Google Docs' wedding templates

This is a great promotion by the Google Apps product marketing manager. I took a look at the templates and don't really need any of them right now, I'm comfortable enough creating my own as I need them for now, but just wanted to put it here for revisiting at a later point.

The rough guest list and budget are being held at My Wedding Workbook (from A Practical Wedding's endorsement). It's good enough, though I wish it were more customizable to remove all the line items we feel are unnecessary. For example, the budgets section is broken down not only to ceremony and reception, but bridesmaids' luncheon, post-wedding brunch, bridal shower, etc. No need for all those, and yet reception food is just one line item, without alcohol being broken out separately?

On class

I got a few different wedding-related books out of the library on Thursday. I flipped through The DIY Wedding pretty quickly, it seems like most of its suggestions are things I've come across already elsewhere, but I'll go back to in more depth later. I finished Offbeat Bride on Friday and more valuable than the tips on the side were her description of the order of events and the funny stories about her own moments of insanity, such as panicking about getting the guests out to the front porch in time for toasts to the sunset.

Now I'm working on One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding, which even though I'm not very far into it, I think probably should be required for anyone who wants to be sensible about weddings. I'm going to get Dan to read it after I'm done, as one of the interesting points she makes in the beginning is how part of the purpose of the hype from the wedding industry is to overwhelm engaged women to the point of feeling like they absolutely have to rely on wedding professionals to stage the kind of event that's up to people's expectations--expectations that are conveniently also set by the wedding industrial complex.

An anecdote from this weekend:

on the drive to a Chinese supermarket Saturday morning
mom: so have you guys picked out a venue yet?
me: yeah, we've got this place in Princeton.
mom: how much is the site rental fee?
me: 2450.
mom: oh...that's rather expensive...
me: yeah, well.

on the drive back
mom: so, are you guys really settled on that place? that really seems pretty expensive (actually I can't quite remember how she brought it up again, but sufficiently close to this anyway)
me: yeah, well, the cheapest place we found that would be large enough was twelve hundred.
mom: wait, twelve hundred??
me: yeah...
mom: how much is your place?
me: twenty-four hundred.
mom: OH. Oh god, I thought you had said twenty-four thousand!
me: mom! I'm so surprised you were that restrained if you thought I was spending that much! if I had that much I would totally buy a house instead.
mom: yeah! well I just thought, maybe she's changed somehow.

As hard as I have worked in my adult life to convince my mom that I am sensible about money, still it's feasible enough in her head that she didn't question a deviance from that immediately. I'm going to choose to believe it's the WIC's fault and not her faith in me.

Even with that, my mom was a little uneasy that serving just dessert and sandwiches would be too simple. After I outlined some initial full hot meal catering estimates for her, she came around a bit more, and then I confirmed that Dan and I would be paying for everything ourselves. The main thing really is just that food is not good value; you have to spend a lot to get decent food.

She's going to look into whether there might be Chinese restaurants that do off-site catering but probably what they'll go with is that my parents will take out all the Chinese guests to a Chinese restaurant afterwards and pay for that themselves, which she estimates would cost about $1000. I think it's partly that she does want to be able to spend some more time with family friend guests from out-of-town, but also an idea about the minimum that they'd have to do to pass muster for the Chinese guests' expectations. Since my mom is a fair and sensible woman, though, she doesn't expect us to shoulder the burden of that expectation, for which I am grateful.

More good reading on class and weddings:

• Cupcake Wedding: on wealth and weddings
• Accordions and Lace: Weddings and The C-Word

I'm trying to develop more bravery against the deep aversion to more openly say, "I can't afford this," without any ensuing feelings of guilt about not making more money so that I wouldn't be in that situation, because money earned is tied to effort which is tied to your character--American culture just can't escape its Puritan roots. 

Even still, I feel defensive and have the urge to qualify it by saying, "It's not that I can't afford it, it's that I choose to be prudent and save money and with what's left I can't justify purchasing this item." But that's still silly, in the end. Not being rich shouldn't cause feelings of shame (and conversely, just like not wanting to go to med school or to grad school just yet shouldn't make me feel inadequate either, as much as my father tries).

