The Invites are Here - and Mostly Prepped

Hooray for invites!

We did ours through VistaPrint because they're decently priced and we got half off of everything with my Upromise account. Both of these things made nice invitations fit within our budget. That being said, you definitely get what you pay for.

This wasn't my first go-round with VistaPrint, but this was the first time I was doing a large order of a pre-designed item. I had previously designed and ordered Thank You cards from them. Even though the proofs all looked good, only one out of every four cards were cut with equal borders. The rest were either flush left or flush right. Big pain. They reprinted the cards for free, but ended up with the same issue. This time, everything appeared to be cut fine, but the printing left much to be desired.

When the recipients get their invitations, they won't be able to really tell that there's anything wrong with the invites. It's only when you see some of them next to each other that you realize only a few were printed to the color shown on the site, the rest seemed to have been printed with some of the ink running out, leaving the invites with more of a red hue than a solid grey. I hemmed and hawed over contacting VistaPrint about it, but ultimately realized that no one would notice (except for me pointing it out) and I would rather get the cards out than wait for a reprint that could ultimately end up with the same result.

That being decided, the invitations were stuffed into their envelopes and the RSVP cards were designated. All that's left to do is address the RSVP envelopes, put stamps on them, address the invitation envelopes, be sure to put the right RSVP with the right invitation, include stamps on the invitation envelopes, and then they'll be out the door!

From the moment we drop those suckers in the mailbox, I will be checking our mailbox for RSVPs. I obsess over when the mail delivery person comes when I'm expecting something, even if I realistically won't see anything for a few days or even a few weeks. It's fun expecting non-bill related mail! That, and we're really looking forward to getting a handle on what our numbers may realistically be. We won't really know until the Fall, definitely, but some RSVPs will trickle in sooner than others. My spreadsheets are fired up and ready to track who's coming and who can't make it.

We had a little fun with our RSVP wording, and hopefully folks will get a little chuckle out of them. Who knows, maybe people will get creative with their responses.

I know this is really a less interesting post. I'll try to make it up to you with another chapter of the stories behind our STD selection this weekend.

Who Needs a March?

Not I!

From Day 1, I knew I would not be walking down the aisle to the Wedding March or Canon in D or Greensleeves. I love classical music and love when a bride walks down the aisle to airy strings. However, it's just not my style. We've been doing our best to avoid making any part of the ceremony or reception feel like a performance. We want to be in the moment and experience it and the best way to do that is make sure you're comfortable. When it comes to the ceremony, the music is going to make or break the mood. I can only imagine the nerves that couples experience as soon as the groom heads up to the front and the bride gets ready for her entrance. I really started thinking about these nerves after this past weekend. Louis, Douglas, and I went to IHOP for my birthday dinner (I looooooove breakfast!). The waitress heard Douglas mention that it was my birthday which prompted her to withhold our check until she could round up the trainees and have them sing to me. I have never been comfortable being the focus of attention, and apparently still am not, even if it's just a handful of people (the restaurant was mostly empty). The boys enjoyed the fact that I turned fire engine red. So I can only imagine that in those penultimate moments, I will be latched onto my poor Dad's arm so tightly!

The good thing is that if I have a few wits about me, I'll remember to focus on the music. While I won't spill the beans on the full processional line-up, because there may be a gem or two in there that will be better realized while you're there, I will divulge the artist we are focusing on for most of the ceremony music.

If you know us as a couple, this won't come as too much of a surprise.

Oh yeah! We've found a way to work Coheed into the ceremony! Coheed has been in our lives almost as long as we've been together. "A Favor House Atlantic" was on a CD Douglas made me shortly before we started dating. It took me a while to warm up to the band, but Douglas fell head over heels. The albums and comics kept coming and our relationship kept growing. Now I can't help but dance around when "Blood Red Summer" or "Feathers" comes on either of our iPods. Monday we went (migraine and all for Douglas) to our fourth Coheed show. They never put on a bad show and their music always strikes a chord for us. It's only fitting that the music that we can literally chart our relationship by is the music we hear on the day we get married.

This makes so much sense, that it may sound like it was a no-brainer. It was, when we finally got around to it. If there is one lesson I've learned through wedding planning, it's that seemingly simple choices get infinitely harder when you give them significance. The more significance you pile on, the closer to impossible the decision becomes. While compiling the STD CDs, Doug and I had put together at least four pages, front and back, of song that had some meaning to us. Having that done, I figured we'd just have to shave it down to figure out our ceremony music and reception dance music. WRONG. The STD CD ended up going through several re-imaginings before we ended up with something that was us and something we felt was the right tease/lead-in for the wedding. During our night walks with Kaylee we'd brainstorm on the music we'd like to walk down to, both with serious suggestions and ridiculous ones. Some we hated less than others, but nothing really struck a chord. Sometimes you just need to hear the right version at the right time for it to click, and when it clicked with Coheed, it felt right. Another lesson learned during planning - you'll know when it's right.

