PLAN MY WEDDING

I'll ask wifey!

- Cake is terrible after a year. Trust me, don't save it.
- if anyone in your wedding party is breastfeeding, make sure they child is fed WELL BEFORE the ceremony

- if you are getting married in front of a fountain, don't let Tom drink a lot of beer beforehand while he waits for your breastfeeding maid of honor to hurry the hell up and feed the kid

- if you are told to hang your veil over a hanger in the bathroom to steam out any wrinkles, hang it by the comb or whatever you will use to attach to your head because otherwise you will end up with a hanger indent in your veil. Not as pretty as you'd think.

- don't let your sister (the aforementioned breasfeeder) apply nailpolish right before you show her how to bustle your dress

- disposable cameras on the tables are kinda cool

- find someone to follow you around at all times with a bottle of champagne, so as to give you frequent refills, and don't forget to eat *something*, even if it's just a little.

More as I think of it.

-- luna (lunace...), June 13th, 2005.

Don't abandon your reception to do pictures.

My parents "matured" their cake for several years, after their wedding was postponed at the last minute. I'm told it tasted great.

(it was home-baked by my nanna, though)

Make sure you have lots of cute little kids around for photo ops!

Nothing is actually planned at all, due to a really long, boring, dramatic story which I will not share here all of our previous planning (which hadn't actually amounted to anything due to L.B.D.S.) was scrapped completely by mutual decision so AFAIK the wedding party isn't even really decided on yet.

my main regrets: an outdoor wedding on Labor Day in TX; the pictures thing; letting my mom and grandma do most of the planning.

French wedding 'cakes' (I can't remember the proper word) look great, but are a bit too sickly for some people to eat. They're made from a big pile of profiteroles glued together with toffee.

xpost Ed that advice is sound and what we've fought for which has put off the planning actually (what Miss M says, I don't wanna let other people do all the planning). My main problem with kind of getting started again is that...there is nothing I really like, in terms of WHERE to have it, in the immediately vicinity of DC. Nothing that screams out to me at all. Maybe I am being really picky.

- if you have your wedding in a small town no one on earth except the people who live there have ever heard of, try to make sure it's not the same weekend as commencement at the local college because motels (of which there are about 3) will fill up fast.

- MAKE SURE that no one who rented a tux drives to the airport two hours away with it in his trunk, forcing your tireless maid of honor to have to drive four hours in the rain to go get it.

- waterproof mascara - do I even have to tell you this?

- if you are not going to have an open bar, do not force people to do the chicken dance. It just ain't right.

xpost oh luna, you know me better than thinking I'd even want to see sober people do the chicken dance...or the hokey pokey...or the electric slide...*shivers*

Rose garden sounds pretty!!

The only problem now is that Bloke's mother might kick up.

I know, sugar, but I thought I knew my best friend that well, too. I HAD TO DO THE CHICKEN DANCE AND I WAS ALMOST COMPLETELY SOBER.

I will bear scars from this FOR YEARS.

Yeah, I hate that. That was the first think I placed a ban on.

JIMMY TEH MOD. WHEREVER WE HOLD IT, IT WILL BE DECORATED IN SPECTACULAR FASHION. YOU KNOW HOW I ROLL. YOU WILL HAVE THINGS TO WORK WITH WITH YR PHOTOGRAPHY ROLE. FOR EXAMPLE, MY HOT SISTERS.

or here!

OK TWO MONTHS TO GO!

