Me, Myself, and Bride

Whatchu thinkin?

2010-12-03T09:10:00.000-08:00

Baby, I got your money

2010-11-29T06:42:00.001-08:00

Smile like you mean it

2010-11-23T09:38:00.001-08:00

I did it! I finally up and got myself blogging with a new site, new name, and a new little image that can stay at the time for the meantime.

Come join me at my new locale, smile in motion Hope to see you there!

Peace,
Jenna

Always searching

2010-11-15T07:33:00.000-08:00

I totally pulled a number on myself.

So I was reading this article on Eat Pray Love which was a major critique about the book. About how she was just a privileged white lady searching for enlightenment with lots of cash and time at her leisure. Now, I definitely agree with this critique...even though I don't want to because I loved that book. Because I love the idea of taking a year to travel and go to magic places and 'find myself' and blah blah. And reading that critique made me feel SO TYPICAL. And who wants to be typical, huh? Sure, we are all trying to fit in and be normal...but typical? yuk.

anyway... so after that critique I was all "but how to I find enlightenment without well to do women telling me of their amazing exploits? and then following in their footsteps and buying my way to a higher level of being?" and then I decided that to be the MOST enlightened, I would actively NOT seek enlightenment.

genius! Enlightenment is right here waiting for me on my couch!

Now, as stupid as that does sound, I believe a part of it. Because I am always, always searching for something better. I'm always searching for more and striving for the best. But if you are always striving for the best, chances are you may pass up good along the way.

The best path probably lies in the in between world of moderation. Enlightenment/happy/content does take work.....but maybe not to the level being pushed by what may evolve into an Enlightenment Industrial Complex. We may not need retreats and trips...just giving ourselves some more attention. The never ending quest for that better place has got to stop and I have to just take a look around and enjoy where I'm at.

Hello?

2010-11-04T06:56:00.000-07:00

Why hello there! Yes, I do still exist. And no, I haven't totally abandoned the blog! (even though it totally looked like it for a while)

I just needed to take a break. A BIG break. From thinking about the wedding. And the wedding was too emotionally fraught for me to really talk about it or do too many recaps about deep things. In all honesty, I'm not ready to share all I think about the wedding. Partially because I'm still working on what I think but mostly because I know some of what I think and I'm still dealing with it.

Because the wedding was great and I'm glad we did it. But it was not the best day of my life. And that is hard to come to terms with.

I do get giant fuzzies in my tummy though when I think about standing up there during the ceremony with my darlin. And sometimes, when we are just hanging out, Brett will get this big, silly grin on his face and he'll say, "You looked so beautiful that day."

And honestly - that makes it all worth it. To hear those words here and there, scattered through my future will make it all worth it.

Oh, and I kinda do plan on letting this blog slowly fade. But I wanna start a new, non wedding focused blog. Wanna know the only thing holding that up? I can't come up with a freakin NAME! I know right. Silly! So I'm waiting for inspiration to come to me on that but also enjoying a break from blog land. There were some things I neglected while immersed in blog land... :)

But its been about a month and I thought I'd throw a line out there and let you know I haven't (totally) abandoned blog land...hopefully you haven't abandoned me!

xoxo,
Jen

We are all really the same person

2010-10-06T16:53:00.000-07:00

One of the major things that I've learned while wedding planning and mainly while wedding blogging...is that we are all pretty much the same person. The similarities between wedding journeys is uncanny. We see the same posts written over and over from different perspectives. Yeah, sometimes its redundant. But sometimes it needs to be redundant.

We all worry about how our weddings are going to look (is it too WIC!? is it too Indie!?) We all try to have a wedding that is 'creative' and 'unique' (or as the Knot puts it so bluntly, 'wowing our guests') We all fret over our dress, shoes, accessories, hair, and makeup. We all consider whitening our teeth. We all put ourselves down about our weight and worry that we won't look good enough. We all worry about people having a good time at the wedding and enjoying themselves. We all cry and freak out at some point (more likely many points).

All this to say that our wedding journeys are uncannily alike and follow that very familiar arch of "I'm gonna do this thing! YEAH!" to "um...maybe tomorrow.." to "WTF, MY LIST IS EATING ME ALIVE!" We check out the WIC world, get freaked out, rebel, find blog land, give a big sigh of relief, and then settle in to the work of making the wedding happen.

And I love that this community is here to help us work it out. But the other major thing that blog land has done for me is to make me realize how similar we all are and how I'm not alone. And that is invaluable.

Its been major for me to stop judging myself, because come on, thats kinda what it all is. We are worried about other people judging us but if we weren't first judging ourselves it wouldn't matter what other people thought.

And we all want to fit in and feel 'normal' and blog land has made me see that (crazy as it is) freaking out about a wedding, no matter how 'practical' you try to be...is in fact normal.

So ease up, gal.

What do I do with this thing now?

2010-10-04T07:31:00.000-07:00

At first I thought I hated my dress and would want to send it far, far away after the wedding (preferably for a price so that I could hate myself less for buying something so horrible). Then I altered it and fell in love with it and thought I'd want to hang on to it forever. Now that the deed is done...I feel like I'd be ok letting go of my Darling dress. (Especially if it went to the Sisterhood!) But I'm not quite sure.

Sell it?
Give it away?
Tuck it in the cedar chest with my mama's dress?
Use it to be a zombie bride on the Zombie Pub crawl?

What are you doing with your dress after the wedding?

The Dress!

2010-10-01T10:41:00.000-07:00

Dear Blog Land,
It seems a bunch of us newlyweds are kinda disappearing around these parts, huh? I feel really bad to do it, but I think it might just be the way it is. I plan to continue writing and will let you know where. As for Me, Myself & Bride... well, I feel that she must fade out and let the next batch come through.

But first, I owe you all some recaps!

And a recap and MAJOR story that I totally forgot about...the dress! Oh, boy, the dress! Remember that epic sh*t storm of suck? Yeah, no good. No good at all.

I bought a dress. Then I regretted it. Then I was pep talkin to myself and all "I don't need no stinkin 'dream dress'! No dress can complete me! I complete me! GO ME!" and tried to make myself feel better. This pep talk worked for about...a minute. Then it sunk in that I really, in all honesty and truly did not like my dress. But I tried to remain calm and be brave and repeat "one day, one dress". This calm lasted a little bit longer, but alas was not meant to be.

At some point, roughly in the last week of July, a mere weeks before my wedding, I knew I needed to so SOMETHING. I broke down. I was dreading wearing my dress. I didn't want to talk about the dress or think about it. And the idea of wearing it on an important day such as my wedding just made me sick.

Not what you want to feel about your dress, ya?

So I reached out in a random last ditch effort. There had been a dressmaker who I had contacted previously about making a custom dress. At that time, she quoted me at $1,600+ for a custom dress - ouchy! But I wrote to her, telling her my sob story, feeling like a brat bride, and asked if she thought alterations on my dress might be possible. She did and she quoted me a very reasonable alterations price. *insert glimmer of hope here*

I scheduled an appointment ASAP and ran over there with my dress to find out that this lady was a heaven sent! She had a very simple plan and exuded complete confidence in being able to make it work! So I said ok, left her with my dress, and crossed my fingers.

Leaving her shop, I felt like a weight had been lifted! I felt free! I didn't even know if this was going to turn out, but I felt so much better already!

Well, to cut to the chase... it turned out. Splendidly! The dress was shortened to just below my knees and looked super cute! She even took the extra fabric and made the flower that I had been failing at making to put on the hip! Total win!

So you want to see it? You want to see what happened to the dress?

Ok, come back tomorrow for some pictures!!!

haha, jk. I'll give them to you now! I'll even throw in a few gratuitous photos of us looking all spiffy and cute! So, without further ado... Meet Darling! (as my dress has now been named.) (and here to refresh your memory is Darling back when I may have called her less kindly things...)

And because you've all been so lovely and patient, here are a few extras that are my favorites! We'd like to get one printed to frame and hang, but I have no idea how we are going to pick! (Note: many thanks to Chelsea Marie Photography - they did such a great job and were a pleasure to work with!)

On and on

2010-09-28T10:37:00.000-07:00

I feel sad. I feel like its graduation and we are all getting married and then going our separate ways in blog land. I feel like I'm losing a wonderful little community that I was so happy to find! But I think its time.

Now that our wedding is done, I don't feel as drawn to wedding blog land. Those pretty pictures are not enticing but merely serve as a reminder to how glad I am to be done with it. Plus, they bring up the wouldas, couldas and shouldas and who needs that? not me!

I'll try to do some more recaping - especially since we should be getting our pictures really soon! yay! But I don't want to reminisce too much about our wedding.

It happened. It was a great day. But I'm too focused looking forward to many more great days.

Since I do love blog land, I am going to try to continue blogging in some way...I just have to figure out what that way is. I liked having the focus of 'wedding' to concentrate my thinking. If left wide open, I think my brain would just produce some word splatter worth nothing.

I'll keep you posted!

Peace,
Jen

Sentimental

2010-09-24T09:06:00.000-07:00

Happy Friday!

Here is a darling song for you, this Friday. This was a friend's first dance song, and I've loved it ever since! There are two versions...I like the "sentimental" version (the one posted below) but take your pick!

Swept Me Away by The Avett Brothers

Peace,
Jen

My precious...

2010-09-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

Want to see one of my favorite things ever? One of those small details that I loved and was so happy to have spent hours making just right?

Well, here it is! My handmade hair dodad!

Isn't she beautiful? This little lady is the result of HOURS of my time and much swearing, but damn...after all that, I'm in love!

I spent a long time looking on esty for a fascinator - and found many of them that were absolutely gorgeous! But I just couldn't bring myself to pay $80 bucks for some hair thing. No way. Plus, I knew what I wanted and I had my materials. I had fabric from cutting the train off my dress and some extra pretty green pearls from my necklace. So I went to it.

First, I searched for a good tutorial on how to make a fabric flower. Wow - so many out there! Its ridiculous! But of course, Martha came to the rescue with an easy and fabulous fabric flower how to. The how to is for a ring pillow but works just as easily for a hair fascinator.

It took me a while to get the flower to look right...somehow, depending on how you pinch the petals, it can come out completely different! One way makes really cupped petals, which make a super cute flower, but I didn't want this thing popping off my head. I wanted it to sit nice and smooth on my hair. So I worked and worked to get the petals to sit flat. Still not sure how I did it...but I did it!

Add the pearls in the center, some feathers, felt the back, super glue some bobby pins to the back and VOILA! What a beaut!

Choice and Trajectory

2010-09-17T08:49:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm back to my regularly scheduled brain programming, I've got a bit to throw at you. I'm going to try to put it into words, but bear with me because sometimes this brain to fingers things doesn't work so well and I just spit out jibberish. But at least I know its jibberish that is trying to get somewhere and maybe will eventually! Jibberish with a purpose! (if I ever write a book...that's going to be the title!)

We had our wedding. It was great. It wasn't perfect. But it was great, and it was ours. Would I have done things differently? Yes, of course. But looking back... we did things the way we did for a reason. Some reason. Some of those reasons I can remember, some I can't. Some were stupid...some were very thoughtful.

All of this to point out the process. Planning a wedding, we are focused so much on that one day. Not even one day, usually, but a few hours in that one day. But when its all over, that one day is a bright flash and we realize that planning a wedding may be as much about the wedding as it is about the planning. That journey changes us as individuals, couples, families. And at the end of this journey, when you are done with the wedding, you are able to take a step back and look with wide open eyes at what happened.*

I want to run with two topics: choice and trajectory.

Choice
In my last post, I included a link to Barry Schwartz's talk about choice.** In one fateful comment section, Jenny posted this video. I watched it and it has since been continuing to blow my mind. Its a really simple talk and concept, but it has forced me to change the way I think about choice. Because I was that person! That paralyzed person in front of the salad dressings or the tooth paste going "WTF!? WHY ARE THERE SO MANY KINDS OF TOOTHPASTE!!!" and then I would read the labels, trying to make the best choice. Because there are so many! And one has to be the best, right!? And of course I want the best! AHH!!!

O_o

Phew. Ok, I'm back. Here is a quick summary of his talk (and by quick I kinda long...) in case you can't watch it.

So his talk basically says this: too many choices makes people unhappy. It does this in a few ways. First, with so many choices comes paralysis. When faced with that wall of toothpaste, I freeze! How to pick one tube out of that entire wall?!? Then, when you do choose that one tube, as Schwartz says, "We end up less satisfied than we would be if we had fewer options to choose from."..."The way in which we value things depends on what we compare them to"..."When there are lots of alternatives to consider, it is easy to imagine the attractive features of alternatives that you reject that make you less satisfied with the alternative that you've chosen."

Next, with all these choices, we end up expecting more. If there is one option available, you get what you get. But when so many choices are present, you immediately expect more. Out of all these options of salad dressing, toothpaste, jeans, etc. there better be one that is the perfect option for me! Of course nothing is perfect, but we build up our expectations when we have more choice and those expectations are always let down.

Schwartz says, "The reason everything was better back when everything was worse is that when everything was worse, it was actually possible for people to have experiences that were a pleasant surprise." Yes, yes, yes.

His final reason why choices make us miserable (#4 below) is self blame. When there is only one choice and that one choice isn't perfect for you, who do you put the blame on? Whatever company, institution, group or whatever that limited your choice to that one pair of jeans. But when there are many, many options and the one chosen isn't perfect for you, now who do you blame? Yourself. You should have chosen better, should have found the perfect one, should have X, Y, or Z.

This totally rings true in my life. I'm always looking for better. I'm always trying to make the best choice I can. But am realizing that all of this is setting myself up for failure. I can't possible win this game.

On our honeymoon we were traveling around California - a new place for both of us - and I noticed that, while we were having a great time, nothing was a surprise. Nothing was blowing us away. There was no room for "experiences that were a pleasant surprise." I've seen too much on TV or in movies or in magazine that I expect AMAZING. I expect mind blowing.

I've jumped out of a plane at 10,000 feet and wasn't blown away. WTF!?

Ok, I'm going to stop here with choices before my head explodes. (even though that would be a mind blowing experience and a definite surprise!)

Trajectory
I had this friend, once upon a time, who was uber critical. Of the world, of himself, of everyone else. He was not very fun to be around at this time because he expected nothing less than saint-like behavior. If you weren't doing everything you possibly could to be a saint citizen, you fail. I got pretty upset with him and his expectations. Yes, people can do better, but no, you cannot expect then to make such sudden changes in their lives with just a little nudge.

We are all on our own paths. These paths are the cumulation of our choices and our past. And we will generally keep going in the same direction. That is our trajectory. It takes more than a little nudge, a little critical thought, to change this trajectory. It has to be a shift from one direction to another - not a jump to a whole new track.

Angie sent me a story the other night which is a perfect compliment to the thought about choice and a great example of trajectory. It describes how we naturally think about the story of our lives and are continually adjusting how we think the story is going to end.

We've reached a new chapter - marriage - and now I don't know what the end of the story is going to look like. There are so many choices and so many possibilities and I'm not sure how to proceed and where to go. I definitely have to let go and stop feeling responsible for making the 'perfect' choice. Its not about the destination, its about the journey, right?

But where do I want to journey to?

What story do I want my life to tell?

How do I make such big choices without freaking the F out!?!?

*note that I try to keep the wedding theme with this post but then never pull through with it! choice and trajectory would definitely be neat to explore in explicit wedding planning terms, but I'm going to go with the broad 'life choices' for this post. Now lets go tangent, shall we? **little plug for TED. With its hours of thought provoking videos, its like etsy for my brain.

Now what?

2010-09-15T11:35:00.000-07:00

The wedding is over and my bride brain is slowly starting to fade away (Though I still have that knee jerk reaction a lot and keep thinking "oh! I could use that for x,y,z" or "That's a cute DIY project!" But alas, no more wedding projects for me.) So now comes the inevitable question around these parts... what next? What do I do here is bloggy world when I am no longer a bride to be?

Talk about married life as Me, Myself and Wife? Go back to being my normal, neurotic self and morph this space into randomville as Me, Myself and I? Or finish my bridal bit and than fade into the interwebs?

Do you care about my everyday biz? About the explosion of thoughts that go into my head and come out as incoherent messes? Should I end every sentence in this post with a question mark?

Well, we got some more time because I do have more recaps coming, but just putting the question out there. What are you interested in hearing about?

Here are a few of the things rattling around in my mind at the moment that may be making some post appearances:

We want to move west. Specifically to a place with a ski mountain.
What do I want to do with my career? Which direction to go, how to become something that sort of resembles a 'professional', goals, etc.
Health. I've been doing pretty good in the health realm and am looking at doing a lot of things. We'd like to do more climbing. I am addicted to spin class. I want to try yoga for the strength, balance, and spirituality. And I've been poking around at the possibility of a triathlon next spring/summer... (Me, Myself and the Tri?)
Books! My brain needs some new wrinkles. It has been full of white fluffy stuff for the last eight months! I need something more substantial to sink my gray matter into! (Any good recommendations?)
Making friends. This is way harder than I think it should be! But a lot of my friends have moved around or we've grown apart and I miss having those bonding times with the ladies! Where are my Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha?
Food! I loves it and I miss it and I want more! I'm specifically interested in baking. More specifically I'm on a quest to recreate this chocolate torte thingy that we had that totally blew my mind.

Way too many things going on in my head. All of them fighting. None of them getting processed appropriately. *sigh* Back to normal life!

Unexpected things I learned from my wedding

2010-09-13T08:11:00.000-07:00

There is one thing I've said so many times that it could possible be my wedding mantra, and it is that ''weddings are crazy!" And they are. In all sorts of good ways, bad ways, and just plain crazy ways.

I'm still trying to figure out what I think of our wedding. I can't contain it in any neat little statements. I can't say it was all one thing or another. Because it was pretty much everything. Perfect and disappointment together. And I think thats just the way weddings roll. (Did I mention that weddings are crazy? Because they really are.)

But I did learn a lot from planning and executing a wedding. Some of these things came as quite a surprise...ok, most of them!

I improved my decision making ability. Really, I was so indecisive at the beginning it was crazy! But at the end, I was all big bang BOOM, decided! One of my bridesmaids told me I was scary on the day of because she would come ask me a question, I'd stare at her for a second while I thought it out, and then say yes or no. Simple. Done. Next! (I may also have had a crazed look on my face that morning. I'm going to call it the 'determination face'.) I'm suspicious that a large part of this improvement in decision making has also come from the improvements I made in living with a decision once its done. Learning that sometimes you just gotta pick something and it does have to be perfect. (See Barry Schwartz on choices. One of my new favorite theories that I'm trying to apply heavily to my life.)
Some people, no matter what, won't dance. So don't try to make them. I learned how to host a party and not get all bothered about whether or not people are having a good time. I had a good time. I provided the opportunity for them to have a good time. If they didn't, I'm not going to let that rest on my shoulders.
I learned how to be bitchy and stand my ground and not back down and all that jazz. But I also learned to negotiate better (especially with certain difficult family members). And in the end, I think our relationships are better for it. Partially because we worked through some things and partially just because we can now go back to normal life and not have to deal with BIG issues anymore! Yay, avoidance!
I learned that large amounts of money are really tough to spend. But that once its gone...I can't say I miss it. Yeah, I could do lots of things with those thousands of dollars. But I spent it on a wedding. Money is money and that's all.
The wedding bought out the best in some and the mediocre in others (luckily we didn't have to deal with the worst of anybody!). It made me really grateful for those who really came through for us. (and I want to give an extra special should out to Ski Bum Bridesmaid! I know you're stalking! Hi!) It also put my tolerance for dramatic, pessimistic, insincere people at an all time low. Life is too short for that! I want to surround myself with people who are happy, positive, sincere and who make my life better.
It made me see what I want in my future. I want those friends and family in my life who mean the most. I want to be surrounded by happy, uplifting people who know how to have a good time. I want to be a happy and uplifting person for others. I want to create a community with all these good people! I want to commit to my choices and not look back! I want to lose stress, worry, anxiety, self esteem issues, and live life!

The Day: Ceremony

2010-09-10T08:25:00.000-07:00

Did I ever tell you about the dream I had where we were getting ready for the wedding and then all of a sudden everyone was congratulating me and apparently we had gotten married and I couldn't remember any of it? Yeah, that was an icky nightmare!

