Down The Aisle...

A singluar focus on my life in Sydney. I was "single", then I became "engaged" and now I'm married - but thats another story...

Monday, July 27, 2009

The Program For Today Is...

Since I have been on my creative roll towards the end of the planning, one of the other projects I decided should be snazzed up was the program. I figured that if the wedding invitation was like a theatre production flyer and our reception invite was a backstage pass to the main party then the event program as it were, being part of the paraphernalia of the day, should also fit in with the whole production theme. It therefore needed to contain bios of the cast and other interesting facts or assorted titbits to keep people entertained. Because after all, another reason to actually get a program is to keep yourself amused while you’re waiting for the show to kick off.

So our program looked a little different than others that I have seen. It had a lot of the more traditional stuff such as the order of service and the readings and such but it also had cartoons, Sudoku, a word search, humorous quotations, the Good Wife’s Guide from 1955 (because we thought it was really amusing) and an editorial on wedding superstitions and the traditions that we were upholding. We decided to make it like a book and have it ring bound rather than folded and it had turned into one big formatting headache by the end of the process but we were happy with it so that’s what counts yeah?

In a way it was somewhat plain as the whole thing was in black and white. Our program wasn’t elaborately printed on the back of a fan (because a fan in winter would have seemed a bit ridiculous quite frankly and you wouldn’t have had enough fingers to hold all the fans required to get the amount of stuff we actually wrote for the program printed anyway). We also didn’t create the program as a CD or a scroll or any of the other weird and unusual creations that some people with an awful lot of time and or money seem to produce.

I found it quite amazing what options are out there for personalising your wedding. These last months leading up to the wedding I have been looking for creative ideas and whilst most magazines seem to be pretty much a waste of space in this area, blog stalking has produced some interesting options. An alternative to place cards are using childhood or wedding pictures from your guests and a neat idea for a guestbook is to have your friends and family “leaf” their name and thumbprint on a poster of a bare tree trunk and its branches. Unfortunately we don’t have enough time at this point to go down the photo avenue and we already have another idea for our “guestbook” but I think that our alternative, our program and the other personal touches we have made to our day will make it a memorable one.

Friday, July 24, 2009

The Relationship Gift Pack

Well sadly, bride shaped stress balls don’t come at reasonable prices unless you order well into the thousands but fortunately, I was able to compromise. And luckily for me, The Boy is uber patient and persistent.

As mentioned previously, seemingly at the last minute, I decided that I wanted to get creative about the bonbonniere. I didn’t want one simple token of friendship or appreciation or whatever is supposed to be for precisely. I wanted multiple tokens. Only together. Like in a pack. I wanted to base the favour around the rhyme “for the spark in your life and the stress through the years, for the sweetness you deserve and the music to your ears” and I wanted four individual items to represent each part of the short poem. Now it didn’t all work out exactly as I had first hoped but on the whole I thought it was pretty cool.

For the spark in your life was a small hand-printed box of matches. Both simple and plain, the small boxes had a cream cover and some text printed on one side. The box read "marriage: wedlock, to tie the knot, the union of a man and a woman as husband and wife, the perfect match". Kinda kitsch I guess but I have to say that I much preferred the symbolism of having a spark between you as opposed to the pea and pear sets of salt and pepper shakers. You may well be two peas in a pod or the perfect pear pair but if I really think about what I’d want to take home from a wedding, some weird looking salt and pepper shakers are not it. I figured that at least the matches were a little more unusual. Whats more, if you felt compelled to keep them until you had made use of them, you could just light all the matches and then feel no compunction at all about throwing the box in the bin. Easy. If you did want to keep them however, we also had our names and the date printed on the box as well. Awww…

The stress through the years I felt would best be represented by a bride shaped stress ball. Not only for the fact that The Boy planned our wedding and it seemed quite fitting for us as a couple but the novelty value was there too. Despite the number of different websites we went to however we couldn’t seem to find a place that would sell us a small amount for anything less than a small fortune. We eventually had to bite the bullet and go for something else which is why we ended up with a plain white stress ball instead. We did get it printed however with our initials and the particularly apt Shakespeare quote “the course of true love never did run smooth…”. Because apparently getting a font that we were both happy with not as easy as we first had anticipated. Ridiculous, I know because who else actually cares, right? And yet…

For the sweetness you deserve, the idea came to me (read I shamelessly pinched) from a wedding I had seen set up at a restaurant. The couple had chosen to give all their guests rocky road wrapped up with a tag reading “each of us come across some rocky roads in life – hope yours are as sweet as this”. I though this was a cool idea so we went on a hunt for rocky road. We looked at the Darrel Lea option which was ok however it didn’t come in small pieces so it was a little more involved to get it to the individual portion stage. We looked at Haigh’s as well which would have tasted fantastic but costwise would have put us further behind bad than we were already so then we found Harrys. These guys were an internet based company and luckily for us were having a birthday sale. Mmm, dark chocolate…

The music to your ears was perhaps a bit of an excuse to have something we found upon our searches across the internet. Because music is quite important to us and The Boy is himself a guitarist, we really wanted to give our guests a customised guitar pick. It is the tackiest thing out being white celluloid with a big red love heart on the front and white writing inside that says “I pick U”. Then, to add insult to injury, we will stick the pick on a business card shaped piece of cardboard on which we are printing a circle and the text “our love is like a circle and never ends”. It will be stuck on just so to appear as though it is a whopping great big diamond on an engagement ring and we think its was kind of funny. I’m, pretty sure our guests will realise that we are not really that sickeningly sweet on each other…

The final part of our efforts was a box in which to put everything. The non-existent budget didn’t quite cover a box with a bas and a lid but we did manage to find a floristry wholesaler who was let to believe that we were a florist and sold us those little corrugated cardboard box things in which they stick flower arrangements. We now have a whole stack of them. We figure that with a little scrunched up paper, and a name tag on each one it won’t look like we slapped it all together at the last minute. Or at least that our guests will be too polite to say anything.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Dummy Spit

Well I had another little ‘Bridezilla’ moment I’d guess you’d call it on the phone the other night. Although I really hate that word. It brings to mind trashy American women who scream and rip shreds of people, either personally or professionally because the ribbon they ordered was actually 2mm wider than what they got or something equally not as earth shattering in the grand scheme of things. I’m sure they have a reason to want whatever they do but they seem to go from perfectly pleasant to hard core harlot in a matter of seconds and you wonder how they managed to get that past their fiancés in order to get engaged in the first place. I don’t think I was that bad though. I didn’t go psycho but basically I was not happy and became a little blunt because suggestion, coercion and requests did not seem to have worked. It eventually got down to if you don’t do something now, I will.

That fact that it got to that point however is probably another result of me not fully expressing my precise wishes from the beginning and just trying to unobtrusively coax the situation towards the outcome that I desired. I can see why it was perhaps a little unfair of me to actually spit the dummy over the fact that I was not understood. Obviously at the same time as it greatly irritates me that I believe I had a perfectly reasonable request that was fully explained – and then ignored. And it was all over a stupid jacket / bolero / shawl / wrap / cover thing. As The Boy and I are getting married in winter and the rest of the bridal party will be fully clothed from top to toe, it was kind of bothering me that my Maid of Honour, otherwise known to others as my sister (or The Pussycat), was still only to be attired in a strapless dress. It is to be a church wedding and I felt it was appropriate, especially given the season for her to have her shoulders covered. I also intend on having location photos after the ceremony and it would really tick me off if she were unable to smile due to her teeth chattering or violent convulsive shivering.

Ok, maybe the violent shivering thing is a little exaggerated. We have had some perfectly lovely weather recently and winter in Australia is a whole different kettle of fish than winter in Austria. It can still get cold however and I don’t want her freezing her assets off as she is forced to stand around or sit still while we go about the process of having a wedding. So I wanted her to have something more to wear. As much as possible, I also wanted her to have something she liked. I’d already nixed the idea of a fur shrug and she had told me she hated boleros with a passion and thought that the various wraps out there were a complete waste of space. This didn’t leave an awful lot of options however and I felt I had managed to find a sort of compromise. I found a pattern that I thought was both simple and elegant and probably not too hard to sew (or have sewn for us) but my idea was apparently too hard or merely too much effort. Or rather actually going out and taking a look at the picture in the pattern book for me was too much effort because that was where we seemed to hit the first snag.

