Sample Bout and Corsage

We're working with Etsy seller April Hiler Designs on the bouts and corsages. Yesterday she sent us these samples. Aren't they great?

We're taking the pumpkin out of the corsage b/c it looks a little imbalanced, but I love everything else. Can't wait to see them all!!

Working on the Ceremony and the Timeline

This weekend we met with our officiant to begin to discuss the ceremony structure. We decided we want him to write everything except for the vows/ring exchange section, which is the most personal part; he says he'll help us if we need it, but he's not comfortable putting words in our mouths! Mr. T and I had a pre-meeting dinner discussion on Saturday to talk over what we wanted to cover, and then we discussed it all over again with our officiant yesterday.

Mr. T's emphasis is that the wedding is mere formality of a bond that already exists, and will continue to. Mine is that a wedding is not two people becoming one blob, but rather two individuals who are working together not only on the relationship, but on their own personal evolution.

We also discussed when we met, how we fell in love, what we admire about each other, and all that good stuff. It was really sweet to hear and to say and Mr. T actually surprised me with some of the things he said that he admired about me. I was so honored. And this is after almost 12 years! It's amazing, when you find the right person, they continue to surprise and delight you year after year. It was also nice, after a weekend of swearing and smearing ink and wasting envelopes, to remember why we're doing all of this.

We decided to include a reading, after declaring earlier we didn't want any. It was just so cute and funny and touching that we couldn't resist it. The BM has graciously said she'll read it during the ceremony for us. Since she's an actress, we thought she'd be just the person to pull it off.

Since our officiant is married to our day-of coordinator, we also met with her yesterday! We worked on a timeline for the day and talked about a lot of the little details. The issue that has me a little stymied is the costume contest, which sounds fun in theory (and we totally want to acknowledge the people who go all-out!) but is difficult in execution--seriously, if everyone wants to enter, this could take hours! So we're still working on that one.

Last night on the way home we were just so drained. For two introverts, talking about yourself all day long is exhausting! Still, I suppose it's good practice for being the center of attention on the day.

Invitations Mailed: Check!!!

We had a wedding whirlwind weekend, and among the things we did were: taking the envelopes to the P.O. to get weighed, buying postage (we picked the king and queen love stamp, above, and we were actually pleasantly surprised by how they looked on the black envelope), hand stamping each envelope with our return address, addressing the remaining invitations (I'd done about half already), affixing postage to each envelope, sealing the envelope with a sticker, setting envelopes out to dry, and, this morning, dropping the finished product off at the post office! Woo-hoo! We still have about 4 addresses to track down, but for my purposes (and sanity), invitations are firmly checked off the to-do list.

The return address stamp was a good idea in theory but bad in practice. It was hard to align, and the silver ink from the ink pad just WOULD NOT DRY. We left those out for 36 hours in 80 degree heat, and they were still smearing when we touched them, and even after we blotted them with paper towels. So, if you are our wedding guest, and you have silver ink all over your envelope, my apologies! If I had it to do over I'd have spent quadruple the amount and gotten an embosser instead of a stamp. Oh, well. In the meantime, there is silver ink all over every surface of our home. I'm mighty glad to be done with those! We've gotten one RSVP already (we hand-delivered a couple of invites this weekend), and I can't wait for the rest to roll in. Exciting!! It's nice to see all our hard work taking shape.

This weekend we also went to Michael's because I decided I didn't trust the glue of the envelopes and I wanted something to seal them with. We ended up using the seals we initially purchased from Martha Stewart Crafts for our favor bags: little grinning skull and crossbones--they are black and white, and they glow in the dark! And then we bought other stickers to go on the favor bags at Michael's. Halloween is in full force there and it was hard to stick to our shopping list. Well, for me anyway. I really wanted the silver sign with the skull on it (with jeweled eyes) that said "Beware of Bling", but Mr. T wouldn't let me. But seriously, how perfect would that have been??

