One of my coworkers got married this fall, and his fiancee planned the whole thing. She wanted this huge, traditionnal wedding with the princess dress, the hundreds of guests, etc...

When he came back from his honeymoon, he complained for at least a month about how expensive it had all been, how much under stress he felt the whole time, how the music was not his style because they had to please the older relatives, etc...

He loves his wife and is truly happy to BE married, but the whole process got him really bitter. ("I sure won't divorce because I don't want to go through something like this twice".)

I am married as of June 4 2001 (same date as one of my best friend's parents! ). I have family in 3 states (1 state borders Canadia and the other 2 border that one). All of J's family is in Georgia. If I was going to have a real wedding where I would invite people and stuff, I would want all of my aunts, uncles, cousins, great uncles and aunts and grandparents (what I have left) and get my recalcitrant father to attend.

Suffice it to say, my real wedding probably won't happen, unless I win the lottery. And I never play that crap.

We went to Jacksonville for a weekend and got married at the courthouse. Funny thing, b/c we hung out with J's buddy the day of, and ate at a Japanese sushi house before we actually went.

It also almost didn't happen. J didn't tell me/remind me/I didn't [think] to bring my social security card. If he hadn't been a po-lice-man at the time, they probably would have said, "Nope." heee but it worked out and we are still happy marrieds

I just finished a whirlwind session of bridal registry at Williams Sonoma. I am actually feeling a little rush from all the excitement! Golly gee willikers that was fun. I had to stifle the urge to register for a second zester! My goodness.

I think getting married is great, if only for the gifts! how fun is that?!?!

I actually have more tips for the actual wedding day than the time preceding it ... the two best pieces of advice I got were (1)remember to eat! and (2)take the time to just step away from everyone and make a mental snapshot of the scene at various points during the day, so it doesn't all just rush by in a blur. I'd also add that if you're the sentimental type, remember to ask someone to collect any mementoes from the day that they see -- I wish someone had held onto the little personalized menus that our caterer printed out, or our favors, since I completely forgot to grab either one for myself. Oh yeah, and don't forget to pack normal shoes along with the clothes when you're putting together your bag of stuff for the wedding night ... I ran around Marblehead for two days after our wedding wearing white bridal shoes, and looked mighty silly

Congrats on buying your dress Riah ... it's gorgeous! I like the flowy sleeves ...

Bjerica, I would like to confidently state that everything is planned and in the bag and all I need to do is show up but that would be telling a big fat fib. In fact, everything I thought would be hard is done nad taken care of- the caterer, the photographer, the musicians, the site, the flowers, all taken care of. Now I just need to worry about all the LITTLE details- what color and type of flowers, what shoes will I wear, what temperature is it going to be, who gets picked up from the airport and who has to take a shuttle, where am I going to stay, when will I ever have time to decorate?

the list goes on and on. I have a wedding planner who is entirely too focused on weddings (her whole house is completely white, for example.) She would like me to quit school and really FOCUS on these details too. We almost got into a shouting match the other day- I had just gotten really bad news from my advisor about my master's thesis and the planner was late for her appointment phone meeting. She was stressing over who was going to do what when and I was stressing over my master's thesis and I finally had to tell her "look- the wedding, it's just one day. My master's thesis, well, that's my life and my career." She didn't like that much.

enough of that rant, the point is I am worrying that there will never be a day when I can sit back and think "well, now I'm ready to get married. all the pieces are in place and waiting for me to jump in and enjoy the day." hah hah. well, maybe that day will come, but it will come AFTER the wedding, I'm sure.

We're planning on a guest list of about fifty, and I think it'll be a Sunday evening appetizer/cocktail/dinner extravaganza at some local elegant restaurant, around August or September of this year. I'll wear some simple, silvery dress, maybe an a-line brocade, or silk shantung, and my guy is looking forward to wearing a tux. The trick here is that we're trying to keep the whole shebang around $5000. The more I learn about wedding day stuff, the more difficult I realize this number will be to attain.

Check this out: I found a dress, last season, on sale. I was thrilled. My mom was hesitant, but she paid for it over the phone and said she'd come to see it in a month. She comes. My dad comes. They both have mini-heart attacks. See, the dress was a little raggedy-assed on the bottom side due to many people having tried it on and that just wasn't suitable, according to my mom. Um. So yeah. My mom tricks me into going to look at more dresses and I get a newer pricier one. Good grief. Now, I'm not a big old romantic fantasy wedding kinda gal, so I don't really give a crap which dress I have so long as it fits and looks relatively cute, but geeeeez. So, um, yeah, my poor parents have lost it. They think that this is somehow my last big day with them and they want it to be like friggin' Disneyland or something. Hi, I'm not dead to you after August 24, mom.

