Wedding day run-through continued

Note - I sincerely apologize for my gramatical errors.

Hmmm so where did I leave off....

4:1o-ish pm: Ralph and I are taking pictures. The limo arrives and my brothers come in the lobby only to see me stretched out on the chaise lounge taking bridal portraits. I try and look serene. Ralph and I leave to take pictures in a dirty stairwell, while the limo and my family wait.

4:30-ish pm: I leave in the limo with my family. Shockingly, it is only very lightly sprinkling. Meanwhile, Ralph and my big brother Dave drive together in our sexy getaway car.....



4:35 pm: In the limo, I down our water bottle and eat a melting chocolate energy bar thanks to Janet. I can't believe that I did not get chocolate on my dress. I still have a terrible migrane. Phone calls go back and forth about whether we take pictures at the dock behind our venue or not.



4:45 pm: We arrive at the dock behind our venue to take more pics only 15 minuutes late. I get out and the rain and crazy wind make me change my mind. I get back in the limo and we are driven to the venue entrance. We arrive to see our new ceremony space. I think it looks just fine given our situation. I later learn that Ralph was so terribly disappointed with it. There is lots of talk about still trying to move it outside between me, Ralph, Esther, our DOC, and staff at the venue. I put all the desicions on Ralph's head, since my brain left like it was going to explode.

5:00 pm: We take family portraits. I can't believe that Ralph and I forgot to make a list of pictures we wanted. Our photographer does really well considering our oversight. All our family was on time and fully coorporates - I have a great time seeing everyone looking so cute and happy. I think my eyes stayed open during the picture-taking.

5:30-ish pm: Ralph and I try and take some outdoor portraits. We run into a zillion people coming to another wedding right across the way from us. They are surprised to see a bride that they don't recognize. It is still drizzling so we take some pics under covered areas, except when Ralph wasn't looking I posed for one in some great foliage getting slightly wet in the process. As we begin our return to the VIP room, we run into some of our early arriving guests. They are pretty surprised to see us.

5:45-6:15 pm: I hang out in the VIP room; I am standing not sitting, as the families come and in out. Head is absolutely killing me. My mom is trying to make thank you cards and divvy up tips. I sip on some Sprite and Coke. Why is there no water around????? Bass music is pulsating through the room, and I ask Ralph to take care of it. He does and gets them to also tone down the steel drums from the wedding I ran into (I had no idea). I cannot belive that all 3 events are going on at the same time in the same location, as they promised that it would never happen, but tell myself to save the angry for later. I do exactly that.

6:30 pm: Showtime! I walk in, or more like stumble. My footing was really off especially with both my parents by my sides. Our officiant signals for us to slow down, since the aisle is ridiculously short in our new space. My feet are KILLING me for standing up in the VIP room for so long. What was I thinking? I manage to cry gracefully (I think) , but facing our friends and family and not completely bawling out of such happiness was really hard. As we say our vows, I remember to bend my knees so I don't faint or anything. I try hard to listen to what our officiant says. But I am so distracted by Ralph and being ridiclously happy to remember it all. I snatch my ring by accident - whoops. I put Ralph's ring on him exactly how I was instructed NOT to do. We have no problem kissing each other, which was a problem at the rehearsal. Then we disappear to the VIP room.

7:00 pm: Picture time in the park. But first we go down another dirty staircase. It is still too windy for the dock. We take pictures on some bridges and by some waterfalls. A server offers us some appetizers, and I force one down, but I still feel ill. We walk into the mulch to take some shots under a huge Banyon tree (Ralph can't believe I can do this in heels and in a wedding dress). We go to our original ceremony site and cocktail site for some pics.

7:49 pm: My veil taken is off and we return just to catch the end of the cocktail hour. We are greeted by a claps and cheers. I couldn't be more happy. Flavia gets Ralph a beer and gets me some water (begrudgingly, I might add). I eat another appetizer or two, but I just feel too ill to eat. I hope the water kicks in to help my headache.

Okay, all the rest in one more post.

