Category Archives: wedding planning

Brr…chilly weekend wrap-up

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Greetings on this exceedingly chilly Monday. This is the kind of day that I wish I could stay cuddled up all warm in the blankets drinking warm drinks and reading. But alas, I have to BS my way through social studies notes instead. (note to social studies teachers–I don’t know anything about feudal Japan. I’m happy to put the notes up on the overhead for them to copy, but don’t expect me to be able to, y’know, talk about it.)

On the other hand, getting paid is always nice. 😉

The weekend was low-key but interesting. Rand and I checked out two houses. We made an appointment to see one on Saturday that seemed perfect on paper. Fireplace, hardwood floors, central air, full basement and attic, three bedrooms plus an office. Everything about the house was quite nice, except for the bedrooms…they were tiny. Seriously tiny. Like, “I don’t know how we’d fit a bed AND furniture into this” tiny. It was nice, but we were sort of a little glad we weren’t totally in love with the place. Right now, we’re kind of at the “looking, but not 100% sure it’s for real” stage.

On Sunday, we called about a townhouse we’d seen up the street from us. I spoke to the realtor as he was on his way to the place for an open house. Well, that worked out well! So we popped over to take a look. It also has a fireplace but is all carpeted. It also has no basement, which is not ideal…but the place is nice. It’s bright and spacious with lots of closet space. Are we serious? I don’t know…interested enough to do some more talking about it and find out if it would be possible.

Otherwise? Had a nice dinner out with friends on Friday. Went to Wegmans to talk about flowers on Saturday…they’ll be emailing me a quote, but their prices seem quite reasonable.

And that’s it for me. How’s your Monday? 🙂

Weekend wrap-up

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It was a pretty mellow one, so I don’t have a whole lot to report. 😉

Saturday morning, we went out for breakfast at The Original Pancake House. I knew it was going to be a good morning, because not only did we get seated instantly, we got a booth. Score.

Afterwards, we stopped in at Rite-Aid to pick up a couple of necessities, and then poked our heads in at Sarah’s Vintage and Estate Jewelry. And bought my wedding band. Ooh!

Later, we headed out for dinner and a little bit of shopping at Borders. Rand had a coupon for 40% off any DVD set, so he bought the Freaks and Geeks set. I picked up John Green’s book Looking for Alaska, which I blogged about on Saturday.

Sunday, woke up to no heat. Gah. This has been an ongoing problem. Frequently, the problem is that the pilot is out, which is an easy fix. Other times, though…well, I don’t know exactly what the problem is, but it requires a call to the landlord and someone poking around the furnace. It was fixed, though. Joy.

Over the weekend, we watched some Freaks and Geeks, finished up Season 2 of Extras, watched Lost (very happy to have Lost back. concerned about how the strike will affect the season beyond the 8 episodes that were filmed.)

I also did some…I hesitate to say “cleaning,” so I’ll call it purging. Went through old papers and piles to sort, organize, and trash. Always an exciting time.

And now it’s Monday. No early-morning phone call for me today, so I’m going to try and accomplish a bunch of things. Wish me luck!

A new blog?

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Why, yes.

I decided to start a wedding blog of my very own. Um, yesterday. Sometimes I feel self-conscious about the prospect of overwhelming people with wedding planning posts, and there are literally hundreds of random little things I want to write about…and so I thought I’d give them their own space. That way, anyone who wants to can follow me over there, and anyone who doesn’t can continue to enjoy my random (sometimes ;)) daily thoughts here.

Anyway, here it is:

Erin’s Wedding Blog (uh, it needs a catchier name, I think…)

Right now, everything there except for the most recent post is old stuff…I just copied most of my wedding-related posts from here.  OH! and I made my own header. It’s not perfect, but it’s my first attempt. 😉

Thursday Thoughts–wedding planning

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Well, I skipped “Wedding Wednesday,” but I think it’s time for an update on planningstuff. (Weekend wrap-up will probably be done tomorrow…)

So every once in a while, I think about all the things that still have to be done. While it’s not insignificant, I don’t feel overwhelmed or panicky about anything. Here’s the update:

Rings

Rand and I looked at rings a couple of weeks ago. We haven’t purchased anything yet, but right now, we’re thinking just plain gold bands. I did look at one with small channel-set diamonds (I think it was actually an “anniversary band”), but I don’t think it was “me.” It’s funny how society seems to want to pressure you into wanting bling.

Cake

We’re looking at having a “decorate your own cupcake bar.” It’s been cleared with the venue. The only thing left to figure out is how to keep cupcakes fresh for a day or two before the wedding. Any suggestions welcome. (Hilary? I’d like to avoid freezing if possible.)

We will be getting a small “wedding cake” for us to cut, but we haven’t quite worked out all the details there yet.

We’re trying to clean up my mom and dad’s cake knife to use…it’s a little tarnished. If that doesn’t work out, two of my aunts have them also.

Accessories

My aunt has a string of pearls that were my grandma’s. I’m probably going to wear them, assuming that they match the dress. I’ll have to find earrings that go with them.

As soon as the dress comes in, I’ll be able to see if the shoes I bought will work, and if not, I’ll have to set off on finding something else. That should happen within the month. Also, we’re going to see if I can wear my cousin’s slip with it. We’re about the same height.

Hair

Still no idea. I have an appointment with a new stylist, recommended to me by a coworker. She has really cute short hair, so I feel good about that.

Flowers

I’ve got nothing here. I’m not going to need a ton of flowers, but I will need *some* flowers. I will happily take recommendations.

Centerpieces

I want to keep this simple. I’m thinking something like this:

centerpiece

I may add some color, but that’s the basic idea.

Other little things are coming along. One of my aunts bought us some gorgeous crystal toasting glasses for Christmas. (I didn’t think to take a photo of them, and I left them with my mom for safekeeping). Mom’s got her friend on the lookout for a scrapbook we can use for our guestbook. Major things we need to deal with right now are probably flowers and cake. Not too bad, right? 🙂

Wedding books

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Thanks to a very sweet and recently married friend who sent me ALL of her wedding planning books, I now have duplicate copies of Bridal Bargains and Easy Wedding Planning Plus.

Give me a holler if you’d like one or both of these. 🙂

Wedding Wednesday–the blogs

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I have a love-hate relationship with wedding blogs. Well, it’s mostly hate, but for some strange reason, I cannot seem to look away.

I don’t even read that many of them…I saved a couple in Bloglines so that I could come back to them every now and then. Every once in a while, I see something cute or clever or fun, which is apparently enough to keep me coming back.

Mostly though, they’re just symptoms of this all-pervasive bride culture I’ve complained about before. Girls going on and on and on about their dream weddings and dream photographers and dream cakes and so on. Making it seem as if it’s altogether reasonable to spend $200 on shoes. (I guess for some people $200 for shoes is entirely reasonable. I am not one of those people…)

*Speaking of shoes, I was recently chided for not updating the masses on my shoe decision. That would be because there hasn’t been a shoe decision.  I didn’t send the Skechers back. I’ve decided that I’ll wait and see how they look with the dress, and if I don’t end up wearing them, I’ll just have a cute pair of summery shoes.

Anyway, some of the things that bridey bride brides agonize over just make me roll my eyes. Shall I (gasp!) print my envelopes, or must I hand address? Who cares? I’m of the “do what makes you happy” camp (unless, of course, what makes you happy is being a bridezilla and making everyone you love hate you). I suppose there are etiquette sticklers who do care, but really…have you ever changed your opinion of someone because of the way their wedding invitation was addressed? I know I haven’t…and what’s more, if anyone I knew changed their opinion of ME over something so trivial, well, I’d kind of prefer they stayed home anyway.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

I have lots of bloggy catching up to do…and I will get to it, eventually. I want to write about some of my Christmas loot, and some of the crafty things I did, and New Year’s Eve. I hope you all were able to ring in the new year in a way that made you happy. I know I did!

(pssst…guess what? We’re getting married this year! Whee!) 

Wedding Wednesday

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So here’s the truth…

I haven’t made a single wedding-related decision since I ordered the dress.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am terrible at decision-making. Sometimes I’m paralyzed by the question of what to eat for lunch. And God forbid that I make a decision and then, for whatever reason, have to make a different selection. That entree you wanted? We’re out of it. Sorry, no cranberry juice. Etc. And what is planning a wedding but constantly making decisions?

Thankfully the big stuff is out of the way…but now, we have all of these little decisions to make, and I know that I should probably get moving on some of them, but I just don’t want to. One of my aunts wants to buy me something wedding related for Christmas. She suggested toasting glasses, but she wants me to pick them out. Could there be something I’ve thought about less? I don’t think so. Several people have asked what I’m going to do with my hair. Uhm…I dunno?

Veil? I dunno. Flowers? I dunno. Cake? I dunno. You get the idea.

Lots of people, of course, ask me how the plans are coming. I smile and say “fine.” And then I feel a slight pang of panic deep down. Am I supposed to be doing something? What am I supposed to be doing? 

I’m not going to pretend that I never considered the idea of my wedding until the moment I was engaged, but I’m certainly not one of those girls who had everything all figured out ahead of time.

I don’t really know what my point is here…I know I’m rambling.  I guess I’ve always known that I didn’t really care about most of this minutiae. I’m just now realizing how much. And yet, the decisions will have to be made anyway…

Wedding Wednesday

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I’m afraid I don’t have anything terribly profound or interesting today. I had to stop in at Barnes & Noble today. I was on my way to an appointment and had forgotten to bring my book to read (I had taken it out of my bag at school and left it there….gah), so I figured I’d pick up a magazine to read while I was waiting. I decided on the current issue of Martha Stewart Weddings.

This was exactly the second wedding magazine I’ve purchased. The first was an issue of…I don’t even remember…Brides, probably, that I picked up shortly after becoming engaged. And much like I did with the first one, I finished flipping through it thinking “Well, that was a waste of money.”

There’s so little practical advice in them, particularly for people who don’t plan on spending insane amounts of money on their wedding.

I haven’t read it, but I picked up this book once at a bookstore: One Perfect Day–The Selling of the American Wedding. (I would love to read it. I’m just not sure I want to own it.) The thesis statement of the book is that the wedding industry is out of control. I can’t disagree. And while I am having a wedding, I’m not going to lose my mind (or enter into bankruptcy) over it.

What was my point? Oh, yeah…Bridal magazines. All of them (there used to be, like, two. What happened?) work to perpetuate this whole “perfect day” myth. As I’ve said before, and will continue to say, I’m much more concerned with the marriage than with the wedding. Yeah, we’re spending a decent chunk of money on the party…but we’re doing it because we want our friends and family there with us. We want it to be a true celebration of our love and our life together, not some fairy-tale idea of a perfect day.

But speaking of the day…there are lots of things that we have to do still, I know, but I’m finding myself wishing it would just be here already. Truthfully, it would probably have been sooner if not for my choice of careers and the uncertainty of it all (you know, the having no idea whether or not I’m going to have a steady job in the spring…). It seems too far away right now, but I know it’ll be here before I know it. And so I’ll continue waiting, and making plans…and I will pledge to buy no more wedding magazines. 😉

Wedding Wednesday–What’s in a name?

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When you get engaged, one of the first questions you hear (after “have you set a date”) from a lot of people is “are you taking his name?”

It’s a question previous generations didn’t give much thought to…the answer was always yes. That’s what was done, and it wasn’t questioned.

I’ve watched lots and lots of friends go through this process. I know some people who kept their names. I know others who hyphenated, or used their maiden name as a middle name. I know some people who agonized over the decision and ended up taking their husband’s name. And I know others who were adamantly against changing their name, and yet when the wedding came around, they did.

My answer? It is and always has been yes.

I don’t have a problem with anyone choosing not to, or hyphenating, or whatever else they decide to do…like so many other decisions women have to make, particularly those involving marriage and children, these are personal decisions that become very, very public. And public decisions mean that people have no problem offering their opinion on the matter. Not too long ago, I read an article on Feministing that made me feel shame for wanting to take my future husband’s name. Shame. 

Yes, I know that it’s not very progressive of me. I know that it’s based on a patriarchal system that treated women as property (and that there are people in this world who still do). I’ve thought about that, and I’ve weighed it out, and I’ve decided that I don’t care. I want it. I want to share his name…I want it to be our name.

At this point in my life, I’m fairly secure in my identity. My name doesn’t change who I am. I don’t have a solidly established career that would suffer from my changing my name.

And besides–I hit the jackpot in the name department. Rand’s last name is gorgeous.

One thing that does bug me, that I still see happening enough to have complained about it in the past, is when a woman essentially loses her first name as a result of getting married, being referred to as “Mrs. Brad Pitt” (or whatever). Even worse…back in my reporter days, when I had to transcribe birth announcements, I would see people being referred to as Mrs. John Smith (the former Jane Doe).

Gah. I have always hated that wording…as if that person no longer exists. But I digress.

At any rate, next July, I will jump through the necessary hoops to become Erin Bellavia…but that doesn’t mean Erin Nappe has ceased to be. I’ll just have a different name. And I think I’ll smell every bit as sweet.