When is it okay to become a bridezilla? Is it ever?

via: The Durtty Bride

I feel like I have stayed incredibly up beat during the planning process. I’ve had two maids of honors step down, familial issues on both sides, a dress that disappeared then re-appeared only to not fit me at all, mailing issues, money issues and on top of all that I moved to Lincoln Nebraska and began a Doctoral program.

I have maintained a great attitude through it all. I really have, don’t judge me.

But now, now I feel like perhaps I should be a bridezilla.

Why? Because our pastor has recently called us to let us know that he can’t do our wedding.

Honestly, I feel bad for the guy. He’s taken over as a head pastor, and as such has stepped into a messy problem. And the church is telling him he can’t leave for a Saturday to do our wedding.

Have I mentioned that we are 12 days out? I didn’t? We are.

So, my question comes in because I feel like a doormat. I don’t know what else can go wrong. Well, I do, and it probably will go wrong. I suppose what I really don’t know is how to handle it anymore.

A friend of mine was just in a wedding the past weekend and she recounted to me the horror that this bride was. Ignoring birthdays, not providing enough food, being a jerk for the most part.

But her dress showed up. She didn’t have anyone step down. Her pastor was there.

I get that this is an incredibly irrational train of thought, but I would be lying to say it’s not there and present in my head.

So, would it be okay for me to fly off the handle yet?

Just as a side note, another friend of ours, in response to this newest conundrum said: “Why can’t you believe it? It is exactly the sort of thing that would happen to you guys.”

Touché my dear friend, touché.

We used Budget Savvy Bride’s idea and turned it into our own, much like we’ve done with everything else.  While I don’t always agree with her ideology, she is super creative.

Anyhow, here is our finished product:

I am super proud of them. See those birds? Those are hand-stamped, by moi! As are those vines, but that was a bit easier. They were also cut and glued by hand by myself and my maid of honor, as well as Chet. Chet did the labels, see that thing in the back?

Man, that was hard work. But I think they ended up being worth it.

We started out on Thursday night rolling the RSVP’s. See those vines? That actually took about an hour to do for the 80 or so we did.

Then, on Friday, we started stamping birds.

This is the Darth Vader trick. It’s patented, taught to me by Charlotte.  See, when you color the birds red, you have to wipe off the feet and the beak and color them yellow. By that point, the red ink has dried a bit, so you must blow on it. That’s right. Blow on it. The heat from the air re-wets the ink and thus, you get to stamp them. By doing that, you get these adorable invites…

Tell me those aren’t adorable! If you don’t like them, well, don’t talk to me.

Now, onto the envelope wrappers. I wish I could remember where I found them, but I can’t currently. Shoulda bookmarked it. Anyhow, we ended up doing these becuase my wonderful friend Charlotte, who had volunteered to do calligraphy had something come up and she couldn’t do it. Well, I can’t do calligraphy, and neither can Chet. So, we opted to use our great stamp as well as my handwriting. It was a pain in the butt, however, it turned out lovely.

Charlotte also paid for the paper as well as the bird and vine stamps plus ink. That obviously was a huge cost reduction for us. In total, we paid for the stamps to mail out (and purchased them when they were only .42!).  We also bought the sticky paper for the envelopes and I paid to have them printed in the design center by my office.

Let me pause here: stamps. Sara, over at 2000DollarWedding at one point in time said that she was upset because they couldn’t afford photo stamps for their invitations. When I read that, I thought to myself “Are you crazy? That’s what you’re worried about?!” I was definitely quick to judge. Then, I had to send out our invitations. I had these beautiful things, gorgeous, really, and I had to put those ugly forever stamps on them. While they weren’t panther stamps, I still was not please, at all. It was kind of like the brown lace. However, this time, I couldn’t change it. It’s still driving me crazy.

Moving on….

Personally, while I think it was cheaper to do them myself it was a pain in the butt. Honestly, if I had to do it over again, I would set aside more money for sending the invites out to be printed. It would just be better. I am not a crafty lady, so this was just too much for me. Yes, they are adorable. No, I would never, ever, ever, do it again.

But then again, should something happen to me and Chet… I wouldn’t plan another wedding. Nope. Sure wouldn’t. But that’s for another post.

Sources:
Envelope Mall for the RSVP envelopes and the mailing envelopes. We had originally intended on doing postcards, but the font was too small. Oh well.
Stampin’ Up! for the stamps and the paper.
For printing, cutting, and gluing, we used stuff around my parents house. My mom is a super crafty lady so she has lots of neat things.

Phew. That post is done.

First topic of the post: Flowers.
These are still a bit up in the air. I’m not really into flowers. They make me sneeze and cost  a LOT of money. And, like everything else, we’re planning on DIYing the flowers, just because it helps cut the cost down some. Since we were going to handle it ourselves, I had considered scrounging the craft stores for pretty silk flowers that look would good in the center of the table(s). And then, like with everything, I started thinking about having to cut the wire stems and shape them and… my head began to hurt.

But, eureka!  Sometime this week, I found this post by A Backyard Wedding. I can’t remember how I found it, and I don’t really care, at all. I’m just stoked I did.

