Questions.

When you get engaged, be ready for these questions:

When did you get engaged? (This one pops up for at least a month, maybe longer. I'll let you know when I stop getting it. It's the ring that tips them off. It's still kind of fun every time.)

How did he propose?

Did you know he was going to propose?

Do you have a date?

Where are you getting married?

Have you found a dress?

And this is just the beginning. Imagine how it's going to be when you really start planning stuff. And imagine all the questions you're going to ask yourself.

Blood tests.

After a relatively uneventful and not-fully-productive weekend (favors were started, the apartment was cleaned, but no exercise happened), I'm back in weekday wedding mode.

Today I thought I'd talk about blood tests briefly. Some states require them before you get married. I think it's one of those surviving old fashioned rules that was put in place to make sure you didn't pass the plague around. Let me google that to confirm... okay, it seems to be a concern about syphilis and only couple of states still require it. I suppose it was a bit more effective in time periods where premarital sex wasn't common and you wouldn't have passed it on to your future spouse yet. (It's your responsibility to get tested now, before you have sex.)

To find out if your state requires a test, you can look in local wedding magazines or just google it. Ours does not, thank goodness.

The reason this is on my mind is because I had blood drawn last week and there is a giant bruise on my arm. It's barely faded after a week. I can just imagine how great this would look next to a white wedding dress. And especially in the photos. So I have to recommend to brides that have to get blood testing - do it a month or more in advance.

In the meantime - anybody know how to get rid of a bruise?

Weekend wedding goals.

My fiance is off to visit one of his friends this weekend so I'll have the whole run of the place tomorrow and most of Sunday. Besides sleeping up to twelve hours and working out a tiny bit and maybe (but probably not) cleaning the apartment, I plan to get a few wedding things done:

-Start working on favors, specifically work on colors and prototypes and set up some kind of assembly structure.

-Keep researching photographers at my leisure.

- Start researching DJs (and open that floodgate of website nightmares.)

-Consult the wedding planning book and see what else is missing.

-Answer any outstanding emails/organize an email folder for wedding stuff.

Also, I am proud to say that today I finally reserved hotel room blocks and got that settled. I'm ahead of the game in that respect. Ahead of the home football game, to be both punny and literal.

Mail time, mail time, MAIL TIME!

I'm always super excited to get stuff in the mail and wedding planning provides lots of opportunities for that. Yesterday, I received two packages (which I shipped to myself - just let me have my moment) and an invite to a friend's wedding. It was exciting.

In package one, I got my new exercise ball and ankle weights. Let me just tell you it is a B to blow up an exercise ball. It came with a cheap pump and it took forever. The valve kept falling out, spewing air everywhere. The pump made this high-pitched whistling noise too, which the cats hated. And the instructions have all these warnings about over-inflating or under-inflating the ball. Apparently that could kill you or maim you or something. The ankle weights were easier to assemble (since they were already assembled in the box.) They're a little big on my ankles but I'll live.

In package two, wedding favors! I'm not going to say what they are because I don't want to give it away in case a guest reads this site, but needless to say, there are over 100 items stashed in our very limited storage space. I'm excited about this. It's going to be a project for me, which is why I'm starting so early, but it should be fun.

The wedding invite from a friend was great to receive too. I mean, we already knew we were going and when it was and the details because my fiance is in the wedding party. But I was actually excited to see the invitation itself to see what they did. It was a tri-fold brochure style invite, glossy, with a design that matched their site and save the date postcards. They have a Texas theme going and are actually serving tacos at the reception. It was a really cute, friendly invite.

There were a few interesting things to note. They didn't do a reply card, opting to have people email or call with their RSVP instead. It's a great way to save money and will probably work for them, but I feel like my mother would prefer the traditional way to organize responses. Plus, a lot of our family isn't that internet-savvy. I also really liked the way they did the return address labels. They made a sticker with this logo they created and used on everything that had their address on it. It was really cute. I'm planning on getting my parents a calligraphy stamp with their address on it for this purpose. It'll be a gift they can use in the future. They sell them on Etsy.

So real mail is fun. On the other hand, I get tons of wedding emails now that are so frequent that it's gotten seriously annoying. The Knot is one of the biggest offenders on the list. I may have to cut them off completely if it doesn't stop. I also get plenty of emails from David's Bridal and Macy's, where we decided to register. Stay tuned for a registry post coming soon.

Music.

I don't have much on my mind today. Well, that's not true. I'm trying to get the hotel room block situation straightened out now that we have the football conflict. And I'm thinking about photographers and registries and makeup and favors. But I thought I'd talk for just a moment about music.

We're thinking that we'll probably have a DJ for the reception. A band is great, but we're worried they couldn't cover quite as much ground. Plus, they're more expensive. We need to book this person by January, maybe even earlier. We'll be looking at lots of sites, I assume. I'm not looking forward to sifting through all that.

We'll have to think of something for cocktail hour since it's in a different location. I guess we should find out if they have speakers and just make a playlist of jazz or motown or maybe stuff from Wes Anderson's movie soundtracks. The acoustic stuff - though that might set a weird tone. And we have a plan for the ceremony, but I can't share it quite yet.

I think the most interesting part for us will be picking an appropriate playlist for the event. Something that works for the older and the younger crowds. Slow songs and fast songs. We're basically planning a prom. That made me shudder just a bit.

I am especially thinking about that first dance. We don't really have a song. I mean, when we first started dating, we danced to MIA's Paper Planes, but I doubt gunshots and cash registers are really wedding appropriate. Now we're kind of stumped. Any song we use won't really be a song that means a lot to us. Though I guess afterwards it will. Is this how people get to the "our song" stage? Did they not have that song before the wedding? I mean, unless you marry someone from high school you probably haven't gone to many dances together. Appropriate dances, that is.

My fiance (hi) is also what you'd call a music snob (sorry) so I'm very interested to see how this goes. Perhaps we'll have to set up percentages of how many songs should be in each genre or targeted towards each age group or appropriate for slow dancing.

Or perhaps we'll just play Arcade Fire on loop and call it a day.

Snap. Click. Flash. Etc.

Photography is apparently a big deal in wedding planning. Something about having these photos for the rest of your life, blah blah, capturing this really expensive event, yada yada. Just kidding. I'm pretty picky about it too, working in a creative field and all.

So far, we have an engagement photographer coming in November who I found online. I just looked up engagement photo shoots in the area we're getting ours done in and emailed our favorites. The one with the most reasonable package combined with amazing talent was Chelsea Donoho.

Chelsea's photography reminds me of an Urban Outfitters or Anthropologie catalog - totally our style. I had a brief "what if this isn't our style ten years from now" meltdown, but I finally decided it didn't matter. These photos would be beautiful. Here is a sample of her work:

(Please keep in mind that two of these are screenshots from her flash site so the framing might be a little off. I'm not a photographer - even with my mouse.)

Unfortunately, Chelsea doesn't live in the state we're getting married in or the state we actually live in, so I've started researching other options. If her engagement photos turn out to be as lovely as I think they will, we might end up flying her out anyway. But I need to look into the economics of that and either way, that still won't take care of the bridal portrait session that my mother wants and I wouldn't mind having.

Which brings me to today. I've been sending out pricing inquiries to photographers in the state we're getting married in, figuring out how much they charge for bridal sessions and/or weddings. Some (not all) of it is insane. Crazy talk. Apparently, if you are good with a camera, wedding photography is a lucrative field for you.

Granted, I've been looking at photographers who get their stuff posted on Style Me Pretty, which probably means they are popular and have built-up reputations and careers. But do I really want to take a chance on an unproven photographer? How do you find those hidden gems who are just starting out, who have maybe twice as much talent as the career guys, but charge about half as much? I'll let you know if I find out. Meanwhile, I can't wait to have our engagement photos done.

The million things you didn't know you wanted to change about yourself.

Hope everyone had a good weekend. I actually put down the wedding stuff for the most part. I was too busy with allergies and cable TV to do anything else.

Today's entry is about perspective and how it changes a whole lot the moment you get engaged. AKA how you go from normal person to vain bride in a nanosecond. I think it's the promise of all those photos that you'll keep forever and everyone will see on your Facebook page. Suddenly, there were many things about myself that I wished I could change. Here are the main ones and my progress with each.

My teeth. I should have listened to my mother and worn my retainer because now I have crooked bottom teeth and one crooked top front tooth. It usually doesn't bother me but suddenly it started being all that I saw when I smiled in the mirror. This one is sadly too expensive to fix. I looked into Invisalign and I still surf deal sites like Lifebooker and Groupon to see if anything comes up, but it starts at 4-5k at least. And the deal ones are... sketchy. Sketchy at best. I'm just going to have to consider my snaggletooth a little quirk and move on.

My skin. I started having acne issues about a year and a half ago. Yay for adult acne! I was semi-working on it, but it became very important suddenly. Based on one friend's recommendation, I switched to Lush products and they really got the ball rolling. Here's my Lush regiment:

 Fresh Farmacy soap. This cleans your skin.

