Category: Wedding Wednesday

Mr. and Mrs…. ????

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Let’s do a scandalous post today….

Let’s talk about last names.

I know I know… I can hear everyone get all awkward… or maybe that’s just me being awkward. Maybe everyone else is totally cool with it. If so, can you help me?

So the last name thing is a hot spot for me and I’ve blatantly shrugged it off over the past few weeks and months promising to deal with it later. Well, last weekend we had our last premarital counseling session with one of our officiants and we were working on planning the ceremony. He asked if we had thought about how we want to be introduced at the end of the ceremony (you know, after “You may kiss the bride,” there’s that part where you are announced as “for the first time ever…”). What’ll it be? Mr. and Mrs. [insert Cobalt’s last name here]? Cobalt [Cobalt’s last name] and Potassium [my last name]? Just Cobalt and Potassium, for the first time ever as husband and wife? The short answer is I don’t know.

For the entirety of my life, I always assumed that I would change my name to be my husband’s last name and become “Mrs. Whatever” because that is what you do. Then I even started joking about it and I was like Hey! My last name is cool! If he has a boring last name, then he should change his last name to match my awesome name… but then when it actually happened and I actually got engaged and actually had to think about changing my last name… it broke my heart. I have been Potassium [last name] for so long that it is part of my identity! Some of my nicknames even are based on that last name. It seemed like changing my name would be like changing my identity. Like lopping off my connection with my family and my past life and joining Cobalt’s family. I mean, I want to be a part of Cobalt’s family but not at the risk of completely losing my connection with my own. I know that is not what is going on here but it still seems weird to me that the girl is expected to do that but the guy doesn’t do anything like that for her family. I don’t know. These are the things that I think about.

So I’ve compiled a list of my feelings on this issue.
Reasons why Potassium doesn’t want to change her name

  • Read the above paragraph for all the emotional reasons Potassium is attached to her name: family, identity, etc.
  • I’ve published a paper in the scientific world with this name. And if you look up my last name in a certain scientific database, this paper along with papers published by my uncle and my grandfather pop up as well… Which is kind of cool. A nerdy family legacy if you will… Okay that is sort of a family issue but the real point here is that if I publish any other papers under any other name, then this one paper will be lost in a search for me and so people won’t have my complete paper publishing record… It’s a complicated science thing…
  • It’s a pain in the butt/very expensive to change your name!!!!! I don’t really think anyone LIKES going to the DMV so why would I purposely give myself a reason to have to go back there?

Reasons why Potassium does want to change her name

  • I still do kind of want to be Mrs. [Cobalt’s last name] because marriage is a joining of families and because it makes everything all tidy with kids and mail and checks and bills etc. Plus my mom didn’t change her last name and it made me feel like she didn’t want to be part of the family or something (it sounds stupid but it was kind of weird for me…)
  • I can keep my scientific name my maiden name so my papers could still be published under that name even if I legally had a new name.

I am sure there are plenty of other reasons to go in both categories but there are a few. Let’s discuss!

In other news, it is really exciting to get our RSVP postcards back in the mail every day.

In other other news, we are having problems coming up with the fortune for the inside of our fortune cookies. Any suggestions? Someone suggested that we put “lucky numbers” on the back that are 8, 4, and 12 (wedding date… hahaha) but what about the actual fortune? We have thought of jokes, trivia about the two of us, cute “ice breaker” questions like “When did you first meet Potassium/Cobalt?” and nothing has really stuck. Thoughts about those?

Okay… Here is your mission for today:

  1. What are your feelings about name changing?
  2. Be excited about RSVP postcards (and send yours in if you have one but otherwise just be excited)!!!
  3. Fortune ideas?

One more thing – the picture! It’s the cake for the bride and groom at the wedding Cobalt and I went to last weekend (hopefully a post about that coming soon!). Adorable, right? I love it. The groom’s mom made it too. Nice work!

Fake Married?

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Last week, Cobalt and I got the aluminum sizers for our wedding bands in the mail. We each got to pick three different sizes of the same width so we could wear them around for a while and figure out which size was the size for us. Cobalt had an easy time of it, one of his sizers fit perfectly and the other two were either too big or too small. So that worked out for him.
I had more of a challenge. Because this ring is so much thicker than my engagement ring, the largest size I picked out (which would have been too big for a skinny ring like my engagement ring) was actually a little small. It went on my finger just fine but then it didn’t want to come off. In fact, I actually hurt my left finger trying to get the sizer off, which is why we are wearing our sizers on our right hands in the picture. So last weekend, we got to go on a fun trip to one of our local jewelers so that I could ask about sizing. Turns out that the half size up fits much better, going on easily but coming off with just a little encouragement instead of yanking and pain. So yay! We shipped the sizers back on Monday along with our preferred sizes so crisis over. Whew.