I kept hearing the line "You won't remember any of it anyway!" about the ceremony and I was terrified of that. That's the most important part of the day! I damn well would like to remember it! But I am extremely happy to report that I was present and in the moment and remember all of it. And here for you (and largely for my memory), is our ceremony recap.

I remember looking at Brett before we walked out to the ceremony. Nerves were flaring up like crazy, so we took a deep breath together, took each others arms, and out we went. There were so many faces looking at us that I didn't know where to look. I looked down, around, at a few people, at him - and I was so glad we were walking together. We hugged our parents and then took our place at the front.

As the ceremony started, I moved my feet to find a comfortable place to stand, took a few breaths and made sure I was present. I listened to our officiant read the words we put together, let the meaning of "create a new family" sink in, saw our photographers out of the corner of my eye, and enjoyed. Two of our close friends came up to read the selections we chose. I laughed a little. Their presentation was almost theatrical - but classical them! Through all of this, Brett wouldn't stop staring at me! I was watching who was speaking but then kept getting drawn back into his gaze. His eyes were happiness. (At one point I looked out into the crowd, but the only face I saw was my dad's with eyes full of tears and I had to immediately retreat! Bad place to look unless you definitely want to cry!)

Our officiant gave his talk (we didn't know what he was going to say before hand) and it was a great balance of humor and insight. He referenced the economy, our beliefs, and noted the very characteristic pause Brett has when asked a serious question. Then it was time for vows.

First, we had community vows. Everyone stood up and said "we do" after three community vows. Very simple, but it was great to see everyone standing in support of us and hearing a nice resounding "we do" each time!

Next, our vows. I went first. I didn't feel a single nerve at this point, but took a nice deep breath to steady myself. I grabbed the mic and my paper and let it all go. There was a little shaking in my voice due to emotion, but I didn't cry a single drop! (Not sure how that happened...every time before the wedding, heck, even now when I read my vows I cry!) Brett read his vows - no tears there either - and just smiles galore on my end! He included the story of when he fell in love with me, made me laugh, and made me smile.

I loved the simple feeling of sliding the ring on his finger, of mine getting stuck at the knuckle, and then, of course, that wonderful first kiss!

Mission accomplished: we were married!

The Day: A few favorite moments

2010-09-09T10:29:00.000-07:00

Smiling like an idiot during our ceremony
Looking out to the crowd and seeing my dad totally tearing up
All the toasts from our loved ones that made me smile, laugh and cry
Dancing with my hubby with everyone watching but feeling like we were the only people there
Dancing with my dad and him saying how proud he was of me
Seeing so many amazing people all in one place to celebrate with us
Staying out with friends till bar close and getting more precious moments with people I don't often see

Better by the hour

2010-09-08T11:40:00.000-07:00

There was the moment after the wedding where I asked myself the big question: Was it worth it?

And then I sat there baffled. I couldn't answer it! Part of me remembered the eight months of craziness, stress, crying, fights with the beau, anger, frustration, etc. Then there is the matter of spending eight months of my time planning for one day. Then there is the intense matter of spending thousands of dollars on said single day. Was it worth it!? How can all that be worth one day!?

But it was more than just that one day. All that time spent planning gave me more than just a wedding. It gave me those lessons learned about us as a couple, about me as an individual, about what family means to us, about how much I like spending time with my mom and wish I saw her more, about what great friends I have who are willing to go out of their way and spend many of their own hours on "just one day" for me, and so on. And I thought about how much the process has changed me and how much fun some of it was.

I still haven't quite worked out my answer to that question...but I'm working on it. And I have a feeling it may not be a simple yes or no answer. Me and simple just don't get along like that. But me and complicated? We're best buds.

One thing I have noticed, though, is that I definitely like the wedding best after its over. Specifically a week or two since its been over. The slight tinges of regret or disappointment that I felt right after are slowly fading away and starting to matter less and less. My love of our ceremony and the time spent up there holding his hands is starting to matter more and more.

The Day: Getting Ready

2010-09-08T09:25:00.000-07:00

We had a lot to do on our wedding day. The day generally went something like this:

Wake up
Go to venue by 9 and decorate like mad!
Get hair done at noon
Back to venue to get dressed and perty
Photos
Ceremony!
Cocktail hour!
Dinner!
Dancing!
Break down
Afterparty!

So yes, like everyone says, the day did fly by. But I'm happy to say I was in the moment and present for most all of it! To start my recaps, I'm going to go with the first portion of the day and wait till my brain is done tumbling the rest of the day around.

Our morning was one of the only parts of the day where I actually felt stressed. Neither of us could eat much but we sat there trying anyway. I got through half my bowl of granola before I gave up. Neither of us could say much and probably both looked like deer in the headlights! Not the 'ease into the day' morning I had been hoping for...but whatever! We packed up all the boxes of crap and decoration that we had and chugged over to the venue.

My parents were already there unloading. My mom had checked in with the venue. And we jumped in to join the bustle! My dad is a genius and brought a hand truck, so all our boxes were inside in a snap! It was a little chaotic at first... everything was unloaded so fast that I spent the first while just finding things! I should have labeled boxes better with what was inside and where it was supposed to go - another 'oops' to add to the list! But we got it sorted and everyone had what they needed to do their task (as previously assigned on the task list) and got workin! It made me so grateful to see everyone helping out so much! It came together with lots of hands helping! We had given ourselves three hours to do all our decorating and that was just barely enough time. We snarfed some lunch and then the ladies ran to get our hair did!

It was really nice to go see my normal hair lady. She is a sweetheart and it made me feel better that she knew my hair and that we'd kinda done a trial run on my last visit. It was also great to just chat and feel relaxed in a familiar place.

The salon trip was mostly to control frizz and make sure my hair was behaving. And also to make sure that I smelled like the delicious Aveda products! mmmmmm Because after the salon we went back to the venue to do makeup and to do the minimal styling that was going to go into my hair. A friend of mine, with her glorious Clinique supplies, did makeup for me and then did a neato little twist to one part of my hair. Then in went my fabric flower that I'd made from leftover fabric from all my dress alterations!

I was so happy with this little flower! After lots of time and swearing, it turned out just like I had hoped! That is definitely one of the DIY projects and one of the details I'm glad I didn't give up on. It made me feel great to have that cute thing on my head! I don't actually have many photos from the wedding...but I do have this little one to share of me:

My hair was down, like always, but did have the little twist in it with the flower pinning it back. I felt just like I had hoped - like myself. Just a fancified version of myself! :)

Once dressed and perty, we did the photos! This was fun because the first batch was just of me and my love. We wandered around the beautiful park location, snapping photos. It was hard, though. The photographers kept making us kiss! But someones gotta make out with that cutie, so I took to it and hopefully my face isn't scrunched up in too much pain! ;)

We got a lot of photos in and had some time left to spare - perfect! Then all of a sudden, some guests started appearing! EEK! Before that, I was just kinda doing what needed to be done, but seeing people arrived made me remember all that was to follow. And some nerves started to resurface...

We had talked about mingling with our guests before the ceremony but that morning decided not to. We knew everyone would be asking the same question and we'd be saying the same thing. Plus, we both started getting that spaced out deer in the headlights look again! So we went back to our get ready room and waited. And waited.

We only had to wait maybe twenty minutes or so? But it seemed like forEVER! All I could do was pace and fiddle. I'm pretty sure I looked like this for those twenty minutes.

We hadn't quite figured out how everything was going to be timed as far as when our parents go out and then we go out and blah blah blah. Good thing to leave for the last minute, ya? It was a good jolt though, because it was just the bridal party left in the room...I was waiting for some cue that we were supposed to start and then I heard the music! Ahh! Time to go! We weren't lined up or ready but we flew into position and out when lady and dude 1! I got a kiss before lady and dude 2 went and then it was just us.

A few deep breaths, nervous glances, and out we went, too.

PS I'm Sorry

2010-09-07T11:30:00.000-07:00

I was looking at my last blog post (since most of the time I type something up, post it, and don't actual read what I wrote until much later....hence the spelling issues that oftin occur) and I realized that it included the phrase "I can tell you that none of it was like I expected". And then I realized that my two weeks ago past self would have punched my current married self.

Because when planning a wedding you are trying to expect EVERYTHING! So WTF, Jen!? It was nothing like you expected!? NOT what a bride wants to hear!

I'm partially a liar...because a lot of it was like I expected. We did, after all, have a tasting with our caterer and that exact meal did show up at the wedding...so I was expecting the mushroom ravioli. There were some aspects that I had no expectations for...like the ceremony. I had no way to anticipate what that would be like. So it was not like expected.

And the other thing is that I might be kinda slow. Because I was surprised how nice some people were and how...not nice some people were. Not that anyone was mean, just that some people weren't particularly nice. Like I thought that since it was a wedding that meant everyone would be the bestest, smileyest version of themselves. So yeah, call me silli willi.

Anyway. just wanted to come say sorry for including that mean, mean phrase. If you are still planning, don't worry. It will all go according to plan and everything will be just like expected. If you have reached the other side...sshhhhh, don't tell!

Married!

2010-09-07T07:07:00.000-07:00

Woah, kids, I'm married! Did you know that that is what happens at a wedding? Two people get married! And when its your own wedding, that means YOU get married! No joke!

I'm still kinda in shock that we are married. Its like I didn't see it coming or something. Or just that I have no idea what "married" means! Nothing has changed really... I have another little ring buddy and his hand is incredibly sexy with his little ring buddy, but other that that, anything different? Not that I've seen yet. But I'm sure things will show up in the future.

Anyway, I'm back from wedding and honeymoon madness!

I'm still trying to wrap my head around all the things that happened and what I feel about them, but I can tell you that none of it was like I expected. Here are some random thoughts and tidbits for you in no particular order.

The wedding went so well! Like so, so, so well! Everyone came through for us and helped us put on a wonderful event! It really showed me who would stick around and be there for us when we needed them. Some people just really, really make me so thankful!
I loved our ceremony and I'm so glad we wrote our own vows! I was totally present through all of it and remember it and cherish it! I wasn't nervous. Didn't mind speaking in front of all the people there. Just felt so happy! Oh, and neither of us cried. I just smiled like an idiot the whole time! In the receiving line, one relative asked me, "Were you born smiling!?"
Wow, its so hard to get around and talk to everyone. I totally tried and I totally failed.
It goes by in flash. I wish I had been able to talk more with everyone. I wish I had danced more with my hubby. But what can you do? Talk with them and dance with him another day, that's what. :)
I wish I had more room in my tummy to enjoy our awesome dessert spread! Family and friends baked pies, cheesecakes, cupcakes, brownies, marscapone bites, brownies, etc. We got a lot of compliments on the many awesome choices of desserts.
Honeymoons are awesome. Especially since I didn't do too much of the planning. It was kinda like a bonus that I kept forgetting about in my wedding stress but then BAM! I'm on a plane to Cali! WEE!!!
I like the wedding best once its over. Being here on the other side is so much better. So much easier. And now we aren't living in sin! Score!

xoxo,
Jen

The Day

2010-08-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

Its wedding day, folks! Please think some good thoughts and send your lovely vibes my way! I'm hoping wedding zen hits me full force but could definitely use some good mojo from this amazing community!

Thanks for being with me on this journey, lovely blog land! Its been so helpful to have this genuine community of support and help and humor along the crazy wedding planning ride. I really can't say thanks enough!

But. I can do a little something for you.

I decided that today would be the day to 'unveil' if you will. So, here for the first time, is US! Aka Jenna and Brett! These are all photos from our engagement session with our lovely photographer. She gave us awesome photos from this session and it makes me even more excited for some wedding photos! What a treasure!

I'll see you back here after the honeymoon!

Love,
J

Why am I at work!?!?!

2010-08-25T06:32:00.000-07:00

Oh yeah, cuz making money is cool especially when paying for a wedding that is THREE days away!! EEEEEE!!!

But I most definitely do not want to be stuck at my desk today! Don't brides get an automatic free week off before the wedding or something? Isn't that written into the rules somewhere? I think it should be. Luckily, I think my boss totally recognizes the fact that the three days I've worked this week are going to be a total wash. No productivity here! Just some putzing, daydreaming, and making lists for myself. And apparently blogging, too!

My emotions are still like a game of hungry, hungry hippo: spaztastic. But they are kinda moving more into the direction of excitement and I'm really, really trying to push the nerves and the stress away. GO AWAY, STRESS! I don't want to be your friend! I know we have this long history and all, but its just not working for me anymore. I don't want your bad influence!

We have some time to relax in the next few days in between running errands and finalizing details. We are also trying to make time to visit with some of the out of town travelers. As my friend from Seattle said, "I'm coming to town just to see you at your wedding, but I realize that I probably won't see you much at your wedding!" so we need some extra date time! And some State Fair time! Can't miss the Great Minnesota Get Together, now can I!? Wedding details, schmetails! I want a PRONTO PUP! And mini donuts. And hot dish on a stick. And some deep fried oreos. And beer. And whatever else my little tummy can fit!

And I've been writing my vows. Which has been way harder than I expected. So much to say and so little time! And dammit, its not helpful that I cry every time I try writing these dang things. But I think I finally got something good...hopefully... Well, I think it'll be good if I can make it through without being a blubbering mess. I have no idea which way that is going to go. I may be too nervous to cry. Or I may just break down and not be able to say anything at all. It feels like a 50/50 chance to me.

Oh! And can I just say thank you to the weather gods for looking fondly down on us and having a great forecast for this weekend? SO appreciated! We had an inside backup plan, but who wants to be stuck in a silly little room when there is a grand old oak tree to get married under! Sweat may run down my back with the heat and humidity that's forecasted, but I don't care! No rain! YAY!!!

So blog land...

Without further ado (or rambling), I'm heading out to finish my last day of work as a single lady, then off to getting sh*t done, and then getting married! We're flying out Sunday to Cali for the honeymoon and won't be back until the 5th! WOO! So wish me luck, please send some good vibes my way, and I'll see you on the other side!

Love,
J

I do have one last thing that I'm going to leave you with...but you have to wait a little bit for it! ;)

Photo from Desirée Delgado who has so many fun pics! I loved browsing her flickr stream!

Can't Wait!

2010-08-23T12:31:00.000-07:00

I can't wait! Yeah, yeah, our wedding is five days away and I'm excited about that, but guess what I can't wait for!? Someone else to get married! Ok, not just anybody. Someone else who I like a lot.

I can't wait to be helpful for someone else. I can't wait to buy thoughtful gifts for someone else. I can't wait to be a little wedding angel if they need me! People have been so helpful and nice to us while we've been planning this wedding that I can't wait to give it back!

I'm going to listen to their crazy thoughts and nod at their lofty wedding goals. I'm going to offer whatever skills I may have to their wedding. I'm going to listen to their family drama. I'm going to help them set up if they need it. I'm going to make them meals for the week of their weddding (because right now...cooking is the last thing I want to do!) And then I'm going to dance a lot because everyone likes a good dance party.

So. From a bride with five days until marriage, be nice to us. Please?

Weddings are hard.

Down the aisle

2010-08-20T09:30:00.000-07:00

We've been slowly picking the major tunes for our day - which ended up not being many songs at all! We have a song to walk down the aisle to and a first dance....and those are the only stand out special songs! Otherwise its all just a free-for-all mix!

I knew for walking down the aisle I wanted to use Sigur Ros. First - um, amazing? Yeah, thats them. Just amazing. Second - when we first met, we used to just stare into each others eyes while we listened to Sigur Ros. The music filled the space and allowed us to forget words. Third - AMAZING.

So for our 'dance dance' Friday post, here is our walk down the aisle song. We did think about having this as our first dance and if you are still looking - consider it! Its beautiful and soaring and uplifting - Its Við spilum endalaust by Sigur Ros.

(check out some of the other "Take Away Shows" - they get these great bands and have them play in random locations, giving a unique show to whoever is lucky enough to be around!)

Happy Friday!

Poem

2010-08-19T07:09:00.001-07:00

Look not in my eyes, for fear
They mirror true the sight I see,
And there you find your face too clear
And love it and be lost like me.

*photo is a teaser from our e-session :) I think I'll reveal us after the wedding!

Soon

2010-08-17T12:17:00.001-07:00

I'm losing my mind. The 28th is coming up so fast, there is so much to do, and I'm going through emotions like a hungry hungry hippo. (what, that doesn't make sense!?) Sunday was just pure joy. Monday was annoyance and a little bit of rage. Today is tired.

But through it all, I'm so excited to marry my man! I love him so much and I'm so lucky he loves me. How does such a thing happen? seriously

Congratulations!

2010-08-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

Congrats to two lovely ladies from blog land! Angie is getting married TODAY! And Lisa is getting married TOMORROW! Go over and give them some wedding day love!

These two ladies just warm my heart and I have never even met them! They've been lovely followers here at MM&B for quite a while and I've appreciated them so much for keeping me company on this crazy journey!

I wish them nothing but the best for their weddings and hope the day is everyone they could ask for and more!

Good luck, ladies, and we'll see you on the other side!

Dance Dance cuz Its Coming Soon!

2010-08-13T08:34:00.000-07:00

Happy Friday!

For today's Dance Dance its The Roots, yo! Collaborating with Cody Chestnutt on a grooving little bit called The Seed (2.0)

Have a great weekend!

Tomorrow, we are going up to the north shore for a friends wedding. This was our dream destination, so I'm super excited to see what they do with it! Plus, I'm excited to dance with my beau and practice our mooooves!

xoxo,
J

Its all in your head.

2010-08-11T07:56:00.000-07:00

I had a really weird day this past weekend. It was Sunday, the Stagette Weekend Extraordinare was done, I was just a wee bit hungover and could feel my mushy brain moving along at a putzy, putzy pace. Me and my darling future hubby hung out together just high on love. We also talked about our respective experiences with our Stag Weekends.

One thing that we both noted was how many compliments we get as a couple. We have been told by a friend that we are his role model for what a good couple should be. A friend told me how much she loved the way we look at each other and that "Its like he falls in love every time he looks at you." (totally made me tear up!) And another friend, who is a skeptic of love, told my mister how great it is to watch a couple work so well together.

These things are so amazing to hear! I feel good in our relationship (obviously...since we are getting married!) but sometimes you are so in it that you forget how lucky you are! This was a nice reminder to step back and appreciate the amazing guy that I somehow managed to find and that I somehow managed to dupe into loving me! ;)

Mom, sometimes you are crazy!

2010-08-10T07:06:00.000-07:00

My mama and I have a great relationship...most the time. But I swear, there is something about wedding planning that takes us normal people and flips that switch to crazy. And the drama switch. And some chemical reaction just melts are brains so nothing makes sense any more and the smallest decisions seem monumental. ("But what if our cake stands don't MATCH!?!?")

And as the wedding day nears, I'm nervous. For lots of reasons. And one of them is freaking out on the day of as we set up and get ready. Me freaking out. My mom freaking out. My mother-in-law freaking out. All this freaking out making my future hubs freak out! and then it'll just be chaos! chaos, I tell you!!!

Not if I can damn well help it!

Me and my mums had a lovely conversation the other day where I told her I was just slightly worried about us freaking out. At first she seemed a little affronted, and then she said, "Yeah, I'm worried I'm going to freak out, too." So I asked, "Mom, how can we go about not killing each other the day of?" and we came up with a plan to not commit murder on the day of the wedding.

First thing Mama said was that my organization really helps her. So having lists of what she is supposed to bring, what she is supposed to do, whats happening when, etc. and letting her see these ahead of time is a big plus. Seeing them ahead of time lets her ask questions, clarify items, and make sure we are all on the same page.
Second thing we both noted is that we have a tendency to get annoyed, hold it in, and then burst. Instead of bursting, we are both going to try very hard to voice our issues sooner if they arise.
Third, to avoid frustrations, being clear is key. And a lot of this is going to start with me. I need to be clear on what I'm expecting of people. I am also going to make a point to tell people that I need them to be helpful and do what we ask...this is not the time for opinions! Its the time to DO! Also, I need to be clear on how thankful I am for their help. No one wants to help a pushy, ungrateful bride.

