The Great M&M Deception

Once upon a time, my then-fiance and I decided that we did not need to have favors at our wedding - we have never kept anything that was a favor from a wedding, or, if we did, it always ended up in the trash pile the next time one of us moved. On the other hand, my mom was really attached to having M&M's at the reception, since both of our names start with M, they wouldn't even need to be personalized.

My issue was that I thought that the M&M's would look like a last minute addition if we just used the ones as they came in the bag, so I requested that my mom get only green and yellow M&M's, because I thought they would just look perfect. I found some favor boxes at target that were cute and cheap, thinking that I would just tie a green ribbon around them when I got to Houston. My mom was not sold on the green and yellow M&M's, saying that it was silly to spend the extra money when no one would notice. She suggested that we buy regular M&M's and then sort through them and take out the ones I "found offensive." I told her I thought that was gross, and that we shouldn't take the time to sort through the M&M's.

What a surprise I had when I got to Houston and my mom showed me a plastic bin filled with small ivory boxes (nicer than the ones I had picked out) tied with cream, green, and yellow bows. I was very impressed. "Can I open one?" I asked.
"Sure, just grab a cream-colored ribbon, I like those the least." I opened the little box and inside were green and yellow M&M's, and only green and yellow M&M's. Perfect. Just the way I had envisioned them.

Fast forward to the day of the wedding. We're in between the ceremony and the reception, and the groom wants a snack. He goes down to the foyer where the extras are stacked next to place cards and brings back a couple of boxes. He opens one and starts laughing - they were just regular M&M's. My mom had just made a few boxes with green and yellow to throw me off the scent.

The Begining of the End

Yesterday was the beginning of the end . . . of my maiden name. The mail came yesterday afternoon, and in it was the certified copy of our marriage license. Yay! We're official! (At one point I was worried, because we never signed it, but you only have to sign when you get the license in Texas).

On our way into town to return a gift at Crate & Barrel and then meet some people for dinner, we stopped at the Social Security office off of 290. Before we left, I printed out the form and grabbed my passport (just in case I had a mean person at the counter who didn't want take my driver's license). We got to the office around 3:00, and I checked in at the computer and told it why I was there.

I remember the waiting room at the county clerk's office, where we got our marriage license, as being a much happier experience. I guess part of it is that there, we were probably in a more excited mood and our form stated that we were getting married! People are at the social security office for a multitude of reasons: changing a name after a divorce, getting a social security card, responding to a notice, or finding out about their checks. Which, all in all, means that most people at the SSA are not that happy.

Luckily, the SSA people are very smart, and depending on the transaction you want to complete, they put you in a different line, so it really moves along quickly.

Now, I just need to get my driver's license and passport done so I can take care of everything else.

The Reception Hall

What happened at the reception hall was clearly the biggest snafu of the wedding day. When my mother met with the on-site coordinator at the reception hall, she asked what time we would be arriving at the hall. When you reserve the hall, you have it from 10 am until 2 am the next morning. Since we were paying for it, we decided that I would get my hair and makeup done at the reception hall, and we would need to get to the hall at ten in the morning.

Fast forward to the week of the wedding, when the on-site coordinator has called all of the vendors to tell them they need to be at the hall by 10 am.

Fast forward again to 10 am, August 8, 2008.

9:55 - My dad drives my sisters and I to the reception hall. The doors are locked.

10:00 - My hairdresser and the makeup artist show up.

10:05 - The other hairdresser (for the bridesmaids) shows up. Some guy who introduces himself as an architect getting ready to do work on the hall shows up.

10:10 - an employee of the reception hall shows up to the hall, but left her keys inside with the setup crew, that has since left, and we are all locked out. She starts calling people. Meanwhile, the other bridesmaids show up (only late because the hotel shuttle driver is a "recent appointee to the position").

10:15 - the employee tells us that "someone" with a key is only ten minutes away and will be there shortly

10:20 - my hairdresser hops into the car with me and the girls, which is idling in front

10:25 - the person with the key still isn't there

10:30 - the architect walks to the back of the building, shimmies open a window, sets off the alarm, and unlocks the front door so that the employee can turn off the alarm

10:35 - we're finally settled upstairs getting ready

The Pushy Videographer

On with the list.

I seriously have a grudge against the videographer. I understand that I need to just let go, but it seriously might take some therapy. To begin with, I did not want video coverage of the wedding, I think it's just weird to watch yourself on film, and I doubt we would ever watch the video. For these reasons, and the sake of the budget, we didn't get a video crew. Then, my grandparents decided that they wouldn't be able to travel for the wedding, so my mom found a videographer so that they wouldn't "miss the wedding."

Umm, videographers are awkward.

1) Videographer spent the half hour before the wedding at the church trying to get in the dressing room to get "getting ready" shots. Which, A) I didn't care if there were or not and B) didn't make sense because the only thing left to do at the church was put on the dress, which I was waiting to do so I could sit down without wrinkling the dress.

2) Videographer kept staging "special moments," such as the bride and groom feeding each other parts of their dinner. Which, sometimes we do, but not when we're sitting at a table with 14 other people.

3) It's weird having your first dance filmed when you're not the best of dancers and you have a video camera on wheels following you around. Thank goodness my husband decided to turn it into a funny moment by dancing us towards and into the lens of the camera.

