Getting close!

We finished the programs today except for the table assignment stickers. We've made a 7 page book for the programs, printed them at kinkos and then bound them ourselves with embroidery floss. Then we glued on tags that were made by the invitations lady, to tie everything together (like a good rug).

I can't believe it's so close! In two and a half days we will get in the car and begin the road trip across the country.

It's weird that it's been a whole year since I started this blog. Time just passes and things come together, I guess!

I am still deciding if I want to get new outfits for the weekend but I probably won't. More likely, I will try to make new outfits out of things I already have. I don't really think I feel like really shopping. I have made a few attempts in these final weeks to go shopping for Shabbat outfits but have gotten distracted or the store I wanted to go to was no longer in business, and I don't really feel like trying too hard when I have a closet full of dresses I've only worn a couple of times (usually to previous weddings).

Yesterday we had an aufruf here because like so many people we are having the wedding somewhere else. It seems to be a tradition to have one aufruf in this congregation 2 weeks before the wedding and another at the congregation where the wedding will take place the week before. It was fun! People threw hershey kisses at us (painful, but JewishGuy blocked it haha), and then the drama with the kiddush lunch. Good times. :)

So here's this week's schedule!

Sunday: finish work for class
Monday: class
Tuesday: class and pack
Wednesday: 12 hour drive home
Thursday: courthouse for marriage license stuff and then bachelorette party!
Friday: move into the hotel, Shabbat services / dinner
Saturday: aufruf, lunch, and dinner, maybe going out?
Sunday: wedding!

Taking Care of Bidnez..

Today we went suit shopping and ring shopping.

It's SO FRUSTRATING how easy it is for JewishGuy to buy a suit and it took me forever to get a dress! How is it that he could walk into a store, tell someone what he wants, and get it, bim bam boom and an hour (and much moneys) later: suit. Done. Yes, I could have done that too, gone to a fancypants bridal shop and plopped down more money than two suits and picked out a dress that was heavy and tight on me, but I knew I didn't want to shop at a bridal salon. So I did it the hard way, I guess. Well, it wasn't so hard, but it was a very long process. ALSO, the store is tailoring it for him, right on the spot, but I have to go to a tailor to have mine done.

Wah wah.

But the suit is great and matches my dress. Also it was a buy-one-get-one-free thing for the suits, so he got a nice work suit, too - and since he had a coupon from another time he spent a lot of money in this store, he bought two other shirt-tie combinations (and shoes, socks, pocket silks, and a belt).

Phew.

Then we went to get our wedding bands. It's actually hard to find a plain wedding band with no rocks in it for women. We had to go to the "men's" section, although it's more unisex than men-only. I have a small man's ring now and JewishGuy also has a thicker man's ring - white gold, plain, and matches the engagement ring. They are sizing it down and it will be ready on Wednesday.

While we were there they offered to re-dip my engagement ring, which is white gold and needed to be re-plated, so they did it on the spot. It looks great :)

Also I am still deciding if I want to have a veil. Jewish brides have been wearing veils for thousands of years so maybe I should wear one. But it seems kind of fake for me, like I am playing dress-up, but then again I am playing dress-up. So... I don't know. When JewishGuy comes in to put my veil on me, I will put his kittel on him, so we will be-decken each other (har-de-har-har).

So... things I still need just for me:

- veil?
- head thing for after the veil is off
- shoes
- alter my dress
- trial wedding hair run-through

T-60 Days!

WOO!

The Dress Party & Decision

Here it is, this is the one I picked! Everyone has been asking so I am posting. I am not posting photos because I don't like doing that on my blogs, so you just have to imagine. I will be sending pictures to some people but not right now.

People have been asking have I found "THE DRESS." Well, I thought I might have a reaction like that, like OOOOOOOOH THIS IS THE ONE !!! .... But I didn't, it's a nice dress that looks good on me. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, I haven't really been like that for anything else so far I think? Yes, I have a dress, hooray! Another thing to check off on the list! I was putting a lot of importance into this dress that wasn't really there, I guess. Some of it feels a little artificial, "The Dress" and all, but I am excited that I have finally picked a dress and now that pressure is off!

