Oh hello there. I am getting married TOMORROW. As in, 24 hours, less than a week, less than all those months that I ahve spent planning. It's kind of crazy. I am, however, really NOT sad to see the planning end. The planning started to be really a drag by the end. I think perhaps i had too long between booking the (first) venue and the date.

Also, I may have underestimated the amount of extra stress resulting from working full time while planning a wedding. I work a full-time, professional, white collar type job, and that entails staying late a lot to meet my hour requirements and things like that. It was really difficult to juggle that and still be able to plan and make appointments to meet people for wedding related stuff.

Additionally, I wish I would have researched more. Ultimately, I love all of my details, but there have been a few that have made me think wistfully of what I may have been able to come up with had I done a bit more looking into my options.

But in the end, I'M GETTING MARRIED TOMORROW! So excited! See you guys on the other side!

Last time as a miss!
Love,
m

FOUR DAYS!

So much to do! Finished most of the paper stuff today, thank goodness. Very tired of the paper cutter. It's coming so quickly! I can't wait.

Hair trial!

Makeup trial!

Gratuitous cute kitty photo!

Things I have not thought about or done yet:

1. written the ceremony
2. decided on the programs
3. made labels for the jam
4. picked vows
5. selected cake buffet flavors
6. found a makeup artist
7. had a second meeting with the caterer
8. decided on table numbers vs. table names
9. picked the beer list
10. gotten possession of my dress
11. tracked down the last RSVP stragglers
12. done table assignments

AHHH

For all those wedding guests who are still looking for lodging for our wedding:

I just recently discovered that a hotel near our venue offers discounts to people who have weddings at our venue. I reserved a block of rooms, but in order to take advantage of the discounted price, you need to book your room by August 19, 2009. Please visit our wedding website for instructions on booking.

If you know of anyone else who doesn't pop in to the blog, and might need lodging, please let them know!

We made our favors this weekend! It was a lot of work, but ultimately I am very pleased with them. I really didn't want to do any favors unless they either meant something to us, or were specially made for us. Too often I have gone to weddings that give you something that is nice, but ultimately useless. Thus, food favors are a definite must.

We started with a bunch of strawberries:


Mashed them up (my favorite part!):


Added some sugar and pectin and cooked them for awhile...

Prepped some wee tiny jars for jam receptacles:


Filled them with jam:

Cleaned the jars off:


Lined them up on a tray:


And created a small army of cute little jam jars!


I'm really happy with how they turned out. The jam was delicious too! Hopefully our guests like the favors!

(Don't worry, we did process the jars. I just forgot to take photos.)

the venue story

My first venue sucked. By now most of you have heard at least the bare bones story of J’s and my wedding drama…in short, we moved our wedding to a new location about five weeks ago, 12 weeks before the actual wedding.

I was having issues with the venue from the beginning. I really felt unsettled whenever I’d email them to ask questions, but I tried to ignore it. To clarify, I really only had a problem with one of the people at the venue. There are two event coordinators, Zach and Rhonda. Zach was fine, I never had any problems with him, and he always was more than helpful when he answered my questions. But, apparently Rhonda was assigned to my event. Since they only had one email address, I couldn’t email just one. Anyway, Rhonda mostly answered my emails, and the more questions I asked, the less happy I was with the venue.

I think it started when I tried to verify whether the venue was wheelchair accessible. I emailed and asked if our venue was, and named the venue in my email. Rhonda responded that yes, they had a ramp, and a wheelchair accessible bathroom, so that wouldn’t be a problem. Ok, I thought. No reason to question her, right? I mean, she works there! I wouldn’t have any reason to wonder whether she was in fact telling the truth! Well, obviously, the place is not wheelchair accessible, or I wouldn’t have had a problem with her answer. I was prepared to go ahead and still use the venue, though. There were other issues that came up that ultimately made me decide to change places.

