Etsy love

Loving this necklace by the very talented LillyElla.

Also, just discovered her blog, and its lovely.  You should visit.

Officiant

I'm super stoked!  My college friend and recently ordained Rabbi has agreed to marry The Beau and I.  I've known since college that I wanted Rabbi Dave (as I've decided to call him from now on) to officiate my marriage and he always told me that he wouldn't if I married a goy (= a non-jew).  The Beau, being a goy, initially deterred me from asking Rabbi Dave, but I finally did.   Rabbi Dave said he would be honored to marry us, BUT we have to study Judaism, go to services semi-regularly and do pre-marital counseling with him or another Rabbi.  OK, I would rather not do any of those things, but any Rabbi would ask us to, and at least this way I get Rabbi Dave.

Yeah! for having an officiant.  And double Yeah! for it being someone I've known and trusted and had a connection with for almost a decade!  I could not bare the thought of a stranger marrying us.

Next.

With a date, venue/caterer, photographer and officiant set I've decided to take the summer off wedding planning.  In September I will deal with whether to hire a florist, we will have our engagement shoot and I will start work on Save the Dates.  (BTW - I'm super stoked about some of the plans we made with Tammy for our engagement session.  We have one location that will either turn out fabulous or ridiculous.)  The Doctor is also trying to convince me to have the ladies get dresses in green or purple (instead of my current plan), I think I'll wait till at least October to deal with that.

In the meantime I am actually spending quite a bit of my time focusing on other weddings.  Beau's sister's wedding is coming up in early August and I'm currently working on making a gag veil for her bachelorette party.  I'm actually having quite a bit of fun making the veil, and its a really good tutorial before I make my own.  Pictures to come when I finish it.  Also, the Doctor's shower is coming up soon as well, and I'm gearing up for that.  If I get time this week I might even try to design an invite for it.

Photographer - check!

We finally chose a photographer for the wedding.  It was a hard decision for me because I really wanted Eric, but we just really couldn't afford him.  Luckily, my man can be just as anal as I am and he decided to make spread sheet comparing our top three choices: Eric Laurits, Erich Camping and Tammy Swales.  He broke it down into three categories: picture quality (with subgroups for "getting ready", "ceremony", "candid" etc), price/packages (ie - what is included in the base price) and personality.  Most items, unless they were a yes or no, got rated on a 1-10 scale.  When we differed on opinion we averaged our two ratings.  At the end Tammy came out on top for cost and the most consistent high ratings in the picture quality category, and while The Beau preferred Erich's personality, he decided Tammy was the right person to bring out my silly-side that he loves so much.  This actually went along with my gut feeling (that I totally don't trust after the dress incident) that Tammy was the best for us.  But still I couldn't officially commit.  At the end we met with Tammy again last night and looked through a ton more pictures; we were both really happy and told her that we wanted to hire her.  Yeah!  One more important thing off my "to do" list.  Now, I just have to email a lot of other photographers to let them down...

Here are some of my favorite pics off of her blog and website.

(This is a picture of Erich Camping - Tammy took it for his website - awesome, right?!)

Nicole Miller Sale

Totally had to get this at the Blue Fly Nicole Miller sale.  ($128 marked down from $320!)

If it fits, I guess I'll wear it for engagement pics or the rehearsal dinner.

Just wish they still had this in my size... ($718 marked down from $1800!)

wedding planning has really been getting me down lately.  it just doesn't bring me that joyful excited feeling anymore.  i think part of it, is that the whole situation with the evil bridal store and the way marked UP sample dress just really upset me.  i really want my mommy to come visit so that we can go confront them about it.  i just want it done with so i don't have to stress about it anymore.  the only wedding related thing that made me happy in the last couple weeks is that my college friend graduated from rabbinical school and agreed to marry us (assuming he is available on that date) - i nearly cried i was so happy, especially when I told my mom, she was so happy and relieved that we would be able to have a Jewish ceremony.  even with finding a rabbi, i've recently wanted to cancel all the wedding prep and plan  a destination wedding with 10 people or just go to city hall and get it the whole wedding thing done with.  but i can't even decide to do that.  i'm just mired with indecision about every single decision - again, i think the damn dress experience has made me overly sensitive about not getting screwed, which is leading to way too much research, way too many options and a constant questioning of decisions.  i hate this.  anyone want to plan my wedding?  you get to do everything, i'll just show up the day of the wedding and marry my beau.

Other wedding attire...

(Still haven't officially picked a photog - we've narrowed down to two and are waiting to get some more information back from one of them - have I ever mentioned that I'm super indecisive.)

BUT onto other fabulous things, tonight Doctor Whimsy introduced me to Lulu's and aren't these dresses amazing!  

I want it them for engagement photos or the rehearsal dinner (especially the first and last ones).

Choosing a photog - the penultimate post

A little wedding saturated right now.  Over the last 2.5 weeks with met with five wedding photogs and talked to two others (including Eric).  Tonight Beau and I are going on a coffee shop "date" to pick one.  I still love Eric, but the cost is just way too much, and we found some extremely talented photographers here in town.  I can recommend any of the following photographers to Rochester couples (in no particular order):

• Rachel Gracie - much more traditional
• Amanda Padgham - mix of traditional and some photojournalism/fine art
• Erich Camping - mix of fine art and photojournalism
• Danielle Zielinski - mix of traditional and some photojournalism/fine art
• Tammy Swales - mix of fine art and photojournalism with a little edge

We narrowed it down to Tammy Swales and Erich Camping.  Mostly it came down to photographic style and personality.  We absolutely love Amanda Padgham personally, but we prefer the style of Erich and Tammy, and they are lovely people as well.  Not sure who will emerge victorious.  

Oh, we've also decided that we want a photobooth, but no mustaches on sticks - I'm over that.