ducksandbooks

Or 2, 3 if you count my engagement ring. Yesterday, after our menu tasting and walk through with the coordinators, we ordered our rings (and my veil and earrings too)! YEY! And I got an email from our ketubah artist that our ketubah has been shipped. YEY! A week from this Monday, we can bring our Domestic Partnership in to the City Clerk’s office and credit what we spent on it towards our marriage license! Wow, the wedding is in 36 days. That’s not even 5 weeks.

Now, I need to confirm our appointments to go over the ceremony with the rabbi. Call the counselor he suggested and set up 1-2 sessions of pre-marital counseling (we’ve talked to her on the phone and she doesn’t think it’ll take us longer than that to go through her checklist since we’re “so open and honest, even on the phone”).

It is also TIME TO GET CRAFTING! I need to figure out who’s doing what so that we can print the programs and make them, as well as who’s coming so that we can make table assignment cards, work on welcome bags, and order and print/attach the labels for the insides of the yarmulkes. What else…. Buy balloons and sunscreen, order foundation garments, take Ben to get his suit tailored and help him pick out a tie. Ribbon wands, those need some TLC too, but their Ben’s job since he doesn’t want bubbles (he’s afraid I’ll stain my dress and won’t be able to dye it and rewear it in March).

Dress fitting, that’s the missing piece. I think it’ll be the Friday of Kol Nidre. Weird juxtaposition, but my friend from synagogue is coming with me and that’s when she’s available. Hopefully my veil and earrings will be in by then too. I ordered 2 pairs of earrings, but both came in under $20, so I’ll resell them or wear them some other time. I’m apparently picky about my pears and crystals being on gold and of all the millions of earrings only found 2 that were pretty AND affordable. Damn expensive jewelry!

24 responses 12 with bells, 12 not attending

for my mother, who has requested a visual of the RSVPs and kindly wrote me an spreadsheet to generate this chart (which I did tweak a little). We are still waiting for 191 people to respond of the 215 invited persons (not counting President and Mrs. Obama or Governor and Mrs. Ritter), this includes Ben and myself as we STILL haven’t received the invitation we mailed to ourselves. I guess there are other people out there who have not received their invitations either.

YEY! People are officially invited, and even officially RSVPing. Now we have SEVEN people coming to our wedding. AWESOME.

I wonder how extravagant an event I can host for just 7 people, with the same budget. I’m pretty sure if would have to be a Roman bacchanal, with a vomitorium and everything.

FYI, my itemized expense report/budgeting spreadsheet is FOUR PAGES. Seriously. And the bed in the study is completely buried (which is a problem because we have guest over, a lot).

not our actual stuff, but close

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Om nom nom. More wedding cards plz!

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I got inspired while reading some blog or another, a while back, and just acted on impulse today. I am now the proud owner of a cheap, black mailbox, and 200 postcards.

This is going to combine 2 ideas

1. gift card receptacle (TBD if it gets monstered-up or not)
2. a postcard guestbook,
   • instead of writing contrived little messages in a book, people can write us a postcard and mail it when they get home! We’ll have pre-stamped, pre-addressed postcards. OR, Just pre-addressed ones that my parents can mail them to us after our honeymoon, a few at a time.
     • Ben had better like this idea, because I negotiated the postcards down to $0.30 each, including tax, and many of them are by local artists and they are all normally $0.50 each + tax.

While downtown buying postcards, I also stopped by the tourist info kiosk on Pearl Street, and picked up one of each thing that looked interesting. I’ll look through them later, when I can get them from the car. It’s pouring outside right now, so everything I got while I was out today (except the groceries) is still in the car.

PS- I am happy to report that there were ZERO issues at the post office, other than my being sucking into my favorite frozen yogurt place. I’m not quite sure how it happened, but I think their punch card has a homing beacon/magnet on it, so that I can’t walk by without going in!

Videographer

Starts at $1990 for this videographer and goes up from there, though I’ve found videographers I don’t like as much that will record just the ceremony starting at $550. I REALLY want someone to film the ceremony, and well, not just with a decent camera on a tripod. Oh well, its SO not in the budget. That’s basically canapes (yes, since we’re not serving cocktails I’m not calling it the cocktail hour anymore). Do I feed our guests, or film them?

Babysitter

Starts at $150 for 2 hours. I’ve held of on addressing invitations to friends with young children because we haven’t decided yet if it’s worth it. There are going to be 5-8 children, ages 2-8, that might utilize babysitting. My mom is worried that without a sitter, many of them will be missing their nap times and might have meltdowns. Otherwise, I was going to give them each a coloring/activity book, non-toxic washable crayons, and a small toy.

After Party

We need to go in and talk to the manager and price this out. Its something that I’ve been hoping that we can do, since we’re having a luncheon wedding and want to have time to hang out with our friends. I figure we can cover the first round of beer and some ballpark pretzels or spinach and artichoke dip. The budget for this is $400, or roughly the cost of the hot cider we plan to serve with the canapes…..

I still want bubbles. But Ben doesn’t think we should have bubbles because I’ll be wearing a silk dress and I want to be able to dye it afterwards (to wear to Andrea’s wedding!). He’s worried that the bubbles will stain my dress. Very cute and thoughtful, but we’re going to miss out on photos like this:

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And I want that! I don’t want rice/flower petals/bird seed thrown at me (and landing in my cleavage), I WANT BUBBLES!

Will bubbles really stain raw silk taffeta? Or will it just come out at the cleaners (I’ll have to have it cleaned before I can dye it). Ivory -> royal blue with ivory trim (the lining and tulle are poly).

Contract signed with the florist! There will be a chuppah with aspen supports and the tables won’t be bare.

We also ordered a ketubah!

To do/find/book:

• order invites
• DJ/ceremony sound guy
• ceremony musicians
• menu tasting/finalization

I’ve been thinking about having a brass quintet/quartet. Ben’s not sold, but I think it’ll be easier than trying to mic a string quartet. Then again, I’ve never tried to mic anyone!

Not everyone will be staying in the same hotel, and they’re both expensive to make and to have delivered to guests, so sadly we’ll be skipping them. But I’d always kinda figured that we’d make them for out of town guests, since we’re asking them all to shlep out here to Boulder. Oh well. If we did have the spare funds to make them, and the and knew where to deliver them, here are a few of the things I’d like to include (with some custom labeled bottled water from Costco:

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Chicolove Crystalized Ginger Dark Chocolate Bar

Boulder Canyon - Balsamic Vinegar and Rosemary kettle chips

Morning Thunder tea - Celestial Seasonings

Bert's Bees Beeswax Lip Balm (tube)