Guess what else we mailed on Monday?! Allllll of our invitations. Yay! Saturday was a fun day full of envelope stuffing, fancy handwriting (aw yeah, calligraphy pens), and envelope licking…

We are headed to wedding number two of the summer this weekend and one of my blog friends is also getting married this weekend. So exciting!!! Any fun plans for your weekend? Natalie, I know what yours are… :):):)

Envelope Drama

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So when Cobalt and I designed our invitations months and months ago, I decided to go with 5×7 inch invitations, which would fit snugly into A7 envelopes (5.25 x 7.25). I figured that because A7 envelopes have a name (A7 envelopes), then they would clearly be easily located. This assumption turned out to be false. Cobalt and I went to a variety of office supply stores on Monday to get envelopes for the invitations he printed yesterday and all the stores had A2 envelopes (too small) and A9 envelopes (too big) but no A7 envelopes (just right!)… Booo. Luckily, the internet has a wide variety of A7 envelopes for sale. I chose envelopes.com (easy enough…) because they had a wide variety of fancy A7 envelopes for sale (and the ones we got were printed with 100% recycled paper! Score!).

On a related note, we have the invitations all printed out (Thanks to Cobalt for spending hourssss at Kinko’s yesterday!), we have stamps (thanks Cobalt for going to the post office yesterday…) and now whenever the envelopes show up, we can mail out our invitations (hopefully this weekend)…

Picture: Gustav the shark eyes the naked invitations. Quick envelopes! You’d better get here soon or Gustav will eat all the invitations! >_< Thanks Cobalt also for this picture!

Questions: a) Did you have envelope and/or invitation drama? How did you solve it?
b) Do you like my new header?
c) Tell me something exciting that is happening for you right now/soon/just happened! :)

How fortunate…

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So Tuesday nights Cobalt works for Geeks Who Drink. It’s a pub quiz company. Really fun quizzes! Look it up and see if there’s one near you. I highly recommend it (and not just because Cobalt works for them…). Anyway, so Tuesday nights he goes off to stump people with the quiz and I have a night to myself in our house to do whatever I want (dance party anyone?! ;)). Since last Tuesday night was spent sadly and frantically making a presentation for my annual committee meeting (grad school thing – your boss and two other faculty members listen to you talk about your work over the past year and give you suggestions/make sure you’re on track for graduating etc etc etc… sliiiiiightly intimidating?), I decided to make the most of this Tuesday night. First I made myself an epic feast (okay, it wasn’t that epic… but it was still delicious…) and then I decided to try out the pattern Cobalt and I found for making the felt fortune cookies we had in mind for our wedding favors. Turns out I actually had blue felt and green embroidery thread that are pretty close to our colors so my trial run pretty much shows you what the actual favor could look like. I like them! I think they look pretty neat. Now all we need to do is come up with what we want the fortunes to say… Thoughts? Potassium and Cobalt 2012? Or something sillier than that? What do you think of green fortune cookies with blue thread to go with these ones? Are you anti-fortune cookie? Tell me all your thoughts on this matter…

In other wedding planning news, the invitations are ready to be printed! Great job T for getting them ready right on time. :) Cobalt is (hopefully) headed to Kinko’s tomorrow to print a test invite and then it will be time for stamp and address acquiring! :)

Dress Fabric update (and a day in the city)!

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Hey everyone!
Wow… it’s been so long since I updated. Boooo grad school making me do stuff all the time. It’s not like you’re my job or anything… Anyway. Craziness has semi subsided so you get a post today! And it’s a fun one with LOTS of pictures! :)

Also, today is Cobalt’s birthday! Yay! Happy birthday Cobalt! I’m sorry grad school has made a bad fiancee out of me this week but I promise I will make it up to you tomorrow on your fancy birthday outing that I have planned! :D But that’s a secret (for now) so let’s talk about something else…

So last weekend, my mom and I went to go get fabric to make my wedding dress! When you want good fabric for something fancy like a wedding dress and you live in California, there is one really good place to go and that is Britex Fabrics in San Francisco!! So that’s where we went. Since neither my mom nor I really enjoy driving in the city, we decided to make a day out of it and take the San Francisco ferry into the city. It was really fun. Some pictures:

Here is a pic of Mom and me on the boat, ready to go!