I gave in to the DIY world of weddings

I told myself that I would try to keep things simple, but man, I got sucked in. I told myself that I did not have to print on a piece of paper what was going on during our ceremony (aka The Ceremony Programs), that it was a waste of paper. I mean, certainly people have been to a wedding before and generally know what is going on. But then, I thought, hmmmm... there are an awful lot of women here, people are going to wonder who is who, and for that matter, who is that girl reading that poetry, and what is she reading? And I thought, that some of those moms might want a keepsake from the wedding. And then I thought, well it is just one more thing, it won't take long to make. Hmph!

I also told myself that a decorated aisle runner was totally unnecessary. I mean, what do you do with it when you are done? Then I met our DOC a few weeks ago and I broke the news to her.... (a) we are using basic banquet chairs without chair covers (shutter), (b) we are not having an arch, (c) we are not decorating anything for the ceremony, and finally (d) that includes the aisle runner.

See, look how pretty our ceremony site is without decorations and stuff.

It was only D that made her slightly downtrodden. So, since I had already made an emergency flight back to Miami to take care of wedding business, I decided to decorate that damn aisle runner the morning of my flight home back to CA.

And so, here are my instructions for other brides that don't feel like shelling out $80+ on one...

(1) Make your design. I used powerpoint to make this...

(2) Measure the width of your aisle runner to determine the size of your finished monogram. At first, I thought it should be 1/2 the width of the aisle runner - WRONG. That was way too small. I would say about 2/3 the width is good.

(3) Resize your design in your program. For Powerpoint, go to File --> Page Setup and enter your correct dimensions. It should automatically resize everything to scale. I then saved the file as a PNG file (I really don't know why, but I did)

(4) Get it to a printer friendly program. For me, that was Excel. I went to Insert --> Picture and inserted that PNG file into there. Then I printed in grayscale. It will print in mulitple pages (I couldn't get Powerpoint to do this).

(5) Cut the pages, align, and tape them together

This is the smaller version that I ended up scrapping

(6) Place the taped pages under the runner and secure well with tape that you have predetermined to be removedable without damaging the runner.

(7) Using a toothpick, outline the runner with your paint. I used craft paint from Michael's. This is kinda nessesary to have a nice finished edge.

(8) Fill in with a brush, if you have a steady hand. Otherwise fill in with the toothpick. I luckily have a steady hand.

The finished product

(9) DO NOT SPILL IT ON THE RUNNER! If so, we found that blotting with concetrated all purpose cleaner (Mrs. Meyers) and then LIGHTLY painting over it with Whiteout worked ok.

We fixed it pretty well

(10) Remove the paper from underneath the runner. The question really should be when should you do this. We waited until the paint was dry to the soft touch, however, the paper stuck to the aisle runner and was a pain to remove. If you remove it while it was wet, I am afraid that the paint will stain anything else that is left underneath it while it dries.

(11) If you are like me... thank you mom profusely. Between the two of us it took us a good 4.5 hours to outline, paint, and then figure out how to fix our boo boos.

Total cost was $16....~$11 for the runner, $2.25 for paint (which I already owned but was in CA), $2.00 for a thin brush, and, of course, the bonding time with mom was priceless. I also got all these supplies at Michael's when they had 40% off coupons (the trick is that you print out multiple ones and make your family come with you).

So what will do with this thing? Well I decided that we will have a little decor in there. How about a few rose petals down the sides of the aisle. Sorta like this.....

Yes, I am a total sucker!

I am a sucker for contests

I entered another "contest" for free Day of Coordination (DOC) services. This one isn't a popularity contest thankfully. I really really hope we win, because the latest mess from our venue is very upsetting. It is far too complicated to blog completely about it, but to summarize....

(1) Our original coordinator left. In getting a new coordinator we found that....
(2) Our 25% off catering discount was never put through. In getting a new contract to reflect the promised discount, we found that...
(3) They weren't sure what our wedding date is (I'M NOT KIDDING)
(4) The Plan B in case of bad weather was not reserved for us.
(5) The ceremony site was listed as the incorrect location.
(6) The reception site was listed as the incorrect location.

Now you might be thinking... did we even bother to read our original signed contract? Of course we did and the original one was perfect and had all the right details in it. I have NO idea, where all the confusion came in when drafting the new contract.

