Wedding Planning!

[Luet]

So exciting!

[Petra456]

Some music has been chosen.

My favorite part of weddings! Anything you can share?

[Gravity Defier]

Only took a few months but I think I may have my engagement ring chosen. :)

I have my eye on a venue, photographer, and caterer, too.

Some music has been chosen.

I hope it doesn't get too stressful down the road. It's going well enough right now.

Engagement ring came in... oh, hmm, not sure when. Custom Alexandrite because I don't f*** with diamonds.

Venue chosen (pictures are on the site) and photographer chosen (engagement photos also on the site). Caterer chosen but have to sign the contract still.

Fred, I'll link to music tomorrow when I'm not on my phone. :)

[Gravity Defier]

Hoping it works out to use this for our first dance.

These How Sweet it Is or Stand By Me covers are also contenders, but may end up as processional picks.

Other music must and will include boy bands, Missy Elliot, Motown, and all your favorite cheese from the 80s and 90s.

[Petra456]

Stand By Me will always without a doubt make me ugly cry.

The Groom's men at a friend's wedding sat her down in a chair, surrounded her and lip sang to "I Want It That Way". She adored it and I hurt from laughing!

[Dr. Mobius]

I always assumed this would be your processional.

[Gravity Defier]

In a world where Trump is president and evil surrounds us, it's difficult to promote even fictional evil and hatred.

[elfprince13]

I feel like there's a much more obvious Star Wars choice that we skipped over



(Courtney and I used the Throne Room theme from A New Hope as the song for the wedding party to enter the reception, and that can almost pass as "serious" wedding music)

[edit]

Apparently the YouTube tag doesn't work anymore. I tried to embed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r2w9ergP1E as my winky-face suggestion above.

[Dr. Mobius]

A friend of mine used The Rebel Feet / End Title from ESB at their reception. The DJ/MC timed it perfectly so the main title fanfare played as the bride and groom entered.

[ratesjul]

Aaargh weddings cost so much money!

We have quotes for venue, catering, tent, and ballpark guesses for a lot of other things... and we're at the upper end of our budget. We have no real idea what a photographer, a cake, or providing beverages is going to set us back (funnily enough those are the top 3 things we want to figure out at a wedding show this weekend).

... and I'm becoming irrationally scared that said wedding show will be too girly and pink and brainwashing...

[Gravity Defier]

I hope the wedding show went well for you!

But yes, they are quite expensive.

[ratesjul]

It was both helpful in some unexpected ways and unhelpful in other ways. Saw a tent company that we had discounted due to expecting it to cost too much, but they don't, and their quote is likely to be what we go with.

For two people who don't drink much figuring out drink offerings is proving complicated.

And photography is starting to prove complex because we intend to forgo much of the traditional timing for the day. Which of course brings us to the elephant in the room as we aren't sure what sorts of timing /event schedule to go with anyway...!

[ratesjul]

Milestone: on Wednesday we filled in the paperwork to book our venue (and thus set the date in stone), and today the venue has confirmed our booking (the events person was on leave).

Ok now it starts to be real.

[Gravity Defier]

Yay! I hope it's mostly smooth sailing from here.

Mostly because I only know one person who did a leaning towards traditional wedding who said it was entirely smooth sailing. If that can be you, too, I want that.

[ratesjul]

I'm not sure how "leaning towards traditional" ours is, but there are certainly some traditional aspects to it.

We've now paid the deposit for the large pretty tent (even in summer one has to plan for potential rain, and if it doesn'train we still need sun protection), and are back to talking to the caterer whose quote we let lapse a couple of weeks ago...

...slowly slowly and all in a rush, at the same time!

[ratesjul]

Made a toile of the bodice for a dress pattern I thought I'd like to use, and decided it needs a lot of modifying to be what I want. Time to pick another pattern probably.

[ratesjul]

We're starting to reach the stage of wedding planning where putting together a wedding website seems like a good idea. Do any of you have any recommendations and/or good or bad experiences with any in particular? It seems like the US ones are kind of the gold standard, even though we aren't US based...

[Mich]

Honestly we just threw together one on Squarespace. They have templates for wedding sites, which made it really easy to just replace the relevant info and pictures with ours.

[Claire]

That's what we did too (squarespace). The ones you can get with Zola are also nice.

[ratesjul]

Wedding website created... we started with TheKnot, and hated some of the lack of options to edit things we disliked seeing. Then we moved on to weddingwire - and discovered that only US addresses were accepted. So we landed on WithJoy.

Photographer booked
Caterer test meal sampled, caterer booked
Toured potential wedding hotel, need to make some decisions on that.
Save the date cards printed, reprinted, mailed first batch. None appear to be received yet.
First in person meeting with photographer, realised we have most of the timeline figured out in our minds which is good.
Starting to plan pre-wedding activities.
Oh, and the current version of the dress bodice seems good so moving on to skirt decisions now.

[Gravity Defier]

Sounds like you're in a really healthy spot given your timeline. That's awesome! :)

[ratesjul]

Wedding weekend activities partially planned (wedding day is the Tuesday of a 4 day weekend), further plans for that waiting until case counts are low enough to be willing to eat at a restaurant.
Paid deposit for hireage of tables, bench seating, a dozen chairs (will use venue tables and chairs for some of the day), glassware, easels for signage, and beverage dispensers.
Came up with a plan for formal invitations and need to diy stuff.
Came up with a plan for tablescapes, more diy required.
And I finished the first dress toile, edited the pattern to remove the waistband and add fullness and have the princess seams line up and then made a new toile out of some taffeta. This time with my first installation of an invisible zip!

[Gravity Defier]

Ratey, if you ever feel up to sharing pictures of anything as you prep, I'd be super excited to look at them. Just saying.

[ratesjul]

The typical format of a cake tasting, as I understand it, involves sampling multiple flavours of cake and making a decision on a favourite (or a favourite combination).

For us it involved 4 sampling sessions... each of the same cake.

You might ask why? Could we not make up our minds easily?

The local kitchen for the bakery we want to get our cake from closes for two weeks about a week and a half before our wedding. We can either get the cake before they close and freeze it (they recommend it can last in the fridge for up to a week, or a month in the freezer), or figure out how to fly one up from their other location at the opposite end of the country on the morning of the wedding.

So we bought a smaller cake in the same style, and ate a quarter of it the same evening, fresh.
Then we cut a quarter into thirds and ate it the next day with a member of the bridal party, after it had sat in warm air for a few hours. (Giving cake opinions may be said person's only wedding task before the wedding day).
Then we ate a quarter that had been sitting in the fridge for a week.
Then we ate the last quarter, after it spent 2 weeks in the freezer and 2 days in the fridge to thaw.

[Gravity Defier]

What's the verdict?

[thoughtreader]

My scientist self loves your methods.

I'm also curious to know the results.

[ratesjul]

The conclusion of our scientific testing was that the cake tasted amazing each time, the amazingness did not diminish too much through being refrigerated, frozen, or warmed up, and we have made a good choice. (Still have to place the actual order but they don't need a lot of lead time because this is not a standard kind of wedding cake.)

Oh, and through the test process we figured out what we think are good serving sizes (which roughly align with their estimates for how many people it will serve).

Also we can get a small cake that will work for Gluten Free Dairy Free guests.

[ratesjul]

I cut out all the fabric pieces for the actual dress over the weekend (except the sleeves). A little scary, a lot of pattern piece rearrangement geometry, but it fit the pieces of fabric I wanted to use.

[Luet]

I can't wait to see it!