K, so that's it I guess. The three things we've come up with so far to help us not kill each other. Now I just need to figure out how to do the same with my MIL...hmm....

Any suggestions on how not to kill people?
Any suggestions on how to broach this topic with a MIL or other helpers who might be troublesome?

Peace!
Jen

* Image from Five Film Plus, fun story: growing up, my mom would get frustrated with my brother and I for whatever dumb stuff we were doing and get whipped into a yelling fury. Sometimes, instead of being scared or behaving...we'd run around in circles yelling "Mad-mom-martigan! Mad-mom-martigan!" I'm sure that really help my mom's temper at the time. :) Love you, Mom!

Bomb giveaway!

2010-08-10T06:34:00.000-07:00

While posting it here gives me a second entry, it also gives you all a chance to enter and swipe away an AWESOME giveaway from over at A Mountain Bride!

The giveaway is for No Foundation Foundation from Perricone MD. I know we are all looking for a way to give us the best bridal glow, and this product looks like a winner.

Good luck, all!

Stag Weekend

2010-08-09T07:16:00.000-07:00

sooooo
sleeeeppyy.....

Its Monday morning after a long weekend and I feel zonked! So I'm going to let my fingers fly and give you a recap of my bustling Stagette Weekend!

Friday - My two ladies of honor stole me away, we went out to dinner, roamed an art fair and then had a girls night with drinks, snacks, and a cheezy wedding movie. Perfect, fun, bonding night!

Saturday - I woke up early (8:00 is totally early on a weekend!) to make it to a special appointment I had then made it back to my house to meet everyone for the start of our Stag Party Weekend!

First thing on our schedule: guns! Both the guys and the gals groups went to a gun club just north of the Twin Cities and had an awesome time! The owner of the gun club was so excited to have women there that the gave us member prices, deals on ammo and a personal lesson! I was pretty nervous to shoot and had never really shot anything before, but the people at the gun club were very nice and welcoming. So they took us out to do trap shooting and I thought there was no way I was going to get this little flying disc in the air! But lo and behold, they told me I was "a natural!" and out of the five guys and five girls that we had shooting, I had the highest score with a 19 out of 25 on my second round! BAM!

From guns, we all then went to grill out and socialize for dinner. It was great that all the ladies and the guys were hanging out and getting to know each other. We have a wide variety of people that we hang out with, and it was fun to see them mix!

After the grilling, the guys and gals split up for our respective bar crawls. We both stuck to the more mellow side of the Twin Cities and did St. Paul crawls. Patios, Irish bars, and a super crowded dance floor! I was proud because I managed a nice steady buzz for the night with limited shots (which are my downfall). When the ladies who were staying over came back to the house, we finished off with a refreshing run through the rain storm, greasy pizza and the few minutes of a movie that we managed to watch before all zonking out!

Phew!

Thanks to my lovely ladies who set it up and did a wonderful job! I couldn't ask for better friends and am so happy to have them standing up for me at the wedding!

Peace,
Jen

Baby, I'm about to have me some fun!

2010-08-06T09:01:00.000-07:00

Good morning, ladies and gents, and happy Friday! I am currently posting to you from the PAST! Because today, I took work off and am hopefully not sleeping in an instead doing all sorts of productive things! In fact, I took all four Fridays off this month before the wedding! Thank goodness I work somewhere where I get bomb vacation benefits and have been saving up vacay time! These days off will definitely help me progress down the to do list and ease my mind. Plus, by taking an extra day off each week, that invariably means that I work one day less and four day weeks are the BEST! Almost as good as three day work weeks.

In other news, this weekend is my stag weekend! WOO! My double trouble maid o' honors have planned what sounds like an amazing weekend - from what I know at least! And all I'm going to tell you right now is that it includes guns, grilling, boozing, and possibly a river in there, too! yes, yes, yes!

If I have any energy left in me after this weekend, I'll post a prompt recap! But. I promise nothing!

To keep you satisfied until then, listen to this love song by Amos Lee called Sweet Pea. And have a great weekend!

xoxo,
J

Pom Poms Galore!

2010-08-05T06:48:00.000-07:00

I am super excited to share some DIY/DIT craftiness with you today! Not only is this project complete - like totally done and I don't even have to think about it anymore - but this is probably going to be the only project that I've had in mind since the beginning. Months and months ago I became enthralled with little lovely garlands... which looked easy and all but turned out to be the project from hell! I only managed to make one tiny little dumb poof ball based on that tutorial before I was throwing things. Not the best...

But I was determined! So I found a new way - inspired by my aunt and based on Martha's know how. So, ladies and gents, I have for you today....

Quick and Easy Peasy (Plus Super Cute) Garland Tutorial!

Materials

fabric
cutting mat and one of those roller cutters work excellent (thanks, Mom!)
good fabric scissors
pins
wire - 24 gauge is what we used
wire cutter
ribbon
needle big enough to fit ribbon

First things first... by a crap load of fabrics in your chosen colors! Wait, maybe don't buy as much as us. We bought a LOT! My mom kinda freaked out and we ended up with 10 yards total! holy geeze. Um, and we maybe used a third of that for garland making? But we have used it for some other projects and its definitely better to have more than less. And we had coupons. Anyway. Ok, get fabric. I'd say something stiffer like taffeta is best, but that can be expensive. We actually have three totally different types of fabrics for our pom poms and they all turned out ok, but the stiffer stuff definitely poofs up better and stays in place better.

Now that you've got your fabric, cut it all up into rectangles. Ours are six inches by five inches to in the end make a pom pom of about four inches wide, but play with the sizing to find what you like! You can also play with how many layers you use in your pom poms. At least three are needed to make a nice poofy pom. We used four layers. Here are my lovely rectangles...
Also, take your wire and cut a bunch of segments approximately five inches long. You'll use these in a bit but its good to have them all handy and ready.

Take your four cut rectangles, line em up, and pin them together. Now, you are going to cut the edges to give the pom pom the desired texture. I've seen them with pointy edges or rounded edges - we rounded ours. The nice part about this step is that you don't have to be too picky. Make sure the corners are nice and round and kinda make a nice wave along the edges, but any oddities from this step are not too noticeable. Here is a funky looking bunch as a good example:

Now you are going to take your four layers of fabric (take the pins out! ouch!) and accordion them. As small as you can get the accordions without too much work. And accordion them the long way? short way? Um, start with the shorted edge towards you and then accordion that way. I dunno what to call that!

Then, when you have it all accordioned up, take one of your pieces of wire and wrap it tightly around the middle of your fabric bunch. It should look roughly like this:

Now poof that sucker! Pull and yank and squish it - don't be shy - until its a lovely little poof ball of a pom pom! Like zis:

Beautiful!

Now make a bunch more. I think we had roughly 70 poms of each color? Or something ridiculous like that. With your ribbon and big needle (get a strong one! I broke a little puny one after two poms!), string up your lovely poms into an even lovelier pom pom garland! With all the pom poms I had, I used up three rolls of 10 yards of ribbon. Aka I now have 90 yards of garland. Holy balls, batman, thats a lot of garland!

But I can't wait to hang them up and see them brightening our outdoor space!

(sorry for the poor lighting on these photos)

So there you have it. The garland tutorial that was months in the making!

Peace,
Jen

PS those are our colors! I don't think I've actually shown you our colors yet! I've become adept at describing them and they are as follows: "Granny smith green, robin's egg blue, and magenta/fuschia/pink/purple/berry color." See? adept.

YES!

2010-08-04T17:02:00.001-07:00

The ruling came in against Prop 8!!!!!!! Good job, Judge Walker!

I'm so happy for California, and I hope this is just the start and that this ruling starts the wave we need to come to our senses nationwide!

Why is it so difficult getting gifts?

2010-08-04T07:06:00.000-07:00

Speaking of registries... The registries have been one of our biggest trouble makers in this planning process. And I think that is weird. Shouldn't receiving gifts be easy? We put together a list of what we want...and those who want to give us gifts give us those things. But no. Not quite. Because it just wouldn't be wedding planning without a dash of drama and a healthy dose of indecision!

Its probably because we are running into the common problem of not wanting much STUFF. We've been living in sin for quite a few years now, have a home set up, and don't need (or want) much. (and have very little room to put said stuff in!) But a lot of people don't like giving money - even if its in the awesome form of honeymoon gifts on Traveler's Joy!

We've had family telling us that we don't have enough on our tangible item registries and that we need more. That we should set up another registry all together to give lots of choices. We even had a family member set up a registry for us because they reaaally wanted us to have this extra registry. And people telling us that the stuff on our registry isn't nice enough and that we should take this opportunity to get china or or crystal or other fancy stuff (stuff that would definitely fall into the "don't want or need or have space for" categories). People telling us that the white dishes we picked out are boring (because he wanted super dark dishes and I wanted super bright dishes....so we just went with classic-never-fail-will-always-match-and-never-go-out-of-style white).

Talk about unsolicited advice! Such strong opinions on what we should ask for for gifts!? wtf

Are/did any of you have similar registry problems?

Image from Kol Tregaskes because while some of you are dreaming about babies...I'm dreaming about puppies!

Finals Time

2010-08-03T06:35:00.000-07:00

I feel like I'm back in school. Like its the end of the semester and finals are looming close. Everyone keeps asking me if I'm excited for the wedding and I never know what to say. Yes, of course I'm excited, but I also have a little heart attack every time I realize how soon its coming up! Its like when people would ask me if I was excited for summer. Uh, yeah, obviously! Everyone loves summer, but first I have to go through finals first and not lose my sanity!

My goal here is to get stuff done and NOT procrastinate, dammit! and then have a week before the wedding where I can actually be excited and anticipate the upcoming day and enjoy the ride. I dun wanna be a stress ball!

And its actually coming along great and I'm super excited because I have two lovely crafts that I want to share with you all! They are all finished and they don't look like a child did them! Unless Martha Stewart has a child...then maybe they look like her child did them. One of the best parts too is that the mister has been involved in lots of them! He made pom poms, he pretty much did all the work for the tree cookie escort card holders, and I even had him decoupaging! awesome!

There are more crafts coming too! Like the flower that I'm making out of the cut off train from my dress to rest on the hip of my dress. And the lighted trees that we are making. And the mason jar lanterns that might not qualify as 'crafts' but I'm going to include in our DIY section.

huh...I never really thought of myself as DIY, but maybe I am? who knows. and who cares! :)

August 28th is only 25 days away! and I have this feeling that time isn't going to stop. So the 28th is only going to get closer and then BAM! be here!

Mish and Mash

2010-08-02T08:41:00.000-07:00

August. Is. Here. Holy goodness we are in our wedding month! Crunch time, baby! Time to tighten the knots and get ready for this ship to sail! I feel like I'm back in college and its finals time. I'm super excited for summer (aka honeymoon and married life) but there is this big thing in the way that is sucking up all my attention. And while I can't wait for it to be here I'm just trying to stall time so that I get all my biz done! Luckily I'm awesome at cramming...but unluckily I'm a horrible procrastinator. I'm trying so heavily not to procrastinate! I really, really want that week before the wedding to do very little, check on loose ends, and just mentally prepare.

Since it is August, it means that our August 1st "RSVP by date has passed and we still have a bunch of guests who did not RSVP! wtf? Did any of you deal with this? How do you gently but firmly harass the people you didn't hear from?

Other random thought... I looked at one of our registries the other day because I was going to take an item off (my parents just put an addition on their house and my mom is going crazy and getting rid of everything and buying new everything it seems. Which is fine by me because we get first dibs on all their awesome stuff! And they just gave us this set of glasses...so I was going to take the glasses we registered for off. but anyway...) and sooo much of our registry has been bought up! Its crazy!

And I feel kinda silly for being so excited. We registered for stuff because we know a lot of guests really like to give tangible gifts. But at the same time, I feel weird accepting so many gifts! And to see all the stuff that has been bought is kinda overwhelming and makes me feel really nice and special and grateful for our generous family!

So this is what a wedding is all about. Warm fuzzies and love! :)

Story time!

2010-07-26T12:07:00.000-07:00

Hey, slacker blogger here!*

Just stopping in to tell you a quick story that I can't believe I haven't told yet!

So a while back, I got this e-mail from another Jen who is also in her 20s, also lives in St. Paul, and just got married in June. Oh, and what? She happened to get married at the SAME VENUE! No way, huh? She saw one of my comments on a 2000 Dollar Wedding, checked out my blogville and noticed our many commonalities!

Not only was she nice enough to drop and e-mail and say hi, but she gave me advice about the venue, sent me photos of their ceremony set up, and shared her experience. Super helpful! We were both planning to have our ceremony in the same location in the lawn but she decided to change it slightly due to slope and lighting....which gives me the heads up that we might want to do the same!

I've said it before, but I'll say it again. Blog land, I love you. And to my kindred spirit, Jen, thanks for dropping me a line and giving such helpful info! We'll be in touch!

* and I'm going to really be a slacker blogger in the next month or so. My mental capacity is totally diminished right now and I just want to get shit done!

Winners and Dance Parties

2010-07-23T11:14:00.000-07:00

TGIF for serious, folks! And its looking like a pretty bomb weekend with fireworks and roller coasters and water parks in my near future! I love me some good Minnesota fun!

But forget that biz for now, we got a giveaway to square up!

Thanks for all your comments and thanks for the patience with my super-casual-not-quite-planned giveaway. I just felt the spirit of blog land love move me and I was all "I wanna give you stuff!" and share the love and jazz. So. Now...with the help of a random number generator (thanks interwebz!) the winner is....*drum roll*....comment number 2!

Which translates to the winner being...Lisa of CraftMyBride!

*cue music* Come on down, Lisa! You've won whatever jazz I've decided to send your way!

And readers, if you haven't yet, check out CraftMyBride - do it! Not only is this gal super adorable in a way that just makes you want to interwebz hug her, she is super de dooper crafty and clever and is just chalk full of good vibes (and love for her dude) that just wafts off the screen. Love it! The world needs more good vibes!

So Lisa, e-mail me (memyselfandbride [at] gmail.com) and we'll get your prize off and on its way!

And since it is Friday, here is a tune that I just cannot stop playing. I am totally hooked on Janelle Monae and here is another great tune from her called Many Moons. Enjoy!

Best conversation ever

2010-07-22T14:00:00.000-07:00

I still have lots of dress stress that sometimes rears its ugly head in the shape of me beating myself up with a mental sledge hammer about buying a dress that wasn't totally me and not defending my right to feel gorgeous and like myself on my wedding day... but in those moments, my beau is amazing and always manages to say the right thing.

Here was our conversation yesterday:

Me: I'm so scared!
Super cute future hubby: Of what?
Me: That we'll do our 'first look' and you'll see me in my dress and you won't like it!
SCFH: Why wouldn't I like it?
Me: I dunno...
SCFH: But you are going to be in it! and I am going to marry you in it! and its going to be GREAT!
Me: *attacks his face with kisses*

(and last reminder to go enter to win!)

Is this mean?

2010-07-22T06:23:00.000-07:00

Quick question to you, blog land:
When the party ends, who is doing the clean up for your wedding? And are you going to be there?

We were under the impression that, as the bride and groom, we get to leave when the party leaves and continue on to our after party at the bar. But my mama disagrees. When asked if she and my dad along with the mister's parents would do the cleanup and do the checkout with our venue, she got a little huffy, thinking it mean that we would bail out.

But I wanna bail out! I don't want to go running around in my wedding dress cleaning up!* And we are hoping that the tear down won't take long and won't be hard. That we can set it up so that whatever needs to go can just be chucked back into whatever box it came in and then loaded in the car.

So what do you think? Is it fair to ask that they clean up and we get to ditch out? or is that mean?

* and when I say cleaning up, I simply mean grabbing all our decorations and packing them in the cars. no scrubbing or vacuuming necessary

(and btw, go enter to win!)

Type A What!?

2010-07-21T11:54:00.000-07:00

You know things are getting good when you have lists of lists. And "make lists" is part of your to-do list! And your list of things to bring includes lists! OMG its MAdNEsS!

Naw, just kidding. Its not madness. Its pure bliss for this Type A gal! I see my lists and I breath a sigh of relief. With my list in hand, I won't forget something, everyone will know what they are supposed to be doing and when, and I will get shit done!

Here is my growing core of lists for The Wedding Day.

Timeline for the day
Things to Bring
What decorations go where
Day of Duties for all our helpers
Contact info for all relevant parties

Ahhh, so therapeutic! If lists are the saviors of my sanity, then right now the calendar is the devil. I avoid the calendar as much as possible! Getting ridiculously close to being in the same month as the wedding!? don't wanna know! don't talk to me about it! LALALALALA not listening!!

O_o

(oh. and go enter to win!)

One more day for giveaway!

2010-07-21T08:45:00.001-07:00

I'll let this giveaway go for another day because only three of you have commented to enter so far! wtf? No one likes free things? Or do I have to be more specific about what kind of free things?

Ok, here are some hints about what the prize might be...

something I like
something I think you will like

Is that helpful? No? Too bad! Here you are trying to get free things and then demanding all sorts of information from me that I don't have! geuze.

So...I may not know what the giveaway is yet, but lets just say that's because there are so many cool options that I can't choose yet. Or I may survey you to find out which option would be the best for you because I don't want to just send you stuff and then you be all "oh...well, um...thanks? Its the thought that counts?" because that would be sad. Prizes shouldn't be wasted!

Back to the Beginning!

2010-07-20T07:00:00.000-07:00

Wanna hear how I met my future hubby? Well, as with many good/bad/ugly stories, it all starts with a frat house*...

So once upon I time I was going to college. Well, kinda. I had just moved into the dorms and was going to be starting college on Tuesday. But it was Friday, so we best go out! And our dorm just so happened to be on Frat Row so we thought we'd go see what all that hubbub was about. My roomie and I are walking along the row and realizing that we are not going to get in anywhere since we aren't showing off in short skirts and hot tops with lots of cleavage. :(

But as we are walking along we come along to a frat where my roomie thinks she knows someone. As we approach we see the dunk tank they have set up in the front yard and get asked if we wanna pay three bucks to throw three balls. "Naw," I say. "I'm broke. No cash on me!" "Oh," says frat boy 1. "Well, you could just go in the dunk tank instead!" "Yes," says I. "That sounds like a great idea!" So frat boy 1 points me in the direction of super cute frat boy** (aka future hubby) to borrow some shorts so I don't have to get mine all wet. In the dunk tank I go, get dunked a few times, then the next dude hops in. I give back shorts to super cute frat boy but don't really see him much that night.

Fast forward a week later and we go back to frat house to see dude that roomie knows. I don't see super cute frat boy...sad! So we are chit chatting and then I look and BAM! Super cute frat boy is back from work! ooh, super cute frat boy is indeed super cute. Somehow we end up talking and I find out that super cute frat boy is also super nice and super down to earth and super outdoorsey! We talk, talk, talk and my roomie ends up drinking way too much and passing out in other frat boys room (no skeez involved here luckily!) I tell future hubby that I should go but that I will see him in the morning when I come to pick up passed out roomie. He says that I should just stay since it is already early morning. I ignore good judgment and say ok. So future hubby and I stay up talking until way early in the morning until future hubby then has to get up and go to work!

I go back to my dorm...spinning from a great night but not sure what to think about this. I JUST got to college! WTF!? Oh, and he is shorter than me (which isn't hard to do when I'm around six feet tall!) and I thought I'd never date anyone shorter than me. But when I told roomie that she said, "That's ok! Hes not taller than me! I'll take him!" and then I got all bristly and laid dibs on future hubby cute frat boy. Done deal.

That's our story and now super cute frat boy will become my super cute hubby in 39 days! eeeek!!!

*We love to laugh about this since neither of us fit in with frat culture at all. So two people who are so well matched to each other met in a place that suited neither of them!
**Future hubby doesn't really like it when I call him a frat boy (...sorry, baby! Does it make it better if its proceeded by 'super cute'?) He pretty much stayed there for the cheap rent. Other than that, the frats deserve most every stereotype given to them.

Reminder: go over here to win something sa-weeet!

