Flowers chosen?

Sorry, I know it's been a long time since I've given you any sort of meaningful attention, Harry Kalas aside. There isn't too much big stuff going on, just lots of little progress every day, chipping away at various things on the to-do list.

Well, here's an update for you. I think I've decided what flowers to order!

I worked at a florist in college, which was by far one of the best jobs I've ever had. Even on the most stressful day (think Valentine's Day), you were super busy boxing and wrapping up dozens of beautiful flowers. How stressful can that really be? I loved seeing the wedding flowers that we put together, and developed a very strong sense of what flowers I preferred. I will admit to one day, 9 years ago (oh my gosh, has it really been that long!?), writing down what I wanted my wedding bouquet to look like. My tastes haven't changed too much in the ensuing years, I have to admit.

One of the best/worst things about working at a florist was the development of the idea that I am capable of doing my own wedding flowers. A double-edged sword, to be sure, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for everyone, due to the stress that is sure to come with it. And who knows, after the wedding, I might not recommend it to anyone!

Actually, I'm really excited and looking forward to being able to work on my own flowers, although some of the logistics are going to require attention. Over the last few days, I've been perusing bulk flower websites, and here's what I've decided to order:


I'm aiming for mostly purple (all shades) and green, with a hint of pink. Sort of a wild, loosy goosey look, not too structured. Does this meet the mark?

Here's the flower breakdown:
Lavender roses
Pink/white bicolor roses
White spray roses
Purple lisianthus
Lavender sweet pea
White alstromeria
Purple alstromeria
Bupleurum (green)
Purplush/bluish limonium
Assorted colors of hypericum berries (for the berries in our "vines and berries" motif) (I'm hoping there's not too many red ones in the mix, but more of the green, pink, and peachy ones)
Assorted colors of statice (any color this comes in will be fine, except for maybe the hot pink)
And for greens, I'm using ruscus (evoking the vines in our motif) and lemonleaf.

I don't want too much of a pastel color scheme, but there are more flowers that come in bright pinks than come in bright purples. Hopefully the purple lisianthus will help keep things in the bold spectrum.

What do you think about the sweet pea? It comes in a variety of bold pink colors, but not a true purple, only lavender. Stick with the purple shade and risk being too pastel, or trade it for a darker pink and risk bringing too much pink into the mix? Similarly, trade in the lavender roses for something else (white or pink?) or leave them alone?

I actually have no problems with pink, and love bold pink flowers, but I've seen a few pictures of florals done in all purple and they're really nice looking, too, so I think that's what I'm going to go for. On the other hand, the eggplant bridesmaid dresses might look nice with a punch of pink, don't you think? Or should I stick with the color scheme and go all purple and green? You see where I'm getting stuck...

I traded the ability to pick the exact varieties of some of the flowers (roses and alstro in particular) for the lower price that comes with just ordering "lavender" roses. Hopefully they'll be blue curiosas, but if not, it won't be the end of the world.

Here's an interesting dilemma that occurs when ordering bulk flowers: They only come in bulk sizes! So if you want a huge variety of flowers, you quickly end up adding $3000+ worth of flowers to your online shopping cart and kicking yourself because one of the main points of doing your own flowers was to save money! Or you can find sites that let you buy in smaller quantity, but you end up spending just as much money because the unit price goes up a lot. For example, I originally had lilies, ranunculus, amaranthus, freesia, anemones, and delphinium in the mix, not to mention a bunch of other shades of roses, lisianthus, and alstromeria. But I really don't need 100 of each flower. Well, I'm sure I could decide that I did need them, but our budget can't take it. Instead, if the deliveries arrive and I still wish I had some lily, freesia, or anemones to help balance the color scheme, or I still wish I had some amaranthus just for the luxury, I can head across the street to our local florist or out to Whole Foods to see what I can get on short notice and in small quantities.

So that's the plan for what to order. Have any suggestions for colors/flowers? I welcome them! In a later post, I'll talk about what I'm going to make with all of these flowers.

Crafting the Invitations -- Budget

The whole invitation recap:
Crafting the Invitations -- Graphics
Crafting the Invitations -- Layout
Crafting the Invitations -- Envelopes
Crafting the Invitations -- Rehearsal Dinner Invitation
Crafting the Invitations -- Assembly

I decided to go DIY with the invitations for two reasons: complete control over every detail and the potential to save some money. I definitely accomplished goal #1. Let's see how I did with goal #2:

Graphic design help from Sue: $20 (Thank goodness for Etsy Alchemy!)
Cardstock, package of 250: $20
Only used 130 sheets, so $10.40
Printing at The Reliable Printing Company: $100 + tax = $106
150 envelopes from ActionEnvelopes: $41.67 including s&h
5 sheets of Unryu Thread Paper from PaperMojo.com: $2.20 each + approx s&h = $13 (I bought some other things in the same shipment so I'm estimating the shipping for just the Unryu paper here)
Pack of striped embossed greeting cards: $1.99 + tax = $2.10
Roll of Zots: ~$3
Package of very flat Glue Dots: ~$3
Only used about 2/3 pack: $1.85
Package of sticko brand repositionable tape: $0.75 (Yup! On clearance for 75% off!)

TOTAL: $198.77 Divided by 100 invitations: $1.98/invitation

Don't forget, that includes the rehearsal dinner invitation, too!

We also used 84 postcard stamps (27-cents each), and 84 first-class stamps (42-cents each), and had to send 9 invitations overseas. I estimate we saved about $27 by using a 42-cent and 27-cent stamp on each invitation/RSVP card, rather than a 59-cent and 42-cent stamp if we had had a heavier invitation and used an RSVP envelope. It's not a ton of money, but $27 counts for something!

I also haven't factored into the equation things like the calligraphy marker I used, because I also used it for the save-the-dates and will be able to use it again in the future. Same goes for the new color ink cartridge I bought; it will be used for printing the programs and escort cards and all sorts of random wedding paper paraphernalia. The various pieces of scrapbook paper I bought as inspiration for the design will definitely get used at some point in time for something, so I'm not going to count those, either, and it was less than $10, anyway.

I could have saved a little more by printing at Kinko's instead of using the local printer (about $22), but I definitely would not have gotten the complete, personalized attention of someone as amazing as Eric. I also could have saved on the per-invitation cost by buying envelopes from a different company, but I would have had to have bought a package of 250, leaving me with 100+ extra envelopes at the end. Sure, I could turn around and try to resell them, but that's an added stress I don't want to deal with at this point. As it is, I still have almost 50 left over I'm not sure what to do with.

So $2/invitation really isn't that bad! It turns out that I met both of my goals by DIY-ing my invitations: complete obsessive control AND saving money!

The downside to all of this? I put in a lot of time and energy to get all of this done. Printing the envelopes, lining them, addressing them, and assembling the invitations alone took a good 15-20 hours over a week and a half. I spent almost two entire weekends just working on this stuff. I watched a lot of DVR-ed TV episodes during that time, including the entire current season of ER. Designing the invitation and rehearsal dinner were also pretty time consuming, although it was spread out over a number of months, so it wasn't too bad. Next year, as an Ob/Gyn intern, I'll be making roughly $11.50/hour before taxes*, so I figure those 20 hours of invitation assembly alone were worth $200+.

Never mind, let's not keep going with those calculations. They're too depressing.

Anyway, what I was saying was that I put a lot of time and energy into these babies, and if I hadn't been totally committed to it and enjoyed doing it, it would totally not have been worth it. But I'm really happy that I created something that was exactly as I envisioned it, and I didn't mind doing it myself this once. After all, I won't be making wedding invitations for myself ever again, and not for anyone else anytime soon. So I won't attempt to calculate what that time could have been worth.

I hope you've enjoyed this little recap of my most time-consuming wedding project to date. Don't worry, there are lots of other projects in the works! I have all of April and May off to do nothing but plan, plan, plan!

*$45,000/year, with 3 weeks of vacation plus 1 week off for either Christmas or New Year's, working 80 hours/week. And let's hope it's only 80 hours/week.

Wedding band

One down, one to go.

I mentioned that the price of palladium had suddenly become very interesting to me. That's because I requested that Philip Haas, the jeweler Eric used to make my engagement ring, make me a wedding band in palladium to match, and I was afraid that the custom piece might be pricey.

I started my wedding band search at the mall jewelry stores, and one day this past summer, I found one I really really liked, at Zales:
It was a 1/4-carat TDW (total diamond weight) shared prong white gold band. It was really nice. The diamond quality was G/H/I (mixed; no guarantee) color, I1 clarity. Since I found it at a Zales in New Jersey, I took down the item number to save.

In January, I bought it at my local mall, and brought it to Philip.

Yeah, I'm sneaky like that. I made sure there was a good return policy (full refund within 30 days, store credit within 60 days), first, just in case. The Zales ring was much too big (I avoided getting it sized right away like they wanted me to by making up a story about needing to show it to my mom, who was only visiting for a couple of days...), and had 13 diamonds. Philip and I decided to shrink that down to 11 diamonds to accommodate my finger size in a nice-looking way (I have a size 4.5 ring finger!). I placed my order, and a few weeks later, I had this:


Sorry the detail isn't that great; my camera doesn't have a very good macro lens. In any case, it's perfect! Palladium, to match my engagement ring, with 11 diamonds totaling .21 carats (the diamonds are the same size each as the Zales ring, but there are only 11 instead of 13), of G color and VS2 clarity. Exactly what I wanted, made especially for me. And the best part? It was only $80 more than the Zales ring! (I know that palladium is less expensive now than white gold, but my stones are of a significantly better quality, to more closely match my solitaire, so I think it evens out... plus the fact that it was custom work, of course!) I returned the Zales ring successfully, and my devious plan worked.

Here are the two rings together:

They aren't an identical matched set, but I like it that way. Each can stand on its own, but they work very well together at the same time.