While we were there I did talk Mr. T into one frivolous purchase. No, two. They were both Martha Stewart "mad scientist" products. She just has such a nice Halloween aesthetic. One was favor bags, to mix in with the ones we already have. The second was labels for the wine bottles that will go on the tables; they say "Poison" and stuff like that on them. See below; aren't they cute? I promised Mr. T I wouldn't have to go back to Michael's again before the wedding, for the sake of our budget. Ha!

Hair Trial: Booked!

I bit the bullet and booked a hair trial today. I'm going to a salon that two hair stylists I know have recommended, so while I don't have a rec for a specific person, I'm hoping the work of the studio in general is good.

Cross your fingers for me!

OMG OMG Invitations are Done! OMG!

This morning I needed to drive into work (instead of taking the train like I typically do) because my dance troupe has a gig tonight. As Mr. T and I got ourselves into the car (late as usual), my phone rang, with an unfamiliar number. I was worried that it was our landlord, so I made Mr. T listen to the voicemail as I drove. It was our invitation printer, saying our invites were done and ready to pick up! Well, you can guess that we took a little detour on the way to work and got those suckers in our hot little hands! They look magnificent and I am SO excited about them.

However, I am not excited that apparently these have been done for awhile and just sitting around and no one called us. That pretty much blows any idea of doing custom postage (we needed to wait until we had the invites done to weigh them, so we could find out what the postage would be). I shouldn't be so whiny and bridezilla about it, but the stamps currently available are just so ugly. Mr. T and I are both a little unenthused about using The Simpsons, gold wedding bands (blech!), or the liberty bell on our beautiful black envelopes with silver writing. The Edgar Allen Poe stamp from last year was amazing, but it's now outdated and they haven't released a new one with the new postage rate.

Oh, well, you can't win them all.

It also changes the trajectory of our weekend. We have to finish addressing envelopes and get these suckers in the mail!!! Luckily our return address stamp came in this week too.

Groom's Gift/Tie: Check!

I persuaded Mr. T to let me buy him the expensive tie from Sak's (the black and white striped one above). After all, I argued, his wedding ring cost me under $50, so I'd gotten off easy (uh, my rings cost him a little bit more than that!). Once he heard my very logical argument, he agreed, on the condition that this also be his groom's gift (so he's on his own for cufflinks).

I brought the tie home on Friday. We both love it and are afraid to touch it for fear of ruining its luxury. It's sitting in a box in his armoire, all wrapped up until he's ready to wear it!

One more item off the list!

OMW Week 33, WW Week 23

I was just thinking posting was light this week, and then I noticed Bilunabirotunda had done her post! Hooray! The pressure is on, I guess...I can't say that we are reinventing the wedding from scratch, but I hope our guests have a nice time anyway. Especially because their outfits will play a large part in the room decor!

Anyway, another half-pound lost this week! That makes a total of 29 pounds. It feels agonizingly slow right now, although I'm glad I'm still losing.

Today I had to use the main downstairs gym because the upstairs women's only area is closed until Sunday (I think they're cleaning the carpets and painting?). I noticed a few other women down there looking lost, but there wasn't the crowd I was expecting. Maybe folks aren't working out since that area's closed.

Anyway, the downstairs gym is really nice. Better floors (who puts carpet in a gym?), a larger, sunnier space, and nicer, more modern weight machines. I liked all of the weight machines down there better with the exception of the pull-up machine, which felt a little...flimsy, for lack of a better word. I noticed that the angles on some of the machines were different, so the way I used my muscles was different. In fact, I'm a little sore! Also, I could do more weight than normal on certain machines, and less on others. It was kinda fun. I might have to make more trips to the downstairs gym!

I will say, though, that the stretching areas were too small. I guess men aren't into stretching? Also, the women's area is way better equipped with fans, I guess because it wasn't air-conditioned until recently. And the men certainly need some fans. Some of them were very odorous. Women just smell better. Mr. T always says boys are gross, and in some respects, it's true. ;-)

I have one more adventure in the co-ed area this week and then I can retreat back to the women's area starting Sunday, if I so desire. I hope the co-ed area isn't super crowded on Saturdays. Hm.

The August Wedding Observer

Hello all, this is Bilunabirotunda. Our lovely Beth has asked me to share the two weekends (back to back!) I spent at weddings.

Executive summary: I am now jaded on normal weddings. Despite being a classicist at heart, I hope Beth and Mr. T will go all out in being themselves, having fun, and helping us have fun!

These two August weddings were nice, but kind of dull. Very similar format: Ceremony at one location, then traipse over to another location, wait around for food and/or bridal party to show up, make conversation with strangers, eat, wait, wait, wait, dance. Cake. Home.

Ceremony 1 was at Preservation Park in Oakland - non-denominational. Ceremony 2 was at Founder's Chapel at the University of San Diego, and was a full Catholic nuptial mass! My first for that.


I don't have any pics of bride 1's dress, but it was the usual white strapless affair, corset lacing - however, with a dark purple insert in the back from top to bottom, long train, and silver embroidery edging around bodice and insert. The bridesmaids wore dark purple and the groomsmen wore red. Bride 2's dress was also white and strapless, but straight, and with a layered skirt. She had a silver belt and her bridesmaids wore purple too. (She told me later, though, that her dress had been accidentally bustled the whole time!) Groomsmen had gray suits and lavender shirts, purple ties. Is this the in color scheme? I liked both dresses - not a big strapless fan, but both brides are thin and have nice figures so it worked for them. Similar veils. Both weddings also had flower girls who just walked up the aisle and ring bearers with the traditional sulky look.


Reception 1 was at the California Ballroom in downtown Oakland, and reception 2 was at the Catamaran Hotel in San Diego. It was at this point that I really appreciated the organizational skills of team 2 - at reception 1, no one, including my friend the groomsman, knew what was going on, where people should be, or when food/bridal party would show up. At reception 2 it was clearly stated in the lobby that we'd have cocktails on the beach for a certain time, then dinner in the ballroom. Cocktails on the beach was undeniably lovely - so we passed the time not unwell. I think the alcohol was free all around, but I liked the champagne/chambord cocktail the waiters brought round, so never checked it out. Also, as part of the package, exotic bird handlers walked around showing off parrots.


And there were baby hula dancers off to the side (not part of the wedding).

Reception 2 scored for flowers, dinner service, and room to sit, but the actual food was better at reception 1 - three or four buffet stations with different things, though you had to stand in line, and there was some disgruntlement. At reception 2, everyone got chicken except my vegetarian husband, who scored pesto pasta. As on an airline flight, the vegetarians do better in the mass meal production line.


The usual toasts, etc, and formulaic dances. Couple 1 do Dickens Fair a lot, so I liked the guy who said, "and may nothing Dickens wrote about ever happen to you!" Couple 1 scored for dancing - they and most of their friends are rabid Victorian ballroom dancers. Couple 1 also had a live band the whole time. And one of their friends had commissioned an original waltz especially for their wedding, which the band played! The dancing was beautiful to watch if intimidating to join. (The Vegetarian Husband does not like dancing and I was in a bad mood caused by a delayed dinner.) Couple 2 just had a DJ, and run of the mill wedding music. Fun for the young people if dull for the older ones. Wedding 2 also had higher heels because it was farther south in CA.


I liked both cakes. Cake 1 had cool molded chocolate leaves with real red currants as accents, and cake 2 was decorated only with real orchids. Classy.



Both weddings had sweet moments and periods of boredom. I guess it's hard for a wedding to be all things to all people. ;-) Couple 2 were so tremendously happy! I liked that. But my favorite moment was at reception 1: the four young flower girls were dancing by themselves, and the flautist played Pop Goes the Weasel for them to dance to. Kind of summed it all up. Get married and have a party. The rest is just showing off, and though I hope Beth will top the lists, as long as they're happy and I don't have to sit around waiting too long, this wedding guest will be just fine.

OMW Week 32, WW Week 22

Another half-pound lost this week...making my total 28.5 pounds! I'm ever so slowly making progress.

The women's area of the gym where I work out is going to be closed next Wed-Sun. I'm not sure what I'm going to do on those days. There's another co-ed area downstairs, but not only am I more comfy in the women's only area, but also, I imagine the downstairs area will be overrun with folks since it will have to serve twice the clientele. Hm. I'll think about that next week, I guess!

Bouts

Recently I reacquainted Mr. T with my plan to create all of the bouquets, corsages, and boutonnieres for our wedding VIPs (he'd forgotten about this). I was explaining how the bouquets are made the day before, and the bouts/corsages have to be made the morning of.

"That's crazy," he told me. "You're not going to want to be doing all that work at the last minute. I don't think you should do it." I scoffed, but then I started thinking about it. We're going to have 5 bouts and 4 corsages. That's 9 things to make that morning. Hm.

So, I did what any good American would--I decided to outsource the labor, and I also decided to go with fake/dried flowers so we can get them done ahead of time. The good news is, we'll likely be at or under budget for these, so I'm not blowing our budget with this decision...just saving myself some anguish.

I pored over Etsy options and finally decided on a likely vendor. I like how she uses real dried elements in her work. We're going to make ours look "less harvest and more Halloween," but I think she's going to rock them. Here's a sample of her stuff:



Those are real dried lotus pods, and the pumpkin is real too!

So, I'm still committed to making the bouquets, but there are only three of those, and now my wedding morning has been freed up (I was having visions of getting up at 5 a.m. and hunching over flowers and floral wire...).

Phew. Mr. T heartily agrees with my decision, as you thought he might.

I love Etsy. Sigh.

Showering

I'm torn regarding the idea of a bridal shower. The MOH wants to throw me one and keeps asking me about it, but I feel like weddings are expensive enough for everyone involved--not just the bride and groom (and/or their family), but also the guests and especially the wedding party. I feel very uncomfortable basically asking for two gifts for one wedding.

The MOH proposed a couple of things to ease my mind: first, that we could have folks make donations to a charity in lieu of gifts, but that no one would be obligated to do this, and two, she wanted to make the shower co-ed as a fun change from the usual girls-only showers.

I'm still torn. It feels like it might be a repeat of our engagement party, which, while it was awesome, I don't see the need to re-do. That's a lot of work for the hostesses, and a lot of money spent to feed folks.

And, although I trust the MOH not to do this, the entertainment at a shower is typically silly games that I can't stand.

Perhaps I am approaching this with the wrong attitude and I just need to view this as a nice opportunity to hang out with friends and family before the wedding. I don't know. I do want a bachelorette party to have a fun night out with my ladies before the wedding, and I kinda feel like that will be enough. Both seems excessive.

Do any of you have opinions on bridal showers?

Review of Financially Ever After

Mr. T was amazed that I was reading a financial book of my own accord, but this one was recommended on Offbeat Bride, so I checked it out of the library.

This was an excellent book; very well-written and full of useful tips. Of course, most of the questions he says to ask your partner have already long since been discussed in our household, but I didn't mind the review. Perhaps more useful to me were his thoughts on joint bank accounts: don't do it till after you're married, which we haven't. His other opinion was that having one joint bank account offers the most financial transparency in the relationship. He offered that you could each keep your own individual account, but that having the joint one, period, keeps everyone honest and is more of an investment into the partnership of the marriage. Mr. T and I have been debating about this and it's likely we'll combine our finances into one joint checking and several joint savings, depending on what we're saving for--vacation, emergency fund, yearly expenses, etc. One thing that this seems to preclude is surprising each other with gifts, though. I'd be curious to hear how you all manage this in your relationships: One account? Three accounts? If it's one, how do you surprise each other? With a credit card purchase? Even that's tricky, assuming you have transparency when paying the cc bills...

Regardless, buying gifts for each other isn't any kind of reason not to combine finances, so we're probably going for the one joint account.

The book also has a section on how to create a household budget, which I took notes on! Mr. T and I have not had to really formally budget for a household, and I think it's a good idea when two people are dipping into the same bank account. I volunteered to do this since I do budgets for work and I've also been keeping up our wedding budget.

Anyway, the book offers much, much more and I totally recommend this one to any couples--married or to-be married--who want a healthy financial future.

Review of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

I can't remember how I heard about this book, but I enjoyed it thoroughly. It's set in England in the 1950's, but it feels like it takes place even earlier. The main character is an 11-year-old girl named Flavia who has two sisters; they live with their father in a family manor with two servants. Flavia's a self-taught chemist and prankster; she and her sisters are constantly "getting even" with each other for various slights (in one scene, we watch Flavia distill the essence of poison ivy into her sister's melted-down lipstick, then re-form the lipstick and place it into her sister's drawer).

Flavia, then, is not your average 11-year-old girl, and when a man dies in their garden late one night, she is delighted to have a crack at the mystery. She travels all through the town and beyond, eventually coming up with all the pieces to solve the puzzle (involving postage stamps, the royal family, conspiracies, magicians, and her father, among others) and at the end, she explains the whole thing to the bemused police.

Flavia may be devious and mischevious, but I quite enjoyed reading her, and am looking forward to the next installment.

Quiet Weekend

Mr. T and I are enjoying the calm before the storm. It's amazing how many items on our to-do list need to be done the month before the wedding, if not the week before.

This weekend I addressed about half our envelopes in my own dubious handwriting, although Mr. T was very complimentary about how they looked. I told him he was biased, but it was still nice to have a cheerleader there.

Mr. T worked on some of our other paper products: icons for the escort cards, and the drink menu for the bar. Those are looking very stylish, and without the pressure of the invitations hanging over our heads, they seemed to flow very quickly!

We should get our invites back from the printer soon, if they really are working as quickly as they thought they would. I haven't heard anything yet, and today's the exact 2-week mark.

I also created a more detailed alcohol budget. We had a general budget, but after we went to BevMo this weekend and priced what the bottles of vodka and tequila are likely to cost, we had a guideline for how much we have left to spend on the wine. That was very helpful, actually. It's unlikely we'll have enough in the budget for Tru Blood soda or Crystal Head vodka, sadly. I'm still holding onto the idea of one bottle of the vodka for display at the bar. A girl can dream, right?





We also went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and picked out flatware. Of course the style we liked has no corresponding hostess set. I put a hostess set by the same manufacturer on the registry for now, but I'm not entirely satisfied with that decision. We might have to revisit our choice.

OMW Week 31, WW Week 21

So last week, not only did I only work out three times, but I also ate more than WW wanted me to. Granted, it was mostly stuff like extra fruit (can't get enough of summer cherries, yum!), but some of it was pasta and booze, and I fully expected to not lose any weight.

And yet, when I weighed myself on Tuesday, I'd lost another 1.5 lbs, bringing my total up to 28 pounds lost! Crazy, huh? I don't get the rationale there.

I've increased the weight I'm lifting on the pull-up machine. This machine is set up so that you have to increase in 10-lb increments, and that is quite a jump! I can only do four at a time. So I do three sets of four. Hopefully it gets a little easier soon.

It's been nice and quiet at the gym. I think folks are on vacation. I'm enjoying not having to wait to use machines, or trip over folks in the locker room. Ah, luxury.

Envelope Addressing Frustration

We got our black envelopes in the mail last week, so I thought I'd get a jump on getting our invites prepped to go by starting to address some of them on Sunday. I'd read a blog post about how to do faux calligraphy, which I thought was genius.

Sigh.

None of the things I thought would be problematic were actually a problem. I was able to easily create an envelope template and align the address properly. The envelopes fed through our home printer perfectly. The black text showed up on the black envelopes so that the type was visible under a good light, and you could trace over it. And yet, when I tried to, my attempts looked AWFUL. We went to the store and got different pens. Still awful. Mr. T tried it. Awful.

Mr. T decided that the problem was probably the pens and ink. Unlike the blogger I referenced, we didn't want to invest in a calligraphy pen...we don't have the time to learn how to use one properly anyway! We bought an assortment of silver pens, but all the attempts looked either messy, or blotchy, or spidery, like an extremely elderly calligrapher had addressed them. I think the ink just didn't want to take to the paper that already had ink on it. Mr. T also thought that as we slowed down to try and trace the address, the ink pooled up, causing the blotchy and messy effect.

So, after hours of trying to make this idea work, I gave in crabbily. Guests will just have to make do with my handwriting! Oh, well.

Dress Fitting #1

On Friday I went for my first dress fitting. Even though what they brought out was two pieces of different colored off-white muslin, I squealed and yelled, "I LOVE it!". I guess I'm an easy customer.

This was my first time in a real corset (Hot Topic or Lip Service ones just don't count, do they?) and even though it was just the muslin mockup, I was surprised by three things:

1. My waist looked tiny.
2. M. was right, I won't need a bra (first time in my life, I think! Well, aside from when I was younger than 11 years old).
3. It was a little harder to bend over than normal! Well, I guess I wasn't super surprised by it, but that boning is no joke. I had great posture.

The skirt was a bit too short, and the shop owner thought I'd lost weight even since she measured me, which I'm not sure if I lost all that much...my waist was the same size when they re-measured me on Friday.

I had to pick a new fabric because they can't get the Duchesse satin anymore in the color I liked, but they presented me with a silk dupioni that I liked even better. I loved how the lace panels in the skirt looked, and we're going to back those with the red fabric so you can see the detail of the lace. I can't wait to see the final product! We're going to do one more muslin before they cut fabric, so I'll go back in a month or so. Squeal!!

I'd post some pix, but Mr. T is known to read this blog from time to time, so you'll have to email me for them if you're curious! ;-)

Review of: Lots of Books

I've been reading up a storm as usual but having trouble finding time to post about all of them. Here's what I've been up to:



I found out about this book on Offbeat Bride. It is a great book, but was so general that it didn't help me out at all at this stage. I would've loved to have read this 17 months ago, or so! Wonderful, funny writing.


This book was more useful, although pretty traditional in its approach to wedding vows. I copied some pages to use as inspiration for our ceremony. Eek, we need to write that soon.



BO-RING. I felt like I was cramming for a mid-term on Halloween. Dry and scholarly.


This one was more interesting and had more fun pictures and poems and such, but I didn't even finish it, I suspect because I'd read the other Halloween book first.

What I learned: Halloween was born from the Celtic holiday Samhain and combined with All Saints' Day and even Guy Fawkes Day. The Irish and Scottish brought it to America, where it took on a life of its own. The end.


I read this awhile ago but apparently I never reviewed it. It's a creepy mystery about an old house, and family secrets, and spooky experiments. I enjoyed it, but I don't remember a ton about it, so that's not a great sign. Still, for fans of Victorian mystery, I'd recommend it. Here's a review I pulled off Amazon:

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Many of the creepy late Victorian familiars abound in The Seance: the dark woods of the English countryside, the ruined mansion with secret passages and hidden chambers and fog on the moors. There's even a sarcophagus in a dead fireplace, a tricked-out suit of armor and some apparatus for collecting electricity when lightning strikes. Drafts blow out candles at the most inopportune times.

The literary conventions of the Victorian suspense novel are present as well: the nested narratives that arrive in mysterious packets, abandoned diaries and even a family tree -- complete with married cousins. Australian John Harwood, whose Ghost Writer won an International Horror Award in 2004, writes with Poe and Dickens peering over his shoulders, shaking their wizened heads perhaps over one modern twist: The strongest characters in The Seance are two women of action.

This was a fun, trashy read about a succubus making her living by managing a bookstore and trying to avoid feeding on nice men. Other local immortals start getting killed off, and she gets pulled into the investigation...and of course into danger. Really quick read, and I'll likely check out the others in the series.


I read this for my book club, so I wouldn't normally review it, but I really loved this book, which is set in post WW 2 England and is told through a series of letters. It has that sort of Anne of Green Gables feel about it, where all the characters are quaint and lovable, and even if something dramatic happens, you know you're in for a happy ending. I totally recommend this one--make sure to curl up with a cuppa tea as you read it.



