9: Top O'the Cake to ya!

So because I am incredibly cool and have so much of a life outside of this wedding (sarcasm alert), I have joined several online communities dedicated solely to wedding planning. These are venues in which women far and wide come to discuss their weddings, to bitch about their future inlaws and to agonize over critical decisions with other brides across the nation (“Should my centerpieces be 37 inches or 25 inches tall? What about their width?”).

There is even a fancy lingo that you must know in order to be accepted as a true bride-to-be planner. Acronyms such as “FH” and “BM” float around these threads and are used without a second thought. For any bride who is considering getting into this line of planning, I will share a guide with you so that you aren’t lost:

FH = Future Husband (just when I figured out how to spell fiancé correctly!)
MOH = this one is pretty straight forward and means Maid of Honor
BM = not what you think, this one means Bridesmaid
BM = confusing huh? This is a contextual one, it could mean Bridesmaid OR it could mean Best Man, pay attention to usage and the pronouns associated with it
GM = Groomsmen
FMIL = Future Mother in Law
FBIL = Future Brother in Law and so on (though every time I see this, my brain automatically names that individual Bill, I just can’t help it.
STD = This is by far the best one for obvious reasons. I mean, seriously, if there was a good reason not to go trough with a wedding, you'd think it'd be that. I saw this one floating around the forums so many times that I wated to get up, go wash my hands and see a doctor. But all was ok my loves because as it turns out, that acronym means Save The Date!

I encourage you to bookmark this and check back frequently for reference. (don’t fall behind).

Here’s one that has stumped me however, and because I don’t want to be seen as a noob (and also because I am too lazy to bother) I haven’t yet asked for clarification about this. Some girls say FI in reference to their FH’s (check the reference guide for a refresher on what FH stands for!). What on Earth does the I represent? I have no idea. Advice anyone?


So the other day I was perusing one of these communities when I saw what is perhaps one of the cutest things of all time ever (and that’s saying a lot because I have seen Ryan (aww) but more accurately, I have this as my desktop picture):



What did I find that could possibly top that?

The answer, my loves, is handmade cake-toppers that are designed to look like the bride and groom.

Yes, you read that right, your eyes are not deceiving you, something THAT CUTE does exist. And it is because of the fact that I have very little life outside of these wedding communities and the internet that I was able to find them. Thank God.

These cake toppers are done by Nicole Clark, an artist who I believe is working out of Ontario. She is amazing and can even include pets in the cake-toppers for a small additional fee. Our birds, for example, would only cost $5 extra per bird, a price that I consider to be quite the bargain (and which is only a mere 8.33333% of what we spent per bird in the first place when we bought them).

I emailed her an excited and enthusiastic message last night praising her work and asking for more information. Afterwards, I literally fell asleep with visions of mini-Groom Ryan and mini-Bride me standing atop our cake.

My dreams came true this morning when I awoke to a friendly email from Nicole in my inbox. She explained the procedure and assured me that I am not, in fact, emailing her too soon because she is booked through March of 2008. This made me proud of myself for being ahead of the game and being able to snag her services before she is booked. (Not to mention that I am more than a little excited to brag about this in my own post in the planning community; brides with weddings before March 08 shall turn green in their pretty white gowns with the envy they feel when they see my precious cake toppers).

Now, somehow (and the reason for this eludes me completely), not everyone shared my total enthusiasm for this part of the process at first. For example, this morning while visiting my parents, I asked my father if he wanted to see the cake toppers. He replied instantly and almost without hesitation a brisk and firm “No.” and then quickly tried to leave the room. After a whine and a bribe (on my part), I was able to convince him to come take a look. Cuteness prevailed my friends because at first sight, my father was swayed.

With a laugh he commented on how cute they truly were.

He then asked me if we were going to have versions of he and my mother made for the cake as well – aren’t we a family after all? What about his two dogs?

Clearly this was the part of the process where I ended the conversation.

Nevertheless, the point is that we have found our future cake toppers and I can cross another crucial item off of the list in my massive bridal planner (where is that thing anyway?). I know that you will all rest easier with the knowledge that I will not have a barren and depressing wasteland of a cake top at my wedding.

So with that I venture off to another day of working and planning and never fear, I will keep you all updated. I know how anxiously you await the next portion of this journey.

love and cake-toppers (is there a difference?),

Rhian

8: Save the Whales…I mean, the Date! Save the Date! (and Ferris)

So while it seems impossible that anything could be so amazing, there is even MORE to this story of the magical venue and the perfect wedding plans. "How can that be?", you ask? Read on dear reader, read on...

