Oh hai. You guys are still here? Wow. Sorry.

This past weekend, while Gocco-ing napkins, I watched Julie/Julia on the Netflix Instant Queue. I had seen it in theaters last summer when I was in Michigan and remembered loving it, so I forced kindly asked Ritchie to watch it with me on Saturday night while we both worked on wedding stuff. I told him that unlike most people who saw the movie, while I liked Meryl’s stuff as Julia, I flat out LOVED Amy Adam’s storyline as Julie. I found myself relating to her so much the first time around. This time, I found the likenesses were resonating even harder. She’s married to a really sweet guy. She’s 30 (only a few short years off for me).  She feels like she hasn’t done anything worthwhile and never finishes anything she starts. And right about the time Julie has a meltdown over a failed attempt at trussing a chicken and has a small tantrum on the kitchen floor, Ritchie turned to me and said, “Oh yeah. This is SO you. And he is SO me.” It was true- the similarities are uncanny.

Image via www.sanfranciscosentinel.com

I couldn’t ignore the fact that Julie’s mantra during the film is that she wants to finish something and see it through. And haunting me in the back of my head was this blog. I know it’s been neglected and I tell myself it’s because work is so busy (which it really is), but really it’s also my inability to see things through to the end.  Work got busy and it was a reason to take a break, but during that break I realized how easy it was to just…not blog.  The worst part is I actually really like blogging.  It’s like yoga.  Every time I stop doing it for a long period of time, when I go back, I wonder why the heck I ever stopped.

In an effort to see this thing through, I’m back and I’m armed with an effton of wedding stuff. And hopefully I’ll have finished a project that I started come August, not just with this blog, but with this whole wedding.  So with luck, in the next couple days or weeks, you’ll read all about my love/hate relationship with my Gocco, how I finally found “the one” (dress, that is), the barrel that sat in my backseat for over a month, and my realization of “how the crap are we going to get all this stuff back east?”  I loosely promise that I will try not to not leave you guys again. We good?  Did anyone else feel a lot like Julie when watching that movie, or was it just me?

I’ve had my share of wedding related dreams, but I think last night was the worst one so far.

I woke up one day and it was wedding day.  Just like that.  I hadn’t been expecting it, it just happened.  As I was completely baffled, I pulled on my dress, put my hair back, and threw a veil back there.  I then ran to the venue, but when I got there, the wedding was already in progress.  Ritchie was up there by himself, but for whatever reason, all I could do was sit in the back and watch while we said our vows.  I remember craning my neck to see my bridesmaids because I didn’t know what their dresses looked like and wanted to see if they looked good together.  Then we were pronounced husband and wife and it was over.  I was crying afterwards because we hadn’t done it the right way, both standing up front together, and we hadn’t gotten any good pictures of it since I was in the back.  Ritchie told me I was silly and we’d do it again, but I told him we couldn’t do it again because it was already done.

Clearly, this dream is crazy.  But more importantly than the content is perhaps where these fears are coming from.

At the moment, I’m feeling a little alone in this wedding planning process.  Ritchie has been super busy with work and hasn’t had a whole lot of time for other things, which is totally understandable because he recently moved up big time, career wise, and his responsibilities have basically quadrupled.  So while he’s either working late or nodding off on the couch the minute he gets home, I’m left to sit and think about all the things we have yet to tackle.  Normally, I’d call someone to lament about it all, a bridesmaid or a family member, but when you get home from work at 8PM like I do, and all your bridesmaids are on the east coast, you’re left with a time difference that doesn’t work in your favor.  To top it all off, my fail safe is usually my mother, a night owl who’s always up at 11 or 12 if I need to talk, but she’s always seemed a little disinterested/detached from the whole wedding process (see this post, for instance, on how she wants nothing to do with my dress hunt) and has recently vested an interest in an area that Ritchie and I haven’t made a firm decision on, causing a bit of a blow up and a pretty big rift between us for the unforeseeable future.

So all that being said, I understand my unsettling dreams about being alone on the wedding day and doing everything myself.  Have any of you ever felt alone in your planning?  Do you have a back up support person for when it feels like you’ve got no one to turn to?

This past weekend we had our engagement photo session with the fabulous Shannon Lee.  The three of us have been SO busy lately that we all found it really hard to cram into our schedule!  But we finally found a day and time that worked and it was worth the wait.  Not only was it a beautiful day here in Los Angeles, but we had so much fun!!!  We don’t have all the photos back yet (the shoot was Sunday, people, give my girl Shannon a break!), but I was thrilled to wake up the next morning and have a little sneak peak in my inbox and I wanted to share it with all of you!

Image via shannonleeimage.com

Image via shannonleeimage.com

Aren’t they just to die for?  And yes, we did do a little geek shoot with comic books and geeky t-shirts (though Ritchie’s brother was quick to point out to me that Ritchie’s a geek and not a nerd- close enough!!)  I can’t wait to see the rest-  we both couldn’t be more thrilled with what we’ve seen so far!

Shannon and I are good friends, but I’d never seen her operating in a professional capacity until Sunday.  She was a total pro and completely a joy to work with.  I had been a little worried about how uncomfortable I generally am in front of the camera.  Even when Shannon was taking pics of me trying on wedding dresses I was totally awkward on camera (I mean, have you seen my face in these pics?).  But during our session I found myself smiling with ease.  Part of it was having Ritchie there, but Shannon was really working her magic to get us to look our best.  She had some really awesome ideas for pictures and I can’t wait to see the end results!

