One of my absolute favorite things about wedding planning is not the wedding planning – it’s the honeymoon planning! I’ve written about honeymoons before, but this past weekend Alex and I achieved a momentous CHECK on our “to-do” list for our wedding: our honeymoon is now PAID IN FULL!! And after the cruddy winter the East Coast has had, who wouldn’t be psyched at the prospect of heading for Hawaii in a few short months?
Choosing Hawaii was easy, but not, for Alex and I. He felt strongly that we should go someplace neither of us has been before, and I’ve been to Hawaii before. In the end, we chose to go there because it’s much more affordable than Europe is right now (our runner-up choice). We’ve managed to make the trip new for both of us, because while I have been to Hawaii, all my time there was spent on Oahu, and we will be spending most of our honeymoon on the other Hawaiian islands.
Here is the final version of what we plan to hit while on our honeymoon – with a special shout-out to Kelly, who has been awesome to us while we planned out trip.

Our first stop is Oahu – because you have to fly into Honolulu, and because if nothing else Alex really wants to see Waikiki Beach and the North Shore.

Photo Credit: Destination360.com

Photo Credit: Aloha.com

We’re also hoping to stop by the Dole Pineapple Plantation, for some pineapple ice cream. We don’t have enough time to go to Pearl Harbor, so I have promised Alex I’ll dig out my photos from the tour I took when we get back!

From Oahu, we’re going to the Big Island, Hawaii. There are 2 main items on our agenda while we’re there: hiking Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, and doing the Mauna Kea Summit and Stars excursion (which we have pre-booked through Liberty Travel). The Summit and Stars excursion is something we are really excited about – we can’t think of anything cooler than star-gazing on Mauna Kea.

Photo Credit: NPS.gov

From the Big Island, we’re going to make our way to Maui, where we will hopefully relax after all that hiking and sight-seeing. There are a few things we’re hoping to do on Maui, though:

• Go to a Hawaiian luau

• Watch the sun rise over Haleakala Crater (which, I’ll be honest, I don’t think is going to happen).

Photo Credit: about.com

• Drive the Road to Hana in our rented convertible… which we’re told is absolutely worth the extra $20 per day by the 3 couples we’re friends with who went to Hawaii on their honeymoons!

Photo Credit: hawaiitravelreviewed.com

We’ve also heard there are a few wineries on Maui that produce pineapple wine, which sounds intriguing.
Anyone have other suggestions or ideas for honeymooning in Hawaii?

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I don’t think I am alone when I say that as a bride, you often have to deal with a lot of advice that you JUST. DON’T. WANT.
For example, you and your fiance have not a single bone in either of your bodies that desires a wedding ceremony that takes place in a church. Not everyone understands this decision, so even your grandmother’s sister’s friend’s uncle’s goldfish calls you to ask if they can help you find a church for the wedding. Or maybe you want to use a non-traditional song for your processional, and your friend doesn’t like the idea, so you now have to listen to her ideas for processional songs every time she calls. Maybe it’s something as simple as whether you ought to have a signature cocktail served during the reception, or if you should go with the lobster or the filet mignon as the third menu choice for dinner. EVERYONE has an opinion to share. Sometimes the ideas are good, and sometimes they are just plain ugly. (And, yes, some of those things have happened to us!)
This doesn’t affect Alex and I as much now as it did when we started our wedding planning process, but in the beginning it was both overwhelming and frustrating. We wanted to make everyone happy, but we also felt it’s our wedding, and it ought to be about us, not about everyone we know. And when you shoot down an idea, or pretend you are taking someone’s advice and then obviously go in a different direction, feelings get hurt. There is a difference between asking for help because someone might know something you don’t know, and being pulled aside for a dissertation you didn’t ask for, right?
Then we got a piece of advice from a rather unlikely source: our landlords. They live in the apartment below ours, and they got married about 3 weeks before Alex and I got engaged. The first thing they told us when we told them the good news was this:

Everyone’s going to have an opinion they want to share. You listen, and thank them, maybe even say there are a lot of ideas you’re sifting through right now and you are certainly going to add theirs to the list. Then you do what you want anyway.

I know this sounds really simple, and perhaps even obvious, but when you’re in the middle of everything, it’s truly difficult to keep this in mind! Adopting this strategy has been one of the best things we did for ourselves with the wedding. It has actually worked out so well that we have decided to carry it over into all aspects of life – you know, for big stuff, like having kids and buying a house. There is so much advice to be had when it comes to these things, it becomes easy to lose sight of what you want, or what you envision, just because you don’t want to insult someone.
How do all other brides, or newlyweds, or anyone for that matter, deal with superfluous opinions while in the midst of planning your wedding, or your life?

