Preparation Do's and Dont's

Every bride will have a long list of beautification procedures including:

Long Term:

Be in shape

Clear skin

Short term:

Mani/Pedi

Hair cut/color

Recently I just got a month pass to the gym as well as an outdoor bootcamp so that pain should start soon. However Mr. FMB did have one demand.... no rugby before the wedding, a month before. :(

Why is he so mean?

DIY surprises from the homeland....

While I have been trying to put my life together after getting a shock last week... my step-mom has been a busy bee back at home with some DIY projects for the rehearsal dinner. This morning I awoke to pictures of invitations and small take home baskets, both crafted out of paper.


Aren't they great!

Having some help with all the wedding planning is essential! I hope you have some extra hands on your side.

Please do NOT give us anything!!!

Well part of getting married and buying a new house at the same time is that you get everything to put in it right? Well we have had to highly publicize that we do not want any physical gifts at the shower or wedding... none... zip... zilch.... ok well maybe if its small enough to fit in a standard envelope. If there was anyway to ask for cash in a polite way we would kindly direct our guests and loving friends in that direction. Yet I fear any hint given that we prefer cash would have Miss Manners knocking down my door.

Why are we so adamant about this? Well lets play a game... how much does the following box cost to ship to England (helmet and dog for size reference and I believe it was around 22lbs):

Guestimate the shipping cost?

If you said $50 you would be wrong, if you said $100 you still would be wrong and too low.... after shipping and customs was paid it was a total of $150 to ship things I already owned to myself in England. And yes for those of you who are counting that is more than the value of what was in the box.

As it would cost us more than the costs of our plane tickets to ship items back to the UK we really would prefer people do not give us gifts in hand. As much as we would like cash (I am not asking for it, just implying that we would prefer it as it travels digitally) we also would like to provide a registry for those who wish to gift us with a new addition to our house. However we needed to register in England to avoid the customs and shipping.

So it turns out besides our families and wedding party.... our gift registry is the only thing that overlaps for both weddings. Although the English do say many words funny and have odd looking plugs things work the same here in general. Some department stores are nicer than others and we choose ours because the carried our pattern for the china. So on a sunny weekend we took trains and buses to Solihull (try saying with without a British accent) and went to John Lewis.

Most importantly we wanted a full set of proper china (serving for 12) and I had chosen the Vera Wang Lace pattern in platinum. Surprisingly Mr. FMB did not find this too "grandma" and agreed on it:


The pans were a bit more a compromise. I wanted copper, Mr. FMB wanted non-stick and we both wanted metal handles so pans can go stove top to oven. After picking up and weighing everything on display we decided on John Lewis' mid-range collection that had a good heavy feel and nice look to the handles. We ordered all the standard pots and pans and threw in a pasta boiler for me and a wok for Mr. FMB:


Next came the fun items:

Classy scale that is both practical and pretty

The essential mixer to replace the one I willed to a friend when I left Boston

Kenwood food processor/blender/juicer/dishwasher/vacuum... very versatile
(I heard it walks the dog too)
A cheese dome.... I love cheese... If I could I would marry cheese

We had fantastic fun going around the store scanning everything we liked. We did opt for basic white good quality linens as we have no clue what our decor will be. I even added a few lovely vases and decor items that I would really like but not purchase myself out of practicality. At the end we had a gift certificate for coffee and dessert each at their restaurant. It was a lovely way to end a Sunday afternoon of hard wedding work.

Why did you decide to register where you did? Did you think it was as fun as I did?

Don't make me push send....

Now that we had agreed on which invites to order we actually had to order them. I knew that I wanted a traditional wording and to include his parents names as many invitees have not had a chance to meet Mr. FMB's parents. (They are equally awesome as mine and we just had a lovely tea at our house this weekend for Mum's day in England. Included were a proper roast dinner, game of cards and a walk around the local park- I could not make this up if I tried.)