We have chosen a venue. The food+drink is pretty much sorted (done by the hotel, open bar, buffet w/ some table service). Last night, we think we may have found someone to decorate, does that include flowers?. I think so. We've found a band we'd be happy with, but need to see if they're free. Need to continue making playlist for Ipod-soundtracked portion of reception. We have decided to excise all religion from ceremony (hooray!), so we'll probably equally piss off both sides. Haven't bought (or even looked for) wedding rings. Bought stationary, and made designs, for our homemade invitations; need to get them printed this week, and sent starting next week. Almost there with complete list of addresses of recipients. About half of our bloc of rooms held at the hotel have been booked, we need to keep on the ones who haven't booked yet. Most people have booked their flights, except for the Brits, who are just starting to. We should probably book our flights. Wedding dress bought, now at the special cleaners who know how to treat a wedding dress. My suit also bought, need to take it in to the tailors THIS WEEK. Need to buy shirt, tie, shoes. Need to book Montenegrin officials for ceremony. Need to translate whatever it is the officials say from Montenegrin to English so my side actually understands what's going on. Need to come up with some sort of 'double-act' speech. Wedding cake gets left until September, I think. Are we gonna have readings? Need to organize transport for people flying into Dubrovnik. Need to find private accomodations for guests who don't (or can't) stay at the hotel. Still need to find a photographer. I think we've decided against a videographer. Goody bags or some shit?

I think that's about it, at the moment.

(Not mentioning, of course, the PhD that I should probably finish beforehand.)

It'll either be a hell of a honeyroom or you'll be catatonic the whole time.

Honeymoon delayed indefinitely :(

I'm kind of glad we didn't take the honeymoon immediately after the wedding (we did a weekend trip). I think I have a serious aversion to custom and ritual, and the whole idea of a honeymoon felt extremely forced, whereas taking a trip six months or so later felt very good.

That's good to hear. There's just no way possible for us to go on a honeymoon right after--we've both gotta get back to London to teach the week after the wedding. It'll probably be next summer; I'm hoping it'll still be a very special thing, and not just, you know, a vacation.

dude, what's up with Montenegro?! is that where you "found" your wife?

Not nice, Tracer, not nice. She is "from" Montenegro, but I "found" her right here in London.

my wife (who is foreign)

That's okay, Goob, Tracer's wife "found" him in New York.

He was being kept at the "LOST: Eligible Bachelors" pound.

Good luck, dude. I have a year to figure this business out, which I'm sort of dreading (re: readings, how to to make my mother cry, etc.).

Molly, in my experience, making your mother cry will take no effort whatsoever. I can do it even without a wedding! ;)

She's already cried once, when it was announced it wasn't going to be happening in the Catholic church. Other than that minor bump, she's been excessively cool. Let's hope it stays that way.

Wedding cake gets left until September, I think.

fyi, this is a bad idea unless you're just getting a generic store-bought cake or you are making it yourself.

When is a good time to talk cake with a prospective baker? Same goes for flowers.

Skip the goodie bags - one less thing to worry about and only halfwits care about receiving one.

Shopping for a wedding cake is fun, too. A lot of places will feed you samples. (I hope I'm remembering that correctly; I got married an eon ago.)

xpost to Molly - I think my Mom is still slightly unhappy that we didn't get married in a church at all... and yet she will talk about what a great wedding it was, too. She'll be over the Catholic church thing by the wedding day, hopefully. I think my Mom cried during the ceremony (probably) and also when we had a photo taken of the two of us.

i'd recommend three or four months in advance? i met with mine about four months in advance. if you push it past then, people start getting booked up. they can only do so many cakes in one day, so the earlier you do it, the better chance you get the best baker in your price range. the food and drink is like super super super important including the cake (more ppl pig out on the dessert portion than you think! you won't eat a damn bit of it besides the bit you have to eat for the photographer though) so i kind of made sure that was all taken care of like kind of before i even finished up buying a wedding dress (lol kind of procrastinated, i didn't book a place until 4.5 months prior to date).

you can totally get awesome stuff done later than like 3 mos in, it just reduces the stress of it and increases your options. waiting til the v last minute is going to guarantee it will either be expensive or you will be refused at the door if you think you're going to get a personalized cake though :\

xpost sara otm re: samples!! you get to eat hundreds of tiny cakes :D

also, LUNA OTM BACK A LONG TIME AGO: YEAR OLD CAKE IS NASTY.

