WedLog

So I completely abandoned this blog.  Oh well.  I think it mostly accomplished its humble purpose of keeping my family involved in the planning and documenting some of the major events.  But, I’m back for one last post.  I was dying for some examples when we were putting together the play lists so I’m posting ours here on the off chance that someone happens upon it who’s scrambling to put theirs together and looking for inspiration.  I don’t intend for anyone to copy it song-for-song, but it’s an example of what works.

Cocktail Hour

We were going for a fun, upbeat, sort of jazzy, sophisticated but approachable mood for the cocktail hour.

Dinner

We really wanted to play Iron & Wine’s album, The Shepherds Dog, on repeat.  But for the sake of variety we mixed it up a little with a hint of ’90s retro and some other laid back favorites.

*number 37 is breakfast at tiffany’s by deep blue something

Dancing

This was the trickiest for me - we’re not big dancers and we know nothing about current pop music.  We started off with stuff the older folks would like and moved into younger stuff.  We figured it was best to mostly stick with stuff people know.  Whatever we did, it worked - people danced!  I don’t remember how far we got into the play list before the night ended - we purposefully had way more music that needed (much better than not having enough).

*number 21 is coconut by harry nilsson

Hope that helps someone out there!

Yes, I stole the Title from East Side Bride.

She’s hilarious and blunt and I love her.  I, however, am not really all that outraged that someone posted a photo shoot in a “real weddings” section on a blog.  Because, seriously, have you seen the other “real weddings” in the blogosphere?  Come on!  So maybe they aren’t technically photo shoots for magazines and stuff, but seriously.  “Real weddings” that get featured on most blogs are basically indistinguishable from photo shoots.  Case(s) in point - the pictures below from Style Me Pretty and Southern Weddings Magazine.

Sure, I admit that I like to peruse the posts for elements I might incorporate into my wedding, but let’s be blunt.  If it looks like a photo shoot, and feels like a photo shoot, and was staged, lit, shot, and edited by a professional photographer then how is it not a photo shoot?  Seems to me that it was a photo shoot of your wedding.  Except that you styled it instead of the photographer.

I fully intend for my wedding not to be a photo shoot.  Other things to keep in mind:

Your wedding is not a state dinner

Your wedding is not a debutante ball

Your wedding does not involve royalty

Your wedding is not a gallery exhibit of all of your unique talents and interests

Your wedding does not exist for the sole purpose of impressing your friends

Your wedding is not a transaction of woman from father to husband*

*hopefully

Now that we have a new plan in place, I’m ready to discuss the mini crisis. Basically, things at Scottadito fell apart. It’s my impression that they have terrible management problems. Since we’ve been in touch with them (about 8 months or so) they have gone through 4 different events managers. Between all the hirings and firings (or quittings; we don’t know the stories) they not-surprisingly lost the latest copy of our contract. And then at the 11^th hour (after a tasting) the owner told us they had changed their policy and won’t be closing the restaurant for private events. If we could cut our guest list in half and use their back room (with no room for dancing) then he’d be willing to work with us. Um, no. Not possible.

Can’t we sue them, you ask? Didn’t we have a signed contract and hadn’t we put a deposit down? Well, not exactly. Which, in retrospect, is weird but it didn’t seem like a problem at the time. We had been told by the first two events managers that the contract was in the books and that we should sign it and put down our deposit as soon as we did a tasting, because we shouldn’t finalize it until we’d decided on a menu. And because their menus change seasonally we shouldn’t really do a tasting until closer to the event. That seemed reasonable. So in late June we set up a tasting. When we got there the events manager we had met with before (who was not the first one we’d met with) had been replaced (again) and the new events manager was being replaced the following week (RED FLAGS). So we were more than a little nervous. Then the owner came in, but didn’t say anything to us – not even a quick hello and introduction. He did a lot of conversing the events manager that we could see out of the corner of our eyes and it all felt very fishy. Then the events manager told us to email our final menu choices and our version of the contract (which was slightly but not substantively different than the version she had on file) to the owner because he’d be handling it during the transition to the newer new events manager. We did as such and he responded (more than a week later) with the following:

Hi Cara
We have changed our policy and will not be closing our restaurant for events.
Our new policy is events up to 65 guests only
If that works for you we should sit down next Wednesday evening ,July 8 th,
and finalize you event
Donald

Our guest list, based on what THEY told us they could accommodate, is 130. So, yeah, 65 won’t work. I replied as follows:

Donald,

This is incredibly disappointing and disconcerting.  We need to speak
in person about this.  Please either give me a call at [phone number] or
let me know when I can contact you or stop by to discuss this.

