No, I am not handing in my Man Card just yet...

Larissa is making me write this entry while she makes dinner.

Ok, so... The "biggie" planning pieces are all taken care of, so we are free to pursue the smaller details at our leisure.  At least for the time being.  Our plan for after dinner is to have everyone back to the lake for cake (Sugar Mountain cupcakes???), drinks, snacks and to relax for the evening.  We're renting a tent, 4 tables and a bunch of chairs.  We decided we wanted to create some sort of centerpieces for the 4 tables, partially as a fun DIY project and to make everything feel more special, too.

We weren't totally sure what direction we would go in. We knew we wanted bright colors.  A few weeks ago we picked up a bunch of small, tropical-ish candles from Bath & Body Works, and we had come across some matching place mats at Bed Bath & Beyond too.  So that would become the base.  We just needed the rest of it.

Recently, we've been watching A LOT of wedding shows, mainly via Netflix streaming.  So we've seen lots of other people's weddings; from the small to the gigantic, to the traditional to the bizarre.  Consciously or subconsciously we've also been forming opinions and ideas while watching these shows.  Last night Larissa had sort of an, "Aha! moment" in which she decided on Gerber daisies as our flower of choice.  We decided they're fitting for the casual informality of our small summer wedding, and they come in lots of bright colors.  They'll be making an appearance in Larissa's bouquet, my boutonniere and the centerpieces.

So today we decided to build a prototype centerpiece.  The vases and such will have to be purchased in Rochester, as it's impractical to fly them back east after buying them here.  We found a square vase and some artificial daisies in the right colors.  To finish it off we discovered these little pellets that turn into gel-like clear balls when you soak them in water.  Add in a submersible LED light and you've really got something.

Below is a picture of what we came up with.  We're pretty damn proud of it, given neither of us have any experience with this type of thing.  Ok... That's enough of that.  She can write the next entry. :-p

~T

I said Yes to a Dress!

While Say Yes to the Dress recently has been one of my favorite shows, mostly because I can’t believe how much people spend on their dresses, dress shopping was not one of the things I was really looking forward to. I’m not a fan of dresses, though now that I’ve lost weight I do find myself occasionally wearing more skirts and the such. Since we are having a very informal, casual wedding and it’s outside, I wasn’t looking a fancy dress. I was really trying to find something more in the line of a sun dress but after showing Tim a few ideas I had (linen/cotton flowy dresses from Old Navy or Gap), we decided to go a bit more formal than that. The problem is that there are very few options between casual day dress and formal wedding dress. I was debating waiting until stores started to get in their spring/summer dresses but by that point I was more on board with something a bit more traditional and I knew if I was going to go that route I had to get my dress soon!

So I went ahead and made an appointment at David’s Bridal. While I wanted to go a bit more traditional, I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a dress I’ll wear once and figured after looking online that DB had some options in my price range. I had printed out a few I wanted to try, the more informal styles (no train, tea lenth, simple) and headed to the store solo. I wanted to go in by myself because I had no idea what I was looking for and first wanted to get some sort of idea before I asked others to join and I’m glad I did.

I got to the store a bit early and took that time to look through the catalog. The problem with many of the dresses I liked that I saw online was that the were only available online but I was hoping to either find something similar in the store or at least get an idea of size (since these dress run so darn small!) so I could order the right size online. I had only one other experience at David’s Bridal back when I was getting my bridesmaid dress for a friend’s wedding and it wasn’t that great but figured it was because I was only getting a bridesmaid dress and wasn’t part of a bridal party in the store. I was hoping this was going to be different but it didn’t seem like it was going to be in the beginning.

