Wedding Pictures

As I was thinking about what I could do today, I thought that I would look through the wedding pictures and start putting a list together for the album, which reminded me that I haven't really posted any pictures on this, which is (was) supposed to be a wedding blog. So here we go (all pictures by Wei Han at Evoke Photography in Houston):


This is a view of the chapel (at Prince of Peace), which photographed so well, and just looked amazing in person. I am so glad we had the ceremony in the chapel and not the main church.


Here is a picture of me with one of the bridesmaids (I made sure to use one that would love her picture). As you can see, even though I used an inexpensive florist, my bouquet looked awesome. I was so surprised when I saw it, not what I imagined at all, but exactly what I wanted.


Next up, we have the cake, which I only got two bites of (downside to leaving the next day).


Here are the place cards that I toiled over before the wedding, which I think turned out well. If you would like me to make some for you, let me know. As I'm not employed yet, I have plenty of time on my hands.

Finally, one of my favorite pictures of the two of us.

Off-Registry Gift Cards

The one gift that I did not mind getting that was off-registry was a gift card. We had gift cards from Pottery Barn, Home Depot, California Pizza Kitchen, Kohl's, Starbucks, and of course Bed Bath and Beyond. One thing that I would suggest to all brides out there is to find an old wallet of yours or your fiance's to keep all of your gift certificates in. This way, they're not making your wallet so huge that you can't close it, but you still have them with you whenever you are out and about. This way, when you return something, you don't have to get a new gift card. Also, you're more likely to wind up somewhere where you have a gift card and have it with you, instead of having to make another trip later.

Another Program Note

I forgot to mention the money-saving idea that our printer had for the programs (it could also be a "green idea" now that I think about it). A friend of my husband's parents owns a printing shop and offered to print the programs for us. He sent us the swatch books for the different papers, and we selected a card stock with a green marble-y finish.

Instead of printing the programs on the expensive, patterned paper, he scanned the image of the paper into the computer, and added the wording to the top of the paper. Then, he just printed the program onto a lighter, glossier paper. I was a little worried about how it would look when he was explaining it to us, but they turned out fabulous, if I do say so myself.

Some things are better kept private

I would like to voice a complaint that has been in the back of my mind for months, but I've just kept forgetting to write about. When I started perusing a certain website that caters to brides (I'd rather "not" say in order to "not" have the followers of said site accidentally finding this post through Google), I would go hunt around through some of the blogs and message boards to see what I was getting into, and I would like to send this message to some brides.

Dear message-posting-bride,

While there is a forum to voice your concerns over sex and romance (preface - I did not venture into this particular forum, but a particular post showed up under "recent posts"), I believe this was a forum for general, relationship-type questions. Please refrain from including descriptions of various bodily fluids; this is a topic of conversation that should be shared between close friends or your physician, not a virtual room of strangers. It is quite a shock to open your computer and read your post, especially when I was just looking for a post on finding a florist.

Thank you,
Catholic Wedding Girl

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.

Dress Obsessed?

Once thing that I am most frustrated about at this point is that I left my dress in Houston at my parent's house. I really want to try it on to make sure it fits, but I can't, so now I occasionally have freak-out moments where I think the dress won't fit. This is compunded by the fact that this week a friend of ours is staying in our apartment, we're packing, and I had an upset stomach this weekend so I won't be able to get to the gym at all this week (Wine Wednesday at Spec's clearly trumps going to the gym). In reality, this stressful week of packing will probably "allow" me to lose weight, so I should be fine. I guess I'll find out Saturday when I get to my parent's house exactly how many cheeseburgers I'll be allowed to eat. :)

Hey Mr. DJ

Whoops! I tried to log into the DJ's website to put in some songs that I had wanted on the playlist, but our login has expired! Luckily, I can still submit things to the DJ by email, and they're supposed to call us at some point to discuss everything. Honestly, I'm not that worried. Months ago, I was thinking that I would have a massively organized list like skywalker's, and despite my not wanting to dance to the Cupid Shuffle, I just didn't put the time or effort into it. I've come to terms with it though. I just want people to dance and have fun, and if that means the Cupid Shuffle gets played, I probably won't even remember it twenty years from now. I just have to email to say no to rap and no to country (apologies to my future brother-in-law, but I am the only woman in Texas who doesn't know how to two-step, so we're just not playing it).

Registry Stalker

I'll admit it, my fiance and I stalk the registry almost religiously, and I am not ashamed about it. It's fun to see what people are getting you. I really don't see the problem with it, for many reasons:

1) if someone gets you something from the registry, the gift is not going to be a surprise anyway
2) none of the guests will watch you open your presents after the wedding, so you don't even have to act surprised
3) if you know someone purchased something, you can watch for it in the mail so your completely unhelpful leasing office doesn't leave it in their mailroom for it to rot
4) if you are moving right after the wedding, it is helpful to know what of your old stuff you can give to Goodwill (maybe this is just specific to us)
5) again if you are moving right after the wedding, you'll be able to tell just how many things have been shipped to your mother's house (after the "cutoff date") that are going to have to get shipped to your new apartment (when you finally figure out where that will be)
6) one morning you will wake up and check the registry and there will be a whole bunch of things "fulfilled" and it will feel like Christmas twice (once when you see that they've been purchased and once when you actually open them)

Am I Still Excited?

