I Can't Believe It's Time

It's 1:00 a.m. on the day of our wedding, and I'm writing this from my hotel room.  Party Person N is asleep nearby and junior party person M is asleep in the living room (yes, my hotel room has a living room!), yet here I am so amped up that I can barely even fathom the thought of closing my eyes.  I know I need to sleep, but I feel this intense need to keep my eyes open and take all of this in - like sleeping for even a second might mean missing out on part of this crazy-wonderful-magical time.  I've been sensing the 'wedding bubble' around me all day today, and I know that the feeling of this moment won't last forever.  I'm trying very hard to take the sage advice offered in my bee twin Miss Seal's last post, and just breathe and stay in that moment for as long as I can.  

Tomorrow morning I will wake up and do a little bit of a decoration set-up, then I will sit back and wait for all the rest of the meticulously planned pieces to fall into place.  To say that I'm thrilled wouldn't even begin to cover it.  :-)

To the hive: Thank you so much for all of your help, advice, support, and kind words over these last few months.  Sharing our planning with you has been an amazing journey, and I've learned so much about myself along the way.  I look forward to having some time post-wedding to write more about the personal aspects of our planning process, and of course I can't wait to show you how all the details come together!

To Mr. FW: Tonight when you teared up as I was reading my vows at the rehearsal, I was reminded of why I'm marrying you - because you are deeply touched by this commitment we are making to each other, and I know you don't take that for granted.  Right now those vows are just words on a page, but you know that those words are truly written in my heart and that this little wedding thing we're doing tomorrow is just the incredible celebration of a love that's already rock solid.  After so many months and years of planning and preparation for this day, I am ready beyond words.  

And with that, I'm finally turning in for the night.  See you all on the other side!

Wedding Burn Out

Warning: ahead you will find much venting of wedding steam.  Proceed at your own risk.

You may have noticed that I've been a little more absent lately (so sorry about that!), and I'm sure you can guess that the reason is because our wedding is fast approaching.  At this point we are working on the wedding 100% of every waking hour (and when we're sleeping, we're both dreaming about the wedding so we can't even really count that as a break).  When we do take breaks, to eat or shower or whatever, we are doing so while we talk about the wedding.  In my quiet moments, I am thinking only about the wedding and it never seems I have sufficient thinking time to actually resolve any of the issues I'm thinking about in the first place.  There's no time to see friends or family, and when we do all we can talk about is the wedding.  Our tiny, lovely little house is full to the brim of wedding stuff.  There's not a single uncovered surface to be found, and until very recently none of it was organized in the slightest (which, for an overly organized person like myself, is just sheer torture).

It's.  All.  Just.  Too.  Much.

{I can't believe I'm letting the blogosphere take a tour of my house in such disarray.}

Two years ago we started planning this shindig in earnest, and back then we both thought we'd have plenty of time to take on any and every project we could possibly imagine.  What we didn't know is that there's a lot of stuff you just can't conceivably do two years before your wedding.  You need to know things like the venue, vendors, budget, timeline, guest list, style, and so many other details in order to finish a lot of the projects that need to be completed for a wedding.  Well, that's not totally true.  For some things you can do what we did, which is to just make your best guess and plug ahead.  It's not a bad option, though I will say that some of the stuff we made way in advance is very different in design than things that we're working on now, and that's just going to have to be okay.  Other things have to be scrapped altogether because they no longer work with our timeline or our budget.  I'm guessing that's just what happens when you plan a single event over a ridiculously long period of time.

So here's the truth:  No matter how much pre-planning you do, everything comes down to those last few months.  I know before I was planning this wedding I would read other bees saying those same words and I thought, "I'll be different.  I'll plan ahead.  I won't let everything pile up like that."  Haha... funny joke.  Now I know just how wrong I was, so I think it must happen to everyone.  One project gets crossed off and it feels amazing, but then we have to add two or three other new things that have popped up.  Even if you're not incorporating very much DIY into your wedding, the sheer number of things other people (your partner, vendors, friends, family members, and wedding party members) will ask you to have an opinion about is simply mind-boggling.

Then there's the fact that many things take four times as long as you thought they would (invitations, for instance), or something doesn't work out exactly as planned (like perhaps our large string balls, which are currently sad and saggy).  And there are those notorious decisions that need to be made but  thinking about them makes you feel immediately crazy and overwhelmed so you just can't bring yourself to get even close to considering them (maybe, say, floral alternatives for yourself and your bridal party).  So projects come off the list, only to go back on later.  Or they stay on the list, haunting you with their stubbornness.

Sometimes I'm sick of our plans and projects.  Sometimes I just want the wedding to be here already so I'll know that we're really and truly finished with everything, whether we like it or not.  But as soon as I think that, I immediately flash back to all those nightmares I've had where we show up at our wedding and I'm utterly devastated because nothing's been completed and no one knows what's going on.  So I think what I really want is more time.  The other day I told Mr. Ferris Wheel that I think we need at least an extra three months in order to do everything and not go crazy in the process.

Alas, we don't have an extra three months.  We just have the two we're left with - that, and a neverending list of things to do.  What option do we have but to make the best of it?  So that's what we're doing.  Trying to keep our spirits up while we're drowning in wedding tasks.  Feels like it's gonna be a long two months...

Did wedding burn out happen to you?  If so, when did it set in?

Our At-Home Cake Tasting

One thing people frequently told us after we got engaged was that the only perk of wedding planning is the free cake tastings.  Personally, I think there have actually been a lot of perks (like, for instance, blogging for all of you!).  But I do love me some cake, so I was looking forward to that perk in particular.  There was a wrench in that plan, though.  We wanted to save money in the wedding cake department, which is why we opted to go with a dessert buffet rather than a traditional multi-tiered wedding cake.  We wanted the center cake on the display to be a small, "top tier"-esque cake.  Just enough so that we could have the fancy wedding cake experience without actually having a full-on multi-tier cake.

{like one of these side cakes}

cake by Cater It Simple, image via the Cater It Simple Flickr page

cake by For the Love of Cake; image via their Flickr page

Well what we found out is that when you want to have a really small, really cheap fancy wedding cake then places don't readily offer free tastings.  We considered skipping the tasting experience altogether, but we just couldn't shake the feeling that $100 was still a lot of money to spend on a cake that we'd have no idea what it was going to taste like.

Luckily, after many an email, we found a woman who offered to prepare a $12 "tasting box" for us that we could try on our own prior to ordering with her.  And that, my friends, is how we ended up doing our cake tasting on our living room couch.

As you can tell from the picture, we were so excited to dig in that we were halfway through with the flavors before I remembered to pull out my camera. In case you were curious our flavor options were red velvet, salted caramel and toffee, citrus, vanilla and fresh strawberries, devil's food with mocha, chocolate with coconut and ganache, and chocolate with rasberry jam and fudge.

I'm so very glad that we got to do this tasting because we ended up with a flavor that we never would've chosen otherwise.  If we'd had to pick off a list, I would've preferred to go with something safe that I could be sure we'd both like.  Maybe the vanilla and fresh strawberries, because anything more exotic would have been too big a risk.  But because we got to do our at-home tasting, we learned that the unusual-sounding salted caramel with toffee is delicious!  I absolutely cannot wait to see how our little skyline cake will turn out, and how it will look surrounded by all of our other desserts and topped with our custom cake topper (which I will totally show you once I have it).

Moral of the story: if something is important to you (like a tasting), don't be afraid to keep asking (politely, of course) if you're not initially able to find what you're looking for.  Hopefully it will only take you a few tries before someone says yes.

Has there been anything you've had to ask for because it wasn't offered at first?  Were you eventually successful?

Keeping It All Organized

Many moons ago a document was forged, upon which was painstakingly penned a list of all tasks, known and imagined, in order that peace and tranquility might be obtained by those soon to be betrothed.

Translation:  We made a wedding to-do list on Google Docs. 

Why Google Docs?  One word: convenience.  It's super easy to share and edit the list together because it's accessible from anywhere.  Interestingly, Mr. FW doesn't like the "spreadsheet" layout I prefer.  His primary complaints (and I agree with them, just not enough to change anything) are that the list extends beyond the width of the screen and that adding a lot of info into one cell increases the size of all the cells in that row.  So he chooses to maintain a separate Google Doc with all the same info, just in list form. 

I prefer the spreadsheet because I like to color-code the boxes as we're working on things so I can quickly see what's finished (blue), in-progress (yellow), and not yet started (white).  If you're following along closely here, you'll notice that we were kicking ass in January, slowed down but were still active in February, really lost our mojo in March, and were completely helpless in April.  May's been a little better, but not much.  Thank goodness it's so easy to cut and paste tasks to reassign them to a later month.  Not that I ever do that.  Nuh uh...  not me.  (And please don't worry - I pulled these screenshots over a month ago, so some of this actually has happened since then!) 

We also use Google Docs to track all of our budgeting and spending.  Theoretically this is wonderful because either of us could add our expenses to the list.  Practically speaking, I'm the one who updates this list with my own purchases plus the receipts given to me by Mr. FW.  I love that I can access my documents from work or home or anywhere else.  So when I'm on my lunch break and feeling overwhelmed with worry that I didn't account for the $8 glue sticks I bought last week, I can quickly log on and reassure myself that every.little.thing has indeed been tracked.

Speaking of Google organizational tools, I can't neglect to mention Gmail.  I dearly, dearly love it for its labels, folders, archiving, search features, and the ability to Gchat with people in real time.  By my estimation, it is far and away the best email system out there. 

