reclaiming wife

Archive for July, 2009

We have been setting up our seating charts this week (yes, yes, yes, of course we're seating people, we have lots of people that don't *know* other people and we need to sit them next to kind, chatty souls. Souls that they might like to make out with. Or whatever).

Anywaayyy. So. We were trying to figure out who we should sit with, and we started dutifully assembling the requisite family table. And then we realized: Why are we sitting with our parents? We see our parents all the time! We'll see them all weekend! So eff it. We sat our parents next to their friends that they never see* so they could party, and we sat ourselves next to our friends that we never see so we could party.
Continue reading Deconstructing The Head Table

Ohhh! And in case you missed it, Kristina, she of Lovely Morning and 100 Layer cake and, um, the chickens, just posted her wedding graduate advice over here. The closer I get to the wedding, the more firmly I agree with her on #1. Now go read!

Photo: Michele Waite

Dear Team Practical
I have so much still to tell you guys...

About drinking white wine while a girlfriend and we practiced my (in the end) DIT hair and makeup.

About marriage counseling and how everyone should do it.

About how I now have a genuine silver sixpence tucked into my wedding shoes which makes them feel brand new, even though they are not.

But some of these stories are going to have to wait till after the wedding. I'm running a fever (literally) from trying to do too much, and we have a million small tasks to be done between now and the wedding. Oh, yes. And I want to be able to keep my sanity and enjoy all this.

So, I'll be checking in here now and then (because I can't help myself anyway), but I have to take the pressure off myself to post regularly over the next two weeks. I have faith that you guys will watch my back while I do this. (And yessss... I'll have posts scheduled for you while I'm off on my honeymoon. HONEYMOON! Just the word gets me excited!)
Continue reading Dear Team Practical

Sponsored Post
Today's sponsored post is really neat, because not only is it something that every single bride in Northern California should know about, but it's a chapter in my long wedding dress search that I never got to fill you in on. And a very cool chapter at that. A vintage wedding dress chapter.I found out about Recapture Designs in Oakland through an early reader of this blog. Recapture Designs is a fantastic vintage store in the Oakland/Berkeley Rockridge shopping district. It's a great store, but the magical oh-my-god-is-this-real part is is the back of the store, by appointment only. Tucked into the back the store owner, Robin, has a whole room of vintage wedding gowns. When you walk in, you realize that they are sorted by decade, starting in the 1920's, and moving through the 1950's, and on to the 1970's. I walking slowly through the decades felt like wandering through a family album. I would squeal and pull out a dress and say "Oh! My grandmother wore a dress in this style," or "This is totally my mom's dress." Continue reading Sponsored Post: Recapture Vintage Bridal Designs

Somewhere around the two and a half week mark, a eerie total calm settled over me. Last week I looked around and realized I had a large event to throw in just over two weeks... and my brain flipped a switch. I went from bride-mind to producer mind. I've mentioned before that after knowing each other for nine years ) what got David and I together was being co-producers of a small theatre company we started in New York. Producing is something that comes easily to me, something I understand.

So the switch flipped, and I calmly went back to my spreadsheets. I had chats with our wedding stage manager (you can call her captain of the bridal brigade, but we all know that a brilliant stage manager is the lynch pin of a smooth production). I wrote prop lists. Suddenly I knew what I was doing again. CALM.

This weekend, we ran all around the Bay Area (because we are pretty sure that by next weekend we will not give a f*ck about wedding details anymore). We had a meeting with our caterer to go over logistics. I walked in, flipped open my notebook to my three page spreadsheet with a detailed color coded timeline for the weekend.
Continue reading Two Weeks Out and I’m Feeling Calm

You guys. We're two weeks out. I'm working nonstop (hellloooo 18 hour days, lovely to meet you) and we're running around trying to finish up all the last wedding chores. Some of them are silly little things, and some of them are bigger. Like, you know, like getting my dress altered, and um, figuring out the last details of my outfit.* Right.

BUT! People keep saying things to us like, "I'll see you in two weeks, but I won't SEE you." or "You'll be too stressed to talk, but I'm excited to be there." or "I'll see you from afar, but you won't have a minute to talk," or, or, or.... and all I can think is if we don't get to hang out with people over the weekend of our wedding, if we don't have chats, if we don't have gossipy drinks, if we don't have teary hugs, and excited arm waving conversations, if we don't really SEE people, then... this is one over-priced party.

So, sanity check, my wedding graduates. I suspect that, if you put your mind to it, you will actually see people at your wedding, and actually enjoy time with them. It's like remembering your wedding... if you want to, you will.
Continue reading Being There, And Seeing