Scrarmpl the shark got to come too but after this whole fiasco of him getting on the other side of the railing in an attempt to reach the water, he had to spend most of the boat journey in my purse…


The Golden Gate bridge was being shy/mysterious and decided to hide behind a cloud of fog…


San Francisco!!! So pretty. I like that I got the sail boat in the pic too..


It was windy on the boat… :-/

Anyway, then we got off the boat and walked to downtown San Francisco where Britex lives. It was a beautiful day in the city, perfect for walking around and hanging out with your mom. Britex had a HUUUUGE variety of fabrics in all sorts of colors and patterns. I was drooling as soon as we got inside. Anyway, we found a bunch of really nice silk satin fabrics in all sorts of colors. I actually found the perfect blue I wanted for my dress but when Mom and I put it up to my skin, we realized that perhaps light blue is not a very good color for me. She said I looked all ashy but I thought I just looked yellow. SO I gave up on the plan for a light blue dress and decided I would rather have a color that would make me look pretty instead of a color that I personally like but that makes me look weird on my wedding day. We found this amazing silk satin instead that looks really good with my skin color and it was sooooo soft. I can’t WAIT to have an entire dress made out of it. So exciting. Sorry though, we weren’t allowed to take pictures in the fabric store AND I can’t have pictures on here anyway because Cobalt reads this blog… So you all will just have to wait for that.
Anyway, we went upstairs (Britex has FIVE FLOORS of fabric, people… :):):)) and found some really nice fabric for my mom’s MOtB dress too. I also got some French netting and a comb for my veil/hairpiece thing. I loved chatting with the French netting ladies because they were so excited for me and we talked a lot about how to arrange the netting to make it be the perfect veil/hairpiece. They were very knowledgable and funny. :) So yeah. A good experience overall! And a great day. I love San Francisco. I feel bad though because being there reminded me of how much less I like Denver, CO… Sorry Colorado…
Here are some more pictures:


Beautiful day in a beautiful city. Look at those trees and the buildings and the sky! <3


Saw this guy at the grocery store at home… Totally made me want to buy those nectarines… Haha, such a sucker for shark things.


Cute bunny in Colorado… See, there are things I like about Colorado!

Anyway, that concludes my post for the day. I hope you guys are doing swimmingly! I am off to have lunch with Cobalt for his birthday!!!!! But while I do that, you should tell me some things… Like… what is your favorite city in the whole world? I think it’s a tie between San Francisco and Seattle for me. But there are so many places I haven’t been to yet! Also, I am always talking about sharks in here so what is your favorite animal?
Have a good weekend! :)

Fabric shopping!

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Short wedding post today due to insanity continuing in life.

Anyway, this weekend, my mom and I are going to go fabric shopping for my wedding dress (and veil, if you count French netting as fabric)! I am really excited to spend the day with my mom and to finally pick out the fabric for this dress! We are also doing one final fitting with the muslin dress to make sure I like her corrections from last time and then… she gets to make the dress! Should be a good weekend. Updates next week! :D

In other wedding planning news, Cobalt and I have planned our “honeymoon” in that we have decided we are going to go ziplining the day after our wedding before we have to head back to CO and our respective jobs. Booooo time off why are you so short? I am excited that we will get some fun and exciting “honeymoon”-like time together anyway. :) Hopefully we will get to have a real honeymoon sometime in the nearish future!

Have you ever been ziplining before? I am excited now but I am pretty sure I will get nervous when I actually get up there… What is your idea of the ideal honeymoon? For Cobalt and me, it’s a joint trip – first to New York City and then to Paris. One day…

About the picture: I know this isn’t ziplining but it is still a picture of me and Cobalt having fun and there is a rope and some trees in the picture so… I say it works. :)

Transparency

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Last week, Karyl tagged me in a blog post. Basically, each person tagged had to answer a specific question. Mine was: “What do you look forward to in your marriage?”

I thought about this all week last week. Not that I’m not looking forward to anything… more like I was trying to figure out what will be different about being married. I know that things will be different but Cobalt and I have been together for so long now that it’s hard to nail down exactly what. So I thought a lot about what changes when you get married: the breaking off from your families and forming a new unit, coming up with new traditions, etc.