4) I love my brother, who, since the videographer decided to film the groom and I going through the buffet line (again, why would anyone want to see that), gave a play-by-play of what I was selecting (she's got the crab cake, but will she go for the sauce?)

Since we were booking only a month or two in advance of the wedding, we didn't have much of a choice when choosing a videographer, especially when squeezing it into the budget. If I were giving myself advice, it would be to talk to the videographer beforehand about what he usually includes in the video and ask to see one of his other videos. I can't wait to see our own cheesy extravaganza.

Just Married!

Here's one of my favorite shots that my cousin B took during the wedding (he's only 11, so he gets mad props for his photography skills). He took an amazing number of shots, quite the little professional. We just got back to my parents' house yesterday, so I might take the rest of the day to veg out and just not do anything.

Greece was amazing! I'm still in the process of editing the photo gallery (how many shots of the Temple of Zeus do people really care about? - we'll find out soon!) before I email friends and family about it all.

New York was good too, though we were still suffering from jet lag while apartment hunting, we held up pretty well. We signed our lease on Friday and got an earlier flight home, which was also good.

More tomorrow. . .

To come (but only because we're stuck in Newark)

It's done. We're finally married! For those of you readers who
attended the wedding - if I didn't have the chance to tell you last
night, we both really appreciated that you were all able to come into
Houston for the wedding.

A few things I wanted to jot down before we got onto the plane to go
to Santorini (note - this is not officially honeymoon time since we're
in a really long layover for Greece and we're tired of drinking the
free booze). I was thinking about how wemetinabar (I think)
wondered where bride blogs to, and I realized I hadn't seen any "post
wedding" blogs.

Here are things I'm thinking about:

1. My brother was smashed
2. Fighting with the pushy videographer through the church coordinator
3. The "Great M&M Deception"
4. Talking with my dad before the ceremony
5. Are we really married?
6. Talking with my dad during the first dance
7. The Subway fiasco
8. Why the reception hall wasn't open when they said
9. Trying not to cry
10. The rehearsal dinner
11. The ring that wouldn't go on
12. Why the president's club might be worth $45

Sent from my iPhone

My Wedding Jewelry

Three days left. . .

I have been agonizing about the jewelry I am going to wear for months. The options, of course, were many: I could wear something of my own, I could borrow from my mother, I could buy an inexpensive set of jewelry, or I could rent something from www.bagborroworsteal.com.

1) I do have a gorgeous set of pearls that my fiance gave me for Christmas, but I feel like I should wear something extra special for the big day.
2) My mom has some very nice jewelry that I would love to wear. The problem is that it is all yellow gold, and I almost never wear yellow gold, and have told everyone else to wear silver.
3) The problem with buying inexpensive costume jewelry is that it is roughly the same price as the next option, but doesn't look quite as good.
4) I have been searching the Bag Borrow or Steal website for the jewelry set that is just right for our wedding. Things became a little more difficult when the traffic increased after the site was featured in the Sex and the City movie. The problem was that I only wanted to borrow the jewelry for the wedding, so I couldn't borrow it until this week, because I didn't want to needlessly pay for multiple weeks of borrowing.
I logged in over the weekend to check out the options, but my favorite necklace had a wait list. I put my name on the list and selected a "backup" option, in case my favorite didn't become available. Today when I logged on, not only was my favorite still on wait list, but so was my "backup." Luckily, my sister (the MOH) and I were able to find an awesome pair of earrings to substitute (shown here).

4 Days Left. . .

Today has been a whirlwind of activity, centered around finishing the place cards, breathing a sigh of relief as Eduoard passes Houston, and waiting for the DJ to call to go over everything.

Here is the picture of the finished place card. To make the bottom layer, I used spray adhesive to affix wrapping paper (by Anna Griffin, no less, available at The Container Store) to white card stock. To make the crease, I used the X-Acto knife and lightly cut on the outside of the fold (but my friend Sara says a bone folder would have been easier). I cut the card stock to 4"x4", so that the tent was 4"x2". The next layer was a 3 1/2" x 1 1/2" piece of textured green scrapbook paper. For the names, I mail merged the seating assignments into a custom label template in Word (3" x 1") and printed it on ivory card stock. To affix the top two layers, I just used plain old craft glue.

My mom is a bit of a weather nut, so the place cards were a bit of an issue, as she has bugging me since Saturday to print them "in case we lose power during the storm." My answer to that was that we actually had to sit down and figure out where to put everyone.

Supposedly our DJ was supposed to call us before the event, which one would assume would be know, but he hasn't yet. I sent an email right after lunch, but it seems like the office is closed for the hurricane (non-hurricane that didn't even hit), since they have their away message up.

Did I mention the in-laws get to town tonight?

Manicure Time

For months I have been attempting to keep my nails looking decent in the hopes that I would not "need" to have fake nails for the wedding (there are an awful lot of close-ups of hands). I love having fake nails while they are on, but taking them off leaves you with gross, thin, damaged nails that take even longer to grow back. I was doing quite well, and my nails even had some length, when disaster struck.

In the last week, as a result of moving I have:

• scraped my hand on the tape dispenser
• scraped three knuckles on boxes while packing them
• torn 2 nails
• put some sort of weird "cleaning crease" on my knuckles from when I scrubbed the bathroom before we left

Stupid moving. Solar nails, here I come.