The big blowup happened when I emailed to pin down times we could come to the venue to set up and stuff. This was where I found out that I had exactly ½ hour for the ceremony, and four hours for the reception. This was never clearly delineated on my “contract,” which was really the “event order.” When I would add details to my wedding, they would update the “event order.” This to me was not a contract, but whatever…they called it the contract. When I objected regarding the amount of time I was allowed, they told me it was always in my “contract.” This was not entirely true…they wrote start and end times for everything, like setup, ceremony, and reception, but they never told me that was ALL the time I was allotted. When I got the event order, the start and end times weren’t even accurate! Not only did I not know how much I was allowed, I was never told that extra time would cost me $350/hour, or $3/person, whichever was higher.

When I objected again to this revelation, and asked to see the rest of the terms of the contract, I was told that my “event order” was the entire contract and that they were sorry if I didn’t know that, but basically it wasn’t their fault, it was mine. I read my “event order” a million times trying to find ANY of that language in it. Big surprise, none of it was in there! Despite all of this, I didn’t think I would be able to find another venue, so I was prepared to suck it up and deal with it. I did, however, want them to know that I did not like the way I was being treated and that they couldn’t continue this way. I sent Rhonda another email, which essentially said that the information was NOT in the contract, and as an attorney, I would know how to read contracts, but that I hoped we could work it out and still have a great event. I also mentioned how unhappy I was that I was told the venue was wheelchair accessible when it wasn’t in fact the case.

I didn’t hear a peep from the venue for three days. When I did hear back, it was not exactly a nice response. Instead of Rhonda, I got Eric, her husband. (Apparently Rhonda and Eric own the ballroom and another ballroom together.) Eric basically told me that he was sorry I had such interpretations, but that the accessibility of the ballroom was self-evident and that he was confident I was aware of this. Additionally, he was confident I was aware of the terms of the contract, the ones he said were always in the “event order” but I still couldn’t find. He said that if I felt mislead, he was offering my deposit back, minus $500 for “sales staff time.”

Naturally, I freaked out. I was a bride, getting married in three months! What bride isn’t stressed out at that point, and completely caught up with the details of the wedding? Clearly, a venue switch would be the worst thing to happen to me, stress-wise. Still…I wasn’t willing to work with them anymore. Instead of apologizing, they had basically blamed me and said they did nothing wrong. If they had apologized, and were nice about it, I probably would have still held my event there.

I wanted my money back, so I tried to contact them to accept their offer to get my money back. They refused to return any phone calls, so after four or five from J, I sent them an email unequivocally accepting their offer. I still didn’t hear from them. I ended up going to find Eric, the owner of the ballroom, on a Friday afternoon, exactly 3 months before the wedding. Eric was…less than pleasant. He told me It was my loss, and when I informed him I wanted my money back, he sneered that he had 30 days to get it to me. I’m not sure this is entirely accurate, but I said whatever. Luckily, my coworker was with me and clarified that he meant he would PAY me in 30 days, right? He said he would get me my money. I then tried to show him the email where his WIFE wrote that the ballroom was wheelchair accessible. He looked at it, LAUGHED AT ME, and told me that it meant nothing. I could only look at him in disbelief. I turned around and walked out, because what else could I do? But not before Eric told me to “come back and try the new restaurant, it’s going to be great.” They were in the process of opening a new restaurant on the ground floor of the ballroom. There is NO WAY IN HELL I will ever patronize that restaurant.

Eric finally paid me, 33 days after he said he would. I ended up finding a new venue, and although I had to have my invitations reprinted, it was worth it. I have never been treated so poorly by a company that depends on customers and called a liar repeatedly. I have never been talked to so condescendingly. I would totally have still held my event at the ballroom if they were nice about it, which they chose not to be. In a way, I am glad it ended this way, because these are not the kind of people I want helping me put on one of the most important days of my life. I will always warn people away from the Arista Ballroom and the people who own it, who clearly do not care about what people think about them, or doing business the right way, or even having a good reputation for their business. They disgust me.

eee!

Look ...

there are so many of them...

and now they are on their way!

I am SO excited!

Well, I suppose I was due.

This weekend was the weekend of the massive freakout. It was set off by such a trivial thing...I had a bad experience at a bakery. You'd think that wasn't so bad, but all of a sudden I couldn't take it anymore. The bakery was in Sellwood. I cried in the car all the way past the tunnel on Sunset. I think the problem is there were too many bad things happening in quick succession...the venue incident, the realization that I had so much extra to do because of the new venue, the neverending list of things that needed to be addressed...it all was too much at that moment.

I am, however, one of those people who feels infinitely better once she has cried it out. So, I cried, I felt bad for myself for a bit...then I got back to work. What else can you do, you know? The stress is always going to be there, and wedding planning is always going to suck...but the wedding itself will be worth it in the end. It reminds me of how I went through bar study last summer. I held up pretty well most of the time, but I had one, colossal, huge freakout toward the end - complete with fleeing the law school, crying in my car, hyperventilating, the works - but ultimately, I sucked it up and got through it. And that's pretty much how I'm going to deal with wedding planning, because I'm pretty sure I'm never going to get back to a point where I think it's fun.

But once I pulled myself together, this weekend was actually pretty productive. J and I decided on our DJ, though we haven't put the deposit down yet... the guy didn't tell us who to make the check out for. My mom and my bridesmaid K came over this morning and helped me assemble all my invitations! There is still work to be done on them, but I can't do anything yet until I get some postcard stamps, which I'll do tomorrow. I'm hopeful that we'll get them out soon. Things keep rolling! Next weekend is another whirlwind of wedding activities. Hopefully productive ones too!

72 DAYS UNTIL THE WEDDING AHHHHHH!

*commence freaking out*

Long time no post! There's been a lot of drama in weddingland. Luckily, it's mostly been sorted out, and we are moving forward with the planning. Lots of you know the story, but I'm not going to write about it yet. You'll just have to wait. :)

But! I had one detail I did want to share with you. One of the things J and I wanted with the groomsmen was that we didn't want them to wear tuxes. We are not super formal people, so while our wedding does have formal touches here and there, we wanted the men to wear suits and not feel overdressed.

J was in his friend's wedding in March. His friend is also one of his groomsmen. Their wedding gave J and his friend the perfect time to take advantage of the Men's Wearhouse buy one, get one free sale. Apparently, Men's Wearhouse doesn't mind if the two suits are not for the same people. This was great, because J basically got his suit for half price!

Anyway, one idea I wanted to do was I wanted them all to wear similar ties. I really liked the idea of the boys wearing ties that looked close but weren't the same. So, a couple of weekends ago, J and I hit the mall to peruse the sales.

We went to all the big department stores, and all of them were having sales on their ties. I was pretty proud of myself for picking out the ties, because I didn't pull out the ones we'd bought to compare tie color.

They look really good! We haven't decided which tie will go to whom, but I'm pretty sure they will all look snazzy.
Don't the colors look neat? Additionally, we bought ties for the dads. We are having them wear gold ties. That ties (ha ha) all the colors together. I'm pretty excited to see them on the wedding day!

I've been blogged!

Check it out. Love it!

I've been doing pretty well getting wedding things accomplished lately. I wrote before about the "wedding funk" I was in. There wasn't really anything that jump-started my desire to finish planning this shindig, but there was definitely a sense of urgency resulting from the "HOLY CRAP FOUR MONTHS" realization I came to. There is so much to do with four months to go until the day, so it was important that I get my butt in gear.

This weekend was supposed to be the florist weekend, but the florist meeting I had got postponed until next weekend. Plus, my sister (who is my maid of honor) was in town. She is the one who designed the save-the-dates, so it was only fitting that we go to the invitation place to pick out our invitations instead!

My ideas about the invitations have been through many iterations. I initially was dead set on pocket invitations. I still love them. I just love how they have the inserts arranged all pretty within the invitation. I looked into them though, and for what I was wanting, they were really just too expensive. I probably still could have had them if I had compromised on some things, like the paper, and instead of having them made to make them myself, but I didn't.

We ended up designing a really pretty invitation that allowed me to use all the pretty iridescent papers that I loved. Instead of a pocket, it's just a long rectangular invite, but instead of having a 5x7 size that I've seen a lot, we made one that was long and skinny, more like 4x11. The best part about this design is we can use the graphic my sister made! I really love that graphic and I am really pleased we worked the whole thing in.

So yeah, we have the order put in! The proofs should be done in a week or so, so once we approve them, they will be printed. I am really excited! The design details will have to wait until the invitations actually hit the mail. Next week...the florist appointment. Hopefully I will have figured out an idea of what I want by then.

