Friday, January 28, 2011

Wedding planning myths

So we have been a little more busy planning wise in the past couple of weeks than we certainly have in the past couple of months. We ended up talking to a different photographer because the first ones kept taking along time to get back to me and this new one has a much better deal than the other ones. More stuff for less money and we are supposed to maintain full legal rights to all our pictures which is a big thing these days. We have also more or less lined up a string duo for the ceremony music. Just have to iron some detail out on the contract and that will be all set. So two things down, how many to go? lol

The thing that I find interesting is that when you start to plan a wedding, if you are like me and don't know the first thing about it, you usually turn to the closest resource available to you for information: Google. Now in perusing the plethora of wedding planning sites out there, you usually will stumble on some version of a wedding time line which breaks down when you should do certain things and such. There are some things on those time lines that I will agree with (i.e. buying the wedding dress 6-8 months beforehand since they will need like 3 months to make it assuming you don't buy off the rack, plus time for alterations and such) but there are some things that I in theory was supposed to do like 3 months ago that I am just getting to now and it seems to be just fine. They seem to make it sound like if you don't book everything 12 months in advance that you are s.o.l. I agree that this is true for the venue, but other things it turns out not so much. So far, for both of the photographers and the musicians that we have contacted, they are all available on the 16th. I was a bit worried that because it is now less than six months that they would all be booked up, but they are not. Of course waiting until the last minute is not conducive to getting the prices/people you want, but you definitely do not have to book it as far in advance as they would like you to believe.

After talking to the second photographer, another thing that seems to be common within the wedding industry is photographers keeping your negatives in order to force you and your family and friends to pay exorbitant prices to get pictures of you. Luckily this person is not like that. They hate that part of the industry and therefore will give us the "negatives" (such a funny term these days since everything is mostly done using digital photography...I guess they give us the photons? lol) and even have reasonable rates for people to get prints or download the files of the pictures they like. So yay!

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Dresses, Photos, and Music

Another day, another update...well sorta.

Anyway, I have finally decided on the bridesmaid dresses, with no help from the bridesmaids themselves....love you :P. What I mean by this is that I asked them if they had any preferences (long, short, straps, no straps, etc) and they all came back with some form of response which essentially said "Whatever is fine". Well that really helps to narrow things down.

So I sat down last week and went through the online catalogue at Dessy.com. Holy crap do they have a lot of different styles...Not only do they currently have like 350 different styles, but within each style you can choose different colors for the dress and sometimes some of the details. Talk about an indecision nightmare. I had looked at them a couple months ago and didn't really find anything I really liked, but when I looked again last week, they had their new spring line out so I was able to find one that I like. (If you go to http://www.dessy.com/dresses/bridesmaid/2807/ you can see the dress. To see what it should look like, change the dress color to burgandy and the trim color to white). One interesting thing about the current styles is that they all seemed to have pockets. Yes, pockets in a dress. I am not against pockets in a dress, as long as it is a casual dress. Pockets in a formal dress seem odd. Regardless, I really like this style so I can deal with pockets and will have to make sure my bridesmaids keep their hands out of said pockets *Evil Glare*. That ought to do it. Anyway, so with fingers crossed, I sent a message to my bridesmaids and they all really like it (Phew). So on to the next thing.

I have also found a dress I like for the flower girl (http://www.dessy.com/dresses/flowergirl/fl4009/; White top, burgandy bottom), but I am unsure about sizing and whether it will work for a 2 year old (well 2 years and 3 months by the wedding). I think part of it is that the picture shows a much older girl who is obviously taller. We shall see.

For the photographer, we are currently in email contact with BK Studios (http://www.bullockandkirstein.com/#). They currently have an opening for July 16, and we are trying to see if we can come up with a price/package that we like.

For music, obviously we will have a dj of some sort for the reception, but I kinda like the idea of some sort of live string duo for the ceremony. There seem to be two separate companies that will do this, but I have not looked into prices quite yet. That will be the next thing on the list along with finding an officiant (There was one that I found which will customize everything but they may be a bit expensive...again have not asked for any info yet so will have to do that)

As for other details:
- Jeff has apparently commandeered the responsibility for the cake. Unfortunately we will not be able to go to any sort of tasting so we will be sending Jeff's parents. Lucky them :P.
- As stated in a previous post, I have chosen what kind of flowers I want, but I have yet to find a florist.
- Need to ultimately finalize the guest list and then get addresses for all those on it so we can send invites out in a couple months
- Need to find a DJ
- Need to book our honeymoon (Oahu here we come :) )
- Need to make our registry and make sure that people buy things from there such that we can pick it up at a store here in London since we will not have room to take things back with us (Hint hint to any of you who are reading this...)
- Jeff needs to get the tuxes and such squared away
- Decorations
- Some other things I'm sure I am missing right now