Hey That’s A Nice Life

I have a new online addiction.

ObamiconMe.

That’s right. You can use this site to turn a photograph of yourself into Shepard Fairey-style painting of yourself like the now iconic image of our new president.

Let me warn you that once you start Obamiconning things, it’s very, very hard to stop.

Really.  I even Obamiconned cartoon Susan and pieces of candy.

Even Don is getting caught up in it.  From his arm chair across the room he periodically shouts out: Not Lupus!  LOL Cat! The Dude!(People submit their best Obamiconned images to a public gallery.)

As fun as it was, I needed a way to connect it to the wedding blog so I made this image.  This picture was taken right after Don proposed to me (sort-of proposed, anyway) and I said, “I do” (instead of “yes” or “I will”).

I’m going to tell right up front that we’re not having a bourbon bar OR a cigar bar at our wedding.

Sorry.

I was out of town for work last week and caught a bug on the way home which kept me housebound all weekend.  Finally, on Sunday night, I asked Don to spring me for a super casual dinner and we ended up at a soup and sandwich joint in Old Town Alexandria.

We sat down near a table with two women and the fattest binder I have ever seen.  In a super scrolling font, the homemade front cover read, “Tying the Knot.”  I almost sprained my eyes rolling them, but I could not stop myself from listening to the women.  I kept trying to look out the window onto King Street, but I keep turning back to them.

And after a few minutes, I looked at Don and said, “Those two don’t know each other.”  It was some kind of bridal meet up.  Among strangers.  A very small bridal meet up among strangers.

One is having a bourbon bar.  The other is having a cigar bar.  One told her fiance she just couldn’t get married in 2010 because people would say they got married in twenty ten (instead of two thousand ten) and she couldn’t stand the way that sounded. 

Seriously. 

That’s what she said. 

Don paid attention to exactly none of it and when I hit the highlights for him on the way home, here’s what transpired.

DW: I want to go to wedding with a cigar bar.

SF: Oh.
(feels slightly ashamed)

I’m sorry.  Do you want me to look into arranging a cigar bar?
(I can literally hear the cash register ch-chinging in my mind.) 

DW: No. I want to go to a wedding with a cigar bar. I don’t want to pay for one.

And THAT’S how I know I’m about to marry the right guy for me.

So, we’re not having a bourbon bar and we’re not having a cigar bar, but I sincerely hope you get to attend a wedding with each some day. 

And, please, take Don with you.

100.

That’s how many days until the wedding. 

Just thought you might like to know.

Here’s a list of all the stuff we’ve checked off the list in the last two days:

• Ordered the sound system for the ceremony and reception
• Ordered the paper lanterns for the ceiling over the dance floor at the reception venue
• Investigated chair rentals for the ceremony
• Officially notified the Town of Ocean City of our wish to use a stretch of beach for the ceremony
• Selected the officiant, signed the contract and paid the deposit

Plugging away; stay tuned.

Don and I seem to only know talented and smart and generous people.  In addition to the friends who have been helping me with various DIY projects related to throwing our almost vendor-less wedding, we also know a bunch of gifted professional, near professional and amateur photographers.

I have known one of these photographers, Chris Anderson, for more than half of my life. He’s a full time photojournalist for a local paper, brilliant and one of my closest friends.  AND he’s agreed to photograph our wedding.  Sort-of.

See, Chris also is an invited guest at our wedding and we wanted (and he wanted) to make sure he still gets to be a guest.  But the more we thought about it, the more we really wanted someone we know to photograph it.  I have this idea, perhaps misguided, that if you have a personal relationship with the photographer the images will be more authentic somehow.

So we came up with a plan that works on just about every level.  Don and I decided to have most of our wedding pictures taken BEFORE the wedding.  It’s a great idea for us because we’re not particularly superstitious and don’t have any ideas that seeing each before the wedding is naughty.  Plus getting the pictures taken early means that we get to attend our own cocktail hour and hang out with our friends and family.

Also - and this is my favorite part - since we’re getting the pictures made early, we can have them taken just about anywhere in Ocean City.  So we decided that we want to have them taken about 40 blocks from the wedding site - at the inlet in Ocean City where we can have some standard beach pictures, pictures with the pier in the background and pictures on the rocks of the inlet PLUS pictures on the boardwalk.  The idea of having pictures of Don in his tux and me in my wedding dress on the carousel at Trimper’s or the bumper cars, playing skee ball or eating cotton candy makes me positively swoon with happiness.

There are a couple of shots we need during the actual ceremony and a few to be taken immediately following the ceremony (after we have our rings on), but the hardest work will be done and Chris can get on with the business of being a guest.

Yay for talented friends!