Father-in-law was totally skeptical and worried about all of our wedding plans and wound up being totally awestruck by how nice everything turned out. i.e. your parents and future in-laws are going even more out of their minds than you are right now and don't listen to them too much.

Awesome! Thanks. I really have no idea what I'm doing. The wedding isn't happening in the city we currently live in, so I may have to rely on friends and family for their advice, or lots of trips back up to Buffalo.

Email was just sent to former professional baker friend for her advice on wedding cakes.

The moms already got one big wedding out of her system, so she's seems fairly open to low-key affair. She was actually really excited about having the reception at a brewery! Yay, Mom!

Wedding cake gets left until September, I think.

fyi, this is a bad idea unless you're just getting a generic store-bought cake or you are making it yourself.

Montenegro-time works a lot differently (aka, my fiancee's brother got married like a month and a half after he got engaged).

My cousin and his wife had little fairy cakes instead of a wedding cake at their wedding. I thought it was very sweet, except for the pink and blue icing on everything that kind of made it look like a joint christening rather than a wedding.

oh i didn't understand you were getting married IN montenegro, i thought you were importing montenegran officiants. n/m then, i don't know anything about modern montenegro and its cakeries.

Nor do I really; I am a)taking my fiancee's word for this, and b)not really caring about what kind of cake we get. It'll be a cake, we'll eat it and then get back to the drinking/dancing/grinning from ear to ear.

well excuse me, i'll keep my mouth shut.

No, please don't! I actually do care about the cake, I'm just fighting against wedding-planning-insanity by continually telling myself that what's important is not the million little things we've got to arrange, but just the great big party itself, with all of our loved ones there. Of course it is fun to bitch about those million little things.

I'm off to print invitations.

I totally believe in invitations and printed ephemera being more important than cake that is mostly a formality and probably no one will remember anyway. (Allz, I actually remember the food at yours being great, but I couldn't tell you SPIT about the cake! Now I think I was prob too busy smoking to have any....)

cake sux; get PIE

ONE GIANT PIE.

Skip the goodie bags - one less thing to worry about and only halfwits care about receiving one.

Our only idea for this is to make a v v special mix cd for all of our guests, but I'm guessing that this is one element that will get lost in the shuffle and ok that's fine.

That's not a terrible idea, but yeah, I'd leave it for last.

don't freak out about procrastinating everything. because we ended up moving to the US 2 weeks before the wedding (what the hell were we thinking?!), lots of stuff got postponed until really the last minute, but turned out ok. make sure you have a place to get married, a person to do it and some food, and everything else will fall into place.

we did all the playlists, rented sound equipment, shopped for booze, wrote the whole ceremony, wrote speeches, bought parents presents, bought film and props for the polaroid guestbook, bought the actual guestbook, planned and shopped for the dayafter brunch, and arranged the welcome pizza party all about 4 days out from the wedding. oh, and i got my flowers on the thursday when the wedding was on saturday. i'd spend hours online trying to find something i liked at a reasonable price, to no avail. walked into local jewel (grocery store) and the lady did all the flowers exactly how i wanted for $115. i love ginger at the broadway jewel. plus we were trying to furnish our brand new unfurnished apartment AND his parents arrived from france a week early, so we spent time with them. it was insane, but i think it came off well.

we also decided to postpone our honeymoon, but when we'd spent the week after doing horrible things like filling out dozens of insurance forms for the new job, we took off on a roadtrip. so i'd say that even if you can do a day or two off in a hotel somewhere, it might break up the craziness and let you get back to normal. where i am today, with a goal of writing all the 'thank you's' and emailing people since i haven't really in a month.

I have a friend who is a printer, so I'm hoping to get some stellar invitations from him.

I love to bake pies, but I think it would be a huge ordeal if I decided to do that. I don't trust other family members to make them, as they don't make their own crusts.

