Deconstructing The Head Table

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.

When we broke the news to my parents, my dad said, "Good. Family tables have always seemed deadly boring to me. It's not a reunion of the 37th airborne, where you have to seat the entire command structure at the front of the room."

Indeed.

*Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Of course we are letting our parents invite their friends (though we did stick to the rule that we had to know said friends or no dice). I mean, it is a PARTY, we do want everyone to have FUN.

Picture: Studio 360

Lovely Morning, Words of Wisdom

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!)

xoxo
Meg

Sponsored Post: Recapture Vintage Bridal Designs

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."When you make an appointment with Robin, she spends at least an hour working with you, pulling down dresses that might work, and letting you try on a little pieces of history. But that is just the beginning of the story. If you find a dress that you love, Robin works with you to figure out how to modify the dress, to make it so it works for your body, to bring it up to date. I hadn't realized how important this would be until I started trying on dresses. Wearing a wedding dress from the 1920's sounds fantastically chic, but once I put them on I realized that parts of the dress would need to be tweaked so I felt like it was really mine. Robin is a fashion designer, so she can do anything from just lowering a neckline, to really redesigning a dress.So brides in Northern California, call Robin and make an appointment. It will be, hands down, the coolest experience you have shopping for a wedding dress. I've never heard of another store quite like Recapture, and diving into Robin's jewel box of a dress collection feels like heaven.And one final note. Robin has recently started doing bridal consultations, helping vintage-style brides accessorize their wedding outfit, go, go, go.You can see more pictures of Recapture dresses on Robin's blog. Enjoy!

Two Weeks Out and I'm Feeling Calm

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.

Me: I don't know if you remember, but we used to produce theatre...
Caterer: I remembered the second you opened your binder.

Later, she introduced us to the woman who would be in charge at our venue.

Woman: Hi.
Me: Hi! Your managing our event.
(Pause)
Me: Oh, um, I mean our wedding.

Then finally, I went to the hair salon to get my final pre-wedding cut and low-lights/white hair covering. We're sitting around the end of the day empty salon, listening to Lilly Allen. I've just found and interview with Dave Eggers and I'm trying to hold up the magazine and finish reading it while my stylist cuts.

Him: (Trying to figure out how to cut my fringe) So where are you parting your hair for the wedding, the right or the left?
Me: I think we're parting it on the right. Wait, no I can't remember if we're parting it or not.
(I immediately hold the magazine back up to try to finish the article. I mean, it's a Dave Eggers interview for Christs sake.)
(Pause)
Him: I think you are the calmest bride I've ever seen in my life.
Me: What? Really? That's a nice thing to say. Why?
Him: At this juncture most brides would be on their cell phones, calling people so desperate to find out where their hair was parted that you would literally think their bank account had been frozen.

And so it goes. Soon I'll pass off the producing baton to Kate, Captain of the Wedding Warriors, and stage manager extraordinaire. Once a show goes up it doesn't belong to the producer or the director anymore, it belongs to the stage manager. And then, I'm going to pause, breathe it in, and get ready to party.

Being There, And Seeing

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.

So, lovelies, could you lend your wise words of wisdom? For me, and for everyone else....

*Proof positive that you do not need to order your dress nine months out. Though um, maybe you'd like to get it sorted out earlier than I did. Or maybe not. It's living on the edge, the bridal edition.

What Really Matters

(I wrote this post, and then I was afraid I shouldn't post it, because it was too boring. But then I thought, oh h*ll. Why don't we talk about what's really important, amidst all the posts about dresses and flowers and shiny rings. Let's talk about it, even if it's not flashy and just true.)

So the interesting thing about having some downtime before the wedding, is it's given me space to really step back from the details of this party we're planning and look at the big picture. Here is what I've seen: All this wedding stuff? This stuff I've been thinking about and planning? It's just stuff. It's really cool stuff mostly - dresses and hand made ties and micro-brewed beer, but it's not the point, and soon it will be gone, or tucked away. What matters is both more ethereal and more solid all at once.

Our service. We've been working on it for months and months, but the last few weeks I've felt like I've lived inside it. It will be over in thirty-ish minutes, but it will be in our hearts for the rest of our lives. I haven't written too much about it, because there are some things that are just too personal to write about publicly, but this is where the soul of the wedding lives. This is why we are doing this crazy public act.