 Tea Tree Water toner. This takes off the residue from the soap and also has some antibiotic properties.

Vanishing Cream lotion. "Eats" the dead skin and moisturizes your face.
It was all working pretty well, but there was still this under layer of gross red splotchiness. So my other friend recommended this:

Murad Exfoliating Acne Treatment Gel.
I use it between the toner and the moisturizer. It exfoliates and really hits the acne. At first my skin got worse and more blemishes came out, but now it's clearing up and getting less red. It also stings less now. Most of the time. Fingers crossed that it keeps working. Otherwise I'm hitting the dermatologist in January. And I've never had great luck with dermatologists unless they give me antibiotics in which case it goes away and just comes right back.

My weight. I've discussed this before and while I am not fat, I wanted to get rid of some flab. As you know, I've been working out with my book. It's a six-month program. If I get to the end and I still need help, I'll have to get a personal trainer. I'm a wuss, so that wouldn't go well.

My hair. This category is two-fold. I had just gotten my bangs trimmed back up when we got engaged and now they must go. I'm growing them out very slowly. They're in this awkward stage now where it's impossible to do much with them. I've been searching for ways to get through the transition. Ever since I got bangs back a few years ago, I haven't made it past this frustration. I will this time. I have a reason.
Leg/arm/bikini hair is the other part of this category. Excuse this delicate topic please. I'd love to not have that armpit stubble in my wedding photos. And I'd love to not have to worry about any of that on the honeymoon. I'm looking into how much this would cost. Mainly I want to go somewhere reputable and there are so many places here, it's hard to find. I'm searching the deals sites for this too, but then it's even harder to find some place good. I'll keep you posted on this as it goes.

Ultimately, I'm going to look my best on my wedding day. That means the best I can do with the tools and dedication and resources I have at my disposal. And if all else fails, I just have to remember: nobody will notice this stuff but me. Oh, and I'm marrying the man I love. That definitely counts for something.

My hatred of college athletics continues to grow.

We're getting married in a college town.

This may not seem like a big deal to you. It certainly didn't to me at first. But now I know a few things that may help you make a decision when you're looking at locations and dates.

Getting married in a college town during football season will come with problems. They usually don't announce the football schedule until February, so unless you wait until the last minute (which I don't advise) there's no way to know for sure if you'll avoid a home game. And if it turns out that you will be getting married on a big game day, there will be things to consider.

First, the crowds of students and fans everywhere. If you get married or have a rehearsal dinner on a main drag, you'll have to think about traffic, parking, reservations, security and more.

But the biggest issue is the hotels. The rates for the hotel rooms actually change if it's a home game weekend. So let's say I reserve a hotel room now for next September. In my contract, there will be two rates: one for a home game and one for an away game. The difference is $50 and up. There might also be minimum stay requirements and other silliness on home game weekends.

It's a pain.

On the upside, we thought we'd have to wait until February to find out if our date was a home game day or not. But it turns out the university went ahead and announced exactly one game for next year: a big home game on our wedding day. Sigh.

At least we know. Time to plan ahead.

Resourceful is romantic. Maybe.

Today I thought I'd share some of my favorite planning resources. They're the books, sites and magazines I use to stay on track or just play around.

I call this one The Book. I'm kind of fanatical about it. It's my cult leader and my #1 pick for books you must buy. It has very helpful worksheets for planning and lots of checklists. I especially like the lists of questions to ask each vendor. It really tells you what to look for and what to watch out for. You can record all your relevant information here too and it has a list of when you should get each item done - something you can also find on The Knot's website, but I like the pen and ink version better. As I said, highly recommended.

This is a pretty good book too. It's smaller and easier to carry around. But honestly, since I got The Book, I've barely looked at this one.

This is a repeat from a previous blog post but worth mentioning again. This embarrassing book is really great. If you have a year like I do, you could use this book for six months and see where you get. Then decide if you want to hire a personal trainer. One thing about the book though - I'm lucky because my gym has most of the equipment it requires, but if you don't have that, you may need an exercise ball, hand weights and ankle weights, as well as something that works as a weight bench.

As far as blogs go, Style Me Pretty is lovely. They have all sorts of photos of weddings you can aspire to recreate in your own way. At first, I used this blog a lot. You can make your own inspiration boards here. But eventually, I found a better way. (See next suggestion.) However, lately I've been using this to see weddings in my area and find out who the vendors were - photographers, etc. It's a great way to find good people. I would recommend doing it by search though and going through individual posts. I did not find that their "Little Black Book" had the best options.

Now if you want to make an inspiration board, Pinterest is the place to be. You can make separate boards for everything - a board for dresses, flowers, bridesmaids, grooms, etc. And there are so many resources there. You can look at the photos everyone is "pinning" and then "repin" them to your own boards. You can also "pin" something from any site (like Style Me Pretty) to your board by adding a "Pin It" button to your Bookmark bar in any browser (it's really easy to do.) You follow certain people and certain boards, but you can search everyone's board and sort by categories. One category is "Weddings and Events." I really like this site. There's new stuff all the time. Eventually, I made a mood board on Photoshop pulling from each of my Pinterest boards.

Now I could definitely recommend some magazines and maybe I'll list them at the end, but I've found the iPad apps for a few magazines to be really fun. The Knot has one - the upside is that you don't have to carry around the giant Knot magazine. The downside is that it takes awhile to download. The magazine is cool because you can interact with it more, for example you can tap to find prices on most things, and you can also save certain things to look at again later.

Brides also has an iPad app that's pretty fun to play with - also slow to download. I don't think I ever get very great information from either of these apps though - they're more for browsing.


Honorable mentions:
Martha Stewart - Her magazines and her site are awesome. They're very DIY though and since I'm going with a more full-service place, there's only so much information I can use here. But I love browsing them especially for ideas on favors and welcome baskets. Martha knows how to treat a guest.

The Knot Local - The Knot puts out local magazines for certain states and areas. They're a little hard to hunt down (try Amazon but be prepared to pay shipping) but worth it in the end. At the very least, you'll get vendor information.

Real Simple Weddings - I just kind of love Real Simple in general. I don't think this is a series of magazines, though I could be wrong, but I liked looking through it. No new information though really.

Hope this helps anyone looking for reading material. Happy planning!

Timing.

Today I just have a little bit of advice that I should really try to take. You don't have to solve every problem upfront. You don't have to hire every vendor at the same time either.

It's really hard to restrain yourself from feeling panicked. Like you need everything right now. But you have to take a deep breath and plan what you can and be patient about the rest.

Right now, I'm attempting to focus on these things:
Gym
Photographer (just initial research - we have an engagement photographer)
DJ (again, initial research)
Favors (because it's something I can actually do now without issues)

The rest... patience.

The Wedding Diet.

I've always been a skinny girl, but I put on a few pounds over the last three years. A slowing metabolism, medication and just plain awful habits are all to blame. I really, really, really like candy. And I used to drink Coke for breakfast. And I never really turned down dessert.

We actually happened to join a gym about two weeks before the engagement in an effort to "get in shape." My fiance is very into the gym. I went maybe twice.

And then everything changed. I was engaged. And I had to think about wedding dresses and photos and the regret I would have the rest of my life over arm flab I could have done something about.

Side note: Has anyone ever stopped to think that 90% of women are not going to look great in a giant white dress? I mean, it's white. People are going to notice any imperfection - from fat to acne. Anyway...

My diet started about three days after the engagement. Everyone kept saying, "You have a year, don't worry about it." But I knew if I kept saying that, it'd never happen. Plus, this was going to be my catalyst, my driving force to finally get in shape.

At first, I was on a complete crash diet. I immediately cut candy, cookies, sweets, soda, alcohol, fruit juice and many more things from my daily meals. I ate salads for lunch, sometimes without dressing.

I was also using the iPhone app Lose It! to record every calorie and every trip to the gym. My daily count was around 1,100 calories. It definitely worked. I lost about five pounds. But I was absolutely miserable. To make a horrible joke, I was going to "lose it!" I was mumbling and glaring at cupcakes and food trucks and candy and pretty much everything. I practically growled on the treadmill.

When we went home for our engagement party, my crash diet kind of, well, crashed. They had cake at the party. And Chick-fil-a nuggets. I ate them. It was our party, dammit. And since then, I've been trying to make healthy choices, but I haven't been nearly as strict. I'll have a cookie or chips if they're around. And I've added wheat crackers and other actual sustainable food to my daily snacks. Hummus and pita chips, too. Fruit pops, etc.

I've also been better at the gym. I used to not know what to do. The classes were hard to get to and not really suited to my beginner speed. I thought I was going to die at least twice during an hour and half step class. The machines were also confusing and I felt like I was making a fool of myself on them.

Then my friend recommended this book:

It's horribly embarrassing to carry into a gym full of hulking men, but I do it. I "run" on the treadmill (still growling) then take my book and set up my little station with hand weights, a step area and exercise balls. Then I go to it.