Cara Winter

And he responded that he’d be in the office after the July 4^th holiday weekend and would get in touch me then. He has yet to get in touch with me. Today is July 17^th. I have decided not to deal with this guy because I cannot trust him and this is a slightly important event, ya know? So instead of hounding him like crazy and going mad trying to deal with someone who is clearly not interested in working with me, I’ve focused my energies elsewhere. I quickly secured a new restaurant* that can either host in-house or cater off-site. (We decided to host at the restaurant since locations in NY are either booked, super expensive or not to our liking). This is a restaurant in our neighborhood that we dine at often. I’ve met the owner before and she actually owns a flower shop/bar (very cool place) as well and I’m already working with her for wedding flowers, so we’ve established a relationship and I trust her. We couldn’t be more excited. We have plans to sign the new contract and put down a deposit this week. The only logistical hiccup is that this place is further away from the church, so walking from the ceremony to the reception is no longer a possibility. Thus, we have to figure out transportation for our guests. We have some options and we’re figuring out details and I think it’s all going to come together nicely.

So, mini crisis averted … er, mitigated.

Now we’re in the home stretch … less than 3 months to go, LOTS to do. Inevitable wedding craziness on the horizon. Invitations are being re-worked, ceremony details are being nailed down, transportation issues are being handled, wardrobe decisions are being made, and the marriage is getting closer and closer and closer … *happiness*

In other news, my dad is in town this weekend! So he’ll get to see the new restaurant and we’ll get to spend the day together on Sunday, which is always fun and something to look forward to.

*The new restaurant is The Farm on Adderley.  I’ll post more about it later, it’s a lovely little spot in Kensington/Ditmas Park that we adore.

I bought Tahari shoes and Rebecca Haas jewelry!  From Macy’s and Cog & Pearl, respectively.  Aren’t they pretty?

Kelli printed some preliminary invitations!!  Of course now we have to change them because of the mini-crisis (see previous post) but they look so pretty in this picture she took:

My breath is bated as I await their arrival in the mail!!

(there is talk of kelli using them in a very cool magazine feature … if that pans out i’ll certainly share later)

So, two more dreams. The first (from before the mini-crisis*) was very calm. I again didn’t have anything ready for the wedding – no programs, no shoes, hadn’t done a dress fitting so the dress was a foot too long and too big on top, no flowers, hadn’t finalized the ceremony with the priest, etc. etc. But in that dream I didn’t stress out at all. And in fact my mom showed up at the last minute with a beautiful headband for me to wear (to distract from the dress that didn’t fit) and an awesome pair of shoes. And my attitude during the whole dream was very calm and not worried.

Contrast that with the dream I had last night (post mini-crisis*): I hadn’t finalized the details of the reception with the new restaurant so I was just hoping that they’d be ready when we got there and that there wouldn’t be other people there eating dinner. Again, I had no programs, we hadn’t done a rehearsal and I wasn’t confident that the priest was going to show up. I distinctly remember crying through the whole dream. It felt incredibly realistic in the way that only terrible nightmares feel. I was devastated. And, strangely, the part that I was most devastated about was that I hadn’t gotten to do seating arrangements. Figuring out seating arrangements, unlike for most couples, is probably the thing that I am MOST looking forward to with the whole wedding. So when I realized that I’d forgotten to do them in this dream I was crushed. Oh man it was terrible. I woke up with one of those corny Hollywood gasps and I almost started to cry in bed from the trauma. Clearly, I don’t do well when things aren’t nailed down and decided.

Time to set up that last meeting with the priest, sign a new contract for the reception, meet with Allison to revise the flowers, get the dress fitted (appointment on Sunday), arrange transportation, fix the invitations, design the programs, make the Ketubah, get a day-of timeline nailed down and then make hair appointments (which I wish was done already but the mini-crisis has created an unknown for day-of timing).

*mini-crisis … more to come later but suffice it to say we have to change our reception venue, which is not an easy task in New York (wedding-season-saturated) with only 3 months. But we have options that we’re happy with so things look good.

So I forgot to post about the invitations.  Probably because everyone was out here when the design came in.  Kelli has once again done a LOVELY job!  Here’s a sneak preview

We’re headed to her place after work tonight to see some of the paper in person and get a feel for the size of the print to make sure none of it’s too small to read.  But overall we think she nailed it.  It’s mdoern but traditional, delicate but fun, simple and unique.  Perfect.  In all likelihood, if you’re reading this you should be expecting one in the mail sometime later this summer …

Next steps - place cards, programs, thank you notes.  And the Ketubah!  We can’t forget the Ketubah!