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As many of my loyal readers already know, several months ago I became a “Featured Bride Blogger” for a wedding website that is currently still in beta: Weddzilla.com.  Our blog is up and running, with tons of posts and opinions and advice, but many other features of the website are not quite ready yet. I often post things on Weddzilla’s blog that I don’t think are appropriate for The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities), so if you are curious about what I write over there, you can click the icon on the right-hand side of your screen, or you can check out my posts here.

What, you may be asking, is my point?

I will tell you!  Weddzilla.com is getting ready to launch itself out of beta, and it’s going to launch itself in high style!

On February 24th, in an undisclosed location in Washington, DC, there is going to be a “Weddzilla Launch Flash Mob,” featuring Steve Kemble.  If you don’t know what a flash mob is, don’t feel bad.  I didn’t know what one was, either, until I went to this YouTube link and saw one for myself.  Weddzilla is looking for people to participate in the flash mob, so if you think you can dance and you’re in the DC area, check out the full details by clicking here and signing up to participate.

Then on February 25th, there is going to be a launch party from 6-9 pm, held at the National Museum for Women in the Arts, also in Washington, DC.  There is also a silent auction going on for the launch, which benefits the Children’s National Medical Center.  If you’re interested in attending the party and meeting some of Weddzilla’s bloggers and gurus, you can get more information here.

Also!!!  If you happen to be a wedding vendor you can donate to the Weddzilla swag bag, which is a pretty darn cool thing to get if you’re a planning bride.  Weddzilla gives away one swag bag for every 1000 fans they collect on Facebook.  If you’re a fan on Facebook, you also get notifications everytime a new blog posts to the site, and there are loads of great bloggers on there, with tons of fantastic suggestions if you’re planning a wedding.

I’m really excited that I am a part of Weddzilla, and I can’t tell you all how many times I’ve had a wedding planning problem solved for me by searching the blog there.  It’s going to be a great website – it’s for brides, by brides, with advice from REAL BRIDES.  I won’t be able to attend the launch party (I’ll be at my second dress fitting – PRIORITIES!!!), but if you’re in the DC area and can either go to the party or spread the word, I’m sure it’s going to be great.

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When I was a little girl, I did what many little girls do.  I watched Disney movies like Snow White and Cinderella, where the heroine gets married to the prince and lived happily ever after as his wife.  As a little girl, I wasn’t particularly aware that when Cinderella got married she probably stopped being ‘Miss Cinderella’ and became ‘Mrs. Prince Charming.’  And even if I had been aware of this change, it didn’t bother me much.  MRS. was perfectly normal – all my friends’ parents’ names were Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So.  OBVIOUSLY being married made their last names the same.  End of story, as far as little-kid-me was concerned.

Well, here I sit, 4 months before becoming a “Mrs.” myself, and let me just tell you, it’s no longer so cut and dry, this whole ‘Miss, now Mrs.,’ thing.

Suffice it to say, the concept of changing my name is throwing me for the proverbial loop.

It’s not a feminist thing.  It’s not even anything to do with Alex’s last name.  Truth be told, his last name could be considered an improvement on my own.  No… it’s more of an identity thing.  It’s as if changing my name in some way forsakes who I was before marriage.  Like I’m not a member of my family’s “clan” anymore.  Which brings me to something else that has been rolling around in my head for a few days now.  I HATE that a woman’s last name prior to marriage is referred to as her MAIDEN name.  The word maiden conjurs images of damsels in distress and white knights climbing up the tallest tower to claim a prize.  I don’t want to be a maiden, thank you very much.  It’s like saying a woman isn’t quite… right… before she’s married.

I’m sure this all sounds like I’m opposed to taking Alex’s last name.  Whenever people ask me if I’m changing “it”, I freeze up and grimace, which probably suggests I’m at odds with the concept (and also probably makes Alex feel oh-so-good.  By the way, WHY do people ask this question?  It’s a bit nosy, don’t you think?).  But that’s not it.  And I more than likely will adopt his name, because it’s a gesture to him and because I would like our kids to have 2 parents with the same last name.  I don’t want to put hyphenation on a child.  My balking is about giving up my last name, not about taking his.

