So the first major installment of planning was sending out our Save The Dates.  When we finalized our venue choice and got a series of potential dates, I compared that list to my spreadsheet of commencements for the summer.  Then I sent out an email to my family and closest friends asking about their availablity.  We finalized a date with Silver Bay, set up a wedding website on the Knot, and the next big step was to send out the STDs so that no one would have an excuse to not make it.

We had one of my closest friends (who will also be officiating our ceremony!) take these pictures for us - she's a very talented amateur photographer and she can be counted on to be game for just about anything.  I bought a second dress specifically for the photo shoot - it had a slight tear under one of the arms and I got it off eBay for something like $60 with shipping.  It arrived.  I bought a couple yards of tulle from Michael's for about $3 and bobby pinned it to my hair.  Oh, budget. I also determined that a crinoline really was necessary to give the dress the sort of floof it needed. Again, though, I was totally unwilling to shell out the money.  I wish we'd recorded the ridiculous outfit I wore instead... I had long johns on and then as many skirts as I owned on as as well.  I looked absolutely ridiculous without the dress on but that was not really the point, eh?

So the dress went on, and off we went to the farm.  After an afternoon of posing in the mud while wearing a huge white dress, we were all a little punchy, but we had fun!  I also brought a little black dress and jeans & black top for alternatives in case we felt like the wedding dress wasn't working the way we wanted it to.

We chose four pictures that we thought most lent themselves to the idea of the STDs, then I played with them in Microsoft Publisher and then my darling MOH printed them using a ultra-high-res photo printer.  This was the final result:

I'm really happy with the result.  They're definitely goofy - but so are we.  We wanted to have fun with this and poke a bit of fun at ourselves.   

We lined these PaperSouce envelopes with this PaperSource paper:

Slipped the magnet inside, prepared orange PaperSource mailing labels, and threw these babies in the mail!

I was really glad we did these - the vast majority of our guests will be travelling for the wedding, and I wanted people to at least have the date set aside and to have some info on the website so that they could start making plans early if need be.  Also it really forced both me and Missus to be sure that we had a complete guest list, with addresses, long before the wedding.

Reception to these was overwhelmingly positive.  They are very "us" and it seemed like people really appreciated that.  On the other hand, there was some confusion in various corners.  One of Missus' cousins called to ask if this was an elopement announcement, what with the dress and the veil and the rings that we're each wearing. No... Some people didn't get the point of having a website, so they didn't go, which would have cleared up these sorts of questions.  The capper, though, was when Missus' mom said that she knew people had thrown them away because they either a) looked like junk mail (with the shiny Papersouce envelope and our return address?) b) didn't recognize us in the picture (??) and didn't know why these strangers had sent them mail or c) beacuse they thought that 6.14.08 seemed like some sort of Bible verse. 

My only explanation for that reaction is... maladjustment.  FMNIL (future mother "not" in law) has always had a problem with Missus "lifestyle".  She'd known about our engagement for over 6 months, had been invited to be a part of the planning, venue hunting, etc., and always avoided involvement.  I think it was a bit of a shock to her to see that we weren't also embarassed about our wedding.  Also that suddenly it became clear to her how many people Missus is out to.  It was not FMNIL's most shining moment, and did zap a lot of the excitement out of the process for us.

Miss Bluebell, I love you. I love you for getting married in my precious Adirondacks, and I love you for loving my blog, and I love you for recommending it to Miss Gingerbread!  It makes me so happy to know that I made an impression on you....

I haven't blogged in a long time - once I didn't get picked up for WeddingBee my motivation to post slipped a little, and then I wound up done planning sooner than I thought.  We're about 10 weeks away from our wedding, now, and most of the decision making is done.  Not that I'm done with wedding stuff, to be sure... I'm feverishly working on our invitations, finally goaded Missus into choosing and buying her tux (it's perfect, I love it, and it should be arriving today!!!) and getting her tux-peeps measured.  I've done the unthinkable and am working on the second installment of our bridal party newsletter (when did I get to be THAT bride?).  Almost all of the bmaids have thier dresses, tho some are having difficulty narrowing down their options.  I had my first bridal shower this past weekend and it was just amazing... the theme was "Coffee, Conversation, and Celebration".  Pictures are starting to trickle in, here are a few:

Those are mini coffee cups made out of chocolate, with peanut butter filling as the coffee.  Our initals are handpainted onto the teapot.

The daisy plates were bought to match - our flowers at the wedding will be gerbera daisies.  In the back you can see raspberry chocolate scones, lemon pound cake, and chocolate biscotti.  This was the dessert - the food included a billion mini sandwiches, hummus & pita points, and lots of cheese.

One of the several rooms rearranged to look like a coffee shop

Us eating with my sister, the MOH at left, one of my BMs with her back to us, and my mom at right.

The present opening begins.  There's another of my BMs at left, and our goddaughter/flower girl drawing (she'd be "helping" in a minute), and the back of Missus' mom's head.  I'm the one in the dress.

I let the blog die, also, because I didn't have much of a readership - the people in my life who care about the wedding planning have been helping, and so I eventually just went back to blogging in my personal, all things blog.  If people are interested in reading, though, I'd make an enthusiastic comeback... leave me a comment if you'd read if I wrote.

I was notified this morning via email that I am not going to be a weddingbee.  I'm part disappointed and part relieved, and maybe a little bit miffed as well.  I'm disappointed not to have been chosen, but I am also relieved to not feel pressure to blog every day or to throw something up there Monday morning because I didn't blog all weekend.  So, it's probably for the best. 

Honestly, I was also a little worried about being the gay bee.  In general I find weddingbee to be a very supportive community, but its also a mostly anonymous one, and people feel less shame about being nasty when they're directing their comments to someone they don't know and can't see.  So, again, it's probably better.

I haven't decided what to do about this blog - if I should let it fold and just go back to posting wedding stuff on my personal blog or if I should keep using it as a resource.  I think it's been helping me keep my ideas straight - there are so many things going on that it's a little hard to remember all of my ideas!  So maybe I'll do that.

And certainly not being chosen as a bee won't keep me from planning during ALL of my spare time!