The wedding band has been purchased!

First of all, this isn't actually the only wedding band I've purchased. We actually purchased a different one prior to this. When we first started talking about wedding bands, I thought that all I wanted was a plain, white gold band. So that's what we got me. It was pretty, and most of all, it was cheap. However, once I started thinking about it, I realized that I kind of wanted something with a little bling to it. I like the idea of just wearing the wedding band if we travel, so I don't have to worry about my pretty engagement ring, but I didn't want to wear just a plain white gold band. I talked to J about it, and he said that it was probably okay to get something different if I wanted it, as we hadn't spent that much on the first band anyway.

If any of you have seen my engagement ring, you know that it's a cathedral setting with pave-set stones on both sides. When we walked into the store on Sunday, I was first looking for a pave-set band that would closely match the sides of my engagement ring. Since my ring did not come as a set, there is no matching band with the exact same pave-set stones. I tried on a bunch of rings with pave-set, channel set, and even prong set small diamonds all around the band. None of them matched the sides of my ring well enough. I knew that if I just bought one of those, I would end up hating that it didn't match my ring exactly.

I ended up looking for rings that would complement, but not match, my engagement ring. This one ring that caught my eye right off the bat was one that looked like a simple white gold band with some diamonds embedded every couple millimeters. I thought it looked nice, and thought it might go well with my ring.

And it did! I really liked the way it paired with my ring. Funnily enough, this ring was about half the price of the other rings I'd first tried on, so there was definitely some upselling tried on us. It didn't work though, because I think this band is absolutely perfect with my engagement ring. And here it is!

I am really excited about it. The only thing about it is it only comes in a standard size six, and my ring finger is a 5 1/4. We had to special order the ring, and apparently the jewelers are closed during the month of July. The special orders apparently take three months. This is cutting it rather close to our wedding day, but hopefully it will work out! I have my fingers crossed.

Hurray! The save the dates have gone out! Good thing too, because I was reaching the end of the window where it's not weird to receive a save the date. I am very happy to get those out the door.

My sister did the design of the save the date, and she is amazing. They look great. She even designed the custom graphic I have been totally in love with, which has been my one great idea of this whole wedding planning process. It ties together J's Irish heritage and my Chinese heritage.

(image redacted)

The only problem is, I didn't order enough. I also don't really think I should spend the money to order more, so what's been sent out is all I'm sending. Hopefully people will understand that not getting a save the date does not necessarily mean they are not invited to the wedding. We'll see! One more thing done!

The engagement photo shoot was a lot of fun! We met our fabulous photographer, April Greer, at Dragonfish in downtown Portland first. Since I am really uncomfortable having my photo taken, I was really going to need a drink before setting out. Luckily, Dragonfish has some delicious drinks which totally helped.

I'd originally planned on just wandering around either downtown or the Pearl, since I didn't know how far we'd probably go with the wandering. Surprisingly (to me), we really took most of our photos in about a three block radius of Dragonfish. The weather was oddly cooperative as well; even though it had been raining for a bit and really windy before we started taking photos, when we started really wandering around outside, the sun came out and stayed around for the rest of our session.

Not surprisingly, I don't really know how to pose and stuff for the camera. I still felt uncomfortable, despite my delicious drink. April was really great in that she totally gave us direction when J and I just kind of sat there and looked at each other. It was really helpful, especially when we felt really awkward taking photos in public. People really like to stare! Also, since they were engagment photos, it was kind of like just making out all around the city. Not terrible, but kind of awkward with people watching.

The funniest part of the afternoon was when we were taking some photos in the park blocks. April had J and me stand in the grass on this small hill, and as we were trying our best to look like a pair of lovebirds, this homeless-looking guy (girl?) wandered by and yelled at us, "get a room!" J and I just cracked up.

