One of my favorite discount sites, Rue La La, is offering wedding dresses today at awesome discounts.  Amongst them, a gorgeous Badgley Mischka and a handful of Nicole Millers.  If you’re not a member already, you can click here to sign up.  Personally, I wish I didn’t already have not one, but TWO dresses so I could take advantage of these deals.  I think my favorite part of ordering off of a site like this is…regular shipping!  None of this waiting 12 weeks for your dress and paying an extra $100 to get it in 8 weeks.  Lame.  Here you pay $10 and get plain old ground shipping.  Enjoy!!

Can we talk about etiquette and gifts for a second?

So I had my shower about a week and a half ago and as a result, I found myself inundated with gifts.  Showered, even.  It’s really quite fantastic.  Because everyone knew I was flying back to LA with one measly suitcase, most sent their gifts directly to LA, so for about a week or so we were receiving 1-2 Crate and Barrel or Williams Sonoma boxes a day.  I opened everything, took it all out, oohed and ahhed over it, then packed it up neatly in its box and put it in the guest bedroom where it will stay.  Why?  Well, allow me to bring you back to the night of my shower.

Picture this: it’s Saturday night.  MOH Crys and I have just consumed copious amounts of greasy east coast cuisine for dinner and in my food coma, I’ve begun to haphazardly pack my suitcase with the gifts and cards I received that day.  Mom is cleaning up the kitchen nearby.

Me: “Ritchie will be so excited about this Magic Bullet.  He’s going to be making smoothies and be pureeing everything in sight the minute I touch down.”
Crys: “You’re going to open it?”
Me: “Am I…not supposed to?”
Mom: “You’re not supposed to use wedding gifts before the wedding.”
Me: “I’m sorry…what?”
Crys: (wide eyed) “Absolutely not.  You can’t open up or use your wedding gifts until after the wedding.”
Me: “Why the crap not?”
Mom: “Well, in case you have to give them all back.”

Ummm….

I don’t know why I never considered this, but I do know weddings get called off all the time for whatever reason.  So yes, this makes sense, but…does it really apply to me?

Yes, there could be some random act of whatever that could cause us to cancel the wedding.  Hurricane?  Freaky ginormous east coast earthquake?  Tsunami?  Sudden emergency or death in the family?  I do think these things would be reason enough to put the wedding on hold….but to call it off completely?  I don’t know.  It’d have to be something really BIG.  Something I can’t even fathom.

So the idea that I may have to return all my gifts has me spooked.  Was I really not supposed to use these fabulous things that everyone had been kind enough to give to me?  And why had I never even considered or known this before, yet my mother and best friend seemed to think it was common sense?

So now I pack away all our wedding gifts so far and think about when I CAN use them and how awesome it will be.

Did you all know about this rule?  Am I the only one out there who was totally blindsided by it?  What do/did you do with your wedding gifts before the wedding?

P.S. I do have a confession.  Ritchie opened the Magic Bullet.  I use my mixer all the time.  And there MIGHT have been an instance last weekend during the Lost finale when I wanted to make a cheese and cracker platter and that large appetizer plate that I’d put on our registry and received for my shower would have been PERFECT.  So if we do call off the wedding, we’re going to have to do some shopping.  And then some returning.  Oops.

Remember that fabulous sneak peek I gave you of our amazing engagement session at Griffith Park with our photographer Shannon?  Well I’ve got more.  Lots more.  I’ve been holding out on you and I’m sorry.  Let me bring you back to our awesomely fun engagement session…

See, we started that day with some light reading under a beautiful, huge, hunk of a tree.

Then we moved over to the observatory in Griffith Park…

I think this one's my favorite.

Upon seeing this picture, Ritchie asked "Did she take this with her helicopter??"

And on our way out we enjoyed the park and it’s view.

Okay wait, maybe this one...

We then ended our day at the Vista theater in Silverlake.

No wait, this one! This one!

Can I take a moment to say that not only is this photo freaking fantastic, but is also nearly identical to something incredibly iconic?

Image via www.iconicphotos.wordpress.com

I honestly have no idea how she got us to do that.  Not to mention the fact that it was an incredibly crowded street with people lining up to see Hot Tub Time Machine, and yet somehow in that photo it’s just us.  Magic.  I’m telling you.  She has it.

And speaking of Hot Tub Time Machine, here’s us doing our best “Woo hoo, Hot Tub Time Machine” faces.

That photo cracks me up to no end.  More photos can be found on the lovely Shannon Lee’s blog here.

Also, it must be noted that when it comes to style, I have none of it.  All outfits seen in these photos were put together by my good friend Dana over at Lover’s Waltz.  Why?  Well, not only does she have an incredible sense of fashion, but she runs another site called Fashion Under 100.  So these outfits were super affordable as well (it helped that I already owned the boots and heels).  I highly recommend the site to people like me who can’t put an outfit together to save their life, or even just who want cute clothes for cheap.

All images via www.shannonleeimages.com unless otherwise noted.

This is what Ritchie sings every time I bust out the Gocco.  For those of you not privy to what a Gocco is (read as: normal people), it’s this:

Image via www.kellyjcallahan.wordpress.com

Which is basically a magical Japanese toy that somehow uses screens, ink that gets on everything, and these weird one use only light bulbs to produce your own professional looking prints at home.  Weddingbee posts like this one and this one got me hooked on this silly toy and had me convinced that we needed our own personalized napkins.

Can’t you order something like that online, you ask?  Yes.  Yes, you can.  But it’s not the same now, is it? (Yes, I realize it is.  Just go with it.)

Plus not days after I learned all about the Gocco, I was casually browsing Craigslist (read as: stalking Craigslist for a Gocco) and one showed up pretty close by (read as: 30 minutes) for only $100!  OMG!  These things can go for up to $400 on eBay!  It’s fate! (read as: uncanny stalking abilities)  I e-mailed with super speed and found that it was still available.  When I said that I would pick it up the next day, the seller told me that he had talked to a woman that would come by that night and get it and if she didn’t show then I could pick it up.  Ack!  No!!  I could see all my Gocco dreams flushing away…so I called Ritchie, who was home from work that day, and he braved rush hour traffic to pick it up before the other contender.  It was a cutthroat Craigslist battle, but we came out victorious!

Okay, I know that’s a pretty lame story, but Ritchie should get some credit for going out to South Pasadena in rush hour to pick up a machine that he still doesn’t understand.  Anyway, behold, customized napkins!!

We also did a darker purple on the grey, which looked the best honestly (sorry no pics).  I can’t even tell you how hard it was to come up with 4 different random facts about us.  We wanted them to be interesting, sort of funny, and most of all just cute.  Seriously…it was hard.  Here’s what we came up with, since I know you can’t read them all in the pictures:

-It took Jess 3 years to convince Ritchie to get a dog.  It will take at least 3 more to convince him to get another one.
-Between the two of them, Jess and Ritchie have visited 34 of the 50 states.  They hope to someday be able to say they’ve seen them all.
-In the past 5 years, Jess has perfected making cupcakes, Christmas cookies, pies, and beef stew.  In the past 5 years, Ritchie has perfected eating them.
-In 2004, Jess spent a month in Venice, Italy and fell in love with the Rialto Bridge.  In 2009, Ritchie took her back to the Rialto and got down on one knee.  (she said yes)

Underneath them all is a cute heart with our names and the date of the wedding.  Ritchie designed these using Kaileen from Dafont.  I think they’re awesome.

After napkins, I knew I had to do something else so that I didn’t buy a Gocco for just napkins.  So I scoured the internet for blank coasters.  Originally, I wanted to go for recycled coasters, specifically the nifty seed in the paper ones, but they were so expensive for a detail that I’m doubting many people will use or notice.  Eventually, I found a site that sold bulk coasters (I’m talking mega bulk, like I’ve got 700 blank coasters left over if someone wants to attempt this themselves) for a very reasonable price and I started Gocco-ing the crap out of some coasters.  These we kept simple by using the little graphic Ritchie made for the bottom of the napkins:

Arrested Development is the best to Gocco to.

And a graphic I had made for us early on by Etsy seller Nan Lawson (more on that later):

Betty White on SNL works too.

So 400 napkins and 300 coasters later, I’ve gotten some mileage on my little Craigslist Gocco.  Did you know that Gocco-ing can be incredibly tiring??

Clearly.  Thanks for the help, guys.

So what do you think?  What would you Gocco if given the chance?  I’ve got a few more Gocco tricks up my sleeve.

This past weekend was my shower.  It was also the only weekend I was going to be in town before the wedding.  Therefore, there was roughly 1,459,867 things to do.  I arrived Friday evening, and landed back in LA on Sunday night, so I have no problem telling you all that when I went to work at 5AM on Monday morning, blogging here was the last thing on my mind.  And last night when I got home, I tried in vain to keep my eyes open during Friday Night Lights and dinner, but was asleep by 8:30.  It was truly an exhausting weekend.

All that being said, I can’t wait to fill everyone in on all the things accomplished during my weekend.  I met with a bunch of vendors, all of them insanely nice and helpful, and all of them ready to get started with us and our wedding.  Behold, my weekend:

Friday
4:30AM – Arrive at LAX in vain hopes of standing by for a 6:30AM flight.
6:30AM – I watch that flight leave LAX, go get a bagel and coffee and wait for the next one.
8:00AM – I watch another flight leave LAX, go get a bloody mary.
11:00AM – I do a happy dance when they call my name to get on the flight.  Previously I was on a red eye, so this gets me in almost 12 hours earlier and gives me one full day on land.
7:00PM – Flight arrives PHL on schedule.
8:30PM – We exit the plane.  There was a huge lightning storm that left us stranded on the tarmac without a ramp crew to bring us in.
9:30PM – I get my suitcase full of wedding crap.  Finally.
10:00PM – I get in my rental car and race down to my mom’s house.
10:58PM – Mom and I place our order for mozzarella sticks, crab bisque, and crab and shrimp quesadillas at the local crab bar down the street, 2 minutes before the kitchen closes.
1:00AM – I finally crawl in bed.  My mom loves to gab and keep me up past my bedtime.

Saturday
8:00AM – Hit the snooze button because I can’t bear to open my eyes.
8:30AM – Crawl out of bed and get pretty for my shower that afternoon.
10:30AM – Meet florist at her home in Newark.  She’ll get me a proposal next week.  Fingers crossed that the price is right and she’s the one!
12:30PM – Pick up Crys, maid of honor extraordinaire, who is waiting for me at my mom’s.
1:00PM – Mmm, Wawa coffee.
1:30PM – Meet DOC while she sets up for another wedding.  Yes, she was that accommodating to my busy schedule.
2:30PM – Arrive fashionably late to my own shower.  But what an awesome shower it is!!
4:30PM – Hugs, goodbyes, and thank yous to my family.
5PM – Stop at Best Buy for a new memory card for my camera.  Lots of pics to take of the venue tomorrow.
5:30PM – Drop off Chucks for the wedding at my cousin’s house.  They’re not home so I leave them in the door.
6PM – Arrive home and pack suitcase with loot from my shower.
9PM – We’re exhausted, but Crystal and I get our butts out for some dinner.  As always with my trips back east, I run down the list of “food I can’t get in LA.”  Chic-Fil-A is out of chicken caeser wraps and I almost cry.  I end up with a cheesesteak from Pat’s.
1:30AM – Finally to bed, more gabbing with mom (Give me a break, I only see her a few times a year!)

Sunday
7:30AM – Drag myself out of bed and finish packing all my stuff.
8:30AM – Load up the rental with my suitcases and mom, Crys, and I are off to the vineyard.
8:45AM – Mmm, Wawa coffee.
10AM – Arrive at vineyard and are greeted by a pretty white horse.  Crys names him Herbert.
10:30AM – Our contact Pete arrives and walks us through, though at that point we’ve explored quite a bit and we like what we see.
12:30PM – Leave the vineyard after a lot of talking, details, some negotiating, and a little bit of wine.  I buy a bottle of my favorite red and pack it into my suitcase.
12:45PM – Get a text from my cousin: “If the shoe fits, where it, and it does!” Despite the glaring spelling error, it makes me smile.
2PM – Arrive at baker.  Eat lots of delicious cake.  Get talked into a two tier cake as opposed to two one tiers.  I insist on cheesecake, so we decide to have two in addition to the cake.
3:30PM – Crap!  Cake appointment took way too long and there’s no time to run everyone back to their cars and get to the airport.  We pull a favor with an old neighbor and I drop mom and Crys off there.
4PM – Arrive at rental car place, drop off car, race to airport.
6PM – Flight takes off back to LA.
9PM – Flight arrives in LA (don’t be deceived thinking it’s a short flight, there’s a 3 hour difference in there).
11PM – Arrive home and promptly pass out.

See what I mean??  Jam packed!  I can’t wait to share all the details with everyone, from the venue pics to the flower choices, so you can expect to see all of that stuff in future posts.  WeddingWire kindly reminded me this morning that we are 95 days away (less than 100, eeps!!) and things are actually happening now!  And every day I come home there’s either wedding stuff we ordered or a Crate and Barrel or Williams Sonoma box waiting for me.  It’s really exciting   I went into this weekend feeling like I’d done nothing yet and came out on the other side feeling totally ready for this wedding.  My only regret was that Ritchie wasn’t there to make decisions with me, but I downloaded everything on him the minute I got home and luckily, we agreed.

Did you have one weekend or a short period of time to cram in a bunch of planning?