Just thought I'd follow up on my last photography blog.

The photographer we met with yesterday was actually really cool. I liked him, and I liked his style and approach to wedding photography. We were a little late for our appointment, so we didn't get to meet his wife because she had to go pick up the kids from school. It's a husband-wife team, so if we go with them, we'll get two photographers for our wedding, which I think is such a great option and idea that it should almost be standard.

I don't remember the man's name, but he had a gentle, if unspectacular face, with features that became more defined as we sat and talked with him and got to know each other.

After giving us an overview of the types of packages they offer, he took us through a questionaire.

"What we like to do," he said, "is to really get to know the couples we work with. I remember when Desiree and I got married, we didn't really know our photographer, he didn't really know us. So we stood outside in the blistering July sun for hours, taking photos that I didn't want to take, and he didn't know what we wanted because he didn't know us. We got some nice photos, but it really wasn't exactly what we would have wanted."

So for the next half hour or so, he asked us questions like, what's your favorite color? What kind of music do you like? Can you give me examples of artists, bands, genres, CDs? What about favorite movies? Where is your dream vacation destination? What kind of job would you want if compensation weren't an issue? (That last one is tough, if you sit down and try to answer honestly. It really makes you examine your motives for current career aspirations, and it helps you understand what really gets your blood pumping.)

The reason for all of this, he explained, as we answered his questions and he scribbled things down on his clipboard, was to allow him to get a feel for who we are as a couple, what kind of taste we have. That way, they can personalize our photos to reflect those parts of ourselves.

All in all, it went well. We're still debating, and I'm waiting on a promised email with a couple of package and price options, but we'll have a decision within the week.

Photography

I shouldn't be writing this right now. I can't really afford the time to be blogging, but I just got off the phone with Jordan, and I wanted to write a little something about wedding photography.

I don't know if it's un-kosher to post budget details in a public forum, so I won't, but I will say that in my opinion, we're working with a pretty decent allotment of funds for the photography for our wedding. But the thing is, everyone is just so expensive! And once you book the locations and buy the dress, a big chunk of your budget is already gone. Not to mention flowers, decorations, wedding party gifts, rehearsal dinner, and the subject at hand, photography.

Several people have advised us not to skimp on photography, because at the end of the day, your photos are among the few tangible things you'll have to remember everything by. I personally don't think we're skimping on photography, but it's hard not to feel like our options are still limited. One of the professional services we liked the best from browsing wedding expos claims to be flexible, to work with your budget to create the perfect package. But I get the impression that it's more like, tell us your budget and we'll tell you what we'll do for that price. Currently, our budget will only buy us four hours of coverage at the actual wedding. We're meeting with them tomorrow, so maybe we can barter a little bit. We'll see.

All I want are some good quality photos with minimum wacky editing (i.e. high contrasty, weird colors, etc. A word of advice to wedding photographers - go for clean and elegant, not funky and artsy. But maybe that's just me) And I don't want to have to shell out a third of our entire budget for them. Is that so much to ask?

What I've Learned (So Far)

While I'm still pretty new to this whole game, there are some things I'm learning about planning a wedding.

First of all, while many may disagree with me, I don't think anyone needs more than about six months to plan a beautiful, thoughtful, well put-together wedding. Jordan and I didn't even have our date set until last week, and we're getting married in June. We've always planned on June, but because of location availability we didn't have a specific date until early last week. Come to think of it, last week was pretty monumental for a lot of the big things - ceremony and reception location, dress, bridesmaids' dresses, invitations. We knocked all of those out (well, mostly; invite are still in progress, and the girls haven't bought their bridesmaids' dresses quite yet) in a matter of about five days, with only about three months left before our desired wedding date.

Also, I get the impression that a lot of women think that they'll somehow lose a lot of weight or transform their figure in the months leading up to their wedding. For some, I'm sure that's true, but I don't think my body is going to change very drastically between now and June, however much I'd like it to sometimes. But really, you kind of get over that after a few months. I think a good pithy saying for many aspects of wedding planning is this: you've got to work with what you've got. Budget, availability, menus, even your own appearance.

But finding a dress that you look fabulous in - as is - sure doesn't hurt.

Let's see, what other tidbit wisdom have I gained so far? Oh, well, one thing I worried about a lot was whether or not all of my friends were going to be able to come. I've learned that no matter when your wedding is, or how far ahead you plan or send out save-the-dates or whatnot, there will always be people you want to be there who just won't be able to be there. That's another one of those things that you kind of just have to get over. Does that sound harsh? I love my friends and family dearly, and I want with my whole heart for everyone that we know and love and that knows and loves us to be at our wedding; but that's just not realistic. And I think I'm becoming OK with that. You just can't control everything.

That's really all I have on my mind at the moment. I'll probably elaborate and add to the list as we go along.

Oh! If you are ever a bride-to-be shopping for your gown, do not turn your nose up to David's Bridal. I did, and I was foolish to. I thought they would be generic, the Wal-Mart of wedding dress stores. But for me, at least, they beat out the other stores in a lot of ways.

For one, you just can't beat their prices. For my first wedding dress fitting/appointment, I went to another store in town that has a reputation for being more formal and high-end. Basically, that translated to very, very expensive, and I didn't really like any of their dresses that much. The two I liked the best were both about $1,000 off the rack, not including any alterations.

David's Bridal, on the other hand, offers a wide variety of styles at an average price of $400-$600. My dress was a little under $500 off the rack, and totals to about $675 including alterations. And it's beautiful - I love it, and I love the way I look in it.

