Open Bar Wedding

ONE MONTH FROM TODAY!!!

I can't believe how fast the time has gone by!

And having an open bar was the one thing my Dad requested... 

Hey, when you're footing the bill we accommodate you as best we can!

Summer 2014

I love summer, but 2014 is going to be a big one!

This summertime, I am a bride, having the experience of a lifetime, surrounded by my family and friends and overwhelmed with the unconditional love that has been so prevalent during the wedding planning process.  

Our wedding is set for August and so far almost everything we've experienced has been fun - at least to some degree!  We're planning our wedding, one of the sweetest chapters in our love story, and looking toward the future.  Yes, wedding planning has been hard work, but life is full of hard work!  That's what makes us appreciate the fun times!  

Over the past 10 months of our engagement, Sam and I have done a lot of growing up.  We've really begun to make plans for our future together as our own little family unit and I am so excited to see what's in store for us!  

2014: Off to a Great Start!

I can hardly believe that 2014 is finally here!  

It's probably not a big surprise that the homestretch of 2013 was a little bit rough for me.  I'm not good with uncertainty and, unfortunately, there were a lot of unforeseen professional changes that happened during the holiday season.  

Even though I knew I at the time that losing my job was probably a blessing, I was surprised how much I was overcome by feelings of failure.  It was really difficult to emotionally divorce myself from all the marketing that my former company was doing, especially because they were either abandoning or seriously neglecting so many of the things I worked so hard to build.  

In the end, I stopped following the company social media pages and focused my attention on my future.

I got up the courage to approach my current employer at a holiday party we both attended.  I had interviewed with her team twice over the summer by my media relations skills are weak and they are a marketing and public relations agency that does a lot of pitching to media sources so they had reservations about bringing me on board.  At the party, the agency founder and agency director were both happy to see me and told me they'd been talking about me recently.  I took the opportunity to let them know I was no longer working with my previous company and that I'd appreciate them passing my name along if they heard of anyone looking for my skill set.  To my pleasant surprise, they expressed an interest in hiring me (again) and I offered to freelance for them a bit so that we could all feel out the situation.

The next day, she called me and asked me if I could start immediately.  We hammered out the details and I was in the office the following Monday.  

Surprisingly, I only freelanced for them three days before they made me an offer to come on board permanently.  I think it was partially my personality (I get along with the other team members very well) and partially my writing skills.  They had me drafting a lot of press releases, e-newsletters and social media posts during my freelance tenure and I think they really liked what they saw.  

So I moved right on into a full-time position with them and today I got handed a big Chinese New Year project to manage on behalf of my team.  To say that I'm thrilled would not do my emotions justice.  

I needed to draft two press releases, and my boss came in at 5 to see if I could have them done tomorrow.  I happily informed her I had already given one to the account director for review, and the other would be on his desk before I left the office.  She seemed very impressed and said, "That's wonderful, I am so glad you joined our team!"

"Me too," I told her. 

And things are going well in my personal life too!  I woke up yesterday and thought, "I'm getting married this year."  It was about a year ago that we picked our wedding date, and now we're just about seven and a half months away from the big day.  It's coming up fast.

Carina and I picked out the bridesmaids dresses over the holiday week while Sam and I were up in NorCal.  Jackie and Carina already have their measurements in, and Lindsay is going to head over to the salon tomorrow to get her measurements taken too.  I just need to follow up with Carrie and Michelle to make sure they remember to get their orders in by Sunday.  

I have the date for my bridal shower (in NorCal) set, we have an appointment to do the menu tasting for our wedding entrees, I have a list of bakeries we need to visit to taste wedding cake and talk pricing, and I am feeling really, really good about everything.

I still need to work on the invitation wording just a bit and then order all the invitations.  And I want to sit down with our florist again so I can work out some of the details with the flowers and decorations.  And then it's pretty much all done except picking out the boys' attire and getting our wedding bands made.  Obviously the little details like seating charts etc. are still to come, but those are things that will happen in July and we're still a LONG way off from then.

The other great thing is that I'm totally 100% recommitted to my fitness goals.  I didn't do so well in 2013, but I realize now that putting all my time and energy into my profession isn't the smartest thing to do because jobs come and go but your happiness and health lasts your whole lifetime and affects your lifestyle.  

So, on that high, high note, let me say that 2014 is going to be my best year yet!

Wedding Planning Update

So, wedding planning has kind of taken over our lives lately.  I suppose that's to be expected, but it still amazes me all the details that have to be taken care of.

Sam keeps telling me that I'm planning so far in advance, but the reality is I am focused on getting the big contracts out of the way so that we can focus on the little details like our DJ's playlist, the lighting we want during the reception, ceremony specifics like readings and vows.

