02.29.08
Flowers
For the most part (a few minor freak outs excluded) I think Mitch and I are really enjoying planning this wedding. At least I am. The DIY projects are moving right along and the stress levels have been relatively low considering how much is going on. I think that speaks well of our future marriage as well.
However, we are now at the flowers stage of the game and I couldn’t be less thrilled. This is probably going to be my least favorite part of this whole process. I’m not really that interested in flowers. I mean sure, they’re pretty and smell nice and brighten up a room, but they also die, and in my hands they die faster than most. There is just so much about these little things that I don’t understand. People seem to plan their weddings around their favorite flowers and have exotic ones flown in from overseas and the like. (Perhaps I’ve been watching too many wedding shows on the WE network though). I just can’t imagine being that attached to a certain flower and willing to pay top dollar for it. Can’t I just pick some from a neighbor’s garden that day?
All kidding aside, I’m just a little nervous about being raked over the coals here.
I am taking my Mom/MOH with me to play bad cop (or maybe she’s the good cop). Also we can always fall back on the “well, i’ll have to run it by my fiancee first, he holds the money you know” haha. Mitch will be enjoying himself snowboarding while all this is going on.
I HOPE to get a fairly good deal on flowers. We are not having floral centerpieces so right there I think we’re cutting a good chunk of cash out. (more on what we’re actually doing for centerpieces later) I just want to get bouquets – for me and the gals, my mom, Mitch’s mom (spoiler alert!) and the grandmothers. I am choosing to do smaller bouquets for the MOG and Grandmothers instead of corsages. Just cause I like the idea. Then boutonnières (i have totally learned how to spell that) for all the groomsmen, Dads and Grandpas. That should be IT for flowers. My estimated budget may be too small for all that, but I’m going to see what creative things people can come up with to make it work.
They’re just flowers people!
As for appointments we have three over the course of the weekend. Appointment #1 is with the recommended florist for our venue – Windmill Florist in Fitchburg, MA. We spoke briefly with them at the tasting we went to a few weeks ago.
Appointment #2 is with Beyond Petal Pushers in Westminster, MA. This is in the same town as our venue and I just found them during a Google search for florists. We will meet with Gwen.
Appointment #3 is on Sunday with a woman my Mom knows. I guess she used to work for a florist and now does flowers for weddings and probably other events on the side. She is going to get some books to my Mom for us to go through and then we will sit down with her Sunday morning. I’m really looking forward to this one. I’m guessing we would get a more honest price from her than a commercial florist that hears “wedding” and instantly doubles their prices. I guess we’ll see though. Maybe flowers are just way more expensive than I think they are.
I honestly can’t believe how much people spend on flowers for weddings. I just can’t imagine having this as one of the bigger percentages of our budget. It’s one thing if you have a $40K budget and spend $3K on flowers, it’s quite another to spend $3K on flowers when you have a $15K budget. I just want to get this part over with and check it off the list to be honest.
02.20.08
Hair Pin
I’m very excited! I have been searching for some kind of hair accessory since I will not be wearing a veil. I have had a lot of trouble finding anything that I like, until yesterday I came across this site with VERY expensive hair pins. Of course I liked those.
Then Kathleen mentioned to check the craft site that she sells her jewelry and other handmade treasures. It’s called Etsy and it’s awesome! For a crafty gal like I am it’s Heaven! So people can buy and sell crafts through this site and there are just some amazing talented people out there. So I contacted this one person who seemed to have a lot of hair pins and things like that listed. She mentions that she can do custom orders so I sent her a message just to see what that would cost. Her price was definitely reasonable considering the materials. She said that she could create something similar to the more expensive one I’d found! yay!!!
Here are pictures of the one I liked:
So, now I’m just going to go over the details of the materials with her and it seems like it will be a really nice custom, one of a kind piece. Maybe something I could hand down to my possible future daughter or something. (awww – are there some Moms out there who are now allergic to this post?)
Moving right along…
-Molly
02.19.08
Ugly Dresses, Crates & Barrels
These are not my wedding dress. Just having some fun at David’s Bridal
This past weekend was a fairly busy one wedding wise. Friday night I went with Lisa and Kathleen to David’s Bridal to start the search for bridesmaid dresses. I had to make an appointment which seemed silly considering there were maybe 4 other people in the store at 7:30 p.m. , but whatever. We went with the thought of just doing the bridesmaid thing, but then they were talking to me about trying on dresses so I thought, why not? I picked out some big poofy ones to try on and one form fitting lacy number.
I have several problems with David’s Bridal.
1) The selection of dresses is impossible to go through in store (bride or bridesmaids alike). I’m not sure if all dress shops are like this, but the racks were just crammed with dresses and unless you feel like fishing through them I suggest going in with pictures of the dresses you want to try on. The bridal gowns are worse because they are all in giant plastic garment bags. I obviously didn’t care to go through them since I already have my dress anyway, but if I were going in there to actually look I would have been very overwhelmed.
2.) Bridesmaid dress materials were GROSS! Not to insult anyone out there that has ordered their bridesmaid gowns through David’s Bridal, but every single dress that Lisa and Kathleen tried on just looked wrong. There were a couple that had nicer material, but the styles were a little more glam than they were going for. I must say the guy who does the pictures for them on their website and in their catalog deserves an award. The dresses look A LOT better than they do in person.
3) The spam. I get emails, phone calls, stuff in the mail, you name it they are spamming me with it. I don’t have time to clean my apartment lately never mind talk to some lady on the phone about how Men’s Warehouse has teamed up with David’s Bridal for coordinating colors with my bridesmaid dresses and why don’t I make an appointment now to check that out. NO, I’m not even ready for that decision yet! I will call you, please stop calling me!
