My Life, As Told Between (Baby Cakes') Naps

Checked out some bridesmaid dresses and visited a couple of wedding photographers this weekend. We’ve decided to go with the first photographer we met. We really liked him and his work and his rates are reasonablish. (I say reasonablish because everything wedding related is grossly inflated and expensive.)

We also met with a DJ last night and are meeting with three florists this weekend. Since we don’t have any friends that have recently gotten married in LA, choosing vendors has been really difficult. Sigh.  Wedding planning is all about making decisions and neither T nor I are particularly good decision makers. I can’t wait until we finalize all the vendors and I can stop worrying about whether I’ve chosen the right person . . . cause, um, that worry goes away as soon as you sign the contract, right?

This isn’t my wedding dress, but how gorgeous is it?! If I hadn’t already bought my gown (which I still love), and T weren’t opposed to slinky gowns (although this has more shape than most), this one would definitely be a contender. Especially since it’s only $378 $225!

T thinks I’m going to be a terror between now and the wedding. This may be in part because last night, I forced him to take me to Office Depot to pick up clear mailing labels for our Save the Date cards, which I insisted had to be done that very day (our cards had arrived earlier that day) even though our wedding is still over nine months away, almost everyone knows the date already anyways, and we probably won’t actually mail them until sometime next week when we finish getting all the addresses we need.

He then witnessed me frantically searching the store to find matching clear return address labels, only to dejectedly settle for white ones because the clear ones only came in expensive packs of 2,000 – way more than we need for our small wedding!

What he doesn’t see however is all the insanity I’m actually saving him from! There’s a big old scary world of wedding etiquette and protocol out there to which T is comfortably oblivious thanks to me (i.e., I just don’t tell him about it). I can only hope most of our guests are equally oblivious because I’m already trampling willy nilly over a lot of the old rules.

If you’re a stickler for wedding etiquette however, I apologize in advance for using printed address labels instead of calligraphy, dropping your courtesy titles, whether it be “Mr.,” “Mrs.,” “Ms.” or other, daring to include both our names on the (white! grrr) return address labels, thereby acknowledging that we’re living together before marriage, and a million other offenses I’ll undoubtedly commit between now and the wedding! =)

I bought my wedding dress this weekend!! After unanimous approval from both the Girlfriends and the Sisters, and a little whimpering over the price, I handed over my credit card (which was emitting its own pathetic whimpers). I love, love, love the dress though and can’t wait to wear it! Oh, and to get married and all that of course. =)

My weekend got off to a nice start Friday night, when we had dinner at C&O with a couple of T’s friends. Unfortunately, we had to call it an early night because I had to get up at 5:oo a.m. for a 20 mile run the next morning. The run, my first 20 mile run since the Marathon in March, was great! Aside from a brief moment at mile 15 when I wondered if I could go on, the run was fun and fairly relaxed.

T and I spent most of Saturday cleaning house and preparing for the dinner party we were hosting for some of my friends who were visiting from out of town. Dinner (aka take out pizza and snacks) was fun, although we bailed on going out afterwards in favor of watching Battlestar Galactica Razor and going to sleep early. Because that’s how we roll.

Fortunately, I got in a lot more together time with them on Sunday, when they came over for brunch, wedding dress shopping, and cupcakes. After they left, T and his brother dragged me to do more manly things – like watching I Am Legend. Which I actually only saw 1/3rd of as my eyes were firmly shut for 2/3rds of the movie. Either because I was scared, anticipated being scared, or was recovering from a scare.

My sisters came to town this past weekend for a sister-bonding, wedding dress shopping weekend. It’s been years since all three of us have spent any length of time together, so it was a really great weekend. Made even better by the fact that I think I’ve found my perfect wedding dress (*knock on wood*)!

We visited three bridal stores and while we liked several dresses, we all fell in love with a dress at the last store. It’s simple, sophisticated, and sexy while still feeling like a wedding dress rather than just another white dress. The cut of the dress is a little reminiscent of the 1920’s. Best of all, it’s comfortable, lightweight and doesn’t require a petticoat! I absolutely love it and am dragging some friends along next weekend to try it on again. I totally want to buy it RIGHT NOW!