Now we just need a ring for Eric. We'd go back to Philip Haas for that one, too, but since Eric won't be around here again until two days before the wedding, I'm not sure that's going to work out logistically, so we'll be shopping around in Philly/NJ, probably. Maybe a mall jewelry store ring would be fine. Plus, I just talked to the husband of a classmate of mine who recently accidentally lost his wedding ring, and he says that a guy's first ring should be like his first car: It shouldn't be a Mercedes. He had bought his ring at Kohl's, just in case, which turned out to be a good idea. I'm not sure what I think of that theory; I'm willing to give Eric more credit than that :)

Cake!

So we finally booked a baker! I know I told you I tasted some cake a couple months ago, and then I let the issue drop.

At the end of January, we went to visit Eric's sister and her new baby. It coincidentally was also Eric's sister's husband's 30th birthday that weekend. I decided it would be good to have some cake, so I set up a couple tastings to pick up and bring with me.

One was from Adrienne's, and they asked me to pick out six flavors to try. I was amazed when we opened the box:

This is the after-we-devoured-cake shot, but I think you can tell that it was six full slices of cake. They were actually all put right next to each other and then iced to look like one complete cake, so I didn't know what to expect! We tried white, lemon, strawberry, red velvet, raspberry, and Italian cream. You can see the 3-0 candles we picked up to celebrate Brian's birthday, too. Free sample cake for someone else's birthday... ghetto, perhaps, but that's how I roll. It was fun to get to taste everything with Paige and Brian, too.

Strawberry was the clear winner, although it is a very shocking pink. After I got back, I set up a consultation with Adrienne (she does her consultations after the taste test, which is awesome), and got pricing and design info. Adrienne is awesome and very friendly, and I'm happy I met with her.

Everything stayed in limbo until Eric came to visit last week for Match Day. I arranged to pick up tastings from 4 bakeries: Plehn's, which I had previously tasted by myself, Bussmann's, Williams, and Adrienne's (for a comparative taste test). There was another tasting but it turned out it would have cost us $20, and I figured there are enough bakeries that will give us free cake that I didn't need to worry about a place that would charge us for a tasting (plus, I already knew their prices and they were the most expensive yet!).

Here's what we collected and assembled at the apartment:

Plehn's, yellow and strawberry:
Since they knew I was picking up the tasting to taste later, they included their icing in a little waxed paper cone for us to dispense ourselves. That's my icing handiwork pictured. I've always wanted to do that!


Williams Bakery, yellow iced with chocolate and chocolate iced with white/yellow:


Bussmann's, 2 chocolate cupcakes and I think 4 yellow cupcakes. The fact that there are 4 made me think that maybe I actually ordered 2 yellow and 2 something else (lemon?), but I didn't taste any difference, so I'm not sure what happened there...


And Adrienne's, where we picked up a slice of strawberry cake. I was totally going to pay for it, since it was a repeat tasting, but they gave it to us for free!


And here is the aftermath:
From left to right: Plehn's, Williams on the plate, Adrienne's pink strawberry, and Bussman's cupcakes in the box.

The clear winner was Adrienne's. it was moist and flavorful, absolutely scrumptious. Plehn's was not too far behind in second -- very moist and light cake, but their strawberry wasn't as flavorful as Adrienne's. Adrienne's was also the most expensive, but we're so happy with the cake that it's totally worth it. (It's still within our original budget.)

So it's going to be a three-tiered strawberry cake with whipped cream filling, iced white and decorated with fresh flowers. I'm really excited for wedding cake now!

Stamp Saga

If you were planning a wedding at this time last year, you were aware of the dismay and outrage that occurred when the Postal Service announced it was raising the price of stamps by a penny. Brides who had already bought the stamps for their invitations were saddened that they might need to deface their envelopes with an extra 1-cent stamp. I made a mental note to not get upset if that were to happen to me this year.

Last year, the post office had a great stamp, the "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" stamp. It was printed in honor of the 100-year anniversary of the creation of the popular song.


As soon as I saw it, I knew it would be great for our invitations (I don't think you know yet the reason why, but trust me on this, and I'll explain more in a later post). But I also knew it would be silly to stockpile the stamps too early, in case postage rates went up again this year. And they were still available as of December.

So a few weeks ago, I was hashing out little wedding details with Eric and I brought up stamps for the invitations. We decided we really liked these baseball stamps, and I knew that it was around this time last year that the rate hike was announced, but we decided that we liked these stamps enough to use them even if we had to add a 1-center to the envelope as well. (And if memory served, I knew that the rate hike last year was announced around February, and it went into effect around May, so it might affect us, depending on our RSVP deadline.)

So that weekend I stopped by the post office for something else, and asked if they had any of the stamps. It turned out they were out of them, and when I asked if they anticipated getting more, I was told it was doubtful, because the clerk suspected a new rate hike would be announced soon. And sure enough, last week it was.

(The rate hike won't go into effect until May 11, and our RSVP deadline is probably going to be May 1, so we will be dealing with current/old stamp rates, not the new ones, so it turns out we need stamps now.)