So armed with my basics I hunted the web for acceptable wording. Just to make it clear my parents are hosting the US event and are not divorced and neither are his parents. (If some of these factors are different there are 1000 other permutations of how to word):

Mr. and Mrs. Charles Smith

request the honor of your presence

at the marriage of their daughter

Isabella Marie

to

Edward Jonathan Callahan

on Saturday, November 27

at half past eight o'clock in the evening

153 North Rosewood Street

Wisteria, California

This was a fine basic template so we used this to start our wording which ended up as so:

DadFirstName and StepMomFirstName LastName

request the honour of your presence

at the marriage of their daughter

My full name including middle

to

His full name with middle

son of FirstName and FirstName Their LastName

on Saturday, the twenty-third of July

Two thousand and eleven

at three o'clock in the afternoon

Name of Chapel

Name of College

Worcester, MA

Reception to immediately follow

A mouth full right?! Well after everyone proofread it (including some strangers we pulled over on the street) we ordered them. I really hated to officially hit send as I was terrified that something had to be wrong with them. But apparently the crisis was averted and they came back just as I wanted, except the envelope liner as I forgot to call to change the order- oh well!

I think they turned out alright. All for a cost of $363/125 invites (budget was $350 but we were including stampage which will be another $100). We had to over order a bit as we are sending out 96 invitations and it was either 100 or 120 and we did spend a little extra to have the return address printed on the back of the envelope and add a line of text to the invite and RSVP card.

As I will not be stateside until May we will not mail out the invites till June 1st. I am setting up the file and the FMB parents are practicing on envelopes like Miss Cinnamon Bun did here:

Until then I will put away thoughts of the US invites and focus on my list of 1000 other tasks.

Were you nervous about making mistakes on your invites? When they arrived was it what you expected? Did you stay in budget?

On the topic of stationary....

While I was "home home" in January (home is Boston where I was living, home home is NY where I grew up... not sure what I call England) the FMB parents trapped me at the kitchen table for some serious wedding work- invitations. I am not sure how they lured me into actually making decisions but I think wine and cheese were involved so they were playing dirty and tricking me.

So I opened up my nifty wedding binder and took out all my ideas for invitations- oh wait there was only one-
Isn't it cute and gardenish and my favorite color green? However there was one major problem, Mr. FMB hated it. Mr. FMB and I have very very different tastes and I am sure we will have many arguments ahead over the decor for the new house. Since it was just a piece of paper (wedding blasphemy I know, please don't strike me down wedding gods) I decided to not fight him on it and went to the website this was from, getmarried.com, to browse what else they had. Fortunately they had many different varieties for under $150/100 invites (the budget was $350 with postage*)

First I checked out the monogram idea:

However even after searching online I can not for the life of me figure out whose letter goes on it. (I like his letter "M" better than my "C" except when I was a child and getting in alphabetical order- sorry future kids) So I moved on to the damask style ones to go along with our STD:




After giving myself a migraine with all the swirls and curls I decided to back up and go to basics (in clothing language- button down and pearls):





After a quick online chat with Mr. FMB (thank you gchat) we settled with a clean cut pressed white shirt version of a wedding invite:
Now I just needed to figure out how to order them...

Did you purchase online or did you need to see them in person? With the cost of invitations soaring to $10/invite or more do you think that its worth spending on or did you decide to save on them?


*Postage disclaimer- "dem stamps expensive!" I advise to estimate at least $1/invite for stampage and more if you have square invites or heavy ones. But do remember that it is not one invite/person because of families and couples. OK go estimate away and then curse the USPS.

Save the dates (all the dates)...

Knowing for the US wedding we would have several people traveling we sent out the STD very early in September. For less than $100 we were able to make send and get them out. A brief way of doing this was as follows:

1) Get a great picture of the two of you without hiring a professional. ex- take it yourself, have a family member or a stranger in the park. Our best one after all that turned out to be this:


2) Browse places that print photo cards. We happened to be on a tight time line and needed to have them made and addressed ASAP so we checked out templates and CVS.com (and the like) and walmart.com. Examples of what you can get are as follows (with much in between):


3) Insert photo, write up text, order (pick up an hour later)

4) Hand write, attach stamp and get in the mail in under 24 hours.....