I don't know if I've lost any more weight. I'm honestly afraid to weigh myself because I don't want to have gained weight. I don't want to have to return to my crash diet. But I feel pretty decent. It's very frustrating because I still see arm fat and belly fat and I just worry that it's not working, that nothing is ever going to work. I know it takes time, but patience has never been my virtue.

My biggest issue right now is alcohol. There's not a lot to do in New York and when friends come to town or want to go out, there are always drinks involved. I need to learn to say no, even when I'd like a drink, because most of the time, it leads to a series of drinks followed binge snacking. Sigh.

I'm off to eat my salad now. Double sigh.

Let's talk about china patterns. Because that would be fun.

It's a raining day today. The kind of day you'd never want to get married on. But the perfect day to catch you up on the china pattern drama my fiance and I went through.

Originally, we hadn't planned on registering for china at all. When I told my mother this, it got ugly. Really, brutally ugly. I'd never imagined that china patterns would be a fight I'd ever have, yet there I was screaming into my cell phone on my front stoop over a year before we were even getting married.

My arguments: We live in NYC and our kitchen is the size of a small walk-in closet.

My mom's arguments: We won't always live in a tiny apartment (though I can't imagine giving this place up) and we're going to want china one day and host nice dinner party and have holiday meals and be a real family.

There will be a whole post, maybe even multiple posts, on the topic of mothers and brides. For now, let me just say this: learn to compromise.

I didn't think picking a pattern would be so difficult. They're just plates we're going to use maybe twice a year. But once we decided to register for china, I started caring about it. A lot. There were so many factors. First of all, our style now may not be the style we like ten or twenty years from now, so it was important to pick something classic and simple. In addition, we're registered at both Macy's and Crate & Barrel so we wanted to pick something at one of those two stores. I'd say we went to Crate & Barrel at least three times over this. And Macy's probably five times. It was tough. Now down to the individual challenges.

Crate & Barrel doesn't have a big selection, though they had one pattern we liked called Kensington Pearl.

It's very lovely and very plain. The rim has little light yellow lines between those two gold lines. And the salad plate has just a pale yellow rim. We were all for it, before we started thinking it through. The ones at Macy's seemed nicer in general. More delicate and pretty. And also, china is a more traditional gift. And people who buy traditional gifts like to go into the store to buy them. And not many of them shop at Crate & Barrel. So we were off to Macy's.

We live in New York so imagine your Macy's and multiply it by 10 or so and add about 300-500 people. Make all of them tourists and slow down their walking speed by 20%. Now you've got the idea.

The china is on the 8th floor, right next to the registry section and the bridal salon. Makes sense. And there are so many patterns to choose from. It's intense. My first instinct was this Lenox one:

But my fiance deemed it too plain. And I kind of agreed. (We did like the shape of the teacup though.) His first instinct was this Lenox one:

But I decided it made me dizzy (it has very light lines around the rim.) So we searched on. I liked the salad plate for this one from Vera Wang:

But hated the little dots around the edges of everything else. Honestly, it probably would've made me dizzy too. Finally it came down to two. This Vera Wang one:

(The one at the bottom left.) And this Kate Spade one:

We felt like the top one fit our style now. It was unique and kind of different. It was very tempting until I remembered our original mission. We wanted something classic and simple. And the Kate Spade set was just that.

It seemed nicer than the Crate & Barrel set. It was more unique than the "boring" Lenox set, though similar (sadly, it doesn't have the same shape tea cup.) It doesn't make me dizzy. And we feel like it would stand the test of time.

Added to the registry. China drama over.
Through this whole engagement, I've started to feel like such a grown up. I'm getting married and I registered for china. We also got a new mattress the same week (the first I've ever bought myself) so that compounded the adult feeling. It's odd but satisfying.

It is exactly one year until our wedding.

I have a lot to catch you guys up on. Decisions already made, family fights already had, parties already over, etc. But today I'm focused on the date. It's one year before our wedding. We're calling it our "-1 Anniversary" and we plan to drink a bottle of champagne we got at our engagement party to commemorate the occasion.

Things I've learned about September 22 and 2012:
September 22 is also my brother's birthday.
September 22 is the day of the plane crash on LOST.
2012 is a leap year, giving me one extra day to plan.
September 22, 2012 is the equinox, prompting my fiance to suggest sacrificing a goat at the wedding.

I think it's the perfect day.

I'm starting this blog to share some things I've learned while planning a wedding. Maybe it'll help another bride in the future. Or maybe it'll just be something I can look back on when it's September 23, 2012.