(I still wish JewishGuy had asked my permission before opening the boxes of dresses while I was out of town)

For the party, a few of my friends came over and brought breakfasty dishes. We talked and ate and then I tried on dresses :) It was nice, even though I had to kind of kick people out so I could go to the art studio (this winter class is killing me).

I am glad that I did it this way. I really hate shopping - I mean I like shopping, but by myself, I don't like shopping with other people at all. And I realize I don't really like shopping with people when they are there just for you, it makes me really self-conscious not only of how I look but also that I am wasting their time and they are just sitting around waiting for me to make a decision. In my house, people are hanging out, eating, relaxing, warm, etc, and either way - even if I hadn't decided on a dress - it would have been a good time.

I think this party was the girliest thing I have ever done in my entire life. I feel good about it but I also feel uneasy for some reason.

It's in the mail.................

the invitations!

Last night I sat down and stamped, stuffed, stamped, and sealed the invitations and today JewishGuy took them to the post office! I just can't get over how pretty the invitations are!!!

THE INVITATIONS!

YAY! They are done and they are soooooooo pretty :D

It's all one piece, tri-folded, and the last fold is perforated so it breaks off into a postcard. No inserts, no extra papers, no giant envelopes.

The extra little squares are tags that we are going to affix to programs/menus/whatever so that we can print the things at kinkos or somewhere not so expensive and then have a fancy touch :) They came with the invitations because there's extra space on the paper for those little squares.

Also we have matching thank-you stationary, which is just a single card (you can see it in the top picture). It has enough space for a short thank you, and is so nice I hope people keep them.

I love them because they are so pretty but not girly, and so different!

Florist meeting!

The chuppah is going to be four bamboo poles (held by friends) with a white cloth on the top. JewishMIL is making it! At the corners there are going to be a couple of these pink & yellow daisies plus some greenery:





The rest of the flowers are going to be these white daises (and also some smaller, also white daisies):


The daisies will be mixed in with the felt and button flowers from Princess Lasertron (click flower for link to etsy shop):



Except the flowers will be in this color palette:



so... YAY!

I think I am going to have the bouquets be a mix of a couple of white gerbera daisies with the button flowers, mine having more button flowers than the bridesmaids'. I don't know if anyone else is having button flowers, it depends on what they want - I know my mom wants a button flower corsage but I don't know if anyone else wants, so I will have to ask :)

The centerpieces as they are right now (subject to review, I think) are going to be two white gerbera daisies and one button flower in one of three clear vase designs (ellipse, rectangle and square).

Also I want to have little tea lights on the tables with the centerpieces, I think that is pretty easy to coordinate.

Overall I think everything will be simple and fresh, I don't want to compete too much with the mansion.

Updates & Clarification

HEY everyone,

#1, I wanted to clarify something important about the blog, because I think I have given the wrong impression to some people.  This blog is where I post things that I like, things that I think are pretty, not necessarily things that I *have* to have.  I'm not actually a bridezilla.  I just think things are pretty.  Mostly, I am flexible about the wedding, and have in fact given up control over most things because I don't have time or I'm not overly concerned with how it turns out.  I do have general ideas as to what I want, which I post here, but it's not set in stone!  So what I post here is the same as a bride-to-be buying bridal magazines and clipping things out that are cute.

Also, just a note, I lapsed in renewing my domain name, so images may not show up on the site for a couple of days.  They will be back soon, hopefully.

#2, Updates!  We are having our invitations done by OrangeBeautiful, and they are pretty awesome, so check them out.  They also have a blog, where they post pretty things that THEY like!  I'm having my second meeting with them next Thursday, when we'll go over some designs they are working on for our awesome invitations.  The invitation is going to have a tri-fold, with the third section being a tear-off RSVP postcard.  How fun!  They're going to play off of the cuteness of the imagery of our Hebrew names, which mean Bird and Tree.  WE ARE SO ADORABLE.