My current solution?  I’m thinking about compromising a bit and changing my last name to his, but also changing my middle name to my “maiden” name.  I think this ensures I won’t be LOSING the name I’ve gone through life with thus far, since that is the crux of the issue.  I have a good friend who did precisely this when she got married, which is how I got the idea.  But it’s still scary, at least to me!

Has anyone else had trouble with the whole changing-your-name concept?

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The only thing I ever felt I would care about to the point of “bridezilla-ness” when it came to my own wedding has always been the wedding cake. I’m a baker, and I’ve dabbled in catering here and there, and so it only felt natural to have strong opinions about wedding cakes. I know that no one ever seems to EAT the cake, but I always imagined having an incredible tasting cake, with an even more incredible look.
Once Alex and I were engaged, the first thing I did was look at wedding cakes, in magazines and online. One of my first questions for potential venues was always about the cake, and if there were rules. So you can imagine my dismay when we found the perfect venue, a venue that includes the cake in the price, even, but were told: 1) you don’t get to taste the cake before the wedding, and 2) you have a set selection of designs you can choose from.

???????????!!!!!!!!!!!!????????????????

The above was my internal reaction when we were told we don’t get to taste the cake, and that they prefer it if you pick the design out of a book. In all fairness, the venue we chose is only on the map because of their catering reputation (which is stellar), and they are quite willing to attempt to make any cake design you show them, it’s just that it may cost you more. AND YOU STILL DON’T GET TO TASTE IT.
This blew big holes in my plan to spend inordinate amounts of time and energy choosing a cake. Plus, I totally miss out on cake tasting, which I’ve always thought would be fun. Luckily, my mom went to 5 bakeries before choosing one to make our engagement party cake, so I’ve had my fill of cake tasting for a while.
As far as pointing to something in a book… that’s just not for me. So I have been on the hunt for pictures of wedding cakes that I love, with the hope that the bakers at our venue will be willing and able to re-create one of them.

Here are a few that I keep coming back to:

This one I think is wicked-cool because it involves a snow globe as the cake topper, though I probably would not choose this myself:

And this is my absolute favorite:

It’s just so classic and clean looking! My florist told me she will give me as many loose flowers as I need (no charge!) for the wedding cake if I decide to do this.

Whatever we decide to go with, I will certainly post about it when the time comes.

Where are other brides finding wedding cake inspiration?

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A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post called “Dressing the Groom.”  When I wrote it, I left out a crucial element of my groom’s wedding-day look, and I did that on purpose.  I knew I was going to be buying him something to wear on our wedding day – I just didn’t want to write about it until I was sure it was happening! Happily, I finally managed to place an order for the final piece of Alex’s wedding-day ensemble this afternoon. I intend to give it to him the night before the wedding, at our rehearsal dinner, but he already knows he’ll be receiving this particular item, so there’s absolutely no element of surprise.

A bit of background…
Alex and I fell in love over a telescope. Literally. We both have a passion for astronomy, and I happen to have saved up my money and bought myself a super-cool 5-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope a few years ago.  (I write a separate astronomy blog, but it has been some time since I’ve had a chance to update that website.)   Alex and I spent a lot of time when we were first dating  looking at stars and planets through this telescope. One time, Alex saw a shooting star and made a wish, then many months later told me he had wished that he would be able to marry me one day – NO JOKE!
When we first started talking about wedding bands, we were seriously considering buying wedding bands made from the Gibeon meteorite, which crashed to Earth in Africa a couple hundred years ago. Here’s what those wedding bands look like:

They’re completely appropriate for us, but there were a few concerns. First, they aren’t exactly cheap, at least not if you want the high-quality, not-going-to-fall-apart versions. Second, you have to buy them online. The thought of buying our wedding rings online seemed way too scary for us. Finally, while they are a unique idea, they in no way match my engagement ring, and given my penchant for getting upset when things don’t match, we thought this might be a poor decision, long-term.
It took me a while to come up with an idea for a gift to give Alex for our “Zero Year” Anniversary. But since we scrapped the meteorite ring idea, and he had been so psyched to possibly wear something from space at the wedding, I eventually decided I needed to find something he could wear that is NOT a ring, but still came from space. That’s when I found Starborn Creations. They make jewelry out of the same meteorite the rings would have been made out of, including… drum roll please… CUFFLINKS.
Alex doesn’t normally wear clothes that would require cufflinks. But he will be wearing cufflinks with his tuxedo at the wedding. So I am giving him these:

Like I said, he knows he’s getting them. But I still can’t wait to see his face as he holds pieces of a space rock in his hand and knows those pieces belong to him!

