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.

Wringing my hands about wedding rings (ooh, I punned!)-- Part Deux

So when last we left our heroine (me), I had given some cashola to the jeweler I lurved in Ventura as a promissory payment on a custom ring... of some kind. I was torn about teal-blue diamonds vs. sapphires and feeling kind of guilty about spending so much money on such a frivolous thing and debating the moral implications of buying diamonds, even ethically sourced ones, and generally wringing my emotional hands about the whole situation.

So I got a call from the jeweler yesterday, and he told me he had ordered some diamonds for me to look over, but the color variations weren't as diverse as he thought I would like. I went in to take a look this morning, and he was right. I was hoping for a five-stone ring that had a very light stone, a medium-colored stone, a dark stone, a medium-colored stone, and a very light stone in a line, but when we put the diamonds next to each other, they all looked like pretty much the same shade of teal. Teal's my favorite color, and the stones were beautiful, but it wasn't quite what I was looking for.

So long story short, I looked at the sapphire ring again, I looked at the diamonds, I mixed up the order of the stones, and finally George (the jeweler) suggested we put a couple of sky-blue diamonds on the ends of the line of teal stones. I took out the two middle stones, bumped the lightest color teal stones into the second and fourth positions, and put two sky-colored stones on the end, and voila--colors I loved, the gradations I wanted, and stones I didn't have to worry would wear out in fifteen years, like sapphires can. Sold.

Until recently, I'd been wrestling with buying a diamond wedding ring. I trusted the jeweler when he said the diamonds were ethically sourced, but I felt guilty about spending what, to me, is a good amount of money on a purely symbolic item. I felt like diamonds are so stereotypically decadent and chi-chi, would I really be happy with a diamond ring, or would I look at it and think I could have had something almost as pretty without the pricetag? Would I feel guilty about spending money other folks didn't have on something that was, on some level, a status symbol?

So I was driving to work on Thursday and it occurred to me--I'm paying for this ring by myself, with money I earned. Doing so isn't going to keep me from paying my bills or put me in debt. Nate's not helping me with it. My family isn't helping me with it. I'm choosing to spend money I earned with my own work on this.

All of a sudden, the ring changed from a petty concession to capitalism (and my fixation on sparkly things) to a symbol of my independence and capability. I'm spending money I earned on this ring, money I worked for. It's not an indulgence or a stereotype, it's a token of achievement. It's a symbol of my ability to take care of myself, to commit myself to a marriage as an independent adult.

That doesn't suck. :)

Pre-weddin' depression?

Things are not necessarily well in Sarahville.

Wringing my hands about wedding rings (ooh, I punned!)

In which I do some emotional handwringing about wedding rings. Sorry, kinda long, kinda fluffy.

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.

Dolphins again

Last Friday, Nate and I collected a local friend, went down to a beach, and had a handfasting. 

This was one of those things I knew wanted to do even before we got engaged. There isn't a lot of tradition I'd consider part of my cultural heritage, but pre-Christian Celtic traditions have always rung true for me, just like I find myself drawn to the deities my ancestors probably worshiped in my own spiritual practice.

As I got into wedding planning and began to be confronted head-on with what before had been solely a conceptual understanding of how much inanity and demeaning tradition goes into planning a Western wedding, I wanted to do a handfasting more and more. Back in the day, before the Church took over marriage and then capitalism took over the celebration, this was what they did. This was all they had, all they needed. Marriages worked for a year and a day, or for a few years, or forever, or not at all. 

We dressed up fancy and drove out to Spinnaker. The song our friends had their first dance to came up on the iPod, which I took as a good sign. The next song was "Bad Romance," and I decided not to take it as any kind of sign at all. We stood on the beach together. We debated whether we should call animal control about the sea lion flopping listlessly around on the warm sand. We watched another pair of dolphins slicing through the waves. We sipped beer and ate a spice cake I'd baked that afternoon, and our friend tied our hands together with the cords Nate made--three colors for him, three colors for me, one thick ribbon to symbolize our commitment, seven strands in total. 

We exchanged vows, which we'd kept private before we spoke them (which caused my control freak brain no end of nervousness). Mine were very direct and legalistic, but also lighthearted ("...to support you; to laugh with you (and occasionally at you); to have epic slow-motion fistfights with you as a means of settling our differences...") , and his were more of a recollection of where our relationship had come from, what we had gone through, and where we were going now. Unplanned, I promised to have very serious conversations with him while slow-dancing around the living room, and he promised to always slow-dance with me at the grocery store. 

We kissed. We finished the beer. Our friend joked that "Your handfasting will self-destruct in three hundred and sixty-six days." and we laughed. And we grinned. And we kissed.

There was a sign by the sea lion which said it was there all the time and was being studied by the Channel Island Aquatic Mammals Institute (or something like that) and that we should just ignore him. He looked very comfortable on the sand.

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