Return of the Wedding Dreams

Last night I dreamed our wedding started late.

We kept delaying it by five minutes to finish the last little things, and five minutes turned into hours. All the guests were sitting patiently in white wooden folding chairs in a big dark room that looked like a conference room, and I was running around behind the altar, in a little prep room, making a list of the things we still needed to do and realizing we'd forgotten almost everything.

We hadn't confirmed the location with the photographers, so they weren't there. We hadn't written a ceremony with Mo. We hadn't written our vows. We had forgotten the booze for the unity cocktail. We didn't have music set up. We didn't have a chuppah. We weren't in our wedding clothes. We hadn't discussed the reception at all, so there was no food, no music, nowhere to sit.

So I tried to write vows as fast as I possibly could in a way that would encapsulate everything we wanted to say (which makes sense--the ceremony's the most important part of the day for me, and the vows are the most important part of the ceremony, so of course that's what I'd want to get done first).

I didn't ever get to the ceremony part of the dream. One of the last things I remember is Nate suggesting that he could "throw together" a chuppah at the last minute and me worrying that it wouldn't look nice,
This is a classic example of how my brain manifests subconscious stress. In high school, I would dream about being late for class because I didn't know where class was, and everyone being mad at me and therefore not telling me where class was, so I'd just run around looking for it, getting later and later. In college, after I stopped living with Julia (the roommate from Hell), I woke up crying in my sleep, which had never happened before and hasn't happened since. Dreams have always been my way of releasing steam my conscious brain isn't ready to admit is there yet.

So yeah, maybe I'm a bit stressed about wedding stuff. Really, I'm stressed about how damn much money this thing is going to cost, and whether or not people are going to have fun, and a bunch of shit I seriously should not care about. I'm not as interested in the wedding  minutiae as I am in the actual relationship/marriage stuff, but I haven't ever thrown a party this big before, and I guess I'm worried that people will think it's lame, rather than awesomeand original and fun and touchingly personal in a quirky-yet-spiritually-significant way.
So yes, I guess it's time to get this planning shit well and truly under way. 

Prenuptial Braindump

Okay, so, our engagement party is over, Great Western is over, I think it's time to actually start doing wedding-related shit. Here beginneth the brain dump:

Phew. This is probably post-party exhaustion, but I'm wiped out today, and generally not feeling so hot. Pre-period body changes have made me extremely clumsy, overly emotional, feeling gross because I'm breaking out everywhere, my boobs almost too sensitive to put in a bra, and generally Ready To Be Done with it all. Of course, I was supposed to get my period last weekend (the Saturday before the party) but being stressed out and in go mode has delayed it for a few days... and hopefully not much more than that. I don't really want to have my period at war, thanks. Also, all that nice relaxin has made my back go out worse than it has all year, including fun-filled spasms. It's probably also a reaction to starting to de-stress after this weekend... fortunately, that mostly got wiped out at the chiropractor yesterday and I'm feeling stiff, but not dying.

Things I Learned from Throwing My First Party

• When my parents tell me we haven't bought enough food, DON'T LISTEN. Your eyes and the size of the Costco shopping cart are true compasses.
• Make sure I actually get to spend time with the person/people with whom I am throwing the party. I saw lots of guests at the party, and not much of Nate.
• Your guest list will never be final, nor will it ever be set in stone.
• There are people in your social group who have done this before, better, and more often than you. These people include your family. Use them. Don't be afraid to delegate; just delegate to people you trust.
• If you're going to speech, prep it before the party.
• If you can't prep your speech before the party, Mo bullshits as easily as breathing.
• Sometimes Nate gets stressed out about party-planning too.
• White wine sangria.

Don't let the bullets fool you, our party went really well. We had some last-minute no-shows and some folks changed their RSVP's to No, and my parents decided when they showed up at the house that we hadn't bought enough food, so they went back out and got more... and now we have leftovers for days... but the party itself was great. It was really great to get to finally introduce my awesome family to my awesome friends, and we were totally loved on during the party itself, so I floated on a nice cloud of happy community lurve for the next day or so.

My mom surprised us by giving us one of our engagement pictures, blown up to 8 x 10" and glued to a big piece of posterboard, for our guests to sign. We got signatures from almost everyone, and we're going to frame the whole shebang and hang it up in the apartment. I was really touched and pleased by Mom's thoughtfulness--I keep being surprised when they do these wonderful wedding-related things (visiting so often to help us look at venues, giving me my Grandma's wedding ring--well, that was a request from her to my mom, but still--talking with me about wedding plans and marriage in general). I think part of me still expects them to disapprove of me getting married at this age, but that seems to be entirely in my head now.