All told the bridal gowns were pretty nice. Two out of the three I tried on were really pretty. Even though we broke the clasp on the first one and had some trouble getting me in and out of the “petticoat” , etc. I don’t know how some women wear these dresses. They were SO heavy! It’s like carrying around an extra 30 pounds all night. I did feel like a princess in the big poofy one though and who knew I could pull of strapless so well.
Final tips – bring a strapless bra with you! I had to squeeze into a strapless torture device and I don’t even want to think about who else wore that before me. Bring a friend or relative you don’t mind stripping down in front of. Thank God I had Lisa and Kathleen with me because there was no way that our sales lady was coming in that room! Be prepared to come up with an elaborate story about how you need to talk to your mom before you buy the dress and you want to sleep on your decision first. Also come up with a story as to why you wont be coming back when the sales woman calls you in a week… still working on that one.
On Sunday Mitch and I got up at the crack of dawn to get to Crate and Barrel’s Wedding Event at 9 a.m.!! Needless to say Mitch was in severe need of some coffee. We were let in two hours before the store opened to the public to create our gift registry. I must say Crate and Barrel really does it up. We were greeted with mimosas and pastries and our laser tag gun to scan things with.
I appreciated that for the most part the employees left us alone. They were always there to help when we needed it or to give us information while we were looking at specific stuff – like the guy who showed us that there was matching serving utensils under the flatware displays (i never would have known that) – and you do feel special while they’re carrying around grilled sandwiches and waffles like it was a cocktail party.
They had demos of certain products going on which was nice, although the knife lady seemed lonely and went on just a little too long with her demonstration. Maybe I’m just mad that Mitch had better knife skills than me. The knives were pretty awesome though and we could definitely use that bread knife.
We had a really good time and walked away with a free gift as well. A lovely heart shaped glass candy dish. awww. Just have to put some candy in it now.
-Molly
02.15.08
Ceremony Music
so… i guess skipping this is not a good idea. huh?
Trying to save money and avoid a boom box (who calls it that anymore? really?) we just figured we could skip it. Lately I’ve been wondering how people will know the ceremony is starting, and I have read that apparently it is uncool (read: not customary) to leave people in silence that whole time.
I’m wondering though, what can we do? I don’t want to shell out a bunch of money for musicians since we did not originally budget for this at all. I also wouldn’t want like a string quartet or anything super formal as that’s not really the vibe we’re going for.
Anyone out there have some ideas for us?
I was thinking of looking into Berkley students, but that’s kind of a haul for them to go all the way out to Central Mass. Also to ask a guest at the wedding with musical skills to play seems kind of rude (if anyone wants to volunteer we would accept graciously however.)
My idea was to walk down the isle to the part in Muppets Take Manhattan where Kermit and Ms. Piggy are getting married – I believe Mitch has vetoed that. (even with Ms. Piggy possibly ATTENDING the wedding!) haha. Maybe we could get a nice instrumental version though…
HELP!
02.12.08
Bagpipes and Postage
Just to add one other thing to Mitch’s post about the tasting. There was a bagpiper there from Sound O’ the Pipes. I know some of you will find this amusing because I kept thinking of the episode of Friends when Ross was going to “surprise” Chandler and Monica by playing the bagpipes at their wedding. It was so loud! Luckily he only played a few songs and would take a break in between them, but MY GOD! Every time he started up you couldn’t even hear yourself think. A wee bit O’ Celebration…
Also, I am FURIOUS with the Unite States Postal Service! Apparently they are raising the postage rate AGAIN on May 12th. Now, I was being all proactive by buying the stamps for my Save The Date cards (which will be mailed in March) and the stamps for the RSVP cards in the invitations (which will be mailed in July) at the same time. So now I’m going to have several stamps I can’t use or I will have to add a 1 cent stamp to those… I think I might just do that even if it looks like crap, because I’m just sooooooooooo pissed about this. Honestly, are they just going to start raising it one cent every couple of months?! stupid.
- Molly
02.04.08
Registry trouble
After some discussion we finally decided to register at Crate and Barrel and Target. Of course, this is only because Best Buy didn’t have a registry option that Mitch could enjoy, nor do liquor stores do registries… these people need to get with the times.
Apparently Target is getting some really bad press as far as registries go. Among all my wedding searches I came across a message board on the knot. The problem everyone is having is with their new return policy. Apparently in their search for ways to nab those jerks who steal and then come in to exchange/return said stolen merchandise, they have angered a lot of Brides!
You can read Target’s return policy here. To sum it up, if you do not have a receipt you can not return/exchange or get store credit even, for anything. They will allow two items to be returned per year in the amounts of two $20 gift cards only. This brings up a lot of issues for registries in particular.
First of all the employees at Target are not always good at making sure they remove things from registries. If a person doesn’t tell the cashier that an item is for a registry, then the item doesn’t get removed either. This leads to the chance that someone would get multiples of some gifts. The brides that have been complaining about this are saying they went to return items that they had received two of and Target basically said “too bad”. Even when items were on their registry, they would not give them money, store credit, or an exchange without a receipt. Who gives a receipt with a present ? Especially one on a registry, which is supposed to eliminate the chance of you getting someone something they do not like or need!
Now we have already started a very small registry online with Target, being that there were a few items that we really wanted/needed that only they carry. We both really like Target and it seemed like the kind of place everyone has access to, and they also have the online option. Our issue is this. Now that we have some items on a Target registry, do we remove them? Do we narrow it down to things we could not get something comparable elsewhere and take our chances? I almost want to pull our registry and write to the company stating why I did. Also, we would then need to pick another store to register at… damn.
-Molly