So anyway, I got the irrits and made it known that there was no longer a request to find a solution she liked to my problem but rather a choice. Within certain parameters (which were pretty much about colour), she could find a solution she liked or she got mine. It wasn’t an angry conversation but more of a tired one. This was something we so should have sorted out earlier than this and it has taken to the last minute to get it out on the table and to hear that she wasn’t doing anything because she assumed she had to sew something herself which she just didn’t want to do. I gather that after we spoke on the phone though, she had a similar vent to our mum who then called me and it seems that mum is now going to follow up a jacket idea. My mother is getting her wedding attire custom made and is going to ask if the dress maker can possibly copy a jacket for The Pussycat as well. I don’t know exactly how it will all work out yet but hopefully on the day everything will come together. As everyone keeps on telling me, knowing both The Boy and myself, how could it be otherwise. Of course, in the same breath they usually say that we’ll have each other so nothing else truly matters anyway but we shall see.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Something Stupid

So I’ve noticed that since we have gotten to the pointy end of the wedding planning business, the arguments animated discussions we have been engaging in have become a whole lot more stupid. So stupid in fact that we are now finding that after we have opened communication over the initial point of difference (read exchange somewhat bitchy comments and complaints), we sometimes find ourselves shifting off topic till we can’t actually remember what we were so desperately trying to make understood by the other person in the first place. Either that or the conversation progresses to the point where we are both either defending or attacking exactly the same point, albeit in slightly different language. We have loads of ‘discussions’ about semantics, trust me. The other night was a classic example (of the former, not so much the latter) where the conversation had deteriorated and each rebuttal was getting a little more personal. We were both tired and frustrated and The Boy was in mid diatribe about how unaccommodating and unreasonable I was when I lost it. I burst out laughing.

Initially, I had been right on top of that high horse of mine. I was trying to write something for the program and when I asked The Boy (who had been lying down with his eyes closed throughout most of the process) what he thought, he read it and said that he didn’t like it because he thought it sounded a bit crass. I was a bit hurt by that but tried to explain what I was going for and ask if he had any other suggestions however the conversation quickly went nowhere. I figured that was my cue that it was time to go to bed. We have hit this wall before and rather than beating my head up against it, I thought I would quite reasonably wait til we were both fresh before we tried to finish it. Since The Boy was still flaked out on the bed, I then shut down the lap top and got up to put it away. That was my story. The Boy’s was a little more along the lines of: ‘I knew we needed to do this but you just started work on the program without consulting me or even talking to me and I sat here feeling useless and like I should be doing something to help but not knowing what. Then you asked me what I thought after you’d already gone and appeared to have finished part of it and when I didn’t think it was really appropriate you got in a huff and just walked off without a word. You made the decision that the discussion was over and didn’t give me a second thought’.

The actual conversation that ensued from these viewpoints was obviously a little more heated. I pretty much blasted him for having a double standard and not giving me the benefit of the doubt. I honestly felt I did the things he accused me of not doing and didn’t do the things he thought I did. I also had no idea that he was resenting me whilst I was sitting there typing stuff out because he didn’t say a word to me whilst I was doing it and I’m not a mind reader. When he rolled over and looked like he was going to sleep, I wasn’t thinking hey, he really wants to be involved in this boring part of the process. I got in trouble for putting words in his mouth of course because he never said he was unhappy with me for typing up the program or that he resented me for taking over the lap top to do it (to which I complained that how else was I supposed to interpret “I felt completely useless” while you “just took over” the computer!). Throughout the course of the discussion he had a go at me though for my lack of consideration and communication when I wanted to call it a night and then the conversation got round to that age old gambit from the The Boy – what the hell do you want from me?!?

