Maybe I lied about being obsessed with weather...

Usually I frequent weather.com for my weather forecast, which will only give you a forecast 10 days ahead of time because beyond that who knows. However, I just came across accuweather.com... they tell you the weather a whole month ahead of time... oh man. Now I know this is not accurate because the 22nd is so far away still, but...

From accuweather.com

Again, this probably means nothing, but if that ends up being the case then I will take it! What scares me, though, is now I have the ability to check on the weather everyday starting now. I was calm earlier this morning knowing I wouldn't know a thing until 10 days before the wedding. But now, I think I may have just become a weather obsessed bride.

Any ideas for how to distract me from hoping that the 23rd's weather doesn't shift into the 22nd?

It's June!

I thought this month would never come! So, I have officially 21.5 days left to pull this all together!

It is such a beautiful day in Piscataway, NJ today as well.  Planning an outside wedding does something crazy to your brain so that you always think of the weather and daylight in terms how it would fair for a wedding.  For instance, as I was walking into work, I thought, now this is dream weather for a wedding – whoever is getting married today is lucky!” The high is 77deg F, just a light wind to make sure you aren’t too warm, partly cloudy. Amazing. One can only hope and dream for a day like today on their wedding day.

I like to think of myself as realistic so I understand that I cannot control the weather and I definitely have a plan B in case there is a crazy thunder/lightning storm at around 6pm June 22, 2012. However, I do find myself making deals with mother nature. For instance, I’ve thought, “Mother Nature, I can live with some rain, but please please please don’t give me wind over 20 mph the day of my wedding.” Or, “Dear Mother Nature, if you promise to make sure we don’t have a heat wave where the temp is above 90deg F, then I promise not to complain about it being cloudy.” Overcast days make for even more beautiful pictures, in my opinion.

While I am being silly about the weather, I am by no means obsessed. Seriously. What happens, happens. Wes and I are getting married that day regardless, so it is going to be a lovely day. J Plus, in the case of a tornado, it should pass fairly quickly…

What I have been obsessed about is daylight. I have been tracking where the sun is in the sky and how long the shadows are for two months now to try and extrapolate what is going to be like on June 22. Assuming the sun will be out. One of the nice things is that June 22 is one of the longest days of the year so the sun doesn’t set until 9:15pm. During the ceremony, it should still be very bright but with long shadows. Slowly over cocktail hour, the shadows will get longer. We will move inside to the reception well before sunset but during dinner yu should see the first stars coming out. You should be finishing dinner right as the sun is setting when we have our first dance. Did I plan that good or did I plan that good?

So…hooray for June! And, let’s all cross our fingers for no heat wave and no crazy wind storm 22 days from now.

RINGS! Part 2

And the ring drama continues! Wes’s was actually a bit harder to find!  

Wes felt very weird about spending gobs of money on a ring. Also, he is a very active person. He is always doing something that would probably scratch up a soft metal ring. This got me thinking that maybe a harder type of metal might be better than gold. There’s a few options for people in the market for a nontraditional metal ring.

There’s tungsten, titanium, cobalt and palladium just to name a few. In particular, tungsten and titanium are significantly cheaper than white gold. If you are interested in knowing how all these metals compare I suggest these site:

http://www.e-weddingbands.com/store/contemporary-metals-comparison.html

http://www.e-weddingbands.com/store/precious-metals-comparison.html

Tungsten is much harder than gold and it is getting easier to find tungsten rings, so we gravitated towards this metal. Tungsten is hypoallergenic, doesn’t scratch, and stays polished forever. Too good to be true right? Well, yes in my opinion. Tungsten is a dark metal so it doesn’t look like white gold at all. Trust me we ordered some and they were very dark. However, they can be made lighter by plating it with some other metal and is thus called white tungsten but it is harder to find than regular tungsten. But here's the worse part… tungsten is difficult to get off in case of an emergency, as well. It is not impossible to get it off, but it takes longer. (I can hear Wes’s mom in my head right now saying “Wes you better get white gold instead of tungsten!”). Also, I felt that if we were going to consider white tungsten that we should go through a reputable company to make sure it was made out of tungsten carbide instead of lead! I was not very confident that some strange internet website selling rings for $20 would be able to confirm for me exactly what the ring was made out of.