We viewed Venito Perfecto (not proper Italian) for the first time in October. This was a wedding planning faux pas (gasp!) because it was only 11 months out from the date we had originally wanted which was September 27th 2008. (interjection: this is another piece of wedding lingo to become accustomed to - someone will ask you "how far out are you?". The first time this happened to me, I thought they were rhetorically stating how cool I was by using 1950s lingo. They weren’t. It means, “how far away is your wedding in terms of months?” weddings, like babies, are measured by their months. The typical gestation period for a wedding is between 12 and 18 months)

So anyway, we were only 11 months out. This is dangerous, wedding-shark-infested-water to be in without a venue. The solution usually becomes: sacrifice your venue or sacrifice your date.

And that is the twist that our happy little fairy-tale took when Perfect Venue didn’t have our date.

Cue sad music and an agonizing decision, right? Nope! Wrong.

In all honesty, Ryan and I weren’t really feeling our date anyway. Ryan picked it because it corresponded with my lucky numbers and we needed an answer to give to the five hundred people asking us what the date was. Truthfully, we both had the nagging intuition all along that that day of next year was probably not going to belong to us.

I remember asking him recently, “do you think we’re really going to get married on September 27th?” In typical us fashion, we both kinda shrugged and moved on. With us, nothing is ever certain, even the answer to things like “Do you think you are going to keep your first name as Ryan your whole life?” or “Do you think I will decide not to quit my job without warning this week?”

At least we’re exciting.

So flashback story time: A week or two before the venue was discovered in the rough, we were up really late talking. This memory has dream-like qualities and is foggy in my mind. That leads me to wonder if I were drinking when the event took place but Ryan assures me that I was just tired. Either way, details are elusive but I remember us talking about how we wanted to get married on a different, specific date AND how much fun it would be to celebrate our wedding AND that date at the same time.

That night, in my late-night-exhausted-drunken state and Ryan’s whatever state, we jokingly decided to switch our whole plan and get married instead on the date we came up with. We were excited and fell asleep shortly thereafter.

The next morning, Ryan looked at me and said, “S0, did we change the date?” I guess all of the excitement had worn off by then because I said “I don’t know if we should or not…” and we let it go at that.

Until the Fates stepped in on the day we found The Venue .

That day, after touring the magical building and nearly crying of joy, we sat down to discuss availability. I kept my little fingers crossed hoping that somehow everything would work out and we would get Our Date (at this point, I thought Our Date was still Sept 27)

I got my wish and we did get Our Date. It just wasn’t the one I misguidedly thought was supposed to belong to us.

Why? Because they didn’t have the 27th of September. Oh no.

But they did have our other date, our magical, swirly, should-be-a-song-in-a-musical date.

The 31st of December.

That's right, my dears, New Years Eve!

So you’ve heard it now and you’ve heard it right. We have changed the date hallelujah!

And our wedding will be held on December 31, 2008.

How lucky are we that we get to begin our whole new lives with a whole new year!? So here’s to December 31st, 2008.

Love and confetti falling from the ceiling,

Rhian

7: Location, Location, Location.

Once upon a time, about one month ago, a young bride-to-be with dark hair and dark eyes and an increasingly exasperated disposition threw her hands into the air and with a pout and a glisten in her eye said, “I don’t think we will ever find a place to have this wedding!”

She called her mother crying and said “I give up. I am going to Vegas. I will be married by Elvis and Ryan will wear a powder blue tuxedo with frills and I will have showgirls as my bridesmaids.”

Her mother was a kind and loving woman and was used to these tirades from the young bride-to-be and so she simply sighed and said “Love, you must be patient, you must relax. Go run a bath, I am confident that something magical will happen soon.”

And so the bride-to-be took a bath and went to bed. The next morning she decided to do a proactive activity because she has a background in self-improvement and knew that she wasn’t being very empowered by her recent actions. The bride-to-be took out a notebook and a pen and wrote at the top of the page:

My ideal wedding venue

And underneath it she described this ideal wedding in as much detail as she could. It said something like the following:

My ideal wedding venue would feel more like a fancy dinner party than a big ballroom event. There would be many rooms, there would be a fireplace that me and Ryan could get married in front of. Everyone could mingle with one another and there would be a ballroom for dancing. It would be elegant and gorgeous, unique and beautiful. It wouldn’t be one giant, hotel ballroom with giant ugly tables. There wouldn’t be one of those ugly dance-floors in the middle of the room with the ugly wood veneer. This wedding would feel elegant, personal and beautiful.