I guess watching too much Say Yes to the Dress sort of swayed me on how this was suppose to go down. I sort of expected to sit down with the consultant first and go over things like budget, type of wedding style. But when my consultant came to see me we sort of stood in a corner and I explained the little I did know about what I wanted but when she didn’t ask anything about my price point or the style of wedding, I offered that up to help her out. I was quickly whisked into one of the side dressing rooms (I still don’t know what you have to do to get one of the central rooms on the “stage”) and she grabbed me some undergarments and went off to find some dresses. I really hate how the dressing rooms don’t have any mirrors in them so you are forced to leave them in order to use the wall of mirrors everywhere else. What if there’s a dress that looks so bad, I don’t want others to see :-P The first few that I tried on were more of the flowy styled dresses. They didn’t look too bad and they didn’t look to nightgowny (which Tim’s not a fan of). Then she brought over some of the tea length gowns, which again weren’t bad and I definitely noted a few of them as possibilities. Now the one thing I seemed to be doing with each dress that had it was pointing out the little bit of sparkly that it might have, a beaded broach here or beaded embellishment there and my consultant definitely picked up on it. I guess I’m not hard to read when it comes to things I like. So we moved onto the last style I was interested in trying, the A-line. There was one simple, no trained a-line I liked that had a bit of ruching to it. I put it on and when I stepped in front of the mirrors I wasn’t hugely impressed. It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great either. That’s when my consultant said she had brought a surprise and she pulled out a sash that had some beading to it. I at first thought she was crazy to suggest a sash with a dress with ruching but boy was I wrong. It completely made the dress and I had that moment. I felt and looked stunning. It was a tear filled moment, like I see on TV all the time but I definitely felt like out of all the dresses I’d tried on this was it and I didn’t want to try anything else on. The sash she had brought over was a cream color but I asked if it came in any colors which she said it came in any color I wanted. While waiting for her to get the dresses, I had been looking around the store and noticed some pursed that were dyed to match the bridesmaid dresses they carry and two colors (one a bright blue and one jewel toned green) really stood out to me. So I asked her if I could see the dress with a blue sash as I knew Tim would like that one more and it went more with our theme of bright colors. That colored sash sealed the deal. Or so I thought . . .

I gather all the info on that dress such as price and headed home totally in love. But as my brain tends to do, I started going over the figures. While the dress was pretty much in budget, the sash brought it over the number I was looking to spend and then there was the possibility of alterations. The dresses I had been trying on weren’t my size and she had just clamped them on to give me an idea so I had no idea how much alterations would be needed. So of course I began to worry about the cost and as the days passed and I began to forget the wonderful feelings the dress inspired, I decided to just check out another store to make sure this was indeed the dress.

In a town called Wahoo, there is a bridal outlet store. Why there is a bridal outlet store in this small town I have no idea but it’s only 40 minutes away and no dress in the entire places is out of my budget. So I didn’t even have to worry about looking at the price tag. Since I had a better idea of what I liked and wanted I decided to invite some friends along. Only one could make it but it was nice having someone there. The store was rather busy so I was glad Missy was along to help me into the dresses. There was a large selection to go through and boy can those dresses be a pain to move and sort through but I was able to find a couple to try. The last one that I tried on, I really liked. It was the style I wanted and it had some wonderful beading detail to it. Missy was smart enough to remember her camera and she took some pictures. I went home slightly confused as I really liked this dress but I wasn’t sure which I liked more.

I made another appointment for DB to see the other dress and invited Missy and Becca along. This time Becca could make it but Missy couldn’t. I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t have someone who would have seen both dresses but in the end it didn’t matter. The day before the appointment, Missy sent the pictures of the beaded dress and while it looked nice, I wasn’t thrilled with how I looked in the dress but then again I didn’t have the proper undergarments on. So I was confused and worried, I wouldn’t know what to do. I sent the pictures to my family and they all seemed to like it.

When I went to David’s Bridal, I slowly realized that my first consultation, where I had one on one personal service was the rarity at DB. My second appointment was not as great at first because it took a while for my consultant to bring me the one dress I was there to try on as she had other brides she was helping too. Again glad I had Becca to help me into the dress. Once I finally got it on again, I knew hands down that was the dress. It just made me feel stunning. So I have officially found the dress! It is ordered and should be here in April. The best part is this time I tried it on in the correct size and it looks like I won’t need any alterations as it fits so well. It might be a little hot for an outdoor wedding in July but that’s what fans are for!