The only other "organization" system I've used is some well-labeled computer folders in which I store inspiration pictures I come across online.  No one else has these folders, right?  :-)  These were a lifesaver during the past few years as we were casually planning the wedding, but now you can see that many of these folders haven't had anything added to them in the past six or seven months (and apparently I haven't thought about wedding makeup since September of 2009!).

At some point I tried to put together a wedding binder so that I could have hard copies of my absolute favorite ideas plus any contracts we'd signed, thinking that I'd take it with me to all my vendor meetings and such.  But it's still sitting on our bookshelf, unused and completely empty.  We have electronic copies of all our contracts, and having inspiration images on the computer alone hasn't been a problem for me.  Given what an internet junkie I am, I guess it makes sense that all my organizational tools are online.  Might not be for everyone, but it works for me!

What kinds of stuff have you needed to organize, and what tools get the job done for you?

Make-Believe Budget Land

How do you create a wedding budget?  No, seriously, how in the world do you decide how much to spend on your wedding when you have no idea how much weddings cost, how much you can afford to spend, or what needs to be included in the total?  Frankly, I have absolutely no freaking idea.  This budgeting tale of ours that I'm about to spin is by no means a "suggested method" of creating a wedding budget.  It's just the random, kinda messed up, pretty-useful-but-not-perfect way that we went about it. 

image via yesandyes.org

Back before I knew anything about the world of wedding blogs (and life was dark and dreary), I started the budget research in the same way I assume lots of other people do - I googled something like "wedding budget calculator."  Apparently, to effectively use those budget calculators you need to first know how much you want to spend.  Well, there was only one other person we'd known who'd gotten married in a quasi-similar location and we thought we had a general idea of how much that wedding cost (although we had no idea how "all-inclusive" or not that number was).  We then decided that number was much too high for us, so we reduced it by 1/3.  Based on what, you ask?  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  We arbitrarily slashed a budget total amount by 1/3 because we wanted to.  Thus our entrance into Make Believe Land.

image via The Funny Pages

I took this make believe number and plugged it into the budget calculator, which yielded many smaller numbers attached to discrete categories (attire, accessories, jewelry, gifts, ceremony, reception, officiant, etc. etc.).  Again, with the whole not knowing what the hell our wedding was going to include thing, I made some totally arbitrary decisions to cut certain categories and move some of the money around.  In particular I focused on the two categories most important to us - photographer and ceremony/reception costs.  I allocated 75% of our make believe budget to these categories, figuring that I'd just magically be able to find photographers and venues that would work within those budgets and that there's no way we'd spend more than the additional 25% on all those other weddings costs (cuz, ya know, I'm gonna do everything myself...  And also I was living in Make Believe Land). 

image via musicchartheaven.com

Related to these arbitrary decisions I made, a controversial wedding budget topic I often see talked about is what exactly gets included in the budget.  Do you wanna include engagement ring(s), honeymoon, rehearsal dinner, other wedding weekend activities?  The list goes on and on.  In my particular Make Believe Land, it only felt necessary to include the *really big* wedding purchases - the ones where a lot of money would come due all at the same time.  I also had strong feelings about what should not go in the budget, namely things that other people might contribute to (like the honeymoon, because we'll have a honeymoon registry), things we didn't yet know what we'd do for it (like the rehearsal dinner or other wedding weekend activities), and things we would re-sell after the wedding (like candy buffet jars or linens).  In my mind, this is a totally reasonable way to approach our budget - 1) because we're having a long engagement so we have significant time to both save and spend money, 2) because smaller costs would just get rolled into our regular monthly credit card bills so we'd never really notice the difference, 3) because we could decide at a later date what we could afford for all the things we didn't include in the original budget, and 4) because money we spend and then re-coup later doesn't feel like money spent to me.

Unfortunately (for me), Mr. FW approaches budgeting very differently.  For him, budgets should account for every dollar spent on anything wedding-related - things that are outside the realm of our regular purchases.  He was not a fan of Ms. Ferris Wheel's Make Believe Budget, no-sir-ee.

 

Where does that leave our budget?  Good question, to which I have a less make believeish but equally fantastical response.  Right now our budget exists as what I might call a 3-tier system.  The first tier is the original budget I put together all those many months ago (venue/catering, photography, miscellaneous).  The second tier is less researched and less specific, and it consists of estimates for those bigger ticket items that should be covered by the miscellaneous category in the first tier but that we're not yet sure we'll actually be spending (photobooth, DJ, lighting, rehearsal dinner, honeymoon).  The third tier is the most frequently updated, where I'm keeping track of every single penny spent on anything remotely wedding-related no matter how small the purchase ($5 for photo printing, $2 for ribbon).   The hope is that, as our wedding date nears, we'll have an up-to-the-minute totaling of *all* our expenses from which we can base our decisions about those second tier items where we have some flexibility.