The next day, her mother sent her an email with a few different wedding venues to check out. The first one she looked at was a gorgeous mansion that glowed with yellow bricks and spire rooftops. There was a Great Hall, a Music Room, a Library and a Ballroom.

The Bride-to-be cried tears of joy and immediately made an appointment to see the venue – that day. She whisked her mother and father there, toured the venue and gasped at its beauty. This place felt just right.

That night they returned with her groom in tow. They toured the venue together and he fell just as in love with the venue as she did. They had found it – it was their castle for their romantic and fairy tale wedding. It was magic – just like the bride’s mother had said it would be.

And so it is booked and the wedding shall take place there.

But wait…there’s more…

Love and happily ever after’s have to start somewhere,

Rhian

6: blogs are back!

So I have unfortunately been a bad bride-to-be-blogger and have allowed my blogging to lapse in the months since planning our engagement party. I am vowing here and now that said lapse will end and I will continue writing and updating with the steadfast intention of creating memories for the future!

That said, there is a lot to cover and catch up on so off we go:

First, in this blog, I would like to address where we left off: The Engagement Party

The Engagement Party was held on September 15th at my parents house. It was a beautiful event.

My parents had decided to repair and basically redo their entire house in the weeks leading up to The Engagement Party. Not only did my fiancé get in a lot of male bonding with my brother, father and brother in law by putting in a brand new floor in the dining room, but I got in a lot of bonding with my mother by going to fabric stores and rearranging all of her furniture. I even got to put my Interior Decorating skills to work (my first time using those skills since I got certified in 2005) and rearrange her parlor.

The party was a vast success and was catered by Lee’s Hoagie House, Acme and Chic Fil A; exactly what we wanted.

And I learned some valuable lessons (some of which I will be taking with me to the wedding):
- Beer Pong on the Porch doesn’t work
- Ryan and I didn’t get time to see one another at all, seriously, we barely spoke
- Those gossipy cousins that I dislike, will remain gossipy and dislikable even at nice events and will therefore not be receiving invitations to the wedding.
- If I don’t eat anything at all, I will get tipsy from one glass of wine
- Flower petals in the pool sink quickly to the bottom
- Unless you tell people to sign the signature photograph and frame set, they will not. A pen is not enough.
- Photocakes are pretty in concept and kindof scary in execution – at least when the photo being used is an emo-tastic one of the two of us without smiles

It was wonderful though and I make it a point to use one of my new glasses every single night.

Love and there's more to come,

Rhian

5: parties, invitations and babies! oh my!

Throwing an Engagement Party is like having a mini wedding. We’ve invited almost all of the same people who are on our guest list, we have spent quite a bit of money on invitations, I’ve had three meetings with my mother about color schemes, fabrics and décor and we are checking out caterers. Suddenly I am feeling more well equipped to continue planning The Main Event.

We chose very cute Engagement Party Invitations. They feature a cartoon man hoisting up a diamond ring the size of the invitation. They are very DIY invites and came with a feature that allows us to print our own text on them so that they are extra personalized.

So here’s The Scene: Ryan and I determining what to write on our Engagement Party Invitations
The Setting: My home office, 10:00PM at night

Ryan and I have just spent two hours rearranging the furniture in my home office so that it is “perfect” for me to work from home and make us millions of dollars for this wedding. We are sweaty and I have just completed a mini-spaz about the wires on the back of my computer being “a mess”. Ryan has helped me rectify this situation with twist ties.

Rhian: OK, so lets do these invitations
Ryan: right

He sits in Patrick, our chair from Ikea that came with its own name, and I sit on my rolling office chair across from him.

Rhian: Write something clever…
Ryan: (writing) Please join us as we celebrate the engagement of Rhian White and Ryan Lockard…
Rhian: (reading from upside down) That isn’t clever? You’re copying that directly from the samples!
Ryan: This is my method. This is how I brainstorm. This is how I do it.
Rhian: OK, OK, I just didn’t want you to think that that was I meant by clever.
Ryan: Thank you, I know.

A few minutes pass. I have spent those minutes looking up love and romance quotes.