Questionable "traditions"

From Meghan, the ladies of Slate's DoubleX debate the question, "Which wedding tradition do you wish were abolished?"

Hanna Rosin: I would definitely say the throwing of the bouquet. In the last few weddings I've been to—even the ones for more conservative friends—there is a strong ambivalence hanging over this moment. The ladies gather shame-faced in the corner and the bride gives a limp, embarrassed toss. In each case the flowers landed on the floor, as the women were too embarrassed to catch them. The age when women want to get married is not over. But the age when women proudly display a grasping eagerness to do so is long past.

I've previously posted how I love Saipua's flower arrangements, as well as the idea of button or felt flower bouquets, so I suppose whether I do a bouquet toss (assuming I do get a bouquet) will be dependent on how invested I feel in the bouquet itself (and therefore don't want it to get damaged) and whether more than three (enough to make a small crowd) of my girl friends feel really strongly about it.

It does seem to be a "tradition" that has a slightly unsavory tinge to it but if I don't care about preserving the bouquet too much and there are guests who really want to partake, including guys, then at this point I don't feel particularly strongly about it.

Other items of interest:

• "No one needs a little box of chocolates with the couple's name on it." - Ha! In one random wedding magazine I picked, the bride was a watch designer so they gave all the guests a custom watch design with the name of the couple and the date of the wedding on the back. ?!??????
• "Extensive hors d'oeuvre spreads followed by massive, plated meals. Your guests just feel guilty about the wasted food, and then they're too bloated to dance." - undesireable and unaffordable
• "The one I hate most is a relatively new invention: the unity candle. It's meant to symbolize the joining of two families, but isn't that what the wedding itself is? Really, these elaborate, pricey candles just add to the cost of the event and make the ceremony longer." - Ha, I can just imagine now Dan's speechlessness if I were to suggest a New Age-y thing like a unity candle that also costs way more than its worth
• "And instead of having my father "give me away," I had both my parents walk down the aisle with me. It wasn't a "passing off," but symbolized, at least to us, the journey they had guided me on from my birth up to that point, and how they were there for me at the biggest moment of my life and always would be." - Yes. Also Martha said this is a Jewish tradition, props to them for that.
• "But I will say that I enjoy a lot of the pageantry at other people's weddings and seeing how their personal style gets expressed (or, more often, crushed beneath conformity and family pressure)." - We are not pageantry kind of people, pretty far from it, actually (see A Practical Wedding's wise words on 'Your wedding is not a show' and 'Your wedding is not an imposition').

Pretty much all the effort that I'm putting in is precisely to avoid the being crushed by conformity and family pressure. I would love to have a totally equal sharing of the planning with Dan, but the issue is that he doesn't really have a problem with conforming to family pressure except if it's going to be a lot more expensive to do so. So I'm a bit of a fish swimming against the current here, but I am supported by all the modern, independent female friends instead. Thank you.

Cupcake pies

Via Amy, more adorable mini-food!

First favors ideas post

Favors, ooo man, can we talk about THE wedding item I am most likely to get nuts over the crafty possibilities?

• (from Mama G/Meghan): fortune cookies with a custom message inside, in clear plastic takeout boxes
• various little jarred gifts from Design*Sponge: granola, tea, potted plants, pickling kit (maybe something with a pie recipe?)
• booklet of pie & other dessert recipes collected and bound
• mini-pie pops!! (via A Cup of Jo) Ok, clearly something that would need to be tested and see if it could be made way ahead of time...but there's just something about mini-food, I guess. [edit: more pie lollipops here]

Thank You photo

This idea suggested to me by Abby, whose mom saw it at a recent wedding. The couple has photo taken of them holding up signs that say "Thank You" and then uses that photo to print up custom thank you cards.

(image found on flickr)

Cute, right? We would do this with more handmade/crafty-looking signs. Of course, it would only work for thank you cards sent out post-wedding, but if we get gifts early it's probably better if we send out cards for those early on. I'm not a real big thank-you card kind of person but I recognize it as a reasonable custom. And it is nice to receive thank-you cards.

Also, apparently you can get 100 free postcards + $15 shipping from VistaPrint for postcard save-the-dates and such. Dan has already put a kibosh on those magnet save-the-dates since they're something like $1-$2 per magnet, plus the cost of postage.