Today I called around to a bunch of post offices, but the answer was always the same: "We ran out of those stamps a while ago." Boo. One helpful woman told me to call 1-800-STAMP-24, to see if I could order them that way. And when I called, I was told that the post office had discontinued those stamps and they had run out of them on Friday. FOUR days ago. ARGH! I just missed it!

On ebay, the stamps are selling for $1 a pop or $11-14 for a sheet of 20. I refuse to pay a markup for them on principle, so we're left with whatever stamps are currently available.

So, what will it be? Abraham Lincoln, because he was a great president who was born in Kentucky? Edgar Allen Poe, because he was from Baltimore and Eric and I have ties to Maryland? Chinese New Year for my heritage, even though neither of us is an ox? Alaska because we went on an Alaskan cruise two years ago? The Great Lakes Dunes sheet is pretty and has fun wildlife pictures, even though we don't live in the Great Lakes region. The Forever stamp works because of our ties to Philly, but it's kind of boring for a wedding stamp, I think (although I'll definitely be stocking up on these before May 11!). There's this Celebrate! stamp, which is kind of fun. Not our colors, but definitely the right sentiment:
There's always the wedding heart and the love heart, but they're so... cliche and overdone. (Now watch, that's what we're going to end up using and you'll laugh at me for being so snobby.) There are 20 state stamps in the "flags of our nation" series (well, 19 states and the U.S. flag), but they've only gotten up to Kansas so far. If they come out with the next series that includes Kentucky in the next month or so, then that would be great, but even so, I would be compelled to buy 10 times too many stamps just to get all the Kentucky ones.

Those baseball stamps were so darn perfect! And, just to let you know, I've always been the kind of person who buys special stamps to convey my likes or loyalties. I always love the Disney stamps (but I concede that Eric probably wouldn't want them for wedding invitations), or flowers. So I like my stamps to have a message attached to them, and I would like to be able to do that for our wedding invitations, too.

And never fear; our invitation suite is going to fall under 1 ounce to qualify for regular first-class postage, come hell or high water! When you're having a budget-friendly wedding, you can't let an extra $17 go to the postal service because you didn't realize square invitations or heavy ones cost extra. (Sorry, postal service, but I can't afford to keep you afloat with my money.)

So what should we do? I know in the grand scheme of things, this is really, really minor.

"Seriously, in the huge sweep of things, this stuff doesn't matter."
"What he's going to say next is, there are people starving in the Sudan."
"Well there are. ... All I'm asking for is a normal amount of perspective."

Ten points to you if you can name the movie that quote is from. And then I'll stop worrying about stamps :)

Show your mettle!

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but my engagement ring is set in palladium. Prior to receiving it, I hadn't heard of palladium, but Eric really picked a winner: it's in the same metal family as platinum, but less expensive and lighter. See? Palladium (#46) is right above platinum (#78) on the periodic table.

I love the color of white gold and platinum, but I've known that platinum is too heavy for me -- my mom got a new ring in platinum a few years ago, and quickly started complaining about its weight, and one day I tried it on for a while and agreed. And don't say I just need to do finger exercises, either -- that stuff is heavy! (And expensive!) And while I love white gold, I do think it's a pain to have to get it re-rhodium-ized so often. I have a tanzanite ring in white gold whose rhodium is starting to wear off, and I really don't want to bring it in to get it replated, but I do wish it was nice and silvery again. (Actually, for the tanzanite ring, I've decided to let it continue to wear for the time being, because I hear white gold develops a nice in-between color after many years.)

So palladium was the perfect choice that I never knew existed, right? And once I discovered its wonders, I knew I wanted my wedding band to match. (Based on the simple realization that it would be annoying to have two rings that wore out differently, and one that I would have to get replated periodically.)

So today, for reasons I'll reveal later, I stopped in to see the jeweler who made my engagement ring, Philip Haas. Because of what we were discussing, I asked about the relative cost of palladium compared to white gold or platinum, thinking that palladium was more expensive than gold. But Philip told me otherwise: platinum, which hit about $2000/oz a year ago, is now down to $900/oz, and gold is about the same, having risen dramatically in the last year.

So I found some charts, and he's right (not that I doubted him):
(source)

Gold and platinum are about the same, at $900+/oz, while palladium is hanging out at less than $200/oz. Score!

Interested in some historical graphs? Me too!

Gold prices, 2000-present:
When Eric bought my engagement ring, around July or August of 2007, gold was about $650/oz. Now it's at $900/oz! I've seen those commercials about now being a good time to invest in gold, and ads and newspaper articles about people selling their old gold to pawn shops and the like, but I didn't realize what that actually meant. Too bad I don't have any gold fillings to get rid of... I guess the crappy economy drives people to invest in gold. Or something. I don't know, I know hardly anything about money (like most doctors, sigh).