Also kind of funny about the day was that there was this couple taking wedding photos in the same area we were! I couldn't tell if it was the actual day of their wedding or it was a day-after shoot or anything. We took our photos on a Thursday, so it's likely that it was just a day-after shoot. After watching that couple's photographer (and stylist, who was following them around and positioning the couple and making sure the girl's dress fanned out properly...weird!), I am really glad we have April doing our photos. The other couple's photos seemed really weird and oddly posed. I'm sure they will turn out ok in print, but watching them being taken was a whole different matter. In any event, we made April promise not to make us take photos like some of the ones we saw. She said that was no problem, heehee.

Anyway, the photo session was great! We really felt less awkward as the time went on, and I think it will probably reflect in our photos. April told us it would probably be about two weeks for the proofs to be done, so I was really surprised and excited when she sent me a few sneak peeks on Friday! I posted a few below.

So there's our shoot! I am really excited to see the rest of the photos. April is the best photographer ever!

Hello! Guess what, another wedding thing is going to be taken care of tomorrow!

Tomorrow I'm taking a half day off of work, going to get my hair styled by my stylist, grabbing J and meeting our photographer downtown for our engagment photo session! I am super excited, as I love love love our photographer, and I am excited to see what kinds of places we will discover for photos. I am doubly happy because up until yesterday, the forecast for Thursday was showers. As of yesterday, though, the chance of rain is only 20%! And while it would have been nice to have Monday and Tuesday's gorgeous sunshine to take photos in, I have been informed that cloudy skies are actually best for photos as they diffuse the light. So, I guess I will take it.

I spent some time and money with my bridesmaid, K, on Sunday. We took our bank accounts to the cute boutiques on NW 23rd to find some engagment photo outfits. I definitely did my part to stimulate the economy, but I am not sure the stuff I found will work for the shoot. We will have to see how the weather shapes up tomorrow. In any event, I am sure I will find some cute things to wear. Too bad I haven't been following my diet, but oh well. Today's burrito was delicious, even if it wasn't waist-friendly.

I haven't done much planning with my venue lately because I just don't like communicating with them. Also, we heard from a family friend of J's that he thought our venue was up for renewal of their liquor license and it might be denied! Of course, that made me freak out, as most things do these days. However, with more digging around, it seems that the concert venue/bar below our wedding venue is the one that is up for its OLCC license renewal. I guess the neighborhood is unhappy with the drunk patrons from the bar that spill into the residential streets after shows, and are drunk and disorderly or start fights. Hopefully this will not affect our wedding venue! J has already called the coordinators and left a message, so we will see what they say.

Up next (hopefully soon!): flowers, cakes, and fittings! Oh my!

I know, I know! I'm a horrible blogger. It's been what, 1 1/2 months since I posted anything? And I came back with a post that said I'd be back soon? I know. All lies.

In my defense, wedding planning is hard! Nobody told me that I'd have such a whirlwind at first, collecting magazines, setting the date, booking the venue and photographer, selecting the dress, getting the bridesmaids...it was a lot in a short period! All I can say is I was spectacularly burned out after I got all that done. In fact, after the bridal show in January, I just wasn't interested in ANYTHING bridal related. It didn't help that my future mother-in-law was really into it, and I felt bad whenever she'd ask me what I had next to do and I'd brush the question off.

Anyway, the wedding planning has slowly been picking up momentum in the last few weeks. Unfortunately, since I work in public accounting, it has also coincided with the last few weeks of busy season (april 15 is coming soon!). Thus, I haven't been able to do all the planning I want to because my weekends are full of work. Still, I've managed to get some things done.

I picked up the dress this past Saturday! It's just as beautiful as I remember it, which is super exciting. I've been having worries that I didn't remember my dress and would hate it! But luckily, I still love it. Now it just needs to be altered. Also, all my accessories came in with it, so I can finally schedule my hair trials with my tiara and veil!

We also finally got the Save the Dates sent out to be printed! I won't post what they look like yet because, obviously, people haven't gotten them or seen them yet. But I will try to post a pic when we finally get them out. They'll be going out behind schedule, but oh well. I love them; they are great! My awesomely talented sister designed them for me, and they incorporate both my Asian heritage and J's family's Irish background. I love it.

In the next few weeks, I hope to schedule some florist consultations, a hair trial, and maybe a makeup trial! Ooh, and our engagement photos are scheduled for two weeks from now. It's all very exciting! Hopefully I won't burn out again. Not much time left for that!

