ducksandbooks

But I’ve seen two very interesting things while surfing the internets from South America

1. If anyone else likes my dress as much as I do and wears a size 4 in dresses at Ann Taylor, you can now buy one for yourself, and name your best offer on the weddingbee boards
2. Our photographer has put up some of our favorite engagement photos, but for some reason Ben’s been renamed Brian…. I’m not sure if there’s a reason for that or not, and I haven’t asked. I’m chicken. click here to see us

Uh, er. I’m not sure how I missed this, but we have to pay individually for our beautiful engagement photos, just like everyone else. %$&^%$# I got it down from 56/269 favorites, then 30, and now 10. But where is the money to order these beauties going to come from!? I haven’t worked a traditional 40 hour week since February, and that was making minimum wage at the bakery! Ben certainly doesn’t feel comfortable spending our date night/entertainment money for the month x2. How did I miss this in the contract? I’m so disappointed in myself…. I was just so excited to find cool photographers who’s style I liked, that I may have glossed over the boilerplate (legaleese for fine print). Ugh.

Time to dig through the couch and clean out the care for change. I guess date night is going back to packing a picnic and/or climbing something, instead of eating out and people watching. Do you have any idea how frustrating people watching is on Pearl Street while denying yourself Glacier Ice Cream, fruit smoothies, italian ice, shaved ice, frozen yogurt, and cupcakes?!

(source)

We got our engagement photos on Wednesday! Some of them came out really well too. WOOHOO!

http://www.pictage.com/795846

Now we just have to figure out what to DO with them. Other than sending a few choice ones to grandparents, I think we’re just going to have a few of our favorites printed out and then make our own photo album.

On the theme of photography, I’ve realized how disappointed I am that there won’t be any photos of our auf ruf or of shabbat dinner on Friday night (it’s not OK to take pictures on Shabbat in our congregational ethos, or Ben’s family’s for that matter). Our families and friends are starting to make their travel arrangements and are getting excited about coming out to Boulder, I’m realizing quite how important it really is to me that they’re going be here.When we decided to move the wedding here, from DC, I’d girded myself for the fact that this was going to be a destination wedding for most people and that we’d have low-ish attendance. Now it looks like most everyone we thought would come is coming!

my "I'm hot stuff" photo from our e-photo session

WOW, this is the most beautiful wedding I’ve ever seen. The only thing I’d change if it were mine would be the flowers (no roses). WOW.

from photographer, Kate McElwee's blog

Kate McElwee‘s blog is full of wonderful goodies, but I’m especially in love with Karen and Phil’s Boston State Room wedding.

I get the nervous giggles. Especially when giggles can be inappropriate, like auditions, or when someone is trying to take my photo. Oops. At least I learned yesterday that smiling for 4 hours doesn’t hurt my face like I thought it might. [side note- I wonder at what time of day my face will hurt, from smiling so much, on our wedding day]

Taking our engagement photos yesterday with Debi and Amanda was a blast. We started with a picnic near the Flatirons, up behind the Boulder NIST buildings. While walking back, Ben and I climbed on some rocks and stood in tall grasses to take some more photos. Then it was off to the St. Julien, where we changed into our fancy clothes and then took some photos of us all dressed up and eating ice cream (and by the rainbow wall).

view from near our picnic spot, only 5 minutes from the car!

These ladies have some serious camera stamina! They took almost 750 photos of us! Wow. I wonder how many will come out well, 1/2? 1/3? 1/4? It doesn’t matter, as long as we have a few were we both look like us, without bra/spanx/xyz issues. The point was to get used to being in front of the camera and spend some time with our photographers so that we’re not all strangers in 4 months when they’re our shadows.

If you’re going to want to look at our photographs of out wedding, you might want to pre-register with the viewer thingy so that you can get $5 off any prints you may want to order. Cool, huh? You’ll need to register eventually too look at the photos, you may as well do it now and get $5 off. Then you can order all the awesomely awkward shots of yourselves to scan into facebook or something. I dunno.

To pass this $5.00 credit along, follow the simple steps below: Send your friends and family the following link: http://www.pictage.com/795846 Have them sign your guest book – That’s it! After pre-registering, your friends and family will be notified when your photos are available. They will automatically receive their $5.00 credit upon log in to view your photos. Remember, this $5.00 credit is only for your guests who pre-register. Sincerely, Kokoro Photography

Here’s to hoping that Amanda and Debi Tipton win some fabulous award now that we put our contract in the mail this morning!

Please welcome, Kokoro Photography to our vendor list!

Ben and I took the bus into Denver on Saturday afternoon (yes, we broke the “no wedding talk on Shabbat” rule, again). For some reason we we kinda disgustingly snuggly all weekend, but managed to pry ourselves a few inches apart so that we didn’t scare off Amanda and her mom Debi, the awesome photography team behind Kokoro Photography.

Oddly we’ve found that the standard of how we get along with vendors is: cakewrecks. Yes, a fail blog is used to measure how well we get along with someone. Does the vendor appreciate a blog that catalogs epic fail cakes? If not, then how can we ever get along?

Afterward we went to visit a friend who was working at the Christkindlmarket, drink some Glühwein, and do a bit of shopping at Ann Taylor Loft (40% anything that wasn’t on sale on Saturday, how could I not!?), ‘case ivory is in this winter! So, I of course had to go start looking for sweaters and other things to wear for our wedding weekend. I’m going to need lots of outfits, oh darn! Here’s the list (so far) of activities:

• Wednesday: bachelorette party
• Thursday: pre-mikvah get together? (then I go to the mikvah)

Boulder Mikvah

• Friday: Erev Shabbat service & dinner w/ family
• Saturday: Shabbat services/Auf Ruf
• Sunday: WEDDING
• Sunday: brunch?

Is it weird to be thinking about the whole week before the wedding as part of the wedding? I jut figure there’s a lot of potential for photo taking and I’d like to look a bit better then my usual PJ/crappy work uniform potato-sack self.

PS- try adding 2 pumps of gingerbread to your chai at St@rbuck$, yummy!

our fabulous coordinator is going to schedule meetings with us with the 3 photographers Ben and I agreed on. SWEET.

Kinda like that, but we’ll have majestic mountains and possibly snow, instead of a gorgeous white sanded beach on Tybee Island, Georgia (which I went to with my mom and GS troop when I was 12).

Here is the narrowed down list of photographers. Anyone out in the blog-o-sphere have any feedback on them?

Andy and Angie Wood of A&A Studios

Debi and Amanda of Kokoro Photography

Karie and Natalie of Karie McLain Photography (which will forever mess with my head since I grew up in McLean)

Now I just need to get my act together, figure out (with the dude) when we want to meet with them, and then call and schedule it. I hope that meeting in person is going  to help us figure out who we want to book with.

I told my mom that the biggest part of my personal hang-up about booking things is thinking about $$$. I know I need to pay decent money for decent services, but everything cost so much! The food budget I can think about $/person and justify it, but photography is really just for Ben and I and our families. That makes it seem like the $/person is just astronomically high until you remember that photography is the only thing from the wedding day that will last in perpetuity.

*brain overload, no more thinking about budgets and money that’s not mine except to spend on this wedding fete*