Posted by barb on Aug 12, 2004 in
Wedding A couple more wedding notes:
- I heard from the dress maker yesterday, and the dress should be in the mail within the next week, so I should have it by the end of next week. Keep your fingers crossed that it will fit!!
- I also made an appointment for a “hair consultation”. My goddess. I never thought I would be that kind of person…a hair consultation…a consultation about my hair. I’m a little ashamed.
Posted by barb on Aug 9, 2004 in
Wedding Here’s the latest on the wedding plans:
- Andrew and I got our marriage license today! Now, no matter what else happens, as long as the officiant, Andrew and I all show up, the day will be a success. The reception can suck, the planetarium can be closed, my dress can rip, Andrew can show up in shorts and a t-shirt (don’t take that as a suggestion, honey…you have to wear the tux), but all of that won’t matter because we’ll still be married at the end of the day.
- RSVPs are trickling in. If you’re reading this and haven’t sent me your RSVP, get on with it!. Oops, sorry…I mean, I would certainly appreciate your RSVP.
- We started planning out the ceremony tonight. The only open issue is now the reading(s). We were even able to pick out vows that we both liked without much trouble.
Posted by barb on Aug 3, 2004 in
Wedding Okay, so there is a slight typo in the wedding invitations. Fortunately it’s not on the invitation itself or the map sheets (at least that we’ve found so far). It’s on the RSVP. It looks something like this:
M________________
_____ will _____ will attend
Number of persons _____
Yup. I forgot to put the “not” in after the second “will”. So, anyone confused by this, just tick the first one if you’re attending, the second one if you’re not. I’ll get a clue if you fill in the number of persons attending.
Maybe this will be the big fiasco for the wedding…you think? Yeah, I know — it’s too easy. I’m still expecting something spectacular to go wrong.
Posted by barb on Jul 25, 2004 in
Wedding A few random wedding notes:
- The invitations finally made it into the mail yesterday.
- I’ve finished all of the favors (have I mentioned that already?) — they are all wrapped up in tulle. I’ve moved on to making and wrapping the ones for the Minnesota reception. I’d like to have those done before the wedding so that Mom and Dad can take them back home with them.
- The rings are both in our posession. There was some mess-up at Bailey Banks & Biddle where the ring arrived but no one called me; fortunately the ring was still there when I called earlier this week.
- The wedding web pages are pretty much finished (at least there are no more pages that say “under construction”)
That’s all for now.
Posted by barb on Jul 2, 2004 in
Wedding We finally booked the formal wear tonight. Andrew called some of the local Masters Tuxedo stores to see if they carried the Oscar de la Renta grey cut-away tux that we’d seen at the Sears store, and to see if they had a better vest selection. The Falls Church store had them, so off we went this evening.
The guy we talked to was very helpful. He explained that it was a morning suit, and our 4PM wedding might be too late in the day for it. I giggled and said that I sincerely doubted that anyone at the wedding would really know the difference (who’s ever even heard of a morning suit in this decade?). He also had one in the store so we could look at it. The pants are striped, but not like the clown-pants with the tux we’d seen at Men’s Wearhouse. So, we told him we’d book it. He was a bit surprised that it took so little work on his part, but perhaps he could see that we were getting exasperated.
Andrew got measured there, but now we need Greg and Dad to call in their measurements and put down a deposit.
Yay!
Posted by barb on Jun 28, 2004 in
Wedding While in Alexandria yesterday, I popped into a florist shop that was on the list of referrals from our wedding coordinator. They were very busy putting together arrangements for weddings, so I made an appointment to meet with one of the co-owners today.
Andrew ended up coming with me today, due to some long and uninteresting circumstances. We chatted with the florist for a while about what we want, what our colors are, the theme of the wedding. He suggested several things, and I basically just went along with everything he suggested. I’ve had trouble mustering much enthusiasm for the flowers — I love flowers, and I’m looking forward to having them at the wedding, but I have no idea what looks good with the colors and dress styles we’ve chosen, so I thought we could just defer to the expert. He quoted us a price and was going to let us go on our way to discuss things. Instead, we had already decided to hire them if they were within budget (they were), since they had worked with our wedding coordinator previously, and she quite liked them. So, we put down a hefty deposit, and we now have our top Clear Lake florist. Yay!
Afterwards we drove off to Landmark Mall, also in Alexandria, to seek out the Oscar de la Renta tux at a formal wear shop there. Unfortunately, that shop seems to have disappeared from the mall. The trip was not completely a bust, though, since we decided to pop into another formal wear shop to see if they had anything. We weren’t hopeful, since we’d been in another of their shops last week at Fair Oaks Mall. This shop had the gray tux we’d seen in the catalog on display, so I was able to determine that I really didn’t like it. However, we asked the guy working there if they had any other gray tuxes to rent, and he showed us one in their catalog. The people at Fair Oaks Mall were not as helpful. This one was a darker gray, which I liked better, but I still prefer the Oscar de la Renta tails. However, this means that we have a back-up plan if I can’t find my first choice.
