What's a Party Without Entertainment

Originally we were going to go the iPod-and-a-charismatic-friend-with-good-taste route with the entertainment. After a while we decided to go the DJ route and budgeted accordingly. Lo and behold, a good friend of ours with an event planning company offered his services at a fraction of our budget. Ordinarily he doesn't do weddings ("Brides are crazy!!" His words, not mine!) but made an exception for us. He got us a great deal with a DJ and offered his services as emcee. He also knows our venue and the folks that run it, so I'm more at ease.

And as an added bonus, his girlfriend also does event planning and we were able to secure her services as a day of coordinator.

DJ, emcee, and Day of Coordinator, all for the price of our original DJ budget. YAY! Our friends rock.

And, if all else fails, there's still the iPod-and-a-charismatic-friend-with-good-taste is always an option.

Give Me a Break

This last weekend Dude and I whisked ourselves to a friend of a friend's lakehouse in upstate New York. We spent the weekend with our amazing friends, grilling, swimming, enjoying each other and not thinking about wedding. Since the engagement there hasn't been more than a day when we haven't had to deal with something wedding related (ours or somebody else's), and we were just about sick of it. This weekend we got to relax and be a little bit of those people who we were before we got engaged.

With every decision we make and every step along the way, we have to remember that despite all this madness, that it's all just about the two of us.

Posting resumes this week, and among the topics are fabric shopping, other centerpiece ideas, alternatives to flowers, and the kindness of friends.

Simple and Pretty

There is a very good possibility I've found the centerpiece design.

The One That Will Make the Feminists Hate Me

I'm not into the co-ed shower.

I know that's completely against my tradition-stinks attitude, but I'm not. There's just something about being in the company of women that makes it all different. Our hair is let down, we don't criticize our men for their wrinkly shirts or drinking too much, and we can gossip to our heart's content.

And, the real reason - any kind of shower that my mom and Maid of Honor will throw is not an event that Dude will want to attend, or the men that we know for that matter. No amount of booze will make the present-opening hour go by any faster. In mine and Dude's case, it would be an obligation party and we would hate that most of all.

Okay I take some of it back, my gay friends are more than welcome to come.

It's Getting Hot in Hair

In my adolescence I think my amount of self loathing was your normal teenage level. There weren't (I guess still aren't) that many Asian celebrities so media images of beauty were always blondes and brunettes with wavy hair. It's interesting how Eastern and Western perceptions of beauty are different, but that is for another post.

But oh, how I tried so very hard to achieve that wavy hair. I even got a perm (yes, a perm!), but instead of getting beautiful wavy hair, my hair looked fried and I think I kind of looked like a cocker spaniel.

It wasn't until later on that I really loved the fact that I had all this thick straight dark brown to jet black (depending on the light) hair. And I do love it now.

But on my wedding day, I'm still holding onto the fantasy of wavy hair.



Though it's very likely it will end up like this:



Sigh. Decisions, decisions.

Ugh, Flowers

Despite the fact that I've barrelled through most of my to-do list there is one thing that I am procrastinating on because I really hate it... the florist.

Let me be honest here for a moment. It's not just that I have severe allergies to most flowers. I just don't get flowers. I don't understand why it ever became tradition or custom to give and receive and expect flowers. I have this image in my head of some caveman, failing to obtain an appropriate meal for the evening, picks up a bunch of weeds and offers it to his cavewoman as a distraction. And then what cavewoman would forgive such a deed just because there's something pretty in her face? I understand that flowers are pretty - but pretty for pretty's sake is of no interest to me.

I contemplated not even having any flowers at the wedding, except that if all eyes are going to be on me and the bridesmaids, we better well be holding onto something for dear life.

I have still not ruled out waking up on our wedding day, going to the corner bodega, and picking up a few bunches of whatever is there, tying them up with some ribbon.

The point is, I still don't have a florist.

Wedding, Half Morocco Style

Dude and I schlepped our way to hot and humid Texas for a long Fourth of July weekend and wedding. The weekend was a rare combination of extravagant and personal. The bride's family from Morocco flew in for the festivities. While the wedding itself was your traditional American wedding-in-a-hotel, we were treated to some traditional Moroccan food at a cooking class. For the rehearsal dinner, all the women donned kaftans and the bride made the most majestic entrance I have ever seen (faces blurred for privacy):




It seemed as if the Moroccan part was very maternal and female centric, with all the women dancing and cheering and singing around the bride. I'm not sure if that's how it is really, or if it was just because there were more Moroccan women than men.

It was a grand old time and the actual wedding itself was beautiful and filled with friends.

Don't Mess with Texas

Dude and I are in Texas attending a Moroccan wedding. All I can say is wow. Details when we get home but all I can say is I want a kaftan.

Reviewing the Registries

We ultimately registered at three places - Bed Bath and Beyond, Bloomingdale's, and MyRegistry.com - and here is my review of the process so far.



MyRegistry.com
The Good:
We liked MyRegistry.com because it lets guests contribute cash gifts that are then linked through your PayPal account. We named our cash bucket our House Fund, which, to be honest, is really where any of those gifts will go. We also use MyRegistry.com for something a little bit off center and registered for wines and spirits at wine.com.

The Bad:
We thought we would use MyRegistry.com for everything, except that it doesn't automatically update what is still needed versus what has been fulfilled. It gives you a friendly pop up that says after you purchase, please update the list, but then that leaves an extra step for guests. There was the risk that we would end up with multiples of the same thing and we'd be under the mercy of each vendor's return policy. We also didn't like that there is a service charge for cash gifts, but it's not that much.

Bed Bath and Beyond
The Good:
Super Low Maintenance. We set up our registry online and we went to the store, got a 2 minute tutorial on how to use the gun, and then were set on our way. We got to do everything our way and everything we needed was in the store. The selection is also pretty good.

The Bad:
Not all in-store items are available online, so we had to go online and edit our list for things that are readily available online. I didn't want to force people to actually go to the store to get the gift. Also - a lot of the things we liked were seasonal and will likely not be available in the next few months.

Bloomingdale's
The Good:
The fine china and flatware selection is really great. The everyday sets were also pretty nice, but we had those ready at BB&B. We decided to do the really fancy things at Bloomingdale's so we were prepared for the increase in price, but we could find a lot of choices that were within a reasonable amount.

The Bad:
Oh dear Lord, did they ever give a speech on how to register. Bloomingdale's is just a higher end store and so everything was geared towards that. We really didn't feel comfortable registering for anything greater than 500 dollars, I know that people might chip in and buy one big thing, but we just didn't feel comfortable registering for something that cost that much and frankly wasn't important to us at all. We were sitting in the registry office for about 30 minutes before we could go and register, and we had to listen to our guy talk about what price ranges were acceptable for showers and wedding (which I thought ludicrous, by the way). Also - the nice china I liked in the store was not available online, so we had to edit that as well.


All in all, not a painful experience, a little bit fun also. Except I hadn't broken in my shoes yet that I bought for MonkeyGirl's wedding so I had blisters and was hobbling around Bloomie's.