Buying a wedding dress is insane. I started at the local bridal shoppe and left in despair and wondering how they make any money with the ugly seconds that they stock. Then I went to a bigger town center and found a boutique with the most beautiful dresses I had ever seen. And I knew they were the most beautiful dresses because they had a ghastly price tag to match. I left this shop hopeful that I might have just found the perfect dress but wondering how much I could really afford to spend on a wedding dress.

Finally I went to another bridal shop that I had been warned about. "The staff are hags and I know a girl that left in tears from there because they were so mean" they said. This shop was the only stockist of a designer I liked for miles so I braved the witches. They had me trying on every dress, except the one that I really wanted to try on. She was saving that one as a last resort, trying to find a more expensive item for me to love. "This one makes you look like a movie star" she said. Didn't she hear me say I don't want a strapless dress with a huge skirt?

I wore her down though and finally I got to the dress I wanted to try from the beginning. I put it on but it wasn't love at first sight but as I primmed and posed in front of those huge mirrors I knew this was the one. I checked the price tag expecting to see four digits but no! this was my lucky day. I had found the perfect dress at an exceedingly perfect price.

Simplicity is key. Our only decorations will be the outdoors, some candles and possibly white christmas lights. I feel for all those whose mother's are going crazy. Mine insists that I have to have engraved napkins (colored plates and napkins from the local party place is fine with me but nooooooooo). Now, how to paint my nails black without my mother seeing beforehand...lol.

For a honeymoon, I highly recommend checking on all-inclusive packages. We're going to Cancun for a week for about $1200 (includes airfare, hotel, all meals, gratuities, drinks, etc).

Here's the link if you want to see my dress (http://communities.msn.com/dragonflyer/dress.msnw).

$2-4000 for a dress is plenty, wtf? i would have walked out of there. they are actually known for POOR service, i was told not to even go there, in the first place.

The weid thing is that my mom is totally underwhelmed. I think she secretly wishes I was having a big creamy fluffy wedding, but that isn't our style. "So, did he get down on one knee?" Uh, no mom, we just talked about getting it over with. "Oh. Well is he going to buy you a ring?" "Uh, no, we're just going to get a wedding ring." "Oh." Get the picture?

I've been looking around for dresses. I'm not getting a wedding dress. I think it is the height of impracticality to spend that much money on a useless 20 yards of satin or whatever. I'll find a pretty thing at La Cache or something and embellish it with beading maybe.

I think we're looking at a budget of less than $1000. Most of that money will go to the hall, whatever the supplies are to craft the decorations and the restaurant where we are taking our parents, grandparents and sisters after the reception.

Oh yeah, here's my basic plan: Civil service in a hall, in the afternoon, which flows directly into an afternoon tea reception which will feature finger sandwiches made by my sister and traditional Irish scones and bread and homemade strawberry jam by my granny. We will then take our immediate family out for dinner and then get changed for a casual, open, cash bar party at a local pub where we can invite all the folks we hang out with on a casual basis and Sean's music friends.

Sorry you had to deal with dress shopping traumas, bjerica, but yay for finding the dress. The wedding industry does seem full of horribly pushy people trying desperately to convince brides to buy stuff they neither want nor need.

On cake, what is your position on smooshing? I, personally can't stand the smoosh. As my father is a photographer, and does lots of weddings, I've had opportunity to see alot of photos over the years, and the smoosh just pisses me off. One of my biggest pet peeves ever. If I got smooshed, I'd declare the union over, I think....

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Originally posted by greschya:
Ahh, how about a red velvet/gray icing armadillo groom's cake?

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How odd...I've actually seen a photo of an armadillo cake. Somewhere....I can't remember where, but I think it was a friend or friend of a friend situation. In the photo, the cake had already been cut, so it looked like a bloody armadillo carcass. I don't know if I could eat that.

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Originally posted by amandapanda:
... we love the idea of handmade invitations. Was it difficult and time consuming? I have lots of time, and lots of people to invite. I just don't really know where to begin. Did you buy the paper pre-cut, or did you also do that yourself? Any other general tips?

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Thanks amandapanda ... I've been making cards as a hobby for years now (and in my non-Digs-related work life, freelance as a graphic designer), so I pretty much always knew I'd be making my own invitations. If you have the time and energy for it, I highly recommend making your own -- in my mind, there's no question that the handmade/designed invitations just feel a lot more special.

So, how to begin thinking about designing your own ... first off, look for inspiration. Go to a bookstore and see if you can find any design books that feature greeting cards and invitations (there's one called "The Best Invitation, Card, and Announcement Design" that has some pretty neat designs). Find a place that sells handmade cards and browse around for more ideas. This'll get you thinking about the possibilities.