Our families. We got to spend a weekend with both of our families in a beautiful vacation home up in sunny Russian River over the fourth of July weekend. We were there for another family event, but it turned out to be just perfect - a quiet moment before the wedding. I'm hoping that amidst the busyness of the wedding, there is some of that quiet energy of important people in our lives coming together, because really, that's the why we are throwing the party.

Our Friends. We have some good friends in tough straights these days. The economy sucks, and life can be tough. So we've decided we can cut nicer shoes, or fancy paper for the programs or whatever we need to cut, and get them all a d*mn hotel room, or buy them a cheap plane ticket. Because we just want them there, with us.

Us. These days we're working on the un-romantic nuts and bolts of things: getting our living wills notarized, and figuring out how to combine our finances. Stuff that will last far longer then the wedding, ideas that will stabilize our partnership. Boring? Yes, even to us. But important and stabilizing to focus on.

And that's not even going into the best wedding planning experience we've had - marriage counseling, because that deserves a whole post of it's own.

What really matters in this crazy world of weddings to you? What is the real and the true that you don't hear people talking much about? Dish.

A Reason To Be A Bachelorette

I wasn't going to have a bachelorette party, because really, I'm just not a hard-partying penis cake eating kind of girl. At first, before the economy fell apart, we were considering having a girls getaway weekend up in wine country, but well, people flying in to San Francisco twice in one summer was just not feasible these days. So I gave it up and moved on. Goodness knows I have plenty on my plate.

And then. And then. This weekend, some of my San Francisco girlfriends threw me a surprise bachelorette. I'm still on a high from how amazing and loving it was, and I don't want to shake the glitter off the day, but I will tell you this.

We went shooting. Clay Pigeons*. Shotguns. Best bachelorette party ever.
This is me, firing a gun for the first time,** with the adorable hipster western shirt that they gave me for the occasion. They also gave me a wad of cash, Lacy underwear, and single malt scotch, because, well obviously.

40 year old guys at the shooting range: Are you ladies here for a birthday?
Me: No, it's my batchelorette, I'm getting married in three weeks.
Guys: Oh, god. What do you want to get married for? You're to young to get married. How old are you?
Me: Twenty-nine.
Guys: Oh, never mind, you're old enough to get married, you look much younger.
Me: Ha!
Guys: But seriously, what are you going to do after you get married? It's boring.
Me: Shooting.Do I look like I'm up to no good? Because I totally am.

* CLAY pigeons. Not actual birds. Though I can't say I harbor any pigeon love in my city dwelling heart.
**Though for the record, I used to be black powder certified, and I've fired cannons many many times.

Buoyed By Love

I got this amazing email from reader Stephanie, which I'm going to keep in mind as I ponder things like what to wear on my head, or our seating chart, or guest list issues, or all the little details. Because in the end, I just don't think those details will be what I experience or what I remember....

The logistics may have set the mood, but nothing could prepare me for the energy and the vibe that followed. It was all about the people, our friends and family, about our dog chasing her tail in the middle of a packed living room/dance floor to Kenny Loggins' Footloose, about my new husband spontaneously switching the iPod to our favorite song and asking me to dance and our friends singing along, serenading us. The entire day was more than I ever could have imagined. I was buoyed by Love, humbled by the kindness and generosity of friends and family, and continuously smitten by the magic of it all.

So thank you Stephanie. Your words are like a deep breath of air.

A Good Place To Be

Let me sum up my life* for you right now in a nutshell: Every third second I think about how excited I am to be married. Sock monkey Christmas trees? Excited to be married. Pretty house remodels? Excited to be married. Cute babies? Excited to be married. Pretty plates that are coming in as gifts? Excited to be married. Funny jokes that people tell me? David's funny! Excited to be married.

Sometimes, when I drift off to sleep I think of the wedding, and my dress, and a toast I might give, and I think about how excited I am for the wedding. But honestly, I have a hard time imagining what the wedding will feel like and I know that however it feels, it will be short. So mostly, I'm just excited about the rest of my life.

Awesome.

*besides the fact that from now until the wedding, I work basically all-the-d*mn-time. No joke.

