Photographer: Booked!

We have a photographer!  Amy Raab will be with us all day.  Hooray, things are getting taken care of :)

Check out her blog! blog.amyraab.com

I didn't actually find or talk to the photographer at all.  JewishGuy did a quick search, sent some links to his mom, who contacted photographers and booked Amy.  Sounds good to me.  Her photographs are gorgeous. :)

Weird Gift Dream: Pyrex?

I had a dream that, for our wedding, someone gifted us with a new Pyrex bowl that had one of their awesome vintage patterns:

I used to drool over the awesome old patterned Pyrex bowls at the thrift store.  The problem?  You can't kasher Pyrex.  IE: No vintage Pyrex on our registry (unless the previous owner kept kosher).  If only they made them new with those patterns. :(

(Click the image for more items with that pattern on pyrexlove.com)

Chuppah (?)

I think we want this chuppah:

I made an inspiration board (click for large version) but it's not as nice as the centerpiece one:

I just want to make sure it will look good in the two possible settings (indoor/outdoor).

Cutiepants (my future) Nephew

DoraBoy, JewishGuy's nephew, is turning 3 years old in October and he is a cutiepants.

SportyJew, JewishGuy's younger sister, just bought her dress for the wedding recently.  She was explaining that the dress was for our wedding to DoraBoy when she was trying it on for BigSIL (JewishGuy's older sister).

Later, they were listening to Rafi, and my name happened to come up in one of his songs.  I have one of those names that comes up relatively frequently in children's songs from the 20th century.  DoraBoy exclaimed, "Wedding!"

BigSIL and BigBIL were confused.

DoraBoy said, "[JewishGal] and [JewishGuy]!  Wedding!"

We have a fan :)

Centerpiece Inspiration Board

I made this today (click for larger image) to give to my mom so she can go to the florist with my ideas for the decorations.  Lots of different, interesting vases and simple flowers (white gerbera daisies and cherry blossoms?).  The top left is a picture of the room we'll be in for the reception so hopefully she can work with that.

Next up, inspiration board for chuppah, etc.

Outta Controlllll

After visiting two potential printers/designers for invitations, I emailed the parents asking for final guest list numbers so that we could have an accurate quote.  I had been telling the designers that we were going to invite a bit more than 200 people because we were expecting around 150 guests.  It turns out we are now inviting almost 370 people to the wedding (so even if 50% of those invited decline, we are still higher than JewishGuy and I originally wanted).  Not to mention the venue - an old mansion - only holds 200-230 people in its largest room, so if more than 60% of our guests come we cannot legally have them all in the building!

This of course was Friday afternoon, so imagine the freaking out that happened by me this Shabbat!  Much.  I think we were just totally shocked by the difference between what we thought we had discussed back in March/April, and what it turns out the reality is today.

JewishGuy and I have talked about it and it seems like we have a major breakdown in communication - the bottom line is, email lists don't seem to be working out so well right now. I think we've come up with a viable solution: A google page!  We spent a lot of time this evening setting up our google page for the parents to use.

Here's a cropped screen grab:

Hopefully this will work and keep us all organized and communicating effectively (I realize this will only work if people check it relatively frequently).

Every section has a To-Do list that is organized by who is in charge of the item, what it is, how it was resolved, and whether it is complete.  Every section also has a "notes" section, so that JewishGuy and I can write in what we were envisioning for this particular part of the wedding.  This way we can delegate, have everything all in one place, and not have to send long emails back and forth!

For example: I am asking JewishMom to be in charge of the florist.  So that she doesn't have to keep checking her inbox, searching for the email I sent her about what I want, or searching around the house for the pictures I sent of examples of center pieces I like, she can just go to this website.  There it is: Decorations -> Decorations Notes.  Pictures will be in Share Files -> Decorations Pictures.

JewishGuy and I talked about this a lot this Shabbat.  We talked about how much control we really want to have over the wedding, how we're feeling about things in general, and especially about this guest list thing (which shocked both of us, I have to say).  I was feeling very overwhelmed by the planning process, I think mostly due to the way we were going about the planning, where I was being held responsible for final decisions on things but I felt like I wasn't actually in control of the planning - for example, I would get a list of things I needed to accomplish, like someone else is in control and I was reporting to that person, but then I was asked for advice about something I was told to do...  I don't even know if I'm making sense anymore!

It's not that we didn't appreciate the help - I don't know what we would do without the parental support!!

The point is, I think us taking more of an active role in organizing the planning will help us to not feel quite so overwhelmed.  We still plan on only being in charge of the few things we want to do, but now we have a system where we are also overseeing the progress of the other elements.

This doesn't quite resolve the guest list issue.  It may happen that we will have to pare the lists down, as it's now T-7 months and we may not be able to find another venue that will be large enough to comfortably hold about 80% of the people we are planning to invite.  If these lists are the absolute minimum, there really is no way that we can comfortably fit 300* people in that venue.  We will be back to square one in that respect, which I am not looking forward to, but we'll deal with that if it comes to it I suppose!

* The event planner in me doesn't feel comfortable with inviting so many people over the legal maximum occupancy of the largest room.  I would like to plan so the largest room can hold 80% of our potential guests - just in case!