Then Cobalt and I met with our premarital counselor/pastor last weekend and he talked to us about this idea of being transparent to each other. We were talking about learning how to better communicate our feelings to each other and our pastor told us that we are becoming the safest person in the whole world for the other person. That it’s okay for me to open up to Cobalt and that it’s okay for him to open up to me. That we can be totally transparent about our feelings and our beliefs and that it’s okay. It’s safe. Cobalt won’t stop loving me when I am feeling fragile or angry and I won’t stop loving him when he is feeling frustrated or hurt. And I think that is what I am most looking forward to in marriage, learning how to be transparent to Cobalt. Makes me feel all warm and bubbly inside. Makes me feel safe to know that he’s the one I get to finally open up to…

In other wedding news, we have officially paid off the photographer! Kudos to her for making us a contract where everything is due BEFORE a month before the wedding so we can get her checked off before we have to start paying everything else off in July…
Also, the invitations are almost done. Cobalt and I had to decide on some fonts for T, which we did this weekend. Hopefully we can get those printed off soon.
ALSO – we are starting to get registry gifts! I am excited to try out Natalie’s Gift/thank you note excel file and excited that Cobalt and I already purchased our Thank You notes.

Picture: Cobalt and me at 14,000 feet above sea level on Pike’s Peak – the easiest 14’er to get up around here (you drive).

First dance

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So some of you may know that my favorite part of a wedding is watching the couple do their first dance. It always just makes me so happy to see them waltzing across the floor whispering and giggling to each other as they go. I just love the mystery of it all – they’re giggling about something important to each other and we get to share in that moment.

Anyway, so obviously since this is an important part of weddings for us, Cobalt and I have been discussing the perfect first dance song. Nothing too overdone but something that shows our love for each other and will give us our own private joke moment. I can’t tell you what it is because that would ruin the surprise for all our guests (some of whom read this blog! Hi guys!) but I can guarantee you that it is perfect. Now we just need dancing lessons so we don’t trip over each other while we’re doing all that cutesy giggling and whispering….

What about you guys? What is your favorite part of the wedding? What song did/will you dance to for your first dance? If you’re not married and not getting married yet what song do you think would make the most amazing first dance song? :D

Picture: Cobalt and me being crazy at a wedding we went to in 2010!

Four Month Update

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Crazy that in 4 months it will be August and 4 months from today, Cobalt and I will be married for one day! That means we have a little over 3 months left to prepare. So I thought I would discuss some of the things we have been working on lately. Most of the big things are out of the way so it’s just on to the little details. THERE ARE SO MANY DETAILS. Just letting you know in case you didn’t already know.

Details (in no apparent order):

  1. Where/when to have the bachelor/bachelorette parties
    Our wedding is pretty much a destination wedding for most of the guests, excluding anyone who actually lives in my home town, so we thought it would be mean to have a separate weekend/location for parties. We’ve currently planned to frolic in San Francisco with our guests at our respective parties (we have yet to determine whether they will meet up) a few days before the wedding. That way everyone (including Cobalt and me) only has to travel once. As for the details of the parties… eh… not so much yet. We just wanted to nail down a day at least so our guests could start to book their plane tickets/hotel reservations.

  2. Where Cobalt and I are staying the night of our wedding
    Yeah… we really should figure that one out…

  3. Registry
    This one is almost done. In fact, I even posted our registries on the wedding website… though we are still updating one of them as we remember more things. Whew. Thanks Lauren for suggesting Myregistry.com to us! :)

  4. Rings
    Are still driving us crazy. We have decided to get matching titanium rings from Minter and Richter but we have had a hard time deciding exactly which rings we want and an even harder time getting sized for them. Since they are titanium, they can’t really be resized (but they will make you a new ring for 50% off if you need to change your size) so we really want to have the rings fit (well duh…). Back in February when we were visiting Cobalt’s family, we went and got our fingers sized at the local jewelers. Then a few weeks ago, we went to a jewelers here because someone (me) forgot their size (sorrrrrrry). They measured both of our fingers again and the sizes were completely different than the ones we got earlier. So yeah… Mysterious. Minter and Richter actually sell a ring sizer. I think it’s time we buy that guy!

  5. Ceremony
    Actually is outlined! We have a good idea of how we want it to run and we have two offiants (cuz we’re special like that. ;)). Now we just need to figure out the details (sooooo many…) like vow-writing, songs we want, what to do about music (live vs. recorded), etc. Woot.