I read this one on the plane to Hawaii. My book club had read one of her previous titles, and somehow I managed to forget that although her writing is lovely, her subjects are completely depressing. This one was no different and made that flight a very long five hours. It's interesting from a historical perspective, as it starts in Shanghai in the 1930s and follows two sisters as they flee China and land on the Bay Area's own Angel Island. But there's not much joy in it, which made it a very heavy read.

Loved it! I've been referring to this one as Million Dollar Baby meets the Xmen. It's about the daughter of a genetically modified human and her eventual quest to revenge her brother, who was killed in a boxing ring. That may not sound like much, but there's so much to this novel, including a believable relationship between the protagonist and another woman, which was beautifully and lovingly rendered.



The same author wrote this book, but this one is set in the same world as the Kushiel series, only a few generations later. Like that series, this book has an Indiana-Jones type adventure vibe (mixed with lots and lots of sex) as the heroine travels the globe in search of her destiny. The end pretty much promised a sequel, to my mind, and I can't wait! Carey writes believable, smart characters.

My only complaint with Carey's writing is that the protagonist is always extraordinary. I mean, you expect that out of your hero, I guess, but even Harry Potter is a so-so wizard. Carey's heroines (and hero, if we're looking at Imriel) are always beautiful, articulate, and possess extraordinary powers. It's at once satisfying reading and also a bit like a diet of nothing but candy--sometimes too much of a good thing. But really, her writing is quite addictive, and I can't wait to read the next one!

Invitations to Printer: Check! Plus, other random tasks

I'm so happy to report that we sent the invite files to the printer yesterday and dropped off the black paper this morning before work. Hooray! That is such a weight lifted. We were ecstatic after uploading the files yesterday.

Also, the printer has already sent us a PDF proof of our invite. That was fast! The owner told Mr. T that they were in a lull at the moment, so the printing might only take about 2 weeks. Hooray! That means, if we have some time to spare, that we can consider doing custom postage through Zazzle or a site like that, to coordinate with our invitations. If we use the post office's postage, we're stuck with some not-so-thrilling options, but we'll suck it up if we have to. I just wish they'd updated the Edgar Allen Poe stamps with the new rate...sigh.

This weekend we also accomplished a few other wedding tasks:

• We made our registries live on our wedsite. We haven't added flatware yet, but we can do that later.
• We tried two more rehearsal dinner options. This is turning out to be much more challenging than finding the wedding venue! To summarize, the Vietnamese place closest to our venue sucks, so we're looking at opening our search to restaurants without private rooms.
• We purchased a custom return address stamp from Etsy.
• We booked our hotel room for our wedding night, plus our photographer's hotel room for two nights.
• We ordered our cupcake stand (cardboard, to be painted and adorned by us).
• We purchased gifts for my bridesmaid and MOH as well as our officiant.
• I purchased a wedding band for Mr. T from an online jeweler...luckily we can return it to the company if he hates it.
• We purchased envelopes for our invitations, with extras for thank you notes. We also decided that lining the envelopes wasn't worth the hassle, so that's another thing off my list.
• We put some thought into our first dance and decided what we're going to do (but I'm not telling!)
• I scheduled my first dress fitting for this Friday! This is when I try on the muslin version. After that they order the fabric and get to work!
  

Phew! Only another 120 things to go!

OMW Weeks 29-30, WW Weeks 19-20

So, when I weighed myself the week of 7/20, I'd gained two pounds. Sigh. The MOH suggested that it was water weight. Two pounds of water weight seemed crazy to me.

However, happily, when I weighed myself the week of 7/27, I'd lost that two pounds! I'm just happy not to have gained more weight in Hawaii, since not only was I not getting up for the gym, but I was also laying around by the pool and disregarding WW at every turn. Phew! So, I'm still at 25.5 lbs lost as of last week.

This week's weigh-in will hopefully happen tomorrow...we didn't get up and work out today for a very good reason, which I'll post about next!