Recently in Planning Category

The book and site, Offbeat Bride, has been many the source of inspiration for our wedding. Ever since I saw the profile of Bree's rock 'n' roll wedding there and went to the Whirlingturban site I knew I wanted them to make my dress. I've been emailing with Katherine and Mindra since January figuring out styling, sizing and fabrics.

I decided to have them make a trial version of the dress out of a cotton fabric before they make the real one. This will give us a chance to make sure the style is right and the fit is perfect.

Today it arrived.

;

There was this tiny little box all wrapped up in packing tape with a return address in Indonesia. Whirlingturban is based in Bali, so I knew it had to be the dress.



I can't wait to get home and to try it on. The fabric feels wonderful. I ran all over the top floor the office here showing everyone. I ordered wool the same color of the dots to knit a little bolero jacket for it. I'm hoping the wool arrives today too so I can knit it while I'm in Mexico next week and wear them both to the AP company party on Dec 1. 

It seems a bit strange to me that I've gotten my headwear before I have my dress. But when you see something that makes you say "That's PERFECT!," well, I think you just have to jump for it.

At Kim Bennett's art show last weekend, we were talking about the wedding plans. I told her my ideas for the dress. With a smile and gasp she said "Oh you could get one of those little pillbox hats with the small veil." Once I got that image in my head, I was sold. I had been considering my hair pulled back on one side and held with a big flower. But I love the idea of the hat and veil.

I was trolling eBay looking for vintage pillbox hats. I found a few that might work, might work well. But I forgot to watch the items, and when I went back I couldn't find them again. *le sigh* But then I found this.

It's not vintage, but it's just was I was looking for. I can't wait until it arrives! *squee*

When we were first planning our event we quickly narrowed the location to two very different locations. The first was a State Park & Beach (Asilomar), the other was a private farm inland from the shore where we'd have the entire venue to ourselves for the whole weekend (Holly Farm).

In order to have our event at Asilomar, we would have to fill out an extensive application and wait for approval. They do not take applications more than 1 year in advance.

One year out, it's likely that Holly Farm would already be booked. We went back and forth on this decision a whole lot, and eventually decided to splurge for Holly Farm, with the understanding that the block of rooms for our guests would be at Asilomar, and we'd have a bonfire there Friday night.

There were many reasons why we felt Asilomar suited our event so well:

1. It's a State Beach
2. The architecture (designed by California's first licensed female architect) is listed as a National Landmark.
3. The arrangement of rooms is such that there are common gathering spaces for sets of rooms. People could meet, visit, mingle and generally socalize in these spaces.
4. The grounds are spectacular, and very different from the East Coast beaches with which most of the atendees would be familiar.
5. There are no televisions in the rooms, making it more likely for people to congregate in the public spaces.[*]
6. Breakfast would be provided to the guests
7. Being a State Park, the rooms are quite reasonable.
8. Etc, etc, etc.

Chiara called Friday to start the process of reserving a block of rooms, and learned that they have booked an event for the entire grounds on our planned weekend. We won't be able to house our guests there[**], we won't be able to have our Friday night bonfire on the beach.

I was very nearly devastated by this news. I was tickled at the prospect at having our (wedding) cake and eat it too. It was the best of both worlds. Really, a setback like this was bound to happen. An affair of this magnitude can't be planned without a few hitches. This may be a rather big one, but in the end it is hardly insurmountable.

I have faith that we can work around it. We will find some way to make it work, and in the end everything will be fine. I'm still reeling, but we will persevere.

[*] The only way this could be more perfect is if we could schedule the event to coincide with some major sporting event.

[**] As it turned out, we would only have been able to reserve a block of rooms if we had our event there, so this was not a possibility in any case.

About “...the best choice” from my previous post. It’s a thorny issue. One of the things we did early on (probably on Ariel’s advice) was look at the various line-items of your typical wedding budget and put priorites to them. It should surprise no-one that we put photography pretty close to the top of the list.

This week we talked about our various options. All of them are capable. It’s clear that we’d be satisfied with any of them. But each of them is very different. Of the original three there were two front-runners, and one probable winner. The rub, of course, is that said winner is more than our original budget for photography. Probably (once you add up every little itemized thing) quite a bit more.