Image from FotoRita

Shower Recap

2010-07-19T10:55:00.000-07:00

Afternoon, ladies and gents!
Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! It was a jam packed one over here in Minnesoooota! We got our best dudes their wedding duds, saw Inception (awesome!!!), went to my shower, celebrated a birthday, had some crazy storms that flooded the streets of Minneapolis, went river tubing, and then woke up very tired on this Monday morning! Phew! I need a break from my weekends.

I've been getting a lot of questions about my shower and just people asking how it went. All I can manage is to say "good!", but I feel like they want more. So after a few seconds of them staring at me I usually break and say, "Um...well, it was very showerlike! We played some games, ate some food and then everyone watched me open presents." That still doesn't seem to be an adequate answer but that is all I got!

Maybe I just feel a little awkward about being the center of attention...especially when all that means is that everyone is watching me open presents. Presents that I've already picked out, are not really going to be a surprise, and are kitchen/house stuff (which means cool but not "OMG NO WAY!" kinda cool). Presents that I feel awkward for asking for and then more awkward for opening at a party just for me. It feels super selfish and all memememememe!

I think that's the interesting part of these showers. I've done all I can to reduce the burden of gift giving for people - I've suggested gift alternatives and theme alternatives that would demand very little financially from people. I've suggested to my in-laws that the other shower doesn't even take place. But it seems that people really want to throw showers. And traditional ones with all the gifts at that! I mean, don't get me wrong - I'm not complaining. Gifts are sweet! and we are going to be high tech in our house because of all of them! But why is it that all these other people want to have these things regardless of how I've tried to tone it down?

Anyway, I did have a bunch of fun at the shower and I love my aunts to death for putting on such a nice little party for me. I was honestly just a bunch of smiles that day but halfway through opening presents I thought my face my break because I was smiling so much. At that point I had to transition from smiling full on to a really quick smile only when necessary. Otherwise my face was just too tired and ended up with a creepy half assed looking smile on. and thats no good. no good at all.

Oh, and reminder! Go comment to enter the giveaway! I swear I won't send you something stupid!

Friday Diddy

2010-07-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

I was driving along yesterday, scanning the radio and then KAPOW! Beats where like bambambam and TI was rapping and then I was dancing my ridiculous white girl dance in the car.

And the video isn't full of naked people, so I can officially like this song now! yay! Way too many songs are ruined by skeezy lyrics and even worse videos.

Have a great weekend everyone!

I'm excited for my shower tomorrow and some fun birthday action this weekend with one of my ladies of honor! Oh, and don't forget to comment for the giveaway!

75!

2010-07-15T06:15:00.001-07:00

So today's post is my 75th post on Me, Myself and Bride! Wowza!

When I started this blog, it was really just for me (selfish, jerk!) and keeping track of what was going on in my head. A weird sort of journal where I just happen to publish it online and share it with anyone who comes across it! And at the time I had this reassuring feeling that no one would come across it...so I just wrote!

Anyway, now I have some lovely blog stalkers who make up an amazing community that constantly surprises me. Seriously, this is an online community that seems to be totally void of douche bags and just full of awesomeness! Great ideas are always being passed around, great advice being offered, help given, and just a general uplifting of everyone involved.

It makes me actually feel a little bit better about the times we live in that something like this can exist!

With all those warm fuzzies taken care of, I'd like to do something today...

GIVEAWAY!
WOO!

In celebration of me not being a total lazy ass slacker and actually making it to 75 posts (I was gonna wait till 100 posts because that's a nice number, but I may show my true lazy ass slacker self before then and just vanish! :) kidding! I won't! but I couldn't wait!), I'd like to give a little gift to someone in the community. As of yet, I'm not sure what this gift might be. I have a few ideas in mind...but it is a work in progress and may partially depend on who wins!

So you wanna win, right? Because I guarantee I'll make the prize worthwhile. Ok, heres how to win... First, pat your head and rub your belly at the same time...and then spin in a few circles...and then share this blog with everyone you know...and then name your first born child after me...ok, no really. To be entered simply leave a comment and tell me about some wedding magic. Has wedding magic happened to you? Is there some wedding magic you are hoping for? And if you don't have or don't want wedding magic, just tell me something nice. (because the world can always use more compliments!) I'll select the winner at random.

I'll let this run until next week - so submit your official entry by then!

Peace,
Jen

SO busy! but heres a ramble about photos!

2010-07-14T06:49:00.001-07:00

I am so blown right now! Like, I can hardly do anything at work because my brain is so full of other stuff! Just went to a wedding over the weekend, got our engagement photos done, going to check out flowers today, my second dress fitting tomorrow, my first shower this Saturday (yay!), friends birthday also on Saturday/Sunday, and amongst this trying to be productive and checking things off our list. (damn that list! damn it to hell!)

I am not made for being so busy and am generally more on the lazy side of life. So I'm totally bamboozled by my schedule at the moment!

So for today's post, I simply have a ramble about our e-session and photographer:

To begin: engagement photos were so fun! and I'm so glad we did them! It was great to get to know our photographer (awesome) and also to kinda get used to being photographed. It helped that, for our first shoot location, we choose the busiest place ever to get over our photo nerves...the sunday farmer's market on Lyndale in Minneapolis!

Both of us love food and are committed to eating as sustainably as we can - so the farmer's market was a good fit for us. Also, I just thought there would be some fun, unique shots to be had there! So we walked around, browsed food, and actually did some shopping!

I'm super excited to see our photos! I try not to think about it otherwise I get all giddy...but she said they probably won't be ready for two weeks or so since she is out of town this week.

Oh, and this 'she' is Chelsey Marie of Chelsey Marie Photography! And now that I think about it, I can't believe I haven't talked about her! Maybe cuz I was holding my breath and not wanting to jinx it....which I still kinda am. We haven't seen the photos yet...but I just am feeling so happy with her already that I can't wait!

Once upon a time I was shopping for photographers. And holy crap are there a lot of them. A lot of really great photographers with amazing portfolios that just made me drool all over myself. But holy crap are they expensive. There was one, a couple with their own photo biz, who I just adored. Kage Imagery - check em out! Awesome photos and they seem like super awesome people! I really wished I could afford them...but alas, I'm a cheap ass. I had been in communications with them previously, and so when I finally gave in to the fact that I was a cheap ass I told them very nicely that I love their stuff, wished we could work together...but I'm a cheap ass. Then I asked if they had any recommendations of photographers to fit my cheap ass budget. They sent me two names - one of which was Chelsey Marie Photography.

Chelsey was exactly what I was hoping for! Someone with some great photos in her portfolio but just starting her own biz. We were actually the first wedding she ever booked under her own biz! This all means that we get an AMAZING deal that includes the works! Gah! (I guess I have gotten some wedding magic, because I feel super lucky to have found her and nabbed her while she is cheap! I guarantee that her prices will start to climb sooner than later.)

So I can't wait to see our photos! And if you haven't noticed yet...I've been keeping this blog mostly anonymous and haven't really shown full photos of us. Dunno why...just have. But I may just get super excited with our photos and not be able to hide our real identities any longer! We'll see.... :)

Wow - what a weekend!

2010-07-12T13:48:00.000-07:00

OMG, kids! This last weekend was crazy! I was in a wedding on Saturday...so both Friday and Saturday were non stop wedding stuff. Then I got my hair cut on Sunday and then we went and did our engagement photos and then I wanted to zonk like Sleeping Beauty and not wake up for a million hours.

So many thoughts to talk about! So little brain energy to do it! But I do want to try and share some things today, let you know I'm still alive, and I still love you all!

The wedding on Saturday was that of my college roomate. It was big, traditional, and Catholic. There were all the standard traditions of a wedding - papa walked her down the aisle, she threw a bouquet, did the dollar dance, cut the cake, wore a white dress, did traditional vows, played all the usual suspect songs, etc etc and so on. And it was beautiful!

Their families are wonderful and even though I barely new anyone at the wedding, I felt very welcomed by everyone! People danced all night long. The couple took every chance they had to attack each other with their tongues. Everyone was smiling and laughing all night!

So in the end, it is completely true what we keep telling ourselves: the attitude is what matters most. Their love shone through and their family and friends made the day the wonderful day that it was. I didn't notice any major unique aspects that were there to tell me who the couple really was. I did not see their personality through the centerpieces. or whatever. But it didn't matter in the end. It was a beautiful wedding for two beautiful people!

But there were some things that I noticed and would like to share:

Surround yourself with positive people the day of. I noticed a few people trying to make a big deal out of things that were not a big deal. The bride was nice and chill but a lot of other people were not. One flower in our bouquets was wilting and dropping out of the bouquet. Yeah, not the greatest thing ever. But no biggie. They were going to make it down the aisle and that's all we needed. But a few people were making a point to complain about it and try to paint it as this horrible thing that was happening. We all have friends or family who are a bit drama prone... buffer yourself from these people as much as possible!
Even at this Catholic wedding, there was some serious tonging going on. Don't be too obnoxious, but don't be too shy! This is probably one of the few times when PDA is actually encouraged by other people - take advantage of it.
Its hard to wait. We had lots of time where the bride was just waiting. While other people had their hair done, waiting for photography time, waiting for the ceremony to start... and it drove her crazy! That was the only point where I saw her anxiety show. Take this into account and give yourself distractions, limit waiting time, mingle before the ceremony or whatever!

Those are my wedding tidbits for now!

Peace,
Jen

Friday Slow Dance and 50 days!

2010-07-09T08:07:00.000-07:00

Happy Friday!
I'm gonna be quick in and out today. But I wanted to bring you a good slow dance song. I love the lyrics and think this song is adorable. Plus, what a cute video!

Its First Day of My Life by Bright Eyes

Peace all! Have a good weekend!

I'm hoping to have some good stories to bring back. Tomorrow I am in a friends wedding - the first I've been to since planning our own! - and then on Sunday we have our engagement session! WOO!

It busy busy around here as we count down! Did you know that our wedding is 50 days away!? FIFTY! That is SO SOON! And I'm definitely stressing. I had a wicked wedding worry nightmare last night, so that was exciting.

Ok, I'm gonna go before this short post turns into a weird and long ramble.

Peace,
Jen

I FOUND IT!

2010-07-06T19:51:00.000-07:00

SSHHHH!!

Stealth mode, ladies and gents!

Because I've found it.

The mother ship. The heart of the beast! The source of ridiculousness!

THE WIC!!!

What geniuses they are. Choosing a crappy run down building in St. Paul posing as a government building. I would never have suspected! But as we were applying for our marriage license, I spotted them!

So heres the plan! We all get a bunch of ski masks and stink bombs and tacky wedding bell decorations and cheap tafetta and homemade dresses and and non matching colors and cupcakes (since those are soooo two years ago) and when they are least expecting it... WE ATTACK!!!

KABLAMO!

We'll turn WIC headquarters into Tacky McTackerton Central! They'll never recover! Not even Queen Bee M. Stew will be able to coordinate the mess we give em!

FLAWLESS PLAN!!!!!

(And in other news, I need more sleep.)

Friday Favorite

2010-07-02T08:00:00.000-07:00

I almost forgot about a song for today! How could I!

So if you are putting together a playlist for your DIY dance party, chances are your main concern is about having a good mix that will get all the variety of guests dancing. Its a tricky thing to do!

I've got lots of pop and hip hop...but I'm guessing a lot of our older guests are not gonna get excited when Missy Elliot starts bumping. (Their loss!) But then, when I go to pull some songs for those guests....I just end up with lots of Frank Sinatra and Van Morrison. Don't get me wrong, those fellas got some great stuff! But there is only so much of them that I can play!

Well, I found a good comprimise: covers! yay! So I've been checking out covers of some of my favorite old school tunes and I think this is a great way to keep some of the classic songs in there (how many weddings have you been at without Sinatra? huh? none? yeah, me too) while also keeping it maybe a little bit fresher.

The favorite one I found, and the one I have for you today, is a cover of The Way You Look Tonight by Maroon 5. Still the same song, but a little fresher!

Happy Friday all!
Now, go celebrate your independence this weekend by blowing sh*t up, drinking lots, and getting burnt in the sun! WOOO! God bless Amurrica!!!

My decision gone wrong

2010-07-02T06:27:00.001-07:00

Yesterday's post was a bit cryptic and left a few of your wondering. I've mulled it over in my mind a lot, have arrived at a good place, and can better share it today. So here goes!

I regret buying my dress.

I was rushed in the process and just went for the best option I had which happened to look nothing like the dress I was hoping for. Its long. Its big. Its bridal. I wanted short, simple, and fun. I wanted the dress that, when I showed it to my will be in-laws their first reaction was "thats not a wedding dress"! Not quite what I wanted to hear, but I suppose it was true - I didn't want a wedding dress. I wanted a dress to wear to my wedding. Big difference in my book.

So after being rushed into buying a dress, I was immediately consumed with dress stress. It involved crying, nightmares, many talks, many back and forth fretting... it was icky. I really tried to love my dress. Everyone told me how great it looks on me. Blah blah blah. But when its not me, its not me and there is no compliment big enough to change that.

Through all this, I knew in my heart of hearts that this dress wasn't "my" dress. And all the stressing over it and berating myself for buying in the first place just made me start resenting my dress. It made me feel dread for the wedding day when I'd have to put it on and I'd walk out and everyone would look at me. Because you know there is always that one big moment at a wedding where everyone is thinking the same thing: what does the dress look like? I came up with the plan to mingle before our ceremony to both reduce my stress and reduce that big reveal moment.

Anyway, all this to say that I don't really like my dress. It doesn't sing to me. I'm not excited to wear it.

Bummer, huh?

Well, here I am two months before our wedding and no magic has happened where a great alternate dress has fallen out of the sky for me. I've lazily looked for an alternate, but to no avail. So where does that leave me? With the dress I have. Until some magic happens.

The way I'm looking at it now is this: I have a dress that people are going to ooh and aah over. I'll look great. I just may not feel like the totally me bride I wanna feel like. Whatever. Its a dress. Its a day. And my mister loves me. So I'm going to suck it up and wear the damn thing.

I will be keeping an eye open for an alternate dress, but I'm not going to stress myself out about it. Hardcore, desperate searches for a new dress only make me resent my dress more. So I'm going to stick with what I have unless I happen to come across something better. I'm going to let the universe's mojo flow. Maybe the universe will be kind to me and send me something pretty or maybe it won't. Either way, I'm letting it go.

I don't have my dream dress and I'm fully admitting that I made a bad decision to buy my dress. But whatever. It sucks but perhaps in the end it won't matter all that much.

So. That's my decision gone wrong: the dress! Thanks for listening, blog land!
Jen

Image via Brit.

What do with with a wedding decision gone wrong?

2010-07-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

I was going to write a post on this today...and then I realized I shouldn't. I have a wedding decision gone wrong, but I am not sure yet what exactly I'm going to do about it! So instead of me saying blah blah thoughts blah blah ramble, this is more of an open discussion.

Have you made a decision for your wedding that you regret?
What (if anything) have you or are you going to do about it?
General advice?

Note: There are a ton of decisions that I fret over. But only one where I know I should have done something different and want to change it. Possibly more to come on this in the future.

On a "Green" Wedding

2010-06-30T14:00:00.000-07:00

For some reason, our wedding has been labeled 'green' by everyone. Everyone, that is, except us. We aren't trying to be 'green' or 'sustainable' or have an 'eco-friendly' anything. We are trying to apply our normal morals to our wedding, though, and that does include being environmentally conscious.

Plus, I have some serious issues with the words "green" or anything that's called "eco-this" or that is billed as sustainable. I could write frickin novel on my issues with these words and what they have come to mean. First, its super trendy and cool to be green. But a lot of times that doesn't mean actually trying to be environmentally conscious. A lot of times it means buying into new things. Ex: Nalgenes and Sigg water bottles are green in the sense that you don't use water bottles. But how many have you bought, lost, ruined by leaving tea in them over the weekend and not being able to get the nastastic smell out or tried to test the myth that nalgenes are indestructible and had to get a new one? In other words, if you buy enough reusable bottles the 'green' value of them is eventually lost.

Second, a lot of things labeled as green, or eco or sustainable are not. Its just another selling point with too little regulation on who can use those words and how they can be used.* And often too little thought into what sustainability means. Fun story: A boycott was created to boycott any and all products coming from the rainforest. The group was trying to save the rainforest. But by removing the opportunity for people to have income from the rainforest, their alternative was the slash/burn and then farm the land. Not thought through very well.

Third, we need a new way of thinking about the 'environment' and our relationship to it. We are part of the environment. We are not some evil force that needs to be separated and removed from the environment to save it. These key words all link to a separation of humans from the environment - which is false. Being 'eco-friendly' is being 'human-friendly'. The lesson of this is that us changing the environment does not have to mean bad things. The current model of environmentalism is all about reducing our impact. In this model, the goal is zero impact. But that is not going to happen. We have always changed and will always change the environment because we exist. and thats ok. We just have to change it in a different direction.**

That's my rant on environmentalism.***

As far as weddings and specifically our wedding being labeled green, I try to avoid it as much as possible. We are doing what we can and what we have thought of to be conscious of our decisions and their environmental impact. Have we succeeded? I don't know. We could definitely have done more. Actually, not having a wedding at all is way more sustainable than having a wedding. But thats not realistic and I DO NOT think being sustainable has to mean giving up everything.

Sustainability is hard. Its not cheap. And can take a lot of effort and thought. But that is because right now, the current unsustainable system is backed by heavy federal dollars, lots of lobbying, and lots of crazy American culture. Our personal choices make a difference, but large scale change needs to occur for us to truly change the direction that we are going.

In the meantime, we are each finding where our line is. What effort, what cost are we willing or able to give to be a better citizen of the environment? How much change are we willing or able go through to change the way we interact with the environment? Because we don't know where the line between sustainable and unsustainable is. We are all feeling it out our own lines on our own terms.

*Side rant: why should the responsible parties be forced to add the adjective. I think those causing the problems should be given the burden of adjectives. So then you'd see labels such as "Industrial Beef!" "Pure toxic cleaner!" and the 'organic' options can just become the norm. No adjective needed.
**Want an awesome, perspective changing read? Check out this book.
***Who was an Environment and Natural Resource major? Me!

Image via mclcbooks and since this is a wedding blog I put a green flower that we will have at our wedding on my post about being green. so clever...

I wanna be perty!

2010-06-30T07:13:00.000-07:00

One of the things on my list of to dos is to go browse the beauty section at Target Boutique. I'm thinking of a cleanser, some whitener for my pearl yellows, spiffy eye shadow, foundation, and waterproof mascara.

But why? My daily beauty routine is to rinse my face off. That's it. Maybe moisturize. And then when I'm going out and want to feel fancy I throw on some mascara, a little eye liner and a touch of eye shadow. Very minimal. With the wedding looming, though, I feel like I need to do something special for that day.

I am going to talk to my friend who does magic with makeup and try to find some extremely minimal products to give me a little shining up on the day of...but I want to make sure to look like my normal self. Just a really great version of my normal self!

So less products...more natural beauty! To help enhance my natural beauty, I'm trying to remember a few instant beauty tricks:

Smile! This is the quickest, easiest, bestest way to bring out your natural beauty. Plus, its contagious! So you will be helping to make everyone else beautiful as well! Aren't you nice!
Stand up straight! Again, super quick and easy and will immediately improve your look.
Arms off your sides! Many of us are worried about the dreaded fat arm photos. Its a hard problem to avoid. But instead of trying to lose enough weight to take arm flab off and then buff up arms to look toned (even though women develop muscle in a way that looks like fat anyway...sucks), I say just learn your angles and keep your arms off your sides instead! That will keep them from squishing against your side and looking mondo sized!
Be confident! Look in the dictionary because confidence and beauty are side by side. They pretty much mean the same thing. So laugh, smile, be yourself and know that you rock!

Thats it. You just read the secrets to beauty! Great, huh? No more need for magazines or commercials telling you all the stuff you need to be beautiful - cuz you already got it! WIN!

Image via sushla

60 days away!

2010-06-29T06:42:00.000-07:00

Woah, kiddos! Our wedding is only 60 days away! Time is just cruising away! And there is so much left to do! I really do need to kick in gear and get some stuff done... so here is my To Do List for the next week or so.

