Have hit the horrible boring stage

People warned me that this would happen but I don't think I believed them since we are doing this whole thing in 6 months, but it did. I'm at the stage where there's really nothing that has to get done or that we should even really do. The first month or two was full of forming ideas, hunting down vendors, making decisions. And now that it's all planned and settled, there's not much that can be done right now. Sure I can play around with ideas and look at pictures of things like hairstyles but there are no decisions to make. All that stuff really has to wait at least another month and really doesn't need to be figured out until around June. I've been playing around with DIY projects for programs and other things but again it's just playing with ideas. We don't need to make any decisions and probably shouldn't for at least a few weeks. This past weekend we went hunting for supplies for some of these proposed projects but when we didn't find anything we loved that would work, we didn't feel a need to try every store and purchase something that day because we have time. It's a good thing, don't get me wrong. It's just sort of boring and all up in the air. Like I have all these ideas that would be great but we should probably at some point focus them and actually start making them happen but neither of us feels like that time is now or at least has to be now. I'm not so good with things being up in the air or unsettled, I'm much happier when there's a plan or things to plan.

Even some of the things I thought I could research and figure out, have thwarted me. My parents are currently checking out venues for the NJ party in the fall and I'm sort of jealous as it seems like they are having lots of fun. I'm super happy that they are really enjoying this and that I'm not burdening them with it but I wish I could be doing the same thing. So I thought to myself, we still need to find a place for brunch the Sunday after, so I can internet hunt for ideas. Well I could, if the majority of the restaurants in the area weren't seasonal places that are currently closed. So I can't even begin that hunt until May. :-P

So I sit and pine for something to research or plan or figure out. I know I should feel glad that everything is coming together so well but I'm a planner, I love to plan and right now there's nothing that needs planning right now. Can't wait for May to get here!

Brides are crazy

As we quickly approach the 4 month marking things are going rather smooth. I can't say this past week has been completely stress free as there has been some family pseudo-drama. I wish I could make everyone happy but it seems like in the end at least someone will end up disappointed or sad. The hardest part again is the distance. I really wish I could sit down with my parents and discuss things and see their expressions and reactions rather than having to rely on inferring emotions in emails or judging their reactions based on the sound of the voice over the phone. It sort of makes me wonder if we should have just stuck with having the wedding out here so that we could have at least invited everyone in the world even if no one could have made it. But the good part is that sitting down and talking things through with Tim, really helps because with these sorts of things he's very good at being the voice of reason and seeing options that I didn't even think of. We are even considering taking a very huge gamble when it comes to invites but first things need to get passed by our parents. There are certain moments in this whole process where I just want to elope and have it be done with but I know in the end we'd both regret that.

Beyond the family stress, this week I picked up my wedding dress :) It was a bit more of a process than I expected and my quick 5 minute trip took over an hour. On Thursday, after dinner, I stopped by David's Bridal and the receptionist rather quickly was able to go to the back to grab my dress. I was rather shocked at how busy this place was for a Thursday night and was happy I did my shopping weeks ago. She brought me the dress in the garment bag and had me sign a paper. I was about to walk out with the dress and head home but figured it would be good to at least open the bag up and make sure it was the correct dress (duh!). These things are huge and rather unmanageable but I was able to find a display rack to hang it on so I could unzip it. I opened it up and sure enough it was my dress but as I was closing it back up I thought I saw a mark on it. Since I was sort of in the main entrance way and there was a lot of people filing in, I didn't want to continue to be in the way and took the dress out to the car. There I opened it up again and sure enough noticed a small dark mark on the side of the dress.

I quickly brought it back in and put it on the rack so that I could take it out of the bag completely and look the whole thing over. The receptionist noticed I was back after checking in a bunch of people and asked what the problem was. I showed her the mark and the other mark I found on the back and she said alterations could probably remove them. She called someone and it took them a while to get there but they said it should be no problem. I spent the next 20 minutes or so just observing the craziness of women in pack and the sort of psychoness that are brides. I talked a lot with the receptionist about how busy it always seems to be and just sort of the strange things that seem to happen when it comes to brides and bridal parties. After the 20 minutes the receptionist began to wonder too what was taking so long and went back to check. Apparently the one spot wasn't a spot but there was a black thread in one of the under layers that she was removing. A few minutes later the woman returned and while the spot on the side was removed there was still a small spot where the tread was that could be seen in some angles but not in others. I really hated to be picky but I did spend a lot of money on the dress, so I asked if it was possible to reorder as I had plenty of time for it to come in. To do that the manager had to be called and we then all started looking at the little spot. She wanted to try one more time as she thought there still might be another thread in there and I said sure. About 10 minutes later she came out and said it was all good but if I still wanted to reorder I could. But it was perfectly fine, no spots or stains, so I finally was able to take it home. But it was rather fun being able to people watch in the store. Perhaps if I'm crazy I'll go one Saturday and just sit and observe :-P

I have also been slightly obsessed with wedding boards lately and while I tend to just follow the more relevant ones such as Upstate NY, July 2011 weddings and DIY (great place to get ideas), I've lately been reading more of the posts on the Etiquette boards as other posters on my main boards suggested Etiquette as entertain reads. And boy are they! People are just crazy and mean. Who knew there were so many rules out there and geez to people have opinions one how wedding should be. I'm really glad I'm not friends with these judgmental crazy women and I sometimes wonder why they put themselves through so much stress over little things like how to word an RSVP card. Just crazy! I love our informal wedding, it might not be the traditional/formal way to do it but it's definitely more us :)

All quiet on the wedding front. . .

I realized it's been over a week since our last post but we've been rather busy lately so the wedding planning sort of took a vacation and so did we! We just got back last night from a wonderful trip to Chicago. While we got to do some sight seeing things, the best part of the trip was being able to spend some time with Tim's brother, sister-in-law and niece. I had a great time and it was super wonderful being able to get to know them all better. It make me really wish Tim was able to have these opportunities to get to know my family on a more one on one way prior to the NJ family gathering this fall. I'm still a bit nervous that it's going to overwhelm him being in a room full of strangers and basically being the center of attention. I hope that at least his parents will be able to attend so he has some sort of anchor besides me in this sea of my family. I was in a similar situation at his brother's wedding but that was just me amongst 10 or so new people and I'm rather outgoing and talkative, whereas he'll be facing over 30 or so loud and sometimes crazy family members. It should definitely be interesting and I'm sure we'll all survive.

So needless to say there has not been much done wedding wise. I actually sort of forgot about having to pick up my dress this week and I really need to figure out plan B on the florists by next week. Then there are the smaller things like going over the officiant's edits, figuring out brunch options and looking into some hair salons (not in Penn Yan ;) )

But I think the thing that will take priority is figuring out what is going on with our flights. I randomly was checking our flights last week and noticed that almost all of our flights had some changes to the times. Nothing unusual as these flights are still months out but as I was going through all the changes I noticed that our Rochester to SF flights no long work. We leave Rochester at 7pm with a layover in Cleveland which did not change but our Cleveland to SF flight that was originally scheduled for 9:30pm now shows up as leaving at 4:45pm which means it leaves before we even get to the airport at Rochester. The thing says that if the new changes cause a miss-connect we can change for no fee but the issues is that Tim and I are on two different tickets/confirmation numbers and I was afraid that if we tried to do this over the internet, we'd get rebooked on two different flights. Tim made the wonderful suggestion that since we were heading to the airport anyways this weekend, why not look into it there. Well we did and the guy just seemed rather confused. He said that while he sees that 4:45 flight in there, he also still sees the original 9:30 flight so we should be all good. So we left it at that, it was early and I didn't think he was really getting it. So we need to call and get this all figured out. We should probably do that tonight. Oh the fun of air travel :-P

So yea not much exciting stuff going on, just lots of planning that I need to get back into after the wonderful vacation this past weekend.

Slowly but surely we are checking things off the list!

Well the first thing to report is that my wedding dress came in! It would be really happy, exciting news except it does mess up my timeline a bit. They told me it would come in around April 1st which gave me some time to tone up a bit and perhaps lose a bit of weight but I highly doubt anything has changed in the two weeks since I ordered it. So I guess what I'll have to do is pick it up next week, hide it away in the apartment where it won't get ruined or seen and then bring it in late April/early May to see if it needs any alterations. I'm actually hoping it won't as when I tried it on it fit perfectly. I just really want to tone-up my upper body which I've been working on as well as just getting back into exercise, so I figure I might slim down a bit just in the process of toning-up. But that should still give me enough time to do alterations if needed and get the dress sent to Rochester.