Wedding Graduate: Peony::Love

I'm super super excited to introduce Amanda, the powerhouse behind Peony::Love as a wedding graduate. I'm not sure what to say other then she's smart, funny, stylish, and her wedding is going to make you really happy deep down inside AND sort of kill you with it's just-right-ness, it's super-stylish-without-even-trying-ness, it's perfectly-them-ness, and its f*-yeah-we-can-do-this-thing-ness. So without further ado I give you Amanda, giver of wise advice:
Our approach to the wedding planning process was to keep things as low-key as possible. We chose to get married on the beach in the small town of Manzanita about an hour and a half from Portland. We wanted to escape from hectic city life and relax for a couple days with our feet in the sand. Keeping with the feel of a small town escape, we tried to keep vendors to a minimum and use as many local resources as possible. Our caterer was the owner of a small local restaurant. We rented out the local community house for the reception. The ceremony was a couple blocks away on the beach. Because of this, we were able to forgo any sort of car rental services and simply walk to and from the wedding.The afternoon before the wedding we got together at the reception venue to set up. We hung garland, arranged our fresh-cut peonies into milk glass vases, then dipped into our wedding beer supply and enjoyed the sunset. The wedding day went by in a blur. There were cocktails to be had, noses to be picked, and a whole lot of newlywed kisses. I think I'm still in a bit of denial that it's all over.
Here's some advice that I'd like to pass on:

-You can't put a price tag on sanity. A few days before the wedding I started stressing out about chairs- of all things. We didn't have it in our budget to rent them, but the thought of using the stained folding chairs at the venue was causing me to lose sleep. If you'd asked me a year ago what I thought of reception chairs, I would have snorted and shooed you away while muttering something like, "you're killing me. a chair is a chair", but there's something about wedding planning that causes perfectly sane people to twitch. In the end we compromised. I got my chairs, and it was Stoli instead of Grey Goose. Both taste excellent when mixed with pink lemonade.-The key to being a successful DIY bride is accepting all the help you can get. Sure, grandma has arthritis and the thought of her hunched over a machine sewing you a gazillion cloth napkins is a little unsettling, but if she offered to do so it's because she really wants to help out. Let her! Do you have friends willing to volunteer 6 hours of their time making garlands in exchange for cheap mimosas and mediocre snacks? Invite them over! Just make sure to reciprocate when it's their turn to walk down the aisle.-Meg is not lying to you when she says that favors are a distraction. I spent too many precious waking hours stressing about cookies and marshmallows. Were they good? Of course. Did they look kinda neat all tied up in ribbon with our names and wedding date printed on the front? Sure. But by the end of the day our guests were too delirious from their Voodoo Doughnut sugar induced highs to even notice. I took the leftovers home, and let's just say I won't be eating another marshmallow anytime soon.-Lastly, and most important, enjoy the planning process. You spend a year and a half staying up at night mulling over flowers and cake and who grandpa is most likely to insult after having too many vodka lemonades at the reception. When the day comes you realize that hours go by like seconds. Next thing you know you're returning linen rentals and picking dried marshmallows off the bottoms of your shoes. Try to take in as much as possible. Some of my fondest "wedding" memories are thrifting milk glass vases with my mom and taking a break from writing vows to enjoy East Side's f** this series. Many many happy returns to you both! Your happiness, your comfort, and the way you so clearly grabbed your wedding and made it yours make me think we can do this thing (in less then a month). THIS is why I started the wedding graduate series, so thank you. For more on this wedding, head over to East Side Bride, who did the big and awesome reveal.

Photos by In Bloom Photography, except for the amazing Polaroids, shot by Amanda's sister

A Question About Grace

I got this question from reader Amy, and I thought it was such a good one that I had to throw it out to you all (especially you wedding graduates). Also, the title of this post was the title of her email, which made me sit up and pay attention.

How are you planning on managing the hosting responsibilities along with the marriage and wedding and events? I'm so excited to see my family and his family and our dear friends... everyone is traveling great distances to be there for us and I want to make sure they're comfortable, happy and I want to visit with them (not just pass by in a whirl of disconnected and distracted activity). We've planned activities and time to spend with everyone, but I'm nervous about feeling split. I'm nervous that I'll get so caught up with everyone else's moments that mine will slip by.

