Finally, some progress!

It's been a hectic couple of weeks. Just before Casey and I started our "year" count-down, The Austin City Limits Music Festival announced that the festival will be the weekend of the wedding next year. This spells big trouble for us. They sell something like 65,000 tickets. Right away I started to panic - how am I going to find lodging for guests? I immediately tried to book a hotel room for myself at Hotel San Jose for 10/09 and 10/10 only to have them tell me it was a blackout date, and I could call back on May 1st at 1 PM. That is when I cried. Left and right I was being told that places were booked. I finally found one place that I loved that wasn't booked, but had paperwork drawn up with another bride. We decided to go and look anyway, and I LOVED IT. The coordinator there called out to the bride letting her know that she needed to know one way or the other, and I contacted the caterer for an estimate. I still haven't heard back from the caterer, unfortunately, but I got an e-mail yesterday saying I have the venue.

the palm door

the palm door

the palm door

A couple of other possible decisions made - Cup Pies (ever seen Pushing Daisies?) instead of wedding cake for the most part, though we will have a cutting cake, that I hope will be a small version of the steampunk wedding cake featured on OffBeatBride.com , and a robot cake topper! Fantastic!

eggs on sunday

exoskeletoncabaret

builders studio

No dress yet, but soon, I hope!

Since when does casual = lobster? Catering is bullshit.

We are so in love

Soon!

I promise a post full of info! And pictures! It's just that we have actually hit the year countdown and now I have work to do. Have I mentioned yet that I am a poor planner and a professional procrastinator? I'm the girl who doesn't start cleaning until an hour before company is due. This is going to be a challenge.

Invitation Idea

 After watching a special on Nat King Cole on PBS I have decided that our invitations should have the text "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and be loved, in return," from the song "Nature Boy," printed on them somewhere. Casey will be designing on our invitations, so really I should tell him, but I felt as if I should put it here too, and this is where I try and record my ideas. I am sure I would forget it within 15 minutes if I didn't jot it down.

 Nat King Cole has been one of my favorites since childhood. My mom had a 'Nat King Cole's Greatest Hits' tape when I was a kid, and I knew every word to every song. "Nature Boy" is one of my favorites, still. Eden Ahbez, the songwriter was ahead of his time by about twenty years.

No News

The dress problem still lingers. I have decided to wait six months or so to buy, and then I will most likely take photos of the Watters dress to a dressmaker and see if they can create something similar. I have seen a few dresses available, but none in my size, or a size that could really be altered to fit me. I hate to admit it to the world, but right now I am a 14 in formal dresses, so a 10 or 12 isn't really a great fit. I am continuing to exercise, and I am putting myself on a much more strict vegetarian diet (I've really let myself slip over the past few years). In fact, I am trying to stick to a vegan diet the majority of the time. No more fish (okay, so I was a pescatarian), gelatin (HUGE SLIP THERE), and label reading galore. I had originally thought that I would try and carry out a gluten-free vegan diet, but holly crap - vegan is difficult enough! It should save me some money though - I can't eat in the cafeteria at work anymore.
Though this is a departure from the wedding theme, as long as I am talking about healthy life choices, I want to talk about quitting smoking. Casey and I have discussed quitting on and off for the last couple of years. We have decided to quit (most likely in October, though that is quite a wait for me. I am afraid I'll lose my enthusiasm.) and use the money that we would spend on cigarettes to save for a sown payment on a house. That is about $3,600 a year before any other contributions. I figure I'll add in part of my gain-sharing from work and maybe an extra $20 a paycheck once I'm making a little more money. With interest and whatever extra money Casey can contribute we should have a decent down payment before we have kids. That is, if things work out the way we plan. I know that it is not always the case.
Back to wedding related info! Previously I mentioned that I want ornamental kale. Several months ago I saw a centerpiece in a friend's bridal magazine about flowers. It was white ornamental kale, and if I remember correctly, it was potted. That is sort of what I have in mind, but of course, I can find NO pictures. The friend is no longer planning her wedding, and though I haven't asked, I am afraid she may have purged all of that research material. I'm sure it will disappoint my future mother-in-law/florist to read that the table centerpiece/decor I'm currently envisioning involves mostly potted plants, and not so many cut flowers. HOWEVER! With more than I year to plan, and no set reception site, I have not set my heart on any one idea. This is the closest picture I could find, though it isn't quite "it."

Comments don't work, I don't know why. I'll work on it - I promise. In the mean-time, send e-mail.

Follow-up

I talked to my mom again, and she seemed much more accepting of my ideas, so maybe I was just expecting more push back than I'll actually get.
The dress arrived today, and though it fits, it is not "The One," so I'll be returning it soon. The bust portion of the dress actually made my boobs look even bigger than they are, and not in a good way. Oh well.