Having Nate's family out was great too. They got along famously with my family, and held their own during a traditional Bauman/Day family Drunken Dinner at a restaurant where we drank waaaaay too much wine, sang in harmony with each other, and threw things. Yep, typical us. There were some issues with Josh, Nate's little brother, but nothing to write home about. I'd been anticipating some drama with him, but it ended up manifesting in a different way than I'd thought it would, and Nate and I got some good conversations out of it, so it all worked out in the end.

And people came! They came to the party and drank beer and played kubb and hugged us and bantered and generally had a great time! My parents seemed to really like everyone, and Nate's parents said it was easy to talk to everyone and that everyone made them feel welcome, even though they were in the minority 10% of folks who didn't know anyone at the party other than us. I was really floored by how much people helped out--my mom, dad, and Linda all handled a lot of food stuff, Rachie, Monica, and Kim all did a bunch of food presentation stuff, and the boys did a lot of shopping on Friday and Saturday. It was really incredible to see the community come together and help us out with stuff, unasked.

We're so blessed.

Venue Acquired! ...and a food dilemma

So we've FINALLY found a wedding venue (yes, we've only been engaged for five months and we've got over a year to go, so there isn't much finally about it. But still, I'm an epic procrastinator, so I want to get all this shit done as fast as possible. Bear with me. FINALLY.) We're going to use the Museum of Ventura County. It's really pretty in sort of a mod-Spanish style way, it has indoor and outdoor options, it's totally decorateable, and it's (for Ventura county) fairly affordable.

We just have one issue--food!

The venue has 3 recommended caterers, which is to say, 3 caterers you can use without having to pay a $500 fee. This is the only issue I have with the venue--the only reason I agreed to go with it is because they have three caterers you can choose from, not just one you're required to use. Having good food at the wedding is a pretty high priority for me, but I'm worried about how much the catering is going to cost. We calculated the cost for the mid-level caterer to do a meal for our guest list and it totaled up to the remainder of our budget. So we'd have photographers, a venue, great food, and no decorations, invites, clothing, gifts for the bridal party, rentals... you get the picture. That ain't gonna fly.

We're waiting on a quote from the "value" (AKA, cheaper) caterer, but I can't imagine it's going to be less than $3500. So, here are our options:

• Swallow $500 and self-cater. I absolutely don't want to self-cater, but it's the cheapest option. I don't trust myself, Nate, or our fridge to stand up to preparing food for 150 people the week before we get married, so this is pretty much off the table, but it is, technically, an option. 
• Move the wedding to Friday, rather than Saturday, and pay half as much for the venue, freeing up extra funds for catering. I'm okay with this option, but I'm worried it would be really inconvenient for our families and half of Team Bride, which is coming from 5 hours away--they'd have to take more time off work/school, and that could very possibly suck for them in terms of time, money, and getting behind on work. We'd also have to do the wedding in the evening, and with a lot of folks coming north from LA, would all the guests make it? Traffic's pretty heinous on Friday afternoons, and I'd hate for any of the folks I love to miss the ceremony... or to have to leave work early to make sure they make it at all. 
• Move the wedding to Saturday afternoon, rather than evening, and do tapas/appetizers instead of a full meal. This is another option I'm fine with, but I'm worried my more traditional father would freak out at the idea that we wouldn't be feeding our friends a full meal. 

What do you guys think? I'm kind of at a standstill here--any of these options would work, but I'm not thrilled about the potential screw-ups or problems with any of them.

This Sunday we went up to Santa Barbara and looked at the SB Unitarian Church as a venue. It was probably a little small for our needs, but it was really beautiful. The whole building is sort of a Spanish mission-style building. I'm uncomfortable getting married in any church, even an awesome one like the UU church, but we could have the ceremony in the courtyard outside, where there's a nice fountain and lots of green grass. If we don't book the parish hall, I think we'd save some money, too (that's the 'chapel' where they have lots of ceremonies and weekly services, and is this big dark long room that has a very Catholic church feel to it and kind of creeps me out--fine if that's your thing, but my spirituality eschews indoor worship and clergy standing up dictating God's opinion to people, so I'd feel completely dishonest being married in a place that made me so uncomfortable).