Some of you may already know this about me, but I have scarcity issues. I’m always slightly worried that things will run out before I get to them. I know in this context it’s totally illogical, but it’s there nonetheless. It may be a family trait since my sister B (who first noticed the dress) is now worried they’ll run out of all the good wedding dresses before she gets married/engaged. In fact, after we left the last bridal shop, she called her longterm boyfriend and told him, “You’d better get on it!”

In related shopping news, I bought these shoes on sale recently:

(They’re a darker, richer red than they look in this photo.)

I had thought to wear them underneath my dress (no one will see my shoes anyways and they’d be a fun touch of color!) but given my sisters’ gasps of horror and vehement objections, I may have to reconsider. Although I have no idea what else I’d wear them to/with. . .

Any minute now I’m going to start shopping for OTHER people. Really. I promise!

Remember me? I don’t know if you’re still out there, but I use to post on this Blog occastionally. I realize it’s been even more sparse than usual lately. Work’s been really busy and with the holidays and wedding planning (by which I mostly mean looking at pictures of stuff online and in magazines) and updating MySpace, Facebook, Friendster and my wedding site, this Blog’s been a little neglected. Sorry about that. I can’t promise that’s going to change any time soon, but you know you can always email or call me right? Cause I’m just saying, I’ve noticed a lack of such emails and calls recently. I know, I know, I haven’t been particularly good at instigating those either. However, T and I did order our cheesy Christmas cards recently so you can expect those in the mail sometime. . . hopefully before next Christmas.

So yes, all is good. We’ve been filling our days with lots of friends, family and food. We’re heading up to northern California today for a belated Thanksgiving dinner with my family, which I’m really excited about. I’ll also get to see some friends I haven’t seen in forever. My sisters are coming to town the following weekend to help me try on wedding dresses. Then one of my best friends, the Frog, is back in California for the holidays, so I’m looking forward to seeing her.  Hope your holidays are all going well too and would love to hear from you! =)

Sorry posting’s been especially spotty on this blog lately. Since we booked a wedding date this past weekend – September 19th! – I’ve been secretly putting together our wedding blog. Yes, even though my wedding is actually ages from now (in exactly 316 days according to my wedding website countdown), I’ve been checking out wedding websites and putting my own together.

In case you’re interested, here are some of the dresses I tried on and actually liked!

Update: Since my friend CH mistakenly expressed an interest in my wedding stories, I thought I’d explain why wedding dress shopping was so much harder than I had anticipated. Apparently most places require you make a reservation – which I didn’t realize and when informed didn’t understand. Since we only had an hour to spare (and I don’t want to spend $1,000+ for my dress), we popped into David’s Bridal, a big chain store that could accomodate walk-ins. The reason appointments are necessary immediately became obvious. Many of the dresses require petticoats and bustier bras (provided by the store), are heavy, delicate, and/or cumbersome. Getting those suckers on and off is a labor intensive endeavor so someone is assigned to you who gets the dresses and helps you put them on and take them off while your friends sit on the sideline ready to provide commentary. It’s a little unnerving to be the center of that much attention, but maybe it’s good preparation for the wedding?

Happy Halloween all! Hope everyone’s enjoying their week! We’ve been super busy lately, but mostly with fun things. Friday night, we had dinner with a couple of T’s friends who were staying with us as they had a wedding in LA that weekend.

Saturday morning I did an 11 mile run by myself because I woke up too late to join my running group. Saturday night we went out with KA and some other friends in Hermosa, which was a blast. The girls dressed up as sailors and T came as a low-budget pirate (because the Halloween stores were ransacked we only managed to buy the pirate accessories but not the actual costume, so he wore jeans and a white t-shirt).

Sunday I went wedding dress shopping with some friends, which wasn’t nearly as horrible as I was anticipating, but a lot more involved than I thought. I even found some dresses I liked. Afterwards, T and I went to a pumpkin carving dinner party. But being the old fogies we are, by the time the dinner portion of the evening was over, it was so late we were too tired to do any carving. Fortunately, most of the other guests felt the same way so our hosts kindly gave us all cute little pumpkins and a carving set to go. T and I carved ours last night (well, T carved while I hurriedly threw together dinner since it was getting really late):

• Went on a great 11 mile run with my friend the Teacher this past weekend!
• Visited a beautiful possible wedding location both T and I loved. It’s a scenic ranch in the Malibu mountains. We’re looking at August ’08 and are leaning heavily towards a Friday wedding, since it’s so much cheaper, but we’re worried about the inconvenience to the guests. Wedding planning is hard. I’ll feel so much better once we book the venue.
• Bought some fantastic hand soap from Target this weekend. I’d been wanting to try it ever since I read about it. I bought all three scents available and the first one I used (Almond Flower) smells great. The soap container feels nice, looks beautiful and is biodegradable. The soap lathers wonderfully, is creamy without leaving a film and isn’t antibacterial! Yay for Method hand soap! =)
• Finally got an overhead light up in our bedroom without too much hassle. We’re slowly but surely getting our condo in order.
• Saw a beautiful bridemaid dress in one of the sample wedding albums we viewed. I’m now on a hunt to find out the dress’s designer and exact color. Unfortunately, googling “grayish blue bridesmaid dresses” hasn’t proven particularly useful, although it has exhausted my investigative arsenal.
• Hung out with T’s friends visiting from New York and their adorable 1.5 year old son who will hopefully be our ring-bearer. =)

Yay!!! After months and months of searching, we FINALLY bought a sofa this weekend! We’d been having a really hard time finding something both of us liked. I liked the aesthetics of a smaller, sleeker sofa and T wanted something comfortable and big enough to fit his (very tall!) frame. We’d started the search for the perfect sofa around December of last year and had been to every furniture store in the greater LA area at least once over the last several months. We were on the verge of giving up and likely buying something neither one of us would be happy with when we dropped by The Sofa Company this weekend and fell in love with – *trumpets blaring* – a sofa that was on SALE!

Unfortunately, the loveseat was not on sale and had to be special ordered, so it ended up costing us more than the sofa and we have to wait 5-7 weeks to get it delivered, but I’m thrilled our place is starting to come together. The sofa looks much better in person than in this picture. The fabric is microfiber and it’s a rich, warm tan with down-wrapped seats and pillows. I so want to buy one of these gorgeous decorative pillows for it, but I’m going to hold off since we need to make sure we can pay all of our bills this month first!

In other news, we also checked out a possible wedding location this weekend. It’s on a hill overlooking the ocean so the view’s beautiful. Overall, it had many elements we really liked, but it’s not quite perfect, it’s very expensive (although we haven’t found any place that isn’t!), and it’s booked up for Saturday evenings through October 2008.

Sigh. Wedding planning is really hard. We oscillate between wanting to do something (in which case, I already feel myself buying into the idea that it has to be perfect according to some undefined idea of perfect I have in my head) or not doing anything at all and saving ourselves a lot of time and money…

T proposed this past weekend! It was totally unexpected and sweet. We went to pick up keys to our new condo together and when I opened the door, it was evident that T had been by earlier in the day. There were rose petals scattered on the floor and tea light candles leading up to the dining room. More flowers and candles filled the dining room, framing the lovely dinner T had set up. I, still unsuspecting, assumed it was in celebration of our new place.

After dinner, T brought out an ice-cream cake he’d purchased. I started cutting into it when T said, “Can you hold on a sec, I have something more important.” I replied, “What could be more important than ice-cream cake?,” not realizing what was going on until he reached into his pocket and got on one knee. Apparently, the little hampster wasn’t running too quickly that day. =)

It is the perfect ring – a simple blue sapphire set with two small Canadian diamonds. We’d done some ring shopping a couple of months earlier (you know, in case he ever decided to propose in the distant future) but I couldn’t find anything I wanted. I didn’t want a diamond engagement ring, not only because of the problem with blood diamonds, but because of the artificial value placed on diamonds as a result of the manipulative practices of the diamond industry. I wanted something understated, preferably with a sapphire, but didn’t like the sapphire solitaires. In the end, I gave up and told T I was going to leave it entirely up to him to find me the perfect ring. He completely succeeded and I love it. I just can’t stop staring at it! =) It looks kind of like the one pictured below, but with a darker sapphire and a thinner band.

In any case, I’m very excited, but wedding plans are for the far distant future. Right now I’m plenty overwhelmed. The move took much longer than expected and was draining. We still have to unpack and get window treatments. I feel like I’m living in a fish bowl at the moment. I had to get my rental towed because it wouldn’t start yesterday. My car is STILL in the shop after a month and despite having been referred there by a friend of a friend, the body shop I took it to is unresponsive and rude.

Oh well, guess life isn’t always roses and candle-lit dinners. It sure is nice when it is though!