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!