Wedding Journal: October
Could I be more stressed at this point -
I know don't even tell me it just gets worse from here! Now I finally feel
like I have all of the big ticket items squared away (well except for
transportation which is another story...) but all the little things are starting
to scare me! Now that we have a chapel there is so much to do that we
couldn't before...meet with the priest, meet with ceremony musicians, plan the
ceremony, the readings, order invitations...not to mention ordering the girls
dresses, ordering rings for us, get a wedding cake, take dancing lessons, think
of wedding favors, order tuxes, and to top it all off my wedding dress is
in! It wasn't supposed to be here until December! Not that two
months is a big deal - I am just unprepared! There is no way it is coming
into this house - not with all the painting we still have to do and especially
because the cat is evil and I am sure she would find a way to destroy the
dress! Just so you know, normally I love my cat, but lately she has taken
to going to the bathroom on the dogs bed. We have gone through several dog
beds now, its not fun, not fun at all. They must have gotten into some
sort of fight...anyway back to the wedding stuff!
First Week of October: Not much wedding planning got done this week. We pretty much just tried to recover from having the floors done and move all of our stuff back into the rest of the house! The floors came out great and the house didn't blow up. Very happy about that! Then on the 7th we flew to Florida for a long weekend to celebrate Michael's parents' 30th wedding anniversary with them. It was lots of fun :-) Though the moment we arrived back in Boston I became a crazy stressed out bridezilla freak. I think Michael was wondering where the calm relaxed person from Florida went! All of a sudden my mind was just working overtime - have to do this and that and it was just an onslaught of wedding things! But once I vented about it all a bit I felt much better. The one big thing that was really annoying me was that the limo company was not calling me back. Not only is that extremely annoying but it is also bad customer service. Especially considering the amount of business we are giving them. I couldn't take it any longer so I asked Michael to call them and lay it out straight, which he did. I just don't make a good tough guy. So hopefully the contract for the limos and minibus are in the mail and that will be one less thing to check off the list!
Second Week of
October: Starting to feel more
productive. Made a lot of calls this week - now
we have an appointment
with the priest at Tufts and a consulting appointment with the Arts Coordinator for
the chapel. She is going to help us pick out what music we want and
what instruments we like best (organ, trumpet, flute, violin, etc..). I'm
looking forward to this consultation - I think it will be fun! I also made
an appointment on the 27th at Occasions for the bridesmaids to get measured for
their dresses. I am so glad everything has worked out with the
dresses! And speaking of dresses, mine is in! I feel like I just
ordered it. But I have an appointment on the 30th to go in and see it,
make sure all is OK and then they will store it there for me. Thankfully because
I would be too nervous with it in the house! And then the fittings start
in January - No holiday sweets for me! This week I'm also working to get
our Save The Date cards out to the out-of-towners and those few locals we think
may need a reminder :-) Putting the address lists together is not fun -
even with the internet there are still a bunch of address I don't have.
How did we ever function before the internet? And actually, the biggest
ordeal was trying to mail merge and format the labels to stick on the
envelopes. You'd never know I briefly worked as an Administrative
Assistant during grad school! But they are mostly done and hopefully going
out the door soon. Work is crazy this week so very little wedding stuff is
getting done -and next week looks even crazier. Will it never end!
Weekend of October 15 & 16: We are trying very hard to be productive this weekend. We are just traveling to much this Fall and there is just way too much to do for the wedding and for the house! So we have designated this a wedding weekend and the weekend of the 30th is a house weekend. We actually did a bunch of non-wedding things Saturday - like getting my brakes inspected, going shopping at Costco, all those really fun things :-) But we did swing by the Cambridge House in Cambridge (of course) and took a little tour. This is a great Bed and Breakfast on Massachusetts Ave. where I am considering booking a room or so for me and the bridesmaids to get ready in. Michael will be getting ready at our house which is fine with me - there will be no CAT OR DOG HAIR on my dress! And the rooms there are just great - Victorian furniture and wall coverings, four poster beds, huge mirrors....much more atmospheric than the Hyatt. The Hyatt is a great hotel but it is a hotel and hotels are pretty generic places. B&Bs on the other hand have more character. But we'll see, need to figure a couple more logistics out before we book it. And I guess it turned out not to be too much of a wedding stuff day because then we came home and Michael cleaned and worked on the car and I dug up my flowers because it is getting cold up here quickly!
But Sunday was the big day. It was
a perfect New England Day - crisp but a warm sun to shine on the leaves which
were all turning reds, oranges and yellows. So we drove up to Portsmouth,
NH where we had seen some wedding rings we liked. The scenery was great on
the trip up - even I managed to stay awake! And then we went to Finn
& Co. to look at rings. All of them were gorgeous. I tired on
the one I had liked from our last visit, but on second inspection I decided it
was too "flashy." Plus it didn't set off the center stone
enough. So after trying on about every ring in the store I decided on the
One - or should I say the Set. If you have stuck with me
and read all of this journal you know Michael bought an inexpensive temporary
setting so I could chose the one I wanted to wear for the rest of my life.