  6. Flowers
    Cobalt and I are getting married in a garden (see above picture – that’s what it looks like in August… and why we pretty much fell in love with the place instantly) so we are not investing too much time and energy into flowers. I have contacted a florist about the availability and pricing of the flowers I want in my bouquet (anemones) and the flowers I want my bridesmaids to hold (Stargazer lilies) but they are not responding… So I think I should probably get on that…

  7. Gifts
    Cobalt has ordered his groomsmen their gifts but I am still having issues finding the perfect gift(s) for my girls. I just want to get something both special and meaningful but also useful/something that they will actually wear/use, you know? Blahhhhh… Back to the searching. Sorry I can’t talk much about it but I know that some of our groomsmen and bridesmaids actually read this blog (hi! and Thanks for reading!). We also need to put our heads together about gifts for our families. Ooooo…

  8. Centerpieces, favors, etc
    Still thinking fortune cookies for the favors but they will probably be felt instead of crochet because then Cobalt can actually help me make them. Centerpieces… BLAHHHHHHHH… yeah… that goes into the category of things that we should think about… also table numbers and seating charts. Everything table related, really…

  9. Wedding Showers
    I have two lined up. One in my home town and one in Cobalt’s home town. Getting to Cobalt’s home town is drivable so we actually have a date set for that one. Need to set a date for the other one but I’ve been kind of waiting for an airline sale so I can actually get to it… >_<

  10. Honeymoon
    Cobalt and I are too poor to afford a honeymoon after this crazy wedding. We hope that one day we can go to France and also New York City (in the same trip preferably) but for now, we are thinking about chilling for a few days around my home town and maybe going ziplining through the redwoods. Oooooo…

What was your favorite detail to plan for your wedding? Or if you’re not married, what are you the most excited about planning? Anyone want to finish planning our wedding?! :D Do you have anything you’d like us to talk about in future wedding Wednesday posts? Any questions about how we did something or how far along we are with planning something?

PS – Garden update: now we have THREE lemon cucumber sprouts and one spinach sprout!!!!!! :D:D:D:D:D:D (be happy I didn’t postpone the Wedding Wednesday post another day with more pictures of baby plants…)

Antsy Questions

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I am a girl of lists. At any given second of any given day, I have at least one list running through my head. Whether it’s the lab list (if I start my cells here then I can do this experiment here and then…) or the wedding list (why isn’t the registry done? We should order our rings… What song are we gonna play here?) or the Potassium list (pick up Mom from airport, text friends back, need… sleep….) or all of them at once, something is running through my head at all times. So for today’s wedding Wednesday post, I thought I would post some things going through my head about all of that. Ready? Let’s go!

  1. Tans
    So we live in Colorado. We are 5300 feet closer to the sun here than people who live at sea level. Basically, once spring hits, I can’t really go outside without getting tanned, burned, or both. So by the time we get to May, I am already sporting a pretty decent farmer’s tan just from walking to the bus stop/biking to work. Not to mention that I also look like a raccoon thanks to my sunglasses tan. Because we are getting married this summer, I am getting increasingly worried about having a farmer’s tan with my wedding dress. Sure, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world but I would really rather not see a fat farmer’s tan/raccoon eyes on me every time I see my wedding pictures. So it’s going to be an interesting next few months I think – full of sunscreen and maybe less sunglasses use. We’ll just have to see because I refuse to do any fake tanning. Thoughts?
  2. Dress!
    My mom was here visiting earlier this week and we made progress on fitting the bodice of my dress. I think the next time I head out to California for a long weekend we are going to go pick out fabric!!!! So speaking of fabric, we went and looked a little at my mom’s favorite fabric shop here in Boulder (you know you’ve lived somewhere too long when your mother has a favorite fabric shop there…). I want my dress to be white with just a HINT of blue. Something that you could really only see in the sunlight. Unfortunately, there were no bolts of fabric that came anywhere close. The only “light blue” they had looked silver or gray to me. It was if, in order to make things lighter, they just took out all the hue in the color, if that makes sense. So instead of just making it less saturated (so still sky blue or whatever but fainter), they just took out everything that made it blue so that it looked dull and gray. I think a dress made out of the fabric would look dull and lifeless so I dunno if that would make for a very good wedding dress. Do you have a favorite fabric shop? Have you ever seen anyone in a blue wedding dress?

In other wedding news, I ordered my necklace to wear with my dress. It’s a shark (duh)! Click the picture to go to the Etsy page it is from.