Apparently, if The Boy calms down and tries to speak in a reasonable tone, he gets in trouble for being passive-aggressive and I bite back and if he loses it and has a full on argument with me, I bite back harder and he can’t win. He thinks I act like its my way or the highway sometimes and that more often than not its just me who is being unfair. He looked so pissed off as he was giving me this huge dressing down. He wasn’t raising his voice but it was a very hardly done by and impassioned plea for me to get enough backbone and just for once in my god-forsaken life to back down first and say ‘I’m sorry, this is my fault and I was wrong’. He was so seriously riled and mad at me and it started with a small smile that quickly broke into a laugh because I thought it was hilarious. Fortunately The Boy had mostly run out of steam at that point and this broke the tension rather than creating more. He could see the humour in the situation as well and we both apologised for being complete tools. Its never really fun having arguments but hopefully (since I am not naive enough to assume that I won’t have many in the future) they all end up pretty much like this one.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Better Late Than Never

So after about 10 months or so of The Boy planning, I’m finally getting a bit more into this whole wedding thing. About bloody time I hear some of you say. After all the weeks when The Boy has been slaving away and wishing that I might be somewhat more jubilant and or engaged in the decisions that we have been making, I am now starting to bring more ideas to the table. My input into the various facets of our day are not so much made up of ‘we can do that if you want, thats fine’ at the moment but rather ‘so I had this idea...’. Which would be a good thing of course except for the fact that my timing slightly sucks and I’m sure The Boy is lamenting this fact with ‘please God, why now!?!’. Why do I have to come up with labour intensive ideas three and a half weeks out from the wedding, especially when we’ve already blown the budget for the day in the first place? And the answer is, because I’m me.

I always did my best work under pressure at school. I was the student that crammed before the test and pulled all nighters to finish my assignments. As much as there is the side of me that is super anal ie. when I turn into the cupboard door Nazi (I firmly believe that the kitchen cupboards should remain shut when you are not taking something out or putting something back in), there is a side of me that is creative and unorganised and tends to leave a path of destruction in its wake. Or a disgruntled fiancé. A case in point would be our wedding favours. About six months ago I was giving these a cursory thought as I googled for ideas and possibilities. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted food, toys, something cute or perhaps something that was useful. I now want all four. Separately. But given together. Just to be complicated. Since the budget has already flown out the window I figured whats a little more where that came from and I got the idea of a mixed bag of goodies.

My goodies aren’t random though. Not completely. They all represent something that I think is important to have in a relationship. So even if you aren’t married, the gift would still kinda have meaning. Something I always wanted. We’re currently trying to make the idea fly though so I don’t really want to list the items yet but I thought they would be an awesome favour that could either be given to a couple together or to a single person along with an escort card. Which was another late idea. I had already established that I couldn’t be bothered seating people any more specifically than at a certain table (and I don’t think The Boy really cares about this either) so I was all ready to have a printed list of names against tables until I saw some cool escort cards. There is no reason to list all the guests on one sheet of paper when there are so many more time consuming and inventive ways of advising friends and family which table they happen to be sitting at during the meal. Just as there is no reason why I shouldn’t print out and fold individual menus for each of my guests even though the venue would print out free menus for each table as part of the package...

This was my third “great idea” that The Boy was very quick to assure me that I would be responsible for putting together on my own because he wouldn’t even know how. This was ok though because of all my ideas, this one was probably the easiest for me to get my head around. It took me a couple of hours and a bit of trial and error but I finally got everything placed just so in an image so that when I print it out and fold it together, it works. I got the menu idea off one of the random blogs I have been stalking for unique ideas and whilst the finished product doesn’t really fit any sort of theme other than “Stuff I Like”, that was really good enough for me. So now I am trying to think up other ways of getting coolness into our day without upsetting the apple cart and frustrating The Boy. If I had talent, I’d write a song or try and find something inventive for the wedding speech but I think thats just going to end up being fairly traditional. Well, you know, apart from the fact that I’m the Bride of course and they don’t always make speeches but my friends and family know that given the right inspiration I can talk the hind leg off a horse so my saying a few words is really going to surprise no one at all.

Monday, July 06, 2009

Name That Tune

There are websites that seem to exist purely to suggest songs that you might wish to use whilst you are cutting the cake at your wedding. I am slightly disturbed by this. The fact that I now know there are such websites also slightly disturbs me. Basically because in a harebrained moment I actually went looking for them. But they say weddings are enough to make you crazy. Don’t they?

On my little to-do list, which kind of seems like a Mary Poppins list right about now, ie. it looks perfectly reasonable until you realise just how much information and effort is required of you, it says we are to contact the DJ about 5 weeks prior to the wedding. Purely by luck, I managed to remember that I should probably start thinking about music about 5 weeks out and therefore was able to give the DJ a call. He in turn then emailed me a whole stack of paperwork which is yet more stuff that we now have to do. Included, there was a questionnaire on what type of music is to be played at the reception. Or rather, there are places where I suppose we are to write out song titles or artists depending on how open we are to the DJ’s discretion in selecting tracks. There is an area to cover the music during the canapés and dinner portion of the evening as well as the dancing end of the night where hopefully our event turns into a rocking party. Since we happen to be that way inclined. There is also that very important section where we can state what is not to be played at the reception which I have to say is a far easier part to fill out. I think my first thought off the mark was that if that pant-less pop tart Lady Gaga even makes it out of a CD case, I’m going to be pretty darned pissed. Sorry, not a fan.

Anyway, the other form we had to fill out was for the ‘occasion’ songs. The DJ wanted to know what song to use for when the bridal party enters the room, when the bride and groom enter the room, when we do the first dance, when we are joined on the dance floor by either parents or the bridal party (or both), when I am tossing the bouquet, when The Boy is tossing the garter, when we are cutting the cake, when we are saying goodbye to all our guests and when we actually depart the reception itself! I took one look at that list and my first thought was sheesh, thats a bit of overkill. There is fairly obviously a need to select the song for the bridal waltz and I can concede that there is an amusement factor in tossing the bouquet to the Weather Girls’ Its Raining Men or throwing the garter to Queen’s Another One Bites The Dust but really, I’d be hard pressed to remember what music was playing at any of my friends’ weddings for the other parts of the evening. Especially when they were cutting the cake! Cause my second thought when I looked at that part of the list was why would you even care?!?

So I decided to have a look around to see if there was some whole movement that I had so far been unaware of or whether there was a stunning song choice that would truly epitomise...well...something. And I have to say there wasn’t really. It seems that this is like the spill over section from the other musical moments at your reception such as the bridal waltz or entrance where you get to use a song that didn’t quite make the cut anywhere else. Either that or in deference to fact that your cake probably has more sugar in it than a box of Fruit Loops you can go for the Archies’ Sugar Sugar, U2’s The Sweetest Thing, the Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) or for the rockers out there, Def Leppard’s Pour Some Sugar On Me. That is unless you want to go for the songs about ‘cutting’ and play Average White Band’s Cut The Cake (which I had never even heard of before today) or Bryan Adams’ Cuts Like A Knife. I tried to think of other cutting songs that might be applicable but all I came up with was The First Cut Is The Deepest by Cat Stevens and that was about a failed relationship so its really not appropriate for a wedding celebration at all.

There were also the suggestions that were just cute however. You know, like Thats Amore by Dean Martin or What A Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong. Songs that have stood the test of time because they are truly great but that as a result have actually been done to death. On the whole though, there didn’t seem to be anything really fitting for either us as a couple or the purpose for which we would use it. We may as well just choose any random song we both like or leave it up to the DJ on the night. It actually crossed my mind that maybe I’d be able to find something fun out of a musical or a movie that just didn’t make it into mainstream lists but I kinda bombed out there too. I did decide that if I was going to bother being specific about what songs were playing as we first enter the room then He’s A Tramp from The Lady And The Tramp, Seasons Of Love from Rent or I Wanna Grow Old With You from The Wedding Singer should be on the list but the getting in to the reception was really about as far as I actually got. I still don’t care what song is playing when I cut the cake. I’m far more excited by the fact that we intend to cut the cake with a (small) sword!

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

And Another Thing...

Well you definitely get the good along with the bad in this wedding business. And sometimes even both at the same time. Saturday was spent on wedding attire and accessories and provided my first opportunity to meet Milliner Man himself. A man to whom I would be reluctant to offer my patronage were it not for the fact that he is one of the best people in country at what he does and he can provide me with what I want. It seemed the far lesser of the two evils to walk the walk and hopefully end up with something I love than to cut off my nose to spite my face as it were. I now know exactly why The Boy was irritated previously however. Subtle is not a word that is in this man’s vocabulary. Which wouldn’t be a problem except for the fact that some of what comes out of his mouth I actually find somewhat rude.

As soon as I walked into Milliner Man’s salon, because really, after having met him it seems like too plebeian a concept to just call it a ‘shop’, I got the feeling that I was very quickly assessed. I’m still a little unsure though as to whether I was actually found wanting or not...I definitely wasn’t in the bottom echelon however because darling, I was able to name drop. I think the first words out of his mouth after hello were “Show me your left hand!”. Out of racing season I suppose the only people he really gets business from are brides so one could assume that this is one way of finding out whether his services might be something the prospective client might actually ‘need’ (which may be worthy of his time) or merely think were cool (which would not). So I proffered my left hand which he then proceeded to ooh and ahh over as you would expect before he asked me “so who designed that”. And I might as well have said that we inherited the ring which was a personal favourite of Lady Diana Spencer’s because immediately he was all be-still-my-beating-heart, “Class!!” as only a man who is camp as a row of tents can be. And thereby I just went up in his estimation. Now I picked the ring because I liked it, not because of who made it but whatever works. It was only then that he bothered to acknowledge The Boy.

By acknowledge however I mean “So is this the man or your little gay friend?”. An opening most definitely designed to put you in your place whether you’re homosexual or not. Milliner Man obviously does not see very many males in his premises (or does not care to) and thinks that it is equally likely that he might be in the presence of a fag hag’s friend as with the fiancé. If it is the former rather than the latter however, he makes it quite clear that there is only one Queen in this room honey and you can bet your booty that it is not you. Since he either did not remember that he’d seen The Boy before or did not care to make it known that he’d already brushed him off, I introduced my other half who then remained pretty much ignored by Milliner Man for the rest of the conversation. He did proceed to compliment me however on the gown (which The Boy chose), the jacket (the designer for which The Boy found), the wedding boots (which I actually found myself) and the roses we are contemplating having in my bouquet which is neither here nor there really.

Overall, as much as I don’t like to admit it, the vain side of me must confess that I was flattered when he seemed to like the choices that we had made so far. He seemed to have no qualms whatsoever about telling me what sort of headpiece would look good on me as opposed to just plain ridiculous or tending towards ‘costume’ so I did believe that he was relatively honest about the rest. What we were able to show him or tell him however may have given the indication that we were made of money though because the fascinator I want is damned expensive! Oh well, I suppose its marginally more useful than a veil would be because at least it could be worn to a party or to the races or some such affair later on. Much like The Boy’s suit which is far more versatile than my wedding dress (even though said dress is not traditionally ‘bridal’). And the suit is looking pretty damn fine at the moment I must say. We got to see it when we went for a fitting Saturday afternoon. Tailor Man has almost finished the suit so he needed The Boy to try it on and see what still needed tweaking. And this was a much more pleasant experience. Mostly because the Tailor Man is a dude.

Over the past couple of weekends we have been to fittings for the grooms outfit but they have been so relaxed that it almost feels like hanging out. We often end up chatting for a bit before we leave and all three of us seem to have that somewhat dry sense of humour which I love. We do also spend time discussing the suit or the fit though and its great that Tailor Man is always willing to explain what he’s doing or why he’s doing it. Cause really, I wouldn’t have a clue about mens fashion. Our tastes seem pretty much in line too so its been fantastic for The Boy and I to get his advice on adjustments or accessories and know that if we really don’t haven't the foggiest, we can pretty much assume that we would be happy just trusting his judgement. I think the shoes are going to be a case in point on that. Given that the suit is a dark brown, I think The Boy was initially going for dark brown shoes as well but has now decided to make more of a statement with some tan shoes which is far less of a ‘safe’ choice. I think they will look good though. Of course, now The Boy is worried that his outfit won’t look formal enough for a wedding but thats a hurdle for another day. I tried to tell him that he looked hot in the suit and outfitted as he was, no one was going to think he was underdressed on the day but I’m not sure he totally believed me.