My bachelorette party was this past weekend! I’ve been resistant to the idea of a traditional bachelorette… strippers, drinking until you can’t remember, etc… so I was curious to see what my bridesmaids would come up with instead. I knew the date of the party, but I was not aware of the full extent of what was planned. My friends did not disappoint!
The girls picked me up in a super-stretch limo at 9am Saturday to hit the Shawangunk Wine Trail’s Pasta Primo Vino event for the day. I know I’m biased, but I thought this was the greatest idea ever. It was relatively cheap for the tickets (although I suspect the limo was not cheap), and we got to hit 7 of the 11 wineries on the trail for a wine tasting and pasta dish at each. They do this event every year, along with others like it year-round, so if you’re interested you can check out the website here.

It took a little over an hour to get from where I live to our first stop on the wine trail, so the girls planned a few games as entertainment during the drive. My favorite? They sent Alex a questionnaire of 38 things they wanted to know about him, and I had to guess what his answers were. They gave me a few “prizes” as I got questions right – the biggest shock was when my sister handed over a bag filled with all the lingerie, and the shoes, needed to fulfill his “dream outfit.” *BLUSH*

My sister had also organized everyone so they were all wearing coordinating shirts, announcing that we were a bachelorette party in a slightly less tacky way than usual. Here are some examples (they got one for me to put on, too):

One of my bridesmaids also did her part to make sure the wine pourers knew to “accidentally” give me a bit more than the 1-oz. standard for wine tastings:

It was a fantastic day, exactly what I had pictured, so I can’t thank my friends enough! (Except by calling them rock stars in the title of this post.)

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

So much has been going on the last couple of weeks, I almost completely forgot that Alex and I were scheduled for a meeting with our floral designer today to inspect our centerpiece mock-ups!

They came out gorgeous – I couldn’t be happier with them, really. Check them out:

Sorry for the not-so-great images – I didn’t have my camera with me (since I almost forgot about the appointment), and the camera on my cell phone really stinks.
Our wedding doesn’t start until 7:30 PM, so we’re going with a lot of candlelight to give some ambiance to the night.  Those are cymbidium orchids floating in the water, in purples, blues, and greens (NOT PINKS!!!).

Any thoughts about these centerpieces, or about your experiences with wedding flowers?

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

I’ve been holding back posting what our wedding invitations actually look like because *some* people were upset at the thought that I might post them here before all our guests received them in the mail.  Judging by the steady trickle of response cards we’ve been getting in the mail lately, I think it’s safe to assume all our guests have now seen the invites – so here they are!

In case you didn’t catch the post, there was a bit of drama with the printing of these invitations, but once everything was taken care of with that, I have to say that I LOVE them!  Lisa, my little sister, has been doing all the graphic design for the wedding (I’ll be posting more and more of her work as we receive the printed versions).  One of my favorite things about the invitations is how she incorporated the pattern of the Pleiades, one of my favorite star clusters to check out with binoculars.  It’s not perfect, but you can see it a bit in the larger star clusters in the corners.

The stars made an appearance on the response cards and other enclosures, too:

Lisa also found these really pretty envelopes to coordinate with the starry night sky theme all our wedding stationery has, and we got silver Sharpies to write out the addresses.  The best part?  Our invitations were under $200 for everything!! (OK, so maybe that’s not the best part, but it’s still awesome.)

If you’re interested in Lisa’s design work, you can contact me through this blog for her information.  Her website is currently under construction!

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

The calendar that sits on my desk at work is the Forgotten English 2010 Calendar. I found today’s entry both entertaining and appropriate, so I’m sharing!

March 23, 2010
bed-vow
Definition: Marriage vow. – C.T. Onion’s Oxford Shakespeare Glossary, 1911

Andrew Waterman’s Almanacks of the 18th century considered March 23 a fine day for marriage.  William Fielding’s Strange Customs of Courtship and Marriage (1942) offered some examples of antiquated wedding vows: “Among the early Anglo-Saxons, the bride was taken ‘for fairer or fouler.’ She promised, among other things, to be ‘buxom and bonny’ to her future husband.”  Florence Howe Hall’s Good Form for All Occasions (1914) recommended this bachelorette party entertainment: “Since the bridesmaids’ luncheon is intended to be a gay and merry, rather than a somber and melancholy affair, it is well to ask one or two of the guests to arrange some amusing feature for the day. Thus, if a bride has many admirers, a dance of the rejected suitors would be appropriate. These could be represented by two of the company. They should be furnished with large bandana handkerchiefs on which to weep copiously. After treading a slow and melancholy measure, each should break a stick over his knee in accordance with the old tradition.”

The things they did back in the day crack me up sometimes! (Special thanks to Whitney, both for giving me this calendar, and making sure I noticed today’s entry!)

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

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?

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

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?

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

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.

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

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?

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

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?

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

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)

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