The Drama

Drama is why people read blogs, right? Well, here is your daily dose. I may be jumping the gun, really. However, I am pretty sure that this WILL be a source of drama in the future. More so than the stress and elevated heart rate it induced today.
Over and over again I hear, "Whatever you do, don't let someone else pay for your wedding. That gives them control over what you do." For those of you who don't know us, Casey and I are poor. We are paycheck to paycheck kind of people. If we were to pay for our own wedding it would be a potluck affair in our back yard after seeing a JP. Which, honestly, might be fun, but our back yard doesn't accommodate that many people, and I don't want to have to clean the house for that many people to come over.
Since we got engaged last October, we have talked about the wedding a lot. We pretty much know what we want. Most of all, we want to have our reception at Independence Brewery, catered by Boomerang's, on 10/10/10. We want it to be fun. We want to have wedding pie instead of cake. We want it to suit our personalities.
After a conversation with my mom today, I think she has very different ideas of what this will be like. She seems unconvinced about where we would like to have our reception, or the fact that I would like to have a small ceremony at a separate site with only family and close friends. She doesn't seem to buy the Boomerang's catering idea. I don't want to have a roast beef au ju dinner; I don't want to have a DJ; I don't want the kind of obnoxious photographer my sister had; I don't think it is necessary that all of our friends come to the ceremony. I want my parents to be able to enjoy the day, but I want to have a wedding that I can enjoy and have fun planning and participating in (I know I will enjoy the whole getting married part, no matter where it happens. Even if it were in a grocery store aisle).
Going through this "planning" with my mom is not going to be fun.
Oh yeah, and I want ornamental kale as a centerpiece, damn it.

Groom Style

 I was thinking it would be nice if Casey and the groomsmen wore brown instead of black. In fact, I was thinking of having the colors be green and brown, like Texas in October. 

 Maybe he could wear something like this?

 He keeps saying, though I am not sure if he is serious or not, that he wants to wear a bow-tie.

 Any thoughts?

The Dress Problem - IV

I just purchased the dress I really like that I am not sure will be flattering on me (the top photo of the last post). It is not in store, so I had to order it online, though I can return it in store if necessary. I went ahead and bought a larger size than my pride wanted to. If all goes well I can have it altered to fit my (hopefully) smaller proportions later on. I have my fingers crossed that it will fit and be a flattering shape, but I don't have my hopes up. I like to think of that as a happy medium. 

I also hope that I will be able to move away from the dress topic soon. You know, I could discuss bridesmaids' wear, table decor, food, favors, entertainment, etc.

The Dress Problem - III

New options! I found these online at Dillard's. I hope that they are available in store so that I can try them on. I'm just not sure if the first one would be flattering on me. Unlike the model there, I am not tall and thin. I know that the other style would be flattering on me, but it is Jersey, and I have found an organic jersey cotton dress that is similar for less on Etsy. com, and I am not sure I like that gold business. I would like to see if it comes off easily before I consider buying it. I have earrings and a brooch in mind for that day, and the brooch might look good in place of the gold-ness.

The Dress Problem - II

I bit the bullet and went to Serendipity Bridal today. They were nicer than I remembered from when Ellie and I went shopping. All they had was bad news. The dress I want, Watters 1096B, is from the 2001 collection, and has been discontinued, and there are zero in hanging inventory. I asked if they had anything similar, and she said, "No. In fact, I haven't really ever seen a dress like that."
Who knows an incredibly talented seamstress in the Austin/San Antonio area?
I did see a similar dress while I was in San Francisco, in a vintage shop. If was an extremely tiny dress from the 30s, with a tag that said "FRAGILE!" It was only $300, and if I were an extremely tiny girl I would have purchased it.
So, on with the search.

The Dress Problem

 I wanted to tackle something now. Something tangible since the wedding is still so far away. I originally picked out a dress on Etsy. I saw it the day Casey proposed, in fact, and thought, "I would get married in that dress." So I sent a picture of it to my mom, and she said, "It is interesting, very Corley, but it's short. You should wear something long to elongate you, and make you look taller." I said, "Mom, everyone there will already know that I am short," but I kept look anyway. (I have decided to buy this dress anyway to wear at some point during all of the wedding related activities.)

 So I looked all over. It seemed like everything I found was either too poofy, too revealing, or too far out of my price range. Occasionally, I found something I liked, but it was someone's personal wedding photo, and I had no idea who made it.

 

 Finally I found something I liked. J. Crew had an affordable, simple dress. Mom liked it too. I ordered it, it arrived quickly, and I tried it on - or, tried to try it on. J. Crew doesn't make dresses for women with large breasts, it seems, and I had ordered the largest size. So we sent it back.

 I went back to doing research. Surely I could find something that I liked. I looked into the pictures I had seen of the mystery dresses that were beautiful, but offered no insight on where they were from, or who had made them, and had some luck.

 I followed link after link, and finally found some comments divulging the name of the dress I had been looking at over and over again. The photo here is by Josh McCullock, who took some really beautiful shots that day. Go see the rest. Turns out this dress is Watters Brides, style 1096B, which I am now starting to search for. I did a little research on their website, and I am a little nervous. I know of one of the two places in Austin where the dress is sold, and it is pretty pricey. I don't really feel like blowing 20% of our budget on a dress, so I may just have to look for a somewhat similar pattern, and then change a couple of things, but I am pretty sure I want to go with this style. Once I know what it would set me back, I'll be able to make some decisions.

We Are Getting Married

I am going to chronicle it here.