Several people have asked me if I am still excited about the wedding. I think there are really two answers.

Yes, I am excited to be marrying the man I love, and I can't wait to be Mrs. D. On the other hand, I am completely exhausted with planning and moving. I have a feeling that once everything is packed (by t-minus 7 days until wedding) and we're in Houston, the excitement will start to build, but until then, I just really don't want to think about the wedding.

I take that back, because I remembered that several times this week I found out that my mother and sister have changed a few things with the layout of the reception hall. They decided not to tell me because it would stress me out. Right, like showing up at the reception hall thinking it was going to be setup a completely different way wouldn't stress me out either. Whatever.

I do think that I am going to be calmer than I anticipated. Before I found a temporary job for the summer, I remember watching "Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?" and getting all teary-eyed and weepy and thinking how I would bawl my eyes out on my way to the altar. I'm not so sure that will happen now. Not that I won't be ecstatic, I think Ill just be less likely to out-and-out cry (because I am NOT a pretty crier - runny nose, red face, the works).

Catering Fiasco

I am ready to cry. There is too much going on, so on top of selling my car, packing the apartment, and having lengthy conversations with my mother about how many and which M&M's to order (despite my thinking that we had already discussed this), my caterer emails me to see how things are going. Even though she told me I don't need to have final numbers to her until next week, I told her the new numbers and some of the general layout then said I would get back to her next week.

She emails back that she will have to adjust the per person pricing, because those numbers are based on the higher number. Isn't that what per person pricing means? The amount that is charged per person? Much less, at what point can you change the terms of an agreement? I told her to send the forms and I'll send them to my parents. She upped the rate by 30%, and somehow the total was exactly the same, despite the food price being different. I called and asked, and she explained that food costs more when you order less (should this be my problem?) and that he calculations must have been wrong on the tax and gratuity (should I have to pay for her math class?).

Yargh and double yargh.

Missed Payment

I knew it would happen. I just knew that something would fall through the cracks. I was on the phone with my mom last night (in response to one of the many text messages that I had been sent), when she decided to go through the list of upcoming payments that would be due. I told her that the only ones left were the caterer, reception site, and the cake baker, unless we wanted to increase the time we had set aside for the DJ, in which case we would need to add an hour of fees to his time.

"What about the church people? When do I have to pay S for the cantors and musicians."

"That was due July 12th. We needed to pay them $400."

"I don't have any record of that, but I'll check the internet to see if I made a payment. . . No, I paid the church $400 in March, but that was it."

So, even though I had called her after the Google Calendar (that she has access to) sent both of us an email reminder the week before the payment was due. She claimed she had "no record" of me telling her about this - which makes sense, since she deletes all of her emails as they come in.

Luckily, she emailed the music lady, who was very nice about the whole thing, and is taking the check over today.

Guest Count

This post is for all of you who are where I was a year ago. I thought I desperately wanted a smaller wedding, with maybe a hundred people in attendance. Ha ha. Such a wedding was not in the cards, and my fiance and I watched as our guest list went from 200 to 250 to 300 to 370 guests (picture me with eyes popping out of my head). My parents and I guessed that we might have to accommodate 250 - 275 people at the most, which narrowed down the venues quite a bit (while my fiance protested that not even 200 people would come). Another factor is that the church is Prince of Peace, which is located out in the suburbs of northwest Houston.

When we went looking at reception sites, There were three in the original group that would have held everyone without breaking fire codes, but one would involve a large tent and portable air conditioners (bye-bye budget) being erected. The other we shied away from because we didn't want my fiance's relatives to think we were complete Texas fanatics and there happens to be lots of Texas "paraphernalia" on the walls. The third was the Chateau Polonez, which not only fit size of the wedding we might have, but is also gorgeous.

Months went by and we sent the save-the-date cards to everyone, and then months went by again, as we sent invitations out to all 370 guests (which was really 350 guests, then 20 more as the "declines" came in. And here we are, with 19 days to go, and a guest count that is currently going to be around 150, as many of our friends and family apparently have better things to do with their lives than witness our nuptials (I know it sounds bitter - shocking - but it's not, they really do, like go on mission trips to Africa and move to Madrid - and yes, they're not bad excuses, they're real, I checked).

The moral of the story is that my fiance is right. No, no, that can't be it. The moral of the story is that everything works out for the best. Even though I considered eloping, the guest count is actually close to what I had envisioned, and if we hadn't thought that we were going to have 275 guests, we probably wouldn't have even thought about the Chateau Polonez as a venue, and it really is fantastic.