Oh, and as for those other photographers we know … well, they might end up being asked to take a picture or two also.

Indoor Carousel by swamibu

Yay! Thanks to my super hard-working and dedicated fiance, our wedding blog has a new look and feel and is powered by the much more robust WordPress software now.

The image for the banner was taken over the summer at 41st Street in Ocean City, the site of our upcoming nuptials.

I really like the final results and hope you like our new look, too.

If you’re looking for the wedding details that previously existed in the sidebar (like the date and location of the wedding and the local links), click on the “Details” tab at the top of the page.

If you’ve been reading the blog from the start, you know some of the early problems we had with the reception venue caterer.  If you started reading more recently, I wrote a lot about it during the month of August.  The catering manager was a challenge, to say the least.

Today, my mom sent me an article from the local weekly paper offered below without comment.

Dooley named new GM at Centerplate

(Jan. 9, 2009) John Dooley has been named the new general manager of Centerplate at the Roland E. Powell Convention Center in Ocean City. Centerplate provides catering services for all events held at the 40th Street venue.

Dooley most recently served as the food and beverage director of Centerplate at Yankee Stadium in New York where he had worked since 2006. He has also served as a regional executive chef for Centerplate at Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, N.J., and then the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City.

Earlier in his career, Dooley was the executive chef for Service America at Indiana Convention Center and RCA Dome in Indianapolis, executive chef and food and beverage director at the Doubletree Park Terrace Hotel in Washington, executive chef at Aramark at Sprint in Reston, Va., and senior food service director at Aramark at SAIC in McLean, Va.

During his career, Dooley has managed food and beverage services for numerous high profile events including the Grammy Awards, movie premier cast parties, the Economic Club Dinner for President George H. Bush and the NBA All-Star game in Denver.

“John brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to our catering operations,” said Mike Noah, convention center executive director. “We believe our clients will be well served by his expertise in food and beverage services.”

- Ocean City Today

I wonder what happened to Silent Bob?

I’m not sure how it happened.  For a long time, I thought there was every possibility that we were not going to register for gifts.  And then one day I went online and started a Macy’s registry to complete the four colors of Fiesta ware that we currently own (cobalt, sunshine, plum and tangerine).  And then Don agreed that Bed, Bath and Beyond would be a good place to register.  When I saw the amazing plates that are fancier than our Fiesta ware (but not too formal and stuffy) at Pottery Barn, I wanted to register there, too.

This is the Emma pattern from Pottery Barn.

And then it was basically done.  Last week, Don and I headed to each of the stores to make our final selections.  There were a few things I wasn’t happy with at the end of the day.  The silverware we selected at Macy’s turned out to be $60 a place setting (we saw the sale price at the store) and we immediately ruled that out.  I didn’t love the barware or stemware we found.  BUT, it was basically done.

We popped into Crate and Barrel to see what they had on the after-Christmas sale and I found the stemware and the glasses and the silverware I want.  It was an agonizing moment.

We couldn’t possibly go from zero to four registries.  No way.

But Don, who is never one to play by the rules and occasionally manages to surprise even me, said, “Why not?”.  In the age of online shopping, directing people to one more Web site is not really that big of a deal, he argued.  Even if people go into the store to make their purchase, they’re likely to investigate online first anyway, right? 

So, there you have it.  We created four gift registries.  I’m relieved it’s done and I’m very happy with our selections, but I still feel a little sick about it so we also decided to list a few charities we care a lot about on our Web site registry page.

Our registries:

Bed, Bath and Beyond
Crate and Barrel
Macy’s
Pottery Barn (this one will not take you directly to our registry for some reason)

Or make a donation to a charity of your choice, or to one of the three charities listed below that mean something special to us:

• Habitat for Humanity
• Gilchrist Hospice Care (Formerly Hospice of Baltimore)
• A charity to support marriage equality

  (We did not send up charitable registries with these organizations, so be sure to let us know if you make a donation so that we can make sure you get thanks where thanks is deserved!)

I’ve been toying with the idea of wedding cupcakes for a few months and last month I learned that my birthday is the same day as National Cupcake Day.  To me, that seemed like a sign and Don was very agreeable.  After all, who doesn’t love cupcakes?

Also in December, two of my fabulous co-workers and I had a chance to sample some of the Washington Post award-winning cupcakes from Georgetown Cupcakes. 

They.
Are.
Amazing.

Sweet, moist, light, fluffy.  I just can’t say enough about these gems.

Oh, there is one more thing I can say about them … they actually fit into our budget.

Of course, if you’re paying attention you’ll note that Georgetown is in Washington, DC - 3 hours away from our wedding reception site.  Yes, it’s a problem, but these cupcakes are good enough to warrant finding a solution.