Divide & Conquer

Pardon if my entry is wrought with typos... My arms are still shaking from my first pre-wedding workout.

As Larissa mentioned in her previous post, in order to not go crazy and accomplish more in a short amount of time, we decided to sort of "divide and conquer" on some of the research that goes into many of the major components of our wedding.  She took lead on photographers, it was my job to find someone to marry us.

The internet really is a wonderful thing.  I shudder to think at how much more difficult all of this would be without the world wide web.  By simply Googling "Rochester NY wedding officiant" I was provided with an adequate range of choices.  Getting married outside in nature rather than in a house of worship offers us many more choices than a traditional religious-based ceremony.  We knew what we did not want, and we knew we wanted choices and flexibility, but beyond that it was sort of up in the air.  I found websites for a few officiants who looked super-flexible as to what they would include in their ceremonies, and who would travel to the Finger Lakes.  As responses started flowing in to my inbox I realized officiants must be one of the first things people book, as many had no availability for our date that was only 6 months in advance.

One of the first I contacted, however, said she could perform a ceremony as late as 2:30 pm on our targeted date.  After a few negative responses from other options we decided to set up a Skype call with her.  Unfortunately, the tech gods did not smile on us and the officiant couldn't get her mic to work, so it turned into a simple phone call rather quickly.  Reverend Kris has been doing this for many years and has a super-cool website with a TON of options of readings, poems etc, along with a basic outline of how the ceremony should/could flow.  It's up to us to sort of "plug in" readings and ceremonies that we like to make it all truly our own.  Then she'll take our draft, offer suggestions, and make it all flow together nicely.  Larissa checked out a ton of books from the library regarding wedding readings (who knew there were books full of just poems, quotes, sonnets, and readings on love and marriage?!).  So there's no shortage of possible material.

We're also looking at some sort of "unity ceremony" as well.  There's this handfasting thing that i had never heard of, but is really cool.  There are also ceremonies that involve pouring wine or sand together to signify marriage.

So now we're in the process of finding readings that are "us".  Good thing we've got some time.  Have any good ideas for quotes/readings/song lyrics?  Post them in a comment!

Check out Reverend Kris' website to see what we have to work with.

~T

The whirlwind of planning. . .

With the basic idea of what we wanted to do figured out, we quickly had to start nailing certain things down. We identified a few of the things we needed to get figured out ASAP as in the wedding world it seems like 6 months is rather last minute to book certain things. The first two things we knew we needed to nail down was who was going to marry us and who was going to capture the day. We decided to divide the task for the searching process, I grabbed photography and Tim hunted for an officiant.

Photography was something we knew we want but also something that after an initial internet search proved to be a bit more tricky than we thought. There were tons of photographers out there to choose from but they all offered way more than we wanted and were willing to pay for. It seemed insane to pay more for photography than anything else we'd be spending and we certainly don't need a full-day or 10 hours of photography. We are really just interested in a few hours for the ceremony and some family/couple portraits and we wanted the images so that we could print albums and the such.

After lots of digging around I just wasn't coming up with anything and so I turned to the wedding forums for help. The best recommendation I got was to check craigslist which I would never have thought of. After a short time browsing the events section, I had come up with a list of around 5-6 photographers that seemed like they'd be able to provide what we wanted and for a decent price. After looking through their sites with Tim and checking their availability, we narrowed it down to 3.

I arranged phone calls with each of them and I was rather nervous about the whole process. I had never tried to hire a photographer before it and trying to do it over the phone (both Tim and I hate talking on phones) just added to the weirdness. The first woman we contacted was extremely friendly and out-going. And we went away with all of our questions answered and really great feeling about it. But being the first person we've called, of course we wanted to see what the others were going to be like.

Tim ended up having to talk to the 2nd photographer on his own and the conversation didn't really leave him feeling like he wanted to work with the guy. First when Tim called him at the arranged time, it went to voice mail and the guy didn't call him back for 40 minutes. Then it really seemed like this guy really did it all on the side and seemed to care more about being able to get back to spending time with his family than capturing our big day. We liked his photos the most but after the call we decided to not even bother pursuing this option.

The last woman was also super nice and we really liked her photographs but we just didn't get the same sort of feel from her as we did the first one. She was rather quiet and soft spoken and while we at first liked her pictures a bit more, we really liked the first photographer's vibe more. Tim had already sort of decided in his mind that he wanted to go with the first photographer and I was leaning that way too but decided that since the bridal forums were such a help I'd ask if anyone had any opinions on both of them. I didn't get any response about the first photographer but a few people had mentioned meeting with the second and while they loved her work and her, they felt she was a bit too soft-spoken/shy and worried she wouldn't be able to handle wrangling and working with these brides large,loud, energetic family. While we don't want any one who is going to be pushy we do need someone who is comfortable getting people in order as we will sort of be on small deadline to get these poses done.

So we decided to go with the first photographer Sonia Maria Photography and since her smallest package is 5 hours, I'll be able to have her around to get some getting ready shots as well. We just got her contract and it will be heading off in the mail on Tuesday. :)

Yet to do . . .

Write the entire ceremony script

Figure out the timing/agenda for the wedding weekend

Figure out grooms attire

Figure out and order bouquet

Figure out and order cake

Figure out and book hair and nail appointments

Figure out and get lights, decorations, centerpiece, etc

Order finger food for informal gathering afterwards

Book rental car for honeymoon

And a whole bunch of other things I'm sure I'm forgetting :)

Accomplished!

Date & time picked- Check!
Ceremony venue- Check!
Officiant- Check!
Photographer- Check!
Dinner location & menu- Check!
Wedding dress- Check!
Wedding bands- Check!
Wedding weekend lodging- Check!
Flights (wedding & honeymoon)- Check!
Honeymoon location- Check!
Honeymoon lodging- Check!

Not bad for 1 month's work...

~T

Who Cares What Color the Napkin Rings Are? I Just Want to Marry You!

Holy cow planning a wedding is a lot of work.

Our original plan right off the bat was to do a whole traditional ceremony & reception here in Omaha because... That's what I thought we would do? I had not spent much time picturing my wedding in the past, but I guess I had always assumed it would be fairly traditional with all the expected bits & pieces. So that's where we started.

After attending a local bridal fair and taking a good hard look at the logistics (and finances) involved in planning a big fancy wedding, neither of us were too excited about it. It was something we would do, but seemed incredibly daunting and overwhelming. So we started discussing alternatives.

What we came up with was a super-small ceremony at my parents' place on Keuka Lake, followed by dinner at a local restaurant, followed by hanging out back at the lake for cake, drinks & conversation. We were both REALLY excited about this scenario as we talked about it and fleshed it out, so I'm confident we made the right decision. Also, since we're now headed the small/informal route, we decided our initial time line of spring/summer 2012 was more time than we needed, so we began targeting July of this year instead.

Because of the nature and location of our wedding, it forced us to make some tough decisions regarding the guest list. We're basically sticking with immediate family and just a couple friends. In an effort to include more people in the festivities we're inviting anyone in Rochester to The Old Toad on the Thursday night before the wedding for an unofficial bachelor/bachelorette party. For Larissa' extended family in New Jersey we'll be flying out there in the fall for an informal gathering so I can get a chance to meet them all.

So that's the plan. We got engaged on January 18, 2011 and we'll be married on July 23, 2011. A wedding in six months? Sure, why not!

We've actually got a lot of the major planning done already, but that's for another post.

~T

The Proposal (his side)

The thought of proposing to Larissa had been in the back of mind for quite a while... All the way back to last summer, really. I told myself I would wait until after Chris & Lara's wedding, and most likely until the winter of 2011.

