oh, darling!

Did you know that Whitney, of Darling Dexter, and her husband Dustin have started taking wedding photos?! Head over to oh, darling! photography to check them out!.

Their prices are sooooooooo reasonable. I would book them soon before they go up, becuase you know they will when they take beautiful images like these.

And from Whitney's blog they seem like just the creative and laid-back people that you'd want at your wedding (or at least that I'd want at my wedding!).

* all images from oh, darling! photography

More Invitations...

Has anyone else found invitations to be the project that just won't end?? Well ours were supposed to go into the mail the end of last week and I am going to put them in the mail today (will the Post Office hand stamp them for me? We shall see.) But we still have a couple trailing addresses and about ten or fifteen more that need to be addressed and stuffed... Sigh, soon enough.

So, as I posted before, we purchased our invitations from Bella Figura and had a really wonderful experience with them. We then picked out coordinating envelopes and envelope liners from Paper Source. Of course, we picked paper that didn't come pre-cut so my honey cut out 125 envelope liners, but we really think it was worth it. I "hand addressed" them all by tracing over a the address we printed directly onto the invitation--which worked out really well. And, finally, we ordered the Fling return address stamp from PaperWink.

PaperWink was really great to work with (although the stamp's arrival was delayed due to a mix-up at my apartment). But last night I was able to stamp all the back flaps with my parents' address, as shown here:

And today they will go in the mail--Yay!!

I'm baaaaaaaack...

Whew! That was a wonderful whirlwind weekend/ week. The best part was showing my Mom our venues on Wednesday. It was actually the first time I had seen our hotel, Church, and reception venue all at once and it was very exciting. I can actually finally see things coming together and the details all seemed really manageable, in part, because our venues don't require much in the way of decorations.

We also went to go hear our band play on Sunday night. It was a small crowd, so we got a chance to hang out with them during their break. They are going to be great! And I am really glad we got a chance to get to know each other a little better before they perform at our wedding.

It seems like our last big decision is... catering! Less than four months out and we still don't have a caterer, but we are working with a couple people to come up with quotes, so I think that will be resolved soon.

Invitation Thought for my Honey

Honey, I think that you should head over to YeeHaw, a letterpress studio in Knoxville, TN that does wedding invitations. According to Good Mouse, Bad Mouse, they "love thowing things together for cheap." And, in case you needed further encouragement to check them out, I know you will love them because they made this sign:

By YeeHaw Industrial Letterpress via Good Mouse, Bad Mouse

P.S. Zombies are not a phenomena that particularly interests me, but they tickle/amuse/intrigue my honey. I must admit that part of what I like about our relationship is that I am able to enjoy or appreciate things in which I have no real interest merely because they mean something to him. That is, that in our sharing a life, I get to share in his quirky interests. And that just makes life more fun! I am the serious part of our relationship (although he does tend to wax philosophical from time to time) and I love that he embraces the whimsical and ridiculous in life. We help create balance for each other and, hopeful, in our life that we will build.

Next Vendor: Day of Coordinator

So, of all the decisions that we have made about our wedding, the one that I feel most confident about is our choice of Day of Coordinator. We are using Kate Z. from Dettagli Weddings. We met with three different wedding coordinators (two specifically for DOC services) and Dettagli's prices were in the middle of what we considered. Katie, the owner, has been very professional, accomodating (i.e., she drove half an hour outside the city to meet with us), and responsive. Because I am not in Chicago, we haven't met with our actual DOC in person, but we did speak to her for about an hour and a half on the phone. And it was the first time that I felt really excited about the wedding; like, hey someone gets what we want to do and thinks we can actually make it happen. We are very excited and glad that we decided to cut back elsewhere in order to afford to put someone else in charge on our wedding day so that we (and our families) can truly appreciate all our hard work and effort (and money spent) and be truly present at our wedding.

Save the Dates

Our Save the Dates are here and I spent a portion of Sunday addressing them. I am pretty happy with how they turned out (sorry for the poor picture quality). We ended up using VistaPrints and I think the total cost is right around $50 including postage. Our engagement photos and the design were free and loving provided by one of our best men (you can see more cute pictures of us on his website). We ended up using a VistaPrint special for 100 FREE standard-sized postcards. Uploading, proofs, and shipping came to $26. Then, I spent another $27 on postcard stamps.

