Last night I dreamt about the wedding again.  I was there, in my lovely dress, and waiting for the ceremony to start.  Everyone was seated and I was ready to walk down the aisle when I turned to my DOC and said “Why isn’t there any music?  Didn’t the DJ show up?” and she said, “You never told him what you wanted, so he didn’t come.”  Silence.

So you can see where my mind’s been lately.

Sigh, ceremony music.  The last thing I want is Canon in D, or whatever other traditional music you’re supposed to have.  Traditional schmaditional.  We’re doing it our own way.  Only, we can’t seem to decide what “our way” is.

At first we had it down.  Before we even had a DJ we sat down to pick three songs: bridal party’s walk, my walk, our walk back together (I know these have real names like “processional” and “recessional,” but I like mine better).  We dipped into a playlist on my iTunes called “Our CD” that I made for us back in college during the very beginning of our relationship when every song we heard seemed so darn important to us.  This is what we came up with:

Bridal Party Walk – “Stuck in the Middle with You” by Stealers Wheel

My Walk – “The Blower’s Daughter” by Damien Rice

Our Walk Back – “Wouldn’t it Be Nice” by The Beach Boys

We were pretty happy with our choices, but we weren’t completely sold.  The bridal party walk was a cool song that we both loved, but didn’t seem to fit with, well, the bridal party and, uh, walking.  And even though I was dead set on my walk song, due to our intense love for the movie Closer, Ritchie has never liked how the song ends with “…until I find somebody new.”  Sheesh, he takes things so literally.  The last song we both love for the walk back.  It was one thing we actually didn’t waver on, even though I’ve never really been a big Beach Boys fan.

We didn’t think about this for a long time, until we were driving around running errands one day and I had a Beatles CD on in my car.  We had always planned on playing Beatles songs while people were finding their seats and I commented on how I just love the transition of “Sgt Pepper’s…” to “With a Little Help…” which sparked an idea.  What if we did all Beatles songs for the ceremony too?  “Sgt. Pepper’s…” could transition right into…

Bridal Party Walk – “With a Little Help from My Friends”

My Walk – “Something”

Our Walk Back – “Eight Days a Week” (I know “All You Need is Love” is a typical pick here, but “Eight Days…” is another one of those darn important songs to us)

We liked it, but I felt a nagging in the back of my head.  First, it’s overdone.  Even one of the DJs we talked to had told us that he’d seen it done a lot when we told him we were playing Beatles songs while people took their seats.  Second, it’s a bit of a betrayal on my part.  I grew up with one, and only one, love from the past and it was The Monkees.  My best friend turned me onto them when we were 12 and I didn’t stop obsessing for some time.  Because they themselves are rip offs of the Beatles, it was always one or the other, and I was Monkees all the way.  I never even really started listening to The Beatles until I met Ritchie.  So I was torn.  The 12 year old in me badly wanted to do this:

Bridal Party Walk – “Take a Giant Step”

My Walk – “Sometime in the Morning” (No video, a clip is the best I can do with this one)

Our Walk Back – “I’m a Believer” (this is actually one of my least favorite Monkees songs…but it’s hard to resist here)

So there we go.  I’m totally torn.  Maybe a mix of all three?  My favorite mix might be “With a Little Help From My Friends,” “Sometime in the Morning,” and “Wouldn’t it be Nice”  But “Take a Giant Step,” “Blower’s Daughter,” and “Eight Days a Week” is a strong contender too. Or, “Take a Giant Step,” “Something,” and “Wouldn’t it be Nice” works as well. Maybe we should just scrap everything and start from scratch?

Did you have/are you planning on having original music for your ceremony?  Or did you go for something less traditional?

It’s been a trying week (and it’s only Wednesday!) as our invitations arrived on Monday and we dove headfirst into adding all the little touches, stuffing, and addressing in the short time we have before they’re expected to be in the mail.  Putting these together means we are cracking down on our final guest list.

Ah yes, the guest list.  It is basically the bane of my (and many others, I know) wedding existence.  When we got engaged we were on a cruise and over dinner one night, we rattled off all the people we’d invite- people from college we hadn’t spoken to in years, old professors, people we were close with from online communities, all of our work friends, etc.  We were so excited and we reasoned that with all these people, we probably had about 70, maybe 80 people to invite.  Oh what a small adorable wedding it will be!

Ha.  HA.  HA HA HA HA HA.  We were so naive.  When we got home from our cruise, I went to the store to get myself a wedding notebook.  I sat down and wrote at the top in fancy letters “Guest List – First Draft, 11-1-09″  I was so excited.  I began with family and the wedding party.  When I was done with that, I was at 72.  OMG!  72 people in our extended families and wedding party!  When did this happen??  “It’s okay,” I tell myself, “It’s just a first draft.  Push on.”  When I was finished I had 136 people.  I was bowled over.  This was way outside our ideal 70-80 person wedding.  Still, I reasoned that a good chunk of these people wouldn’t come and figured this was an okay place to be.  I’d definitely whittle it down to around 100-115 and we’d be perfectly fine.

Then the parents came in.  To be fair, I will say that there is a major emphasis on parent here as my mother was by far the biggest culprit.  Just before our Save the Dates went out, we asked the parents for their guest list.  We had covered all the bases with Ritchie’s family mostly, his mom added maybe 2 or 4 people.  But all the while she told us to take people off more than she asked us to put people on.  Enter my mother.  Queen of indecision (and I wonder where I get it from).  First she added about 16 people.  It was a blow, but I held strong.  Then she called and took 4 or so off.  Then she called and added 2 back, but took another 2 off.  It went like this for weeks.  She would call and start off with, “Jess don’t be mad…” and I knew it was about the guest list.  Often these conversations went “So and so was like a father to you growing up,” or, “Well, I haven’t talked to so and so in years.”  After I sent out our Save the Dates, it continued to happen.  “But I already sent out our Save the Dates!” “Oh, that doesn’t matter.  I talked to so and so the other day and she said she’d be very hurt if we didn’t invite her.”  Sigh.  I know this is pretty normal from parents, but I’m fairly certain that it’s normal from parents who are paying for the wedding.  While our parents are picking up a few of the tabs, we are paying for the majority of this shindig ourselves.  Every guest that is added a little “Ka-ching, ka-ching!” goes off in my head (the second ka-ching is for the inevitable plus one).  But then again, we’re doing it ourselves too.  Recently I had been back in touch with a close college friend who I really wanted to include on our day, so I added her (ka-ching, ka-ching!).  Ritchie reconnected with an old friend of his, so we added him (ka-ching, ka-ching!).  In the past few months we’ve befriended and become pretty close with our new neighbors (ka-ching, ka-ching!).  The guests continued to add up and before we knew it, we’d added at least 10 people since we’d sent out our Save the Dates ((ka-ching, ka-ching! ka-ching, ka-ching! ka-ching, ka-ching!).  And of course, all the while, my mom was remembering and taking off people.  I’ve gotten to the point where I literally have one invitation left, which is for our dang scrapbook DANGIT.  If one gets lost in the mail, or more unforeseen circumstances happen, I’m screwed.  As of today’s post we are now up to, brace yourself, 144 people.

It’s tough.  At some point, we had a kind of “eff it” attitude towards our guest list figuring we had so many out of towners that adding people wouldn’t really affect our outcome.  But now that people are starting to book rooms, people we never expected to make the trip, we’re getting a little nervous.  We’re doing the math in our head and we’ve only really budgeted and planned for around 100 people.  We never thought we’d get more than that.  And yet, it’s such a dilemma as we want every invited guest to be there.

So a lot lies on these little invitation’s shoulders.  Those tiny little RSVP postcards hold our fate in their hands.  I can’t wait to release them into the world and see what they come back with.  I’m excited and terrified all at the same time.

Are you terrified of your guest list?  Stuck with an indecisive parent like mine?  Excited about sending out your invites, but afraid to get your RSVPs back?

There are a lot of reasons to make compromises in your wedding planning.  Mostly, they’re financial.  I would love to have a menu with 5 gourmet entrees to choose from on the day of, with trays of seconds going around so guests can sample anything they may have missed (yes, I’ve been to a wedding that had that), but we just can’t afford that food or that service.  I wanted crab dip, but it cost more than all the other appetizers combined.  I fought for a long time to have wine bottles on the table, but it became clear that our venue would not go down on the price, so I caved and nixed it.  These are the financial compromises we make constantly with the wedding.

There are also religious and traditional compromises.  Even though neither of us are religious and would just as soon have a friend do it, we’ll compromise by having my cousin marry us because he’s in seminary school and it will make my grandmother very happy for his first wedding to be ours.  I told my maid of honor that I didn’t want to play any games at my shower and I was adamant against a ribbon bouquet, but they did it anyway because it’s tradition and according to her, you just have to.

Then there are the compromises you make because of how they’re perceived by others.  When you come upon an idea that you and your fiancé just love, but you are met with resistance on all sides.  So even though you might have an emotional break down about it, say eff it all and let’s go to Vegas, have a very serious conversation where you calculate all the deposits you’ve made so far and how much you have saved for the rest of the wedding that could fund a seriously awesome honeymoon instead…eventually, you just have to cave.  Because there have been financial compromises, traditional compromises, and now what I will deem the “you guys are crazy” compromises, there will be times where you just cave.  With less than three months to go when you can’t make everyone happy and you can’t make yourself happy, just let it go.  Buck up, sigh, and let it all go.  No wine on the tables, no crab dip, no ordained friend to marry us, no 5 course gourmet meal.

What kind of things have you given up for your wedding?  Have you ever felt like the compromises are compromising your vision for the day or do you just sigh and let it go?

Bad quality, but it’s what I think of whenever I have a bad day. (seriously, why doesn’t think exist in better quality on Youtube?  It’s so cute!  Copyright laws, psshh- I want my chipmunk songs!)

Some days you just have a bad day.  Work comes down hard on you.  You make stupid mistakes.  Someone doesn’t see eye to eye with you.  And on those days, when you come home and curl up in your fiancé’s arms and say you had a bad day and he listens to everything you have to say while he makes you dinner and lets you fall asleep on the couch watching Iron Chef and gets you into bed before midnight…well, it’s those bad days that make you realize why you’ll spend all days, good and bad, with him.

Things are already picking up for me this morning.  Not only is it the Friday before a 3 day weekend (YAY), but this wedding on Offbeat Bride today made me smile from ear to ear.

Hope everyone out there is having a great day today!!!

Something I’m really bad about on this blog is checking comments that Wordpress thinks are spam, and then approving them when they’re not.  Seriously, I’m truly horrible at this.  So it wasn’t until this morning that I caught a comment made by my future brother-in-law a few weeks ago regarding the bridesmaid’s shoes.  It’s a simple, matter of fact comment, but it was exactly what I needed to see how simple it all was:

Hmmm.  Why not?  The idea of the whole bridal party in Chucks was something that I loved early on when we decided to do it for the guys, but never really entertained.  I don’t know why, but I didn’t think anyone else would go for it.  But then I saw the comment and it clicked that maybe this might be acceptable.  As it were, I was planning on telling the girls to get flip flops or simple sandals.  If we do this, I can pick up the Chucks in bulk and my girls won’t have to worry about shoes (or their feet hurting all night).  Easy peasy.  Plus there are all these pictures to confirm just how cute the sneakers with a dress look is:

Image via philadelphia-weddingphotography.com

Image via www.farm3.static.flickr.com

Image via www.whaleyam.files.wordpress.com

But I’m nervous.  You all didn’t see the look on my mom’s face when I pulled out the purple Chucks that the groomsmen would be wearing.  And I broached the topic of Chucks with dresses to two of my bridesmaids who both responded with “You’re the bride, you can do whatever you want…” which I think translates to “You’re effing crazy.”

The flip side to this is that if Ritchie and all the guys are in Chucks, and so are all the girls, that means that I’d be donning Chucks myself.  Which is actually perfect because I have yet to find a decent shoe to wear at the wedding.  I have awesome purple heels that I wore for our engagement shoot, but they make me taller than Ritchie and he is not a fan of that.  Plus I can barely walk in them.  Face it, I was born to be a Chucks bride.  Plus, it brings me back to this picture I’m completely obsessed with:

Image via katyregnier.blogspot.com

In which that lovely bride is sporting a color I recognize as “Dewberry” that is available only as a custom on the web site.  It’s something I’ve lusted after, but never felt the need to pony up for.  After brainstorming a bit with Ritchie regarding colors and slip ons vs. sneakers, I came up with a collage of Chucks for the wedding:

This is awesome for so many reasons.  I kind of love the hodge podge of mix and match colors.  Two shades of grey, two shades of purple…kind of like all the different shades in our wedding party.  Plus, both Ritchie and my shoes would be custom, which means that we can get our wedding dates printed on the back.  Kind of cool, right?

They’re a perfect pair!

So I’m completely torn.  I love this idea.  And I am the bride and can do whatever I want.  But, I don’t necessarily want my friends and family to think I’m crazy and go all judgey judge on our wedding.  And I can hear my mom until the end of time saying “This is my daughter- she wore SNEAKERS to her wedding!!!”

What would you do?  How do you feel about a whole wedding party in Chucks?  Would you hate wearing sneakers to a wedding?