Somewhere around New Year's Larissa & I started "informally" talking wedding; what we want out of a ceremony, what sort of setting/venue we envision. It was fun to think about, but to me it got me thinking, "Hm... I better do something about this sooner rather than later." She was obviously at least somewhat ready for it, and it had already been in the back of my mind for months. So I started browsing for rings online. I was unsure of when I would be able to go shopping without her (we rarely go out sans-one another on the weekends). I knew it would be fishy if I requested a solo shopping trip.

Then in mid-January I ended up with 2 snow days off from school. The 2nd day really wasn't bad weather-wise at all, so I took advantage of the unsupervised time to go shopping. In the span of a couple hours I hit-up every jewelry store in WestRoads Mall. I quickly learned which store seemed the nicest and willing to help me out. I knew more-or-less what I was after... Larissa isn't that in to diamonds, and she absolutely LOVES sapphires. My ideal ring was a white gold band with a sapphire in the middle with a smaller diamond on either side of it. At Brodkey's I found almost exactly what I had been picturing. Along with having what I was looking for, they were super-nice and took the time to show me a bunch of different options. Other stores were like, "Sapphire? Are you SURE you don't want a diamond?" So in the course of one afternoon I bought an engagement ring.


Part 1 was done. As for how I was going to present it, that would take a bit more effort. For Christmas both my brothers had given photo books as gifts. This got my brain working. I decided I would make a photo book of all the time Larissa & I had spent together, going all the way back to UB. On the last page was a picture of the ring with the words, "Will you marry me?" It took the afternoons of both snow days plus a bit more time to put it together. I ordered it, and intending to present it to her with the ring on our 18 month anniversary, January 27.

The book arrived 9 days before our anniversary. As you've already read, I just couldn't wait. By that time I had already been sitting on the ring for a week, and felt like my head was going to explode with anticipation. It didn't help that weddings were a frequent topic of conversation between us, and it seemed the plot of every TV show we sat down to watch somehow involved a wedding...

Larissa bringing home that bridal magazine was the last straw. I was still trying to hold off. I felt like waiting would make it more meaningful, or something. I don't know. But her going into the spare bedroom in search of chocolate (which was basically right where the ring & book were) gave me a good reason to go ahead with it.

It took her forever to go through that darn book... With each flip of the page I knew what we were getting closer to. I'm a pretty fidgety guy in general, but at that point I could barely sit still, and my heart was pounding. So she got to the last page, I pulled out the real ring, and there we go. "Tim Krayer has updated his relationship status to 'Engaged'!"

What you think you want, isn’t always what you want.

Well prior to the engagement we had actually been talking lots about our ideal weddings. So it’s no surprise that we had a fair idea of what we’d like rather quickly after it happened. Our idea was a rather traditional/typical wedding with a ceremony some place (perhaps outside) and the reception at a hall of some sorts here in Omaha. We’d invite the whole crew as basically the list of everyone we’ve ever known and would possibly think of inviting to a wedding was only around 100 people.

We set a realistic date of June/July 2012 and fortunately enough there was a Bridal Fair that first weekend. It was definitely fun walking around to the vendors and getting ideas and inspiration (who knew the local grocery store could make such nice cakes and floral arrangements!) and we were absolutely shocked at the price of photography! All in all it was a good day and it didn’t stress me out because I knew we had plenty of time.

Then I called my parents and began filling them in on the ideas we had. My biggest concern was my grandmother, I wasn’t sure if she’d be able to fly out here or not. The verdict was no she can’t fly but my mom was willing to drive her out here (a 2 day drive each way!). That really got me thinking about our plans. Sure it would be fun to have a big traditional wedding (though neither of us like to dance and the reception would be less dancing and more fun/games) but what was really important at least to me was to have the people I love there and what we started to realize after talking to both our parents was that if we had it out here most of our family probably wouldn’t be able to attend. So then we began considering doing this on the east coast but the idea of planning something big and formal from far away was not only daunting but somewhat disappointing. If we were going to spend all this energy and money on a wedding, I wanted to be visiting the venues and trying cakes and picking out flowers, not having to pass the few “fun” things over to other people. It was just going to be too stressful for me.