For the record, I am team white gold! However, white gold isn’t all it is cracked up to be either. White gold is made by mixing gold with white metals like nickel or palladium and then is plated with rhodium. The rhodium wears off quickly. I have only had my engagement ring for two years and it is already yellowing. So, I have to take it in to get it replated which will cost $45. If it is plated with something else to make it white then what is the point of getting white gold anyway!?!

 I guess the only thing I recommend to people is that you do your homework and know exactly what you are buying.  

Wes tried on white tungsten carbide and white gold at the jewelers. He knew before going that he wanted a very plain band. No designs. No inlays. No fancy finishing. He decided he liked exactly 5mm, not 4mm or 6mm. He liked the ringed domed, not flat. He instantly liked this 5mm white tungsten ring the jeweler had. I was hoping we could it in white gold so in case of an emergency paramedics would be able to cut it off. However, the domed rings are more expensive because there’s more metal compared to the flat rings, so the jeweler gave us another crazy price for white gold. They didn’t have any older rings in the back like mine, so we left without a ring for him. We did some searching online and found white gold and white tungsten carbide rings on sale at Macy’s. I also had a 15% coupon so we order both of them to look at.

 Here they are:

Tungsten on right.

Tunsten on right. This is my hand - Wes's hand isn't that girlie!

They look the same in color. The only difference is that the white gold ring is a little flatter than the white tungsten. Both are comfort fit. The white tungsten was much cheaper. Again, I am team white gold.

AND he picked (drumroll)…

Tungsten. Oh well. Little does he know that his wedding present from me is going to be a vice grip for him to carry at all times in case we have to crack his ring off.

RINGS! Part 1

We have our rings! Hooray!

I spent a little bit of time thinking about what I wanted. My engagement ring is fairly simple ring with a round stone set in a very thin pave band made up of little round diamonds. Non-matching wedding rings are becoming very popular. I think it looks great and there’s something so brave about going with something nontraditional and having the confidence to carry it off. Check this one out:

Weddingbee

I definitely can’t afford to get more diamonds or bigger diamonds so I thought maybe I can get a metal other than white gold. Such as rose gold! I looooooove rose gold right now. I have this beautiful rose gold watch that I got for my birthday. I wanted to try out the look before committing to it, so I ordered a fake rose gold thin pave ring from a costume jewelry store.

I like it! But, let’s be honest… my love for rose gold might not last forever and I am not a brave person. Thus, I decided to stick with a matching band. I tried a few others things at the jewelry store just to check, but it only confirmed that I should go with a matching band.

Until they told me the price… It was double the price of my engagement ring setting. WOAH! Why you ask? More diamonds? Nope. Better diamonds? Nope. Better metal? Nope. It was more expensive than my setting because the price of gold has been sky rocketing. Sad face.

I literally almost burst into tears because I had no idea what we were going to do. Wes was so wonderful. He told me that we could get it and that we would just figure it out. While I am sure this what any girl wants to hear, I just couldn’t spend the money. The lady could see that she wasn’t going to get a sale out of me and that I was really upset. That’s when she said that they had older rings sitting around that were ordered back when the price of gold was less and that they would be cheaper. We went through them and found one that is almost exactly the same as my engagement setting. Bingo. It was half the cost of the “matching” wedding ring.

Here it is!

This ring doesn’t fit perfectly up against my engagement ring, but I can live with that.

Maybe from time to time I'll slip the rose gold ring between the two to change it up. J

A pet peeve.

As a to-be bride who has been engaged 2+ years, I've watched a lot of wedding shows. There's something that happens at a lot of weddings that just drives me NUTS. I even see it happen in David Tutera's My Fair Wedding. And, as an expert in wedding etiquette, I am so sad that David doesn't always remind his brides NOT to do this... What am I talking about? I am talking about this:

Such a cool bouquet, but you're holding it all wrong!

Source

I can't see your dress!



Source

Oh yes perfect Anne Hathaway...you did it wrong, too!

I can't stand when brides hold their bouquet too high. It ruins the whole walk down the aisle thing for me! When brides hold their bouquet too high, then we can't see their dress and it detracts from their glowing face. I see it happen so often that I can't help but hold my breath when a bride starts to come down the aisle just to wait to see if she is going to hold her flowers the right way. I talk about this so much to Wes, that he showed me this picture this morning:

Source

This is Ryan Tannehill, the new quarterback for the Miami Dolphins, and his lovely bride, Lauren. He was drafted on Thursday and as an avid Dolphin fan, I fell instantly in love with Tannehill. And, I love his wife as well, because she holds her bouquet the right way! The sad part is that Wes showed me this picture just to point out that she held her bouquet the right way... that's how much I talk about this pet peeve of mine. Oh well.

I guess, it is not that big of deal where you hold your bouquet. I'm just ridiculous. But, I will definitely make sure my bouquet is held low so you can see how happy I am to be walking up to my best friend and soon to-be husband.

Invitation: Making the RSVP card

I know it doesn’t seem like a big thing, but it was a mini project of its own to figure out what we wanted on the RSVP card. I have been told by SO MANY brides that people get really confused about how to fill out a RSVP card, so I tried to make it as easy as possible and to save myself some work as well.

Here’s a reminder of what they look like!

First, I put a RSVP date of June 1, 2012… three weeks before our wedding. It is supposed to be 2 weeks before the wedding traditionally, but it would be really nice to have counts before that. Our counts are due to all our vendors at 2 weeks, so it gives us some time to make calls in case someone forgets to send their RSVP card back.

Two: I heard from some other brides that, sometimes, people like to add in extra people to the guest list and it makes for tense conversations. I thought it would be safer to put exactly how many seats we had reserved for each party so there wouldn’t be any confusion.

Third: I got the idea to put “Names:” instead of the traditional “M___” because apparently the latter can be a bit confusing. Other brides found that their guests did not know that you are supposed to fill the “M___” in so it reads “Mr” or “Mrs” etc. Our wedding isn’t very formal anyway, so “Names:” works just fine, in my opinion.

Four: I made multiple lines for the names because I wanted people to feel free to list everyone coming to ensure we had the  correct spelling. Seeing that a few invitations were sent to a family where 10 people were included, I think all that line space was necessary!

Five: It is becoming very popular to NOT have the standard “Accept” and “Decline”. I wanted something a little fun and I know that many people who can’t make it will still be celebrating in spirit so “Will celebrate from afar” seemed just right! Here’s some examples of how crazy (in a good way!) others have gotten with their RSVPs:

From weddingbee

From weddingbee

Six: I think my food icons are super cute! But, I guess they confused a few people. Um, I hope most people understand that you will not receive a whole cow or chicken… Mr. Barry, I am talking to you… J I wanted people to initial next to what they wanted. This is because we are having a seated dinner and I wanted to make sure you get the meal you wanted, even if multiple people from your party are coming.

Seven: You may not have noticed, but I wrote a little number on your RSVP card. I did this in case you did not put your name on the RSVP, then I would know who it came from. That number also has helped with regards to being able to organize who is coming in my excel file. I recommend doing this to any couple sending out a lot of invitations!

Lastly, I put something special on the back. I know not everyone was going to see it, but a few have…

I really want people to write us a little something. We want people to be involved and get excited because it is going to be an amazing day! And, in the process, Wes and I get reminders of what it takes to be a great couple. Also, I will use your notes as decoration on the wedding day. So, please fill out the back, as well, if you haven’t sent your RSVP back yet!!!

Invitation: The final product

There were a few ups and downs with designing our invitations, but I am so happy with how our invitation suite came out. It was a massive project. To anyone who wants to do this, it has to be a labor of love or you will hate every minute of it. I really love knowing that I cut out each piece and hand tied all that twine. I am well aware that most people spent two seconds tops untying that twine, but I think it gave it the personal touch I was looking for. We picked out the wording forever ago, but reading over it now, I get happy all over again. I hope people truly know that we want you at our wedding because, in some way or another, you are important to us and our parents. And, this isn't just some "I dos" and a cake - it is a CELEBRATION! A celebration of life. A celebration of family, friendship and the stuff that makes life worth it. Okay, I will stop being sappy. I took some "glamour shots" of my invites, so I could show them off to the world. :)