My next few posts will probably bounce back and forth between pre-wedding, wedding and post-wedding, since I totally dropped the blogging ball the last few weeks before my wedding….

Let’s talk wedding disasters. You know how in your wedding planning, when you’re stressing that something is going to go wrong, and eeeeeverybody insists that the things that always go wrong are the tiny little things that no one notices? Ignore them when they say that. Sometimes you have a disaster, or even two, and all 150 people notice. However, when those same annoying advice-givers tell you that everything will work out in the end and people will have a great time, listen to that part. That part is actually correct.

My wedding ceremony was perfect. Absolutely, down to the last detail, perfect. Which was funny, since I really hadn’t put a ton of thought into the ceremony except slaving over our choice of processional and recessional music. The reading choices took about 10 minutes. But for now, I’m going to skip over the perfect ceremony and jump to the partially-horrifying reception.

Call me old-fashioned, but I didn’t see Dave before the ceremony. So after the ceremony and big family group photos, the wedding party had about 45 minutes of late afternoon winter sunlight to get all our pictures. We took our pictures and then very haphazardly told each other we’d see everyone at the reception (Mistake #1: not organizing transportation better).

There was a 40-minute drive between our ceremony site and our reception site. When Dave and I got there, after being what we thought was a few minutes behind the rest of the wedding party, we were surprised to find very little of our wedding party waiting for us. We had completely lost one of our groomsmen, who had ridden with a non-wedding party friend, and that was cause for a bit of a stress, because we were slightly behind schedule and wanted to get into the reception. But that wasn’t nearly as stressful as finding out where most of the wedding party had disappeared to- they were in the reception room, trying desperately to fix the two full kegs that weren’t working At All. $250 worth of beer, trapped in non-functioning kegs. Dave and I found this out through his very blunt grandfather, who came out to the lobby to tell us that everyone was cranky because they wanted food, there was no beer and no music was playing. I found my father and asked him how bad it was, and he very reassuringly said, “Oh, it’s bad.”

At this point I’m already in a panic, and I haven’t even figured out why there’s no music. Dave’s brother/best man told us there was a problem with the music, so the playlist we’d slaved over had not been playing for the last hour and a half. As we finally gathered all of our wedding party and our emcee got ready to announce us, Dave’s brother turns to him and said, “So I might as well tell you this now, Dad spilled a Coke on your laptop and that’s why the music isn’t playing.”

Dave just sat on a chair with his head in his hands. I almost punched his brother right then and there. Not exactly the most opportune time for us to be told this. So while most newly wedded couples walk in to their receptions dancing and pumping their fists, we walked in with fake smiles and slight grimaces. With all the pressure our male relatives were giving us about everyone being hungry, we just kind of walked to the head table, didn’t sit down, said screw this and I just walked over to the buffet line to get it started.

It was a miserable start to the reception. I was trying not to cry or scream, nothing was organized, Dave’s poor cousin who was supposed to be emceeing and dj-ing was in a panic; it was a horrible mess. As Dave and I started to eat, I looked at him and very pathetically said, “This is not how I want to remember my reception.”

To make a long story short, we got my laptop out of Dave’s car (Thank God I had grabbed it at 3 a.m. when I left my house, with my exhausted bridesmaids asking me why I needed it), and a dedicated groomsman and bridesmaid’s boyfriend sat together and downloaded music and logged on to Youtube to get songs. The beer never did get fixed, so less than half of one keg was salvaged from the two kegs we had. Luckily, the lodge didn’t have stringent alcohol rules, so I had told all my friends that they could bring their own liquor if they wanted it. Some of them did, the rest became wine drinkers for the night. I don’t know how the wine lasted- as my dad said, “Loaves and fishes,” i.e., somehow it kept multiplying.

So in the end, everyone had a great time. Most people knew there was no beer, and a lot of people knew there was a music problem. I don’t think anyone remembers the awkward march to the buffet line. We ended up doing the toasts, cake cutting and first dances all back to back, instead of having some informal dancing between the first dances and the cake cutting, like we’d planned. While the awesome playlist that Dave and I spent weeks on was not used, and a lot of my favorite songs were not played, everyone danced and had a great time dancing. When I hear a fun song that was on the original playlist, I get a little wistful that it wasn’t played, but in the end you just gotta let things go.

My reception was far from perfect, but it was a blast. My brothers tossed me in the air in my wedding gown, the boys had a mosh pit over catching the garter, and Dave and a couple friends had an impromptu concert toward the end of the evening.

As they say, at the end of the day, you’re married, and nothing could be better than that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I came very close to not living to see my wedding. That sounds dramatic, but it’s true, and I’d like to take a moment to share my story and remind all of you excited, stressed-out brides-to-be exactly what is important about this crazy time in your life.

One night in early December, I was driving through rural Virginia on my way to visit my parents when I hit a deer that was standing on the interstate. I lost control of the car, slid across the road, flipped and then rolled several times before the car came to a stop resting on its wheels, or what was left of them, facing perpendicular to the interstate in a ditch.

It was the first time in my 23 years I have had an experience that I did not expect to live through.

