Let The Countdown Begin!

So tomorrow will mark 1 year to the day until our wedding. Sure, that's a long time from now. But I'm sure time will fly. It always does.

I'm feeling more and more satisified with the date we chose. October 1st almost guarantees comfortable weather as it's been a blissful 65° to 70° in the 'Burgh all week. Of course there is always the threat of rain, but as long as I'm not drenched in sweat or trudging through snow on the way to the chapel, I'll be a happy bride.

I posted the following pictures on my Facebook, but not here. I'm moreorless including them for posterity. Here are a few shot of our reception venue, the Phipps Garden Center, which we have officially secured between the hours of 6:00pm and 11:00pm on Saturday October 1, 2011.

  

  

The other exciting update is the acquisition of my wedding gown, rather, the foundation for it. As I mentioned in my previous entry, I purchased it from someone on eBay who apparently wore it in a drag show. The dress came in great condition, but definitely must be cleaned throughly. The scent of perfume was pretty intense when I pulled it out of the box. It fit me very well...which was a pleasant surprise. Since I am going to have it tailored and customized, I think this will significantly make the whole process easier versus starting from scratch with a pattern. Here are the pictures:

  

 

Well, that's about it for now. We've been loosely working on the other planning, mostly still just tossing around ideas. I did get confirmation that we have officially reserved the chapel at my Mom's nursing facility for the wedding, which will be at 3:00pm. The resident pastor, a wonderful woman named Gaia Thompson, who has grown very close to my Mother, sister and I during the past 3 years, will be officiating.

Good stuff all 'round. :)

Fun Stuff!

As some of you saw on Facebook, I bought my wedding dress from a drag queen on eBay yesterday for $50.

As you may or may not know, I was planning on having my dress hand made by a friend of a friend who is a seamstress by profession. The dress I want is vintage-inspired - definitely nothing I can find in a regular wedding dress shop. One option was to find a pattern, buy the fabric and go from there. Another option was to find a "base" dress and alter the hell out of it. Surprisingly, I am told that is actually the easier option of the two.

So I began poking around eBay, Etsy and the like. Found a few possibles. Poked some more. Found some on eBay that were very simple and easily "alterable". One of which was apparently worn by a drag queen. I had emailed the seller to ask for more specific details and pictures. She told me that she had made it for her roommate (the drag queen, who only wore it once) and was now selling it on eBay. It's surprisingly simple, but very close to what I want...and amazingly my size. Anyways, I impuslively outbid everyone and won the auction yesterday.

I figure, even if I don't like it, it was only $50 and I'm sure I can sell it again on eBay. I can't wait to see it though. I'll post pictures when it arrives. :)

In other news...we changed the date!!!

We are crazy, we know this. But as it turned out, the reception venue we've (pretty much) chosen is not available on 11/11/11. Which was fine, because I had already decided that having a wedding on a Friday is just annoying for everyone. I have no idea why I didn't think about it before. I went to a Friday 4pm wedding in the city once before - totally annoying with traffic, coming from work, people having to take off work, etc.

I know it's "my day" and I should do what I want, but seriously...we weren't that emotionally attached to that date. We just thought it would be cool. And since we're having guests, we'd like to make it easy on them...and ourselves! So once we nixxed that date, we decided that we'd rather not have the wedding any later in November...weather, the holidays, etc. So upon examining the calendar...and deciding on October as the month...we settled on Saturday October 1st as the date we will get hitched.

The weather will be nicer...it's not too close to Halloween...'cause of course, we can't mess with that, it's too important of a holiday. :P

Things are really starting to take shape now, and we are pretty damn happy about it. :)

A Mild Setback

So even though the day is pretty far away, I decided to begin shopping around for a reception venue a few weeks ago. I really had no idea how much a typical reception can be, so I wanted to get a handle on it so we know what we are dealing with.

The place I had my heart set on was actually one of the boats in Pittsbugh's Gateway Clipper Fleet. I attended a wedding reception of a former co-worker several years ago and it was AWESOME.

Like many places, they have an "all-in-one" deal where they basically provide everything: the cake, booze/bartenders, table/chairs/linens, outstanding food, free parking for guests and 1 night stay in the Sheraton which is next to the dock...for one price. All we have to do is show up! Sounds like a great deal, right? Well sure...if you have a spare $16,000 laying around.

We Set a Date!!!

Yup. We've settled on the date: November 11, 2011. I am so happy! It's like this huge weight has been lifted, I finally have an end point to focus on. That being said, we have 515 days until the date.

Don't fret, I'm not completely psycho, I only know this because of this awesome website I'm using: Wedding Wire. They have a neat little counter on my "dashboard". And I just found a Blogger Widget that does the same thing!

Wedding Wire is great site because it organizes everything you can possibly imagine for your wedding. It's like a free wedding planner - I love it. Especially the "budget manager". It does that spiffy thing where it auto-calculates how much you can spend on what based off of the total you want to spend. Then, it produces pie charts that you can adjust based on what you want to spend for each item. PIE CHARTS. How can you not love that?

WTF: Dress Sites Suck!

This is by no way a relevant or meaningful update. More of a pointless mini-rant, really.

I had a pocket of time this morning that I spent aimlessly stumbling around the net. Suddenly, I found myself clicking through wedding dress sites. GOOD GOD...finding a dress may be more difficult than I thought.

First off, what the hell is up with all these sites that have pages upon pages of dresses with NO PRICES?! Aside from David's Bridal, I can't seem to find any comprehensive sites that have their dresses organized with prices. And there also seems to be alot of 'scammy sites' out there, which is kinda annoying.

My sights are set...

Well, I have a date in mind. It hit me like a bolt of lightning about a week ago. I was clicking through my Outlook calendar at work, checking a date for a conference my company usually attends.

Now, I've already accepted the fact that the wedding wouldn't take place until next year at the *earliest*. But as I think I mentioned before, I'd prefer if it wasn't any later than next year.

So I got to September 2011. And to my surprise and delight, the 10th falls on a Saturday - PERFECT! Are you ready for this?

Our wedding date would be...9-10-11!!!!

I'll take the physical challenge, please.

Even though we don't have a date set, I intend to lose some serious weight before I walk down the aisle.

I've been a lazy sack of shit most of my life. The last time I engaged in regular physical activity was when I was 12 years old and played league soccer. Soon after that, I sank into a hazy, sedentary lifestyle that has basically stripped my body of all muscle tone and allowed the fat to pile on to my 5'3" frame.

Some background info...

I should probably start off with some basic background information. First of all, Dan and I have been together for a little over 2 years.

We've known for a long time that we wanted to share our lives together. In fact, after only a few weeks into the relationship, I think we both knew it. It was like this mutual, unspoken, terrifying realization. It was very weird...mostly because I'd never felt that way about anyone before.

I was actually mad because I was suddenly living a cliche. They say when you meet the person you are to spend your life with, "you just know it"...and well, that is exactly what I felt. Very weird...but true, at least, for me.

So it begins...

Ah, the first post. It feel so fresh and clean! This blog has yet to be tainted by my pedantic thoughts, broad generalizations, and delusions of grandeur! Enjoy it while it lasts, dear reader. Because I have a feeling this blog may become a vile cesspool of wedding banter.

I should mention right away that I generally hate weddings. Rather, I hate most wedding STUFF. Particularly all the obnoxiously over-priced products, services, traditions, hype and wedding-related crap shoved down our throats from the time we can walk till the time we stumble down the aisle.

I hate most BRIDES. They are often horrifying, puzzling pieces of work. I have observed close to 20 years of wedding stupidity. Family, friends and total strangers have not escaped my scrutinizing eye. So I am fairly confident that I've got a solid understanding and awareness about becoming a *shudder* B-R-I-D-E.