Sooooo.... I have little faith in our new coordinator (apparently she can't read a contract), so a DOC would be great to insure everything goes as planned the day of (and if it doesn't, she'll fix it and never let me know). Check here on January 25th to see if we win her services.

Oh and I am flying directly to Miami upon leaving Europe. We got a mess on our hands that requires more than emails and unanswered phonecalls! In the meantime, Ralph is trying to get me revved up to get me to go all bridezilla on them. He thinks that is the only way to get them to do anything right. I think he might be right.

Just when I was starting to stress...

a google search saved the day.

One of the reasons I really liked our venue is that it was pretty and natural on its own and needed little to no decoration. For some stupid reason, I was starting to think that our lack of ceremony decorations and use of standard run-of-the-mill banquet chairs sans chair-covers (a thing that both Ralph and I dislike out of the discomfort of them slipping from under our bums), would look boring.

Well a simple google search, which I did for reasons I will discuss later, yielded a wonderful video from Fandango Video Solutions, that alleviated these fears. It is of a cute young(!!!) couple getting married in the same location (but different setup) that Ralph and I are in sealing the deal in. They had no chair covers, no ceremony decor, nada... and I like it that way. Whew, I need to stick to my gut. I don't have time to be rethinking this stuff. Anyway, I have other things to worry about.

So please enjoy the show.

Sharing some of my attempted craftiness

Poor Ralph, he thinks I am crazy. I have about 10 different DIY projects going on at the same time. Why? Well, I want to have as much done as possible before I leave in December (which would be December 9th!!!).

Some stuff just has to wait to be revealed until the big day. But in the meantime, I will share my latest somewhat finished project. The other day, we were shopping at Target and I was perusing the $1+ section in the front of the store, and found these:



I decided that for $2.50, I could make some nice signs to direct people to our ceremony. I just needed some materials that I had laying around my house. I sanded them down and painted them with some latex paint that I found in our utility closet.




Then it rained on them and they looked pink. I tried another coat - still pink. So, Ralph stepped in and got some flat spray enamel in white. He said he would take care of it - but in the end it was largely all me...




Next I needed to paint on the letters - not an easy feat. So I printed up a design in word. Using a ballpoint pen, I traced over the letters using alot of pressure. This left an imprint that I then followed with the craft paint I used for the escort frames.




The result wasn't perfect, but good enough. I am glad I didn't bother with stencils. I like the imperfect look.

I made two signs for a total cost of $8. Sure it was cheaper than buying them on etsy, but it was a little more time consuming than I would have liked. The only thing I am missing is the correct ribbon.

Oh and I have no idea what I will do with these after the wedding. Maybe flip them over and paint something else on them???

Timeline schimeline

Any place you go to learn about weddings and wedding planning, you will find that there are helpful timelines to help the clueless (I mean most people, I assume, have never done this before). Each month or so, they give you a whole bunch of checklists of what to do. See what the website theknot tells me to do:

4/18/2008 - 5/18/2008
THIS MONTHS TO DOS

		Choose a color scheme, if you so desire, taking into account the decor of the rooms/areas you have reserved for your ceremony and reception.
		Start investigating any ethnic customs or cultural traditions you might want to incorporate into your ceremony or reception.
		Start auditioning reception bands or DJs.

Here is another one from the magazine Real Simple Weddings:
It is nice to have. The only problem we are having is that our schedules don't exactly mesh with these timelines. We travel apart and often, so scheduling is critical to our sanity. Put wedding planning on top of all that and you have a mess. Here how one of our conversations go:

Me: So how long do we have together before one of us leaves?
Him: Ummm 1.5 weeks, then I go to Costa Rica for 4 weeks and then I am back for 3 weeks and then go to Brazil for 3 weeks.
Me: And when you are in Costa Rica, I am in Belize for 4 weeks and then I am back for a week and then I go to Brazil for 2 weeks.
Him: So how long do we have together this summer - only 1 week?
Me: Yep - I guess we gotta go register then.

So for pretty much everything on those checklists we have to do quite far in advance. Otherwise, one of us (most likely me), has to make an executive decision. I am not too pleased about getting behind on these checklists, but it looks like it is going to happen, since there is no way I am auditioning DJs from CA. I only hope we start investigating traditions by May 15th:-)