Going to the Chapel....

Name and/or LJ userID: Kelly/Blueirisheyez
Wedding Date: Undecided - looking at late spring/early summer 2011
Bride/Groom/Other (please specify): I am the bride - Jeff is the groom
Age: 39 (and not counting)
City/State/Country you live in: Chicago
City/State/Country you're getting married in (if different): Chicago but half the family is leaning toward Vegas
Your song/First Dance song: Undecided
Wedding Colors: Undecided
Formality: Semi
Theme (if you have one): Hey let's get married!
Number of guests: 100-125
How'd you meet your fiance?: Eharmony
How long have you been together?: 10 months
Do you have a personal wedding website?: Nope not yet
Have you read the community rules before posting this survey? Yes
Anything else you'd like to tell us?: I have been a member of this community for a few years. I found it when helping my friend plan her wedding and stuck around to assist other friends and family in party planning. Jeff completely blew me away by proposing last night. I don't have alot of ideas - as I never expected this to happen but I will be posting quite a bit more than I have in the past.

My wedding ring arrived yesterday, on Christmas Eve. It's gorgeous...

( Picture! )

FH and I got engaged in the beginning of August, and we're getting married on Halloween 2010. When we got engaged, his mom (FMIL) and Nana (FNIL) wanted to throw us an engagement party. Since we're about 3.5 hours away, we thought it'd be no problem to coordinate and whatever, and we said that early January would be awesome.

Well, strike that plan. FH and I are moving from Florida to Maryland in three days (OMG OMG FREAKING OUT), and January just won't work anymore since we're spending so much money on the move and it'd be hard to fly down so soon. Fortunately, nothing has been planned yet. :) We'd still like an engagement party, but we're afraid of having it too close to the wedding -- we were okay with 10 months, but everything now just seems too close to our wedding.

So for all of you who had engagement parties: When did you have them, and how far out were they from your wedding date? What do you think would be the least amount of time between said party and wedding would be appropriate (i.e. number of months, weeks, days...)?

Happy holidays, fellow WPers!

I know I've posted before about being engaged without a ring...FH and I are still still still saving up, and I am still ringless, months later. It hasn't really bothered me (disclaimer - I have a cheap, cheesy CZ I wear sometimes, just to have a little sparkle, but FH has promised a real diamond in the indeterminate future, but with teh economy, etc...ya know how tough it can be!). Well, the conversation of my ringless engagement came up over Christmas dinner, and apparently, my great-aunt has an emerald that she got as an engagement ring, and offered it to FH to give to me. So generous of her! However, it has a seriously HORRIBLE setting (think yellow gold with ribbons of metal fanning out around the base - I wish I had a picture to do it justice.) So two questions:
1) did anyone get an engagement ring that wasn't a diamond (especially if you're like me who had her heart set on a diamond), and what were your thoughts about it? (was that what you wanted, was it a surprise, etc?)
2)did anyone get a ring from a relative that had a terrible setting, and needed to be reset? How did you approach the issue? did you talk to them about it first? What were their reactions?

Thanks a million!

From memory there was a girl on here who was having a vaguely unicorn themed wedding but I can't find a post by her on which to comment. I just saw this and found it somehow appropriate. ( Picture under here )


ETA:  By the way I just thought it was interesting.  I didn't post it to be offensive.  I actually think it is quite cute, something a little different.

With the recent what-did-you-not-do-that-you-wish-you-had question, I noticed a few people had said something about videography, and now I'm curious.

We didn't have a camcorder growing up so I have some dance recital videos and that's about it... and I never watch them, they've just been in storage forever.  So when it came to wedding planning I didn't even consider video footage because I figured it'd be the same thing--watch it once after the event and then it'd go in a box in the basement and never see daylight again. 

So I'm wondering-- brides who had videographers or at least had a relative videotape your wedding:  did you watch the tape afterward?  Do you think you'll watch it again?  Do you feel it was worth the expense?

I have a bridesmaid dilemma.

( The played-out drama here! )

Has anyone else ever been through an issue like this? Advice?

I got the Nina shoes in the mail today so I thought I'd do a side by side comparison here, since there seemed to be quite a few of you that seemed interested in at least one of the them.

Height
Both shoes have 4" heels. The platform on the Gracious look slightly higher, but only slightly. I'm talking millimeters here.

Comfort
The Gracious feels a little bit more comfortable because it is a little cushier (which I think accounts for the slight difference in platform height), but I think they make heel insoles these days, so you could conceivably go with that for the Electra. Also, the Electra has extra support in the back of the shoe instead of the straps. Both shoes are reasonably comfortable, especially considering the height.

