A Foot-Long Engagement

As frustrating as it's been, and as often as we've seriously considered eloping, I really cannot express how grateful I am for having a long engagement. The first few months, when we were throwing out ideas and seeing what would stick, were especially hectic because this was the time everyone, include myself, were dealing with our own ideas of what the wedding was going to be and trying to get a handle on what it would become. This time let everyone get out their frustrations without the frustrations or stress influencing any decisions that were being made. Lots of conversations occurred, whether over the phone, through email, through texts, or while on a night walk with the dog. Ideas were kicked around, ideas were tested out, minds were changed over and over. Was it taxing? Yes. Was it ridiculously stressful? Yes. Did it make us not want to have a wedding? Some times. Was it worth it? Totally!

Now jump from being five months in to being five months out.

Since most of the dust has settled and most decisions have been made (some deposits put down), things are going really smoothly. We're still having typical wedding issues. guests not seeing the wedding website address that was printed on the CD cover for the Save the Dates AND was on the invitations and mixed messages going out about plus 1s, but now that we're into the thick of planning, if someone is caught off guard by an idea, they usually take a few minutes to get their heads around it and then we're off to the races with productive talk - did you ask your vendor this? Who's in control of that? If you do this, remember to be mindful of that.

Another positive about the long engagement is that it has allowed us to have a few family weekends to get together in Roanoke and have everyone be included in the process. One thing I've regretted during planning is that my Mom and I live so far from each other. We haven't been able to just go out for chai and coffee and just sit around and have all of the small talks that need to occur and help iron out details and figure stuff out. It's been great having my future brothers around to bounce ideas off of or to vent to. We've been able to go around town sampling cupcakes with my future mother-in-law and kick around ideas for the hospitality suite as well as cake. We've been able to make a few trips to Roanoke to have conversations and plan with my future father-in-law and future-step-mother-in-law. Still, I really wish that everyone was closer together. With any luck, Douglas will be hired by Modea (first week of the internship is going GREAT, btw) and we can work on getting everyone between southwestern VA and Charlotte before we start the journey toward babies. I am grateful, though, that we were able to have at least two family weekends in Roanoke to show folks around and give them a real idea of what was being planned.

Case in point - this past weekend. When Douglas and I had our different menus from our various food vendors, we knew that once we made a decision, we'd want to do a tasting, and, if possible, do a family dinner so everyone could sample the food and give us feedback. We had narrowed the food down to two vendors: Szechuan (Doug's favorite Chinese restaurant in town while growing up) and Blue Ridge Catering. Both menus would satisfy everyone's dietary needs and provide a decent amount of food for everyone. We decided to go with Szechuan, so that is what we had for dinner on Saturday night. Having spoken to them earlier in the week about them drawing up a more detailed contract, they knew that we would be ordering our wedding menu as take out for the family to enjoy. I point this out because the food was less than on par. One menu item was scratched almost immediately. The pineapple shrimp was apparently covered in a mayo-based sauce - not enjoyable. Past that, everyone was ok, but not great. While everyone knew we wanted feedback, they were still being careful not to say how blah the food was. It didn't take long to get the conversation going, though. I think we were all happy to be in agreement. The food was a disappointment. The next morning, Douglas was on the phone with Blue Ridge as we kept our fingers crossed that they still had the date open (they did!). While Szechuan is still on the table, Blue Ridge is in a very good position right now. After revisiting the last menu they sent us (which we loved), we realized that for them to provide drinks was going to cost as much as we were budgeting to get drinks from Sam's - DONE. They provided staffing - DONE. Douglas is setting up a meeting with them to discuss details in the next week or so. If everything works out right - we'll be signing with Blue Ridge! The best part about this turn around - the week before, Blue Ridge catered an event for one of future-step-mother-in-law's organizations with a menu that was similar in style to the one we were eyeing and people were raving about it! Future-father-in-law really dug the presentation of the food! Double-score! So fingers crossed - we'll, once again, have our food figured out soon!

We were also able to get two more sample cakes from our lovely baker, Lisa (who totally gave us four small cake bon-bons as a treat). So Mom and Dad were able to taste the wedding cake! We were also able to sample the third flavor combo we were considering. The only arguments going on about the cake was which flavor to make the biggest tier. Oh the check marks and stamps of approval were being marked in my head!

The downside to having two family get-togethers for wedding stuff is that months and months worth of conversations occur during only a few hours. We discussed everything from centerpieces to flowers to chuppahs to gifts for the wedding party to shuttles to what the parents would wear to why the groomsmen weren't wearing jackets. They were mostly good productive conservations, but boy is it a lot to deal with in such a short time! We equated it to being worn down by a sander - quickly. By the end of the night I was questioning why were were throwing an event that cost so much money! But by the next morning, the giddiness was back and things had been worked out. I'll tell you what, though, last weekend I hit that moment where I understood why everyone says "It was worth it, but I'd never put myself through that again."

So here we sit, on the other end of the weekend and less than five months away from the big day. About 50% of our guests have already given us a yes or a no whether through online or physical RSVP or hotel reservation. We are on task with our budget. Most of the big vending decisions have been made and secured. And, the Rapture has been rescheduled for Friday night, so the Scavenger Hunt should be more interesting. ;-)

Another Wedding (Planning) Weekend

This weekend we're headed back to Roanoke to meet with the family and do wedding stuff. This weekend is less about planning and more about enjoying the fruits of our labor. Saturday night we'll be enjoying our wedding menu from our restaurant of choice and topping it off with two sample cakes from our baker! Kaylee is looking forward to hanging out with grandparents she hasn't seen in quite a while.

RSVP update - we have more than a quarter of them back! Lots of folks have been writing nice little notes back. We got the best one today because we didn't realize we were mailing one to Albuquerque, NM! (see previous post for reason why that's funny)

Invites and the Disappearing Wedding Planner

Two weeks ago I told you that the invites were here and that they were mostly ready to go out. Well, now they're out and we've started getting RSVPs back! Since all but a handful have been received, I can now share with you what our invites and RSVPs look like.

As mentioned previously, we ordered from VistaPrint.com because we were able to get half off with my UPromise account and we didn't have to spend a lot of time picking out colors, fonts, and inserts. Douglas and I had more fun announcing our wedding with Save the Dates than we did with the invitations. No matter what idea we came up with or which place we looked, we just couldn't really get into the invites as much as we got into the STDs. This made it both really simple and really difficult to commit to a specific invite. We browsed through the wedding invitation section and the regular party invite section. We found a ton of great ideas in the party invite section, but those cost more (go figure) and it was more difficult and costly to do RSVPs for those cards. So, at the 12th hour of us being fed up with dealing with invites, we made a decision - really, Douglas just gave into my leading favorite.

So enough already! What did we go with! (I hear you)

Here they are!

So what were some of the decisions we had to make with the invites, besides which design to go with?

1) Would we do the formal wording with Mom & Dad inviting the guests to attend? - since Mom & Dad are footing the bill, we decided to leave this decision up to them and gave them final approval on the complete wording of the invitation. They were so excited about it that we were able to place the order right after they saw the initial proof (hooray for email!).

2) When should the RSVP cut off be? - This decision became really easy once Douglas got offered an internship (more on that later). We are handling the RSVPs so I wanted to make sure we would be at the address on the invites for as long as the RSVPs were coming in. It's not that I don't trust mail forwarding, I just didn't want to add an extra variable that someone could use as an excuse. "I sent it, they must have lost it in the mail." Because of this, the end of July made sense. After deciding on that, we then realized that by having the date be the end of July, it would give us August and September to viciously hunt down people who didn't RSVP or to follow up with those who forgot to fill out the top section of the RSVP (just because you say "no" to the scavenger hunt, I can't assume that it's also a "no" for the ceremony). The hunting down unknown RSVP responsibilities will be passed off to family members as we may/may not be moving during the fall.

3) Why no kids under 13? - Way back at the beginning of all of this when we put together the initial guest list, we realized just how many kids under the age of 5 would be invited to the wedding if we allowed children: enough to fill up a regular classroom! We love kids. We would love to have kids at our wedding. But this was going to be waaaaaaaaaay too many little ones running or crawling around for anyone to handle. Once we figured out that it was going to be very difficult to accommodate the little rugrats (and there are some really cool ideas out there on how to keep kids entertained at weddings) we also realized that since there were so many young ones that their parents might enjoy some adult time away from the kids for a night. So why is the cut off at 13? We're not looking to be lewd or anything, but with beer flowing and our adult sense of humor, we didn't want to have to mind our tongues (or worry about anyone else minding theirs). Hopefully a good time will be had by all and no one will get offended because their toddler started walking around the next morning quoting dirty limericks.

4) Who gets +1s? - This was the ugly part of the whole decision making process. Everyone feels more comfortable having the option of bringing a plus one. We had gone into the guest list process assuming plus ones for everyone who wasn't already paired up. Unfortunately, we never actually noted that in our list so we didn't realize that it would take our guest list near 200 instead of the already bloated 150. So we had to sit down and see who all would desire a plus one - big number. We weren't comfortable with simply picking and choosing, so we narrowed it down to engaged and married couples - much smaller number. Having that number, could we make any exceptions for other plus ones? Only one exception was possible - the wedding party. That only knocked up the count by about 4. Totally doable. Funny enough, as soon as we made this decision (but hadn't told anyone yet), we found out one of our chuppah holders got engaged! Way to get in at the buzzer! We're hoping that by August we'll have a really good sense of what our actually numbers are looking like and if they're low enough (talking about looking for over 20% not attending) we may be able to make a few more exceptions for plus ones. So sit tight folks, you never know what could happen!