Luckily... for the UK we had a bit more time. Also both of us feel that this is more a celebration and party and less formal. I also had become obsessed with this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiELDUYnQfA

Dinosaurs and Hellogoodbye singing our cake cutting song.... its too perfect not to use. So Mr. FMB took the reigns and has sketched this up for our UK STD:


Very much less formal... but also very us. Any thoughts or suggestions?


Did you design your own stationary from scratch or borrowed a template? As a STD is sent out early (before out budget was discussed) did you end up spending more or less on it? How much should it cost just to let people know?

One, Two.....

They say that bad things come in threes. Yesterday AM I was laid off, This AM I have been battling a computer virus for three hours (I think I have won)... am I a sane person to be afraid to get out of bed tomorrow morning?

Never the less there are important wedding things to get done. None of which I am going to do today. Instead I am going to dream about the dress I plan on wearing to the Sheff-do at night. (I also do recognize with current events that I may not be able to afford any of these.)

I apologize I am not sure where I got this one. I love the sleeves and the glitzy detail for the evening.

BHLDN- I love that this is not a traditional ball gown but people will still know that I am the bride.

Justin Alexander- How can you not love this dress in the ivory/coffee. If I could justify the $1000 price tag it would already be ordered.

David's Bridal- Cute cocktail chic but a little too daytime. However it is very affordable.

David's Bridal- Again very affordable but perhaps not enough glamor to go along with Mr. FMB's tux for the evening.

Are you a two dress type of bride? If so do you feel guilty for spending on another dress? Would you consider selling the dress after to save money?

Petal Power...

Picking out flowers is easy. They are flowers and most of them are pretty. Well most of them....

Flea bitten looking nasty scabiosa

So after my short course in summer wedding flowers I settled on some colors and shapes to be used in my arrangements. Even though I am already saving money by using a friendor I suspect we will have to make a few exchanges due to availability (example some zinnias are shaped similar to dahlias at a lot less of a price).

POP QUIZ!!! Name the flowers



Rose Dahlia Chrysanthemum Gerbera Daisy (but a nice one)
Asters Spray Roses Calla Lilly Lisianthus
Greens Hydrangea

I got so excited after picking out the flowers that I wanted to see what they would look like. Being stranded in my house with no car and no clue where to get flowers in my new city.... I may have drank the power point kool aid and created a mock up of the centerpiece....

Scared?

Although my highly skilled artwork may give you an idea of how the colors will blend together... it doesn't do much for shape. With seventeen guest tables I am going for a bit of non-uniform look to break the room up... Ideally we could pick up some milk glass vases for low round centerpieces like these:



Once we get settled into the new house I will have to do a test run myself to see how it looks.

Anyone else out there deciding on flowers without an expert opinion? If so are you planning on doing a test run?

Keeping the motto....

Well hive... this has not been a good day so far. A 5:30am email as I was out the door for a business trip informed me I no longer have a job. Sucktastic (that is the nice way to put it). Luckily I have a very supportive family and partner. With a deep breath we will make this work until after the wedding when I can get a visa to work in the UK.

Did you have any major setbacks leading up to your wedding?

The first dance... the first compromise

Everyone tells you that marriage is a a constant compromise and raising a child is a team effort (insert many other sayings here). Well if being in a relationship was a primer then planning a wedding is college and you start having situations needing a compromise thrown at you, a lot of them.

I had a list of first dance songs I wanted but Mr. FMB shut down every one. Considering I was getting pretty much my way on most things for the wedding having Mr. FMB know and like "our song" was fine with me. In a flash of brilliance he sends me the following two links (over gchat of course- most of our pre-England life took place over gchat)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8tuTSi6Sck
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmwRQqJsegw
I loved both and loved that he had picked them out on his own... so we decided to use one for the US and one for England... a great way to tie the weddings together.