Things we've already booked:

1. Florist
2. Photographer
3. Videographer
4. Venue
5. DJ/Emcee/Lighting
6. Officiant
7. Hotels for Guests

Things we still have to decide or finalize:

1. Cake (tastings and final selection)
2. Live music (ceremony and cocktails)
3. Menu (tastings and final selection)
4. Bridal party attire
5. Wedding Dress (purchase)
6. Invitations (order)
7. Rehearsal 

We already picked out the invitations, we just need to go in and officially order them once we have our menu items selected.  We need to set up a time to do our menu tastings, but that's all part of the venue so I'm not super stressed about that.  I think I picked out my wedding dress, and I'm planning on ordering it in December when I'm in NorCal, but I have an appointment down here to try on dresses with Jackie in two weeks.  We're also hopefully going to pick out the bridesmaids dresses during her visit.  

The cake is the last of the big stuff that needs to be taken care of.  So we need to make some appointments to do some tastings at different bakeries.  If we don't find live music, our DJ can handle the ceremony and venue does live music on their patio which is just below our cocktail balcony.  So that's not really crucial to the wedding happening.

I am just so excited to start our marriage and become Sam's wife!

A Second Full-Time Job

Woah, wedding planning is slowly taking over my life.  Not that I'm complaining, and I'm not overwhelmed (yet), but it's definitely taking up the majority of my free-time.

Even little things, like getting the room block together for the resort we're getting married at, have become bigger projects than I anticipated.  Thankfully, Sam's been wonderful so far and only chimes in when I have some options for him to choose from or when he feels really strongly about something - which is rarely the case.

The one recurring point of contention is the officiant for our ceremony.  The rabbi that married Sam's parents is still alive, and Sue has been pressuring me to have him marry us for what seems like the last six years.  To my credit, I have firmly stood my ground that I feel uncomfortable having the rabbi who married her perform our ceremony because the priest who married my parents is also also still alive.  Beyond the officiant, I don't think it would be fair to either side of the family to choose to be married in a religious ceremony when there are such varying degrees of religious commitment in our families.  Sam's dad is agnostic, his mom was raised by a Jewish father and Irish Catholic mother, my father grew up Catholic, my mother converted to Catholicism to get married in the Catholic church and both my parents attended Catholic high schools and a Catholic college.  Because of this, choosing an officiant is was one of the main things I have been dreading about wedding planning since long before we were engaged.

I have done more than my part to learn and celebrate the Jewish holidays and customs, but, despite pressure from Sam's mom,  I have been adamantly opposed to converting to Judaism.  I would never dream of asking Sam to give up his family customs in favor of mine, and I think it's insensitive that I would be put in the position where I would feel pressured to do so.  

Luckily, Sam is not pressuring me about having a Jewish wedding or asking the rabbi to perform our wedding (yet).  The rabbi will be performing the ceremony at the wedding we attend on Sunday, so it will give Sam and I an opportunity to see him in action.  Sam has promised his mom that we'll meet the rabbi before we make any decisions, but he has been very careful not to commit us to anything or make any comments for or against the rabbi.

To help us make our decision, we have appointments later this month with two well respected officiants who are local to the area and very comfortable performing interfaith marriages.  It's my hope that we will click with one of them and this will save me from having to compromise on something as big as who will preside over Sam and I committing ourselves to one another for the rest of our lives.  Obviously there will be compromises I have to make over the next couple of months, but this isn't one that I'm comfortable with and I don't feel like this is something I can brush off without having serious regret later.

The Guest List

So far, the worst part about wedding planning is, without a doubt, the guest list.  Obviously we have two families that need to be accommodated as well as ten years worth of mutual friends and two lifetimes of best friends.  It all adds up to a lot of people.

And that is the crux of our dilemma.  Where to make the cuts.  Where are the natural dividing lines of social circles?  As the bride, I feel like it's my responsibility to bridge the gap between my parents and Sam, who in turn will have to head up the conversations with his parents.  It's a well-rehearsed, choreographed dance that Sam and I are managing these days.  I suppose all couples go through a bit of this, especially with a fixed budget and limited venue capacity, but that doesn't ease my anxiety.

I am still in the honeymoon phase of wedding planning; I want to please everyone.  I am told by former brides that this phase will wear off... and hopefully that will happen soon.  I can't imagine going through the next 10 months of planning trying to make my mom, Sam's mom, Sam and I happy.  That sounds completely exhausting!

So for now, as we try to cut our list down to the maximum venue capacity, I am torn between making Sam and I happy, making my parents happy, and making Sam's parents happy.