Finish making the pom pom garlands (and write a DIY post about it!)
Get my hair cut and talk with the lady about styling the day of. (I'm not going to have any styling done per se - just washed, blown out, and made delicious with all their nummy aveda products! mmmm....aveda....)
Decide what is going to hang from our tree limb where the ceremony is taking place and buy any necessary items (lanterns, ribbon, etc)
Buy fabrics and material to make my flower for on the dress and in my hair
Do trial run of flower making
Visit the flower supplier and pick out flowers. place order? (totally leaning on my aunt here. I have no idea what to do with flowers!)
Add more music to our playlists
Work on writing our ceremony more

Ok, I'll stop there before I get overwhelmed! Because instead of being more productive when there is a ton to do, I get overwhelmed and shut down. No good!

At least there is a long weekend coming up where we can get some stuff done but also have some free time to relax and play in the (hopefully) sunshine! This pasty Minnesotan needs some vitamin D hardcore!

More of the Ushy Gushy stuff

2010-06-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

Angie over at One Cat Per Person wrote about that one big topic the other day. Yup, its love, folks! I wrote a little bit about love, she wrote a little bit about love, Meg writes a lot bit about love... ok, everyone writes about love. Cuz come on! Its LOVE for crying out loud!

But before we get going, can I first just say that love is the best? Really. Its amazing. And I hope we never fully understand it and that it remains this wonderful mystery that we are always writing songs/poems/blog posts about.

Love means so many different things to different people. And to the same person it can mean different things at different times. Its this slippery little bugger that just won't sit still and won't be boxed in. Plus, our cultural notions of love have evolved over time and are still evolving. All this to say, omg, love is huge and amazing and crazy and powerful. I can't even touch such a subject, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to try.

Because we are starting to write our ceremony and I'm starting to form my vows in my head. So what do I want to say in those vows about love? What do we want our ceremony to feel like? What readings do we want to include?

I'm trying to balance my need for honesty (aka sounding like a downer) and my need to have a meaningful, thoughtful ceremony that is going to have people passing those tissues! (It is literally one of my goals to make everybody cry. And laugh and smile and think, too. But cry. Is that mean or whats with that?)

So far, here are some key thoughts that we want to focus our ceremony on:

The idea that we've been together for a long time already (will be 6 years!) and are solidifying a commitment to each other and that we will continue to grow together.
The family and community that helped make us who we are is now needed to continue supporting us as we form our new 'baby family' together.
That a wedding does not make a marriage. Lots of hard work and love make a marriage.
That we love each other! Yay! And that love is, indeed, the best.

I've been browsing tons of poems, stories, essays, quotes, anything really to try and find some delicious readings for our wedding. The following are some that I've pulled together that I enjoy. I'm sure you've seen some of these before but hopefully there is something new in here.

When you love someone, you do not love them all the time in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility, it is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity, in freedom. In the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting as it is now. For relationships, too, must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits - islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides. One must accept the security of the winged life, of the ebb and flow of intermittency.
-Anne Morrow Lindbergh

But ultimately there comes a moment when a decision must be made. Ultimately two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take. It is indeed a fearful gamble. Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature.

To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take.If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation. It takes a lifetime to learn another person. When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected.
- excerpt from The Irrational Season, Madeleine L'Engle

To love very much is to love inadequately: We love- That is all.
Love cannot be modified without being nullified.
Love is a short word but it contains everything.
Love means the body, the soul, the life, the entire being.
We feel love as we feel the warmth of our blood, we breathe love as we breathe the air, we hold it in ourselves as we hold our thoughts.
Nothing more exists for us.
Love is not a word.
It is a wordless state indicated by four letters.
- Guy De Maupassant

We may include an excerpt from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Its chapter 21 where the little prince and the fox discuss what ‘tamed’ means. Its a cute story with a cute message and cute characters...and something else cute too, I'm sure! We'll edit it down to be a bit shorter, but with the same gist.

Finally, have you all seen the ceremony that Peonies and Polaroid’s wrote? Magic. Just beautiful magic. And I’m pretty sure we are going to take a lot of inspiration from their ceremony.

Specifically, I’m in love with these three sections:

Throughout time countless millions of people from many cultures, religions and societies have gathered among friends and families to celebrate their love for one and other and their commitment to each other. Each culture has symbols and rituals to celebrate marriage from the Japanese tea ceremony to the Jewish tradition of breaking the glass, a rich tapestry of traditions from around the world combine to symbolise the meaning of marriage. And today we should try to remember that a wedding is a symbol, a beautiful, heartfelt and meaningful symbol but a symbol nonetheless. This ceremony is not magic, it will not create a relationship that does not already exist and has not already been celebrated in all the commitments The Boy and Peonies have made to each other, both large and small, in the days since they first met and recognized their connection to one another. It is a symbol of how far they have come together and a symbol of the promise that they will make to each other to continue to live their lives together and to love each other solely and above all others.

……………

Peonies and The Boy, the symbolic vows that you are about to make are a way of saying to one another, “You know all those things we’ve promised and hoped and dreamed- well, I meant it all, every word.” Look at one another and remember this moment in time. Before this moment you have been many things to one another- acquaintance, friend, companion, lover, dancing partner, and even teacher, for you have learned much from one another in these last few years. Now you shall say a few words that take you across a threshold of life, and things will never quite be the same between you. For after these vows, you shall say to the world, this - is my husband, this - is my wife.

……………

No one but you can declare yourselves married. You have begun it here today in speaking your vows before your family and friends and you will do it again in the days and years to come, standing by each other, sharing all the sweet and the bitter of life. Each tender act, each loving word will be the declaration of what was made here today.

Phew! Whole lotta realistic, yet ushy gushy love going on! Ya?

Peace, all!
Jen

Friday POP!

2010-06-25T06:35:00.000-07:00

Oh, Friday, I love you! Just having you here makes me feel so much better!

Today I got some lovey, poppy feelings going on where I just wanna snuggle and tickle and giggle and feel care free! With that in mind, I've got a song with so much pop you'll think you were actually chewing bubblegum. Add on top of that the 'ouch' factor of bad 90's hair and fashion, enthusiastic boy band dances, cheesy acting, and cheesier lyrics and we've got a classic, folks!

I give to you: Color Me Badd singing All for Love! WOO! Hit it, boys!

Color Me Badd @ Yahoo! Video

Deadline: Wedding Day

2010-06-23T18:00:00.000-07:00

I just got a quick little thought that has been playing around in my head about the wedding date that is zooming closer and closer (a little over two months!?!? AH!)

I used to feel like the wedding was a big deadline. Like, forget all the actual wedding stuff. I saw the wedding as a deadline for me to become awesome. To become the full version of myself. To be the strong individual I was intended to be. Or whatever. For some reason I thought this all had to happen by the time I got married.

I think its because of the idea that you shouldn't be with someone until you know yourself first. Which I think can be true and is good advice - definitely know yourself first because it makes knowing someone else intimately and them knowing you intimately so much easier! But life doesn't really work like that all the time.

I met my future husband when I was 18 and he was 22. wowza, huh? almost six years later (can you do math and figure out how old I am? I hope you can!) we are getting married. Now, do I wish we had met when I was just a wee bit older? yes. I totally could have used some more growing up time on my own. There is only so much developing you can do by 18. But we met when we did and can't change that. And I definitely knew he was a good catch and did not want to pass up on such a great guy.

So we've had a long relationship with me growing up a lot (both of us growing up a lot, really) within this relationship. That is going to happen regardless. Relationships make you grow up and grow together. I just happened to have lots more growing up to do since I was just a wee little one when we met!

Anyway. Whatever gave me this idea that I had to be my all-star self before getting married? Whatever gave me the idea that I could reach my all-star self so early at all? I dunno. But I've definitely learned that I am going to be growing up for a long, long time. Until I'm dead, in fact. So this wedding deadline that I had in my head is silly.

More than that, I've learned that this other person I've chosen, he helps me grow in ways that I never could grow on my own. He challenges me and makes me confront aspects of myself that sometimes I would rather not. Plus, I like the challenge of trying to grow as my own individual person while at the same time growing as a couple. :)

The wedding date has started to look less and less like a deadline and more and more like a kicking off point of a new joint partnership that will bring both of us higher.

And I can't wait!

WTF

2010-06-23T08:52:00.000-07:00

Hey all. I'm going to be a bit MIA around here - I'm trying to get a lot of stuff done and need to step back from blog land to help me get it done.

But I had to share this today.

I don't know what to say anymore about this damn oil disaster. It makes me so angry and so sad and really doubtful about our future. Everyone is pointing fingers and trying to shake off blame when in the end I think we are all to blame.

That's all I got today.

Necklace!

2010-06-21T09:37:00.000-07:00

Oh! I'm so excited! I had some serious thoughts to share today but they were completely wiped out by a nice little package that came in the mail for me! A necklace! WEE!!

Some of you may remember a post a while back about necklaces and other accessories. I wanted to add some color (green specifically) to my outfit and searched and searched through tons of necklaces. Lots of pretty stuff out there! But I was looking for something very specific.

In the end, I have actually purchased two candidates for my wedding necklace. And I'm going to keep both because I love them both. But I just got the second one today and I'm so happy with it and so excited that it turned out just like I hoped! Check it out!

Gorgeous, right!?!? and the absolute perfect green!

So here is how it went: I bought this string of bright green pearls
to have something classic (string of pearls) that was still fun and me (green). I get the pearls and they are beautiful, the perfect color, and just like described on the etsy listing, but it turns out sometimes I suck at reading the details of said listings and they are really small. Smaller than I expected. In other words, they don't provide the POW or impact I was hoping and instead looked kinda like a child's string of beads. So I was bummed out.

I continue my search for perrty necklaces and come across this beautiful and unique necklace on this amazing etsy shop by Galit Barak. She is awesome and agreed to incorporate my beautiful green little pearls into one of her beautiful crochet silver necklaces. I sent my little pearls all the way over to Israel, she worked her magic, and the necklace turned out better than I could have expected - its, dare I say, perfect!

Major thanks to Galit for wonderful work and for being such a doll to work with! Definitely check out her super unique jewelery - its like nothing I've ever seen before!

Friday Fine and Dandy

2010-06-18T07:30:00.000-07:00

Happy Friday! And it couldn't have come soon enough! I was convinced (multiple times) that yesterday was Friday. Severely disappointing (multiple times) to find out it was not!

Anyway, as with every Friday, I got a tune for you!

There has been a lot of talk in blog land among those of us who are doing our own dance music about how hard it is to put together a versatile playlist to make a wide range of people happy. We have tons of fresh dance music on our playlist, but its mostly comprised of hip hop, club mixes and slightly techno stuff. Not quite the best to get Grandma groovin.

Plus, we are trying to stick mainly to songs that people know. Yeah, this means cutting out a lot of the quirky music that we love, but we want people to dance...not just us! And people like to dance to stuff they know! So lately I've been exploring some older music, some more slow songs (because I don't know any good slow dance songs apparently), and trying to get some variety.

So for this Friday, I'm playing an old classic and a great slow dance song. By none other than Van Morrison. This dude's got some amazing songs and I'm sure a few will make it into our playlist. For today: Someone Like You

Romantic, not too cheesy, has a nice sway, and Van's smooth voice. Enjoy!

Pimples!!!

2010-06-17T12:32:00.000-07:00

OMG, guys, I've got pimples. Like everywhere. They are little baby ones but they are finding strength in numbers!!! AAH!!! I dunno what to do!

See, I've never really had any acne problems or ever really gotten pimples (yeah, boo hoo me, I know) so now I am completely lost! And freaking out that I'm going to be a pimply mess on the wedding day! Of course stress is probably a factor, so freaking out doesn't help... but I'm freaking out.*

Should I find a cleanser? Figure out a new face routine? Go meditate? Buy foundation? (yeah, I don't own any) Call an exorcist? Or just eat this nummy chocolate that I happen to have in front of me...? We'll try the chocolate since its the closest possible solution to me at the moment.

Speaking of, have you ever had Chocolove XOXO num num bars? They are my FAV! I almost always have a dark chocolate and raspberries one stashed away. And not only are they delicious, but they come with super amazing love poems inside the wrapper! Its like a delicious lover serenading you and your taste buds at the same time!

Wanna read mine today? Here it is:

Meeting At Night

The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

Robert Browning

Yeah, I don't really get it. But I love them because they are usually really cheezy and just plain epic sounding love poems! Hearts flutter and chests pound and yadda yadda epicness.

Well, I ate the entire bar. Heres hoping that is enough to clear up my pimple army!

Cheers,
Jen

*only mildly. I'm just being dramatic.

Awesome pimple art via ambird

Bitchy Bride and the Bridal Veto

2010-06-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

I was having a discussion yesterday with an unfortunate bride who is having serious mother-in-law issues. Her MIL issues make me feel like my MIL is a little cherub angel sprinkling dust and fancy on us and playing the harp. I was trying to think of helpful advice but was coming up pretty short. Its a shitty situation and shitty to deal with and there is only so much that we can do to make it better. (Keep with it, dear! Sending good karma your way!)

But one thing did stick out in my mind. She mentioned feeling "bitchy" when dealing with her tough MIL.

First, I want to talk a tiny, little bit about that word: bitch.

What a word, huh? Lots of history, lots of cultural meaning, lots of changes and attempts to reclaim it recently. But to being with, I'm going to borrow from an article that Andi Zeisler, co-founder of Bitch magazine, wrote for the Washington Post. She wrote:

Bitch is a word we use culturally to describe any woman who is strong, angry, uncompromising and, often, uninterested in pleasing men. We use the term for a woman on the street who doesn't respond to men's catcalls or smile when they say, "Cheer up, baby, it can't be that bad." We use it for the woman who has a better job than a man and doesn't apologize for it. We use it for the woman who doesn't back down from a confrontation.

So let's not be disingenuous. Is it a bad word? Of course it is. As a culture, we've done everything possible to make sure of that, starting with a constantly perpetuated mindset that deems powerful women to be scary, angry and, of course, unfeminine -- and sees uncompromising speech by women as anathema to a tidy, well-run world.

Whenever I hear that word, I have the feeling of silencing. Its one of the many ways our culture tells women to quiet down. To not be so strong. Not be seen or heard so much. Not to make so many waves.

Sure, sometimes people are actually being bitchy (aka jerks), but I'd say most of the time when I hear that word, it is simply being used on a female who is not playing along with prescribed gender roles that say women should be quiet, soft, gentle, forgiving, please others, passive, or whatever other bullcrap. Women are bitches when they act like men and that is dangerous territory that makes patriarchy very uncomfortable. So how handy to have a nice little word to shut down those types of unruly women!

And how well it has stuck. I know for myself personally that I often feel wary of being bitchy. At work when I need to get something from someone and they aren't getting it done... or while planning a wedding and dealing with demanding family members. I'm always aware that I may be stepping out of the "soft, gentle, passive, feminine" realm and into the "bitchy" realm and I tread lightly. No one wants to be labeled a bitch, but I definitely do not want to live my life in a passive manner either.

I'm still learning how to navigate this issue for all the variety of situations*, but I wanted to share a nice little method I've come up with to avoid feeling bitchy (and hopefully to avoid being labeled bitchy) while wedding planning.

I call it my Bridal Veto. Unsolicited advice that just won't quit? Bridal veto! Way too many varying and stubborn opinions? Bridal veto!

On almost every wedding decision, we've had differing opinions from both our parents. I always try to be gentle first and let them down easy, but often that just isn't enough. They start debating and arguing - and I start trying to debate back, giving them all our justifications, reasoning, or whatever defense I can throw at em. At a certain point, though, debate has to stop and decisions have to be made, and sometimes things just aren't up for debate at all.

That's when we need to be able to say no and stop worrying about being bitchy.** Saying "Bridal veto!" is one way I've found to remind others that hey! I'm the bride! This is our wedding! and we get the final say! Thanks for your ideas, input and suggestions, but you have all been denied by the Bridal Veto.

And so far everyone has responded to Bridal Vetos way better than just me laying down the law. ... What am I going to do after the wedding when my Bridal Veto has run out!? Actually deal with people!? WHA!?

Peace out, holmes.

Jen

*It doesn't help that Minnesotans are notoriously passive anyway. We are always saying kinda, sorta, maybe, I think and never giving full, firm statements that may get us in trouble later. Some call it Minnesota Nice, but its I kinda think its maybe, sorta Minnesota Passive.

**Its silly that we should feel bitchy for taking control of our own weddings. That is not fair to put on ourselves.

Image via superbomba

Defending your own

2010-06-15T07:01:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I came home to see my mister on the phone. After a few seconds observing, I knew it was with his mother. I sat down to start putting our stamps on our invites (SQUEE!!) and heard this, "No, that's actually the opposite. Blogs have helped her deal with the wedding in a good way. Its the other mainstream sites and magazines that were driving her crazy!"

Apparently my mother in law thought I should stop reading blogs. She couldn't understand why I read them so much and thought they were bad for me.*

This made my defensive hairs stand up and I wanted to grab the phone and defend all you thoughtful ladies in the really amazing community and defend myself from such allegations... but I didn't have to.

The mister went on to describe (and very well, might I add) how there are so few good resources out there for brides. How the first wedding resources you find are insidious pooh heads that have no heart and no soul and just make brides feel bad about how ugly their wedding is going to be unless they include one of the latest "hot color combos" or have a "stylish theme"! Or how they have to put on a show to "wow your wedding guests"!**

Ok, he didn't get into that much detail, because I'm pretty sure hes actually never looked at The Knot or Martha Stewart Weddings or any other general WIC thing. But anyway.

In this conversation that I came home to yesterday, he defended me and my blogs. He also defended our so far limited inclusion of his family in the planning process AND he defended our choices for our guest list.*** Good job, baby!

I was so proud and so happy! First of all, he does an amazing job of moderating between his mother and I. I know he is on my team and prioritizes us as a couple and as a new forming family first. This is not the first time and probably won't be the last time that we have to deal with in-law issues, so its such an amazing relief that we are on the same page and can effectively deal with these issues. He naturally followed Lisa's advice from A Practical Wedding post that in dealing with in-laws,

The most important thing is that,

1. your partner is on your side.
2. your partner navigates.

When he got off the phone, I pounced him and attacked him with a million kisses and much praise for his wonderful dealings with his mom and not making me deal with it.

That's my story for the day.

Jen

*I will agree that at some point, even reading blogs gets to be too much. I've learned to limit what I read and to stay away from the ones that make me feel our wedding is inadequate in any way. I'm passed gathering 'inspiration' for the most part and just want to crank this thing out. The blogs now are serving as just a great social community to share with and connect to.
** Burn in hell, Knot! I hate you! ok...just a little venting...
*** Apparently his mama had a lot to get off her chest!

Invites? Check!

2010-06-14T06:40:00.000-07:00

They are IN! Printed, done and beautiful!

Many thanks to my wonderful, designer cousin who was our friendor for these (or "cousinor"? "cousindor"? Naw, those sound weird.) She both designed and printed our invites for us (hello sweet deals working in a print shop!) and I couldn't be happier! They look nice and happy and cheery and like a little party is going to happen under those two trees!

Check em out!
This is what they would look like when you pull them out of the envelope. All three (invite, RSVP postcard and directions) are standard postcard size - 6x4 - and are bundled with simple paper wraps (the blue strip).

Then we got the full invite with our info blobbed out:
The RSVP card and the mailing label side of the RSVP card:

I'm so excited to grab some stamps today, finish bundling little packages, get someone with nice handwriting to address them (my mom says if I address them they won't get there...sad...) or figure out how to print on the envelopes maybe, and send them out! Then I'm gonna grab that red pen and go check crazy on our to-do list! bam! bam! BAM!

WOO! I love productivity!

Hopefully this productivity high can carry me further down our to-do list that is hanging and taunting us on the wall. Our list is such a wienie head.

Peace, kiddos!
Jen

Friday Felicity

2010-06-11T07:39:00.000-07:00

Happy Friday, friends! I have a great band and a great song and a great video to share on this Friday. While I'm at it, I'm going to make this another double. Because its Sigur Ros and they are magic in my ear. The songs for today: Hippipolla and Glosoli.

