The problem is that I’ve secretly always wanted to go try on dresses.  A couple of times in college I even made semi-serious plans with various friends to go try them on while wearing fake rings and lying through our teeth.  So I was a little bummed that I wouldn’t get the opportunity.

But my bridesmaid and best shopping buddy, Katie, understood the sad little piece of me that really wanted to go and play princess for a few hours, even though we both knew that I wasn’t actually shopping.

My sister, of course, was a little nonplussed.  Last year she had offered to make her best friend a wedding dress only to have the girl go shopping a week later ‘just to look’ and buy a dress on the spot.  Caroline was understandably afraid that I might do the same thing and her hours and hours of work would be wasted.  She had nothing to worry about.

The first thing I noticed at the dress shop is how ALIKE everything was.  Oh, sure, you can have puffy or not puffy, and you can have beaded or not beaded.  But if you want sleeves, or a different waistline, or anything at all that isn’t popular at the moment your options are really limited.

Even so, I found a number of dresses that were fun to try on (the best–covered in crystals and ostrich feathers and including see-through panels on the sides–unfortunately got taken off before we got the cameras out).  So for your entertainment, I present myself in a plethora of bridal gowns.

This first one doesn’t really do a whole lot for me, but it came the closest to having the neckline I’d like.  As my father said when I made him look at my favorite wedding dress options in high school (I was a weird kid), it’s too plain.

The second one was better from the front, and had an interesting train that attaches to the collar instead of the skirt, which means you can take it off rather than having to bunch it up and drag it around all night.  This is probably the one i would have bought if I were buying from everyone’s favorite bridal gown big box store.

Now I’ll be honest–I think I look totally hot in this one (see facial expression to confirm).  The dress was built for my body shape, and I like the asymmetrical shoulder.  It is not, however, something I’d want to be stuck in all night–it just felt like I had tons and tons of fabric around my feet and I didn’t even get down off the little pedestal because I felt like I would get my legs caught up in it and fall flat on my face.  But it’s a gorgeous pile of fabric, for all that.

And then there was this one, which I thought was quite nice.  I’d probably add a little piece of fabric to block out the overabundance of cleavage, but on the whole I thought it was a pretty dress.

Shopping was fun, and I’m glad I got the experience.  One interesting thing about it was the HUGE difference between the boutique place and the chain store.  At the boutique there was one saleswoman who chatted me up, told little jokes, and promised to knock some money off the price while she deftly handed me one expensive hair bauble after another.  In the chain we had one salesperson for 3 brides and she basically dropped off dresses to the communal changing area for Katie to shuffle me into while she ran off to help someone else.   We were in and out of there in less than half an hour.

Now I just can’t wait to see what my ACTUAL dress looks like!

One of the problems with holding a wedding halfway across the country is that a lot of our local friends aren’t able to make the trip.  With that in mind, one of our lovely bridespeople decided to throw us a bachelorette party to give the locals who can’t make it a chance to hang out with us and celebrate our nuptials.  It was a hoot!

Now, I’ve always thought that bachelor(ette) parties were a little weird.  I mean, if you’re getting married you’re obviously pretty far from being single, so it seems sort of strange to go out and hit on people all night.  If I’m going to get drunk and hit on someone all night I know who I want that person to be!  So I was glad she was coming with me.

So instead of getting plastered and playing bride-to-be-bingo, we started off the evening with a show at The Baton, Chicago’s drag cabaret.  About 20 of us went to see the ladies—who came in all ages, shapes, and sizes, all of them lovely—and get in the celebratory spirit.  It was especially nice to go to the early show since some of our friends have kids and couldn’t stay out all night.  I’d recommend spreading the night out that way if you can arrange it.

Then we went to a gay bar and watched the Shower Night festivities.  That was a first for me.  I don’t think I’m a huge fan of watching people gyrate onstage and splash water at me, but sure did stir up the crowd.

We got kind of a cool reception at first, I think because Lynn wasn’t wearing her tiara (she was wearing a fedora instead, but it doesn’t read ‘bride’ in quite the same way as the awful piece of tinsel they stuck to my head).  And I had been worried because some of the gay bars in that area have banned bachelorette parties (the kind with straight girls who come out for their one last fling and grope all of the guys in the club because ‘they don’t count’) But they let us in with no problems, and eventually the hostess of the contest asked why we were celebrating and we got to come out and say we were getting married. She stared at us for a second and said, ‘wait, YOU’RE getting married?  Oh my god, y’all, we really ARE taking over!” and everyone applauded.  Fun, fun!