There are some cute and crafty save-the-date ideas out there (here: photo of fridge, book stack with circled numbers) but I think save-the-dates in general fall under "projects I should only take on if I find myself with a lot of free time and extra inspiration." Once we reserve the date, I'll post about it here and hopefully a mass email or two will take care of the younger folk and phone calls will suffice for the rest of the fam.

Yes, of course I like letterpress and lovely paper goods and yes, some people may find a reminder that they can post on their fridge to be helpful, but with limited resources I think this is something I don't care about all that much. Maybe I'll design one in Photoshop that people can print out if they want something to stick on their fridge :)

Venue chosen! Tentative date(s) picked!

Mama G was in town this past weekend, and as a result I now have two new Gmail Tasks lists: 'blog post ideas' and 'wedding to do.' I'm sure the to do list will morph into something much bigger  very soon, Google products I love you but some things just aren't fully up to snuff in their functionality.

I will slowly try to work through the 'blog post ideas' to clear it out at least a little bit (possibly tomorrow evening during my JS class...though that will be harder to get away with what with the all the pictures that will be included, heh), because ever since our 2 hour planning session at Meghan's fueled by pear cider and apple cider doughnuts from Greenmarket, I have been Googling like mad and finding lots of great stuff.

Anyway, venue! Chosen! Mama G threw her full support behind Mountain Lakes House which was just what I needed. Also I agonized over it for a whole week and that was enough time to let it fade and get sensible if it were possible. In her words:

You and your guests will not remember what you had to eat at the reception but you will remember the setting and charm of the location. Feed them peanut butter and crackers, if you have to, but have your wedding there!!! Lovely house and setting - I can picture it now.

Which was just the thing in the end, really, I could just picture what we'd all look like hanging around on on the lawn by the pond and on the patios. All classy and grown up.

Of course, peanut butter is a no no for He Who Is Allergic To Life (if Dan does stuff worth memoirizing about, the title of the first volume will be Allergic to Life) but we decided on the following:

• Saturday date, so people don't necessarily have to take off from work to get here (I wanted Memorial Day weekend originally but Princeton has their graduation weekend then)
• afternoon (1-6ish or maybe 2-7ish) so that we don't have to deal with arranging artificial lighting and we take full advantage of the scenic venue. It's also early enough that people won't expect a full-blown dinner and the older folk don't have to leave early, while the younger folk can continue socializing in bar-hopping or some such later that evening if so desired, but also not too early such that we're up at Jesus o'clock setting up.
• champagne* and dessert** reception (*with nice beer and tea, maybe wine, and partial potluck on the desserts with pies from the good bakers we know, cupcake stand, Mama G's chocolate fountain, and **sandwich platters as well because Dan insists that no matter what people expect to be fed more than just dessert at a social event) I just like calling it a champagne and dessert reception for now because it's more elegant than all the rest together. Also I have no objections to also have OJ and milk available still, brunch or no brunch.
• Mama G to be my long-distance planner and possibly day-of coordinator as well (Meg's younger sister's graduation is early June)
• potential red (my dress)/orange/yellow color theme, I'd like to make an inspiration board

And many, many more other ideas that are now floating around. Right now I'm focused on trying to see if it's at all possible to get just one caterer who will do this kind of food at a good price plus help us figure out the rentals and provide a few people on the day-of to do setup and cleanup. It's probably unlikely, so I've been reading about self-catering as well, which is daunting, but so it goes. 

I suspect it'll be hard to find a caterer who will do all the services stuff but then be ok with us asking them to just get sandwich platters from Costco or something like that. I did find that apparently there are people who are just 'catering managers' which is a cross between a full-blown planner/coordinator and catering company. I haven't Googled that just yet but we're so near NYC, there should be enough aspiring chefs and restauranteurs that I'd be able to find with postings at a local culinary or school something, I suspect.

The current tentative dates are 6/11/11, 6/18/11, and 6/25/11. My preference is the 18th but Dan needs to check with his mom about a competition she takes a school team to that happens every year right after school ends. Anyone else have any preferences one way or another?

I'm really happy and excited about the venue and food style choice, it feels right and doable, especially with Mama G's help. Hooray!