How have you all been doing while I was bumming around?

centerpiece inspiration

I've been taking a mental break from wedding decor lately. Not only is it not my forte, but I don't have strong opinions on anything so I can't really make decisions about the decor easily. I've written about flowers/centerpieces before, I know. But, what if we didn't do floral centerpieces?

I previously posted a Weddingbee photo from Mrs. Avocado's centerpieces. They're super cute, but the more I look at them, the more I don't think they tie to the feeling of our wedding. They're more vintage than I think our wedding is going to be.

I've collected a few photos of decor we might be able to pull off. Anyone have any thoughts?

I really really like that one in the bottom row in the middle. The floating flowers in the water filled candle look really neat! I think the floating candle within the vase also adds something nice. However, I tried to do a submerged flower type thing with a tulip. The tulip didn't stay down because it was too buoyant. I'm not sure what florists do to keep the flowers down, but I'm pretty sure I won't be able to recreate that on my own. The other candle ideas in the photos are pretty as well.

Flowers mixed with candles in holders of varying heights and widths. This one is cute as well. I don't know how expensive it would be though for all those candles and glass to put the candles in.

Candles tied together wtih a ribbon. This is pretty and modern. Also would be pretty inexpensive, as there are only three tall pillar candles and some small votives. J and I have already purchased three dozen votive candle holders, as we found them on sale for super cheap. We could use purple or gold ribbon to tie our colors into the decor.

My current favorite. These paper flowers are super easy to make, and branches can be found anywhere random, like parks. The only thing I'm still pondering is in what kind of vessel the branches could be displayed? I'm not sure what sort of vase or bottle would be asian-ey or irish-ey.

I'm still totally uninspired for bloggy topics. So, here's a meme. I got tagged by Emily at Starting in the Basement. I miss Emily, Portland needs to give her a job so she can come back here. The rules were to post five things you love about yourself and five things you hate. However, I hate tagging people, so if you want to do this meme too, feel free.

Love me don't

1. I hate my inability to work out. I get depressed when I think that I'm not going to be all buff for my wedding (when have I been buff in my life? never.), but I can't force myself to go to the gym. I have some gym disconnect.
2. I get irritated very easily. I yell too much at incompetent drivers, I flip people off at will, I will go on and on about how something pisses me off. I think I need to learn a little zen.
3. I have champagne tastes on a beer budget. This is a problem when i want too many things.
4. I am incapable of making small talk without some sort of boozy confidence.
   
5. I can be incredibly lazy about some things. I have a necklace I want to return to Banana Republic that I've had for two weeks now. I still haven't returned it. I work in the same building as Banana Republic. I am that lazy.
   

Love me do

1. I think I am a very thoughtful person. I always try to remember birthdays and other special occasions.
2. I like my hair, mostly. It's naturally straight and silky.
3. I'm an excellent baker and pretty decent cook.
4. I have an excellent work ethic.
5. I can laugh at myself. I find myself hilarious.

And with that, I'm all inspiration'ed out. This list was harder than I thought it would be!

hi guys. I promise I haven't abandoned the blog! I've just been ridiculously busy and not all that energetic about wedding planning. Unfortunately, the busyness isn't likely to stop anytime soon. I guess that's the perils of working in the public accounting field. Busy season lasts until April!

I haven't made much progress on the wedding planning front. I've been kind of burned out again, so I've been taking a break for a week or so to get back into the groove. But I've been thinking a lot about details this week, so the planning will commence soon, hopefully. My sister (and maid of honor) has been busy designing my save the dates too. Those will be revealed at a later date.

Hope all is well! More details coming soon!

Last weekend was very productive in terms of wedding-related tasks. We managed to show J's parents the ballroom, which they hadn't seen before. They both thought the ballroom was very pretty and it would be a beautiful place for our wedding.

We did have one problem with the ballroom, though. I had been previously told that the ballroom was wheelchair accessible, but upon inquiring again I was informed that the ballroom is not, in fact, wheelchair accessible. This wouldn't be a problem except that J has an aunt that is mostly confined to a wheelchair. I am pretty sure we wouldn't be able to get her chair into the ballroom. This is kind of a problem if she chooses to come to the wedding. I am not sure what to do about it at this point, but I feel awful about it. I am a bit upset at the ballroom for telling me one thing when it wasn't really true, but what can I do now, I suppose. I really hope this works out.