The best part of the evening, though, was watching our friends interact. Some people showed up to the Baton early and started up a conversation and by the next day my co-workers and my volunteer buddies and my old roommates were all friends on facebook.  It gave me a little glimpse of what I hope our wedding will feel like.  Weddings are a way to join families, but also a way to link communities.  I’m still sad that all of the people I love can’t be together in one spot at one time, but seeing these seeds planted makes me feel like our wedding really will be the beginning of an intertwined support network of family and friends.

Paper is the least important thing to either of us when it comes to this, so we kept it a little on the low-effort end of things.  I think it still looks pretty decent, although I’ve got nothing on the beautiful invitations Derek’s got going. But! Think of this post as proof that you, too, can have wholly fine-looking paper products for very little effort if you also aren’t that big into paper (cake is my preferred medium).

We started off with some print-your-own invitations that I fortuitously found at a thrift shop for $5.  A little experimentation with fonts and wording choices, and some fun with Paint to make the map and voila!  Our invitation suite!

Here are the two vintage postcards that we made copies of to use as our Save the Date and RSVP cards—the choices on the RSVP were quite a hit!

Then, I found this nifty stamp on the internet and thought it tied into the kitschy Florida theme we’ve got going perfectly.  As did the paper made from palm fronds that they’re selling at Office Depot these days.

So I wrote up a program, and a little tag for our favors* and bought a ‘Thank You’ stamp to use on the plain pink notecards we got on clearance from Paper Direct** and we had a little stamp party!

Then, I printed all of our guests’ names on more palm frond paper and cut out some bright colored backing paper.  We used a corner-rounding punch (also on sale) to finish the edges and then glued them together.  I’m planning on making a white ribbon board to attach these to with little clothespins for the guest table.

So now all we have to do is get them to Florida in relatively decent shape and we’re ready to go!

* if we have time to bake them, which I sincerely hope we do!

**the company was great, but they’ll send you catalogs for the rest of your life if you’re not careful.

Done?  Feel better?

A couple days ago I realized that things were getting close and I still had no schedule for the wedding day.  So I set about calling everyone to confirm when and where they’d show up.  My first frantic call was to the jewelry store that was engraving our rings—they were a week late because of the valentine’s day rush and I was afraid we wouldn’t have our rings to use at the ceremony.  But they’d rushed them through for us and were ready, so I ran over to pick them up on my lunch break.  Before I left I got the phone numbers for our minister and photographer.

The minister was fine—I left a message at the church to have him call me back and dialed the photographer’s number.  But it was disconnected.  I had a brief flash of fear when I thought about how his website hadn’t been working on my computer—I’d had to find the number in an email since the site wouldn’t open.  But I thought I’d just written it down wrong.  Nope.  Phone line, gone.  Website, gone. $500 deposit?  Oh, yeah.  Gone.

His personal number is in one of those online telephone directories, so I called and left a plaintive message hoping that this was a misunderstanding and asking for my money back, which of course was never returned.

And then I checked out the BBB.  He’s got an ‘F’ rating because he’s done this before to people.  One poor bride wrote that she had paid $2000, and had him shoot her wedding before he disappeared—with all of her wedding pictures.  She’s never seen them, and her attempts to sue him haven’t gone anywhere.

Thank God my friend’s uncle is a wedding photographer.  He had been asking about taking some pictures of us for his portfolio anyway (he wants to expand his business and has only shot a few gay weddings), so when I called in a desperate muddle he dropped everything he had planned this weekend and also dropped his fee down to help compensate us for the plane ticket and even the lost deposit with the other guy.  In some ways it’s really wonderful because as soon as I saw his website (after we’d already signed the other contract, way back in August) I was sad that he couldn’t be our photographer.  I’m looking forward to working with him, and I know that our pictures will be gorgeous (and, more importantly, extant).

So a word to the wise: check all of your vendors on the BBB before you hire them. All of our vendors on So You’re Engayged have been vetted through 3^rd party websites and personal interactions, but I would still say that the 5 minutes you spend checking up with the BBB is worth your peace of mind.