The friendly catering manager, Katy, tells me that while they suggest same day consumption for their cute little cakes, they taste pretty great on day two and that we will not have a problem picking up the cupcakes on Friday and serving them on Saturday evening.  On top of that, our friend and neighbor, Martha, offered to chauffeur the little beauties with her when she comes for the wedding (since Don and I are headed in that direction on Wednesday night or Thursday morning).Yippee!  

And, if that’s not enough good news, Katy also told me that they’d be delighted to decorate them (at no additional charge since they’d be decorating them anyway) with the beautiful chocolate sea shells from Guylian that I will provide for them.

I’m giddy with excitement of sharing these amazing little cupcakes with our friends and family.  All that’s left is to pick the flavors.  We can choose anything on the Friday menu and have already selected chocolate and vanilla,  and vanilla and chocolate - but will probably pick one or two more.  I’m thinking lemon blossom sounds YUM and the seasonal cupcake for May is toffee (which I love).  

Check out the Web site - http://www.georgetowncupcake.com/home.html - and click on menu.  What flavors sound good to you?

The invitations are nearly assembled and I love how they turned out. Sure I would have liked gorgeous letterpress invitations on creamy thick paper … but the price was too dear. My favorite part about these invitations is that my fabulous friends / wedding elves helped me make them over a few evenings, some wine, some beer and lots of chatter. My second favorite part is how much money we saved. Have I mentioned how nice it is to have an almost vendor-free wedding planning process?

Here’s what we did:

1. The invitation is crafted from two pieces of 80lb cardstock (cut in half so that one piece of paper made two invitations) tied together with raffia. The background is metallic lagoon and the text overlay is aquamarine metallic. Both pieces have just a bit of shimmer. The text was laser printed two per page onto a regular sheet of printer paper and then photocopied (!) onto the invitation. We used a paper cutter we already owned to cut the darker blue sheets in half and then trim a quarter inch all around and cut in half the lighter blue. Two small holes punched into each piece allowed us to thread a thin piece of natural-colored raffia through and make a simple bow. Just below the bow we glued a tiny starfish.
2. The response card was designed as a self mailing postcard. On the front is a color photocopy of a vintage postcard from Ocean City. We used Photoshop to change the text from “Greetings from” Ocean City to “A Wedding In” Ocean City. The vintage image was printed four per page on some leftover cardstock from some long-forgotten craft project. The back is the actual response portion. There are three events that require responses for our wedding and we decided to include all three events on the same response cards without issuing separate invitations for each event. We added “Number attending” to the Welcome Dinner and Bagel Brunch events because children are invited to attend those events, but not the actual wedding and reception. Again, I printed the response cards four per page on the darker blue cardstock. Everything was trimmed on the paper cutter.
3. The insert is a half sheet of the lighter blue cardstock printed and photocopied like the invitation and response card.
4. The envelope is the same aquamarine metallic. The paper and the envelopes were ordered from www.actionenvelope.com which has a lovely assortment of colors and decent prices.
5. I ordered an address embosser from www.expressionery.com to stamp the return address onto the envelope flap. It has not come yet – I selected the 10 day free shipping method and had a 40 percent off coupon. Wahoo!
6. I am going to make address labels that coordinate with the colors and design of the invitation for the outside of the envelope – we aren’t actually addressing for another 6 weeks, though (in case anyone moves, etc.).

As I mentioned, the cost of these DIY invitations is pretty hard to beat. We made 76 invitations for the following costs:

• Lagoon invitation paper - $15.96
• Aquamarine invitation paper - $11.36
• Lagoon response card - $7.96
• Aquamarine insert card - $11.36
• Envelopes - $15.92
• Starfish - $12

I already had the raffia and the plain white cardstock used for the vintage postcard image. That brings the total cost for the invitation to $74.50 – or about $.98 per invitation.

That’s right – less than $1 per piece for custom-designed, handmade invitations.

The labels will increase the cost a little (not significantly), and of course there is the postage that has to be accounted for ($.59 per invitation and $.27 per response card). We could save money by hand addressing all the invitations, but I love the idea of creating a label that works with the overall theme and design elements. Miss Sushi, one of the WeddingBee bloggers, made some that I just loved and I decided it would work well for us, too. I plan to use the address embosser for the Thank You cards and next year’s Christmas cards as well (provided we do not move I’ll emboss every item we send in the mail!) – so the $16 I spent on the embosser can be shared across multiple projects. I had to order the paper and envelopes in quantities of 50, but I have other projects that require the same paper, so it will not be wasted.

Here’s the working idea I have for label right now. I am going to keep playing around a little, but I like the way it’s looking so far.