Posted by barb on Jun 25, 2004 in
Wedding Since we have less than three months, we thought it was about time to arrange for the tuxedos for Andrew, Greg, and my Dad. Here’s my problem: the colors I chose were yellow and navy. Navy. What an assinine choice. “Why?”, you ask? Because navy and black do not go together. Especially the navy on the bridesmaid dresses that we chose.
So, the solution to the problem is to have gray tuxedos with navy or yellow vests and ties (navy looks better with the gray). So, we started at Fair Oaks Mall, but the formal wear place only had one gray tux, and it had four buttons, which I don’t really like — it looks too much like a regular suit, and what’s the point of that? Our next stop was the formal wear place at the Sears (not Sears itself, but some kind of contracted out space inside the Sears). They had a nice looking Oscar de la Renta set with tails that was charcoal gray, but I didn’t like any of the vests that they had (plus the rental for just the tux was $130, that’s not including the shirt, vest, and shoes).
Our final stop was the Men’s Wearhouse across the street from the mall. When we walked it, a very tall blonde woman called to us, from a table where she was folding shirts, “Can I help you?”. I said yes, that we were looking for tuxedoes to rent for our wedding. She continued folding while I told her what I was looking for, explaining that our colors included navy, which I didn’t like with balck. I also told her that I had a print-out of something from their web site that might do the trick.
Finally, she stopped folding, deigning to give us a small bit of her attention. She walked back to the rental desk and pulled out a book, and found the page with the one set of tails in gray. Unfortunately, the pants that came with it were striped. Not pin stripes, but more what I would call clown-pants stripes. “No,” I said, “that won’t do it.”
She asked how dark the navy was, and I produced a swatch. “That’s not too dark,” she says, and unzips one of the suit bags containing a rental tux. “See, that’s not bad against the black.”
Had I not just said that I didn’t like navy and black? Did she think I was kidding? Hello?
“No,” I said, “I don’t like that. It won’t work.”
I believe she mumbled something about the fact that I wouldn’t be able to find what I wanted. I remember thinking that I had seen what I wanted but without a good vest at the formal wear place in Sears…she was sounding like the car salesmen I’ve dealt with. Needless to say, Andrew and I left, though a bit crankier for the experience.
Posted by barb on Jun 7, 2004 in
Pictures,
Wedding The personalized napkins and ribbon we ordered came in last week. I was worried that they wouldn’t turn out, but they look great:
I used the ribbon to start tying up the favors in little tulle circles….that’s going to take forever! Though I was able to do about 30 tonight in just under 2 hours. I have about 50 more to do for the VA reception, but then 125 or so for the MN reception (plus, I still need to make more soaps for the MN reception).
Posted by barb on May 20, 2004 in
Wedding Andrew and I met with a unitarian minister this evening, and we were both very impressed with him. He has a varied background from being ordained a preist in the Catholic order to driving a cab in New York to counselling in-need children. His outlook on the world very much mirrors ours, and he’s more than happy to work with us to make our wedding our day.
Yay! Now we just need a florist…and formal wear for the guys.
Posted by barb on May 12, 2004 in
Pictures,
Wedding We vistited the Arlington Planetarium this evening with our wedding coordinator. We hadn’t seen the planetarium since Andrew and I visited last October to scout it out as a possible wedding site. This time we wanted to see the lighting and layout to figure out what we need to do to make the wedding work.
A few notes:
- For the majority of stars to be visible we will need to have the planetarium quite dark — so dark that we will not be seen. To overcome this, Devri suggested using candles. Jonathan, the planetarium director, actually had a candle, so he lit one for us to see how it looked. It looked good — very romantic — but using too many will drown out the stars just as sure as the dome lights will.
- We thought that maybe we should choreograph the ceremony so that the lights will come up and down at various places. We would then probably save total darkness for a special reading.
- I’m nervous about getting the officiant to go along with this. They tend not to like flash photography, so I’m wondering how they will deal with darkness. We will probably be able to get a lighted lecturn, so maybe he’ll go along with us, but … We meet with one next week, so we’ll have to see if he’s willing to work with us on this point.
Overall the visit went well. I quite liked Jonathan — prior to tonight we had only talked on the phone. He said that he has a background in production and broadcast, which makes sense, but he seemed much like a scientist to me.
Tonight was the first time that the wedding felt real…concrete. We’ve been making plans and writing checks and talking with vendors, but it’s all seemed kind of unreal. Tonight, though, standing in the planetarium, talking about where I would be walking in, it finally hit me that this is real. I’m sooo looking forward to it!
A few pictures:
