Things my Mother has Worried About

Now, to address a subject that I am sure many of the other brides have dealt with, and if not, I fear it may rear its ugly head in the future. As the title of the blog suggests, as you plan your wedding, your mother will, no doubt, call you and ask you the most bizarre question you have ever heard. Do not bother telling her it is bizarre, this will only result in hurt feelings (if she doesn't think about these things who will?), and possibly raised voices. The issues that she calls about will not be is the caterer going to provide a vegetarian alternative to the buffet or do you have a cake topper, these issues would seem legitimate, I believe, by anyone's standards. Here are the questions/reminders my mother has chosen to ask:

1. "Be sure to ask the hairdresser if she needs us to bring bobby pins." The story behind this is that her hairdresser is going to be doing my hair, even though she "retired" a month ago, so my mom wasn't sure she would have "access" to bobby pins (??) or wouldn't be able to bring all the different colors of bobby pins (again ??). I tried to tell my mom that if she couldn't bring bobby pins, we should find someone else, since the last thing we needed to worry about on the day of the wedding was remembering to bring bobby pins.
   
2. "Maybe you should do 'family place cards' instead of individual place cards." She made the point that we would "obviously" seat entire families together (I think not, since most of my cousins are of the age where they can sit with other people their own age). The reasoning behind this one is that she and my dad cannot remember the names of one of his friend's significant others, and doesn't want to call and find out.. I told her that we can easily call and just ask how it is spelled, but she's still not convinced.
3. "Don't you think we need to bring extension cords to the reception site." I actually laughed out loud when she said that one, but she was, in fact, serious. She thinks we need to bring them for the hairdressers (I know, she's really hung up on this), despite the fact that we went and looked at the bride's room at the reception site specifically to count the number of outlets in the room (there are 8 sets of outlets and only 4 bridesmaids).
   

Organization, Finally

This weekend, my fiance and I finally had a chance to unpack the presents I received at the shower the week before.

Thank goodness. I was so tired of walking into the living room and thinking that I was in a garage. One corner of the room had a pile of boxes, that had been somewhat consolidated before I came back to Houston, but most of the gifts were all packed by Crate and Barrel in boxes that were much too huge (I have no idea why 4 cheese spreaders need to be individually wrapped in a whole issue of the New York times and put into a shoe box).

Saturday we finally unpacked a lot of it, ran it through the dishwasher, and found places in the cabinet for it. Some of the items were replacing old3er things that one or the other of us had bought when we were in college, so we also packed up a couple of boxes to go to Goodwill with.

The living room was looking more or less like a living room again, when UPS, Fedex, and the postal service each delivered a wedding gift to the door. Time for another trip to the dumpster...

Note: I realize that the above post may sound ungrateful. I am not bemoaning the fact that we are receiving generous gifts from our guests, merely the fact that C&B and BBB insist on using giant boxes to ship gifts.

Wedding Invite Snafu's

Now for reason #5 that you need to have a professional wedding planner.

You mother should not be in charge of addressing invites (or for that matter save-the-dates).

I don't know how many of you are addressing your own invites, but I had dreams of being able to lovingly address each individual invite. They would be artistically calligraphied and treasured by those who received them. My mother had other ideas, namely that she would be the one addressing the invitations, as it was tradition (whose I don't know - or why that is a "tradition").

A month or two after we got engaged, my mother offered to send out save-the-dates, and one of my sisters offered to design them, as I had done the same for her when she got married. Luckily, my fiance and I paid a visit to my parents house after the save-the-dates had been addressed, but not sent. We found several mistakes, doctors addressed as Mr., weird family configurations (a father and son addressed as a couple), and names that were just wrong (John instead of Josh). I admit that some, as my mother pointed out, may have been from the "confusing" guest list I made on Google Docs, but others (the John/Josh debacle) were not. My fiance and I convinced her (it was surprisingly difficult) to re-address some of the mis-labeled save-the-dates.

Fast forward to addressing the wedding invitations, a duty I gave up to my mother, since I decided that I did not really have time to address 350 invitations, much less in calligraphy. After the invites were mailed out, a few came back, one for one of my fiance's friends. I emailed my
fiance to have him obtain the guest's address information. He emailed, and the guest had moved and forgotten to tell anyone. I emailed my mom the new address and she sent the invite.

Last week, I hear that the invite has come back again. Weird - until I ask which address she sent it to, and she replied that she sent it to the one I had updated in Google Docs. Unfortunately, to avoid confusion, I had emailed her the new address, so a month later, the guest will get his invite. Luckily, we sent them out almost 10 weeks ahead of the wedding, so he should have plenty of time, and I had my fiance send him the address for the website so he could begin to make travel plans.

Stress

I honestly cannot wait for the wedding to be over. Like many brides, I would guess, the wedding is not only "big event" happening during that time. Here is everything that will happen in the next 3 months:

Week before wedding: Movers pick up everything in Austin (which means everything has to be packed)
After the movers come: Get in the car and go to my parents' house in Houston to stay for the week up to the wedding
Wedding day: Get married
Day after wedding: Leave for honeymoon
Ten days after wedding: Stop on two-day layover coming back from the honeymoon to look for apartments in NYC
Twelve days after wedding: Go back and spend a few days with my parents
A few days after that: Start driving my fiance's car back up to his parent's house (and sometime before the wedding sell my car)
One month after wedding: Move into new apartment in NYC

Frustrated with the Reception Site

Here is the sequence of events that has made me greatly dislike my reception site (ladies don't say hate):

June 3: I email the reception site to set up the "big meeting" which is supposed to take place about a month before the wedding (August 9). I ask to have the meeting on June 13 (since I am planning on traveling to Houston that day).

June 4: I get a response saying that June 13 is much too early; I won't know a lot of the little details (no indication what those might be).

June 17: Having returned from previously mentioned trip, I try again to schedule the meeting, this time for June 27th. Now that I have found the perfect part-time job, I only have Fridays available to go to Houston, and I have two other appointments scheduled for that day.

June 17 (after arriving home from work): I am told that the month of June is extremely busy for them (duh) and they have many Friday weddings. I am given a list of days and times when we can meet. Of the 10 or so days, one is a Friday (July 11), which happens to be the day of the bachelorette party. The coordinator expresses that she understands that it can difficult to plan a wedding from out-of-town, and maybe I could send someone else. At the meeting we will go over the timeline, the table setting, and other details.

I, upon reading the email, become irate. 1) I could have had the timeline ready for the last meeting. 2) How can I entrust such a meeting to my mom, who was flustered at the florist when asked her opinion of the bouquet? 3) Yargh.

After 15 minutes of venting/fuming to my fiance, I decided to ask my sister and my mother to go and they can call me if they have questions.

Thank Goodness I Don't Bake Cakes for a Living

I just met with the cake person at baker's. I only had half an hour set aside for the appointment, because I only wanted to talk about changing the size, the flavor of the cake, and make sure I had given her good pictures so that she could copy the design from the beading on the dress onto the cake.

We wanted to nix the groom's cake because our caterer is including chocolate fountains with our dinner, so we didn't think that people would need as much dessert. Our baker does not feel the same way. She thinks that "fruit cannot replace cake." Obviously, but we were still including enough for everyone to have a piece.

Then I told her we wanted to do two flavors in the bride's cake. "Well, people are going to want one of each flavor," she says. I ignore the urge to argue with her about how cake intake could possibly be regulated at the reception and asked if we could do chocolate in addition to the plain butter cake. Now, it's been a few days since the consultation, but I think she said that we couldn't do it because "it wouldn't work." As in, she made it sound like there would be structural issues. Anyway, I chose a different flavor, NOT chocolate, to be the flavor on the other half of the cake. Then she said, "It sounds like you're just trying to do the same thing as a groom's cake, but in the other cake." Well, in a way, but the groom has decided he doesn't need a separate cake with a faux cigar box and chocolate-covered strawberries on it because the MOB is having fits about the cost of the cake, so I just wanted him to have a flavor that HE got to choose in the cake. So there, baker woman.

What I Hate About My Wedding

OK - let me lie down on the couch, doctor. There is one thing about my wedding that I can't stand, and it is really starting to bother me. Really. What am I talking about, you ask? The fact that my mother won't stop worrying about whether or not we need to provide the hairdresser with bobby pins? While that is a rather pressing issue, I am not referring to hairdresser woes.
I am referring to "the gap." Not the store, though I have been disappointed with them for a while, but the fact that there is a gap between the ceremony and the reception.

I don't know what to do - I know that many people have posted their dissatisfaction on Knot message boards, but it just can't be helped. Even though my fiance and I talked to our deacon about the date 14 months before the wedding the time we wanted (4:30) wasn't available. We had our choice between 2:00 and 7:00. I blame the Catholicism. If there weren't so many of us getting married at churches, there wouldn't be this cafeteria-style ceremony line up at the church. Yargh.

We realized that a reception starting at 8:00 pm wouldn't be super friendly to our older guests, so we decided to have the wedding at 2:00 pm. We also realized that a reception that started at 3:00 or 3:30 would not be any fun - who wants to dance and drink (or for that matter, eat dinner) and leave in the daylight? So, we have "a gap," from whenever the 2:00 ceremony ends (it's a Catholic non-mass, so it's vague - somewhere between 40 minutes to an hour) until the 6:00 reception.

My sister also had a gap at her wedding. My parents reserved a meeting room at the hotel and had sodas, beers, and snacks there after the ceremony and until the reception. I don't know if that's in the plans for this wedding, but it's very distressing. Everyone keeps asking me what they're supposed to do between the wedding and the reception. I need to think up a good answer. Maybe there's a 3:30 movie across the street from the hotel. A quirky comedy would be perfect, people would be out by 5:15.

This is Too Much Togetherness

Another one of my friends pointed me towards this article, well, not pointed me, exactly, just everyone who reads his Google chat away message. According to this article, there is a couple that has not been more than 15 feet apart at any point in time for more than 10 years. A Slate writer heard about it and decided to try it with his wife http://www.slate.com/id/2192282/.

It's a funny article, although I think they did much better than my fiance and I did. I, for one, don't think that I could have kept my mouth shut while my fiance stopped work to watch a soccer match for half an hour.

Paring Down the Registry

One of the fun things about having a blog about the wedding is having a fiance that reads random internet articles and is more than happy to pass them on to me. He really loves passing on articles from a decluttering website, as he believes (maybe erroneously) that I am a pack rat.

This article was referenced on www.unclutterer.com, but talks about different uses for common household appliances. In theory, being able to use the appliances for multiple uses means that you don't have to register for as many things. There's recipes for making frozen beverages in ice cream makers, and how to use a waffle iron as a sandwich maker, brownie maker, and goodness knows what else. My favorite was the recipe for a souffle in a slow cooker, which sounds really easy, but maybe you wouldn't need a slow cooker to make a souffle, just a thought.

Anyway, the BEST part about the article (http://www.chow.com/stories/11092?page=1) is in one of the comments. I don't know that "unclutterer" knew about this person, surely they would have filtered it out. "Karykat" asks "I do have a question though. I have a regular waffle maker that just makes small round waffles. But also have a Belgian waffle maker. Think that would work for these recipes? " Hilarious! Surely this woman has a George Foreman. I mean, you can't have two waffle makers and no George Foreman.

Bridal Shower Fears

My two sisters, one the MOH and one a BM, have been lovely enough to plan a bridal shower for me next weekend. Many of the guests are family or friends of my mom's, but the few people still left in Houston are invited as well (although I must say that none of them have RSVP'ed to sissy - harumph).
One of my other bridesmaids "K" recently reminded me that one my greatest fears will soon come to fruition. Since we were sophomores in college, K has had a plot to embarrass me at my bridal shower, which really goes back to the first time we watched Pulp Fiction. For whatever reason, K thinks it would be hilarious to have me open her gift at the bridal shower, in front of my grandma (which is an integral part of her comedy scenario). Inside the pretty white paper and ribbons would be a ball gag.
"She can't really want to do that," is what you're thinking. No, she can, and I am now terrified that she will. Although she is in California and can't come to the shower, my sister has received a package in the mail for the shower. She thinks I am being difficult because I have refused to open it. I just can't.
Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum.