(Photo credits: ring pictures from ArizonaSkies.com // cufflink pictures from StarbornCreations.com)

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Alex has kept to himself when it comes to planning our wedding. He cares about it, and will give an opinion when asked, but if I’m talking about the difference between magenta and purple, he isn’t particularly into the conversation.

So you can imagine my surprise (and delight!) when he told me he had an idea for the wedding – specifically, an idea for the music at our wedding. We’ve already hired musicians for the ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception, but we haven’t quite gotten to the point where we’re choosing which pieces of music should be played when. I was all ears!

Before I continue, though, I have to give you a bit of background about Alex. He is waaaaay into the TV show NCIS.

(image from CBSTV.com)

It’s no joke with this show for him.  He can watch it for hours.  For Christmas, me, my brother, and my sister got him the first 3 seasons on DVD.  And you know how they constantly play it on TNT (or whichever cable channel it is)?  Guarantee you that channel is on if you come to our house.  I think it’s cute – I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so engrossed by TV, ever.

Maybe you see where this is going.  Alex’s input for the music at our wedding was this: he would like to walk into the wedding while the theme music for NCIS plays.

Yes, he’s serious.

I initially wanted no part of this idea.  But then I thought about it a little more, and while I just can’t see asking our ceremony harpist to figure out how to play the NCIS theme, there really isn’t a reason why we can’t ask the DJ to play it.  So I told Alex a couple of nights ago that I think I’d be OK with walking into our reception while the theme music plays.  He was excited – I’m not sure if he’s more psyched about the music or the fact that we’re using his idea.

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© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

I did not particularly enjoy the process of shopping for my wedding dress.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the moment when I said “this is the dress I want,” I just didn’t have much fun going from store to store, trying on loads of dresses with little privacy and being told things like “I can tell you’re plain,” or, “you don’t have much of a chest” by saleswomen who were trying to convince me to spend thousands of dollars in their store. (For the record, the store I ultimately bought my dress from did NOT do any of those things to me!)

But, if I’m being honest, I was a lot more nervous about finding a place to rent the guys’ tuxedos from than I was about finding my own wedding-day outfit.

We have male members of the wedding party scattered across 3 different states. Simply going down to the local tailor and ordering up 8 tuxedos was not going to work for us, because the chances of getting all those guys to come into town for both measurements and to pick up/try on their tuxes are slim to none. Never having had need for a tuxedo myself, I had no clue which places were the best to check out, so I turned to the local chat forums on TheKnot, where I was told to try Savvi Formalwear, and to avoid Men’s Wearhouse at all costs. Well… that’s not fair. One bride told me Men’s Wearhouse worked out great for her wedding party, but she was the only one with a favorable opinion.

You may have noticed that when it comes to our wedding, Alex and I seem to be involved in a comedy of errors. Nothing we think is a great idea seems to work out the first time – planning our rehearsal dinner is a case in point. Tuxedo shopping was no exception. I had looked up both Savvi’s and MW’s websites and found both had locations in the Danbury Mall. So we headed there over the holiday break, thinking we’d check out both places and make a decision once we got a feel for each store.

… Guess what? Savvi seems to have closed their Danbury location. Moreover, MW doesn’t rent tuxes out of their mall location, they want you to go to their location across the street if you’re only looking to rent!

Being that Savvi was nowhere to be found, and therefore would not be convenient for 2 members of the wedding party, we had to cross it off our list. That left Men’s Wearhouse. I was pretty skeptical of MW when we walked in – after all, I had been hearing negative reviews about them for a couple of months now. But I’ve got to say, the 2 guys we spoke with there seemed to know their stuff, and weddings seem to be most of what they do. Alex told me that a tux is a tux, so we decided to go ahead and order ours through them. I’ll admit this: a big factor in making this decision was the fact that Alex would get his tux rental for free because of the total number of rentals we are going to be doing.

After a bit of talk, we decided Alex will be wearing a black/black tux combination, while the groomsmen will be wearing a black/sage combo. The bridesmaid dresses are also black with sage, so I think everything will match pretty well. I’m undecided what colors we’ll do for our little ringbearer, but they don’t want to measure him until May anyway, so there is plenty of time for that! Here is an image from the Men’s Wearhouse website of the sage vest, so everyone knows what I’m talking about (sage doesn’t seem to mean the same thing to everyone):

We asked a lot of questions while we were there, and I feel like we’re OK about our decision to go with Men’s Wearhouse for right now. If the wedding comes and we have a disaster, I will certainly post about it!