{3 tiers - these are full of goodies more palatable than budget items}

image via Rose Petals Cakery

For sure the final budget is not as pretty as the make believe budget, it's way more complicated than it probably needs to be, and it will likely change as time goes on...  but it's working for us.  For me, for now, that's enough.

Who else began with an idealized budget that morphed into something less attractive over time?

Ms. Ferris Wheel's Wild Ride Begins!

*deep breath*

...  and away we go! 

image by Idle Type via Wikipedia

So hellooooooooooooo hive!  Can I even tell you how surreal it is to be writing this post for you?!  I'm trying to find the words to describe the crazy shock and disbelief I feel right now, but to be honest I'm still a little bit worried that someone's gonna realize their mistake and yank my Bee card before I've even gotten started.  (That doesn't happen, right?  Right?!?)  Because I was just having this incredibly normal morning, waiting on hold with an incredibly normal telephone representative, when I decided to multitask (per uzsh) by checking my incredibly normal email.  I thoughtlessly clicked on the newest message in my inbox, but at the same moment I saw the words "think you'd be a great addition to the Weddingbee team" I was also hearing this representative woman insistently asking me for my employer identification number and password, so I didn't at all get to process what I was reading.  When I finally got off the phone and re-read the email (oh, only about a zillion times), that's when my morning became decidely not normal.  It all started to sink in.   

I... am... a... Bee!!!!!!!!  (Still shaking my head as I type that.  Wowza!)

And just who is this Bee, you're wondering?  Oh, I'm so very glad you asked.   

{the Ferris Wheels, on the Matterhorn at Disneyland}

By day (and some nights and about half the weekend {workaholics unite!}) I'm a psychologist working in a university counseling center with a part-time private practice.  By night I'm an absolute hobby fiend who always has my eye on the next craft/talent/skill/project du jour.  (Mr. Ferris Wheel would like to add that my hobbies include "planning the future" and "running the numbers" - not mutually exclusive.)  As you can probably already tell, I love ellipses, parentheses, hyphens, asterisks, brackets, and any other grammatical device or punctuation marks that will let me continue with ridiculously run-on sentences without the point being completely lost in all my wordiness.  To top it all off, I'm an optimist with a snappy sense of humor (if I do say so myself) and a meticulous eye for detail. 

Mr. Ferris Wheel is a psychologist as well (except kinda not quite because he doesn't graduate until May - small details), and by the time our wedding rolls around in November we will have been together for 6 amazing/stressful/formative/love-filled years (cue collective "aww...").  After slogging through 2 doctoral programs, 2 dissertations, 2 internships, 1 post-doc, 1 funemployment, 1 surgery, and 2 moves we decided we finally felt "ready" (whatever that means) to make our commitment all official and such.

For 11 months now we've been working to create a non-traditional, fun, chic, handmade wedding in a fairly typical hotel ballroom in downtown San Francisco.  (Don't worry - I'll explain all of that in more detail later.)  And I'm so glad to have y'all along for the ride!

{this time inside the Haunted Mansion}

Oh, and before I forget...  Why Ferris Wheel?  Well, the icon is adorable, I love carnival rides (Mr. FW could actually be convinced to ride a ferris wheel), it kinda fits with an unintentional circle-y wedding theme that's started to develop, and I happened to see a ferris wheel the day before getting my acceptance email (it's a sign!).  But Mr. FW had his reasons as well, and to prove it here is the verbatim list he sent me over Gchat:

[Mr. Ferris Wheel]:  i like ferris wheel for the follwoing reasons:
1. "Ms.Ferris Wheel" sounds better than all but a couple others
2. The picure is easily the coolest
3. The icon is representative of things in our wedding
4. It is something at the carnival that we could actually do together.  Because if you ever take me on one of those spinny things again i reserve the right to throw up on your shoes
5. i think ferris wheels are romantic-sounding
6.  I think Ferris Wheel IS actually something almost everyone would identify as being associated with a carnival.  Unlike, for example, bunting
7. Now I also know you're leaning towards it too
And 8. I think it lends itself more readily than some of the others to be incorporated into our wedding somehow
WHEW!
me:  Awesome
I'm gonna be Ms. Ferris Wheel
!!!!

Who could argue with such logic?!  So Ms. Ferris Wheel it was.

{celebrating at our favorite restaurant with a homemade ferris wheel card, given to me by Mr. FW}

Hang on tight, Hive, cuz I have a feeling this is going to be one wild, bumpy, and thrilling ride!  Whee!

P.S. Only after I sent many an excited message to other people did I realize that Ferris Wheel looks a lot like Ferris Whee! and that makes me infinitely happy.  Don't you agree?