Looks
The Electra looks like it could be a copy of the Gracious, but who cares: they're still really nice. The Gracious has pretty criss-cross straps on the back, while the Electra has a plain enclosed back with the strap running through the top. The Gracious's bow is a little more elegant and sleek, but the Electra comes in lots of pretty colors while the Gracious only comes in white, ivory, and eggplant. The satin on the Gracious is very shiny, which surprised me (not in a good way) because you wouldn't have guessed that from the Zappos pictures. Based on those pictures, I also expected the bow to be more angular than it looks in person. The satin on the Electra is softer and more what I would expect.

Price
I bought them both at Zappos for...
Electra: $89.95 Gracious: $325
Yeah, a pretty big difference. A lot of it has to do with designer name.
( pictures and what I ended up choosing )

So here's the scoop:  Ben and I were dating for month(me in ungrad, him in grad school) when we were sitting in my dorm room talking.  All of sudden he says, "Will you marry me?"  I said, "Yes!".  A little over 5 years later we are just now starting to plan our wedding.  He proposed spontaneously, and didn't do it with a ring.  Well today, he got down on one knee with a little box and said again, "Will you marry me, Lex?"  I said, "Yes!" and he opened the box and inside was the most beautiful ring I've ever seen!  I am sooo happy with it!  I keep walking around going, how does it sparkle in THIS light?  How does it sparkle in THIS light?  OMG, I feel like I'm playing dress up it's so pretty!  You must squee with me! 
( Read more... )

P.S. I really want to thank everyone for their comments on yesterday's post about my officiant dilemma. You are all so helpful and sweet! It's so nice to have a community of women going through the experience of planning a wedding where we can share trial, tribulations and squees!

Here goes a confession: I know nothing about invitations. I have never made one, never received one, never saw one "live".
( details and questions )
Now, the most important question: where the hell do I put the guests names? Part of the invites will be handed, not mailed.

Also, any links on a detailed "invitations 101"?

Part of the deal when booking our venue is agreeing to deal with certain vendors, that includes officiants.  Last night my wedding coordinator emailed me the list of officiants.  Now, to refresh your memory, I'm getting married on Maui.  I grew up on Maui so the island/tropical thing is not new a different to me, and my wedding will definitely NOT be Hawai'ian themed in ANYway.  So I went to the website of both of officiants and they are both hardcore Hawai'ians.  We're talking Hawai'ian shirts, kakui nut leis, blowing conch shells, the whole nine yards.  All the sample services had Hawai'ian language passages talking about the islands, etc. 

My problems aka Bridezilla moments

1. I don't my officiant wearing a Hawai'ian shirt and lei to my wedding.  My wedding is not going to be "island style".  Can I dictate what my officiant wears to my ceremony?

2. All of the officiants are Christian ministers.  My fiance is a Buddhist and I am a pagan.  A Christian minister would be totally inappropriate.  Non-denominational would also be inappropriate because that's just another word for Christian, and we're no form of Christian.  Can I ask a Christian minister to do a non-religious ceremony?  Part me of me feels weird having a Christian minister perform my ceremony, even if it's non-religious, considering I'm a pagan and if he knew he'd probably tell me I'm going to hell. 

Am I blowing this out of proportion?  Part of me feels like I'm being a bridezilla, but part of me feels like this is important.  Help!

EDIT:  Here's a couple of the officiant websites so you can see what i"m talking about
http://www.piaaluli.com/
http://www.mauivalentine.com/
http://www.hawaiianroyaltyweddings.com/

My wedding is in May and my bridal salon says it takes about 2-3 months for the veil to come in if I order from them. So if I want to order through them, I should probably do it within the next month or so, since my dress is coming in March-April.

Since I have some time off next week, I wanted to go in to try on my dress with some veils, but they told me that the dress that I ordered got sold off the rack, so I wouldn't be able to try on veils with my dress. :( Did you guys find that you HAD to try on both together to make a choice?

( in which I show some pics and beseech your opinion )

Thanks to those who gave advice about the Pac Man cake. I'm almost afraid to post it here, because it's definitely not up to the standards, but I figure some of you might enjoy it.
( Slightly blurry pics below the fold. )

I thought people might enjoy seeing this video.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/ginger-bread-white-house

....but when it came right down to it, you weren't able to make it work. The question about the gingerbread house at the reception got me thinking.... For the married ladies (or almost marrieds!), was there something that you planned to have at your wedding/reception that sounded completely awesome in theory and planning, but when it came right down to it you weren't able to do it/it didn't end up the way you envisioned it?
( Our last minute change... )

CARD BOXES.

I woke up this morning thinking about card boxes. Like, literally, before I even had a conscious thought, my mind was running an independent dialogue with my subconscious regarding card boxes. I have no explanation for this.