Platinum, 1992-present (sorry, I couldn't customize the graph to be just 2000-present to match):
In July 2007, platinum was about $1300/oz. Then look at how it skyrocketed in late 2007! Then notice how it dropped to 2004 prices. Now's a great time to buy platinum, if you have any spare change to make investments.

And my favorite metal, palladium, 1992-present:
Wow, I wonder what that peak in 1999/2000 was all about. In July 2007, palladium was about $350/oz, compared to almost double for gold, and over triple for platinum. And soon after, it also peaked, along with gold and platinum. Now, it's a lovely sub-$200/oz, perfect for wedding band buying :)

Fascinating stuff, the metal market. And I'm happy knowing that when Philip calls me in a couple of days to tell me something super-secret, I'm going to be satisfied with the price.

Cake for me!

I've been putting off looking for a baker for our cake, for a variety of reasons. First, I just knew it was going to be expensive -- I had checked out a couple local bakers who put prices on their website and I just couldn't stomach it. $3+/slice? It just seems ridiculous when the slices are so small and you can buy a whole box of cake mix for less than $2. (I'm aware that $3/slice is pretty standard for wedding cake, at least in this area, and I can only count my blessings that I'm not getting married in New York.)

(It's probably pretty clear, but I'm not a cake snob. My favorite cake is any sort of from-a-box chocolate cake. No icing.)

Plus, since Eric no longer lives here in Louisville, it would be so depressing to go to all of these cake consultations by myself, and just not fair for me to get to taste the cake without him. Delicious, but not fair.

But this weekend, with the calendar ticking away before my eyes, I got serious and started the research end of things. I made a list of as many bakeries as I could find in town, and made a few phone calls. It turns out a lot of bakeries are closed on Mondays, which I didn't know. Anyway, I ended up with an appointment for two days from now for a consultation and tasting, and I just figure that if everything works out OK price-wise and initial tasting-wise, I can always bring Eric back the next time he visits for a confirmatory tasting.

I called another bakery who gave me a price quote over the phone, and I asked about the often-mentioned strategy of having a small display cake and sheet cake to make up the difference. It turns out this is pretty economical, so I was excited and invigorated to do more cake searching.

Then I spent the rest of the evening pulling together pictures of cakes to send to Eric, in order to get his opinions on decorations, before I go to these consultations. It just wouldn't be nice of me to order a big purple cake covered in pink sugar flowers, you know? I'll share my inspiration photos with you later.

But today, when I was out running errands, I drove by one of the more well-known bakeries in town. I decided to pop in and see if they could just give me information -- I wasn't expecting to taste cake or anything like that. And the consultant was nice enough to sit down with me and write up a quote for me on the spot. This bakery doesn't price by the slice; instead, they start with the appropriately sized basic yellow cake with white icing and standard, unfancy decoration, and go up from there for colors, flavors, fillings, etc. But still, their quote was very reasonable, especially with the small-cake-plus-sheet-cake strategy, and I started to warm up to the whole cake thing.

And the best part? She offered to give me some cake to go! "Just a second and I'll ice a couple pieces for you. Just tell me what flavors you'd like."

And so I left Plehn's Bakery with a yellow cupcake and a piece of strawberry cake.

Mmmmm. The yellow cupcake was really really really really good. Light and moist. The icing was pretty standard buttercream -- I don't really like icing, so I scraped it off, but it tasted like good buttercream. I ate it for -- I mean, in addition to -- my lunch, because it was lunchtime. (Seriously, I stopped at Whole Foods and picked my way through the store sampling the freebies, pondered for a long time over the prepared foods bar, and settled on some sushi. After I ate the cupcake.) I had the strawberry cake just a little while ago, eating it in front of the webcam for Eric to see (and envy), and it was pretty good. It wasn't particularly strawberry-y, and it wasn't quite as moist as the yellow, but that might be because it sat in the box all day, I'm not sure. Still very good cake, don't get me wrong.

So, depressing single consultations and unfair solo tastings? Who cares! I'm going to keep tasting as much cake as I can! Who knew there were all these perks to planning a wedding? This might have to become a habit of ours in the years to come.... ;)

Sharing the love (and the cost)

One thing that doesn't come with our venue is chairs for the rooftop ceremony. The venue provides chairs for the reception tables inside, and certainly has more than enough chairs to provide them for the roof, but for some reason, won't allow their chairs to be used outside on the roof. Fair enough. So we knew we needed to rent chairs.

One of Eric's recurring concerns is that it will be very hot on the roof. It's certainly a valid concern; while most people having outdoor weddings simply pray for it not to rain, we have a rain contingency plan (the venue lets us use one of their indoor spaces). What we do not have is protection from a bright, hot sun beating down on us, which is actually what happened at his sister's wedding a couple years ago. (It was a minor annoyance, to be sure, but a couple people got sunburns during the ceremony!)

So when we started talking about chairs, Eric was worried that plastic chairs would feel much hotter than wooden ones, and so he preferred the wooden ones. You know, the ones that look like this:
(source)

These aren't actually wood, by the way; they're usually a composite resin material that just looks like wood. I have to confess, I was never really fully convinced of the hot-chair issue, but if Eric feels strongly about something, it's worth doing, because he doesn't have a super-strong opinion (when it comes to wedding planning) that often.

