It may have taken me several appointments and months to find a dress, but it took Ritchie all of 2 minutes, 1 appointment, and the first suit he tried on to find his attire. Behold, his J. Crew appointment.

That’s right, the pics are all of the same suit….because he only tried on one suit before saying, “Yup, this is it for me.” I made him the appointment at J. Crew, but I certainly didn’t have any hand in picking the suit. I was parking the car- he was in this when I got there. Not that I’m complaining, it’s a super cute suit.

He had walked in with an agenda- no vest, no tie, no bowtie, just pants, a jacket, a nice white shirt, and something that will look cute with the purple Chucks we’re getting.

After he decided it was the one, he asked me what would set him apart from all his groomsman. We had told them all just to wear a gray suit, any shade, with a white shirt and the purple Chucks we provided. So what would make Ritchie, who would be wearing all the same things, look different from the other groomsmen other than the fact that he’s standing at the altar and the other 5 dudes (I hope) aren’t? I told him it didn’t really matter because I’d be able to pick him out of the crowd, I was sure of it, but it was clear that he wanted something to make him a little bit different. After all, I had that fancy white dress and all. We shrugged and figured we’d come back to it. But later that week, Ritchie’s doppelganger was on Idol and it dawned on me.

Image via sugarslam.com

The skinny tie.

Image via rightcelebrity.com

And yes, Joe Jonas is Ritchie’s doppelganger. Resistant as Ritchie is when I insist, there’s no denying that the similarities are rather striking. Plus Ritchie put his picture up on Facebook for doppelganger week. Sure sign.

Image via disneydreaming.com

But all jokes aside, I knew the second I saw Joe Jonas on Idol in a skinny tie that Ritchie would look amazing in one and it would look great with his new suit. And he couldn’t even argue, even though he’d been initially against the tie, he saw what I was seeing and knew it was a good way to stand out. Even Joe Jonas knows that a skinny purple tie would be the way to go at our wedding, as he demonstrated for us in this picture.

Image via jonasbrothersfan.com

Now, all I have to do is find the perfect purple skinny tie.  And please, tell Ritchie he looks like Joe Jonas, because he pretends like he doesn’t believe me.

I’ve been thinking about readings a lot lately.  Don’t ask me why because I know there are far more important things to do at this juncture, but after hitting a little snag with my family about who would marry us, I thought it’d be nice if we could express ourselves by having one person who means a lot to us from each side of our family read something at the ceremony.  Plus it makes it the ceremony seem a little less “wham, bam, thank you ma’am” even though we’re not into dragging the vows on forever.

So I’ve been scouring the internet for quotes and snippets that mean a lot to both of us.  My first thought was Buffy.  It may sound crazy, but Buffy has played an integral part in our relationship.  I never watched it when it was on TV and felt it wasn’t for me.  Ritchie felt otherwise.  It took him years of begging before I finally sat down and gave it a chance.  And oh boy.  How I ever resisted to begin with is beyond me.  Ritchie and I have incorporated many Buffy-isms into our lives, the most important to me being my claddagh ring.  I had always wanted one (and in turn wanted an Irish boyfriend who would give me one), but Ritchie waited until after Angel gave one to Buffy to present me with one for my birthday, when it would have so much more meaning.  I never take it off.

It turns out that there are quite a bit of touching true love confessions from Buffy, nearly all from my favorite tortured soul, Spike, but none of them feel quite wedding-y enough for me.  Here are a few favorites:

“When I say I love you, it’s not because I want you, or because I can’t have you. It has nothing to do with me. I love what you are. What you do. How you try. I’ve seen your kindness, and your strength. I’ve seen the best and the worst of you, and I understand, with perfect clarity, exactly what you are. You’re a hell of a woman. You’re the One.“
-Spike to Buffy.  Most of it’s better suited for vows, as it’s in the first person.  I love it, but clearly it doesn’t all work.

“Why does a man do what he musn’t? For her. To be hers…to be a kind of man. And she will look upon him with forgiveness… and everybody will forgive and love. And he will be loved. So everything’s okay, right?”
-Spike to Buffy.  I may actually try to slip a snippet of this into our programs, I love it so.  But not for a reading.

“My whole life, I’ve never loved anything else.”
-Oz to Willow.  I tried so hard to get this on our invites, but it didn’t work out.  I will find a place for it, for sure.  It so simple, yet so meaningful.

“I’ve gotta say something, ’cause I don’t think I’ve made it clear. I’m in love with you. Powerfully, painfully in love. The things you do, the way you think, the way you move. I get excited every time I’m about to see you. You make me feel like I’ve never felt before in my life… like a man. I just thought you might like to know.”
-Xander to Anya.  So, so, so sweet.  Like, cry your eyes out sweet if this were in vows repeated to me.  Just sayin.

“I know you’ll never love me. I know that I’m a monster. But you treat me like a man. And that’s…Get your stuff. I’ll be here.”
-Spike to Buffy.  This one obviously has no place at a wedding, but it just happens to be my absolute favorite Buffy moment and never fails to make me teary.  In fact, it’s getting a little misty in here…let’s move on.

After exhausting the Buffy route, I turned to my favorite writer, Neil Gaiman.  Unfortunately, as much as I love his dark, witty style, it doesn’t necessarily translate to good wedding reads.  When you google “Neil Gaiman, love quotes” this is what pops up the most:

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life…You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”
- Sandman, The Kindly Ones

Awesome…but not exactly what I had in mind.  I did order myself a copy of Four Letter Word, which Neil wrote a story for that I’m hoping will have something I can lift that seems relevant.  If not, it’s a compilation of stories about love by great authors, so surely there must be something in there.

When I thought I’d exhausted the Neil Gaiman route, however, I stumbled upon this on his blog:

“This for you, for both of you,

a small poem of happiness
filled with small glories and little triumphs
a fragile, short cheerful song
filled with hope and all sorts of futures

Because at weddings we imagine the future
Because it’s all about “what happened next?”
all the work and negotiation and building and talk
that makes even the tiniest happily ever after
something to be proud of for a wee forever

This is a small thought for both of you
like a feather or a prayer,
a wish of trust and love and hope
and fine brave hearts and true.

Like a tower, or a house made all of bones and dreams
and tomorrows and tomorrows and tomorrows”

It’s very sweet and wedding appropriate.  But it’s wedding appropriate because it was written by him for a friend’s wedding and he was kind enough to post it online.  It seems a little bit like cheating, taking the words he wrote with friends in mind and using them like he had written them for me.

So that’s where I stand right now.  Considering my affinity for gothic writers like Gaiman, Shirley Jackson, and Christopher Moore, and TV and comic book writers like Joss Whedon and Warren Ellis, I’ve had a really hard time finding stuff written by them that reeks of love, affection, and happily ever after.  Did you go the route of trying to make your favorite author’s stuff work for you or did you go with a more traditional reading?

…our guest bedroom:

Please excuse the walls- the roof leaked and they had to repaint.  Which means that we’ll have to repaint now…because it’s half white and half blue.  Thanks, rain.  No, let’s focus on all this lovely stuff we’ve got going on here.

A – Gocco
This fabulous little discontinued Japanese “toy” is the genius behind my personalized napkins, coasters, and thank you cards (more on all that later).  In fact, behind those boxes are stacks of Gocco’d napkins and coasters.

B – Paper Source
An evil little store that to most is only online, but is much more dangerous as a brick and mortar that I can actually walk in to here in Los Angeles and is the culprit behind my envelope liners, rounded corners, and adorable grapevine punch out.

C – Chucks
6 pairs of purple Chucks (1 groom, 5 groomsmen) for the guys.

D – Target
We all know how much you can drop in an “I’m just running to Target to pick up paper towels” trip.  On this particular one, I found adorable, bird-adorned, recyclable totes for our out of town bags.  I wasn’t planning on making out of town bags, you say?  Well now that I’ve found these adorable totes, apparently I am.

E – Core Bamboo
Ideeli, one of many evil discount sites I frequent, offered discounts on Core Bamboo one day.  We needed bowls for our family style pasta, they offer cute purple bowls made out of recycled bamboo.  Seemed a perfect fit, until they delivered every bowl in it’s own individual box.  This is only half of them.  Wasteful much?

F – Barrel
Found for $10 at a flea market.  Lived in my car’s backseat for about a month.  Ritchie insists that he’ll get around to making a card box out of it, but until then, I call him Milton.

What’s the point of showing you all of this other than allowing you all to see how useless our second room is?  Because in case you have all forgotten, my wedding is not in California.  Bicoastal Bride, people…as in, my wedding is 3,000 miles from here.  And all that stuff?  Yep, you guessed it.  It’ll have to travel 3,000 miles with me.  Suddenly all these little details don’t seem so important after I think about this shipping bill.

How do other far away brides deal with all this shipping?  I’m pretty sure Milton won’t fit in my suitcase this weekend, but maybe I can squeeze in a bowl or two…

A while ago, Ritchie purchased his guy’s shoes and it was easy as pie.  I figured somewhere down the line I’d do the same thing with my girls.  One of my bridesmaids had tossed out the idea of doing flip flops, since heels tend to sink into the grass at an outdoor wedding, and I thought it was a great idea.  Casual and comfortable.  My kind of wedding attire.

But then another bridesmaid said to me that I’d have to be careful because the last thing you want to hear when walking down the aisle is flip. flop. flip. flop. And she’s right.  Casual, comfortable, and awwwkward….not such a good idea.  But as an avid flip flop wearer myself, I know that there are plenty of flops out there that don’t flip flop loudly wherever they go.  It’s just a matter of finding them.

So I went on a hunt for flip flops and found lots of pretty ones.  Like these:

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And these:

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And man I LOVE these:

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There are lots of pretty flip flops out there when you expand out of your J. Crew and Havianas comfort zone (ahem, note to self).  But then I started to wonder about other pretty sandals that weren’t flip flops and weren’t heels and so I turned to ShopStyle to look at “silver sandals.”  I got through maybe 40 of the 100 some odd pages and began to notice myself falling in love hard with a specific style:

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And these:

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And I think these are my absolute fave:

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Then I remembered a conversation I had early on with my MOH who said to me that a lot of people are very specific in their taste in shoes (herself included) and that not everyone will like the same shoe.  And it occurs to me even now that they’ve all got different, mismatched dresses, do they actually need the same shoes?  Just because the groomsmen are doing it doesn’t mean that they have to.

So now I’m torn.  I wanted to buy everyone’s shoes as part of a thank you like Ritchie did and so they wouldn’t have to buy shoes just for the wedding (although, really, is there anything wrong with having to buy new shoes?)  But now I’m thinking I should just tell them to have at it and just make a few suggestions, like I did with the dresses.

What do you think?  Mismatched shoes or no?  And do you love those gray ones as much as I do?  I would be lying if I said they didn’t make it to my shopping cart for a brief moment before I closed the window and reminded myself that I should be shopping for other wedding related things and not pretty shoes.

First amazing fact, now that I’m back from the dead?  My bridal shower is in just under 2 weeks.  Which means, I’ll be back on the east coast in two weeks.  Which means?  I FINALLY GET TO SEE MY VENUE!!!  WOOOOOOOOOTTTT!!!!!!!

Okay, regaining composure.  Enough about that for now.  Back to the bridal shower.

Upon reflection, I don’t think I’ve had a party centered around me that I didn’t have to organize since I turned 13 and my mom took over teen night at the local bar (yes, I’m aware that there’s so much wrong with that sentence) so that my friends and I could celebrate my birthday and do the electric slide.  I thought at first it would be embarrassing, since I’m not generally a fan of being the center of attention.  But now that it’s getting closer, I find myself really looking forward to it.  I’m excited to see a bunch of my friends and family and it’s a nice little preface to the wedding and how much fun it will be to have everyone together.  The only unfortunate thing is that since I will only be in town 2 days (less than 48 hours, actually), and I absolutely must see the vineyard or I may die of curiosity, the shower will be held in Delaware which is rather far for Ritchie’s family to travel.  I know that most, if any, won’t be able to come and that bums me out quite a bit.  I was looking forward to any opportunity that would bring the two families together, but I know that the wedding will do a splendid job of that.

I don’t know much else about the shower, and I love it that way.  I’ve got a date, time, and place.  I informed my MOH of my unnatural and very recent obsession with cheesecake.  And I warned her that I’m not the bridal shower game type, even though she knows that, and even though we both know that I won’t be able to get away with not doing ANY (I believe her exact words were “Jess, there will be a ribbon bouquet, no matter how much you don’t want one.  It’s just going to happen.”)  After sending her the guest list with addresses, and my mom’s phone number, I tried to forget about the bridal shower so that I can just be pleasantly surprised next Saturday.

But, my surprises came even earlier than I thought they would.  Because yesterday, I came home to this:

That’s right.  A box wrapped in a blanket.  You see, Ritchie happened to get home just as the UPS guy dropped this off while I was still at work.  He immediately recognized it as a shower gift, and a poorly disguised one at that as it said what it was right on the box.  So he wrapped it in a blanket before I got home.  And there was a sheet under this.  Getting that sucker open was just like Christmas.  But my efforts paid off!

Holy crap!!  It’s our very first gift off of our registry, and it happens to be my most coveted.  Oh, and also the VERY first thing we registered for.  (Plus a little basset butt in there for ya).

I was literally jumping up and down as Ritchie took this picture.  And then neither of us noticed when our wily basset hound Brando snatched up some excess wrapping from the box and we proceeded to chase him around the living room for a good 5 minutes.

He’s fast.

The best thing about my mixer?  It’s BOYSENBERRY.  That’s right friends, not boring blue, silver, black, or red, but my brand new KitchenAid mixer is effing PURPLE.

Hello beautiful.

Oh, the many things we’ll make together.

This very first, AMAZING gift comes with MANY huge, GINORMOUS thanks to my future mother-in-law, who knows the key to my heart is a fantastic mixer that will help me make the key to Ritchie’s heart, which is pie.