When we first started day dreaming about weddings, I had thrown out what had been one of my favorite ideas for a wedding, something small and low-key. A friend of mine had done something that I just loved. She got married at a local park with her family and friends and then went to a restaurant afterwards to celebrate. But when discussing this prior, Tim wanted something a bit more festive/formal. But now here we were, not knowing what to do. We could either have a wedding out here that most of the people we cared about couldn’t attend, attempt to not get stressed out by handing over our wedding to family and friends to plan or find another alternative. To me the most important thing was to have my grandmother there so we began discussing the small, informal park/restaurant idea and I was trying to come up with places that could work in NJ. Tim then mentioned that his parents had offered their lake cottage as a location and the more we talked about it, the more the idea really grew on us. It was in driving distance for my family so my grandmother could make it and it was a beautiful location that had lots of meaning for Tim and for me too.

And like a switch, everything changed. Our big, semi-fancy wedding turned into a small, intimate gathering of loved ones with a laid back, informal celebration afterwards. We figured if we are doing something smaller and less formal why wait so long and so we looked at this summer for the wedding. After a bit of working through options, we landed on the date July 23, 2011. And so now the planning stage begins . . .

The Proposal (her side)

It was a Tuesday evening, January 18th to be precise. Tim and I had been informally discussing ideal wedding things for a while but for some reason lately we had been discussing it more. That day at work I saw a bunch of copies of NE Wedding Day magazine in the admin hall, I gather because we are listed in there as a wedding vendor, so I grabbed one. That night when I got home I proudly showed Tim my score only to met with a groan. I had thought that I had finally crossed a line with the pretend wedding planning and he apologized for his horrible reaction. The night continued on and after dinner he turned to me and said you know that secret project I’ve been working on, well it’s done and I was going to wait until our anniversary next week but I’m having a hard time waiting. I stupidly told him, he should wait since he planned to do it next week. I knew he was working on something and figured it was for our anniversary but wasn’t sure what it was.

So we went back to watching TV. Now I love chocolate but shouldn’t eat a lot of it and to help with portion control, I have Tim hide the chocolate in his room and when I want some I ask him for a piece and only a piece. Well he’s not that great at hiding things and I know where his stashes are (I know defeats the purpose of the plan) so I decided I wanted a piece and started heading back to his room letting him know that I was going for chocolate and asked if he wanted one. All of a sudden he freaks out and was like “No, don’t go in there!” which surprised me. So I asked him to get me chocolate and sat on the couch.

A few minutes later he appears with chocolate and more. He hands me a photobook and explains that this is the secret project he had been working on. So we sit down, I eat chocolate and start flipping through the book (I’ll let him share the link) . It’s filled with photographs going all the way back to our college time and all our trips and moments in between. Then I get to the last page and it says “Will you marry me?” with a picture of a ring. I turn to look at him and see he has the ring right there. Being taken completely for surprise, I then proceed to call him a punk multiple times and eventually he asks if that means yes, which of course it does. There is crying of course because it’s me and more calling him a punk. At least then I could understand his reaction to the magazine ;) We then proceeded to call family and friends who for the most part weren’t all that surprised. And so the next chapter begins . . .

FIRST!

I would like to take this opportunity to gloat a bit and point out that I was the first one to post on this blog. ;-)

What can you expect to see here?  Well, hopefully a semi-regularly updated step-by-step process of everything that goes into the planning and execution of our wedding.  As an added bonus you'll get to view it all from both of our perspectives.  We've already found out that the two of us have very different "wedding planning saturation" thresholds where we have to take a step back and say, "No more for today!"  Should be a good time.

We will have to begin by backing up a bit and reflecting on the proposal and planning that has occurred thus far.  Look for that coming soon.


~Tim