filled, even at times when there is no room anyplace else in my life, as if since her, everyone I have met is simply passing through.

I think that maybe she is my match in the collective unconscious. It’s not that we always agreed, though we did think alike. The truth is more that we were perfect complements.

She didn’t know it then, but she was headed for more snow. I expect, though I can’t say from experience, that snow in Philadelphia is very different from snow in the mountains of Arizona. Where she came from, she was never long out of sight of the ocean, and the weather was always that perfect sixty-two degrees and dry that allowed her to spend the whole year barefoot and in cable-knit sweaters. She saw the city differently than I did. To her, it was a quarry of concrete boxes holding prisoners who were there by virtue of their own inertia. When I looked, as I sometimes did, I saw shining glass towers or houses, centuries old, many wanting from years of neglect, but all of it with so much potential! She was more realistic than I was, at the time, or maybe the contrast between cedars and asphalt was just too much, but either way, she recoiled.

She drew back until nothing in the city could touch her, including we who wanted to reach out to her, and eventually she had to go. I think he and I had always known that she was seeking something from the world. She would go wherever she had to go to find it, or maybe she just liked the going.

I think she knows that we have this. It’s something I could imagine myself imagining, granting unwarranted importance to one individual in my lifetime – my very own “one that got away” – but, I don’t think it’s just me. We talk hardly ever, though I expect that as she climbs a mountain to get to class today while the shadows are still long in the west, she may think of me…knowing that I think of her.

Life has become deceptively simple. Soon the rhythm of work, rest, and sleep will be natural to me, more entirely than ever before. I work on the 21st floor, and it is grey. The printer is next to the window, and I stand waiting for ink to make numbers to make sense, but the blinds have been shut for the last three days.

Walking (and the acquisition of ever more belongings) has become the highlight of my days. I walk to the bus or the dirty retro subway that is somehow less revolting than the dirty newer subway. I walk to shops, I walk to the bank, I walk to my front door.

I desperately miss cutting my own hair.

I miss trees, and the real smell of morning, and never knowing what new adventure the day will hold.

I want my girls back.

This life is not full enough to make me happy.

You are my fundamental orienting principle.