Yeah, Molls, I've thought it would good to just ask a bunch of people to bring different desserts -- like, the one person you know makes the best apple filling, pls to bring three pies or something like that, ditto finding someone to make a couple of normal German chocolate cakes, a spice version, big satisfying molasses cookies, etc etc -- each to their own specialty. Or try bakeries and order one or two from each, whatever's best, so you're not tied to one place. NB: I dunno how this works out financially if you have to go all-commercial, but I've always liked the idea!

That would be great, definitely. I'd just worry about having the right amounts when all is said and done.

My mom and aunt have already volunteered to make sizable amounts of cookies for post-dinner festivities, but the reception place says they provide lots of desserts, so cookies may not be necessary. However, my Aunt Priscilla is an AMAZING baker, and I would be sad if her cookies and treats weren't involved.

DO NOT TRY TO MAKE YOUR OWN WEDDING CAKE, TRUST ME. Just in case anyone was going to.

Screw the cake, then!

I mean, dinner is one thing, it helps with the booze, but by the time dessert is served quite frankly we should all be dancing anyway.

Ahaha the non-drinkers/dancers at my wedding are totally getting screwed.

In all honesty, I don't really like cake all that much, but my tiny Polish grandmother won't be out there dancing. She'll enjoy a good piece of cake, though, to help her get over the shock of it not being a "church" wedding.

my wife is French, so instead of cake we had CHEESE! (which the venue (a pub) tried to steal half of, unsuccessfully)

also, bourbon balls - my dad's recipe

molly if your aunt is an amazing baker and you want to get her involved, you should! it'll be cooler than some cake some random person made.

HOORAY we "designed" and printed our invitations ourselves and WE I DIDN'T FUCK IT UP and they look super-nice!

Show us! If you'd like.

molly if your aunt is an amazing baker and you want to get her involved, you should! it'll be cooler than some cake some random person made

My long-ago wedding involved cakes made by my then husband's Aunt. They were magnificent: delicious and beautiful. It was her wedding gift to us and greatly appreciated.

Tracer, yeah! I'm thinking a tiered platter of delicious cookies and sweets.

xxpost I can't exactly, 'cause we didn't really 'design' the whole thing, so I'd have to take a picture of it, etc., and I'm lazy.

We found really nice stationary cards, for surprisingly cheap, then I designed the text in photoshop and we got that printed on the cards. It's not that it was that complicated. I'm just really surprised at how painless it was for the quality of the return--they're easily as good or better than 'proper' invitations we would have had to have ordered like 3 months ago and paid 3 times as much for.

GOOblar,

Firstly congratulations to both of you on your engagement and best of the luck for the all arrangements. I got married in Montenegro 2 months ago and it wasn’t very easy to put together the whole thing.

I had many guests from abroad as well as from Montenegro, I arranged their accommodations, we had rehearsal dinner, some post-wedding events keep them entertained (not easy to have overseas guests, one must make sure they all are ok and enjoy it!). It worth all hard work at the end, they are still talking about it and they say one of the best weddings they been to.

We had our wedding cake got baked here, although I generally find their cakes so rich (unless lots of cream and nuts is your taste) everyone seemed to enjoy it. My suggestion would be get your cake baked here.

It is by law you must take an official interpreter at your ceremony so this sort outs your problem with guests understanding what is going on

Most of the Montenegrins are very laid-back and don’t like to work so hard; be very clear for what you want, make sure they absolutely understand what you said and they can/will do it.

Make sure they are reliable. (this goes to all vendors and supplier you use on your wedding) I guess your fiancé’s relatives and friends can check that. A close friend had a cancellation 1 week before their wedding from the hotel they booked months in advance. It was a total mess, luckily managed to get another venue for their wedding reception.

There isn't much variety of products and services here (yet) so finding a good photographer and florist might be a little problem. (I had two photographers on my wedding to ensure I had some good pictures. If you have seen most of their work, trust me you would have done the same.) I supplied plenty of pictures, explained them the concept and what I wanted. The weddings are here very different; they have their own way of doing things, most don’t even send invitations out!?

Tell me where are you getting married (town/venue), how many guests do you have?

Hannah