I didn't exactly fall in love with it immediately in a "OMG THIS IS IT!!!!!" kind of way, but as we walked through the grounds I started scheming and imagining and the place really grew on me. I could imagine decor, and in my head I started arranging furniture, and I started getting really excited, so when we left and Nate said he thought the place was too small for our estimated headcount, I got really bummed.

I think part of the reason venue shopping is stressing me out so much is because I think it's one of the aspects of planning that's the most critical and has the possibility of being the most restrictive. It's hard to avoid the big wedding-in-a-box places around here, and I have a really hard time visualizing decorations and colors and whatnot without a space to work in--that's just not how my brain works. I feel like we're sort of stuck until we have a venue, then a lot of my questions will be answered for me and I can start the more fun parts of planning because I have some of the bigger nitty-gritty stuff cleared away.

Nate keeps telling me that it's too early to stress myself out, but I have a tendency to leave things for the last minute, and that's the last thing I want to do with the wedding. I don't want the whole process to be a nightmare, but I'm worried that if I don't stress out now, it's just not going to get done. :( I know to a certain extent perspective is a choice--I could choose to be stressed out about something or I could choose to go with the flow, but I can't seem to let go and let wedding stuff just happen, or even to approach the planning I am doing with enthusiasm and a joyful heart. Maybe it's too personal, maybe I've heard too many horror stories, maybe I feel like if I want shit to be important and meaningful I have to break my back to get it. I'm not sure what the source of my perspective is right now, but I'm not thrilled with it.

Baby's First Wedding Squee

Hokay, so--I found a photographer, well, a pair of photographers, I love. I talked to Nate about it. He liked them too. I emailed them. I expected to hear nothing. Apparently in the world of weddings, no one ever gets back to you and you have to chase them down (in the world of Santa Barbara/Ventura weddings, this is so far been untrue for me. Every single vendor inquiry I've made has been followed up on quickly. I guess it pays to live in one of the two most expensive places to get married in the US. Pays someone, anyway.)

So, we hear back from the photographers, and they say sorry, we alternate every other year between LA and Seattle, and 2012 is a Seattle year. We could come down, but we'd have to charge you a travel fee... and since you're in California, it's a flat fee, not a full rental-car-airfare-hotel kind of fee. What do you think?

We thought yes. Even with the fee, the number they gave was less than any other photographer I've looked at so far. It's still a heck of a lot of money, but hey. Photography is one of those things that's important to us, so we'll pay to have it done fr srs legit.

Anyway, nothing's set in stone yet, but it was really gratifying to hear back so quickly, get such a great price, and have such nice communication with the photographers. :) I sent them a response email introducing us, talking a bit about our wedding, and asking a couple of questions, and we've been trading emails for the last couple of days. They seem really prompt and happy to answer all my questions, and we're looking at setting up scheduling an engagement shoot sometime this summer. Eeeeee!

So Nate was subjected to my very first Wedding Planning Squee on Monday night. Like, with dancing and wiggling and going of "Eeeee!" I have to say, since checking out the wedding-in-a-box venue, I've been a bit wary of wedding planning. I had really been striking out with research and such on venues, I'd had some budgetary issues, and I was feeling a bit overwhelmed and like this wedding thing was going to be way more work and fraught with way more difficulty than I'd originally planned.

And yeah, it's going to be a hell of a lot of work, and stuff isn't always going to turn out as quickly, easily, or cheaply as I feel like it should. But this thing? This particular thing? Seems to be working out perfectly. :)

"Be your own well of happiness. Don't let anyone poop in your well." --this chick

Nate and I have begun tackling the first logistical nightmare of our wedding planning adventure--the engagement party.

The website lives!

We've officially completed our first co-task! We sat down, went through all the templates on mywedding.com, picked one out, and have the teeny tiny rudiments of a wedding website.

Also, welcome! This blog? Officially and entirely completely about wedding shit. It will all be this trivial, silly, self-absorbed, and childish. I make no excuses. There will, occasionally, be a contemplative post or two around here, but the vast majority of it is going to be the lightest and fluffiest of posts. Enjoy.

There will also be frequent use of the word "motherfucker."

Guest list, round 1

Preliminary total from our first draft "include everyone you've ever met and talked to for more than 10 minutes" spreadsheet: 213 people, not counting our extended families. On the other hand, it includes all the people who a) probably won't travel out to the wedding, b) I know and used to hang out with a lot but haven't seen in years (college roommates from sophomore year, etc.), and c) people I don't really want to invite, but will if politeness dictates.

That might, might, might be manageable, but I doubt it. And frankly, I'd like something smaller. We'll see.