Photos

Wedding photos are up at flickr. More to come in the next week or two.

I am an attention whore

Go here and look at my freaking awesome engagement pictures.

Tokyo is going down.

I wasn't going to post this, but I saw a commercial for a popular tv show "Bridezilla" this morning and thought I would offer my vast experience (3 months) to the blogosphere.

Ways to not be a bridezilla

1. Choose the correct vocabulary – Replace “my wedding” with “our wedding”. Contrary to popular belief, you cannot get married without your fiancé, and at the end of the wedding, he will be just as married as you are. The wedding isn’t about the bride. The wedding is about the couple.

2. Choose when to laugh – Whenever you go into a bridal store, pick out invitations, etc., find at least one option that makes you laugh. This might be the dress targeted at mothers with a miniskirt and spaghetti straps, or (my favorite) the post-wedding brunch. The ability to laugh during the planning process reduces stress, grounds you in reality, and keeps you from thinking that you have to have it all. (After all…those tie-dyed roses are ridiculous…why would you want those?)

3. Choose who matters – The list of whose opinion matters should be a short and uniform one. Here’s a sample:
Your fiancé and you
Whoever is paying
Martha Stewart is not on this list. Neither are your guests. Your wedding shouldn’t be dictated by Oprah or the Knot. (If you are already a Bridezilla, then this step doesn’t help you at all, as your opinion is corrupted.)

4. Choose your battles – Sometimes there are things not worth arguing over. Your bridesmaids can’t afford the $500 dresses you had your heart set on? What is more important-who is in the pictures or what they’re wearing? Your fiancé have his heart set on a white tux when you’d never even considered it? He deserves to feel as amazing in his tux as you do in your dress. (Besides, he’s going to look great in anything.)

5. Choose to be happy – Things will go wrong and not match your vision. There is no such thing as a perfect wedding. In the end, it is your choice to make the time leading up to your wedding and the ceremony itself a joyous occasion for all involved. Remember, after the honeymoon, all that’s left is your husband, a few pictures, and the memories. Don’t alienate the first, overspend on the second, or forget to make the third pleasant.

I stand corrected

We booked a photographer today.  It was not the photographer linked in the previous post.  (That one was busy on our date.)   I'm really pleased with who we have.  I'm sure that our pictures will end up being beautiful and representative of B.J. and me.

Let this be a lesson to me - there is nothing so vital in the wedding plans that a change will ruin the entire process.

More Wedding stuff, because I know you're interested

First off, go here: http://www.lisahesselphotography.com

Frankly, I'm more excited looking at some of these pictures than I have been about any other aspect of the wedding (excepting the groom and the dress). This photographer has done several weddings of friends, so I'm waiting to get their feedback before I really make up my mind. (But holy cow, how pretty are these pictures?)

In other news, if anybody wants to give me a gift, money is always good. I have a feeling that the wedding, despite my best efforts, is going to end up being pricier than I was hoping. What a racket.

I'm already too late.

Currently, there are 317 days until my beloved and I descend into wedded bliss. We got engaged roughly 24 days ago, which gives me a total wedding planning time of 341 days. Note that this is longer than the gestation time for a child (a mere 280 days), the time necessary to complete an associate's degree (216 days spent in class, assuming four semesters of 18 weeks apiece) and the amount of time it would take to completely read War and Peace (1358 pages, read ten pages a day comes out to 136 days).

Yet, it is obvious that I got a late start on planning my wedding.

My wedding dress was purchased a few weeks ago at a well-known bridal store. Before you are allowed to try on a single dress, you must "register". "Registering" is a ploy, designed to get three pieces of information out of you-the number of bridesmaids (so they know how much money they can squeeze out of you), the date of your wedding (so they know when that money will materialize), and your email address.

As soon as I purchased a dress, my email was inundated. I now get at least three messages a day, informing me of a blow-out sale, a special promotion, or the existance of placetag holders--things that I was not aware existed, but apparently am not officially married without.

The information avalanche doesn't stop there. I've gotten phone calls to schedule tuxedo consultations and let me know about drawings that I've won. I'm starting to see wedding coordinators in dark alleys and dream about cumberbund blindfolds and being pelted with bouquets.

Worst of all, I'm starting to understand some of the Bridezilla urges. Even Christmas pales in comparision to the amount of propaganda you're force fed. (At least Christmas will come again next year.) Your wedding is the Most Important Day Of Your Life and everything that you give up is something that you will Never Have Again.

The pressure mounts even more when you start looking at bridal magazines. At first, you just want a couple of ideas on a hairstyle. It's not long before you start to believe that a post-wedding breakfast is a good idea, and once you start down that slippery slope, it's only a matter of time before you begin to salivate over weddings in St. Thomas.

I grew up without Wedding Day Barbies and stopped watching Disney Princess movies after I started high school. I know now that this was a tragic mistake. How else will I know how poofy the sleeves on my bridesmaids dresses should be or how much money I need to spend on flowers to be truly happy? And most important, what kind of horse should my prince, er, fiance ride?

These issues are just some of the many that I will debate over the next 317 days...time that is now not nearly enough.