I need this veil

I know, these posts are hilarious and have no real wedding planning value.

BUT.

I must have this veil.

Wedding Cake - Hilarious Disaster!

OH MAN.

Click the cake to read the story of the disaster.  Then, you must visit Cake Wrecks.  I found it this afternoon.  The latest post is extremely sad, but the posts about previous cakes are amazingly hilarious.

Luckily, JewishGuy and I have decided not to get a cake anyway.

New top contender?

One of the brides on my reading list recently bought a JCrew dress.  There is another one on the site I really like (I think this is the one she bought!), but I think this one might be more what I want.

Simple Chuppah

Pretty... (click to see florist)

I like the more simple chuppah design, with some little flowers near the top.

Ball is a-rollin'

Seriously, it is amazing to have a supportive fiance, future family in-law and family in the wedding planning progress.  I have to say: I LOVE delegating!  Love, love, love.  It means I can focus on working on a few things rather than feeling like I am in charge of everything.

 

Today I feel good about the delegation and am now working on invitations.  We've talked about this (fleetingly) and basically decided we want a local (Chicago) printer, preferably letterpress printer, to do our invitations.  AND they have to be done by Thanksgiving-ish.  Hopefully that's not too much of a time crunch.

My employer has a good friend who is a letterpress printer so of course I emailed her first.  I also emailed a few other printers who are actually in my neighborhood - as luck would have it - so hopefully I will hear back from them soon.

The main issue is that we will need Hebrew on the invitations.  At least our names will be in Hebrew, if not more.  I'm not a huge fan of the whole invitation being in Hebrew and then translated, although it can look nice, so it really depends on how that all works out.

ALSO...

We are looking for a photographer.  We really like Akil, as he did our friends' wedding and was fantastic.  The downside is he is in Houston so we would have to drag him all the way north for the wedding, which adds to the cost, of course.  We are looking for photographers in the area who offer a similar package with similar quality, but to be honest I don't think we are going to find it.  We're still looking, so we'll see...

JewishGuy is in charge of the band.  He's taking on that responsibility, and I'm glad to let him have it.  He's going to contact the 5 bands we've narrowed our search down to, get some samples, we'll both listen to them, then he is going to make the appointments for auditions so that my parents (and hopefully also CankeyB) can listen to them.  We got some great recommendations from Jewish couples who were recently married in DC, as well as family members who know people who know people.

CankeyB has found her yellow dress, and although I haven't seen it yet I'm sure it is great!  This is exciting - the yellow dress was going to be the hardest one of the three to get, since yellow is not in season anymore she had to brave the sales.

I've decided I want a button/felt flower bouquet by Princess Lasertron.  I have to run it by the parents but I am sure this is the best option for me.  They are soooo cute!

I am thinking of alternatives for bouquets for the bridesmaids and boutonnieres for the men.  I think I might want to go with the herbs for the boutonnieres, but I don't know about the bridesmaids.

Anyway, yay, progress, things are moving, can you feel it?

Need to get on the ball!

As you may have noticed, this blog has gone pretty quiet lately.  It's because the planning has also gone pretty quiet!  We are falling a little bit behind, partially due to the move and starting grad school and whatnot, and also partially do to a little bit of burnout perhaps.

Last weekend JewishGuy's parents and younger sister and my parents and younger brother came to visit and meet for the first time.  It went really well, we hung out and saw some Chicago-y things as well as a Cubs game (who knew Cubs fans break out into song when they win? Maybe it's because they don't win so often?).  But I think it made us realize that we really are running out of time and we need to get on the ball.

JewishFIL sent us a check-list of things we have to do, or delegate.  So last night we went through the list and assigned ourselves parts to take care of.  I'm assuming the list will then be passed around and we'll all assign ourselves things to do and then things will get done.  I also assigned some of my bridesmaids things to do, although I've talked with them before about it... like the possibility of CankeyB being involved in the band selection (as my proxy haha), DesignerChick in charge of hair and make-up.

Hopefully the vague-ness is still okay and things will work out all by themselves...!

Don't Worry, it will calm down

Today I was talking to someone who is recently engaged, as in, a few weeks ago.  Now she is getting the calls about setting a date.  I told her how within 24 hours of being engaged I was asked the date.  I told her how I was already crying about the wedding in 72 hours.

I have to say the first week of being engaged was probably the worst.  Picking the date was the hardest thing I've been involved in regarding wedding planning so far.  Either it was too far away, too soon, on someone else's wedding date, on an anniversary of death (family, national tragedy or poetic), or somehow inconvenient/difficult for important people to attend.  I considered asking to elope.  I don't know how that works for people who want to be married Jewishly.  I guess we could just find some rabbi here and two witnesses and print a ketubah off of the internet.

I'm glad that week is over.  And now I find myself in the position of reassurance.  Eventually, people will either stop asking, or you will pick a date and it will be over.

EEE!

HOW cute.  So cute.  (click image for info/link to site)  Besides the fact that it's sold, it's actually kind of yellowy (according to the site), so I don't know that that will work for me.  BUT the silhouette is adorable.  Thank you, CankeyB for pointing me towards Posh Girl Vintage!

Sorry so few updates recently... swallowed by class and job hunt... will be back on the wedding planning train soon!