5) How do we word the RSVP? - We knew from day 1 that our RSVPs would not have typical wording. Cruising the wedding blogs, I had found a lot of really fun examples of wording folks had used. Of course, as we were playing with the wording, we realized that we had to make it very clear to folks how they were responding if they marked option A over option B. Always include some clear designation of YES, NO, or MAYBE. Very important!

The invites didn't take us too long to put together and get out the door. Once they were gone, it officially marked the end of the "big" things we had to get done. We had booked nearly all of our vendors and invited all of our guests. So what the hell do we do now?!?! After a few minor freak outs, I sat down with Douglas to create a new list of what we had left to figure out/do. Now we start getting into the details.

Those details are for another day. Let's discuss the second topic of this post - Douglas!

You may or may not know that Douglas has done a lot of the heavy lifting with this wedding - dealing with the phone calls to vendors, putting together multiple versions of the Save the Date CD, and helping the girls with the bridal shower (you go boy!). Recently, Douglas decided that planning a wedding so far away was not really working for him and that he'd be able to do his job more efficiently if he lived in the area. So, on May 23rd, Douglas will be a temporary resident of Blacksburg, VA! Ok, ok, so the real reason is that he kicked ass at his interviews and was hired as a full time paid intern at a hot new company, Modea! It's for three months and they're not sure whether they'll have enough projects going on to hire him on full time immediately after his internship ends, but they seem to really like him. So I will be staying behind in CLT while Douglas goes to work in VA for three months. Should they be able to offer him a full time gig, I'll pack up and off to VA we shall go! If not, Douglas comes back to CLT and continues his search for work until Modea tries to tempt him back (please tempt!). We're both very excited at the prospect of living in the Blacksburg/Roanoke area since it's A) Freakin' gorgeous, B) in the mtns, C) near some of his family, D) closer to my family, and E) an even cheaper cost of living than we're already maintaining! Yes, please!

Of course this makes wedding planning both significantly easier and difficult at the same time. Douglas will now be able to meet with vendors more often (we've just starting looking for a DJ) in person instead of just via email or phone. However, most of our decisions/discussions have taken place during our night walks with Kaylee. While we can still do that over the phone, it's not quite the same. So there will be a lot more back and forth between us. I don't think it will get too bad until July/August, where the panic starts to kick in. My first fitting will be in August! AH! Full gear! *breathing* The good thing is that Douglas will be working again and in an environment that is perfect for him. While he's off doing that, I will have my office to myself and will be able to sneak off during my lunch break to the newly built on-site gym. I'm so excited about the new gym! The current one is too small, cramped, and doesn't have many windows. If more than one person goes in, you'll be rubbing elbows during workouts. The new one is a newly built free standing structure with LOTS of windows and looks out onto the pool! I've spied new equipment in there lately, so now we're just waiting for them to announce the opening and tell us how to access it!

Enough about the gym. Douglas, gone, 3 months. Of course we'll see each other every so many weeks. There's Memorial Day weekend, the Charlotte ComicCon, Father's Day, bridal shower, etc. I won't be able to go up to see Douglas unless Louis is planning a trip since Doug is taking our car. So sadly, the Roanoke trip next weekend will probably be my last one for a while (which will drive me nuts, btw). I will be so much calmer being IN Roanoke as we get closer to the wedding instead of being in CLT and feeling like I can't do much. :-p

So let's all wish Douglas well! This is a great opportunity and I'm so excited for him and proud of him!

Digging the Tracks - Part 3

Before we return you to the next installment of Digging the Tracks, let me announce that the invitations have gone out and the RSVPs have started to trickle in!

And now, back to our scheduled program.

Where did we leave off? Oh yes, we are now on track 9 - I'm Not Okay (I Promise) by My Chemical Romance.

Douglas got into My Chem before I did. I ended up being hooked by this song, I'm Not Okay, while working on my last semester in college. There were plenty of days where this was just the right ballad to belt with to express the frustrations of the day. As My Chem put out more music, our affinity for the group grew. When The Black Parade came out, we were blown away. This will always be one of our top favorite albums and we may have never gotten into it was it not for I'm Not Okay (I Promise).