My last bridesmaid also picked out her dress this weekend, so the dresses are all ordered! I am pretty excited about this, as two of my bridesmaids may be inaccessible this summer, so the earlier the dresses come in, the better since they can get them altered earlier. Interestingly, no two girls picked the same dress. I wouldn't have cared if they did, but it is kind of fun that they will all have different dresses. Only one dress has a sash too, which will be in a contrasting color. Still, I like the choices my girls have made. They will look very pretty on the wedding day. (Yes, I will eventually get around to doing the bridesmaid post!)

Additionally, J and I asked one of our friends to be our officiant. J and I had never really wanted to hire someone to officiate our wedding. One, it costs money, and two, the person just won't know us as well. It was really important to both J and me that whoever married us knew both of us as people and as a couple. Unfortunately, most of the people we see are either friends of mine or friends of his, and we don't have a lot of friends that fall into the overlap category. Most of those are also in the wedding! However, we ended up asking N, my roommate from law school, to officiate. She has known both of us for the two and a half years that she and I were friends in law school and has seen both of us together a lot, as J would come down to visit me a lot in Eugene. J and I are both super excited for her to officiate our wedding (though we had to tell her no rapping and no poetry. :) No Mandarin poetry/rapping either.). I am sure she will do a great job.

The bridal show was very informative. I ended up inviting J's mom to go with me, since I wanted to get her more involved a bit and I needed help with bouquet ideas and other flower ideas. I think she had a great time going through all the booths with me and looking at all the wedding stuff, and we found some really nice sample bouquets at the show that I really liked.

Oddly, one of the bouquets I liked the most was made of purple kale! Not even a flower. I hadn't ever heard of people making bouquets out of vegetables, but the bouquet looked really nice and had the added benefit of being really sturdy. We ended up seeing the bouquet being used in the bridal fashion show (no cowboy fashions this year!), and it looked really pretty. Another bouquet I liked paired white hydrangeas with purple alstromerias, which looked pretty and unique. Also, both hydrangeas and alstromerias are relatively inexpensive (I think), which would be good for my pocketbook. When it comes to flowers, I think my motto right now is cheap is better, as long as it looks good. No carnations-and-baby's-breath bouquets for me.

We also got some good ideas for favors. I had previously decided I didn't want any favors if they were just something to have, because most favors are useless anyway and guests leave them at the venue by the bucketload. We saw this guy with tiny jars of jam, though. I really liked this idea because we could just buy a bunch of tiny jars in bulk, and make our own jam from berries picked over the summer! I liked this idea because it was more personal and would let us give our guests something that was quintessentially Oregon. I think we might do either Marionberry (depending on the marionberry season) or Oregon strawberry for the jam, or both. That might be fun.

As far as I know, I didn't win anything, but oh well. The show was productive and that was all I was looking for. Hopefully some of these new ideas help me out later!

I am going to the Portland Bridal show this weekend. This bridal show makes the third or fourth one I've been to, including the one I went to before we got engaged where I pretended my pink sapphire ring was an engagement ring so Colleen could have some cake. To be honest, I'm kind of tired of bridal shows. There's just a lot of people talking about weddings! and fluffy things! and on my god you NEED a videographer! and it all kind of gets old. Plus, there are a good number of crazy bridezillas who will shove you out of the way to look at a display.

No, the main reason I am going is to collect information on some vendors. I am still missing some crucial ones, such as a florist, someone to do my invitations, and other various little things I keep forgetting. I used to have a lot of brochures from the various bridal shows I have been to, but at one point in the past year I up and threw the whole stack out because I couldn't for the life of me remember why I was keeping it. Now I remember. I needed some info out of it.

It shouldn't be all bad, though. I am going with one of my bridesmaids, K, who is also getting married in August. Incidentally, I am her maid of honor! So we should have a good time seeing what the other wants for her wedding.