The songs alone are great, with such emotion in them, but then add some beautiful story telling in the videos and they just capture me completely. Good luck not getting lost in these. Oh, and can I just say how cute all the people are in these? Both the adorable elderly and the adorable children. Loves it.

Sigur Ros has a special place in my heart. They make up a significant portion of the soundtrack to the beginning of our relationship when we would stay up late together listening. Often not talking much, just letting the music speak for itself. We were just enthralled with each other and happy enough staring into each others eyes.

This was also when I saw that certain look start to come across his face. I'd ask, as innocently as I could, "Whatcha thinkin?" and he'd say, "Oh, just enjoying the music" with a little shy smile. But I knew what he wanted to say was "I love you".*

So thats what I think of when I listen to Sigur Ros. I'm also hoping to find an appropriate song from them to have our first dance too.** Their music is just pure emotion and I'd love to think of both of our 'beginnings' when I hear them: the beginning of our relationship and the beginning of our marriage.***

See you next week!
Jen

*all together now! "Aawwwww"
**any suggestions? The tricky part is knowing what they are singing about - I'd like to avoid sad lyrics. Also, a lot of their songs start really quiet and then built into a crazy crescendo and aren't quite the typical pace for a slow dance. Maybe I just have to expand my dance song boundaries?
***Again! "Aawwwww"

Ushy Gushy (or lack there of)

2010-06-10T06:59:00.000-07:00

I was reading Another Damn Wedding's post on music and cheesy love songs today (totally agree, Lyn!) and it reminded me (in a back asswards kind of way) of a post I wanted to write. So here goes, kiddos. Beware of tangents and blabbering!

I just recently finished reading Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert and I would love to do a full book review of that, but I just don't know how. She brought up so many great issues that I fear I'd babble on and on and on and couldn't stop. Also, I flew through that book! So I'd like to read it again and process it a bit more before trying to put together something meaningful to say.

But I do want to touch on one topic: love. (yeah, ok, just the biggest topic EVER!)

Gilbert pretty much says that love is a horrible reason to get married and I am going to go ahead and agree with her. Love is flimsy. Love is changing. Love is an emotion held in a human heart - not the most stable of carriers. In fact, one of the most unstable carriers. Love offers no security, no guarantee. Love is indeed blind.

But I think Gilbert, in this instance, is talking about love in the sense of romantic love. The love that washes over us when we first meet someone, when they fill our brain and consume our thoughts. That love is not stable and can come a go, leaving a broken marriage behind. That kind of love is dangerous to marry for.

Gilbert tells the story of an elderly couple who lived by her while she was growing up. They were married for years and years. In her old age, the lady had alzheimer's and her husband took care of her. He did things that she used to enjoy, trying to provide whatever happiness he could to her now.

Talking to the old man one day, Gilbert asks him how he and his wife fell in love. But to her surprise that’s not how their story went. He was young and trying to start up his own farm. Someone gave him advice, saying that he must have a good wife to build a successful farm. So he choose a bride and they got married.

No love in the beginning of that marriage, but what love evident in the end while he cared for his wife. The moral of that story: love does not a good marriage make, but a good marriage fosters love.

That’s where my head is at right now. Love. What loves means, what love should provide for a marriage, and the different kinds of love. As Helen Fisher, a scientist of love, tells (check out an awesomely interesting 30 minute TED talk by her), there are three kinds of love.

1) Lust
2) Romantic love
3) Attachment

Lust is that basic desire that Fisher describes as evolving to get us out there looking for potential mates. Romantic love is that obsession, that craving to be with someone that Fisher describes as evolving to focus our mating energy. Finally, attachment is that sense of calm and security with your partner that she describes as evolving to “allow you to tolerate another person long enough to raise a child.”

We praise romantic love and that ushy gushy crazy kind of love, but leave out the less glitzy phase of ‘attachment’. (maybe it just needs a new name...how unattractive sounding…) But that's what marriage is. And the mister and I are there. We've been together long enough (5.5+ years) to get past that romantic love stage and into the nitty gritty how-do-we-stand-each-other phase of working out the details. How do we manage money? How do we maintain that spark of romantic love? How do we deal with each other's family? Do our long and short term goals align? How do we make them align? and so on and so forth.

And this is how Lyn's post at Another Damn Wedding got me thinking (see, back asswards). We are not an ushy gushy couple. We don't really like ushy gushy songs. But that's what everyone expects. The honesty of where we are at in our relationship doesn't really sound so good in a song! I'm thinking lyrics along the line of "Merging our accounts and taking on your debt! Fighting over space in our one tiny closet!" Not so great. So how do we choose music for those important and 'significant' moments - like a first dance?

Or how do we write vows? Whenever I start them in my head, it always sounds like such a downer. Because when I think about our marriage honestly, I'm scared. And to get over those nerves, I have to think honestly about the trouble we will face and about why I'm willing to face that trouble with him. Thats what it really comes down to, but again, doesn't really sound the best. "Baby, shits gonna hit the fan, but I want you to be there with me when it does! And darn if we won't clean up that mess together!"

Pass Nana a hankie, folks, cuz this ones a tear jerker!

We will proceed carefully and take time to pick music and write a ceremony fitting for us. It will be romantic in some senses and I'm sure we will jerk a few tears, but I'm guessing that our vibe will be less of an ushy gushy ridiculous love fest and more of a happy, honest, thoughtful ridiculous love fest.

Cheers, all! Hope this made some sort of sense. Next time I'll pick a topic a little less large than 'love'! ;)

xoxo,
Jen

Photo via adwriter

North

2010-06-10T06:27:00.001-07:00

Hey! I'm back! I had a wonderful long weekend up north in the woods. My parents and grandparents and uncle all own lots on this little lake in the woods up near Grand Marais, and my grandparents built a cabin there. When I was little we were up there almost every other weekend in the summer and apparently it has had a lot to do with my development. Whenever I take people there, they go, "Oh, this explains a lot about you!" I'm not completely sure what that means...but I'll take it as a compliment.

And I'm so glad that my mister fits in with my family and can get into the cabin groove. Because its definitely a different kind of cabin. Its tucked away, there is a pretty small motor limit on the lake, no jet skis are allowed, restrictions are set so that no development is near the lake - aka on the lake you can't see any cabins, just woods. And when we go there to have a relaxing weekend we do things like build a stone wall.

Its place where we watch the squirrels during breakfast as they do acrobatics to get on the bird feeder. Then we go down to the dock to examine a pile of poop. We think it might have been an otter because there are rumors of an otter taking up residence on the lake. We are still investigating this rumor. After that, the real excitement starts - a trip to the gravel pit! Yay! And while I say that with a little bit of sarcasm, in all reality I love it. We pick out all the 'best' rocks, bring them back, and then find them homes in the forming rock wall. After dinner we go fishing and catch a bunch of the world's smallest walleye, maybe a few keepers, and then we go in to warm up and enjoy a game of dominoes.

But that is my little slice of heaven right there. I get to run around in the woods, not confined in my office, and do whatever I please. Sometimes relaxation comes in the form of reading a book on the dock and sometimes it comes through using my hands and my body and building a rock wall.

And not matter how hard I try, I just can't be stressed there. I brought some items from my 'to-do' list with over the weekend, but didn't even look at them. Didn't even think about them. And didn't even care.

Awesome.

Just wanted to share a little piece of 'real life' with ya'll. Because apparently "that explains a lot"!

*This photo is an old one, but I like it. It was the fall of 2004 and this is when I first took the mister up to the cabin. I had been wading in Lake Superior and am now concentrating on walking because I can't feel my feet. That lake is ridiculously cold.

Tuesday's Tender

2010-06-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

Lets slow it down a bit with some Ray LaMountain and his steamy, dreamy voice. I've got two songs for you today from this dude. First, a nice slow song that, despite its title, is quite sweet.

Then we got one with a little more groove. This song is bomb and so is that beard. Way to be awesome, LeMountain.

See you tomorrow when I come back from my northern MN vacay!

Peace,
Jen

Monday Movin'

2010-06-07T08:00:00.000-07:00

I'm off on a long weekend enjoying the fresh air of northern Minnesota but I wanted to send you all a little something today and tomorrow! I've been slackin over here and I apologize. I'll try to be more thoughtful soon. But for now, I'm just gonna keep sending you some awesome tunes from our playlist to enjoy! We can never get enough good songs and I hope you like some of our selections!

I'm all about a good dance song and try not to discriminate, but it seems like I have. All the past songs in the Dance Dance collection have been newer, with lots of hip hop or techno beats. We are working really hard to include music that everyone will enjoy - to get the grannies grooving right along side all our friends! That's a tough slot to fill though.

Here is one for the older gen. that hopefully gets younger booties moving, too!

Friday Frenzy

2010-06-04T06:40:00.000-07:00

For this Friday's sound, I'm hitting up one of my favorite dance tunes ever. And it is by none other than Madonna! woop! woop!

This song makes me want to open my own dance club. A club where drinks are strong and cheap, where there is no pretense, sweaty people just wanna have fun dancing, and where the songs just won't quit! If I had any interest in owning my own business, that's what I'd do. But instead I'm kinda lazy and would rather stick to a minimal 40 hour work week. :)

Happy Friday, everyone! Hope this gets you pumped for the weekend! Rock out with your socks off!

(Can we just give props where props are due? Madonna, how can you still be rocking that high cut leotard? Not my first choice of attire, but rock it if you wanna!)

(oh and PS, I'll be out for a trip up to the cabin this weekend - be back Wednesday! Peace, all!)

Together

2010-06-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

Last week I went a bit MIA because I needed a break from wedding planning. Not because I've been stressed or freaking out about something - actually just the opposite! I've been feeling great lately! Just really enjoying where we are at and getting really excited for the day to hurry up and get here already! I'm looking forward to putting the wedding behind us and moving on to being MARRIED!

It feels like I've found the elusive wedding zen! Lets hope it can hold...

This new zen has come from a major shift in our planning and the fact that my mister is now on board with the wedding.

So that may sound odd. Wasn't he on board before? Kinda. And I haven't talked about this for a lot of reasons. 1) It made me feel dumb. All you blog ladies have seemingly super involved, opinionated, and engaged FHs. Mine wasn't. and I felt like something was wrong with us. 2) I didn't know what to say about it because I was busy trying to deal with it. I hadn't been able to process it and probably didn't fully know what was going on. Its hard to be objective when you are in it.

But now we have mostly resolved that issue and I have processed it and better understand it, so I feel like I should talk about it. This is a place for all parts of the wedding planning process: the good, the bad, the ugly, and the just plain crazy crap that goes on. So here is a story I was avoiding telling. Be warned: this is not gonna be short!

The mister and I dated for 5 and a 1/2 years before getting engaged. We'd talked a LOT about getting married and were just kinda slow to get to that decision. For whatever reasons, it took me five years to be sure that he was the one I wanted. It took me five years to give him the green light and say, "Ok. I'm ready. If you proposed, I would now say yes." (As opposed to the previous status of "take a rain check".) Then we worked out the details of the engagement ring (huge ordeal! not ready to post on this still! lol).

So the proposal wasn't a surprise exactly. I was surprised when it happened but not that it happened. If that makes sense...

Before officially getting engaged, I had already found A Practical Wedding and was already gearing up to start wedding planning. I thought I was so ahead of the game - and maybe in some aspects I was. I was so confident that I could breeze through wedding planning and come out with a simple, relaxed, beautiful wedding that cost around 5,000 bucks with 100 or so of our nearest and dearest. Oh, self, how naive you were!

When we were finally engaged, I hit the ground running with wedding planning. We immediately talked about what was important to us (not going into debt, local food, not being introduced to anyone at our wedding, supporting local vendors, etc.) and what we wanted our wedding to look like (dinner with our first ring relatives and close friends + fun party time!). Then we went into making it happen.

Turns out that, for what we wanted (dinner, 100 people, rented out space), 5,000 was not a feasible budget. So the budget ballooned to 10,000. I freaked out. Lots of tears. We contemplated eloping. But we had already gone through the process of deciding what was important to us and what we wanted. The only thing standing in the way was a few extra thousand. Luckily I had a bunch of savings and my parents were going to cover half that cost. So we moved forward with our original plan, learning to accept the realities of how frickin expensive weddings are.

Within this process, the mister and I made all the major decisions together. Venue, catering, guest list, officiant, choosing to iPod DJ the wedding, etc. There was no decision that we were not both a part of. But we were at totally different places when we thought about the wedding.

I had dove into the planning and become invested in the process. I had read all about beautiful, meaningful, community based weddings on A Practical Wedding and I wanted. I saw that we could have a wedding on our own terms and that it could be somewhere between indie and traditional - that it could be us. And I was determined to get there.

The mister, on the other hand, had not put much thought into it and was very unengaged in the process and was not invested in the wedding. And it drove me crazy! I could not put all the thought, money, time and effort into planning a wedding for US if he was not present in the process. I could not give the care needed if it was apparent he did not care. So what was the deal?

Money. (boo money) The mister hadn't been working much (construction sector was not happening) and was watching his savings dwindle. I was paying for our portion of the wedding and because of this, he did not feel as if he could/should have a say in the wedding. I told him otherwise and tried to let him know that that didn't matter, but to him it did. And understandably so.

So because he was not financially invest in the wedding he did not feel his opinions should be given as much weight. His lack of financial investment dissolved his emotional investment. And without him engaged in the process, I was unable to engage in 'our' day either.

Insert more crying and freaking out and debates about eloping. Insert honest discussions. Insert the mister starting a new job where he actually works 40 hours a week and has the ability to save money. And our planning is back on track.

After many discussions, he now gets that - regardless of his financial input - I need his input in the wedding. It needs to be a day built by us otherwise I just don't have the energy to put into it. And that being emotionally invested in the planning will help him feel more emotionally invested in the day - making it what it is supposed to be - a meaningful day for us.

We are now in it together and planning as a team. We are both (slowly) progressing along our to do list. We have both been crafting for the wedding (check out his awesome work!) and are both going to be able to see the fruits of our labor on August 28th.

I know that the stereotypical model of wedding planning is a demanding bride who obsessively plans the wedding while a spacey groom just shows up on the day without doing anything. But that stereotypical model just does not work for us. I could not function in that stereotype. I might kill someone in that stereotype and that would really mess up the details of a wedding!

So thats my long story. About how at first, I dove into the wedding planning, dragging him along and did not give him time to catch his breath. But now we've found our wedding planning zen together - which will hopefully make for a wedding day also full of zen!

Lessons learned: 1) Communications, as always, is key! I can never say that enough, but just talking it out can solve so many problems. 2) Be sure you are ready to talk it out. We talked about this a lot throughout the last few months, but as I said, I couldn't quite see what was going on clearly enough to be able to communicate it effectively. So we talked and yelled and cried. But once we were each able to communicate our feelings effectively, then we actually made progress. So GOOD communication is key. 3) I'm super lucky. I've got an awesome guy who loves me and wants to marry me. Even if sometimes I'm a nut job. :) I must have been an excellent person in my last life because he is just too good!

Peace,
Jen

PS Hope everyone had an awesome long weekend! Mine was a perfect, relaxing time that nourished my little soul! Canoeing on the St. Croix river on Saturday, celebrating my dad's birthday on Sunday, and chillin on the boat with our besties on Monday. Nothing productive was done and thats just fine by me!

Friday Freak Out!

2010-05-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

Ahhhhh, freak out! Its friday, baby! Lets get our weekend on! And I hope all of you get to enjoy a long weekend with memorial day!

What am I going to be doing? Enjoying an early summer in MN with some biking, boating and sun bathing. mmm, yes! I heart summer hardcore! Nothing wedding related is planned and nothing wedding related is going to happen. Maybe my brain can follow along and take a wedding break.

Here with some awesome grooves and some awesome moves, I have !!! or Chk Chk Chk or whatever they are going by with Heart of Hearts. This song just makes me wanna dance! And ski. Since I found this song off the latest TGR ski video, Re:Session. (omg, I know I just got done talking about how awesome summer is, but I get a little lady-in-the-boat hardon watching these ski videos. So amazing!)

Enjoy the song and enjoy your weekend!

Deep Thoughts

2010-05-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

I miss taking baths. I haven't lived in a place with a comfy bath tub since my parents house about 6+ years ago. All these claw tubs look cool, but really, that 90 degree angle in not soothing on my neck. I want to soak in a comfy tub and read a book and play in bubbles and have battles between the ninja turtles and my little ponies again.

This is now a requirement of our honeymoon: stay at least one night in a place with a bomb ass bath tub.

Raphael is ready.

Bubble monster via deysale

Porra!

2010-05-25T06:55:00.000-07:00

I'm sorta taking a break from wedding land and may be a bit MIA for a while. I'm not stressing about anything right now and am feeling really great about the wedding - so that means I'm gonna ride this wave for as long as I can and try not to think about anything lest I stir up something that should have been left alone. :)

So today, in honor of the ridiculous heat and humidity here in the Twin Cities and because I don't have AC and definitely don't want to do any sort of cooking or heat inducing activity, I have a lovely recipe for you. Its a cold soup that require zero (or very little, depending) cooking!

My brother is currently living abroad in Spain and has been for a few years now. He used to live in a little town called La Roda where they served a nummy soup called porra.

Its a simple tomato based soup that is surprisingly refreshing and can be garnished with tons of various things to fit your taste. Here it is shown with some hard boiled egg and tuna (yeah, not the best looking picture...but it does taste good!). A friend of my brother sent this and she notes that this is a rough recipe from her memory. The amounts can be played with a lot to fit your taste.

What you need to make porra:

Blender
2-3 slices of day old bread (or I just lightly toast some bread)
roughly 6 medium size tomatoes
half a red pepper
1 garlic clove
few glugs of olive oil
very small dash of vinegar (optional)
salt to taste

Peel the tomatoes as best you can and cut into quarters. Peeling over the blender will keep all the juices for the soup. Also peel the red pepper as much as you can and cut into chunks. (I gave up very quickly on peeling the pepper and it didn't seem to make a difference. I haven't tried it with keeping the tomato skins yet.) Cut bread into smaller chunks. Chop up garlic. Watch out for both the garlic and the vinegar in this recipe - a little bit goes a long way!

Put everything (bread, tomatoes, pepper, garlic, oil, vinegar, salt) in the blender and blend until smooth. It should be thick - not runny like tomato soup. Chill in fridge and serve with your choice of condiments; hard-boiled egg, tuna, ham, prosciutto (delicious!), pepper, avocado...play around! Also great with a nice crusty baguette.

Hope this helps on those days where any additional heat in your house is too much! Let me know if you try it, what you think, and what you chose to garnish your soup with!

Bon appetit!
Jen

Friday Funky

2010-05-21T07:00:00.000-07:00

Happy Friday, ya'll! I can't wait for what looks to be a sunny weekend here in MN! Some gardening, some grilling, some biking on our lovely network of trails, maybe getting some color on my poor pasty Minnesotan skin? Winters are rough on our complexions over here! But damn, when the summer comes, Minnesota and all its inhabitants are beautiful! For real! The more I travel the more I love my Twin Cities hometown!

Anyway. I'm feeling less bloggy lately, so maybe I'll make a new tradition with a dance dance party every Friday! If you are lucky like me, you can close your door or plug in your headphones and have a little chair boogie in your office!

Enjoy my new favorite song:

Gals got style and some smooth moves!

The In Laws

2010-05-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

EEEEEK! Its the dreaded in laws!!! Run for you wedding lives!!!!!!!!

haha, jk! All dramatics aside, my in laws really aren't that bad and no, that is not my mother in law (but I still love the picture!). We have some troubles, but I feel like that is normal. Its another set of parents, so of course they are going to be trouble and cause wedding hassles. Its in their job description!

I get along with my in laws pretty well. We do have lots of differing opinions and should generally avoid serious discussions (aka politics, religion, what to eat for dinner...) unless we want them to turn into arguments, but for the most part it is a very amicable relationship. No BFFs or anything, but friendly.

Enter engagement and wedding planning. Suddenly there is a new and different and scary aspect of our relationship that I don't know how to react to. As I said before, most discussions turn heated with the in laws, so I was terrified of all the scary territory I was going to have to cross with them. For example: there was religion. We are not having a religious ceremony and this caused the in laws to be upset. We had talked about religion before but never in the context of ME personally and US as a couple or about OUR wedding. And I really didn't know how to deal with it.