In unrelated, but still important things you should check way before we did, go and have a look at your passport.  When does it expire?  Because Lynn’s expires exactly 2 days into our honeymoon, which is a problem since most countries want to see 6 months on there.

I’m glad I made that particular bad joke late last night.  She’s got an appointment with the passport office (which thankfully is in Chicago—if we were farther away from all of these consulates we’d be in real trouble) to see if they can help her—luckily they had an appointment open before she leaves for Florida—about 6 hours before she leaves, that is.  Um, so we’re hoping that we’ll both be on honeymoon after the wedding.

Engaged people are supposed to get cold feet, right?  Nervous about making a huge commitment, worried about what it all means, yes?  But since Lynn and I did our committing in Boston last summer, we’re just throwing a big, special party, where we re-say all of the important stuff in a place where our family and friends can hear it.  The decision is made, and we’re in it for life, so that pressure is off.

What I’ve got now is itchy feet.  We’re a month away from the wedding, and there are TONS of little details that I could be working on.  Could be.  But for some reason I just can’t seem to focus.  I think a lot of the problem is that everything is sort of small—we need to get our rings engraved, and the engagement rings cleaned.  I wanted to make hair appointments to try out different styles, even though our hair won’t be done by the same person as the one practicing.  I need to buy mini clothespins and something to wear to our rehearsal, and hand out assignments to helpful relatives.  But so far all I can do is stare at other peoples’ wedding pictures and wonder how ours is possibly going to come together in the next 30 days.

That said, the nicest part of this phase has been getting back the RSVP cards.  A lot of people can’t make it (that’s the problem with a destination wedding), but a lot will be there.  Yesterday I got an RSVP from my great-aunt, saying she couldn’t make it.  Every time I see the ‘no’ box checked, especially from an older relative, I have to fight down the urge to interpret why they aren’t coming.  Is it because they disapprove?  Do they think that what we’re doing is wrong?  Or is it just to difficult to travel once they reach a certain age?  I was dealing with this, trying to tell myself that this woman I’ve known from birth—the auntie who always had a toy hidden in her house just in case I came to visit—wasn’t judging me.  And then I noticed that the other piece of mail in my hand wasn’t another RSVP, it was a letter.  From my auntie.  She said how much she wished she could be there, wished us all the happiness in the world, and asked that we send pictures so she can keep up better with our lives and feel like she had been there.  Although it’s not helping with the details, her note is helping with the bigger picture.

So I’m waiting for more notes, more RSVPs, and for my sense of urgency to kick in and make me actually accomplish the things left on the list.  Wish me luck! I think I’m going to need it…

Now that the rehearsal dinner location has been agreed upon (thankfully), we move on to the next step—planning the menu!

Is this something that is addressed elsewhere and I’ve just managed to miss it?  Do most restaurants come out with some sort of plan if you tell them you’re having a rehearsal dinner at their space?  Or does everyone else just have no set budget for their rehearsal dinners and hope for the best?

We’re having the dinner at the Martin Fierro Restaurant in Naples.  Lynn and her mom went there a few weeks ago to sample the food, which they both said was marvelous, and that the staff didn’t blink and eye when she said exactly who was marrying whom.  So that’s good.   I’m happy to support a South American restaurant in that part of the state (the other side of Florida is swimming in them—the west coast not so much) and also to show our guests what sort of things people eat in Uruguay, since none of them have ever been there.

Now we just have to figure out what to feed people.  As far as I can tell there are three options for this (all of which involve us ordering ceviche and some sort of lovely cheese appetizer for everyone beforehand, and letting people get whatever drinks they want):

1. hand out menus, let people choose, pay for whatever they buy.  This is the easiest method since everyone will get exactly what they want, but also has the potential to be the most expensive.
2. work out a set menu with the restaurant before and have them bring out our pre-ordered (and possibly pre-paid) food once we show up.  Here we’d have the most control of the budget, but what if we get things that no one wants, or too much or too little food?
3. make a smaller ‘event’ menu just for our party.  We choose seven or eight entrée options and give our guests a menu with just those choices to order from.  We’d have some cost-control, and they’d have some choice in what they get.  I just worry that we’ll eliminate some of the cheap-but-interesting things along with the too-expensive ones and everyone will get a nice but somewhat boring meal.