That’s ok, we’ve prioritized. Photography was pretty close to the top, so we just need to rebalance everything, right? But wait, do we really? Is the photography the number one priority? And then I had an epiphany. To be honest, the number one priority is not having the stress-filled, abbreviated, cookie-cutter event in a country-club reception hall.

The number one priority was having a whole-weekend event, surrounded by our circle, our tribe, in a laid-back atmosphere at the locations we’ve chosen. This is obvious, given that we’ve allocated over half our budget to said locations (and already committed a sizable chunk of change to reserving them, so it’s a bit late to reprioritize too much), but it still feels better to frame it that way.

I think that part of the allure of Jerry Yoon, apart from all the things I’ve already mentioned, is that he also gets us (me) out of a jam: that prospect completely side-steps the danger of feeling like we’re “settling” for our second choice.

Our wedding planning is starting to ramp up. Most recently, we’ve been interviewing photographers. We investigated quite a number of possibilities on the web, and chose 3 that we knew we wanted to interview (including one who we watched work (or tried to) at the wedding of two friends).

Our last interview was Tuesday evening. While the next task of comparing apples to oranges, to a Farbergé egg is still before us, I felt good about getting the interview process behind us.

On the way home on Tuesday, Chiara mentioned that a friend (and coworker) had mentioned a friend of hers who “takes beautiful pictures, and might be more economical, since they’ve only been doing it for 4 or 5 years.” My thought on that was, “Well, yes, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to take a look at their webs—wow!”

Go ahead, look for yourself. Spend some time exploring it a bit. I’ll be here when you get back.

There are a few facets of these photos that grab me. They are heavily weighted toward candids, and the energy in them is wonderful. Even the posed portraits are interesting, and don’t feel forced or contrived. They also have a modern style without that “hipster-(too-)cool, full-of-yourself” (sneering) veneer that we both find so off-putting. We’d been looking at more traditional photographers specifically because we didn’t want anything to do with that. They also have elements that were common to everyone with whom we spoke.

In spite of what Alexa said, they’re not all that inexpensive. (Though their packages tend to include more, so they may end up being economical.) But they do get major kudos for being up-front enough to put package pricing on the web. (Though -20pts for the “page” that’s just one big image, and -10 extra for the horizontal scrolling (which would probably be 10 or 20 more if I didn’t have two-finger scrolling on my MBP). It just occurred to me that the “one big image” page could be a way to make sure it doesn’t get indexed. Still, points off.)

So, we’re setting up another interview. If you told me that on Tuesday, I would have accepted it with a weary acquiescence. But I devoured that site, I loved the feel of it. Without realizing it, I looked up and realized I was 17 pages in. I’m actually excited to talk to them, and see if they’re the best choice.

Mark your calendars: August 8, 2009!

E and I have checked with the lovely folks at Holly Farm in Carmel Valley, CA and we are the first to put a hold on 8-8-09. Go us! So it looks like the wedding will be the weekend wedding that we've talked about with some folks: show up Friday and leave on Monday, with the ceremony happening on Saturday.

One of the (many) reasons we love Holly Farm is that there is room on-site for 22 people and there are a couple of houses that Holly Farms owns in Carmel (one is across the street) that we can also rent. Immediate family and the wedding party will have first priority/right of first refusal for staying on-site. We'll probably hold a block of rooms over at Asilomar for other folks. And there is always the Farm lawn for those that want to pitch a tent after the festivities.

Two decisions down, 8 billion to go! WOO-HOO!

This page will eventually contain details of our event. Here's what we know so far:

This week I was teasing Chiara about wanting to incorporate some of the ideas from this Steampunk Wedding. But then we poked around Offbeat Bride and realized that while Steampunk might not be our brand of freak, we had definitely discovered a tribe that railed against the Wedding Industrial Complex at least as much as we did. There are some wonderful ideas here and are such a relief after leafing through Modern Bride and its ilk.

We've already ordered the book, and look forward to reading it!

(And, to be fair, I do like some of the aesthetic aspects of Steampunk. Just not enough to incorporate it into our wedding. Especially when Chiara doesn’t share that sense.)