Wedding Planning

I am so incredibly excited to be a bride!  Obviously this is (hopefully) the experience of a lifetime for any couple, and Sam and I have been waiting a really long time for this.  From the invitations to the decorations to the food to the cake to the hotels our guests are going to stay at - I am really excited to do everything!  

So far planning the invasion of Normandy (which is what my Nonna and I are affectionately calling the wedding planning process) has been going really smoothly.  I suppose that we're lucky because we already started this whole process so many months ahead of time but here's some of the stuff we're thinking of:

Wedding Planning Whirlwind

Last weekend was a whirlwind of wedding planning. I picked my mom up at John Wayne on my way home from dropping Sam off at LAX. He’s in Thailand with his parents this week visiting his brother. 

Mom and I stayed up well past midnight looking through The Knot’s quarterly magazine that Carrie brought down for me last weekend. We also went online and perused a bunch of invitations and get a feel for what we liked. Luckily, Mom and I both liked the more formal invitations and she agreed that it would be cute to have something with some kind of beach theme. 

Saturday morning she wanted to get her nails done at my local nail salon, so I took her in there after breakfast. When she was finished, we headed over to South Coast Plaza to check out the Papyrus store and see what they had to offer as far as invitations go. As we were flipping through books, Mom found the PERFECT invitations. They are very clean and elegant, the wording is very formal, and they have a starfish accent at the bottom of the invitation. I’ll have to take Sam back in a few weeks and make sure he likes them too, but I don’t think he’ll have too much of a problem with them!

After the invitations, we headed home and had lunch with Hunter. He was happy to see us and spend some time getting spoiled while we were getting ready for our appointment at The Surf and Sand.

Ironically, the photographer and florist I have booked for my wedding were at The Surf and Sand on Saturday doing another wedding. It was fun to meet the photographer, who I booked through her boss, and hadn’t met yet. The florist wasn’t there in person, but Mom did get to see the flowers she did.

We also got to meet our wedding coordinator, Kat. She helped us figure out what our wedding costs would be and answered a bunch of our questions before I signed the contract and Mom handed over her credit card. During our meeting, Kat had us sample the house champagne and we got calamari comped by the resort. It was really nice, and obviously, since we’re going to pay a LOT for this wedding, I am sure they were doing their best to impress us.

After the business was done, Mom and I wandered around the hotel so she could get a better feel for it. We went down to the beach so that Mom could get an idea of where our wedding photos will be taken, and while we were there we got to see the photographers taking photos of the bridal party. It was really fun.

After we were done at the Surf & Sand, we walked across the street to Laguna Brisas, The Best Western hotel we are getting a special rate at for our guests. Mom and I hadn’t been in there before, and we checked it out just to make sure everything was on par- which it was! 

We headed home at 8pm… pretty impressive since we got up 12 hours earlier!

On Sunday, we conferred with Dad about the best way to communicate all the hotel information to our guests on the wedding website. After sorting that out, Mom and I went down to Fashion Island to do a little shopping. It was funny, because we’re trying to figure out if coral or turquoise bridesmaids’ dresses will be prettier. I would love to find something in Tiffany Blue to match the colors of The Surf and Sand, but we’ll see how that goes. Anyway, while we were shopping both colors were EVERYWHERE! They were on the racks in the stores and on the people wandering around the mall. It was hilarious.

After lunch at R&D Kitchen, I dropped Mom off at the airport. 

It was kind of strange to see her go since I’m now home alone with Hunter all week while Sam’s out of town. Not that I mind it so much, but we had a really nice time while she was here and it was all SO easy! Nonna said she once heard planning a wedding compared to planning the invasion of Normandy and that's been our running joke for about a year now.  I just hope the rest of the planning process goes this smoothly and the day goes off with minor hitches!!!

Late last night, I was watching The Newsroom and texting with Carina about my dress and everything Mom and I accomplished. I wish Carina had been here, but it’s been really fun bonding with her on Pinterest posts and texts and phone calls. I think this is going to be a really fun experience for us as sisters. J

As I was walking Hunter, Dad called to say that he and Mom were going through their guest list and he wanted to add another 8 people who he felt would be offended if they weren’t invited. He said it’s not likely these people will pay to travel down here, but who knows, they might. He said he’ll send an email out to let everyone know that they shouldn’t worry about offending him if they can’t make it, but that he wanted them to know they are in the VIP circle of friends. I told Dad that since he is paying for all of this, I don’t care who he invites. As long as we stay under the max capacity of the ball room and can afford for all these wild people to come and suck booze down at the open bar, I feel like the more the merrier is our motto!