So my personal answer is this: we've scheduled time to see people, and then we've been very strict about scheduling time that is JUST for us. The first day that I have off work is mine, I'll sleep, I'll hang out around the apartment, I'll do whatever I need to do personally to get ready. I've warned all and sundry about that time, and will stick to it. We've scheduled other moments like that through out the weekend. Our time to leave our welcome picnic even has a enforcer... someone has been assigned to forcibly throw me out of the party. I think this is key, especially in a wedding planning world where you are expected to be available 24/7... after party, after-after party and all. Then, we've also scheduled time that is together time - a picnic, for just hanging out and chilling, a cocktail hour post wedding that we plan to BE at (Eff taking extra pictures).

So that's my super organized type-A way of handling it. But in a less organized, more free flowing way, I think just being aware of the issue is 50% of the battle. What about you Team Practical, what are you doing?

Sponsored Post: Silver Charm Events Recession Brides Workshop

I'm popping in really quickly today to share something useful to all of you Southern California brides. Really useful. Liz Coopersmith*, the event planner behind Silver Charm Events is hosting a Recession Brides Workshop this Sunday July 19th in Los Angeles. Now if you are like me, it may be that part of your brain just turned off, and you started thinking blah, blah, blah event planning, blah. So, let me tell you why I think this is very helpful.

David and I happened to be really lucky: I used to plan big events, and we used to produced theatre and events as a team (pre-dating). So, going into this we had a really good idea of what things cost, where we could save money by doing it ourselves, what we actually *enjoyed* doing ourselves, and where it was going to be less expensive/ more sane to just hire someone. That's a HUGE edge to have. Most couples throwing weddings haven't planned big events before, and they definitely haven't planned big events together. Cue: stress (unless you are more saintly than me). So, I think it is really-really-super-duper-smart-smart-smart to take the opportunity to sit down with an event planner and have her talk you through good ways to save money, how to negotiate contracts, and where to focus limited resources.

Oh and did I mention it costs just $20 per person and $30 per couple? Riiiigggghhhtttt.

*Liz worked for and planned events for NPR. No joke. How cool is that?

Wheeee!

First of all, you guys kill me. Here I was, trying to take a Friday totally off from blogging, and you have to go and do something so cool that I have to pick up my proverbial pen. D*mn.

So. I'm delighted to tell you about a wee little blog about how delightful it is to plan a wedding in a recession (right?) being written over at Double X, Slate.com's ladiiiieeessss site, by a member of our own team practical. So it is, of course, smart, funny, and well written (I have the coolest readers). Even cooler, she names APW as her favorite wedding blog (yippee). Take a gander at this bit:

So when we decided on September, that meant a six month engagement, which is pretty quick by today's standards. Several people have asked if I'm pregnant, which is not only incredibly gauche but also illogical; six months is the exact WRONG amount of time to be engaged if one is hiding a pre-nupitial pregnancy. Also, why would you plan something like a wedding if you couldn't drink while doing it?

Go, go read it all. Thanks Bridget. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the story.

PS Now someone tell me kindly but firmly to take a few days off from blogging next week. Thanks.

Sponsored Post: DIY Wedding Flowers From Blooms By The Box

Ok. So I'm excited to unveil today my most exciting sponsored post to date (drum-roll please...) My fabulous sponsor, wholesale flower distributor Blooms By The Box mailed flowers to my house so I could arrange them and tell you about it. Lets start at the beginning.
First, even though they are called Blooms By The Box, I'm somewhat dull. I've always thought of flowers of something you went out and got and lugged home with great/mild annoyance. So when I arrived home one evening to find an enormous box of flowers on my door step, just a few feet from where I wanted them, I was sort of shocked. The sum total of my flower preparation duties were: pick up box, open box, fill container with water and flower food, put flowers in water. Um, what? Yeah, I knnnooooowww.

