So You're EnGAYged

Sam and I have decided to go the paperless route for our wedding invitations. The reasons for this are both financial and environmental. Sam feels pretty strongly about going paperless (and she has been quite laid back about most other aspects of the wedding). We talked about it briefly, and her points were valid (cheap/almost free, easy tracking and follow up and no paper making its way to our guests’ trash cans). Easy! The decision is made, but I have to admit I’m nervous.

From the beginning of the planning process, I have insisted that invitations are just not something that I care about. Of course, there are many aspects of wedding planning that I proclaimed not to care about 6 months ago (attendant attire, etc.) and have since developed surprisingly strong feelings about. To be completely honest, I still don’t care about the invitations. I care what people think about us and our wedding.

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We are going with a traditional wedding cake as our main dessert.  I’ll have more details on that after our tasting in July.  In the meantime, however, I am super excited about our hot chocolate bar.  We are still playing around with how to present it in a cute and user friendly way, but here are a few of the key components so far!

Brian Teutsch’s flickr photostream

Muffet’s flickr photostream

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After proposing to Sam with diamond cuff links, I decided that I didn’t want an engagement ring. Part of the reason was to save money as we started planning the wedding, but we also wanted to keep the cuff links as the main symbol of our engagement. I decided to forgo an engagement ring all together and select a wedding ring with some sparkle to it when the time came.

When we started looking for wedding bands, my parents offered me their engagement diamond to incorporate into my ring. It kept falling out of my mother’s ring years ago, and she always planned to have it reset, but never did. Eventually she got a band of inset diamonds instead. (She works with her hands, and the solitaire was never practical!)

So, we went back to the jeweler who worked on Sam’s cuff links to have my parents’ stone reset into a ring for me. I really liked the look of a double band, since I am only planning on wearing one ring. I ended up going with a double band halo design to fit the oval stone.  What do you think?

When my ring was ready, Sam came with me to pick it up and select her ring. These were some of the top contenders…

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Sam and I are getting married at the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center.  I really love our venue.  But, before I get all gushy about the reasons why- Let’s take a look back at the contenders that we didn’t pick, shall we?

I looked around online at a bazillion potential venues and emailed maybe 10.  Some were waaaaaay out of budget.  Some took a really long time to get back to me, and I forgot about them.  We ended up visiting two and a half potential venues.

Stonehurst (the half) wasn’t open when we popped by so we evaluated it based on the outside and crossed it off the list.  It’s a very cool building, but a great deal of the beauty lies in the grounds, and we just would not get the whole effect in December.  The area where guests drive up and enter is also kind of around the back, so you never really get the pretty view of the whole manor that is shown on the website.

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Photo from The U.S National Archives’ flickr photo stream.

Writing about wedding traditions is turning out to be much more difficult than I anticipated.  I thought dividing up the various topics and tackling them one by one would help, but it feels like everything is just so masterfully interconnected.  The wedding script is so intricately written, and I think that’s what is so constricting.

So, cake….

(Wasabi has nicely covered the history behind the ceremonial cake cutting, so I’ll jump right to my own cake issues!)

At first, we weren’t going to have a wedding cake at all.  It fell into the category of things that we don’t have particularly strong feelings on either way, so let’s just do whatever is cheapest.  Dessert is important to any gathering, but I figured wedding cake would be an unnecessary expense when a simpler dessert would likely taste just as good, if not better.

As it turns out, having a wedding cake is very important to my mother.  Since I’m not anti-wedding cake by any stretch, just in favor of saving money, I had no problem with her gifting us a traditional wedding cake (as long as it’s delicious, and I do trust her taste in cake).

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Okay, so dress shopping was really fun.  Much more fun than it looks like in the picture!  I can’t bring myself to post my actual dress just yet, so here’s a peak at my aunt and my bridesmaid/bffl/high school prom date, Brian watching me try on dresses.

I wouldn’t say that I was nervous about dress shopping, but I was a little unsure of what to expect.  I mean, I’ve been dress shopping plenty of times, but there’s something about wedding dress shopping that can be a bit intimidating.  Honestly, I was anticipating having to cross out the word groom on forms and field awkward questions from pushy consultants.  I know, such an unfair stereotype about wedding dress consultants!

But, my family and I went to a total of six stores, and not one person uttered the word groom.  So that was nice.  Everyone was pretty focused on the business at hand, and we jumped right into the satin and lace.  Although I did strategically say “Samantha” instead of “Sam” a time or two to make sure we didn’t get any upsetting reactions.  I didn’t want to sign a contract with a shop that I didn’t feel comfortable with.

I ending up finding my dress on the first trip out, but we were very thorough and made sure to explore all our options before committing. After a few weeks of looking around (and repeatedly looking at my dress on the designer’s website), we went back and bought the dress that I fell in love with on the first day.

Also, I LOVED the consultant who worked with me to pick out a dress.  She had great opinions, and was more than patient while my mother, aunt, prom date and I bickered over satin buttons.

HUGE check off the giant list of things to do!  Now we wait (until August!), which is hard for me…

Did any other dress people brave the boutiques and find themselves pleasantly surprised?