Then there has been money. The guest list. Opinions on what we 'should' do or what is appropriate for a wedding. We haven't even gotten to the last name situation yet or details of our non religious ceremony or what-have you. All these important, big, defining topics. Being that my relationship with them has never been very personal, I was not sure how to suddenly deal with all these intensely personal issues with them.

And I think I kinda botched it. I was scared to approach these topics because I didn't want our wedding planning to involve yelling or hurt feelings. Which means I've been avoiding his parents. (A totally healthy way to deal with your problems, right? No, its not??? Whatever! I'm not listening to you anymore!) And I feel horrible about it!

From a really logistical standpoint, it has been easier to keep the wedding planning with a few key people. Aka Me, Mister, my Mama and my aunt, Franck. Four people provide enough opinions to get tangled together, so the less the better. But also, when you put money into a wedding (my parents are paying half) you get to have more say. There just can't be that many opinionated voices or bride go crazy.

So I didn't know how to navigate their involvement and left them out more than I perhaps should have. I would like them to be involved but I also want to avoid problems the best I can and do what I can now to avoid hurt feelings.

How do I involve the in laws without making them full wedding planning partners? Luckily, the major planning parts of our wedding are taken care of (venue, caterer) and now we are just left with lots of smaller sized projects to put together. Maybe I can ask for their input and help on one of these? That will include them without inviting a torrent of advice and opinions where I am not looking for advice or opinions.

Whats your in law situation? How are they involved with your wedding?

Note: While I haven't shared this blog with many of my 'real world' people, I'm still iffy on discussing people issues here. But I feel like I should be honest - and I won't post anything here unless I feel okay about the person its about finding it. Aka no bitchfests or gossip craziness. Which isn't me anyway, but we all have our moments!

DJ vs DIY

2010-05-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

One of our bigger decisions has been to forgo a DJ and do our own wedding playlist on either an iPod or a laptop. There have been lots of nay sayers who tell me Why Using an iPod to DJ Your Own Wedding is a Horrible Idea (um, biased much?) but then there is Meg at A Practical Wedding who describes their self DJ experience and gives some great advice (I feel redundant for how often APW and the word "great" appear together).

I've been doing research and have some serious doubts about whether doing our own music is a good idea or not. Yet at the same time I don't really feel like adding another budget item to our list. So here is a pro/con list I've come up with of the biggest factors. Please feel free to weight in.

Pro Doing Our Own Music

Free! Yeah, we are going to buy some songs and that does cost money, but most of it we have already. Plus, buying more awesome music doesn't sound that bad!
No worries about a crazy DJ. Yeah, some are great, but some are nutso! And how do you know unless you have a good referral?

Cons of Doing Our Own Music

Without someone to really watch the music, we lose the ability to adjust the music for what the guests are diggin and dancing to.
The sound system at our venue. Its only one volume for the entire room. And when I'm dancing I want music pounding! So either music is pretty quiet or people can't talk on the seating side of the room. :(

So on one side I'm cheap and don't want to spend more money on a DJ. This wedding budget is a monster and keeps growing and growing. All these unexpected costs are coming up and are always more than I expect. I do have an old friend who is willing to do it for a reduced rate if he is still available. Reduced from 1000 to 600, so yeah, a good deal but still a lot of cash! On the other side, the music/dancing are the entertainment for the night and I'd like to do it right.

How do we manage the playlist without having to work our wedding? There isn't an obvious musical person to ask. My brother would be great for the role but he is hesitant and doesn't want to 'work all night' - which I don't want either! And what do you think about the sound levels? Does it really matter?

What are you doing for your wedding? Advice for DJing your own? Opinions on which works better?

Image from Hans Woltering

Our Wedding: Ceremony

2010-05-18T08:02:00.000-07:00

We are finally putting together our ceremony and are enjoying the freedom of a non-religious, do whatever we want format. There are so many possibilities and its really fun to sort through our options and ideas to put together a ceremony that is going to be meaningful to us.

So far...this is what we have for our ceremony:
- Important people are seated, the four people standing up for us walk in, and then the Mister and I walk in together (or something)
- Our officiant (who is the father of one of my mister's best friends) says some sort of welcome
- Some cool people read something awesome that makes people think
- Some cool people read something awesome that makes people smile and cry
- Our officiant says a few more words
- We say some kind of vows
- We give each other rings
- We make ou...I mean, we kiss
- Exit to cocktail hour!

Is it sad that I feel really happy and like we've made great progress now that we have this extremely vague and totally nondescript outline?

Also, does anyone have some good readings? We went to Borders to browse through their love poems and all we found were extremely cheesy, epic poems that no one would be able to understand just listening to them. One reading that we are thinking about is from The Little Prince, a story I've loved for a long time, about taming and being tamed. Its adorable and has a cute little message. It also might be fun to have three people read it. One as the Little Prince, one as the fox and one as narrator.

So, any good, meaningful, not so cheesy and not so grand poems or readings about love/marriage/commitment out there?

Peeling Back Another Layer

2010-05-17T06:00:00.000-07:00

Today, I reached a new and better place in wedding planning. Ok, so maybe that's premature to say... Today I saw a new and better place in wedding planning and I want to go to there! That place? Its called reality.

I think I once lived in reality. Sometime. Long long ago. Way before this engagement stuff and wedding planning. And since then, reality feels like a far away place told of by wedding graduates who have made it through to the promise land of marriage.

But for now I still live in Wedding Land, living in fear of the Wicked Witch of the WIC and being guided by the Good Witch, Blogda to the Wedding Zen City where the Wizard will make send me home to a blissful, love filled wedding...

Woah. Ok, that metaphor is getting crazy and needs to be put down!

So what I'm really trying to say is this: I've pulled myself away from the WIC and feel very successful in ridding myself of any pressure I feel to have a Martha worthy wedding. I can flip through a colossal bridal magazine and not be phased. I have not, however, learned to bypass the much more manageable but nevertheless intense expectations that are raised by blogs. Mainly, that we will all have a wedding where we are calm, happy, blissed out, totally in love, and supported by a loving community who helped put together this thoughtful day.

Focusing our energy on having this sort of wedding definitely is much better than focusing on a wedding worthy of a magazine spread, but it can still be stressful. Another Damn Wedding posted Friday on her hot pursuit of a blissed-out-couple-loving-spontaneous-community-based-love-fest wedding and I couldn't agree more.

There are many stories in blog land telling of a magical day where the bride wakes up and suddenly, all previous stress and wedding worries have been wiped away. The day then continues as the bride is blown away by all the support and community love her and her involved groom feel. And they live happily ever after!

I want that! I want to know that all the things that are going to stress me out will *WHOOSH* just go away as soon as I wake up on our wedding day. That my community of helpers will be the complete and assuring support that I need. I'm hopeful. I can envision that in my future. But what if blog land has led me to believe in some sort of crazy new idea of a perfectly unperfect day?

Talking to a recently married friend about all this, my friend suddenly says, "You know what? I didn't really like our wedding. I don't look back fondly at it. But that doesn't really matter anymore. We're just happy to be married!" Now, I think that is a great sentiment and I hope that, no matter what, I will simply be happy with getting married to a man who makes my insides smile.

But that's not quite the thing a gal wants to hear in the midst of planning...and in the midst of writing checks that are bigger than shes ever written in her life! I'm hanging on for dear life to this notion that our wedding is going to be an amazing blissed-out-couple-loving-spontaneous-community-based-love-fest. And I'm going to will it to happen.

Not in the crazy denial sense of willing something to happen against better judgment that that thing may not happy... I'm going to will it in the sense that if I wanna be blissed out? then I'm going to be blissed out! Unless some jumbo disaster occurs, I'm going to be rubber on my wedding day. And my wedding community can be my glue. Wedding stress will bounce off of me!

Is that still crazy denial of reality? I dunno. But I'm going to stick with this mad determination to have a great wedding. What alternative is there?

Question: Do you ever wonder what would have happened if you'd never found the wedding blogs? I am almost positive we would have eloped. I would not have had any grounding on which to build the wedding we are building. Would it have been better to elope? Maybe. Parts of me wish we had. But am I happy with our current wedding plans? Yes.

Music Makes You Lose Control

2010-05-14T07:08:00.000-07:00

Last night I went through our entire music selection for HOURS to put together our preliminary playlists (more to come on this later). Phew! So much groovin and movin! Note: Its really hard to stay focused through so many bomb dance tracks!

I don't got much to say today, but I do want to share this...

I must learn some of those dance moves. So spunky!

*I was only a munchkin when this came out. So while I know the song...the video and dance moves are new and wonderful to me! I never knew what I was missing!** Have mercy on me while I go back in time and enjoy something many of you were aware of all this time!

**I have also discovered the Beatles in the last few years. They really do have some good stuff!

Too many weddings

2010-05-12T09:41:00.000-07:00

We are at that age when every summer is full of weddings. And this summer, it feels very different to be a part of that. We are getting married, I will be in one, attending a hand full, and starting to hear talk of a wedding for two of our closest friends in the coming year. Its a very busy time!

I'm finding that it also adds a very difficult element to our planning. I've talked before about all the crazy expectations that come with planning a wedding and trying to stay true to our goals in the face of many differing (and very vocal) opinions. One side of the family thinks our wedding isn't going to be formal enough ("This is your wedding, Jen! Not a child's birthday party!") while the other side can't believe what we are spending and that we are having such a "large" wedding. All very encouraging, thanks families.

And as our wedding represents, we fall somewhere smack in the middle. Our 94 person guest list is the right size for us and includes all of our first ring relatives and close friends. We definitely hurt some feelings and drew some uncomfortable lines to keep it that small, but its what we choose. And I don't feel like its a large group or a really small group. Its just right! (This guest list is too big! This guest list is too small! This guest list is juuuuust right!)

Our budget reflects what we wanted as well. Meaning: a full meal, a place to eat that food, a photographer, a white dress, a suit, and some things mixed in that look pretty. We luckily have the means and partial financial support from my parents to do this and will not go into debt for our wedding. The budget definitely got bigger than we imagined...but we found out very quickly into the planning that the budget we imagined was not realistic for what we wanted. We are sacrificing money instead of sacrificing a day that will represent us and be meaningful to us. *insert cheesy phrase here about making memories to last a lifetime or something*

All these decisions were made with care to fit us as a couple in this particular moment in our relationship and lives.

Enter the wedding season.

I've been talking to a friend of mine whose wedding will be in July. Inevitably, weddings are the major portion of our conversations, but I try to avoid it as much as possible. We are having very different weddings and I want to avoid comparisons. Me comparing our wedding to theirs and her doing the same.

But once wedding season gets into full gear I don't know how to avoid it. I'm scared of attending weddings this summer, seeing what they did, and feeling the expectations all over again. On the flip side, I DO think our wedding is going to be completely awesome...and I don't want to share awesome details that we are doing in case it sounds like "oh yeah? check out what we're doing! isn't that GREAT?" or that I'm gloating about ours.

Anyone else dealt or dealing with this? Advice on how to avoid comparing weddings?

Projects: Tree Cookie Escort Card Holders

2010-05-12T06:00:00.000-07:00

Its that time in the planning where I actually have to do stuff. Yeah, I've been planning a lot, but so far that has seemed to mean lots of conversations, googling, reading lots of blogs, stashing away of ideas, e-mailing, meeting with people, standing in one place as they make my dress fit, swiping my money card, oohing and ahhing and that's about it. Now its time to bust out all my crafty ideas, pick and choose, and DO them! Yay!

And I'm going to pay it forward. Since most of my ideas have been in some way based off blog land amazingness, I'm going to post my own DIY posts to share what those inspirations have led to.

First up - some really adorable (if I do say so) and really easy (honestly!) and really cheap (best part!) Tree Cookie Escort Card Holders!* This particular project was inspired by an awesome escort card box from The Brides Cafe. I loved the look of the mossy box but am generally creeped out by styrofoam, so I took the idea and tweaked it just enough to work for us.

Behold our tree cookie escort card holders!

Our cookies are fresh cut and not sanded at all, so they are still rough - and that's the way we like them! Natural and cute! And totally vibing with our quasi tree theme for the wedding.

To make your own** adorable tree cookie escort card holders, here is a quick and easy tutorial:

Materials needed:

Tree cookies! and lots of them! We found a baby tree in the woods, chopped it down and then used the mister's dad's circular saw to quickly buzz off a bunch of cookies. The size can really vary. Some of ours are 2 inches in diameter while some are 1 inch. I'd recommend at least 3/4 inch thick.
Wire - Choose any color (we used copper) around 18 gauge. You can find this in craft or hardware stores. We got two packages to equal 50 feet for roughly five bucks.
Wire cutter
Round nose plier - other small pliers can be used, but the round is extremely helpful in twisting the wire (both the cutter and the plier I had gotten from a craft store for pretty cheap)
A drill with a tiny drill bit to match the gauge of the wire - Err on the side of small when it comes to the bit. You can use glue to secure the wire, but its better if its snug. OR instead of a drill - just use really soft wood. Our cookies were half basswood and I could easily push the wire into the wood for a secure fit.
Sticky icky glue. Even Elmers will do.

Step One: Cut wire to length. I cut ours to approximately 4 inches long. I like the look of varied lengths, though, so I was nowhere near exact.
Step Two: Use the round nose pliers to twist wire into curly head. I found it easiest to curl it into a conical sort of shape (see picture below) (Its easier to maneuver and twist the curve while its spread out instead of flat) and then smoosh it flat with your fingers. The 18 gauge wire is still really malleable and easy to shape with your fingers. When shaped in a nice twirl, test that a piece of paper will be securely held - tweak as needed.

Step Three: Drill hole in wood cookie. Put a little bit of glue at the end of the wire and put in cookie hole. Leave to dry. Or, if you were able to find a soft wood such as basswood, simply push the wire into the cookie.
Step Four: Sit back and admire.

Easy, right? I put together the first five in less than five minutes, so give me an episode or two of Bones and I'll be set! I love projects that look way craftier than they really are! And cheap! In total, this cost us a whopping five bucks - that's just for the wire since we already had the other tools that we used. Score team us!

One DIY project done. Next is making some fun and colorful garlands!

Peace,
Jen

Note from the editor: this is now a totally DIT (do it together) project. The mister cut the cookies and just finished twisting all the wire into cute lil' curls. And then he made this awesome heart version just for me! :) awww

* OK, I felt kinda douchy writing that. "escort card holders" ew. That sounds like some sort of totally unnecessary thing the knot would push for a eight bucks each, doesn't it? Well, we do need escort cards to indicate our guests' meal choice. And we were originally going to just do plain tent cards, but this is so easy and so cheap that we're doing it. High return for our investments! score!

** or if your wedding is after 8-28-10, let me know and I'll ship them

Our Video STD

2010-05-11T09:45:00.001-07:00

Since starting this blog, I've been a little top secretive. I don't really like putting much of myself out there on the interwebs and have generally kept this pretty anonymous. But as we continue along in planning, there are a lot of things we have done or are going to be doing that I'd like to share more of.

This includes all of our DIY stuff. Which isn't too much, really. I'm pretty lazy but I'm also pretty cheap...so we are doing a few really easy, cheap DIY projects and I should share! Because I scoured blog land for ideas and then modified them to fit our needs. So now I have 'new' projects to put out into blog land that hopefully someone else can use or take and modify for themselves! Blog land, I love you!

So our first DIY project was our Save the Date. I didn't want to spend any money on paper STDs -not a big priority item for us- so we decided to make a video. There are so many cute options out there and after some brainstorming this is what we came up with:

Our Video STD
(Not sure what the problem was with the embedded video. It was too big and ate up the right side of the blog! So with no time to trouble shoot, you just get this link!)

Yup! That is us - all bundled up for February in Minnesota! And now the secret is out! You know our NAMES!!! and what city we are in!!! AHH!!! ;)

I should also talk about the process we used to actually send out the video. Once we posted it to YouTube we were very careful to keep it under wraps until we were ready. We gathered everyone's e-mail, crafted a STD e-mail and then sent them out. The e-mails were sent out just as paper STDs would be - to individuals/families/couples and addressed accordingly. So they would read "Ms. Cake and Guest" or "Glaze Family" so that they knew who was invited, that kids could come along and all that other etiquette jazz.

The e-mail read like this:

Ms. Cake and Guest,
Brett and Jenna are getting married! And we want you there to celebrate with us, so save the date!

View your Save the Date here (insert link to our wedding blog)on our wedding blog. Invitations will be in the mail as the wedding nears, but until then you can keep track on the blog! Ceremony and reception will be held on August 28th, 2010 in St. Paul, MN.

Can't wait to see you there!
Jenna and Brett

Our last concern that, being the internet, people who were not invited might see the STD and be all "Can't wait! Yay!" and an awkward moment would then follow. We wanted to make sure only we sent it out to only those people who were invited. We showed them to our parents and the first thing both of our fathers said was, "Oh! This is great! I'm going to send it to everyone!" wtf? NO! Do not do that, papas! So first, we limited it being sent out only by us. Then, we didn't give out much info in the STD - like time or location - so no unexpected guests would show up. Finally, we included a note under the STD on our wedding blog. It read, "Please note that this video is intended for invited guests who received this from Brett or Jenna personally." Hopefully this will all ward off unexpected guests and help avoid any misunderstandings or hurt feelings. so far so good!

The song is Love by G. Love

Oh bugger

2010-05-10T10:52:00.000-07:00

I had to order my dress in a size up because my hips were just a teeny bit big for the size that otherwise fit me perfectly. So dress was jumbo on me! Like...boobs would fall out all over the place if I didn't hold it up. Not good.

But it led to a fun little joke at work where I would snack on all goodies brought in (which there are a TON of! Thursdays are specifically donut days but there seems to be some sort of cake, cookies, breads, or other nummy treats all the time! Its great/horrible.) and as I walked out of the main office with a jumbo slice of choco cake goodness I'd say, "Well, gotta fit into my dress!" They thought it was great and were soon encouraging me and pushing all the num nums on me and saying, "We're just helping to make sure you'll fit into your dress!" It was great and delicious fun!

But now its all ruined. I had my dress fitting last Friday and so the dress will actually stay up and not make all the guests gasp. No more eating cake without guilt. Now I'll just have to deal with that guilt. Bummer.

Wedding Represent!

2010-05-10T00:05:00.000-07:00

I was having a fit of insecurities about the wedding yesterday. One moment I’m worried that our wedding will be judged too cheap, us too lazy, or the style too “whimsical”.* The next, I feel like its turning into some formal, boring, stuffy, soulless, totally not unique wedding. I worried about regretting decisions, about not feeling like our wedding represents us well enough, and about spending all this money for nothing. Pretty much just a hot mess of worry where the worry is like wedding acid and disintegrates all happy thoughts and not even my beloved garlands are safe!**

Mid mild freak out, I was clinging to any and every sincere piece of our wedding I could find. The ring warming ceremony. The awesome charity favor idea that we are doing instead of useless crap. The awesome, concise guest list that we retained total control over. The two amazing ladies I will have standing up for me. These pieces that I feel good/great about and am excited for were like my wedding security blanket.

But I'm sick of fight back wedding insecurities. Its silly, annoying, and not productive. Insecurities do not check things off the Mondo To-Do List! So insecurities really just need to die. Die and never come back.

They are not dead yet, but I'm working on it. And here for you today I have the top 10 things I've learned to battle insecurities:

1) Remember that I'm marrying a completely amazing guy. Total win for me! Beat that, insecurities!
2) We wanted a big, fun party and that's what we are doing. And because this big, fun party is our wedding...well, its going to look a lot like traditional weddings. Whether we feel 'traditional' or not, that's part of the wedding territory.
2.5) because wedding = tradition. By extension: our wedding = traditional.
3) We are going to have 90 or so guests at our wedding. This means mixing lots of different family and friends. I'm pretty sure ALL of them will disagree with at least one of our choices for the day. But our goal is not to please them. Our goal is to have a meaningful wedding for us.
4) Its ok that they will disagree with at least one of our choices for the day. That doesn't mean they are going to look down on us. Different choices for different people.
5) If they do look down on us, they are weenie heads.
6) This is the first wedding I've ever planned (and I hope the last *crosses fingers*) and don't really know whats going on most of the time. I'm learning as I go and making lots of it up as I go. So me, give self a break.
7) Of all the important details, I have control over the most important of all. My mood. If I don't want to be upset, I don't have to be. Magic.
8) All the details are meant to set a celebratory mood and the detail that does that best? A couple who is giddy with love and excitement and beaming smiles wins over any arrangement of flowers or vintage anything.
9) The wedding planning - fun parts, stressful parts, insecurities, all of it! - is a great learning experience. Ya know...the whole "whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger" bit.
10) And again - WE'RE GETTING MARRIED!!!!!! Eff the rest! WEEEEEE!!!!!!