Also, I am taking a trip to Maryland in December to meet with florists and wedding planners.  We are thinking of hiring someone for the weekend to make sure things go smoothly, and if not the weekend then definitely a day-of coordinator.  My mom is putting together the itinerary of my meetings and I'll just go to them and chat (maybe we will go together?)

Things are coming together without me having to do too much, which is also awesome.  My mom and JewishGuy's dad are working on Shabbat services, the whole family is participating, reading Torah or Haftorah or having aliyot or leading services.  It's going to be awesome.  I am really excited. :)

DesignerChick is working on setting up a consult with her make-up artist for me also for my trip in December.  I probably won't have the dress yet, but we are going to design my make-up concept.  Ha!

CankeyB along with my other bridesmaids are hard at work on my bachelorette party, although I don't know much about it other than it will be a slumber party the Thursday night before the wedding.  OBVIOUSLY I am ridiculously excited!  (Also... I have a sneaking suspicion there might be a "surprise" bachelorette party for me here in Chicago thrown by people in my program...)

I think that's it for now in terms of updates...!

Long Time No Post

Well, it's really been a long time since I've done a wedding post.  Basically, I am overloaded with grad work, so I have pretty much given everything away that I can give away for other people to do.  I am immensely grateful for the stepping-in of family and future-family!  I don't know how this would happen if it were just up to JewishGuy and me, seeing as how we are both working our butts off and JewishGuy is traveling at an average every other week.

However, things are getting done.  My mom is working with a florist for various arrangements, JewishMIL is going to MAKE the chuppah (woo!), we are going to do our own centerpieces, we've booked our print media contract (OrangeBeautiful, check them out, they are awesome).  We've made some decisions, like no wedding cake but heaps of desserts.  People are volunteering for Torah reading, JewishGuy is doing the Haftorah, for our aufruf.

Still have no dress!

And on and on.  One day I will be finished with the major assignments and I can go back to posting!

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...!

Status Update!

Since we'll be interviewing our first (and hopefully only!) photographer tomorrow, I thought I may as well post a status update.  What has been done so far, and what does theknot.com say we have to do soon?

DONE

• Booked hotel, venue and caterer
• Found an "officiant who suits [our] style and spirit" (JewishFIL)
• Put together an engagement party (happening tonight!)
• Begin working on wedding guest list
• Choose color scheme
• Start registering for gifts
• Choose bridesmaids, etc
• Begin looking at gowns
• Gave the bridesmaids guidelines for the dresses (well, I still have to send the packet to HillelLady!)

CURRENTLY WORKING ON

• Booking photographer
• Looking for bands to interview/get sample mp3s from
• Deciding where to go for honeymoon

NEED TO DO THIS MONTH

• Insure the engagement ring already!!! (it's going on our renter's insurance at our new place)
• Interview/book a wedding consultant (a day-of coordinator)
• Decide on a budget (haha)
• Finalize the guest list
• Book the band
• Talk to a florist

We liked the photographer from our friends' wedding so much we are going to try to book him for ours.  We're meeting with him tomorrow to talk about his rates and travel stipulations, considering he will have to go all the way to DC for the weekend.  I'm hoping that he will be excited to be there for the Cherry Blossom Festival and won't charge us too much for his travel!  We'll see.  There are also photographers in the DC area that CankeyB is pointing us towards, also JewishGuy's cousin is sending us amazing photographers but some of them are super expensive and high profile.

Also, I think we need to add the invitations to things that need to be worked on this month.  I think once we finalize the out-of-towner guest list (which should be almost finalized?), we should send out save-the-dates.  There's also some controversy about whether or not to send RSVP cards, but I'll talk about that another time.

In any case, I think we're in good shape considering the wedding is still 279 days away!

Yay Tallit! & Dress stuff

I bought the tallit for JewishGuy! I happened to be walking around Jerusalem and stumble on this little shop for an artist who hand-weaves tallitot in Rehovot. She said she could make a custom one if I wanted, but I saw one in the shop that I think is perfect. I had my friend try it on so I could see what it looked like on someone, and I think it's good. He won't get to see it for a while, though! I'm not going to describe it here but it's nice, not crazy colorful, understated but I think he will like it. And if he doesn't like it, the lady said as long as it's clean and new we can bring it back next time we're in Israel (honeymoon?? :P). So that is nice to know.

In other news, I am glad I didn't spontaneously buy the dress. I showed my friend pictures of it on my camera last night and she seemed unenthused. Granted, she didn't know what I was looking for, but it doesn't matter, if she didn't think it looked good then maybe I was just caught up in the moment. Really, it's good I didn't buy it, because it was at the upper limit of what I wanted to spend on a dress! Plus I would have to carefully transport it back.

Engagement Party Delays

We have decided to delay our local engagement party until June for the following reasons:

1. We got lazy on sending out invitations and now it's a week before our original date and nobody has been officially invited. (This is a big reason)  Although we could send out an email, I really want to send out invitations, I just think that's nicer.  Plus, I made the invitations already!  I just have to scratch out the date somehow haha.


2. Right now I am feeling ridiculously crazy and not ready for most of the traveling I will be doing this summer, plus I'm still kind of finishing classes and taking care of grad school things, like financial aid & loans, eek.


3. I unfortunately had to race up to NY last week for 4 days, which cut out a significant amount of time to get things done that I needed to get done before I leave for Israel in a couple of weeks.


4. We haven't registered for gifts yet...  At first we weren't planning on registering before the engagement party since we weren't expecting our friends to give us gifts at the engagement party, but a number of our friends have asked us to register.  Who are we to disappoint them? ;)

Also, while I was in NY, many of my family members asked when we were going to have an engagement party.  And when I told them we were having one down here, they looked surprised and somewhat upset that we weren't having a family engagement party.  So now I am wondering, should we have another one in NY?  Maybe this summer or maybe closer to Thanksgiving when everyone is around anyway?

So now we are thinking late June, like June 22, for our local engagement party.  Some people won't be able to make it because it's so late, like people who are moving in May and people who are going on summer trips or internships, but I don't know how we could pull it all off in a week and still be sane.  I mean, we could, it's possible, but I think we might just delay it for sanity's sake.

Fun with Lists

Wow it is hard making a guest list.  We came up with a first draft of the guest list of just JewishGuy's and my friends today - mostly because we were concerned with the weekend events involving food.  Some of our guests are religious and coming from out of town, so we will be providing meals for them and services at the hotel throughout Shabbat.  That means we have to know how many people to expect to feed for those meals and how much space to rent at the hotel.  While we were at it, we made a list of our friends who will be eating on Sunday (well, we separated it into "maybe," "probably," and "unlikely.")

It's a pretty long list!  Right now it looks like around 20-25 of our friends will be there for the weekend and around 35 for the wedding!  I think we are looking to invite about 55 friends to the wedding, total.  Our friends list doesn't include our parents' friends and their (our-age) children, or family.

What sparked this new progress was developments in the catering and hotel arranging department.  I have only heard through JewishGuy (after talks with his mom on the phone), but it sounds like we are going to go with this caterer, which has been highly recommended by pretty much everyone we know in the area, even though we haven't tasted the food yet.  It also sounds like the hotel is going to be really flexible with us about blocking off rooms since we are renting conference rooms for meals and services - as in, instead of charging us a percentage of the costs of the rooms we can't use once we've blocked them off, we'll be able to cancel them 3 weeks in advance with no (?) charge.  That's fantastic news and a big sigh of relief, considering we are blocking off rooms in DC during the cherry blossom festival!

Things are falling into place, at least some of the major things.  Although, because I don't want to jinx it, AHH EVERYTHING IS FALLING APART AND NOTHING IS GOING RIGHT RAH RAH RAH :( :( :(

We Have a Venue!

Woo!  We have now put down a deposit on this place (the same one that I was talking about before) for March 29!

These pictures are from when my mom went to visit last week.  Very pretty.  Yay!

There was a little bit of drama involving the times - they seemed to say to my mom that the 7 hours we were buying didn't include set-up or clean-up, but then the contract was pretty clear that not only did you have to subtract that time, but that you should only really count on 4 1/2 hours of event time!  That's really not enough for the ceremony AND the reception.  However, since it's a Sunday and we're the only event happening that day, we were able to buy some more hours to make it a more reasonable amount of time.

