Tag: weddings

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…)

Skeleton bride head and such

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Skeleton bride head is excited about all the new friends I can make for her with all these fun pattern books. She just hopes that I make the rest of her body (and her veil) and possibly a skeleton groom first. They have a wedding to get to after all…

(Thanks to my sister and Cobalt’s family for the fun books! I want to quit grad school and crochet all the time now…)

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.

Fun With Skype and Wedding Invitations

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Last night, Cobalt and I had the pleasure of Skyping with our friend T, who we have asked to design our wedding invitations. A few weeks ago, Cobalt and I sat down and made rough sketches of what we would want to see in our invitations – paper size, colors, wording, what the RSVP cards would look like, borders, drawings, etc. I drew it all up with my Wacom tablet and e-mailed them to T. So last night, she had them all open on her computer and we worked together so that she could have a better idea of what we were thinking. It was kind of a fun experience with her drawing away on her Wacom tablet and us watching via the “Share screen” option on Skype. We would pick part of the invitation, she would ask us a little about what we were thinking, and then she would go to work. It was sooooo cool to watch everything unfold. I am so incredibly excited for the way everything turns out. I think it is going to be amazing. Thanks T for being awesome!!!

Cobalt and I are super excited about how personal our invitations are going to be. How do you guys feel about invitations? Do you like super fancy frilly ones? Simple ones that just give the information? Something in between? Something with maybe… sharks? on them?

Also, Happy Pi Day! From me to you… Go get some pie! :D

Cobalt’s Questions about Readings

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Today’s post is written by Cobalt, obviously. Potassium still took the picture… and no we are not having a shark officiating our wedding… that would be… odd…

Hey folks,

Potassium is exhausted from work so she asked me to fill in for this Wedding Wednesday. I haven’t done blog writing in awhile so I’ll try not to suck. So we’ve been trying to figure out what to do with our ceremony and such, and I’ve been thinking about it as the “show” part of our little shindig. Vows are one thing, but what do we do with things such as readings? Potassium and I have our way that we like to do things and we are trying to find a way to makes the ceremony be us, but still solemn and nice. We don’t want it to be boring. I’ve been debating a little about readings. Are they worth doing? 1st Corinthians is nice and everything, but is it too cliché? Should we even care? If we didn’t have a reading would it be weird? What are some other ideas we should take a look at? I know this is a lot of questions, but we would like some ideas.

So whattaya think?

In sickness and in health

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Short post today because Cobalt and I both have tragic death colds of death (finally getting better but still…). Boooo… Anyway, in case you didn’t guess already, today’s Wedding Wednesday post is about vows. So really, the post looks like this: What do you think? Writing your own vows or using traditional ones?
I am kind of of the mind set that Cobalt and I are anything but traditional and since nothing else about our wedding (what we’ve planned so far) is going to be very traditional, maybe writing our own vows would be more of our style. I like the freedom that it gives you – being able to say things and make promises about things that actually matter in your relationship and being able to add in little inside jokes that gives your relationship a sense of mystery and wonder that I think is my favorite part of any wedding. On the other hand, I am kind of nervous about writing my own vows. I am such a perfectionist, how can I make sure what I say to Cobalt expresses exactly how I feel?!
What do you guys think? What have you done? Is it worth it to write your own?

Picture: another engagement picture by Holly Carlyle.

The cow’s upside down again…

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Cobalt and I are having our second premarital counseling session this coming weekend. At the end of the first one, we had to take a test about ourselves and our relationship (how we deal with money, planning for the future, etc). Now this time we are going to discuss the areas that the test said where we are compatible and incompatible and then come up with plans on how to handle things when the incompatible areas pop up. I am kind of intrigued, excited, and nervous about this upcoming session. Where are our weakest points? Where are our strongest points? How will we learn to bring up sensitive topics? I hope this is helpful for making our relationship even stronger. :D

So… the picture… well in our first session, our counselor mentioned a couple he knew that had a stuffed cow prominently displayed in the house. Whenever one of them was upset and needed to talk to the other, they would turn the cow over – on its side if things were bad but not terrible and on its back if things needed to be discussed immediately. In this way, the second person could see the cow and know that their spouse is upset. This spares the first person the awkwardness of having to admit that he/she is upset and allows the second person to jump right in and ask the question “What’s wrong?” It’s kind of an awesome system if you ask me. Think about when you are upset and how hard it is for you to admit that something is wrong and how much you are just hoping your spouse/partner/boyfriend/girlfriend/whatever will just pick up on it and ask you about it. No longer! Just turn over the cow. Think about when you feel weird but you don’t know why or what it means or how to bring it up… turn over the cow. Problem solved. Now your spouse/partner/boyfriend/girlfriend/whatever can just ask you. They understand how you feel (based on the cow’s position) and now they can start the conversation.
I think it is neat. Cobalt and I were inspired and actually have this cow in our house though to date we have not actually used it… But we could…

What about you guys? Do you have creative ways to solve conflicts or attack iffy topics? How do you make sure that everyone is happy and feels like their voices are heard?