Sadly, we're not having as much luck with our reception music (first dance, father/daughter, mother/son), but we have plenty of time to work it out. Note to self - 6 months out, can't use "plenty of time" for much longer.

LESS THAN 200 DAYS!

A Potential Vendor Talks Himself Right Out of the Running

The vendor search.

I don't know anyone who really enjoys this task. There are parts you may enjoy, like finding your baker and getting to taste lots of cake, but the overall experience does not fall into the category of "things I look forward to while wedding planning".

Fortunately for us, we haven't had too many bad experiences. My dress shopping was very smooth with some great ladies helping us out at the shops. All three of our potential bakers were a pleasure to sit down and speak with. The venue folks have been a little hit and miss at first, but that's mostly because we're booking while details like pricing and availability are being worked out for the facility as a whole. And then there have been the caterers...

Up until last month, our biggest issue with the prospective catering options were the prices. While in town during our wedding planning weekend, almost all of our vendors recommended Center Stage Catering. We reached out to them, and sadly, they are booked on our date. Also, during the weekend, we met with the potential caterer that we've been talking with since almost day 1. Up until this meeting, we had been speaking with the owner's wife and she was great. This meeting, however, we were going to be meeting with the man himself, Mr. S (name is being withheld because family in the area still use their services, and we don't want to do anything to hurt those relationships). I had done research on all of our prospective caterers and the reviews on this one were very consistent: the owner was very difficult to work with. We went into the meeting keeping open minds, but also knowing that this wasn't necessarily going to be a walk in the park. Turns out, we really didn't need to be prepared at all!

During our entire meeting, at no point did Mr. S ask about any details about our event or what we had in mind. Instead, he used the entire meeting to showcase his iPad, make sure we knew that he had plenty of decorations and linens and dishware that we could rent or that he might "throw in", and go into detail about how important it is to make it look like you spent thousands of dollars, even if you didn't. We learned that the event really isn't important, it's how much food you make it look like you have, how high end it looks, and the significance of having decorated candle stands of three different heights to keep the table from looking flat. Some of his ideas had a decent intent behind them, but he did a terrible job at selling them.

For example, I don't think the way to sell someone on getting shrimp is to say "I fill a bucket with a lot of ice and then lay some shrimp on top of the ice so it looks like you have a full bucket's worth. It looks like you've spent thousands of dollars on shrimp, but it's really just a few shrimp. Then, I make them very spicy so that Uncle Bob doesn't go up and put 5, 6, 7 shrimp on his plate. They're hot, so people will eat less. That saves you money which you can then spend somewhere else, like linens, which we have in this beautiful purple and black pattern."

Let's dissect that, shall we?

Creating the illusion of more food than you have - not a terrible idea. Presentation can be important. If you buy two dozen shrimp, I don't see the harm in creating the illusion of three or four dozen. I do see the harm, however, in making six shrimp look like fifty (a bit of an exaggeration, but you get my point).

Spicing up the food - the concept behind this one isn't bad, in moderation. I do not want to pay for four dozen shrimp, a dozen of which end up on Uncle Bob's plate and half of which don't get eaten. You don't want to waste your money on food that isn't going to be eaten. However, if we've somehow been able to work in the fact that we can't do spicy, this isn't the best proposal for the same reason as not spicing it up. Why would we want to waste money on a few high end really spicy shrimp that no one can eat? I'd rather err on the side of paying for more food than we need than paying for an entire dish we know people can't eat. Mr. S seemed to pride himself on this type of hocus pocus with food, which disturbed me. I'm all for finding ways to cut corners, but if we're not even trying to put on the illusion of a high end wedding, why does any of this matter?

Other than finding out first-hand about the size of Mr. S's ego, I also heard the sales pitch that I swore would get any vendor immediately vetoed. We were sitting at the corner of the bar during the entire meeting, myself and Douglas on one side of the corner in the bar with Mr. S facing us on the other side of the corner. When he gets to this point in his pitch, he leans in toward me, arm on the bar, head tilted forward, arm outstretched so that his hand can point and gesture emphatically in my direction to drive the point home: "This is YOUR wedding. You have an idea in your head of what YOU want YOUR day to be. It's all about you." At this point, Douglas and I forcibly work in that it's not the way we're think of it at all, it's OUR day. To which Mr. S responds "Sure, but it's YOUR day and YOUR vision."

Don't you DARE try to sell me a bill of over priced goods on the back of a delusion of being a selfish princess for a day! The earlier parts about the shrimp already had my brain going all

but this set off all of the bells and whistles. There was no way this guy was going to be our caterer. However, this ended up being early on in the meeting, if not half way through, so we still had to sit through a lot more of Mr. S's ego-stroking. When it appeared that the meeting was finally drawing to a close, I got very excited that we'd soon be free! Then, the icing on the cake, Mr. S made sure to strongly suggest we reconsider the original menu he sent us - the original menu that didn't even remotely hit the type of food we wanted.