The alternative is the plastic ones, which look like this:

(source)

I like the wooden ones, too, because they look nicer. However, they're also more expensive -- usually at least $1 more per chair to rent. When you're renting more than 100 chairs, it adds up quickly!

Of course, I also love the gorgeous chiavari chairs:

(source)

But around here, at a price of about $8/each, that's way out of our budget! Plus, to be honest, I don't really think they fit the feel of our wedding too much, so I wasn't too sad to cross them off of our list.

What I did want was the wooden ones, and I wanted to find a way to make them even less expensive. So I emailed our wedding coordinator contact at Glassworks and asked her to please pass my contact info to the bride getting married the day before me, and tell her to please contact me if she might be interested in splitting the cost of renting chairs.

For a while, I didn't hear anything, so I assumed the other bride wasn't interested. But then, out of the blue, I got a phone call (with an apology for taking so long to get back to me) expressing interest from Jenica. Then the negotiations began.

It turned out she was having a larger wedding than us -- definitely 150, whereas I think we're going to end up having about 125. The width of the rooftop at Glassworks isn't huge, so you're limited in the number of chairs you can fit in each row, and, as it turns out, the wooden chairs are just slightly wider than the plastic ones. Enough so that if you use the wooden ones, you can fit only 5 chairs on each side of the aisle, but if you use the plastic ones, you can fit 6 on each side.

Here's 5 chairs on each side of the aisle, and the altar does seem kind of far away... (source)

For 150 people, that's the difference between 12 rows and 15 rows, and when you're worried about sound being carried, that can be a big difference. To be honest, I hadn't even thought of it, but it was one of Jenica's #1 concerns, so she really wanted the plastic ones.

I said we were flexible, and even though Eric wanted the wooden ones, I figured a significant price difference would probably be enough to convince him, so Jenica and I asked around for quotes.

She got the first one, and it was a great quote, with one exception. She told the company that she would be using the chairs on Saturday, and I would be using the chairs on Sunday. The company, seeing an opportunity, offered us a "deal": Instead of being charged fully for each day's rental (because we were two different weddings), the second day would be 50% off. The 150% price was more than other place's 100% price, and I knew it. I was also annoyed at that company, because if Jenica hadn't disclosed there would be two parties using the chair, they wouldn't have charged her double -- they would have given her the 100% quote because it was a single contract, and most places won't pickup on Sunday anyway. But because they saw an opportunity, they took it.

So then I made a couple calls, and simply told the rental companies that we needed the chairs for Sunday of Memorial weekend, and asked when they would anticipate delivery/pickup occurring. Most places said they would deliver late Friday afternoon or first thing Saturday morning, and would not pick up until Tuesday, because they were normally closed on Saturday afternoons and Sundays and Monday would be a holiday. Jackpot! If you don't tell them it's for two events, they just charge you for a single event, as long as it's within their normal delivery schedule.

So with that setup, we got some more quotes and found one that was the best. The plastic chairs were still significantly less expensive than the wooden ones, and both Jenica and I went back and forth -- first she said she wouldn't mind getting the wooden ones, since they looked nicer and with the shared cost, they were a good deal. Then Eric and I said we wouldn't mind getting the plastic ones, since they're less expensive, and even less so with the shared cost. In the end, economy won out; Jenica said she and her fiance were already over budget and it would be helpful to cut costs any way they could. We decided the plastic chairs won't be much hotter than the wooden ones (we're dealing with the heat in other ways, too -- more in a later post), and, let's face it, we care more about price than the look of the chairs.

I signed the contract and specified Saturday morning delivery, and Jenica and I split the cost of the deposit, and we'll split the cost of the balance come May. I'm really happy we were able to work this shared rental out -- sometimes it seems like companies in the wedding industry are just out to get you, but we found a way to use the system to our advantage. Can you imagine how silly it would be to have her chairs stacked and put away Saturday night, then have a separate set of chairs put up for our wedding, when her chairs were sitting right there, waiting until Tuesday pickup anyway?

And we really won in terms of price -- our share of the entire rental essentially works out, per chair, to the price of a single chair from other companies, not including delivery and setup. So we kind of got delivery and setup (which can be a lot of money!) for free!

What do you think -- are we scamming the system? Or are we simply being smart shoppers?

Please save our date!

May 24, 2009!

As mentioned previously, we are now at the T-minus 6-month mark, and the days continue to march by (when you go from 12 to 11.5 months to go, not having booked a DJ doesn't bother you so much; from 6 to 5.5 months, you stress a little every day...). What does that mean? It's time to send our save the dates!

(As a burgeoning Ob/Gyn, I could easily abbreviate "save the dates" as "STDs" and chuckle thinking about chlamydia, trichomoniasis, and strawberry cervix, but I'll save us all that awkwardness. You're welcome.)

