Archive for August, 2008

Aug 2008

They are up, they are up! Peony has put up the first of many pictures of her stunningly beautiful wedding. You all must go look, right away. There are so many nice things you could say about this wedding, about how it was stylish, super-budget and chic, but really, no one should talk about anything but the radiant joy on their faces. Cara said, "The small details that we spend so long thinking about really faded into nothingness on the day. " Amen. May it be so.

As for me, I am winging my way down to Los Angeles for a very informal little engagement party in my parents delightful backyard, and then some time by the pool. Thank you for all your support this week, in comments and emails. Rebecca gave such excellent perspective on weddings and life when she said, "we all have to nurse some grief about losing our concept of how we hoped things would be and making the most of how things will have to be."
Continue reading We’re In This Together

Posted in: Life, Meg's Thoughts, Weddings | 3 Comments »

Aug 2008

Lime & Cherry

Do you know about Nicole's blog Prom to Altar? Technically, it's her personal wedding blog. Really, however, it's her sassy awesome blog. For example:

Dear TheKnot.com,

When I received your email featuring "4 Hot New Color Combos We Love", I was intrigued enough to open it. Not that I'm looking for any hot new color combos-- it's just that the wedding industry is always coming up with these new color schemes, and it's fascinating to see what the trendy new combination is-- many are hideous, some are nice, most just use new names for standard colors.

Now, here's my gripe: "cherry and lime" is not a "hot new color combo" (but it is a delicious flavor sensation). Maybe you love it, but here's the thing... cherry and lime is actually red and green, a color combo owned by Christmas for hundreds of years.
Continue reading Lime & Cherry

Posted in: Meg's Thoughts, Sass, Weddings | 2 Comments »

Aug 2008

Hope

It's been a difficult week here at Chez Practical. The clouds are beginning to lift a bit now, and we are both just fine, but things around here have been tough and emotional. All of this difficult personal stuff just happened to fall during the same week we had a lot of wedding errands to do. We would put on the happy face and run to the caterer for a tasting, to the flower mart for flowers, to the venue for a once over. It was hard, and it kept making me wonder what the point of a wedding was. It seemed frivolous.

And then two things happened:

I saw this picture of my dear blog friends wedding, and I felt like my heart had been lifted right up to the sky.

I read this passage by Elie Wiesel: "In our tradition, celebration of life is more important than mourning over the dead. When a wedding procession encounters a funeral procession in the street, the mourners must halt so as to allow the wedding party to proceed. Surely you know what respect we show our dead, but a wedding, a symbol of life and renewal, a symbol of promise too, takes precedence."

And then it hit me. I love weddings and write about weddings, because weddings are about hope. Weddings are hope for the future, hope for a new generation, hope that love and family can win out over everything else. Weddings are not more important then life, and they don't stand apart from life, but they represent something bigger then us, and undoubtedly bigger then the dress we wear or the flowers we carry.
Continue reading Hope

Posted in: The Hard Stuff | 15 Comments »

Aug 2008

Beck and Margaux – The Invites

Remember my favorite wedding ever?* The one that wasn't a wedding, it was a quasi nuptial event? The one with the hula hooping? The one at Union Station? (And I didn't even mention this last time) the wedding where the 'ceremony,' such as it was, was a compilation of videos made by their friends? Continue reading Beck and Margaux – The Invites

Posted in: LGBTQ Weddings | 6 Comments »

Aug 2008

The Best Budget Tip I Know

I've shared a number of tips and tricks on how to keep a wedding on budget - and believe you me, I've used everyone of them and then some the last few months! But it occurred to me that I hadn't shared my very best budget trick. It's as simple as this: We spend cash on all wedding purchases. We believe in this so much that we chose to have a longer engagement so that everyone could save their pennies. I know using cash isn't always possible for everyone*, but with the rest of the world pushing you to get a wedding credit card, I thought I'd tell you why this works for me.

We are more emotionally attached to cash then to credit, which feels a bit like free money (whee, I'll pay it back when we're married and are making more money!) When I look at something I love, like say invitations, and think to myself "Yes, $2,000 is a lot more then I was planning to spend, but in the long run it's not that much," I sort of believe my own logic... until I pull out my debt card that's attached to my savings account. I know exactly how hard I worked to put every penny in that savings account, and I look at my debt card, and I turn around and walk out of the store. A credit card would not hold that power for me. If your parents are helping you out with the wedding, I suggest that if they can do it, you have them send you a check for their contribution (incrementally, if they need to). Put that money in a money market fund for the wedding. It will then emotionally become your money, not free money, and you'll feel exactly the same way about spending it.
Compound Interest. I know, I know, but I have to do this math with you. Let's say you charge $5,000 in wedding expenses, and you plan to pay it off in 5 years, on a credit card that has a 14% APR (the average in the US). By the time you have paid off your bill (if you make no additions or subtractions to that amount over time), you paid $10,028. What just happened to your wedding budget? Is that a Kaboom that I just heard? You can calculate this here, just remember, most credit card interest compounds at least once a month.

Continue reading The Best Budget Tip I Know

Posted in: Ask Meg, Budget, Meg's Thoughts, Weddings | 21 Comments »

Aug 2008

Just Back…

I'm just back from our vacation at Bodega Bay. The nights were full of stars and s'mores, and it was good to get away. If you live in Northern California, and haven't waded in the Russian River, you must go right away!

I haven't had time to pull my thoughts together, but until then, I'll leave you with this treat. I posted on wedding music hoping that someone would send me a Klezmer wedding march, and, Internet, you didn't fail me. Here it is, thanks to a lovely reader: the wedding march by Klezmer fiddler Alicia Svigals, more perfect for me then you could ever imagine.
Continue reading Just Back…

Posted in: Life, Meg's Thoughts | 4 Comments »

Archive for August, 2008

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