So, um…help?  What should we do?  I honestly can’t decide which is the best way to go.  Part of me thinks that we could just order off the real menu—after all not everyone is going to order filet mignon just because it’s an option.  But then part of me feels like if we are hosting a dinner we should plan the menu (as a way to take care of our guests).  Whatever we decide I’m still really excited!  Just reading the menu makes me hungry…

image by me

That ‘paying for anything extra ourselves’ part has been the ruling factor in our wedding budgeting.  Our families gave us a set amount specifically for the wedding, and another amount for the honeymoon. Of course, spending that money has been easy—and quick!  Almost all of it went to the food, venue, and photographer (and the honeymoon fund to plane tickets).  But everything else we need to pay for ourselves, so we’ve been hunting for deals.  We’re not exactly debt-free at the moment between a new house, student loans and some lingering credit card debt, so the plan is to keep our contribution low enough that we’ll have the cash on hand on the wedding day to cover everything.

So everything has been about saving money.  We’ve gotten all of the vases, candle holders and most other decorative stuff at thrift shops, along with two unopened boxes of print-your-own palm tree invitations–for $5!  Almost everything else we’ve bought online. Since we don’t live in Florida getting things sent there directly has been really helpful.  I’ve done a lot of shopping at websites that have things on clearance (thank you cards), free shipping (linens—it’s cheaper for us to buy than to rent, and we can resell them later), and sometimes even free stuff (we got our save the date and RSVP postcards for the cost of shipping, and they look amazing!).  I <3 the internets!

Other than that, we’ve accepted help as gifts wherever possible—people have been incredibly generous.  This is especially true of my sister who is designing and making BOTH of our wedding dresses in what little free time she has (I can’t even think how much it would cost to pay someone to do that). And we’ve started letting go of things that don’t matter as much to us (wedding favors have been the hardest for me to give up.  Have you ever noticed that EVERYTHING starts to look like a good wedding favor after a while?)  because we don’t want to pay for them.

In some ways I think it helps that we’re two women because our parents have always had it in the back of their minds that they would be paying for our weddings someday.  I don’t know that it’s true in every family, but both sets of parents immediately offered to help when we announced our engagement, which made everything a lot easier for us.  Without that money we’d be having a much different (read: smaller) wedding.  Now we just have to sit them down again and go over the fact that neither of us is a groom (or that we both are) and hope that everything goes smoothly over the next 60-odd days.

image by me

That ‘paying for anything extra ourselves’ part has been the ruling factor in our wedding budgeting.  Our families gave us a set amount specifically for the wedding, and another amount for the honeymoon. Of course, spending that money has been easy—and quick!  Almost all of it went to the food, venue, and photographer (and the honeymoon fund to plane tickets).  But everything else we need to pay for ourselves, so we’ve been hunting for deals.  We’re not exactly debt-free at the moment between a new house, student loans and some lingering credit card debt, so the plan is to keep our contribution low enough that we’ll have the cash on hand on the wedding day to cover everything.

So everything has been about saving money.  We’ve gotten all of the vases, candle holders and most other decorative stuff at thrift shops, along with two unopened boxes of print-your-own palm tree invitations–for $5!  Almost everything else we’ve bought online. Since we don’t live in Florida getting things sent there directly has been really helpful.  I’ve done a lot of shopping at websites that have things on clearance (thank you cards), free shipping (linens—it’s cheaper for us to buy than to rent, and we can resell them later), and sometimes even free stuff (we got our save the date and RSVP postcards for the cost of shipping, and they look amazing!).  I <3 the internets!

Other than that, we’ve accepted help as gifts wherever possible—people have been incredibly generous.  This is especially true of my sister who is designing and making BOTH of our wedding dresses in what little free time she has (I can’t even think how much it would cost to pay someone to do that). And we’ve started letting go of things that don’t matter as much to us (wedding favors have been the hardest for me to give up.  Have you ever noticed that EVERYTHING starts to look like a good wedding favor after a while?)  because we don’t want to pay for them.

In some ways I think it helps that we’re two women because our parents have always had it in the back of their minds that they would be paying for our weddings someday.  I don’t know that it’s true in every family, but both sets of parents immediately offered to help when we announced our engagement, which made everything a lot easier for us.  Without that money we’d be having a much different (read: smaller) wedding.  Now we just have to sit them down again and go over the fact that neither of us is a groom (or that we both are) and hope that everything goes smoothly over the next 60-odd days.