And get this - the associate who helped me try out dresses over the course of my three appointments at David's Bridal is a Biola grad! She just graduated last May ('09), she married a guy that Jordan went to high school with, and she has been super sweet and helpful and encouraging through the whole overwhelming process of finding a gown. In all seriousness, I think I'm going to invite her to the wedding.

Invitations

Yesterday I, with the greatly appreciated help of my little sister, Hannah, my sister-in-law, Nicole, and my mom, tackled another big hump in the wedding planning process: invitations.

Actually, I guess I should start with Friday. Hannah, my mom and I spent most of the afternoon and early evening driving around town, first to find invitations, then to look at shoes. From the get-go, I didn't think it would be necessary to pay for professionally made invites. Back in January, Jordan and I went to a wedding expo here in Albuquerque, and there was only one stationary place that had a booth set up. They had some beautiful stuff, and I got some cool ideas, but I had never planned on making a purchase.

Nicole has been infinitely helpful with planning everything so far. It was on her advice that we made our first stop Target, to look at their ready-made, pre-packaged and put together wedding invitations, complete with envelopes, RSVP cards and their corresponding envelopes. We spent about twenty minutes in Target, considering our options. Hannah and I sat on the floor in the card aisle, opening up boxes that weren't sealed shut to get a better look at the invitations. There were embossed ones, there were ones with velvet borders, there were several with ribbons, and a couple with pretty, printed designs. I like more than one set, but the price was again too high. A box of fifty cost about fifty bucks, and the fancier ones came in sets of twenty-five for almost the same price. I didn't want to spend $200 of our budget on invitations. So we headed out.

Next stop: Hobby Lobby. Now, I used to work at Hobby Lobby, and it wasn't exactly a warm and fuzzy experience, so I didn't really want to go to the Hobby Lobby I used to work at for fear of being recognized by any of the employees (particularly Whitney or Caitlin, I don't think they liked me very much . . .) Thankfully, there was another Hobby Lobby location just down the street from Target.

Pause. I realize that Hobby Lobby is not a nationally-known store; let me explain. Imagine a Super Wal-Mart, only it's full of scrapbooking supplies and balls of yarn and unpainted wood and (sometimes nice, sometimes tacky) home decor and wedding supplies. Also, it smells predominantly of fake flowers (which thrive in abundance at Hobby Lobby). If you're making a styrofoam model of the solar system, or if you're hand-painting a jewelry box for your mom's birthday, or if you're shopping for cheap wedding invitations, Hobby Lobby is the place to go.

It was also on Nicole's advice that we stopped at Hobby Lobby. My brother, Jon (Nicole's husband) put together homemade Christmas cards with cheap supplies bought in bulk at Hobby Lobby.

At first, things didn't seem promising. I asked an employee where they had sets of blank cards and envelopes, and he led us to a set of shelves on the end of an aisle (not even in an aisle), which had a meager two shelves with blank greeting cards and envelopes in plastic wrapping. Not what I had in mind. The invites at Target were still fresh in my mind, and I wanted something like a single card on which to print, not folded greeting cards. So we made our way to the wedding aisle to look at their ready-made sets of invites and RSVPs.

After some deliberation, I chose a set of pure white cardstock invitations. The invites themselves are about 6"x6", with an embossed flower-y border along two edges. The RSVPs are the same, only smaller. Hannah and Mom also helped me pick out some rubber stamps and colored ink, just something to make them more colorful and unique. All in all, I'm very pleased with the end result. And to think, when we embarked on our shopping trip I had little to no specific ideas in mind, and in a couple of hours we had everything we needed, all for just over a hundred bucks.

Which brings us to yesterday. Jon and Nicole came over around 1:00, and we printed, stamped, addressed and stuffed invitations for about three hours. I ordered pizza, we listened to music, and we put on the episodes of The Office and 30 Rock that I had missed the previous Thursday.

I think, although I haven't counted, that we got close to 150 invitations and RSVPs made up. We could only address so many, because my list of friends from Biola is still incomplete; although my mom wonderfully and diligently put together a list of her family and friends to send invitations to, so that helped.

Poor Jon seemed a little bored. He spent most of the time in the dining room, working on his computer, which the rest of us printed, stamped and addressed away in the kitchen. I hope he was able to get some work done. He got more involved later, though, when I tried to test out the sealing wax I had bought with the idea of adding an extra personal touch to the invitations. It was a cool idea, but it took about ten tries for us to get the wax to the right consistency, and then to get the seal to stamp in properly. All the while, my mom voiced her worry that if we tried to seal the invitations this way, we'd ruin them, and she also reminisced about using sealing wax when she was younger and thought she remembered that the metallic wax took longer to dry properly.

Turns out, she was right. And it says so right there in the instructions that came with my sealing wax set: metallic wax needs more time to dry.

So, we might scratch that idea, although I'd like to use the seals on something. Maybe programs? It just looks so cool.

Some photos:

Hannah, Nicole and Jon.

One of the stamps we used.

Jon, trying to get the sealing wax to work.

I thought about posting a picture of the finished product, but I kind of want it to be a surprise.

=)

A Preface

My name is Sarah.

I am nineteen years old.

I live in a small desert city, in the wide lap of tall, purple mountains.

I am engaged to a man named Jordan. He is twenty-two.

He proposed in October, we're marrying in June.

Yesterday, I bought my wedding dress.

Today, I argued with my mom, had somewhat of an emotional meltdown, was talked down from the edge by Jordan, and I learned that not only do I have the most wonderful, loving parents around, but I am also blessed beyond all belief to be marrying a man who is strong, patient, forgiving, and absolutely unwilling to let me flounder in my own vices.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring.