Weather Forecast: 1 Day Out

So this is the last of these posts, and the end of my foray into meteorology. Weather.com's forecast really was pretty stable after the tease of June 9. It looks like we'll get a pretty standard early summer day.

Date of Forecast	High	Low	Chance of Rain	Wind Speed	Description
9-Jun	79	63	0%	7 mph	"Abundant sunshine."
10-Jun	83	66	30%	6 mph	"Scattered thunderstorms possible."
11-Jun	84	67	30%	6 mph	"A few thunderstorms possible."
12-Jun	83	64	30%	8 mph	"Isolated thunderstorms."
13-Jun	78	63	20%	6 mph	"Mix of sun and clouds."
14-Jun	83	63	20%	8 mph	"More sun than clouds."
15-Jun	85	63	20%	6 mph	"Partly cloudy."
16-Jun	86	67	20%	8 mph	"Generally sunny despite a few afternoon clouds."
17-Jun	86	66	20%	9 mph	"Generally sunny despite a few afternoon clouds."

Here's Weather Underground's:

Date of Forecast	High	Low	Chance of Rain	Wind Speed	Description
12-Jun	81	61	20%	5 mph	"Partly sunny. Chance of thunderstorms."
13-Jun	81	61	20%	3 mph	"Partly sunny. A chance of showers and thunderstorms in the morning."
14-Jun	83	61	10%	4 mph	"Partly sunny. A chance of showers in the morning."
15-Jun	85	63	20%	6 mph	"Partly sunny."
16-Jun	85	68	10%	5 mph	"Mostly sunny."
17-Jun	85	65	20%	5 mph	"Partly sunny. A slight chance of showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon."

Finally, our hour-by-hour for tomorrow, courtesy of Weather.com:

11 AM - 79 degrees, 0% chance of rain
12 PM - 81 degrees, 0% chance of rain
1 PM - 82 degrees, 20% chance of rain
2 PM - 83 degrees, 20% chance of rain
3 PM - 84 degrees, 20% chance of rain
4 PM - 84 degrees, 20% chance of rain
5 PM - 84 degrees, 20% chance of rain
6 PM - 83 degrees, 20% chance of rain
7 PM - 81 degrees, 20% chance of rain

Weather Forecast: 3 Days Out

We're now firmly ensconced in the mid-80s as the Weather.com forecast temperature ticks up a couple in today's forecast. Just about everything else remains stable.

Date of Forecast	High	Low	Chance of Rain	Wind Speed	Description
9-Jun	79	63	0%	7 mph	"Abundant sunshine."
10-Jun	83	66	30%	6 mph	"Scattered thunderstorms possible."
11-Jun	84	67	30%	6 mph	"A few thunderstorms possible."
12-Jun	83	64	30%	8 mph	"Isolated thunderstorms."
13-Jun	78	63	20%	6 mph	"Mix of sun and clouds."
14-Jun	83	63	20%	8 mph	"More sun than clouds."
15-Jun	85	63	20%	6 mph	"Partly cloudy."
16-Jun
17-Jun

Weather Underground's forecast essentially duplicates Weather.com's for now, except that Weather Underground offers the optimistic "partly sunny" and Weather.com offers the pessimistic "partly cloudy." Strange. Is there a difference?

Date of Forecast	High	Low	Chance of Rain	Wind Speed	Description
12-Jun	81	61	20%	5 mph	"Partly sunny. Chance of thunderstorms."
13-Jun	81	61	20%	3 mph	"Partly sunny. A chance of showers and thunderstorms in the morning."
14-Jun	83	61	10%	4 mph	"Partly sunny. A chance of showers in the morning."
15-Jun	85	63	20%	6 mph	"Partly sunny."
16-Jun
17-Jun

Weather Forecast: 4 Days Out

The forecast did quite a bit of fluctuating today. When I first checked, it said 86 degrees as the high, which constituted a pretty significant change. I view that as going from "Pleasant, if a little too warm for my tastes" to "The best part of the day will be the part where I take off my suit jacket." The evening forecast looks more in line with what we've been seeing all week.

Date of Forecast	High	Low	Chance of Rain	Wind Speed	Description
9-Jun	79	63	0%	7 mph	"Abundant sunshine."
10-Jun	83	66	30%	6 mph	"Scattered thunderstorms possible."
11-Jun	84	67	30%	6 mph	"A few thunderstorms possible."
12-Jun	83	64	30%	8 mph	"Isolated thunderstorms."
13-Jun	78	63	20%	6 mph	"Mix of sun and clouds."
14-Jun	83	63	20%	8 mph	"More sun than clouds."
15-Jun
16-Jun
17-Jun

Weather Underground's computer had been stubborn, with the day's high and low holding steady all week, but we finally have some change there.

Date of Forecast	High	Low	Chance of Rain	Wind Speed	Description
12-Jun	81	61	20%	5 mph	"Partly sunny. Chance of thunderstorms."
13-Jun	81	61	20%	3 mph	"Partly sunny. A chance of showers and thunderstorms in the morning."
14-Jun	83	61	10%	4 mph	"Partly sunny. A chance of showers in the morning."
15-Jun
16-Jun
17-Jun

Also worth looking forward to: Weather.com's hourly forecast goes out as far as 40 hours. Thursday's post (2 Days Out) will go up at night, and it will include the hourly forecast for the wedding times.

Weather Forecast: 5 Days Out

We see some significant improvement in the forecast here at 5 days out: temperature dropped a tad, chance of rain dropped a bit. Weather.com has become frighteningly optimistic:

Date of Forecast	High	Low	Chance of Rain	Wind Speed	Description
9-Jun	79	63	0%	7 mph	"Abundant sunshine."
10-Jun	83	66	30%	6 mph	"Scattered thunderstorms possible."
11-Jun	84	67	30%	6 mph	"A few thunderstorms possible."
12-Jun	83	64	30%	8 mph	"Isolated thunderstorms."
13-Jun	78	63	20%	6 mph	"Mix of sun and clouds."
14-Jun
15-Jun
16-Jun
17-Jun

Weather Underground, not so much, particularly in the text forecast. Their model holds steady with the temperature predictions.

Date of Forecast	High	Low	Chance of Rain	Wind Speed	Description
12-Jun	81	61	20%	5 mph	"Partly sunny. Chance of thunderstorms."
13-Jun	81	61	20%	3 mph	"Partly sunny. A chance of showers and thunderstorms in the morning."
14-Jun
15-Jun
16-Jun
17-Jun

Weather Forecast: 6 Days Out

W-Day is fast approaching--we're now 6 days out. First off, weather.com:

Date of Forecast	High	Low	Chance of Rain	Wind Speed	Description
9-Jun	79	63	0%	7 mph	"Abundant sunshine."
10-Jun	83	66	30%	6 mph	"Scattered thunderstorms possible."
11-Jun	84	67	30%	6 mph	"A few thunderstorms possible."
12-Jun	83	64	30%	8 mph	"Isolated thunderstorms."
13-Jun
14-Jun
15-Jun
16-Jun
17-Jun

We'll also add in another forecast. Here's the forecast from Weather Underground, which pulls its data from the National Weather Service:

Date of Forecast	High	Low	Chance of Rain	Wind Speed	Description
12-Jun	81	61	20%	5 mph	"Partly sunny. Chance of thunderstorms."
13-Jun
14-Jun
15-Jun
16-Jun
17-Jun

We'll start using AccuWeather.com as our third and final forecast once we get close enough to the date that the chance of precipitation isn't considered "premium content."

Weather Forecast: 7 Days Out

So last night I had a dream that I was checking weather.com and the forecast had increased to a 90% chance of rain. Needless to say, somnolent Dan was pissed off.

Anyway, we're in something of a holding pattern on the weather, according to weather.com. The language has changed a bit, but the percentages remain steady.

Date of Forecast	High	Low	Chance of Rain	Wind Speed	Description
9-Jun	79	63	0%	7 mph	"Abundant sunshine."
10-Jun	83	66	30%	6 mph	"Scattered thunderstorms possible."
11-Jun	84	67	30%	6 mph	"A few thunderstorms possible."
12-Jun
13-Jun
14-Jun
15-Jun
16-Jun
17-Jun

Weather Forecast: 8 Days Out

I'm going to put the forecasts going forward in a table, so we can track the fluctuations of the various forecasters. (For now, we're still flying solo with weather.com.) As could have been expected, the beautiful forecast that came in yesterday did not hold up.

Date of Forecast	High	Low	Chance of Rain	Wind Speed	Description
9-Jun	79	63	0%	7 mph	"Abundant sunshine."
10-Jun	83	66	30%	6 mph	"Scattered thunderstorms possible."
11-Jun
12-Jun
13-Jun
14-Jun
15-Jun
16-Jun
17-Jun

A note to forecasters: if you say there is a 0% chance of something happening, be damn sure. Putting 0% yesterday was a forecasting nightmare; there was no way you could give a number like that with any sort of confidence at all. And if your computer model spits that out, something is wrong with your formulas or underlying assumptions.

Weather Forecast: 9 Days Out

Today was the first day that any weather forecasting sites had a forecast for our wedding day. I figured it would be a fun exercise to track the forecast day-by-day, half to see how much it changes, and half just because I am going to be checking it every day to begin with. As we get closer I'll start adding in additional forecasts, but for now, only weather.com is looking that far out. As of now, the forecast is about as pleasant as could be imagined. I can only hope it holds...

Via Weather.com, as of June 9, 2011 at 9:30 PM:

High - 79 degrees
Low - 62 degrees
Chance of rain - 0%
Humidity - 65%
Wind - W 7 mph

"Abundant sunshine. Highs in the upper 70s and lows in the low 60s."

Photobooth info & chalkboards

Amy has come to my rescue and will be taking over the whole photobooth project, hurrah! It's going to be placed in a corner of the middle terrace outside, where people will see it pretty easily, there's natural light, but it isn't really in the way. There's a door in that corner too that we could try to open up and hang some fabric over if the photobooth backdrop thing doesn't work out.

Overall advice

• APW Photobooth How-to, which used a digital SLR, a sturdy rented tripod, a remote shutter device ($15), and saved the photos to the flash card in the camera
• Lyn of Another Damn Wedding's post on her photo guestbook: I think this is basically I want! Getting physical photos is more fun than saving files to a card, plus I'm rubbish at getting around to making scrapbooks. Key lessons: she used the Fujifilm INSTAX 210 Instant Photo Camera ($65 on Amazon), with film being ~$2/exposure, and pens for people to write messages on the photos themselves. She also had an instructions sheet, which I think is a really good idea.

Backdrop

• Merrilee did a photobooth at a Halloween party that mentioned using an actual photo backdrop stand from a photographer friend of hers, which she has a photo of. Not sure if this is something that can be rented?
• While searching on Etsy, I found this shop Fun on a Stick that has a whole section on photobooth setups that seems pretty neat, actually. $83.95 for a freestanding photobooth backdrop with fabric, plus $22 to ship in the U.S.

Hopefully this isn't too unethical, but I have recruited my handy friend Joe to build us one like this out of PVC pipes based on what we can see of the structure in the photos. He thinks it should be pretty easy and quick. I'll take care of sewing up the fabric backdrop, but I can't decide if it should be a solid color (and if so, what color), or a pattern, or...something that's a hodgepodge.

Our photographer Kelly posted this photo of a wedding at the Fuller Craft Museum. I think that background here might be part of the museum? But at first I thought it was some kind of patchwork quilt of fabrics and I kind of like the effect.

Equipment

• I have a friend at work who has a Polaroid camera he said I could borrow, but film is apparently pretty expensive? Not sure how that works out on a per exposure cost when compared to including the cost of the Fujifilm Instax camera, hopefully Amy will do the math on that one!
• Another option would be to use the point-and-shoot digital camera that we already own and then set up a printer like this Polaroid PoGo Instant Mobile Printer ($35). Amy says she thinks it's a pretty good price for pretty decent printed photos, not the best, but does the job. Also apparently sometimes there are streaks in the photos, but you can calibrate it to avoid those. This printer uses Polaroid ZINK Photo Paper which is pretty inexpensive, about $0.20 per sheet. Photo paper needs to be kept in a cool spot, as heat will damage it and affect how it prints. There's also an adhesive on the back of this paper that you can peel off to glue it to something.

Props

• I've posted some other potential props, but Amy also sent me the idea of creating a Polaroid frame out of white cardboard as a prop, kind of like how other people have used an empty picture frame. Set up your digital camera on a tripod and create fake polaroids. By that I mean, cut out a white cardboard frame for people to physically hold and frame themselves in. Like so: 

• Wedding for Two posted about a really simple DIY chalkboard sign that she made for $7. 

While I'm on the topic of chalkboards, I wanted to include this chalkboard program from that same Fuller Craft Museum wedding that Kelly shot:

Pros: a way to display program information without having to make programs, which could be helpful in giving guests a sense of what to expect in the ceremony since it's non-traditional/religious.

Cons: probably only the people sitting in the front would really see them, right? Or is it safe to assume that people would see them when they're milling around before the ceremony starts?

Another chalkboard item are the signs that Lyn also made:

I've been thinking of a way to make signs for things, especially the pies that people will bring, without needing to print things up beforehand. This could be an easy way to do that.

We won a day-of coordination giveaway!

No burying of the lead here, no sirree. One of our potential officiants sent over a newsletter from one of her colleagues, Carina of Luxe Events, who had her birthday earlier in October and wanted to celebrate by holding a giveaway for free day-of coordination service by herself! I thought about it for awhile but then got busy with life. Luckily, I managed to put together an entry just a couple hours before the midnight deadline.

And we won! This is so cool!!! Here's part of what I wrote in my entry:

I entered a few wedding-related giveaways in the beginning when I was looking at various wedding blogs and such, but stopped after awhile when I realized that many of what they were giving away wasn't entirely what I was looking for anyway. This giveaway, though, would be really appreciated by us because our current day-of coordinator is actually a dear friend of mine, the mother of a friend from work whom we affectionately call "Mama G" (her last name begins with G). She's supported me throughout the whole planning process as an impartial, sane voice I can always turn to who I know always wants the best for me. She even sent me an engagement present of the Martha Stewart Weddings book and has spent time talking about my wedding when she's visiting her daughter in NYC.

If we were able to have the help of a professional coordinator, then Mama G would be able to organize and plan the parts that she really enjoys without having to deal with anything that she's not as interested in, which would be a great gift for me to be able to give her in gratitude for all that she's already helped me with. 

I think Carina and I are going to get along really well. She has a background in organizational psychology and describes her strengths as an organizational nature--nature, mind you, not just skills, which is how I feel about my own personality as well--and her attention to detail. One of the stories I like to tell people when asked to describe myself is that when I tell colleagues that I used to be an editor on a research journal in college and did a lot of copyediting for them as a result, they invariably go, "Ohhhhhhh...yeah that explains a lot/makes a lot of sense."

Carina's sending us her contract in the mail, but basically our part to the giveaway will involve writing a testimonial for her and giving our consent for her to use the photos by Kelly within the stipulations that Kelly sets out. From what I found on her website, Carina's been running her wedding planning/coordination business since 2009 and has some great testimonials already but no reviews on Wedding Wire yet (I've decided that of the many, many vendor review sites out there, I like Wedding Wire best because they have a pretty easy-to-use design and most of the vendors I've researched for our NJ wedding have had a good amount of information on there). We'll get that fixed up.

Hooray for putting ourselves out there and getting offers of help from the universe in return!

Tentative schedule

I've had this sitting in a draft for awhile because pinning down a timeline seems to have something...final about it, like I'm closing off options to optimize the whole day even more. I'd like people's feedback on whether this seems like it might work, though:

• 9-12: morning setup, flowers (makeup/hair?)
• 12-12:30: lunch
• 12:30-1:30: caterer sets up, immediate family arrives for the posed family group shots
• 1:30: ask guests to start arriving by then, drinks are available (lemonade, iced tea, hot tea, coffee, alcohols)
• 2-2:30 ceremony (probably shorter than 30 minutes though)
• 2:30 onwards: guests enjoy food, drinks, dancing, games...
• 2:30-2:40: Dan and I hang out in the sitting room to take a moment and savor being newlyweds on our own
• 2:40-2:50: photographer comes in to take a few photos of us
• 2:50: we make our 'entrance' (we'll probably just walk in and join the crowd, I don't think I want a formal announcement here or anything)
• Reception until 6:30, Dan and I will head out to have a private dinner. We need to figure out transportation so that Dan can drink as his own wedding.
• I'll probably take a nap back at our apartment.
• If I feel up to it, we may head into Manhattan for an after party/bar-hopping of sorts with all the young folk who are in town.

The whole thing with the timing is balancing it so that people don't need to rush over after lunch and so that it goes on long enough so I don't feel like we spent so much time planning for something that passes in the blink of an eye, but then also ends early enough that people can get home or go out to dinner (but, sustained by the finger food at the reception, not need to get dinner immediately).

I've also toyed with the idea of a welcome picnic of sorts on Friday evening (though most people probably wouldn't arrive in time unless they take time off from work, and I don't want to make people do that), and then some kind of group brunch on Sunday, because there are a lot of people who will be around that I don't get to see very often that I want to spend more time with, but it seems unlikely that that would happen without planning ahead and planning just the one day is already a bit of a project (potentially helpful link: 2000 Dollar Budget Wedding on pay-your-own-way events beyond the wedding day itself). Also, I know that even the wedding itself will tire me out quite a bit and I'll need some time to recharge, so I probably shouldn't be too ambitious with the amount of social activities planned in here.

Wedding timeline

Our wedding photographer (eee!) has been doing a series of posts on her own blog about her top 10 tips for better wedding photography. She's up to #5 right now, and I'd definitely recommend heading over and taking a look at the first four and following up with the remaining five when she's gotten to them--they're pretty meaty and will be quite useful, I think. Anyway, just wanted to repost the links from tip #5 on planning out the timing of the wedding:

• A Smart Planner highlights the key things you must have on your timeline
• A wedding bee bride has a super detailed timeline which is really helpful

[edit] another real timeline from Cupcake Wedding.