So, early the next morning I set about arranging flowers. Actually, having the creative partner that I do, David and I both set about arranging flowers, and decided to have a small contest about who could make a prettier arrangement (uh, not that we are ever creatively competitive at all or anything). We have the vases for our wedding, so we were testing them out to see what prettiness we could make. Here is what we learned:1) I was reminded again that flower arranging is supposed to be *fun.* It's all about playing, seeing what works, seeing what doesn't. In this picture I'm attempting to create a tall arrangement, that quite frankly was a total failure. So, I shrugged, cut it up for scrap, and made a new arrangement (which you'll see at the end of the post).2) Flowers all have different personalities. By which I mean some flowers are sturdy, some are less sturdy. Some arrive open, some arrive closed. Some will last for just a day or two, some will last for a week. The advantage of using Blooms By The Box, instead of running out and buying flowers on your own, is they pride themselves in their customer service. So, you can email them or call them up and chat about when your flowers should be delivered, and which ones will work well for your needs.

But enough with the small talk, you want to see what we *made* right? Well, my ever tasteful fiance made something sleek and modern:And I made something a bit more wildflower-y, a bit more rough and tumble. Hilariously, these more or less fit our respective personalities.We had access to the exact same flowers, but our arrangements are totally different and complementary, which I love.Finally, I want to say a word about Blooms By the Box website, which is invaluable if you are doing DIY wedding flowers. They just launched a blog which I can honestly say is so good that I'm going to use it when we do our flowers. Their post on the flower color wheel would have saved us hours of experimentation during our wedding flower trial run. Then there are the videos, and videos are how I learned to make a bridal bouquet. Seriously. And finally, the sample design gallery.

So, all you DIY flower people, all in one fell swoop, I present you the tools I wish I'd had when I started. You're welcome.

Clara & Sam's Recession Wedding

Oh you guys... I got this amazing email last week, with a wedding that made me remember what really matters, what all this is about. It's not about money, it's not about what we don't have, it's about what we do have: love, joy, family. So feast your eyes on this wedding, and breathe it in. I have been a longtime reader. I got engaged last summer. My husband and I, both law students, were planning a wedding for 2010. The economy has hit the legal profession especially hard. As a result, my husband and I decided to do a "wedding for now" and plan to do a "wedding for later"* when we achieve better financial stability. We planned our mini wedding in three weeks, right before finals, taking place two days before our law school graduation. We had our Dean of Admissions officiate with three witnesses attending, the ceremony took place in the center of our law school courtyard. In the afternoon we had a very non formal reception at an outdoor sangria bar across from the law school. Our budget was around $2,000. See? Don't you feel much more joyful (and peaceful) than you did before? Me too.

*Editors Note: In my humble opinion, with a wedding this (dare I say) perfect, you totally don't need a wedding for later. Because this is clearly the best wedding ever. What you DO need is a deeply fantastic anniversary party (and don't we all?) By which I mean, congrats you guys! Here is to many many happy years.

On Paying Attention

So as we approach the one month point before our wedding (Thursday!) I'm going to be blogging a bit more slowly. It's not so much that we have piles left to do (we really don't) but it's that I want time to pay attention.

It's been really interesting to hear from you guys if you felt a shift in your relationship after getting married, some of you have said emphatically no, some of you have said emphatically yes. I think for us, there will be a change. Our day to day life will obviously stay mostly the same, but here at the one month mark I can feel our relationship changing a little bit at a time, and I want to make sure I'm present for that... just like I want to make sure I'm present for the wedding. So I'll be here on the blog, but maybe three times a week, and maybe not every morning... my posts might be a bit more scattered and surprising. But, hopefully you will stick with me for the ride.

In the meantime, I have to say just how much I'm being inspired by all the past wedding graduates as they grow into their new marriages. There is the adorably pregnant Cate Subrosa wrote about marriage (and you must go read the whole thing): Our dear friend Frog stood up at our wedding and confidently proclaimed, "marriage makes you free." And I have no idea how he knew it, but he was right. For me, anyway, marriage makes me feel free.

And then there is Down To My Soul who's gone from making her wedding dress to making a baby (and being the cutest pregnant woman in all the land)

And East Side Bride negotiating what a partnership means, how sometimes we bring in money and sometimes we allow our creative sides to be supported.

And, and, and... I could go on all day.

But finally, there is Kristina of Lovely Morning who not only helped launch the fantastic 100 Layer Cake after her wedding, but is filling our heads with inspiring visions of what a marriage can be: growing vegetable gardens and having wayward chickens in the kitchen.And frankly, I feel this change coming over us, and I can't wait to watch it grow. I hope our wedding is a really fun party, but what I'm really looking forward to is marriage.

So hang in there with me while we work on growing ours.