I think the quality is pretty good. There is a streak towards the right-hand side, but it isn't very obvious. The process was very easy--VistaPrints provides templates so you know what size to design your own postcard, then you just upload it. The only downside is all the spam that I get from them, but since we got a pretty good deal on our Save the Dates, I am not complaining.

Now, I just hope that the recipients enjoy them as much as we do :)

Reception Venue

Image from here

Our reception venue is Historic Pleasant Home (also known as the John Farson House) is located in Oak Park Illinois. We were deperate to avoid a traditional ballroom and really liked that this location has beautiful outdoor space--it is located adjacent to a park. This was also the perfect space for several other reasons:

* It was also more affordable than most other venues that we considered.

* It was available! (We only had eleven months to plan our wedding, so availability was a major factor for us.)

* It's about a seven-minute drive from our Church.

* It's within walking distance of a reasonably priced hotel, which means that we can save money on transporting guests to the reception location and that our guests aren't required to pay a lot on a hotel room to attend our wedding.

* There is a CTA ("L") and Metra stop within a block of the hotel, so guests can easily head downtown to explore Chicago in about twenty minutes. (And they can take public transportation from the airport, saving on car rental.)

* There are shops and restaurants located nearby.

The only drawback of the space is that, not being a traditional ballroom, there isn't one localized place for gathering. We will have to get creative. If the weather is nice, we are hoping to take advantage of the outdoor space. So, that's our venue. It seems like such a perfect choice now, but it still took many weeks (or was it months?) for us to finalize our decision. And I think my mother is still convinced that it would be better, cheaper, and easier if we had just picked a ballroom ;) Oh well, you can't please everyone. So, I suppose if we can't find a caterer we can always make it a picnic reception at the last minute. Always, like to have a back-up plan.

Food

So, as I mentioned before, we still don't have a caterer (e.g., food, or tables and chairs, or glasses, or linens) for our wedding and we only have six months to go. We have had a comedy of errors in picking a venue and caterer that all stemmed from our burgeoning guest list. Apparently, many caterers who will cater events with 100-125 people will not cater events of 175-200 people. But, I talked to a new caterer yesterday and they seemed very nice. Although, I haven't received a proposal yet (over 24 hours later), so I hope I haven't scared her away with my desperation (ohmigosh i don't have a caterer! i need food! but we are working on a budget! please help! and make it cheap!). Oh well! I am keeping my fingers crossed hoping this will work out and we will have a caterer and I will feel much less stressed (well that and once we send out our Save the Dates and I find a dress and ....). At least it will be one more (big) item off the list. Plus, since this is our single biggest expense, I am hoping that after we see the damage, acknowledge it, sign for it, and pay a deposit I will be able to feel less bad about how much this is all costing (see, it's done, can't do anything about it).

Image from here.

Wow!

I have been having the hardest time picking out invitations that I adore. Most I find are fine and will get the job done. But, I haven't found any that I was head over heels about until I checked out Printable Press that Meg posted about today. Kimi's designs are AMAZING! And because I couldn't pick just one, here are my favorites (so far):

All images from Printable Press

Vendor #2: Photographers

Image courtesy of Cathy & David Photographers

We are so excited about Cathy & David Photographers, our wedding photographers. I love the expression and emotion they captured in this photo. They are actually based in Indiana, but have an incredibly reasonable travel fee. They have been so responsive and flexible. We are so very excited about working with them on our wedding day. I would encourage brides to look outside of their market for wedding photographers. We were able to find a wonderful photographer who offered what we were looking for at a reasonable price and who was available by not constraining ourselves to a Chicago-based photographer (although there are also many wonderful Chicago-based wedding photographers).

Thanks to a Talented Friend

One of our best men in our wedding (yes, there are two) is also a very talented photographer and graphic designer. He is a part-time wedding photographer in the Nashville area and graciously took some engagement photos of us over New Year's. He has also been designing (and re-designing) our Save the Dates. Apparently, while I do not care about the steak knives, I do care about the Save the Dates. Who knew. Here are a couple designs he has done for us and they are just awesome. I am so lucky that such a talented individual has been willing to spend his time designing these for us for free. It is so much fun to pick out pretty designs without having to check the what they cost before you fall in love with them. I actually think we are leaning towards another design that I don't have a jpeg of. But they are all so great, I just can't decide. Please leave me a comment and let me know which one is your favorite!