In other news, as Tim reported, we cracked out a first draft of our ceremony. A few weeks ago I was really excited to do this but once I started realizing what exactly was involved, I became less thrilled. It seemed rather overwhelming with all the choices and options. I really wasn't sure on the readings as there are so many out there, enough to fill multiple books worth (that I of course checked out from the library). Last week we divided and conquered on the readings by each taking half the books and marking the readings we liked. This weekend we figured we should probably start putting this thing together. As we were looking to get out of the apartment and I sometime have a hard time focusing on things I'm not sure excited about at home, we decided to head to Panera. It actually worked out really well and we were quickly able to knock something out. We found a few really nice readings that are us and get an idea of how we'd like the ceremony to go down. I'm most excited about our "unity" section as we have decided to do both a Time Capsule and handfasting. It should be a really wonderful ceremony. When we first started, I was sort of wishing we did go with something religious because they have a set ceremony and we don't have to figure much out, but now I'm glad we are doing this as it definitely reflects us and it's exactly what we want. So now we'll send it off to our officiant and see what she says.

In other wedding related news, the flowers are somewhat moving along. Erica met with what we were both hoping would be my florist on Friday and got some great ideas for my bouquet. It will be a really great color combo and have a lot of flowers that I like. The only thing is, as this florist is in Buffalo, there is a worry about transporting the flowers that far. Christine got her bouquet the night before and drove them in to Philly but that was a shorter drive and perhaps these flowers are more fragile. So while there is finally a more concrete idea as far as flowers and design, we have to figure out who will do them. I've gotten a few recommendations of florists in the area, but it will mean Erica will need to head out to Rochester to meet with florists. I'm so lucky to have such a great friend who is willing to help out.

Finally I've been getting a bit nervous, confused as what to do with my hair. I've finally decided to go with a professional to do my hair just because it does need to last all day and I don't want my sisters to have to worry about it the day of. There are a few salon's in Penn Yan but I have no idea who is any good and none really have a website. The other debate is the trial run. Apparently brides have test runs before to figure out exactly what they want. I figured I could do that on the Friday before, not typical but most likely doable. But now I think perhaps I should try to do a test run out here at a salon just to get some ideas of what looks good and what sort of hair jewelry would go well with the style I got with. I'm guessing salons will do trial runs for hair-styles even if I won't be going with them for the final hairstyle. Just another thing to figure out :-P

But at least the major things are coming together and all that's really left are the small things!

The Script

Larissa & I are being married by a multi-denominational Reverend, Reverend Kris.  While we were both raised Catholic, neither of us desired to do the whole mass thing, so this seemed like the way to go.  She is very flexible, and will do pretty much whatever we want.  This leaves us with a lot of choices, and the task of writing basically our entire ceremony ourselves.  Today we decided to tackle the challenge.

I was a bit concerned it might be hard to get ideas or inspiration for readings and such.  Like any other part of the wedding world, however, the problem is not too few choices, but too many.  A few weeks ago Larissa reserved a bunch of books from the library, and we've both been doing some web searching in our spare time.  In addition, Reverend Kris' website provided the basic progression of a ceremony along with many possible choices for each piece.

So this afternoon, armed with Larissa's laptop and a few of or best library books, we locked ourselves in a booth at Panera (fewer distractions than at home) and set to work.  An hour and a half or so later, and we had a pretty snazzy ceremony mapped out.  It actually was pretty easy to do, I think.  We seemed to agree on a lot of the pieces really quickly.  Like, we'd be reading from a list and we'd both say "The third one!" and it would be decided.  So we've got a solid draft that we can email off to the officiant for her opinion, and she can tweak it a bit to make it flow and make sense as much as possible.  Should be good.

It's really neat that we have such total control over what will be said.  It allows us to tailor the ceremony to something that is uniquely and totally us... We're able to say exactly what we're thinking.  Good stuff.

~T

The Cure / Friday I'm In Love (MTV 2007)