Douglas didn't come away from the meeting with the same bitter taste that I did, but I really didn't expect him to. He wanted to give them another opportunity to propose a menu to us and see whether it better fit what we needed, so I agreed to giving them one last chance. Douglas sent off a menu idea based on one another potential caterer had put together that well illustrated the type of food we were interested in. Today, Douglas had a phone call with Mr. S about that suggested menu. A looooong phone call that involved more listening than talking. The look on Doug's face told me everything - Mr. S was doing the same thing on the phone that he did in the meeting, selling his vision without asking anything about what we were doing and not letting a question get in edgewise. When Douglas recounted the conversation for me, I learned that Mr. S decided to go full on difficult, so much so, that any difficult vendor or scenario related to wedding planning will now be referred to as "getting Mr. S-ed".

It went a little something like this:
"I can do chicken tenders, but do you want me to go to Sam's and buy the cheap frozen stuff or do you want the really high quality product? Same thing with the burgers, what size are the patties? What type of buns do you want? Do you want the cheap stuff from Sam's or the good stuff?"


If you want me to pay you a few thousand dollars for your services, why would you even suggest that you would run to Sam's to get the product?!?!?!  To quote a former co-worker of mine "I don't know what kind of dope those guys are smoking over there..." A unanimous exclamation of "DICK!" pretty much put the nail in the coffin for Mr. S catering our event. Mr. S will be sending us another menu proposal and after that, we'll be done with Mr. S. If this is the crap we're putting up with before we hand over our money, I can't imagine the crap we'd be putting up with day-of or even week-of. No thanks. We are not knowingly inviting a mountain of extra stress and paying a ton of money for it! That's just insanity. So another caterer bites the dust.

All hope is not lost, though. We still have the option of food provided by Doug's favorite local chinese restaurant, and we still have a caterer that we ended up revisiting who has been awesome to work with so far, especially compared to Mr. S. We're still in early talks with this catering option, but we're hopeful it will be an affordable and fun option.

Lesson learned: as soon as those bells go off in your head, don't give the vendor a second thought. It's really not worth the extra aggravation.

You've Been Dying to Know - The Venue

Last week we finally got the pricing information we had been waiting for on both venue options. We were really hoping that the pricing was going to make the decision really easy for us. Lucky for us, I guess, it didn't. With numbers in hand, Douglas and I sat down to talk out the options to make sure we were comparing apples to apples and not overlooking anything. When that was done, we still felt that we were rushing into the decision, so we called up two very smart people to get their opinions. They told us what we already knew but didn't want to admit. For some reason, I felt guilty for my first choice venue being an actual option and going for it! It only took three people to help me move past it and realize I'd regret not making the choice I knew was right. Within the hour of getting the information, Douglas and I contacted the venue to make sure we were locked in for the date.

I wish I had pictures of what it will look like, because that would be great for the big unveil, but that will just add to the surprise.

Back in August of last year, you might remember the posts about some of the locations we were checking out. From that visit, one place had stolen my heart...

The Market Building!!!

If you recall, these were taken as they were getting ready to start renovating the entire building. The renovations are well underway and are scheduled to be completed in May. The building even has a Facebook page for the renovations. Douglas and I were fortunate to get a meeting and see the mock-ups of what the finished interior will look like and samples of the materials that will be used.

I am so excited that we will have this big open space! No one will feel cramped, we can do everything at one location, and it is going to be GORGEOUS! The floors will be covered in carpet, except for the large dance floor. What color carpet? Dark purple - that's right, purple - with some creme and dark red in it. The freaking carpet is going to be our wedding colors! Yeah, as soon as we saw those samples along with the mock-ups, it was hard to resist signing on the dotted line right there. How many signs did the universe need to send me? Only one - $. And lucky for us...

"Bob, tell them what they've won!"

Little to say, we quickly contact the folks in charge to make sure we locked down our date. And, ladies and gentlemen, we are CONFIRMED!

Spiderman Happy Dance

So let's recap what we have in our little treasure chest thus far, shall we?

• Very tasty and talented baker is chosen, contract is signed, deposit is payed.
• Photographer with style I wanted is found, contract was signed today, deposit is going in the mail today.
• Dress, which was everything I didn't want in a gown but is the one I'm totally in love with, is in the shop waiting until alterations time this Fall.
• Girls picked out their own dresses which are awesome!
• We know what we want to do for beverages.
• The venue that's been a front runner from the beginning is not only going to be finished using our colors, but is within the budget!

Soon to be in the chest:

• The guys' outfits are almost finalized.
• We may have two options to chose from as far as food that will be within budget and the style of food that we want.
• We just started looking at wedding bands and are zeroing in on decisions already.
• Invitations are almost chosen and should go out in the next few weeks!

That's right - invitations will be making their way to your mailboxes SOON! How exciting? Very exciting.