Also, the kosher caterer that's been recommended to us by many different people on separate occasions is on their list of preferred caterers.  That's great because they know the rules of this place and I'd say we could probably trust them not to do something crazy that would cost us our security deposit.  That's probably the next thing we have to get: the contract with the caterer.  

We have to do it soonish only because we are also going to need them all weekend, not just for Sunday afternoon.  We are planning Shabbat meals for the out of town guests in the hotel who are shomer shabbat and therefore have to come Friday and can't go out to dinner or anything.  So any caterer we get would (preferably) do Friday night dinner, Saturday lunch, Saturday dinner and Sunday dinner.  That's a lot of catering.  However, my thoughts are (at least right now, just preliminary thinking) is that if we are able to block off rooms in a hotel in downtown DC, the Saturday dinner could be relatively small so that the guests would then go out on the town Saturday night... although the kashrut issue might prevent that from actually being possible.  Well, who knows, that's another discussion.

Anyway, phew, another major milestone in the wedding planning process complete!

April Fools!

OK So we aren't actually changing the date... it's still March 29.  I thought I was hilarious.  I think I was!

CHANGING THE DATE!

We've decided to have the wedding August 24 instead.  We just don't want to wait!  I think we can probably get the planning done in time, we just have to step it up.  Plus I'll be free most of the summer so I can do a lot of traveling to help with preparations and whatever.

Yay!!!!

Engagement Partay!!!

JewishGuy and I decided to have an engagement party!  It's exciting because a lot of people from here probably aren't going to make it to the wedding, so we still wanted to celebrate with them somehow.  We don't have a ton of money to do this with, so we are going to go with a simple and cute dessert party :)

I've arranged to reserve the courtyard in our apartment complex that has nice shrubbery, trees and a pretty nice fountain.  It's lit up at night by small post lights in the shrubbery and lights in the fountain, and there are a few tables and chairs (and we can drag some chairs over from the pool in the other courtyard but I assume most people will be standing most of the time).

I am thinking of making little lights to put on the tables to add a little more light but to also be our decorations.  I want to do something simple, like really just going to the thrift store and picking up some old vases and then sticking candles in them.  I want the effect to look like a combination of these:

I think that could be really pretty.  Like not quite as polished as the top one (also not hanging), but not quite as childish as the bottom one.  And on the tables would be different (covered) bowls of cookies, cakes, and other desserts, plus wines and other drinks. 

That plus a little light music... I think that could be very nice!

I am going to hand-draw invitations and then take them to kinko's to be sent out to everyone as soon as I get all of the addresses I need.  We are going to invite a pretty large crowd, so I think it will be fun.  I am going to wear a dress :)

Going with the Times

JewishGuy and I were talking about it and we decided that, for the sake of the out-of-towners, we should have a late afternoon/evening wedding rather than a morning/afternoon wedding.  The reason I wanted it to be earlier was because I wanted to wear a short dress and flats, and I wanted my bridesmaids to do the same.  However, I'm pretty sure we can manage this with a semi-formal evening wedding.  Also, it might be really pretty to have candles on the tables and little lanterns up around during the party!

It would be better for the out-of-towners for a few reasons:

1) They can get just as drunk as they want and then go back to the hotel and crash.

2) They won't be stuck after the wedding is over at 6pm going, ok, well, what do we do now?

3) They can go downtown in the morning before the ceremony and see the cherry blossoms and maybe tour a little. (Or they can just sleep in late.)

So, there you have it.  It's now a semi-formal evening wedding!

Real Updates

So much of this blog is me fantasizing about things I want to do and not necessarily about REAL UPDATES, but since there will be REAL UPDATES occasionally (increasing in frequency as the year goes on), I have created a new tag for posts with real updates called, surprisingly, real updates.  This tag will be located on the side column, along with other tags, such as "glee," "colors," etc.  So if you are someone who will be checking in periodically to find out what's up, feel free to only click "real updates" to see what's the real status.