In addition to shopping, we also had a little party in the park last weekend.  We decided to do one big no-gifts pre-wedding party in lieu of all the other pro-gift extravaganzas that typically precede weddings.  It’s a recession, yo.  People don’t want to buy us presents.  And we don’t want to buy them fancy finger foods and what-not.  So we brought a grill, some wine and beer, and hot dogs.  And we told our friends to bring some grub and we had a great time!  I nearly hit my dad in the head with a wiffle ball (on purpose), Jeff took a walk with his little buddy, Jonah, along the water’s edge, and our friends met our family and each other and it was lovely.  And also Seth took some pictures!  (He’s also going to take some pictures on the big day).

So, as it turns out, avoiding matching dresses is not as simple as it sounds.

In an effort to avoid stumbling upon pictures in some forgotten album someday that look like this …

… we decided to avoid matching dresses.  But we would like it to look at least somewhat coordinated, so that the pictures don’t have horrid color combinations.  So I went shopping with them and our moms last weekend to find non-matching dresses.  In a strange twist of fate, they both ended up liking the same J.Crew dress anyway!  So I insisted on different colors, at least.

So all was well and I was warming to the same dress concept.

But then one sister was having second thoughts about another dress and the other sister ordered hers didn’t like it in person.  So several emails later now it looks like we might be leaning toward these from J.Crew (left) and Calvin Klein via Nordstrom (right):

…which look pretty nice together, actually.  And if we coordinate fall flowers* I think I kind of like where this is headed.  But these dresses aren’t quite in our hands, yet, so there may be more iterations of best sister shopping to do.

So, I never wrote a post about marriage prep.  As of last month some time, Jeff and I are officially prepared for marriage. Yes, we took our marriage preparation course with the Brooklyn diocese last month and we passed! (Actually, you just have to show up - no one passes or fails). And we actually really enjoyed the weekend.

It was led a charming couple, Ernie and Gabby, who have been married for 58 years. They’re both in their 80s and they have had a quite a life together. They met at a restaurant in Brooklyn not long after Ernie returned from the war (he was a marine). Ernie says he walked in with his buddies and she was at a table with her girlfriends and he looked at her and said to his friends, “I’m going to marry that girl.” So he and his buddies invited the girls to a dance and the rest is history … or, well, the rest was the basis for the class they taught on how to be married, I guess. They were funny and youthful and full of spirit. They were open and honest and talked about how the first 10 years of their marriage was really hard. They didn’t communicate well and they didn’t understand each others’ needs. But they went on a marriage encounter weekend and it turned their lives around. Now they teach this class to help other couples deal with marital issues before they spend 10 years in a bad marriage.

On Friday night we had a wonderful priest lead a prayer service and give a great talk about marriage. His name was Father Perry and he’s the pastor at a parish in Ditmas Park. We’re thinking about riding our bikes there when the weather gets nicer to pay him a visit. He was insightful and progressive and reminded me of my two favorite priests - Fr. Bob Hoffman (who was the pastor at the church I grew up in) and Msgr. Stewart Swetland (who was the pastor at the church at my college). He read 1 Corinthians (”love is patient, love is kind …”) and suggested that if we use that reading at our weddings, to have an old couple read it. He said when a couple who have been married for many years reads that passage, it takes on a completely new meaning. Love is something deeper and more beautiful when it’s been aged for years. He talked about a man whose wife of many years had been sick for quite some time. Their son took him to a ball game one day to get him out of the house. After the game the son suggested going out to dinner, but the man insisted he go back home to have dinner with his wife. When the son said, “Dad, you don’t have to - someone’s there to care for her, let’s go out and take your mind off of it and enjoy some time to ourselves for a few hours,” the man responded that it wasn’t that he felt obligated to go home, it was that he wanted to go home. He wanted to have dinner with his wife. He wanted to sit next to her bed and eat his TV dinner next to her, even though she was barely responsive. He wanted her company because he loved her. He changed her colostomy bag because he wanted to care for her, because he wanted to be with her, because he loved her. And then the priest made a joke about how you don’t hear love poems and love songs very often about changing colostomy bags - but that that is what love is. That is what marriage is.

We both thoroughly enjoyed marriage prep, actually.  And I totally think it’s the kind of thing that should be required for everyone who gets married.  Because we actually heard someone tell their fiance that they had a step sister who lived in Connecticut.  They didn’t know that already, and they’re planning to get married.  And another couple we overheard discussing whether or not they’re religious.  As in, “Do you go to church?”  Um … Do you go to church?  Isn’t that like 2nd date type material?  Yikes.

So, to sum up, we’re very happy to be getting married in a place that requires not just wedding day preparation, but real marriage preparation, too.  Because when the day is done we have a lifetime of marriage awaiting.  And you can’t hire a wedding coordinator to take care of the sticky details for the rest of your life …