Anyway, as you might expect, I now haven't been able to stop thinking about them. Our initial intention was to have a TARDIS card box, but now that I've made our TARDIS cake topper (which I STILL need to put the finishing touches on so that I can post pictures!) and we're considering putting a Doctor quote on the invitations, I'm wary of Doctor Who overkill. Who knew there could be such a thing?

So, I would LOVE to see all of your beautiful card boxes! Details on where you acquired them or how you made them would be even lovelier. Thanks!

So, I totally missed the six month mark, but I haven't had a whole lot of new ideas/purchases either.  The major stuff is all done- all that's really left to do is BUY STUFF, which is totally not the fun part for me (I love shopping but hate paying for stuff I can't even use until June!). I also have to kick my groom into gear to get his part done, because he hasn't so much as glanced at a suit yet or told his groomsmen what they should look for! Anyway, I'd like to start out with a couple of petty questions: --What's a good deadline for my bridesmaids to have purchased their dresses? I don't want to be overly pushy, but I don't want it to be a week before the wedding and have them scrambling about town looking for something. My MOH already has hers, but my other two bridesmaids aren't really even looking yet. They're choosing their own dresses and shoes; I am purchasing their jewelry and wraps.  I'd like them to have their dresses far enough in advance that they can get alterations as needed, and to give me the heads up so I can get jewelry that will look good with whatever they buy.  The wedding is June 12, so if I say they need their dress by April, would that be reasonable? --For those of you who are doing/ have done "out of town" bags, how did you give them to the recipients?  Can you typically arrange to have them placed in people's rooms or have them at the front desk, or do you have to give them out yourself?  Our guests will all be staying at the same hotel, and we expect to have about 15 rooms in our block (and therefore, 15 welcome bags), if that makes a difference. Next- Onto the progress post! ( random progress, and an awesome music question :) )

I realized that I haven't posted any cakes since August, so I should show y'all what I've been up to since then. (Answer: not too much, actually.)

( Click here for five cakes! ) 

Thanks for looking at my cakes, everyone, and for all the good advice you give all year long!

Hello all!

Name and/or LJ userID: chemical_lover. the groom is soul_assassin11, although he's not really an lj fan and probably won't post here.
Wedding Date: TBD
Bride/Groom/Other (please specify): I'm the bride
Age: We're both 24
City/State/Country you live in: I'm in Kingston, ON, Canada he lives in Ottawa, ON, Canada
City/State/Country you're getting married in (if different): Probably Waterloo, ON but it's still TBD
Your song/First Dance song:Y Sister Hazel - All for You is our song, so it will either be that or Coldplay - Green Eyes
Wedding Colors: I'm sure a scheme will emerge eventually, but at this point we'll probably do Blues for me, Greens for him and let the rest work itself out.
Formality: Come in your Sunday best! I have a feeling a couple people might show in jeans but most will arrive in something at least business casual.
Theme (if you have one): I said theme to FH and he gave me a strange look and said 'getting married', so let's go with that.
Number of guests: probably 50-70, but I'm hoping to keep it on the 50ish side of the scale.
How'd you meet your fiance?: We both were in Honours Chem Co-op at the University of Waterloo. He swears we met in the 2A Analytical Chem lab, but I don't remember meeting him until 3A Physical Chem Lab. He was flirting with both my lab partner and I, but I caught him in the end!
How long have you been together?: Just under 4 years, I'm sure no one here cares about the exact amount.
Do you have a personal wedding website?: nope... maybe he'll make one, he's on better terms with the internet than I am.
Have you read the community rules before posting this survey? I have indeed!
Anything else you'd like to tell us?:

I've been reading about all of you for a while now, but finally I can join the fun!

We got engaged Saturday and I'm on cloud nine! We are trying to tell as many people as possible in person over the holidays (but we already phoned our parents), so we haven't changed facebook. I can't tell anyone at work since I'm waiting to hear where my permanent placement will be in January, and I don't want this to affect their decision. I'm hoping that you guys can help answer some of our preliminary questions and help me get passed the surreality of it all before I can yell it out to the world. 

So I guess our first question is can anyone recommend any websites they used for budget breakdowns or planning timelines. FH doesn't believe in long engagements (his words not mine, I'd love to have lots of time to plan and save) so we're thinking about next June when his family will be over from England anyways which means we need to get on with the planning!

Thanks for all your help ladies and gents!

I know we've got ceremony music tags, but this is a little strange so I thought I'd just post.

I really want to have something interesting for our ceremony music (processional/recessional). My cousin is singing with acoustic accompaniment. Which is great...except I have no songs for her.

I would really like to do an acoustic version of a popular song. I think it's fun and pretty, but I need ideas. Right know the top of the list is an acoustic version of Knock You Down, but I am open to other ideas.

Tl;Dr: What are your suggestions for popular music that would sound lovely acoustic during the ceremony?