One of the things that bugged me about our 21-month engagement was that early on there was little I could legitimately do to start making plans. The venue and date were gotten out of the way early on, and I chose my dress on my first-and-only shopping trip, but held off on ordering it until this summer. I was in a crafty designing mode and had nothing to design!

(Again, I'm now kicking myself that we still don't have a DJ, but one story at a time now...)

I don't know where I got the idea, but I really wanted to make a postcard for our save the dates, and I thought a photo of us would make for a good postcard. Postcards are good because they cost less to send than a card in an envelope, and they save paper -- cheap AND environmentally friendly! So after we had our free engagement session, there was one photo that immediately tickled my creativity neurons as being perfect for a photo postcard:



I envisioned a line or two at the top, and the bulk of the information at the bottom, among the grass. Plus, I'm still kind of embarrassed about a picture of us being all lovey-dovey hanging on everyone's refrigerators, so I liked this one because we're not the complete focus of the picture -- we're kind of small and blurry. In my head, I knew what I wanted it to look like, but I wasn't sure I had the proper tools to make it happen. I have accomplished many projects using PowerPoint to do what I want to do, graphics-wise, but I wasn't sure it was the best thing this time around, so I explored my (free) options.

I ended up downloading Paint.net, OpenOffice.org, and Inkscape. I'm sure I used none of them to their full advantage, but I figured out which ones did what I wanted them to do, with some aggravation on my part, but with good results in the end. Let me know if you want more details. Essentially, I ended up using Paint.net for adjusting the size and resolution of my image, and using Open Office Draw to lay out the text and overall postcard design.

I spent one memorable afternoon and evening downloading and evaluating free fonts from dafont.com, much to my GPA's chagrin. After boucing some ideas off of Eric, we ended up choosing a script and plain text font: Renaissance and ParmaPetit.

And here's our final result!


I formatted it so that it could be printed using VistaPrint, which I chose after requesting samples from a bunch of different online printing websites. VistaPrint was the cheapest and I couldn't detect any appreciable difference in quality between VistaPrint and some of the others, which people on some of the forums had warned me about.

Things to keep in mind: Make sure your postcard is the right size for a postcard stamp; if it's larger than 4.25 x 6", it won't qualify for the 27-cent stamp. (Current postage size regulations can always be found at usps.com). Since I actually placed the VistaPrint order back in May, I opted for super-slow, 21-day shipping because I had plenty of time. In reality, it shipped the next day and arrived well within a week. I have to imagine that the overnight upgrade fees aren't worth it.

Then they sat in the office for 6 months, waiting to be addressed and sent out, and over Thanksgiving break, when Eric came to visit, we gathered all of our families' and friends' addresses and had an addressing marathon. I got to use the purple calligraphy marker I bought at Michaels a few months ago (!) and here is the result:

I know I've blogged about my handwriting before, but I had to show it off again :) Using the calligraphy marker was so much fun! To be authentic, I know I should use calligraphy pens and real ink, but let's face it: that's just not going to happen. And my (platonic, just have him to help pay the bills) roommate just got a wedding invitation in the mail the other day addressed in ballpoint pen, with handwriting nowhere near as nice as mine (not that I'm judging), so I feel OK about my shortcut here.

The current postcard stamps are the tropical fruit ones that a lot of people seem to not like, but I think they're pretty and colorful, so I didn't lose any sleep over them.

Here's the final cost breakdown:
Photo session: free! (But cost a lot of mental anguish)
Design software: free! (But cost a lot of initial mental anguish to learn to use)
VistaPrint:
-100 postcards: free (troll around the internet for coupon codes, or sign up for their mailing list or request free samples and they'll give you discount codes)
-uploading the front and back design: $4.99 each side (this is where they get you!)
-slow processing and shipping: $6.48
-TOTAL: $16.46, or 16 cents for each postcard. Sweet!
Stamps: 27 cents each, and we bought 80 (we're only sending 1 card to each family/household unit)
Calligraphy marker at Michaels: a few bucks, plus I used a coupon, plus I'll use the marker again for the invitations, so I'm not even going to factor this in

GRAND TOTAL: 38 cents for each postcard. A bargain!

So there you go! We're waiting for one final address from a friend, and then we'll send them off. The only wrinkle is that I'm now on the east coast until January 4, but I really want to send them before then, and I really want them to have a Louisville postmark. To solve this problem, I'm going to mail them all as a package to the Louisville postmaster and have him/her process them through the Louisville post office to get the desired postmark. A little OCD? Perhaps. But it's not going to cost me much money or effort to accomplish what I need to, so I'm going to let it slide this time. So watch your mail!

The downside? I don't think we're sending Christmas cards this year -- this was a big enough mail project, and between this and having to write thank you cards for all of my residency interviews, I'm done addressing envelopes for the time being :)

I just bought my wedding dress!

Squeeeeeeeeeeeee!