The phone rings and it is one of my sisters. She is nine months pregnant so I answer the phone by asking her if she’s going into labor. She laughs and says she isn’t. She then proceeds to inform me that she will not be in attendance at my engagement party because she “already knows” that The Baby will be needing her every moment between the hours of 6:00 and 10:00 PM on September 15th, 2007.

I am then enlightened with a detailed conversation about breast feeding and pumping and for another time I reconsider this marriage route (I’m totally kidding). I laugh it off and tell her I understand but I know there is a twinge of unrest in my voice because I can feel it in my chest. I just would’ve liked for my sister to be there, but it’s ok. I’ll be engaged for a year, so I’m sure we can celebrate more another time.

After I hang up the phone, Ryan triumphantly announces that he has come up with a clever beginning. I ask him to share it with me and he reads proudly:

“Rhian and Ryan: it could only be better if our names were spelled the same.”

And that, my friends is how we ended up going with a romantic quote on our invitations.

(although in Ryans defense, it WAS really clever)

Love and I have another Dress Shopping appointment tonight,

Rhian

4: Progress = Printed Engagement Party Invites!

Stop the presses, hold onto your hats, do other cliché things that indicate something big has happened: Ryan and I have made some measurable progress with this wedding thing!

So we haven’t found our venue, I have not found a dress, I still do not know what my colors will be or who any of our vendors are BUT

1. We have each asked almost all of our bridal/groom parties
2. We have scheduled our engagement portraits
3. AND
4. We have scheduled our Engagement Party!

This, my friends, is progress.

We have yet to ask my brother and sister in law into our party but after that, I think we’ve managed to accumulate attendants! Oh wait, actually, Ryan still has to find an 8th person (yes, I said 8th…this ain’t no smalltime affair, kids). We joked about posting an ad on craigslist inviting interested parties to apply. I'll keep you updated.

I have also come to the conclusion that The Engagement Party satiates my need for a wedding in general. Earlier today, I suggested with a sugary laugh that we should just bring an officiator, I should wear white and we should just do it there, while all are assembled. It would be like a surprise party. “Surprise! We’re actually getting married now! You’ve been punked! Fork over some additional money as a gift and have another drink on me!”

Not that I am in that much of a hurry. Occasionally, while flipping through Modern Bride or Elegant Bride or Sophisticated Bride or Philadelphia Bride or Freakout Bride magazine I’ll casually ask Ryan “Are we sure that we want to be married? Isn’t married just code word for “boring and unattractive”? Can I still dye my hair blonde on a whim if we’re married? Can I still go out dancing with Cindy? Can we still be wild and reckless and randomly hop a flight to wherever? Can Ryan still walk out of his jobs without giving notice? Can we still have throw down, drag out fights for no reason and then end up makingout furiously in the corner five minutes later?”

Ryan assures me that all of the above and more is still possible- "even if we're married". He has vowed that we will create our version of "Married" and that it will not be lame and boring. "Don't you remember how much you hated "Relationship" at first?" he'll ask me and I'll nod as I recall a conversation in the car when we first became "official" in which I asked the identical questions above only I used the word Relationship and not Marriage. Ryan calmed the storm of my fears then too by convincing me that relationship could be fun and exciting and that it did NOT have to mean tied down or boring.

Ryan says that our version of Married will not involve a manicured lawn, draperies that match the carpeting, scheduled date nights and long conversations about stocks. We are not planning to settle down in a house anywhere, we will not be getting a minivan or a fence. "Married", Ryan promises, is not a sentence to being ordinary and boredinary.

I believe him and it is only because I am able to trust him that I know that it will be OK. And trust him I do. He is in fact, the only person on this planet I could ever imagine marrying (which I guess is why it's good that I am?). In the words of my sister-in-law who didn't believe my brother was telling the truth when he told her I was engaged: "I always thought you would stay single forever!"

I did too. Which is why, incidently, marrying Ryan is the right thing.

I mean, it was less than a year ago that I was out at the bar in my short, tattered denim skirt, layer upon layer of necklaces and makeup with long curly blonde hair cascading down my back. I had perfected single and I loved it.

And then I met Ryan and as much as I tried to fight it, there was just something about him that made me actually fall in love. Suddenly, I stopped returning the calls of other guys, I stopped keeping my schedule open. I would commit to dinner with Ryan way in advance, I would be secretly sad if he didn't automatically assume we were seeing each other that night.

I tried to deny the truth, I tried to keep on pretending that I wasn't so smitten. I would force myself out without him and would then find myself texting him all night, creating elaborate schemes to "run into him" wherever I happened to be with my friends.

