Reason #1 Why I am a "Bad" Bride: I just don't care about the steak knives

I have been thinking about writing this post for a while and decided to go ahead and write it after reading Sara's post today. I met with a day of coordinator the other day who told me how the better she knows us and our wedding, the more she can help us make sure the day goes as we planned. (Sounds reasonable, so far.) The example she proceeded to tell us was about a bride who hated the steak knives at the hotel where they were having the reception. So, when the caterer ran out of steak knives and the hotel volunteered to provide some of there's, the DOC could say that was not a good solution. (How they resolved this problem, I don't know.) I just didn't get it. I couldn't care less what our steak knives look like. (In fact, I am not even going to have steak knives!) I left the meeting and asked my fiance, "am I a bad bride because I just don't care about the steak knives?" He laughed and said "no" and, I suspect, he was thinking how grateful he was that I don't. But, nevertheless, I still felt like I wasn't as bride-y as I should be; that somehow the fact that I don't really care about these details is a "problem." Despite the wonderful support on the internet (see in particular here, here, and here), it's still hard not to succomb to the feeling that when you are a "bride" you are supposed to live for every detail of your wedding. This is just not true when there are so many more important things to be focused on, e.g., preparing for marriage. For us, we have been trying to decide where we will live and whether my career or his should take precedence (not something easy to negotiate and with potential long-lasting implications if not dealt with well). My fiance and I have jobs/ job offers in two different cities and after my failed attempt to get a job where he is now living and working, we have been dealing with what we should do. Should we move for my job? Where we will begin our life together as husband and wife just seems much more important than the steak knives or, really, any detail about our wedding.

So, thank you to all the wonderful future brides and past brides who blog about these things and help me feel normal for not obsessing on every detail of my wedding. In spite of your efforts, it's still not always easy, so I can only imagine how hard and terrifying this process would be without your support.

Image from www.ludwigshiffcutlery.com

Working on a Saturday: What happens when you read too many wedding blogs at work

So, my wedding blog-addiction seems to have caught up with me because I am here at work on a rainy Saturday catching up on the work I didn't get done during the week. It's rainy and yucky outside today, so my office isn't the worst place to be, I suppose.

Gratitude

Wedding planning seems to highlight a lot of my negative personality traits. For instance, my perfectionist streak is constantly finding fault and making it impossible to make decisions in case something better lies around the next, undiscovered bend. Yeep! In the past four months, I have found wedding planning to be a stressful and not altogether fun process. Which is frustrating. It's my wedding. I am in love. Isn't this SUPPOSED to be fun?! Well, sometimes it isn't. But one thing that I have found that seems to help me get a little bit more enjoyment out of it is practicing being grateful. When I see beautiful weddings that I cannot have because my budget isn't big enough or because there just isn't time or because I'm just not that crafty, I get frustrated. But then I try to be grateful for what I do have. A wonderful fiance (even though I don't get to smooch him as often as I'd like because he's many many miles away). A budget lovinlgy and generously provided by our parents. A job. My health. My family. Especially in light of the economic turmoil swirling around that seems as though it could swallow me up at any moment, these things are actually what matter most. The wedding, be it good, bad, or ugly, simply cannot compete in terms of what really matters. And then I feel all better (well, mostly). And realize that whatever I decide will be okay. Even if I don't come up with the cutest self-designed and lovingly made invitations ever :)

Image by Matthew Michael Photography

What's in a name?

As a follow up to my earlier post on our ceremony location, I thought I'd mention a thought about the name of our Church. Our Lady of Sorrows does not exactly convey the joyousness of your wedding day. So, it did give us a moment of pause, but only a moment. The Church is beautiful, the congregation is welcoming, and our priest is great. My fiance's response when I asked him about it was that he could make a little comment about how getting married at Our Lady of Sorrows helps us to remember that, while today is a day of joy, we take each other in marriage to have and to hold in both times of joy and of sorrow. I think he meant it to be funny, but instead it's actually kind of sweet and true. In case you were curious, that's what we are taking away from the name of our Church.

Ceremony Location

Image by Photographer Jeremy Atherton via http://www.ols-chicago.org/

[A little quirk I have noticed about myself is that I have trouble doing things out of order. This causes problems sometimes when I cannot get complete the first thing on a list, I accomplish nothing at all on that list because it is very difficult for me to skip over something and move on to the next one. Anyway, as a result of this quirk, I have started my more detailed posts on wedding decisions completed and in progress in order--starting with our ceremony location.]

We are having our ceremony at Our Lady of Sorrows Basilica in Chicago. It is beautiful as you can tell from the picture above and large (I think it can seat 900, so I am hoping our wedding doesn't look tiny in such a big space). I have to admit, I am a little in love with the long long aisle. If you are a Chicago bride looking for a Catholic church, I would recommend checking it out. They do very many weddings (I think because the location isn't exactly ideal) and are very accomodating when they do. The priest we are working with their is awesome. We had our first official meeting with him on Valentine's Day. We are very excited about our Ceremony location after my mini-panic attack when I first tried to find a Catholic Church in Chicago that wasn't booked over a year in advance.

Second Try's a Charm?

I apologize for allowing my little blog here to languish without any new posts for over a month (not that I am apologizing to anyone but myself because I suspect I am the only way paying attention). But, nevertheless, I find other brides' blogs so useful and it is such a great way to keep track of whatever has tickled my fancy or sparked a thought for something that could work at our wedding. So, here goes my second try at blogging about my wedding-planning experience. Since I last updated this blog, we have made some fabulous progress on our wedding (though I suspect the knot would still label us as behind schedule).

I will post more details soon, but for now here is our DONE list:

• Ceremony location
• Reception venue
• Photographer
• Block of hotel rooms near the reception location reserved

Here are the next few items I think we will be completing soon:

• Day of Coordinator
• Band
• Save the Dates
• Wedding Website

Here are the things we need to do SOON SOON SOON, but are floundering with:

• Wedding Dress!!!
• Caterer

I will create some individual posts with more details on items that we have completed and are working on shortly. I hope that now that we are making forward progress, finding something to write about here (other than, I don't know what to do and cannot make a decision to save my life, eek!) will be a lot easier.

*image courtesy of etsy seller olivemac

Re-purposed and Re-tooled... or not?

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and an opportunity to give thanks for all the small blessings in your life. I spent mine with over thirty members of my family. Which always makes for a good time with lots of good food.

My goal was to come back from vacation with a new sense of purpose and direction for our wedding. Sadly, this goal was not accomplished. It was probably too much to hope for given that I flew over a thousand miles and drove another seven hundred over five days.

I feel a little bit like I have been sent back to the drawing board as it seems that our wedding guest list is closer to 200 than 150 (and 150 is the maximum our original venue could hold without a tent). So, we are back to the initial question: where o' where shall we hold this shindig. I would love to have the outdoors as a backdrop, because I think it would give us the most flexibility to achieve the wedding we both want. And it is beautiful just as it is. But, we need a rain plan. And a facility that will let us stay past dark and bring booze. This has proved a challenge. It doesn't look like we have a family member (whom we could ask to provide a space without feeling as though we were imposing) with a large enough house.

Eek! I cannot wait for this part of planning to be over so we can move on the fun stuff!