Next, think about whether there's any sort of special theme you'd like to use. I designed a set of wedding invites for friends whose only specification was "something abstract, and maybe cream with burgundy type for the colors" -- pretty vague, but it definitely helped get me started with brainstorming (you can see what I ended up with here). For my invitations, we knew we wanted to incorporate something from my Chinese heritage, hence the double happiness character and the color of the outside of the card. Common things to draw upon include: heritage, shared interests, something unique to your history as a couple ...

Even if you can't think of something specific, it's good to sort of decide on a general style. Romantic? Traditional? Contemporary?

Definitely visit fancy paper stores -- there are some amazingly gorgeous papers available out there, and if you stumble across one you just adore, it might be all the inspiration you need to start designing your card.

As for time, yes, it's time-consuming. I made probably half-a-dozen mockups before designing on a final design (that took about a month of fiddling around with various ideas); then actually putting them all together took another month (I think I made around 150 invitations). Having someone to help you with the assembly helps a lot. Also, the more handwork that's required with your design, the more time it'll take (mine involved: cutting and scoring the red paper, cutting out the squares from the red paper, printing, cutting and scoring the inner vellum piece, punching holes, and threading ribbon -- yes, I am insane). If you're making your own invitations, definitely give yourself plenty of time to work on them.

On the plus side, my invitations were super cheap (probably spent less than $80 on them). I got my paper through a paper warehouse that mostly sells wholesale to printers, and the text for the invitations was just printed on my laser printer.

Our "theme" is spring (we're having lots of green, yellows, and orange, with more bright green than anything) with a japanese undertone, since he proposed to me while we were on vacation in Tokyo and we've always appreciated the culture. We're not going to go overboard with so that it's smacking people in the face - just understated to the point that most people won't even necessarily pick it out. We have yet to even figure out a lot of those details, anyway.

So I have plenty of time and 150+ invitations to make, and I need a hobby, so it sounds perfect! I also didn't realize how cheap it would end up.

Thanks for the help! I'll set to it pretty soon.

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Originally posted by greschya:
On cake, what is your position on smooshing? I, personally can't stand the smoosh. If I got smooshed, I'd declare the union over, I think....

But, if you are pro-smoosh, what's your reason?

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Now we have to plan the wedding...grrrrr!

We decided on a late September (as in like Sept. 2003, I KNOW its a long way off, but I am the epitomy of the planner personality.) wedding in hopes of catching some georgeous fall leaves, and due to said fall colors we are thinking perhaps a harvesty type of reception theme.

Which leads me to my question...where could one score a BUNCH of strawberry baskets (the wooden variety NOT the green plastic type.)

Whatcha gonna do with them?

I hope that makes sense.

Of course I want a beautiful dress, and a huge party, but the one thing I really want to splurge on at my wedding is the photographer. Yeefan, your wedding pics were exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for--the photojournalism style instead of stiff poses.

Anyway! Holy crap, yeefan, your wedding pictures were absolutely heartwrenching. It's less than three months to go here and I've become an embarrassing super-sappo. I'm ashamed? Hah. So yeah, we are hiring a super local photographer (not a photo studio character, a guy who shoots bands and magazines, etc.) so I hope ours turn out as lovely as yours are!

Also! I can't believe how beautiful your invitations are, you are totally gifted! What did you do for favours? I'm really torn here. I really wanted to design a lot of the stuff for the wedding, but got crazily busy with work when the invites had to be ordered, and then I wanted things to coordinate so the other stationery type things are the same style.

Okay, wanna see what an enormous loser I am? Ummm... lookee here. Feel free to mock me, I quite deserve it. But I am terribly excited, dammit! Hee.

And thanks for the well wishes.

AND, next time you venture into T.O., let me know if you're going to any shows.

Just finished printing my sister's invites last night. Sean is handling the music so while my printer chugged away for 3 hours, Sean sampled music for sis and made a list of stuff to make mixed cds of.

(sidebar for indie music fans: my sis usually balks at anything to do with "your music", as she calls the wide variety of mostly non-commercial music Sean and I listen to. But, the first two things Sean played - Michelle McAdorey and Broken Social Scene - made sis all teary eyed and excited. She left with a promise of cpies of a fistful of cool chick's cds that she'd never let herself discover because she never listened to 'my' music before. Silly bugger! In addition, Colette said that while artists like McAdorey, Cat Power, Lucinda Williams... were perfect for the wedding she didn't want to have a chicks only sound going on, and "you know, guys don't sing like that." Sean and I looked at her funny as if thinking, where have you been? And Sean walked over to his wall of CDs and starting picking through them, "I'm about to prove you wrong" he said bringing a stack of cases back to the stereo.