My original budget for a wedding dress was $500. I knew it could be done, but that it would limit me to simpler silhouettes and lower-budget stores. I didn't think that would be a problem, and I felt it was a fun challenge to meet. After all, I knew I was never going to have a Vera Wang, and I refused on principle to have a dress that cost more than $1000, so it wasn't like I was compromising my goals tremendously with a budget of $500.

A year ago, when I found this dress, I knew it was going to be the one. It was anything but simple -- full of intricate embroidery, and my budget immediately went out the window. I started pricing it, and prices ranged from the $1050 the shop in Louisville wanted to about $700 or so from various online retailers. HouseofBrides.com, my standard for all things inexpensive in the wedding world, originally wanted $700, but now wants $750 (I guess due to the worsening economy). The challenge got harder, but I got more determined.

In my Googling, I came across some of the Chinese knock-off websites, like Periwing.com, that promised great things for less than $200. I considered it, de-considered it, re-considered it, and then began considering it seriously.

My reasoning was, "Even if it's not an EXACT replica, it will be pretty good, and that's good enough for me." And if it's really bad, I can afford to lose $200 -- the benefits are worth the risk.

Then I saw some pictures of actual knock-offs, and while they were pretty good, therefore meeting my standard, they weren't EXACT replicas, and a feeling of doubt started to grow in the pit of my stomach. I succumbed to the wedding industry, dammit.

So then I turned to pre-owned and sample sales. The problem with me buying pre-owned is that I'm very short, and I need to order the shortest version of this dress. Because of the design of the dress, there's no place to shorten the dress. There are no horizontal seams on the dress at which to pull up the skirt -- not at the hem, not at the waist. Multiple seamstresses have told me that it would be very difficult to shorten, so my best bet is to get the shorter version off the bat. So none of the pre-owned or sample dresses I found worked. Stupid tall people.

One particularly depressing day, I discussed it with Eric. I was no longer 100% comfortable with a knock-off, I couldn't find a used dress that would work, and I was unfortunately in love with a dress that was out of my budget and if I were going to order it new, it was getting close to the time I'd have to do it. We discussed it some more, and we decided that I would keep an eye out on the pre-owned market, but if I hadn't found one by the time my rotation in Philly ended at the end of August, I would start the process of buying new, and we would just have to adjust our budget. Did I mention I totally love this guy?

So last week I went through my old emails of price quotes, trying to figure out who would give me the best deal on the dress. I came across one from Pearl's Place, who told me a year ago that they couldn't give me a quote over email, but would be happy to help me out if I called. So, a year later, I called.

$525, plus $12 shipping.

SRSLY!?!?!!?!??! That's so close to my original budget, it's ridiculous! WHY didn't I call this place a year ago?

All that was left for me to do was to figure out my measurements and place my order! Unfortunately, I left my shoes back in Louisville, but my friend David was coming east for a rotation in DC, so I got him to stop in my apartment a few weeks ago to pick them up for me. This past weekend, I got them from him, and yesterday, I went to a store here at the shore that carried the designer's line and tried on some other styles in various sizes.

Since Pearl's Place doesn't do online orders, I sent them an email last night with all of my order information and shipping address, and asked them to call me today to get my credit card number. I wanted my order to be in writing, just in case anything happens in the future. So this morning, the wonderful salesperson from Pearl's Place called me and took my credit card number, and I placed my order!!!!!

It's a huge relief, and I'm so excited! Talk about a buzz kill, though -- now I have to wait 12-16 weeks for it to come in.

What? You want to see a picture?

Well... OK.



The model is wearing it in ivory with gold embroidery, but I'm going to get it with silver embroidery instead.

Like it? I do! And I'm so glad it all worked out.

Craigslist

You most likely know about the beauty of Craigslist. You, like me, might look for cheap-o vendors in the "services" section. You might scroll through the "for sale" section to see if there's anything that strikes your fancy -- vases, decorations, wedding dresses, or unwanted wedding/engagement rings. Or, you might just type "wedding" into the search box and see what pops up. It's fun; I'm sure you know.

But what if you're looking for a particular item, and you've exhausted all of your local search options (Craigslist, consignment shops, yard sales, etc) with no luck? You're pretty sure someone, somewhere, is selling what you're looking for, but you don't know how to find them, short of hitting every single Craigslist site out there.

Enter: Google.

I love you, Google.

First, Google "craigslist." The first link it returns is the one you want. Below it, you'll see hotlinks to some of the biggest/most popular Craigslist locations. Below that, you'll see another search box, that says, "Search craigslist.org."


Use that search box to type in your query. Say, for instance, you're looking for paper lanterns; they're light, they're cheap to ship, and they're likely to be resold after other brides use them in their weddings (yes, they're very trendy right now, but that's not stopping me from using them). Just type in "paper lantern" -- everything that comes back will be from a Craigslist posting. And if, for some reason, you are picky about where it comes from, the first part of each URL it returns will be the host city. I got 148 hits back.

Not bad!

And if you're a Google fiend and like search shortcuts, here's the one you want:

search term site:craigslist.org (italics not necessary, of course)

A Craigslist-specific search every time!