Registry excitement and woes

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This weekend, Cobalt and I got some more wedding stuff done. One of the main things we did was head to Bed Bath and Beyond (from now on this = B3) so we could scan in stuff for our registry. Now I can tell you we have had some good times and some bad times with this registry business, which is the topic of today’s post. Registries… Why are they so complicated? There are so many things that we want but then there are so many different brands and so many different stores that sell them for so many different prices! How do you narrow down what you want? Seriously. That is Question number one. I mean for ordinary things like cutting boards or spaghetti scoops – why are there so many brands? They all do the same thing, right? Also, there are so many brands for more complicated things like rice cookers or knife sets but we have been mostly using our friends (especially our friend the internet) to give us good suggestions (or reviews in the case of the internet) for those things. So there you have it, for question one – let us know your favorite brand for kitchen stuff (fancy stuff like rice cookers and non fancy stuff like spatulas), flatware sets (why are there so many different kinds?!), etc. Now it’s time for

Question number two
So originally, Cobalt and I were thinking B3 and Target would be nice stores for our registries – Target could be a cheaper option for guests who love us but don’t have the funds to pay for anything crazy. But now that we are into the fray we have noticed two things:

  1. Target’s website has caused us nothing but trouble. When we first tried to register, it wouldn’t let us enter our e-mail address and then once we went to the store to register, the website didn’t make it easy for us to see our registry and edit it online, which makes our life hard. Plus, half the stuff we scanned at Target ended up being on Clearance so it won’t be available for our guests to purchase and the other half was only available to purchase in stores, which makes it hard for those people who like doing their shopping online (Potassium, for example).
  2. B3 has a nice variety of prices. We have things on the registry now that range from like $5 to $250 so it seems that anyone wanting to get us something could find something in their price range from B3. Also, we have been able to find almost everything we want at B3…

So now what do you guys think? Should we just say SCREW YOU TARGET and have one registry at B3 (even though it doesn’t have everything on our list?) Should we just hang in there with Target? ORRRRR should we bring Amazon into the picture for the previously Target-listed items? Do you have a favorite store for registries? Discuss (along with question one up there)…

FINALLY…
Question number three
Cobalt and I are hard pressed to find an awesome comforter anywhere we’ve looked. Target, B3, etc. Nothing really caught our eyes as the most amazing and soft and warm comforter ever, which of course is the one we want. Who loves their comforter and wants to tell us where to register for ours?

Okay. So. To sum these these questions up for you guys
Topic: registries

  1. What brands do you like (kitchen stuff, kitchen machines, flatware sets)?
  2. Target and B3? Only B3? B3 and Amazon? or B3 and ………???
  3. Where do they sell awesome comforters?

Today’s picture – colorful sake from one of our favorite restaurants around here. We have not registered for these but maybe some people do (I just don’t think we drink enough sake to need our own).

Also, for those of you interested in actually getting stuff on our registry, we will post the finished versions on our wedding website when we are ready. :)

Ooo thanks! My FAVORite!

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Hello friends and welcome to Wedding Wednesday! Today’s post (if you didn’t guess) is about wedding favors! Cobalt and I have been searching for the perfect favor for our guests and we want to know your thoughts!
We have been thinking about making crochet fortune cookies as our favors – with the fortune listing our names and the date. I realize this would be adding to my plate of things to do but I actually quite like crocheting and I actually also quite like the idea of giving my hands something constructive to do when I get stressed out (with work or wedding planning or both… you know how it goes). Also, I am thinking about calling out the cavalry and giving the pattern to anyone who knows how to crochet (if this is you, let me know!) and we can have a crochet fortune cookie making party (and Cobalt has already suggested that he be in charge of making the fortune part)! :D
Anyway, what I really want to know from you guys is what is your opinion on wedding favors? I know it has gotten really popular to have edible wedding favors, like candy or something the guests can munch on as they head back to the airport/drive home from the wedding but I guess for some reason that just seems impersonal in my opinion (for our wedding at least. No judging going on, people…). But then I also worry that we put all the effort into making a bunch of cute personalized crocheted fortune cookies and then I just give people more “stuff” to deal with… :-/

Conflicted…

What do you think? Are the fortune cookies just going to stress us out and then just give guests something else to shove into their bags to take home? Or are they awesome? Or should we come up with an alternative idea (perhaps personalized but REAL fortune cookies bought from Oriental Trading Company?)…

If nothing else, we could always fall back on giving out miniature dinosaurs and frogs like those posing on top of my family’s old (1980s?) Macintosh computer in the picture (or you could decorate your old Macintosh with one of our crocheted fortune cookies… I think one would look nice there surrounded by all the dinosaurs…)

Thoughts?

Wedding Shenanigans…

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This weekend was a crazy ball of wedding planning. Cobalt and I flew out to California, worked on wedding stuff for two days straight, and then headed back to Colorado on Sunday. Whew. At least California was significantly warmer than Colorado so we could escape the cold for a few days (yeahhhhh sandals!). And we got a lot of work done. For example, we got our cake designed/ordered (soooo excited about it), got the boys’ tuxes ordered, and I got to be fitted for my dress. Funny story about that: my mom is making my dress and we learned that I should probably not eat 3 extra servings of spaghetti for dinner before being fitted. >_< Bustiers and full tummies are NOT friends… :p
Regardless, it was a good trip – though the jury is still out on the wedding rings discussed last week. Today’s picture is of Cobalt and me being bored in the bridal shop while waiting for our consultant to draw up an estimate on the tuxes. Here’s another picture of me wearing Cobalt’s tie:

We’re super excited about how much work we got done this weekend and how our wedding plans are coming along in general. Is it August yet?! Now I have a question for all you ladies (or guys, I don’t care) out there…. what do you think: should tuxes have pocket squares or boutonnieres? (or BOTH?!) Are pocket squares really worth $8 per square of craziness?!