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As a “something extra” gift this Christmas, my godmother gave me an adorable little book called Brides Companion, by Susannah Marriott. It’s full of poems and quotes and traditions, with a few DIY ideas mixed in. I’m going to use it for inspiration when designing our ceremony programs and wedding favors in a few months. As I was flipping through it, I came across the following passage, which cracked me up (you have to read all the way to the end), so I had to share it here!

How To Avoid a Bad Husband
(from A True Friend, American etiquette manual, published in the 1870’s)

• Never marry for wealth.
• Never marry a fop, or one who struts about dandy-like, in his silk gloves and ruffles, with a silvered cane and rings on his fingers.
• Never marry a stranger, or one whose character is not known or tested.
• Never marry a man who treats his mother or sister unkindly or indifferently.
• Never, on any account, marry a gambler or a profane person.
• Never marry a man who is addicted to the use of ardent spirits.
• Take an especial and seasonable care that your children shall not have an a*s for a father.

Some of this could still be considered decent advice today, right?

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© 2009, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

I posted this recently on the Weddzilla Blog, but I wanted to share it here as well.

Maybe it’s because it’s so cold outside lately, but I’ve caught myself daydreaming about our honeymoon quite often this week. So I thought a blog post about honeymoon planning could be in order!

Alex and I had completely unrealistic ideas in our heads when we started talking about where we’d like to go for our honeymoon. I think our first concept was to go to Tahiti, then to Fiji, then to Australia – but we were going to stop in New Zealand on the way to Australia. I have done a decent amount of travel, and I do know how much things cost, but I was still blown away by the price tag for that trip. OOPS! We realized we would have to scale our honeymoon down if we were going to be able to afford food for the year after we get married. So Alex suggested traveling around Europe. His parents had done that, and he thought it might be fun. We already had a trip to Italy planned (which you can read about here if you’re interested), so we researched places like Greece, France and the UK. We also discussed Hawaii, but I went to Hawaii in 2000 and Alex wasn’t sure he liked the idea of going someplace I’ve already been.

I’m usually a do-it-yourself kind of travel planner. I’ve become pretty good at finding great deals online for airfare and hotels. But this was our honeymoon. I had big ideas in my head about getting upgraded to first-class and finding buckets of champagne in our hotel room. I knew I didn’t have a clue how to ensure any of those things might happen on my own, so I convinced Alex we should go to a travel agent. We wound up at Liberty Travel, where I had booked a previous trip to Tahiti and Bora Bora, and had a relationship with an agent named Kelly.

We told Kelly we were thinking about Hawaii, but we were much more interested in Europe. She was great – went through all the Hawaii literature with us from hotels to excursions. She also told us about how there is a direct flight to Honolulu from Newark, which after our experience with flying to Italy sounded pretty appealing. Then she went over everything for Europe, focusing on Greece because that’s what we were most interested in. Greece sounded AMAZING, and Liberty had a stopover in Paris that we could tack onto the trip for not a whole lot more, too.

Then Kelly told us about a few options we had not really considered before talking to her. She told us about Jade Mountain in St. Lucia and The Crane in Barbados. These were two places she had gone on her own honeymoon. They’re all-inclusive, but much more low-key and private than the all-inclusives you usually picture when you hear that term. All-inclusive is a VERY attractive option for a honeymoon – no worrying about having to pull out a wallet the whole time you’re there! Her point was that after a wedding, it might be not-so-relaxing to sit on a plane for 12 hours to get to your honeymoon destination. Heading to the Caribbean would put us on a (warm, sunny, not at all icy) beach a lot faster than heading to Hawaii or Europe.

Alex and I did not ultimately choose to go to the Caribbean on our honeymoon. But I’m sharing this information with all of you brides because I think these are great options, and they aren’t something you’re necessarily going to find out about by surfing the web. I have been to St. Lucia before, and that island is BEAUTIFUL – I would go back in a heartbeat, and I am actually contemplating taking Alex to the Jade Mountain resort for a weekend before the wedding just to escape all the craziness.

Hope all the honeymoon destination talk warmed you up for at least a few minutes!

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