I don’t know why or how, but at the end of that tumble I was able to walk away from the car with some seatbelt abrasions, a swollen lip and various bruises. The car, on the other hand, was missing most of its front end and had a shattered windshield, barely operable front doors, crunched back end… you get the picture. I never saw what the deer looked like, but I imagine it fared about the same as the car.

As I spun, only able to see the air bag that had deployed in my face, thousands of thoughts flew through my head. The thought that crystallized in the forefront of my mind was the realization that after spending nine months frantically trying to plan my perfect wedding, stressing over the most useless details, one twist of fate almost prevented me from being there to actually experience my wedding day.

There’s nothing like a near-death experience to make you realize how twisted your priorities are. What good does it do to spend hours agonizing over the kind of ribbon I tie around my centerpiece arrangements if I don’t live to see the wedding day? What good are any of the wedding planning moments if in the end I don’t get to spend the rest of my life with the man I love?

We’ve heard all the clichés in the world about counting our blessings and not taking anything for granted, especially our time on this planet. In fact just a couple days after the wreck I spent two hours watching an incredibly cheesy Spy Kids movie dedicated to the importance of spending time with our loved ones. I had zero desire to watch the movie, but what would I have accomplished by denying my little sister the opportunity to share a simple experience like watching a movie together? I spent some time with my sister and my parents, and got a few silly laughs in the process.

When the car’s rolling came to a stop and I realized no sharp pains had pierced my body and I wasn’t rising above the earth on a shining white cloud, all I could process was how amazing it felt to be alive. There are plenty of things from that Saturday night that won’t remain with me forever—the bruises, the fear of driving at night, the intense hatred of deer. But I hope that I am smart enough to hold on to the lesson that life is too precious to waste it. Crying over ceremony programs or panicking over piano notes definitely count as a waste. I am thoroughly blessed, and I’d like to spend every moment remembering that important fact.

We are getting married because we found the one person in this world that makes everything better, who makes us laugh, makes us smile and makes us feel like nothing in the world could ever hurt us. Stop your wedding planning, and take a moment to stare into the eyes of your fiancé. Remember what you love about him (or her), and remember how incredibly lucky you are that you get to spend the rest of your life with that person. Don’t waste a moment of it, and don’t lose sight of why you’re planning this wedding.

 

 

No one ever told me what a pain in the you-know-what RSVPs would be. When it came time to put together invitations, I thought there were only two options for RSVPs. Either you required them, or you didn’t, and if you required them then you sent a card and people were supposed to return that card to you by a certain date. For me, I knew I wanted to assign tables, so I knew I needed RSVPs (not to mention needing to know how much food to provide).

When my cousin sent out her wedding invitations, she did not put her own postage on the RSVP cards (even though she paid extra postage for square invitations). I thought that was tacky and thoughtless, and I thought putting stamps on the RSVP envelopes would mean everyone would send them back easily.

I was so, so wrong. We sent out about 125 invitations. By the week before our RSVPs were due, we had received 50. I went into panic mode, and no amount of attempted soothing from Dave was going to calm me down. We both knew that there was no way we would receive 50, let alone 75, RSVP cards in that last week. It was Thanksgiving, so I encouraged Dave to spread the word with his family when he went home, and I told him I was going to start calling people after our deadline of Dec. 2. By the time that deadline rolled around, we were still probably 60 RSVPs short, although that included some wedding party members and a few others we knew would attend. We still had a pretty lengthy list of people to track down.

A week into tracking down coworkers, family members and old college friends, I really wish I had those hours of my life back. The phone calls and online messages are just awkward and time consuming. We still haven’t gotten definite answers from everybody, including one who has a tentative role in the wedding, and I really just want to be able to finalize my seating chart and cross it off my to-do list.

If I had only seen this photo about three months earlier, I never would have suffered through this:

What a ridiculously simple thought. Ladies, let me tell you, those little RSVP cards are not exciting to scrapbook. They don’t add any fun to your corner of wedding supplies. And after the first week, going to the mailbox to look for them is a major source of stress, not a thrill.

Don’t require your guests to send in RSVP cards. You will end up resenting your friends and family for their role in wasting your time and money, because they ignored the card you took the time to type, and they threw away the 44 cents you placed on that envelope.

In this tech-savvy, overly-busy, forgetful world, people don’t want to be bothered with filling out a card and remembering to put it in the mail. If you need a definite headcount (and most of us do), then I highly, highly, highly recommend what this smart couple did, and just give your guests a deadline to let you know if they will be there or not. Make sure you give them that deadline, but allow them to give you their notice in whatever way is easiest for them. It will save you money on postage and some major headaches. And I would imagine it will save you a lot of time—there will of course always be people that can’t make up their mind, or manage not to talk to you for six months, but you will have a lot fewer people on your to-call list if you let your friend Sally text you that she’s coming, and have Uncle Don mention over Thanksgiving dinner that he will not be able to make it.

 

I spent four months living in Ecuador, and if there’s one thing I learned, it’s how to barter, or regatear. No price is fixed in Latin America, and the same goes in most of the wedding world.