Track 10 - A Favor House Atlantic. You wouldn't know from it's placement on the album, but this one's a biggie. This tune is from one of the most important bands to us: Coheed and Cambria. Douglas and I can track our relationship by Coheed tunes and it all started with A Favor House Atlantic. Pre-dating, Douglas made Crystal many CD mixes. There was one mix he made sure to note had special meaning, so listen carefully. Most of the songs were new to me and one of them had this girl shrieking about a sniper with a good eye. I couldn't make heads or tails of the intent of the song and the voice was just odd. Imagine my surprise when I caught the music video and saw that it was actually being sung by a dude with a huge fro!

That was my introduction to Claudio Sanchez, the lead singer of Coheed. Douglas was digging the group. When he learned that the whole point of the band was to tell a story and that there was a comic to supplement the music, he was hooked! It took me another album or two to dig enough songs to actually say that I was a Coheed fan, but I came around. Early in our relationship, we learned that they were going to be doing a concert in Atlanta on my birthday weekend - Douglas had to go. We drove down and back in one, exhausting day. The opening act had fallen ill so we ended up getting a double dose of Coheed in some amphitheater out in the middle of nowhere. Since then, we've been able to see Coheed in DC and twice in Charlotte. Douglas has done a meet and greet, and I've had Claudio wave back at me as I caught him sneaking back onto a tour bus. Every time we've seen Coheed, they've put on a hell of a show. They're just as awesome doing acoustic sets as they are plugged in. They have such an eclectic sound and it varies from album to album. There's a song for every mood. On our wedding day, listen careful, because I promise at least one Coheed tune will make an appearance.

Track 11 - A little less serious. Most people know this song from one of two places - either as a Cake tune or as the theme from the TV show, Chuck. We are fans of both Cake and Chuck, so Short Skirt/Long Jacket quickly became one of our favs. Track 12 - Cobrastyle, is also from Chuck, so let's combine these two for story time. If you've never watched Chuck, it's a show made for the masses, but definitely takes specific aim at geeks like us. Two of the main characters, Chuck and Morgan, are full fledged geeks. They work at the Buy More (fictional Best Buy) where they fix electronics and work on the sales floor. They own collectables from movies like Tron and Star Wars (yes, I had to provide a link to Star Wars. Sadly, there are folks our age that have never seen the films). The show throws in obvious references (buying a delorean) as well as more subtle references (any number of movie lines thrown in as normal dialog). With its humor, decent story telling, and geek references, the show easily won us over. Plus, who doesn't enjoy watching Casey slip into Jayne Cobb every now and then?

Jayne with his gun, Vera - Firefly

So, we're geeks. If this shocks you, then you really haven't spent more then five minutes with us. ;-)

Track 13 should not come as a shock to anyone - White & Nerdy by Weird Al. The original song that this one parodies drives me crazy (no pun intended) as it came out while I worked at a local top 40 radio station and heard the song at least once an hour. I rolled my eyes when I heard Weird Al was going to parody it because I was so sick of the song, I didn't want to hear any version of it again! Good thing I decided to check it out because it was, as most Weird Al songs are, awesome! (I am one of those people who ends up singing Weird Al lyrics during the original tunes because the Weird Al lyrics take over). After learning the lyrics, we were able to catch the music video - major geek out include science references, pop culture symbols, and Seth Green, one of the biggest geek icons!

Toys! Robot Chicken! Weird Al! 

Weird Al and Seth Green have both done their fair share of Star Wars parodies. (oh no, not Star Wars again! - Oh yes!)

 

However, it took the movie Zack and Miri Make a Porno for us to find the gem that is track 14 on our STD CD. Fett's Vette by MC Chris is a little rap ditty about Boba Fett from his point of view, if he was gangsta. For those who don't know, everyone, Boba Fett, Boba Fett, everyone.

He'd say hi but he's dead - Spoiler Alert!

So why do we did Fett's Vette? Is it just because it's a song about a Star Wars character? No, please, we have more cred than that. Let me give you a sample of the lyrics:

Gotta make the money
Credit's no good
When the jawas run a shop
In your neighborhood

Think you can cook?
I got a grappling hook
Let's make this quick
'Cause I'm really booked

I'm a devious degenerate
Defender of the devil
Shut down all the trash compactors
On the detention level

chorus
My backpack's got jets
Well I'm Boba the Fett
Well I bounty hunt for Jabba Hutt
To finance my 'Vette

wicky wicky woo

Well I chill in deep space
A mask is over my face
Well I deliver the prize
But I still narrow my eyes
'Cause my time
I don't like to waste.

And with that, we end our geek section. The next installment of Digging the Tracks will take us down a more romantic route, but, as you know with us, with great romance comes great comedy.