“Nicole, why on earth are you ‘stoked’ you found that post?”, you may be wondering. Because, dear friend, I get all of my inspiration from blogs. And her wedding = uh-mazing! It was a backyard shin-dig (which you might have guessed), the kind that I would love to have if we had a house, or knew someone who had a house big enough.

But! Within this little treasure of a post, she provides links to The Flower Exchange and to a video on how to create bouquets. Now, the flower exchange seems pretty awesome, and legit. Both of which are good things. She said her experience was good with them and the flowers lasted forever. Yay!!

Centerpiece inspiration:

So, I began browsing. And they have these wedding combos. For example, the one I think we may go with is this:

-100 Roses (your choice)
- 60 stems gerberas (any color choice)
- 10 stems of hydrangeas (only blue or white available)
- 5 Salal Tips
- 5 Bear grass
30 bunches per box
$253.00

We’re still trying to figure out the “bunches per box thing”. I’ve sent them an e-mail and am waiting for a reply. But! I think this is awesome.

They also sell Baby’s Breath for $10.00 for a bunch of 6 or sixty stems. For this, of course:

via: Once Wed

Next up: Catering
ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH. That’s about all I can say about that. Actually, it’s not.

Since we’re going through the university, we have to use the university catering. No problem. When they want to, they’re food is delicious. Absolutely delicious. We’re not talking about any kind of cafeteria-food-that-I-have-to-eat-as-a-freshman-which-makes-me-gain-45lbs*. No, this is good stuff.

If you could ever meet with them. No joke, we’ve been trying to meet with the catering director since March. She canceled our date in March because she was too busy. She said she would call in a week, and never called. So we called her in April. Set up an appointment, she was too busy, canceled. Said she would call. Never called. (See a pattern evolving?)

So, I called her yesterday and said look, “I’m graduating, we’re leaving, we can’t be back before July, and then on August 10th, we’re leaving the state and won’t be back until November… for the wedding.” Her response? Oh, well, let’s meet at 10. Great! Perfect.

Not even an hour later, she calls us back, and guess what?! She’s too busy. But, she can squeeze us in between 4:30 and 5 but closer to 5 because she has another meeting. Are you effing kidding me?

She then asks us if we’ve looked at their menu online. Online?! (Side note: they have a fantastic option to order your food online and then they verify it and whatever, it’s great, when you’re planning student organization stuff. Or minor events.) My response, which was a bit curt, was along the lines of: this is a wedding, we need to discuss what we want, alcohol service, set up, our cake service, etc. I cannot do that online, we have to talk to you, in person; is there anyone else we could meet with? She said that it had to be her because she didn’t know who would be there in November.

So then she gets all nosy and asks why we can’t be back in Huntsville before July, don’t we live here. And I explained that we do, but we’re graduating and moving, so it’s not possible. And then she said well, you’re moving back in August? NO!!!!!!!! WE’RE MOVING OUT OF STATE! Oh, well why are you having your wedding here.

I was speechless. But, I persevered. However, we’re not meeting with her until July I guess. Whatever. Chet suggested calling someone we know who is higher up and having her tell us what to do. Despite how annoyed I am with the catering director, I don’t want to get her into trouble, which that very well may. Any suggestions?

Edit: she called us back and said that we could meet Friday or Saturday. Really? She made it sound like it was so difficult for her to meet with us, and she’s such a martyr for doing it with commencement. Yeah, well lady, I’m graduating with family coming in. I can’t meet with you. Perhaps we should have done this in April, no?

Finally: Life as it it.
Y’all can skip this part. It’s just me being sentimental, a bit. No really, just go comment and don’t worry about this part.

I’m officially done with my undergraduate work…. and I don’t know how I feel about it. I’ve been waiting for this moment for about 4 years, but now that it’s here, I’m nervous! I don’t know what’s coming up next or what to expect. I am going to miss my friend severely. It’s going to be so strange to have to write a new script for my life, and I don’t know how ready I am to do it. I try not to get all sentimental, but still… oi vey.

And besides that, I’m packing, and dealing with moving and everything. We’ve just about sold all that we wanted to sell, which I am so happy about. Now we have to put our lives from the past three years into carefully marked boxes so they can being their journey to my parent’s home and then Lincoln. It’s all just very, very weird. How do y’all cope with big life changes?

*Yes, it really did. Bastards.

Has anyone ever really tried to bring together a list of their closest friends and family, thus ensuring that they are surrounded by those people on their wedding day. It is not easy at all… and I mean that.

And venues.. oh lordy… that is something else. We checked out Austin Hall on our University campus on Friday, and I would love that. We both would. That would be our ideal place, because SHSU means so much to us. But, if we get married at Austin Hall, a huge chunk of our guest list would probably not be there — thus successfully knocking it down from about 100 to 50 or so.

But, then of course, there is Austin where we could get married. At a children’s museum, a sculpture garden, and the list just goes on and on. This would definitely ensure that a lot of people would be there, but what should we give up?

Ah, and the budget. I mean really, this is just a pain. We have an idea of what the budget should look like; but how, exactly, do you do a budget when you don’t know the venue? Because, as previously discussed, the venue will dictate how many people will be there.

It’s such a vicious circle.