Sometimes I still look at him and wonder how it happened. Two days ago I woke up and realized I was in the suburbs and there was a ring on my finger. A year ago, that experience would have made me launch into a panic attack that was Emergency Room worthy. Now though I just wonder with amazement how all of these pieces fell into place. And I know that it is because of the fact that those thoughts dont send me into a hysterical panic that this is the right thing.

and hell, even if I do panic, there is no one else who would ever be able to calm my panic or let me have the biggest temper tantrum ever like Ryan would. That man, I swear, knows exactly how to handle me.

So anyway, all is well and we are taking this one day at a time. Ain’t nothing gonna break our stride, nobody’s gonna hold us down. Oh no.

Love and we’ve got to keep on movin,

Rhian

3: Love and French Fries

My maid of honor texted me this morning and told me that she had an incredibly vivid dream in which I ran away to Vegas and got married. Apparently I’m really putting that out into the atmosphere and it’s catching on.

I have calmed down in recent days however and haven’t been nearly as frantic or maniacal about these wedding plans. In fact, I’ve learned to embrace and love the wedding again. My sister called me from a train station in Jersey last night and suggested looking into the Spirit of Philadelphia as a possible venue. I am considering all options though I truly would like a space that is less that $100 per person for my 200 people party. Any thoughts?

Ryan and I had a conversation in the car this morning while I drove him to work about possible venue sites. It went something like this:

Rhian the Bride: I would like our reception site to be somewhere that really means something to us, or has some value to us or can embody our relationship overall somehow.
Groom Ryan: Yea, that makes sense
Rhian the Bride: I don’t want us to get married somewhere that we feel completely disconnected from. At least, not if we can avoid it.
Groom Ryan: OK
Rhian the Bride: Does that make sense?
Groom Ryan: Yea. It makes perfect sense, we don’t want it to be just anywhere.
Rhian the Bride: Right. Well, I mean, I guess it could be just any random place but if that happens then we have to spend time there making it our own by consciously spending time there cultivating memories of the place, or something.
Groom Ryan: Right.
Rhian the Bride: But ideally, I’d like us to get married somewhere that already has meaning. Do we have anywhere like that? Does anywhere matter to us? Where are our special places?
Groom Ryan: Um…

*time elapse*

Groom Ryan: OK well…the pretzel park in Manayunk? [referring to a dog park in Manayunk that is home to a giant statue of a pretzel. We once went for a walk there and only remember that walk because we took pictures while on it]
Rhian the Bride: it has to be inside. And big enough for 200 people.
Groom Ryan: Right, I’m just listing places that mean something to us.
Rhian the Bride: OK
Groom Ryan: Chick fil a?
Rhian the Bride: what?
Groom Ryan: the movie theater?
Rhian the Bride: Are you kidding me?
Groom Ryan: Umm…Penn State?
Rhian the Bride: we can’t have our wedding at Penn State, it’s in the middle of no where, no one would come.
Groom Ryan: they have satellite campuses.

So clearly, we have no idea where to have this deeply meaningful, intensely personal, always-will-be-memorable, wedding. We apparently have only one actual “special place” and it was at a crowded college campus in the middle of the state where we exchanged our first kiss. Either that or next to a big stone pretzel in the smoggy hills of Manayuonk or at the home of the original chicken sandwich. I am not enthusiastic.

If I had my way and the Wedding Gods smiled upon me they would wave the wand clutched in their perfectly manicured hands and grant me an art deco building with an awesome interior. Or maybe somewhere circular. I don’t know anymore. All I do know is that I just want somewhere that will look beautiful in the evening, is big enough, wont cost me more than four years at university and isn't tacky.

The fact that this request seems impossible causes frustration to bubble up within me. I want to fall to my knees in the middle of a stone, urban courtyard and yell towards the sky “is it too much to ask?!” while my anguished cries cause a dozen pigeons to flap away hurriedly and the camera pulls back to reveal that I am alone in a sea of careless people who are going about their regular lives without a second thought.

But, like I said, I am feeling better about all of this and so I keep my faculties about me, I drive calmly next to Ryan when he suggests we exchange our everlasting vows at the drive-thru of a fast food franchise and I allow myself to remember for a moment what everyone has been telling me: that what really matters is me and Ryan and our ardent love for one another.

That and having an open bar at the reception.

Love and thank god this ring is so big,

Rhian