I See, I See

I think I have discovered the why and wherefore of the atrocious bridal to-do list. Five weeks out, my hands are largely free of tasks, as we have all but finished our list (Type-A alert). I've noticed that my newly free hands tend to start wringing themselves.

It's not that I'm nervous about the wedding, per say, or about our marriage. Its that now I have time to think about the vast unknown (what does a wedding feel like when you’re a bride?) and the way our lives will never be the same after we marry (together five years or no). I have time to think about my emotions.

I think this is why favors were created, actually, as a monumental distraction from the truth.

Avis & Vincent's Courthouse Fiesta Wedding

Going towards Fourth of July weekend, I decided there could not be a better wedding to share then this fantastic laid back courthouse wedding followed by a backyard Fiesta. I love the way this wedding is such a great, quirky reflection of the couples values. And, even more important, it's such a great story from this community. So without further ado, Fiesta!
My husband and I live in Decatur, Georgia. We met at the University of Tennessee almost 10 years ago. I am the owner of Avie Designs, a stationery company and my husband is finishing up his master's to become a teacher. We decided to get married near the end of January sitting on our couch at home. When we started talking about how we should do it, we went around and around. You see, I am not one of those women that has been thinking about her wedding since she was 2. I actually never thought I would get married. It just kind of fell in my lap. I knew that I would have trouble with an actual ceremony in front of everyone, wearing a white dress, walking down the aisle. I have no problem with these things, but they just aren't for me.

So, we decided to go down to the courthouse for the actual ceremony and then have a reception at a later date. We only told our immediate families in case they wanted to join us. We didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. So, we had 2 weeks from the day we decided to get married to get all the announcements and invitations done. I wanted to send out the announcements immediately so that everyone would find out from me and not word of mouth. And, being a stationery designer, I had to make them difficult. We decided that our celebration party would be fiesta themed since I am half Puerto Rican. I then decided that the item that would tie everything together visually would be mexican party flags. I hand cut about 80 announcements and then affixed them to paper to create a mailable flag. That is all I did for 2 weeks.Then came the day we had scheduled to go to the courthouse. It was the most beautiful clear, sunny February day. We went to fill out the paperwork in a office with a sign that read "Marriage and pistol licenses." Don't worry, we didn't get a pistol license. Once we paid our money and swore that our information was correct, we had to go see the judge (since we were not having another ceremony). The line to see the judge was very long, but just as we were settling down in our seats, the judge came out of the little room and asked if anyone wanted the "express lane." I looked around at my family and asked if that was okay with them. They were up for it so we got in the express lane. All we had to do is stand before the judge and say that we wanted to marry each other and that was it. We were done. And the "express lane" bit provided many jokes later. It also turns out that my Mom had planned a little surprise party for us that night where my friends thought they were celebrating my birthday (again) and we had no idea they would be there. It was a double surprise and it was awesome.When it came to planning our celebration, all I wanted was to have a big party with all my friends and family. So we made it super casual with the Fiesta theme. We are lucky enough that my mother-in-law has a beautiful house that is large enough for 100 people in Tennessee that is also only about 20 minutes from most of my extended family. So the venue was free. We had latin food, latin music, margaritas & sangria. I made about 1,000 party flags that hung in the tent. We did all tissue paper decorations, no flowers. That kept the cost way down. My family made most of the food. Our largest expenses were the tables & chairs that we rented and the tent that we had to rent last minute due to the crazy stormy weather we had that week. We made a photo guest book with polaroids and had a photo booth that we made ourselves with cloth and tissue paper flowers. My husband and his brothers are brilliant musicians, so they played for about 45 minutes including a special song preformed by my husband just for me. After that, we had pinatas (that my mom made), limbo, and dancing. We didn't have a DJ, just an ipod and a sound system. My mom made a cake in the shape of a sombrero, which she ruined by falling into 2 days before the party, but never fear, she made another one.All and all, it was definitely the best week of my life, I would highly recommend a DIY wedding. It allows you and your family and friends to spend time together and have fun together. It was an exhausting week (my brother graduated from college too!) for us all, but we spent so much quality time with each other that we hardly noticed. After all, isn't that the point of a wedding? To get everyone you love in one place and celebrate life? I hope so, because we did just that.