So today I picked out both the engagement setting and the wedding band. I
can't describe the ring - when I tried to describe it to my mom and Trang it
sounded odd and definitely not my style - so here is a scanned picture from the
store's catalog. The resolution on the picture isn't great but I think you
get the idea - the center stone is offset by two leaf shaped designs on wither
side then there is some more detailing and two tiny diamonds on the
outside. The wedding band picks up the same pattern. I really liked
the antiquey look of the set. Poor Michael - he loved all the ultra sleek
modern ones - which explains why he didn't pick out the setting in the first
place! He hasn't made up his mind yet what he wants for his ring yet and
may design it himself. Though he is strongly considering having one made
from titanium!
And next weekend is my wedding shower, hosted by my grandmother, Marge Godleski, at my mom's house. All of the Boston bridesmaids are making the trip with me and its parents weekend at Lehigh so my cousin Bonny is driving over to Williamsport with her mom (my Aunt Sherry), dad (my Uncle Bob), and sister Mary Rita. It sounds like a lot of my female relatives will all be at the shower so I am really looking forward to it - we never see each other! So stay tuned for lots of pictures to appear in these pages!
October 23rd & 24th: To read all about the big shower, go to the Shower special entry.
October 28th: Well, we're ordering the bridesmaids dresses. What a relief. I thought we would never find anything. Most of the dresses screamed bridesmaid - not the look we were going for! While this one is a bridesmaids dress, I think the girls will be able to wear it again if they shorten it and it is just so elegant. The style actually contrasts with my dress but I think the final effect will be dramatic, rather than having very similar styles. But no information is being disclosed until the big day - sorry. So anyway, we all went out to Occasions for the fittings tonight. I picked Hang up at home, Pam and Trang were going from Cambridge and Kim was meeting us all there. Once again we made great time and were there right at 6:30. The fittings weren't until 7, but Trang had made an appointment to try on bridal dresses before the fitting. Sharon was helping us tonight and she was great. Trang probably tried on six (?) dresses but two were definitely strong possibilities. I won't go into any details here because I don't want to spoil it, but she did eventually go with one of theses dresses and it is gorgeous! However, I tried on the bridesmaid dress she had in mind and it didn't quite go with the style dress she had chosen for herself so we're back tot he drawing board there! We actually ended up doing the fittings in between Trang's dress trying on - she's lucky it was me who had the appointment after her! Pam and Kim went first because they had to leave early. Trang, hang and I ended up staying until about 9:30 - the ladies at Occasions are very talkative - which is great because usually its great advice! But by the time we got out of there we were starving. I mean starving - near hysteria starving. Trapped in suburbia and craving Thai food. Not a good combination. So we desperately flee down the Pike and into Waltham, praying that we can find Carambola and that it is still open. Thankfully we find it and even though they say they stop serving at 9:45 they seat us. This is a great restaurant - sister restaurant to the Elephant Walk in Cambridge, but no cheaper for being in the burbs! We treated ourselves to a great dinner and some wine though - we deserved it after all that bridal/dress/wedding hoopla. The whole thing really is exhausting!
Halloween
Weekend: I am writing this about two weeks later and can't
really remember what we did! I think we tried to play catch up on our
lives because we have been traveling so much this month. Oh yes....it's
all coming back to me. I can't believe I forgot this! Saturday
morning I had an appointment at Yolanda's to try
on my dress which was in! Yolanda's was crazy as ever. I am so glad
my mom and I shopped on a Friday - Saturday's there are out of control.
But I got to try on my dress - very exciting! Two surprises - one its a
little tight....just a little. She said they could let it out.
Forget it I am on a diet. I don't want them ripping up my dress!
Second was the material of the dress - I couldn't believe it it was silk
organza. At Occasions the other night Trang was debating getting her
dress in silk organza or silk crepe - I was a big fan of the silk crepe thinking
that's what my dress was. Oh well...talk about an uneducated bride!
But the dress is in its being stored and alterations are in February. The
veil should be in soon - can't wait to see it all together!
What else....so after my dress appointment I did some cleaning around the house while Michael studied for his class. Then around 3 I dragged him into Boston to look for shower thank you notes, wedding invitations, and a rehearsal dinner site. Of the above, all we got accomplished were finding the thank you notes. We went to Rugg Road Stationery on Charles street where I found the thank you notes. They had some neat wedding invitations but nothing that really called to us. I was really looking for plain cream parchment with an embossed Celtic knot...alas nothing even remotely close was to be found. We walked through the commons and down though town to Faneuil Hall. We mad a couple of pit stops at some tourist info booths to take A LOT of brochures so we can share them with our out-of-town guests. I felt like a shoplifter we took so many! The next store - A Scribe's Delight - carried a brand of wedding invitations I had really liked from the Internet, Anna Griffin Designs. In person the quality was fair and the prices high. Not a good combination. So we are 0-2 on the invites. Michael is crabby and needs to eat. So we head to the North End to Cibo for some wonderful food. Excellent gnocchi. It was a really great night - date nights are few and far between these days. And then we went to Mike's pastry for desert and pigged out - hot chocolate, cappuccino, canoli, and some outrageous chocolate cake thing that Michael got. All in all a very wonderful night. And mildly successful - we did decide that there is probably no restaurant in the North End big enough for the rehearsal dinner and even if there was the minibus would never find a parking spot. So we are back to square one with that....