Additionally, J REALLY wants me to go, if nothing to just enter to win more things. Oh, I forgot to tell you? Back in the fall, I went to the Rose City Bridal show and entered to win a bunch of stuff, as one does when one goes to bridal shows. This time though, I actually won something! I won a $2000 credit to use for catering for a party from Catering by Bo, who own the Typhoon! restaurants. Very tasty. I am pretty excited about this prize, and I think J and I are going to use it for a joint bachelor/bachelorette party with lots of booze. Free booze! and Thai food! It doesn't get much better. Anyway, yeah. Now that I won that, he wants me to enter more drawings. Let's face it though, I am not winning twice.

Over the holidays, many of my bridesmaids were actually in Portland. That meant it was a perfect time for some decisions about bridesmaid dresses!

I thought long and hard about what kinds of dresses I wanted my girls to wear. Once I'd picked my girls, It was pretty apparent I wouldn't be able to pick one dress for them all to wear. Each of them has a different body shape, so it would be hard to pick one that worked with all of them.

With that in mind, I decided to go the everyone wears a different dress route. I picked the designer (Alfred Angelo) and the color (grape), and told them to all pick satin dresses. So far, I have two down and two to go, but hopefully I will have them all picked out soon. I love the two dresses that have been picked so far. I'm pretty excited about it.

I will have to devote a post to introducing my girls at one point.

Wedding 1/10 was a lot of fun! I drank, danced, ate some food (the marie-friendly parts), and generally had a good time. I really hope my wedding is that fun.

The wedding was for one of the daughters of one of J's family friends. Unfortunately, the thing about that was that the whole group of friends kept mentioning that J and I were next and that his family was the next one with the weddings (J's brother is getting married a month after we are). Unfortunately, I don't think we can invite everyone that was there! :( We are limited on the number of people we can invite to the wedding. J's brother and his fiancee are also limited on the number they can invite, because they're having a destination wedding. This means more will likely try to come to ours because they can't make both, and ours is local.

Sigh. The guest list has got to be one of the worst parts about wedding planning. It's like ranking your friends! I'm hoping I will get to invite all my friends, but at this point, I don't know. Between J's and my families, we have a lot of people. I have a lot of various friends from different stages in my life as well, so that adds more people. I believe we have decided to limit +1s, which will help numbers, but still. It's a horrible process to go through, and I keep hoping it works itself out.

Beyond that, though, the wedding was fun, I got some ideas from what the bride and groom chose to do, and some things that I don't want to do, so all in all I would say the wedding was a success!

Hi y'all. So, we've had some interesting weather around here the past few weeks...mostly in the form of a foot+ of snow, which NEVER happens. I can't recall a time in my childhood where Portland had that much snow, or the city shut down for a whole week. We're just not equipped for that. The week before Christmas break was spent mostly working from home, in an effort to not get stuck in the snow. J works across the street from where we live, so he had no such luxury...his office refused to shut down, so he walked to work. Thank goodness we bought new snow boots the Saturday before the snow started to fall!

It's been pretty clear here for about a week. Sure, there are piles of former-snow-turned-ice all around, but for the most part the ground is clear of snow. I woke up this morning to a nice dusting all over the ground. Normally, I would be happy to see some snow, as we rarely get any, but lately it's just been a nuisance. I just get annoyed. I think I would feel better if Portland were more prepared for snow that falls, instead of all the roads closing and us getting stranded places.

Anyway, this made me think of weather-related incidents that may happen on wedding days. As my wedding is in September, the likelihood of snow is quite low, but it is Portland, after all...we may get rained on. I hope it won't be that big of a deal, but I would like to take my wedding photos outside, and I don't want the hem of my dress getting THAT dirty. Rain would definitely make a ton of mud to besmirch my dress. Luckily, our ceremony and reception will be inside, and both will be at the same location, so we won't have to worry about troubles in transportation.

J and I are attending a wedding tomorrow (first of 10 for the year). I can't even imagine what must be going through the bride's head right now...waking up to MORE snow on the ground. I know she was having difficulties in the last few weeks getting stuff together, because she couldn't get around in the snow, and many of her vendors weren't open due to the snow. I'm sure everything will work out for her in the end, but yeah...keeping my fingers crossed that I won't have to deal with that kind of anxiety!