Ring Shopping Reconsidered

(For the previous posts about how I still haven't found a wedding band - click here http://catholicweddinggirl.blogspot.com/search/label/Wedding%20Rings)

Last I left you, dear readers - as one of those advice columnists used to say, my fiance and I had found rings that we liked at K's, which we thought were a good price. All we were waiting on was to see how much my band would cost if it were made out of palladium instead of white gold. Our salesperson "J" called me back and let me know that the ring would be $1050, ie considerably more than the same in white gold. "I didn't get a chance to order your fiance's ring yet, I'll do it later this afternoon," she said. Order? When had we ordered the rings? I asked her to hold off on it until after I spoke to my fiance, and I would get back to her one way or the other.

Meanwhile, I hop on the internet to see what I can find. I looked around on Blue Nile, but everything was a lot more expensive than we had seen at K's, so I did what anyone my age would do - I turned to Google. I searched for "wedding bands" and several sites came up, including several sites which looked extremely sketchy. A couple that I looked at, and look legit, are skyfacet.com and weddingbands.com (subtle, I know). I think we're going to wind up going with the rings from one of these sites, they even let you engrave them and still ship in two days or something.

More Ring Shopping

(For the previous posts - click here http://catholicweddinggirl.blogspot.com/search/label/Wedding%20Rings)
This round of ring shopping was by far my favorite, which may have been influenced by the fact that I got to go downtown to meet up with my fiance during lunch, along with the fact that one of my favorite sushi places is right next door to the jewelry story. To further add to my good mood, I was even able to find parking on the same block.
After lunch, we went over to K's to look at the wedding bands. "J" greeted us and showed us to the wedding bands (not the same person who helped my fiance with the engagement ring, but you can't have everything). She and I hit it off immediately, as I described one of the men's rings as looking like subway tiles and she laughed hysterically. I can't help it - I love it when people think I'm funny.
She was very helpful, even to the point that when we told her that we were looking for rings in palladium, she offered to call one of their suppliers to see if my ring could be made since they did not have the style I liked in palladium. Wonderful! She wrote down the styles and the sizes we would need and said she would call me later with the price for the ring. We were hoping it would be less expensive, since the one I liked was upwards of $900. The big surprise was my fiance's ring, which was somewhere in the $600 range, even though it was just a brushed ring with a bezeled edge.

More to come . . .

Ring Shopping Round 2

After we left the first jeweler on our ring extravaganza (chronicled in http://catholicweddinggirl.blogspot.com/2008/05/ring-shopping-round-1.html), we walked down to the other end of the mall to the other jeweler BB. BB is where my fiance had gotten my lovely pearl necklace, and I would have been completely satisfied skipping the first round and heading straight to this store.

Luckily, salsesperson was so much more helpful than the woman at the last store. "A" walked my fiance and I over to the wedding band counters and asked what style of ring I wanted. I told her that I thought I wanted a channel set band in palladium, to match the band of the engagement ring. At this point, we had a brief moment of confusion as she tried to show us bridal sets, then I showed her my ring and it clicked that I already had an engagement ring.

What I didn't realize was the difference that the shape of the stone makes. My engagement ring is a round stone, so it looks best (I think) with a ring like the one below. While we we were at BB, I saw several ones that looked to be the same size, but there was a big differences in the prices - several hundred dollars. I asked "A" why there was such a large difference, and, after looking at the item descriptions, she told us because the diamonds were higher quality in the more expensive ones. She also pointed out that the lower quality diamonds weren't as noticeable when they were in the channel setting, so it might not be "worth it" to spend the extra money, which is exactly what I was thinking.

"A" was really great when my fiance was looking at his rings, as well. She was really patient with us, since we were asking about the advantages and reasons for choosing certain metals over other metals, which ones were which. Even when she was unsure of an answer, she went and found out the answer by looking up the item in the back or asking another salesperson for help. I would have been fine buying our rings at this store, but we both felt like we "should" go back to K's, where he got my engagement ring.

More on that later. . .