And then.  Then I threw out the idea of getting invitations for our rehearsal dinner.  I had figured that it would be a family picnic for our wedding party, parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, etc.  Lynn’s family has a cabin called Bear Hammock in the middle of a national park (it was her great-great-great grandparents’ homestead, so the government couldn’t take it when they made the area into a park) which is both beautiful and really really cool, so I was thinking bbq, guitars, campfire, and general merriment.  But Lynn’s mom was not having it.  Too many people, too little space, no, no, no.

So I tried again—there’s a state park that we love on the site of a funky little religious cult from the turn of the century (they thought we lived inside a hollow earth and that the heavens were in the center, among other things).  We’d originally wanted the wedding there but between accessibility issues and rental costs it didn’t work.  Why not move the family picnic there?  No, no, no.  Still too many people, too much stuff to coordinate, too far away.  No.

Third time’s the charm?  We finally decided to have a smaller dinner for just the wedding party and our parents at a local restaurant.  There’s a Uruguayan restaurant not too far away that looks reasonably priced.  We’re going to Uruguay for our honeymoon, so I thought that was perfect. Again, no.  Lynn would prefer Thai.  –sigh- At least in this case we can come to some sort of compromise.  She’s in Naples checking out the Thai and Uruguayan restaurants and we’ll decide based on space and cost (and whether they’ll let us take over their restaurant on a Friday night in high tourist season).  All things being equal Uruguay wins since most people don’t have that kind of restaurant nearby and almost everyone has decent Thai.  But if it’s cheaper or easier or generally nicer to have Thai, that wins.

This whole mess has helped me understand all of the wedding stress people talk about.  Thankfully we mostly agree on things and our parents are mostly on-board with the details (or in my dad’s case just not terribly interested as long as there’s food).  So I’m telling myself that it wouldn’t be a wedding if there weren’t one big hold-out, screw-this, why-do-we-even-need-to-have-a-wedding fight.  Just one.  To get it out of our systems.  And I’m glad it’s been over something silly and trivial and not something that is really important to either of us.

How have your fights been going?  Anyone getting out of this unscathed?  What would be your pick—Thai or Uruguayan?

They seem to fall into three categories: super-religious—

“We request the honour of your presence as we celebrate the love we’ve found and are united for eternity in Christ”

Way too cutesy-

“Our course is set, it’s full speed ahead; we’re sailing toward, the day we’ll be wed!”,

or fairly straightforward (we’re going that route).

The difficulty has been deciding how to actually word a few key points. First: parents. Both of our sets of parents are divorced.  Mine have each remarried, while Lynn’s mother has a long-time partner and her father is currently single.  Some of them are contributing to the wedding financially, and all of them will be present to support us and help out, so we want to acknowledge them.  But listing all of those names is ridiculous, so we’ve opted for the generic-but-inclusive ‘together with their parents’ line.

Then there is the murky so-called etiquette code of what you are being invited to, exactly.  I read something that told me an invitation requesting “the honour of your presence” is for a wedding in a church, which isn’t the case for us, so it’ll be “the pleasure of your company” which is more what we’re hoping for anyway.  We’d rather enjoy the pleasure than the hono[u]r, in the end.

And finally, the part that took the longest to decide: what to call the thing.  Should we call it a wedding? A commitment ceremony?  A ‘celebration of our love’?  Our ‘special day’?  I was worried that some of our relatives might be offended by us calling it a wedding, but then I realized that I would be more offended by anyone having that reaction.  Since it is a wedding, that’s what we’re going to call it.  Anyone who has an issue with that fact can choose not to come, but I don’t want to make things more palatable for any closeted bigots in the family—especially at our expense (both literally and emotionally).  Honestly, this is one of those things that I think we worry about a lot but that in the end probably isn’t a big deal at all.  Straight people ask people to “celebrate their union”, watch them “get hitched”, and all sorts of weird permutations and no one wonders whether they’re having a wedding or not.  I need to remember to give people the benefit of the doubt and try to assume that they’ll have no trouble understanding our invitations, either.

After that, the rest was pretty straightforward: date, time, and location.  So, putting it all together we got:

Together with their parents

Emily Kate and Lynn

request the pleasure of your company

at their wedding

on Saturday, the twenty-seventh of February

two thousand and ten

at four-thirty in the afternoon

(address)