* Story: I was getting together with my mom and two of my aunts. Before I had arrived, they had put together two mock up tall centerpieces. One was something my aunts came up with and was very beautiful and could have come straight out of Martha Stewart Weddings. The other was based on the ideas I had been throwing around and was very colorful and different. They showed them off to me, compare and contrast, pros and cons, and then one of my aunts asked, "Ok, so which one do you like? This one, which is very classic and elegant... or this one... which is... well, lets call it 'whimsical'." (with disapproving tone on "whimsical") Can you guess which one was the creation of my brainstorming and creative, cheapskate juices? Can you guess which one I picked and which one we are going with for the wedding? Can you guess how auntie wrinkled her nose at my proclamation that whimsical was the complete winner over Martha inspired centerpiece? le sigh.

** Over dramatic much?

Fridays Rock My Socks

2010-05-07T06:51:00.001-07:00

I'm so happy to see Friday. Work has been crazy. A rainy MN day is making me want to go back to bed hardcore. And the wedding is weighing me down. I have a mondo to-do list that I haven't even looked at in ages and don't quite know where to start on. I feel in a good place as far as the wedding, but right now I just want it to be here so we can get this marriage show on the road!

Hence my less than thoughtful posts of late. Shoes! Necklaces! Rings! And yesterday, a very successful first dress fitting with an adorable little lady who is possibly two feet shorter than me and who I am so happy to give my dress to to make it go from giant white sack to slim and trim beauty! (Oh, and by the way...I introduced the dress to green pearl necklace. They are unsure about each other but could be great friends once they get acquainted better. I also introduced the dress to these metallic sandals that I picked up. WOAH. They HATE each other and had to be separated immediately lest some fighting break out! It was terrible.)

So instead of thoughtful wedding land critiques or insights, I'm jumping on board with posting on non wedding real person stuff.

Non wedding things happening in my life:
- Trying to navigate an awesome job where I have been for almost two years now but just got the hang of a few months back. It was a new position when I came in where I am the one person communications team for a department at the University. Aka so much to do and so little time.
- Planning for marriage. What will that mean for us? At the moment we are not a fully integrated couple. We are still two individuals with lots of stake in each other, but I'm looking forward to joining together more in our finances, planning, car ownership, insurance, and all the good stuff!
- Wanting to MOVE. We've both lived in MN our entire lives and have wanted to move out west since I graduated college a couple of years back. An awesome job got in the way (yeah, rough, I know) and then the engagement/wedding came and put off our moving plans. As soon as thats done, I want to GO, get some new scenery, some mountains, and awesome skiing!
- When we move, I have no idea what sort of direction I want to aim my career in.
- Getting in shape. Trying to figure out a lifestyle that I can keep up and that will keep my healthy. Less lazy butt. More buns o' steel!
- I wanna cook and bake more. Which might conflict with the above...
- Enjoying summer! I can't frickin wait for Minnesota to get in gear and summer to come! Summer grilling, boating, laying in sun, biking on all of the awesome bike trails in the Twin Cities, canoe trips down the river, river tubing, weekends at the cabin, AAHH!!! I LOVE SUMMER!!!!

(I'm going to push this rainy, gloomy day away are just stare at this picture all day, dreaming about summer. This is from a past canoe trip down the gorgeous St. Croix River.)

Whats going on in your non-wedding life? Here's hoping this Friday rocks all of your socks as well. Peace!

Our Wedding: Sassy flats

2010-05-04T12:05:00.000-07:00

Its time.

For shoes.

I've been doing shoe dances, praying to the shoe goddesses, making offerings to the shoe winds, and anything else I can think of to make this process go smoothly. I am hoping the heavens take pity on me and send me something beautiful!

I'm a pretty picky shoe shopper and am not looking forward to shoe shopping for the wedding. But at the same time, I'm excited for wedding shoes. This is another avenue where I can tone down the big bridal of my dress and add some fun and spunk. I've been coming up with some candidates online - though I've never successfully ordered shoes offline and I'm guessing I'm going to end up ordering a bunch and then returning a bunch... but whatever. If that's the sacrifice the shoe goddesses demand.

My criteria is as follows:
1) Flat - Me and heels are not friends. I'm roughly six feet tall and I'd prefer not to feel like a scary giant or to be breaking an ankle at my wedding! Kudos to tall gals that can rock the heels - but its not me at all.
2) Comfy - I'm Practical with a capital P when it comes to shoes.
3) Preferably colorful - I would just die if I could find a wonderful granny smith green shoe! mmmmm, green...
4) Not be flip flops that will go *flip flop* down the aisle.
5) Look at least a little bit formal. But really I don't care that much...just not flip flops.
6) Oh and I don't want to take a loan out for my shoes.

I'm going to go do some shopping one of these days, but so far, I've got a few contenders online.
A) Comfy looking green "Light on Your Feet" Seychelles.
B) Some pinkie Gee WaWa sandals (awesome name, by the way) that would be my big spender shoes at $139. They look like a mix between sandals and flats...interesting...
C) Simple, "something blue" (or pink), well priced DV by Dolce sandals
D) Pinkie leather sandals that look like they'd be hella easy on the feet...and have lost some style because of it
E) Simple, green, sandals by Laundry Common that look totally 'me'. Aka functional, bare bones, with a little bit of styling that doesn't make a huge statement but is enough. The color of green is highly approved of.
G) I could open it up to fun metallics and get these beauties or I could just go with every color there is and be done with it! :)

Phew! Thats way too many shoes for a non-shoe gal like me.

What is your vote? Any others you want to throw into the runnings? And do you have your wedding shoes yet?

Photo from David@UNT

Our Wedding: Rings!!!

2010-05-03T07:02:00.000-07:00

I'm so excited! We went to the jewelers on Friday and got our wedding bands!!! WEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

Mine is going to be a plain band* that matches my engagement ring, and the mister got this sweet band that has a hammered texture down the middle and with smooth borders. Like this:
Buying our rings felt like a really great step towards finally be MARRIED! I can't wait! And seeing that ring on his finger when he tried it on just made me beam. Not that I need to lay claim to my man or anything, but that ring just makes me think "DIBS!" Really official dibs! Hes mine and I couldn't be luckier!

Yay for wedding highs!

*Apparently they don't really do plain bands anymore. We went in once and they only had three plain wedding bands for women. Three! wtf!? And none of these three matched the non-rounded/non-domed shape of my engagement ring, so the lady recommended we come back this past weekend because a bunch of vendors were going to be there so the selection would be better. We went back and this time they had five. double wtf!?

Ducking the Punches

2010-04-30T01:30:00.000-07:00

So I was listening to NPR the other day, and as usual, heard something awesome. It was this lady, Laura Munson, talking about her book called "This Is Not The Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness”. At first, it sounded like your typical self-help, relationship advice, claiming your life kind of book. Which I'm totally going to admit that I'm a sucker for. I'm constantly self-helping. Not because I really need help, just because I'm always trying to be bigger and better. I see my potential and I want to reach it, dammit!

Anyway, so this book. She talks, she is empowered, she saves her marrigae, it all sounds great. I haven't read the book and only heard pieces of her talk on NPR, but I found an awesome (and short) article that she wrote that covers the gist of her book.

In it she tells of how her husband came to her one day and said, “I don’t love you anymore” and wanted to leave her and their children. Following some crazy zen path, she said “I don’t buy it” and in effect waited him out. Eventually he came around and they have continued to be happily married since. Part of her philosophy is to not take things personally – and even when her husband told her he didn’t love her anymore, she worked to not take it personally. As she describes, he threw a emotional punch at her and instead of making it a fight, she just ducked.

This amazes and baffles me. Its amazing because I totally see the logic behind it and understand how not taking things personally means you can actually work through the issue at hand. It takes a lot of the emotional warfare out between two people and gets to the nitty gritty of whats going on. But it baffles me because I can’t imagine being able to do that! She must be a zen master!

As I said earlier, I’m a sucker for books like this, and this is an area that the mister and I could definitely work on. We come from families who address conflict very differently. I’m a soft Minnesotan who grew up in a soft spoken family where we didn’t argue and never raised our voices. His family is constantly raising voices across the dinner table over whatever hot topic they can find. We’ve worked on reconciling these two styles and have made lots of progress, but the arguing is an art form that we are still learning. We haven’t learned to duck each other’s punches yet and still seem to walk straight into them!

But luckily we have lots of time to learn and even if we get into nasty fights we always come back together stronger and better than before.

New vibe in town!

2010-04-29T08:33:00.000-07:00

So far, most everyone around me is pushing for a traditional wedding - parents, in-laws, awesome-and-helpful aunties, the big, bad society, and so on. But the vibe just changed.

One of my best ladies, lady of honor, sister-from-another mister, just got back in town. She was off living the ski bum dream but is back for the non-ski season! Its great to have her back in town and I can't wait to have her help for the wedding. We totally vibe together and I don't think I would ever hear her say anything along the lines of "Well, traditionally people do this..." or "You should do this - thats the way its normally done!" Such a relief not to have another person pressuring me to do dumb crap that costs way to much! :)

At the same time, this wedding is well underway and has been swayed by the traditional wedding forces. Its hard to avoid when all I have is people telling me to do things one, traditional, big, white, expensive, crazy way! I like to think that I've done a good job holding my ground and making our wedding what we want it to be...

But then I enter the What If zone. What if Ski Bum Bridesmaid had been here helping steer me away from crazy? Would our wedding look different? Is our wedding too big and crazy already? EFF!

Ok, really, I'm fine. No worries. I just feel pulled in two directions. The super hippie, chill, just let it flow direction and the traditional, heart attack, consumerized wedding direction. Hopefully I can fall into some sane middle ground where our wedding will look like us and feel like us and just be happy. Because that is my theme. When asked at our engagement announcement about colors/themes/whatever I just told them that our theme is going to be "Happy" and I'm sticking to that.

Oh! Em! Gee! 4 Months!

2010-04-28T12:33:00.000-07:00

Holy buckets! In exactly four months it is gonna be my wedding day!!!!I can believe it! Its so surreal! Me? Getting married? wtf? This is a day that's always been talked about in the far, far future. And now we are half way through our engagement, four months out, and its starting to feel real.

EEEEEEEK!!!!!!!!

Our Wedding: Accessories!

2010-04-27T09:03:00.000-07:00

After finally dealing will all the dress stress and insanity inside my bridal brain, I've got my dress...now its time for accessories! YAY!

Now I gotta say that this whole 'fashion' thing is not really my realm. About 90% of the time in the summer you can find me in some comfy as hell capris and a tank top, and a simple necklace is as fancy as I get within the accessories world. I pretty much wear one pair of shoes as long as I can until they are worn through with holes and then my mom (still) yells at me that I should go get a new pair. And that new pair will probably look a lot like the last... just saying that me and fashion are not best buds who stay up late chatting on the phone and sharing all our secrets. Me and fashion are more like next door neighbors who wave at each other each morning, talk about the weather, and then carry on with our day.

That said, I am pretty excited to accessorize with my dress! This is where I wanna take that piece of big bridalness and tone it down. Less formal! More fun! WEEE!

Necklace: Right now, I've got two great contenders for this - thank you, Etsy!

Exhibit A: This is the top runner by far. Its simple and you can't get much more classic than a string of pearls. But its got that color and that POW and you can't get much more 'me' than a nice bright green! I think I'm going to introduce this one to the dress and see if they get along.

Exhibit B: Runner up is this simple beaut. Something I'd wear over and over with a nice touch of color. Not quite the same POW but still pretty. Who knows, maybe my dress is an attention hog and won't want to share? Then this little guy could be the subtle touch I'd need.

Hair Piece: No way, no how is a veil going to go on my head, so I turned to the wonderful Meg at A Practical Wedding and her What to Wear on Your Head While You Wed posts. There are so many great options, but I hear the big side-o-head flowers or feathery fascinators calling my name.

Exhibit A: Is a light, cute, simple option. I like the size, that there are two, and their little pearly centers.
Exhibit B: Is a fun flower of a good size that would look great plopped on the side of my head! I think I'd add some frenchie bird cage netting to this to be oh so chic - maybe the netting could be on during the ceremony and off for the reception. This (the big ol' flower in my hair) was the original plan and the one I'm still learning towards. I'm chopping of my dress' train and could use the fabric to make a nice flower with some pizaz.
Exhibit C: Va va voom! What a sexy little feathery piece with some bling going on! I love the shape of these fascinators (the seller has a bunch of purty ones) and these could also be great with some birdcage nettting. The price is a bit high but I'm thinking maybe I can make something like this relatively easily, too. Oh the options!

Phew! That's all I got for today. Shoes are my next big adventure since I'm kinda a picky shoe shopper. I am looking for flat flat, cute, colorful sandals that are nice enough to wear to my wedding but still comfy as can be. Luckily for me flats seem to be 'in' this season. *crosses fingers*

Cheers,
Jen

The Shower

2010-04-23T11:41:00.000-07:00

Oh, the epic bridal event that is the shower. With its ladies gabbing and adorably arranged trays of food and games of toilet paper wedding dresses. What to do with you, wedding shower?

My lovely aunts have offered to throw me a bridal shower and I feel really mixed about this whole event. I'm extremely flattered that they are willing to go through all the effort for me and I know that whatever they put together it will turn out spectacularly (One of my aunts is, after all, referred to as Franck. As in Franck from Father of the Bride because she can throw down some fabulousness!) It really does make me feel all warm, fuzzy, and special that they would go out of their way to do a shower for me.

I'm all for the gathering of the ladies and having an afternoon of mingling - I just don't know what to do about the whole gift giving tradition. The mister and I have lived together for the last three + years (sinners!!!) and don't need or want many things. We live in an apartment that is already full with our loads of gear (two bikes each, skis (alpine and cross country), snowboards, camping gear, etc.) I don't feel like we can even register for enough to cover a shower AND a wedding! Also, I feel bad asking for gifts twice. "Hey, come to two separate events just for me where I will require gifts of you both times!" Awkward.

My aunts are pretty traditional, though, so I can't stray too far from tradition on the shower. I was mainly hoping to come up with a shower theme that would ease the gift burden of the attendees and allow for more time for fun and mingling (aka less of the staring at me as I open things that I put on a list for people to buy).

Here are the ideas so far:
- Books, Booze and Beauty "The bride would appreciate gifts of great literature, nummy drinkables, and Aveda goodness!" (These items can come in wide, wide ranges of cost. There is many a great bottle of wine for under 10 bucks!)
- Themes such as "month of the year" gifts where each guest is responsible for a gift that goes with a month of the year. (aka scarves for January and a beach towel for June)
- Just let the older ladies get whatever and trust my friends to know me better and get something fun and creative that I could actually use (like books, booze, and aveda gift cards for nummy, nummy goodness)?
- That's it. I'm out of ideas.

Any other ideas?
What are your shower plans?

Suck on this, favors!

2010-04-23T06:16:00.000-07:00

Favors are stupid. Plain stupid. But that's just my (strong) opinion on the matter.* I've never been to a wedding where there was something waiting at my place that made me say "cool!" Usually its just little tokens that cost the couple way more than they are worth. To have a worthwhile favor it would probably have to be something meaningful to the couple, useful or tasty to the guests, and not be something people say "wtf do I do with this now?" And those kinda things cost more than I care to spend on my guests (sorry, guests!). We are already feeding them and providing a party for them to have fun at - they don't need a silly token from us.

So that's my biz on favors. BUT I do like one 'favor' idea and that is the donation favor where you can put a little note on the tables saying, "In lieu of favors, a donations has been made to the Bomb Ass Foundation of Hope and Love" (or whatever charity you choose). We thought about doing that....then decided just to skip favors...

UNTIL I heard an awesome idea that I'm totally stealing and think you should all steal too! (if you want to, of course. no pressure!)

It goes like this. Each place setting is given 3 (or 5 or 7 or however many) beans with some simple instructions. Guests follow these instructions to a table where three jars sit. Above each jar is a description of a charity - what it is, what they do, what donations are used for, etc. Each bean that the guests have is worth a dollar donation, and each guests get to decide where they give their dollars/beans to! With less than 100 guests, if we give 5 beans at each place setting, that means a total of roughly 500 bucks for donations. I'm definitely willing to do that instead of giving some little piece of plastic that will end up in the trash.

The lady who shared this idea with me said the guests all had a great time reading about each charity and making their choices. It got them involved and made them feel a part of the donations.

We are always looking for more ways to bring our guests into the day, and I think this is a great one! I'm really looking forward to picking the charities, and I hope the guests have a fun time deciding as well.

xoxo,
Jen

(*Note: While I think favors are stupid, I'm not saying you are stupid if you are going to have favors at your wedding. I'm positive that favors are part of the WIC of pressure, madness, and unnecessary things and that no one should provide them unless they want to and have found a favor they would enjoy giving! The End.)

Dress stress - a decision?

2010-04-16T11:39:00.000-07:00

I'm definitely keeping that question mark on the end. I'm making a dress decision and lack of time is making this decision final, but I'm sure doubts are going to resurface. And that's ok. I'll just have to deal with it. Because I've given this a LOT of thought and I have to trust myself in making this decision. I have to know that I made the best decision for myself that I could in this moment...and however it turns out in the end - whether I love or regret my dress decision - that's all I can ask from myself.

I'm sticking with my current dress and am going to focus my energies on making that dress mine. Its a great, flattering dress, and I'm sure it will make me feel special. Plus, my mister's jaw is going to drop. And that is all I need to feel great in any dress!

Now on to the Dress Stress Lesson of the Day!

Our culture puts enormous pressure on women to look beautiful on a daily basis. Mucho money is wrapped up in the beauty industry – they show us these false, unattainable ideals and the dollars flow in as we try to achieve that photoshopped look. (Ok, we stand no chance when up against a photoshopped Jessica Alba. Not even Jessia Alba stands a chance against a photoshopped Jessica Alba!) It’s no wonder then, that with “one big day”, the pressure is just unimaginably amplified. And I’m not sure how to combat it. There are lots of great discussions about it, and I think the best we can do it support each other and work to reaffirm ourselves. Over and over. Because this shit is well ingrained.

Even with my best efforts, I feel prey to expectations hardcore. I may have tried to deny it, but I was totally shopping for the ‘one’, ‘perfect’ dress. Even though I think that ideal is BS, I wanted it to be perfect. And I somehow expected to find this one perfect dress for under 500 bucks!? What bizzaro world was I living in!?

One of the things I most feared most was looking too ‘bridal’ (whatever that means). I don’t feel like a typical bride, so I didn’t want to look like a typical bride. I was scared that if I did people would place typical judgments on me – like spending frivolously, being shallow, being bossy, and all those horrible, stereotypical, and downright nasty labels. It’s hopeless to worry about what other people think, though. No matter what I choose, there are going to be people who think I should have done it differently. So eff it.

Perhaps the best thing I learned through all this dress stress and searching for the perfect dress to represent me is this; I simply can not be summed up by one dress. No dress, no matter how beautiful or well crafted, can represent the complex person that is me. I am bigger than any dress. I can shine more brightly than any fabric put together can. The dress is merely going to provide, for one day in my life, an accent to my already bright self– and that’s all I need. It may not be the "one" but its MY dress.

(Note: That’s my pep talk to myself. But I also want to say thank you all for your support and helpful comments! The blog community has been crucial for keeping my sanity. I can’t even imagine the mess I would be in without the safe and sane sounding board that blog land provides. Thanks you thank you thank you!)