Don’t just assume that you have to accept whatever price is quoted to you the first time. My reception venue is a perfect example of how to barter in order to ensure that you get everything you want at a price you can afford, and the vendor gets happy customers.

Dave and I are having our reception at Barren River Lake State Resort, a state park about 25 minutes from my house. It is the place Dave and I used to go when we first started dating, it’s where Dave proposed, and it’s the location of the first stabbing I ever covered for the newspaper. Lots of good memories.

I knew the park manager through work, so we had a very good relationship to start with. From there, it just took patience and the courage to ask questions.

The park provides the space, food, dance floor, wait staff and linens. The initial contract I received charged us a $300 space rental fee, along with the other costs. I had shopped around other state parks before choosing this one, and I knew one had offered to waive the space rental fee if we spent $2000 on food. I knew we expected to spend $2000 anyway, so it was a simple matter to request that the $300 fee be waived if we spent $2000 on food, and the park agreed easily.

Next, we dealt with room rental fees. The state park has a lodge and cottages, and we had reserved a block for our guests. The first price quotes I got were $135 for the cottages and $70 for the rooms. The park manager had vaguely said in the beginning that she thought rooms would be $60. So when we were told $70, all I had to do was tell group sales that oh, the manager thought we could get $60 rooms… and it was done. I almost stopped there with the room bargaining. I had been nervous to ask for a discount on the lodge rooms, and I thought it was too much of a stretch to ask for cheaper cottages as well. But I did a little research and saw that the December rate for the cottages were posted online in the $95-105 range. So I very politely mentioned that to the group sales person, asked if she was sure the cottage price on our contract was correct, and all of a sudden I got $90 cottages and an apology for overpricing the cottages initially. The cottages sleep 8 people. A good chunk of our guests will have high quality lodging for $12 a person. That’s insane, but awesome for our underemployed friends.

So I got my space fee waived, I got major discounts on my rooms, what more could I ask for, right? Well, I wasn’t quite done. Our buffet price included dessert, but we were bringing our own dessert in the form of wedding cake, so I really didn’t want the park to provide extra desserts for my guests to fill up on and for which I had to pay. My last cost-reducing request was to knock $2 off the buffet price and forget the park-provided desserts.

How’s that for budget savvy? Did you guys try bargaining with any of your vendors? If you haven’t yet hired vendors, do you think you have the regateando skills to bring exorbitant wedding prices down to your budget? Good luck!

I was horrified when I started to look at wedding invitations and what people spend on little pieces of paper. So when it came down to finding my own invitations, I was initially in full DIY mode. I had it all figured out- all I would need would be cardstock, some watercolor paints and a regular printer. I knew what type of design I would paint and exactly how it would look. As I planned this, I was also of course coming up with lots of other great handmade projects and creative things to do for the wedding. The list was suddenly getting very long, but my fiancé just shrugged and told me he knew I could handle it if it was that important to me.

Of course, my mom struggled to be politely supportive and yet discouraging at the same time. It was at her insistence that I “just look around” for some pre-made invitations that I could be happy with. On the second stop of our wedding supply excursion, we popped into Target, actually to exchange an early bridal shower gift. We wandered over to the stationary section, and voila! there were some super simple pseudo-letterpress invitations and RSVP cards that were very simple to my watercolor vision. The invitations were a simple half sheet of off-white with a green dandelion on one side. Oh yeah, and they were on clearance. It was perfect. I spent about $85 on 150 invitations.

The struggles that ensued with those invitations were concrete proof as to why painting my own invitations was a crazy idea.

It shouldn’t have been so difficult. I found a template online for the invitations, and it took me just an hour or so to figure out how I wanted to lay out the print on the invitation. I hit a bit of a snag in trying to download a font to my Mac, but a quick computer switch with Dave and I was good to go. Or so I thought.

I have a pretty basic HP printer. Nothing fancy, but does a good job. Unfortunately, its format does not allow you to center the paper you are trying to print on. You have to line the paper up on one side in order to print it. But the template I used was formatted so that the paper was supposed to be centered. I know this sounds confusing, but the end result was that only have of the ink made it on the actual invitation, while the rest missed completely, going on to an imaginary centered document. It looked like this:

Not good. And not as easy to fix as I thought it would be. I had to abandon my 8.5 x 5 in. template in favor of a normal 8.5 x 11 document, set my margins and guess as to how the typeface would fit around the dandelion. It took foreeeeeverrrrrr. But, hallelujah, I figured it out! My invitations were perfect. I was so thrilled, I was jumping up and down. Dave was a little put out, because according to him I wasn’t nearly as excited when he proposed to me.

But life was good, and I commenced printing-and immediately realized my printer was getting completely hung up on the paper I was using. If I put more than one piece of paper in the printer at a time, it would pull in two or three pieces at a time and mess them all up. So in the end, I had the oh-so-scintillating experience of printing all 125 of my invitations individually, sitting next to the printer and feeding it one sheet of paper at a time.

That’s what you call devotion to a cause.

What kind of invitations did you guys choose? DIY or fully engraved? Did you hit any speed bumps in your printing process like I did?