What else has been a compromise? His morning suit, the food and many more. Maybe it isn't the wedding that I always dreamed of... but it has become way better.... the wedding we have always dreamed of. Going through this process together has even given me new dreams of what I want on that day.


Do you have a groom who has a lot of opinions or none? How do you work out planning differences when you have completely different views?

Music of the night (US)

Mr. FMB and I have different tastes in music, the kind of tastes that do not overlap at all. Maybe its the three years in age difference... or maybe it was that we grew up in two different countries. From our nights out I know I hate the dance clubs in England and he can not stand the bad pop music in the states. So music selection will be easy right?

Well luckily the ceremony music was easy. The traditional church only allows certain music and I just picked out the ones that we will be familiar with- decided on organ and trumpet and done. (The professor in charge did sing several of them to me over the phone which was very entertaining as I had just returned from cocktails with friends).

Cocktail hour was easy too... as neither of us will actually be able to attend Mr. FMB is not too fussy. So for cocktail and dinner it was the classic standards from my friends Frank, Bing, Ella and and Nat. During dinner I will throw in a few slow songs that I would want to hear but may not fit into all the other craziness like "Forever and Ever, Amen" by Randy Travis and "Bless the Broken Road" by Rascal Flatts (yes I will sneak a little country in).

For the dancing part of the night we banned any formal dances (chicken, electric slide etc). Mr. FMB only had one request- "Apple Bottom Jeans" because apparently it reminds him of meeting me in Texas (I am not sure if it is a compliment). Add in a spice of Rhianna, Bon Jovi, Donna Summers and the King of Pop and the only reason my family will leave the dance floor will be for another drink. We did have to decide on a few special songs for those moments:

Entrance Song: "Whole Lotta Love" - Led Zeppelin
Father/Daughter Dance: "Tale as Old as Time" - Beauty and the Beast
Cake Cutting: "Oh, It is Love" -HelloGoodbye
Last slow dance: "The Luckiest"- Ben Folds

However there was one song Mr. FMB was putting up a fight for... the first dance. Hours on YouTube and bottles of wine were wasted debating over this song. After returning back to our respective countries Mr. FMB had a stroke of genius and suggested "Feeling Good" but what version?

To be continued

My Confessed Floral Stupidity

Having a friendor take care of the flower arrangements means I need to do a bit more research ahead of time so I can help select the varieties. I have absolutely no clue about flowers at all but as I intended on planting my very own English garden in a month it is time to do investigation. According to a wide variety of flower websites these common wedding flowers will be available for my July wedding:

Alstromeria- Do not like the markings so a no for me

Asters-Maybe as a filler

Bells of Ireland- No because of the funny shape

Calla Lillies- Yes sparingly

Cockscomb- No for the funny name and fuzzy look

Chrysanthemum- Yes yes and yes in light green and white

Columbine- No too little

Delphiniums- No because of the funny shape

English Lavender- yes as a filler

Forget-Me-Not- maybe as a filler

Freesia- No, just don't like

Gerberas- Just not for my wedding

Gladioli- No because of the shape

Hydrangea- yes as a filler

Iris- No, never liked them

Larkspur- No because of the shape

Liatris- No because of shape

Lillies- No because of funerals and smell
Lisianthus- yes yes yes

Nigella- Um.... no

Queen Anne's Lace- Yes as a filler and it reminds me of home

Roses (regular)- Sparingly but they do come in a lot of colors

Rose (cabbage)- Yes! I love these!

Snapdragons- No because of shape

Stephanotis- Yes I love how delicate and clean they look


Stock- No because of shape

Sunflower- No, not for my wedding

Tuberose- No

Yarrow

Zinnia- Yes (and a way to mimmic expensive Daliahs)

Which are your favorites? Any good summer stems out there that I may be missing?