Yay! STD!

Today after much delay, the Save the Date Cards finally arrived. It is now in print. Keith and I will be getting Married on October 23, 2009 in San Francisco.

Getting the cards means that we have to deal with the guest list. Which will be a chore.

While I would love to invite everyone we've ever met in our whole lives to our wedding, due to space restrictions, we can only have 70 people. Technically its 72 but Keith and I are those extra two, 'cause we really can't have our wedding without us. To futher complicate things, part of the wedding celebration will be at a bar, so we'll have to restrict the guest list to those over the age of 21. The idea has been floated to have family friendly "wedding showers" in LA, SF and NY so as to have everyone and anyone come celebrate with us, but its not been planned out so I don't know if that will happen at this point. So if anyone wants to arrage this, let me know, and you can be the offical wedding shower coordinator.

The STD cards themselves look amazing. Thanks Ma! Now I just have to figure out what to do with the 930 extra cards. The printer wouldn't do anything less than 1000.

A tale of Two Dresses

I'm not usually one to stand on traditions and such, but when it came to a wedding dress, I really wanted a white one. Now I've been designing my dress, in my head, long before there was a ring on my finger. In the first incarnation, I was wearing a long strapless a-line dress with long white gloves and a ribbon choker (hey it was the 90's). Eventually a more Grecian goddess look came into my mind, with an elaborate mid section and flowing chiffon.

Now that I actually need a dress, it is a bit of a different story. After trying on a maybe 20 dresses, I finally found that I liked the big 50's tulle thing. However, due to painful incompatibility between my arms and the beaded bodices, I will not be wearing one of them, but at least I got it out of my system.

As to the real wedding dress, I found one that I like, but am hesitant to purchase it now. But good sense tells me that I should march right back to the bridal store and throw my credit card right down! I'll probably see if one of my bridesmaids is available next weekend to verify my judgement call, but more than likely, I think I may have found a dress. Scary.

And that beaded Grecian thing. I found one of those too and bought it, just in case.

Wedding Songs

Well, we've got our venues (both ceremony and reception). And Gen assures me we're sending out S.T.D. cards any day now. But in the meanwhile, she asked that I set up a place online to receive song requests for the reception such that we can fill up our iPod and let it rip.

So if you have requests or suggestions for the wedding, please add a comment to this post and we'll see what we can do.

Shoes!

So I have this photograph in my mind. It is of me and my two brides maids pulling up the hems of our dresses to show us three with matching shoes on, except that mine are orange and theirs are black. I know it's cliche, but I like it.

Shoes can be a huge part of wedding planning. Brides go gaga over Manolos, Stewart Weitzmans or Christian Louboutins. Except, I have this pet peeve of putting on flip flops or ballet flats for the reception after wearing four inch heels for the ceremony. I can't keep three to four inch heels on for the whole time and I really don't want to wear tennis shoes (and socks). Also, I love a good pedi, so I want to show that off. And honestly, I really can't spend 500 on a pair of shoes.

Today I finally found the shoes. They look cute (adjudicated by quorum), are not extremely expensive, and have low heels. I ordered them, three pairs to be exact. We'll see if they fit. And if they are really as cute in person as they are in the photos.

an irk

I don't think I am really getting across what I want out of my wedding, or at least I don't think I am sometimes. I may not really have the "vision" of what I want, but at the same time, that's part of what makes me, me. I love it when a plan comes together.

What I want is a most excellent party where people I like and love come together and share an amazing meal and then maybe dance a little after wards. I want it to be in an urban environment because really that's what I love the most. I do love me some concrete! But I want the ceremony to be in nature or at least outside. I want there to be lots of orange, green and black because those are the colors that define each of us and maybe a little blue so as to avoid the whole all hallows feel.

I want a restaurant. Not an "event space". I love restaurants. And I want a park or a rooftop and not a church.

And I want to do this wedding in a way that I don't feel horrible for spending all that money on all the crap the wedding industrial complex is trying to sell me. I've looked at all the internet has to offer and after a while it all looks the same. Each wedding is like another, even the brides blend together as one eventually.

All I want is to have my wedding be fun, maybe a little bit silly, and a little different than all the rest.

room service

I think that it may be premature to move the wedding outside the city. It was just me over-reacting, something that I am want to do.

Anyways, in the spirit of over-reacting, I decided that it would be a good idea to block out rooms now, at hotels that are near to where we plan on having ceremony/reception. The two that I checked out were the Mosser and the Intercontinental. I've never stayed at either and the Jr. Travel Agent in me would not allow people to stay at a place I've not set foot in.

So, I went to the Mosser first. The lobby was pretty nice, done in an urban modern deco style. The guy at the front was pretty helpful and the door guy showed me around the place. My initial impression was pretty good until I stepped off the elevator and noticed the carpet. This is key in noticing a property, see how in repair it is. So that was a strike against. The second thing was the rooms were really small, I mean really small. Did I mention they were really small? And they were a lot more than I thought they were going to be because of Oracle. Thanks guys.

The upside is that it is centrally located in SOMA and its the cheapest hotel in the area. I think I'm going to have to do more research.

The second place I checked out was the Intercontinental Hotel. I walked in and spoke with the check in guy who was less than helpful. I had to push him to get me to another check in person who finally got me the group sales person, but I had to wait like 10 minutes for that. She was really helpful and took me around to all the rooms. They were nice, but the bathrooms were dissapointing. They were standard tub/shower combos. They said they had better bathrooms, but I didn't see them. She did show me the ball room too, but I don't think its in the budget to hold the reception there.

All in all it was really depressing. So I had a chocolate chip cookie and a peppermint latte at Peet's.

Oracle and Fleet Week

So I called about information about a particular park in SF where I was thinking of having the ceremony. However I found out some particularly disturbing news.

1) That weekend is the end of fleet week. I might be having Blue Angels sonic booming my ceremony and sailors crashing my reception (though I think my maid of honor will be happy with having her pick of navy men.)

2) That is the week before the Oracle Convention, and all the rooms are booked starting from the 8th of October for people coming in for set up (and probably every single extra chair in SF will be rented to them too!)

3) Who owns the park is still in limbo, and they don't even know if it will be "finished" by then, since it's still not done.

Maybe October isn't going to work out in SF. Sonoma anyone?