We also came thisclose to running into the Bowie Bride who was doing her engagement session with Holly of Cakes and Kisses in Griffith Park at the same time!  I was bummed to have missed her, but I did, however, get to meet the infamous Wendy of Just Wenderful and she was so sweet.  She hung for a minute to watch us posing before taking off for Bowie Bride’s shoot.  I can’t wait to see the photos that Holly got of the Bowie Bride and her fiancé; it’ll be neat to see two people’s perspective on the same day in the same location!

Early on, Ritchie and I decided that we were going to join the many other nerds out there who have outfitted their groom and groomsmen in Converse:

Image via amelialyon.net

Image via amelialyon.net

Image via chixorgirl.vox.com

There was some debate about whether buying our guy’s purple Chucks was silly since we doubted they’d ever wear them after the wedding, but one of Ritchie’s guys told him that absolutely he would and couldn’t wait to.   So we made up our mind and purchased 6 of these suckers in our guy’s sizes:

Image via amazon.com

I also snagged a pair for myself in the same color to wear during the geeky part of our engagement session (more on that later!).  But then I got to thinking…why is it just the guys who wear the Chucks at the wedding?  I started Googling and stumbled across this:

Image via katyregnier.blogspot.com

O.M.G.  First off, the color of those Chucks is to die for.  I recognize it immediately as a color that only comes with the ones custom made on the site (for a good chunk more than you can purchase them at retailers).  Second, the bride.  Wow.  She’s stunning and she pulls off those Chucks WELL.  Like, ridiculously well.  Is that a purple sash I spy that perfectly matches her purple Chucks?  Um, excuse me, can I just be you please?

Sorry.  Moment of weakness.  Anyway, some more Googling revealed that it is OFTEN not just the groomsman that wear the Chucks.  Not at all, in fact.

Image via budgetbride.com

Image via philadelphia-weddingphotography.com

Image via vowdoo.files.wordpress.com

Image via www.furiousphotographersblog.com

And it got me to thinking about it.  Ultimately, I think I’d be happier with my girls in something a little more girly (we’d been tossing around the idea of dressy flip flops) and I think they would too.  But the bride and groom Chucks have me swooning.  And I haven’t found that pair of purple peeptoe kitten heels that I’ve been scouring the internet for just yet.

What do you think?  Chucks on the guys?  Chucks on the girls?  Chucks on everyone?

We made our own Save the Dates and they really turned out to be a labor of love.  I doubt we’ll be taking the same route with our invitations only because, though they seemed relatively easy, it took forever to get these suckers done and in the mail!  So, let’s do a little break down, shall we?

We went through a few hurdles to get these done, the first being that people weren’t reading them properly.  Eventually we said eff it and went with our original design as is.  People would figure it out, even if it took them a time or two of reading it.

All images via me!

I loved the relationship timeline idea and Ritchie quickly agreed that they were the way to go for us.  As we brainstormed over what points in our relationship to hit, we realized that even more interesting than our actual relationship was the story of how we missed each other through nearly all of college.  We threw in a little play on words and eventually came up with what I found to be an awesome, original, and very “us” take on the timeline.  I also think this is great because most of our guests don’t know how we met, just that it was at college.  The summer after graduation I basically showed up next to Ritchie at a family function and he was like, “This is Jess.  We’re moving to California next month.”  So here’s the chance for everyone to learn about the beginning of us.

After that debacle, and once they were already at the printer’s, I realized that envelopes to fit them in were kind of impossible to find. I had based the size off of a template on a web site with accompanying envelopes, but when I went through the steps to order them, they were sold out.  Oops.  I then embarked on a search for envelopes that would accommodate our size.  When Ritchie suggested shrinking the Save the Dates I adamantly refused because A) they were already at the printers (despite them not actually being printed yet) and B) the text was small enough as is- I didn’t want anyone to complain that they could barely read it.  After a long search, I finally found envelopes that would fit, though they weren’t exactly what I was looking for.  I would have preferred top loading envelopes instead of side loading, and I would have liked for them to be cheaper, but hey, they were gray which matches our color scheme, and I’d been looking for a while, so I said eff it and went with them.

Then there was the issue with using a local place and waiting for the printers to be fixed.  But that all worked out in the end.

Top it off with an adorable return address stamp I’d ordered from NoteTrunk’s shop on Etsy and we were ready to roll.

Done and done!

For the addresses, we printed straight to white Avery labels we already had and I thought they looked just fine.  I used a roll of stamps left over from one of our jobs.  They were flags.  I didn’t care, postage is postage, and they were free.  I also noticed that most people take their Save the Dates and invitations to the post office, but this busy working girl shoved every last one of them into the small mail box in the lobby of her building on her way to work.  And ya know what?  They made it to their destination just the same.  Flags and all.  So there.

The reactions we’ve gotten have been really positive.  Everything from “this is the cutest thing ever” to “I feel like I know you guys really well now!”  I’m loving it and I’m really glad we went this way instead of our gut reaction which was the ever popular magnet.

Budget Breakdown:
Design and Labor: Free
Printing, Paper, and Cutting: $26.89
Envelopes: $49.50
Return address stamp: $24.90
Purple Ink Pad: $3.49
Labels: Free
Stamps: Free

Grand Total for 100 Save the Dates: $104.78 coming out to roughly $1.05 each.

What a deal!  And relatively painless- it took one night of watching Chuck to stuff and stamp all these envelopes.

With this project out of the way I still have about 100 more, but at least everyone knows about it and can start planning.  The texts, FB messages, and phone calls with questions are rolling in.  Ack!  This thing is totally real!