Wedding teeth

Little post, but I'm entertained by it.

Mr. SB came up to the office this week and we had whitening trays made. :)

His & hers molds, bleaching trays, whitening gel, and retainer cases.

I mean, seriously, what kind of dentist would I be if this wasn't part of our pre-wedding ritual??

Old photos

Our reception site doesn't really have room or the set up to do a video. It's probably just as well, because normally people can't see or hear it anyway... But I do think it's really fun, and awesome MOH K has offered to put one together for us for the rehearsal dinner. A task I gladly handed over...

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And finally, after literally MONTHS of asking... I finally got some Mr. SB baby pics!! And he's adorable. :) He probably wouldn't want me posting them online, but I thought one couldn't hurt.

Can you see the determination on his face??
(*Edit. Er, actually, no you can't, bc this is pixel-ly. Shoot. I hope the ones I sent MOH K to work with aren't like this.... Well trust me, it's adorable.)

To be fair, an embarassing picture of me, my now 5'10" sister, and my dad.

And us, on day ~6 of dating!
(I sure am glad I calmed down on the eyebrow plucking and my skin decided to clear up...)

Anyway, I'm a little sad that not everyone will get to see the show, but I know we'll enjoy it. Can't wait!

What age is your favorite to look back and laugh at? Baby, middle school??

Pocket schedules

So I totally stole this idea from...

Miss Apple Cider from Weddingbee

She mentioned how nice it was to have a list of names, times, phone numbers and addresses for guests,
especially for folks that are out-of-towners.
And it folds up to a cute little business card size.

This is the extended version for members of the bridal party.
The one for the "rest of the gang" doesn't have the rehearsal info on it.

This was one of the easier crafting/word processing tasks. Finally!

Overkill? Or Useful? (And is there anything else I should have included?)

PS. I'm getting some good use out of the little vine/grape icon. Notice it on EVERY piece of paper??

Goodie bag for the OOTers

One of my favorite blog acronyms is "OOT" for "Out of Town". Just like I say "MOH" as "Moe" and "FMIL" as "Fimmel", I read "OOT as ... well... oot. And chuckle to myself. :)

Anywho, I went to a OOT wedding that had a goodie bag at the hotel check in and I thought that was a really nice touch. Not so nice that I would go all nutty-nut like some brides and make every single one personalized, but nice enough to make a generic, though thoughtful, gift bag,

What goes in an OOT bag, you might ask? Well, things you'd like to receive at your hotel after traveling to get there.

Water, a bottle of Sonoma wine, gold fish, California raisins, and cookies of course. :) And winery map/magazine of the area. And a pocket schedule, see next post.
Nice photo, I know.

Insert said presents into a dollar store gift bag that fits the wedding vibe-ish (and can be guilt free thrown away) with a little welcome note and a green bow.

Oh that green bow. How do I hate thee....

We bought some sparkly green (wire edged) ribbon and planned on "finding something to do with it". Well, making little bows is apparently "it." Notice the scraps of green fabric alllllll over the floor above? That's because when you cut the stupid thing, it frayed. A lot.

This is where Mr. SB retreats to when I'm crafting. However, in this photo... notice the little tea candle on his desk? No, it's not for romance. He voluntarily cut and then singed the edges of every ribbon so it wouldn't fray when I made the bows. He's a keeper I tell ya.

So these bad boys took a long time to put together, but I like 'em. And even though Mr. SB insists no one will care about them *insert sad face*... Would you be happy with this OOT bag?

NFC Championship crafting

Mr. SB loves helping with wedding crafts. :)

Ok, not at all, but he tolerates them when distracted by football or other t.v. Until he gets bored ~an hour into it.

Today's task, wine charms!

I mentioned before how cute my MOH sis was in making charms for the bridal shower, and I am to-ta-lly reusing them for the wedding seating assignments. However, I needed ~40 more.

A sampling of our Sunday adventure.

Helloo Michael's beads! We now have 70 unique and individual little wine charms... and the beads in that package (in the pic) are extra!! Eek for over-buying! I love how they turned out, and I LOVE that MOH had the idea and did such a great first round. Hooray for completed wedding crafts! (*Side note, I will bend over all the sharp little ends when I add the name cards. They look vicious at this point...)

Anyone have any ideas for what to do with 500 extra green and white beads??

Field trip to the County Clerk's office

You can't get a marriage license at City Hall. Who knew? You actually have to head to the County Clerk's office (30 miles away, M-F, 9a-5p) both people in person to fill out paperwork.

It was raining, and ugly, and there was a name changing debacle. But overall successful, and $83 later, we were licensed to get married within the next 90 days!!

The actual office was ugly and boring, as was the paper we got from them... so I insisted we take a picture with the sign out front.

Oops. Missed. But so happy!!


There you go! Office B177 :)
(*Side note, it is totally raining and there is a huge planter under the sign that I am basically standing inside of, AND this is taken with Mr. SB's cell phone. It's amazing this turned out even this good!)

Yay! Almost official!!

The name game. Final decision. Sort of.

So... have I written about this before? I do like my name, all three pieces of it: first, middle (esp. as it works with the first), and last. I like my initials, and possibly most importantly, my name is the name of my business. I've worked for 7 months now to get people to know my name (as a new Dr. in town) and changing it would be hard. And relatively expensive (with rebranding and all new stationary, etc.). I have known for a while (since I knew I'd be a professional with my own business and name-branding) that I'd not fully change my name. Mr. SB is completely supportive of any decision I make on this topic.

Our fur babies have had a shared last name since we got them. Mattie, Elliot, Olivia, and Lily MyLast-HisLast, which has a ring that we've really gotten used to.

So my plan was to be Mrs. First Middle MyLast-HisLast. That way I could be Mrs. HisLast when I wanted to (and with future kids) but still Dr. MyLast at work. But...... if I change to that, then my business name is a fictitious one, even though it's my *old* name, and I have to file fictitious licensing paperwork, etc. ... ... Insert big headache.

Well, I hadn't thought all the way through this when we went to go get our marriage license (yay!) last Friday. Apparently, you have to decide AT THAT MOMENT what you might change your name to. You aren't committed to actually changing or not, but whatever you choose is the ONLY thing you can change your name to without doing a full, expensive, in court legal name change.

The clerk lady was sooooooooooo thorough in making sure I knew my options, but equally insistent that I had to fill out the paperwork right then.

Seriously? I have to decide right now?

Options:
First Middle HisLast
First MyLast HisLast
First (Middle MyLast) HisLast - Two middle names, no actual parentheses
First Middle (MyLast His Last) - Two last names, no hyphen, no actual parentheses
First Middle MyLast-HisLast
First Middle HisLast-MyLast
First Middle (HisLast MyLast)
*or*
He (!) could change to
First Middle MyLast-HisLast - in either order with or without a hyphen


Ayyyyyyieeeeeihhhh decisions!

So... I went with what I had thought I always would:

First Middle MyLast-HisLast

So when I'm ready to change it, and have decided what to do about the business, I'll head to Social Security and the DMV etc. but that's what I'll change it to.

How big of a decision was your name change??

Done and sent!

Of all the things to not take a picture of... I didn't take a picture of my finished pile of invitations that I sent!! (They made it out on my 8 week pre-anniversary, which was my goal.)

Anyway... here's my work station from the all-day/all-weekend invitation finishing par-tay.

Yes, it took a constantly refilled cup of coffee, two computers, one BIG OL' pile of custom cut (by hand, by me - 4 pieces of different sizes x 40 invites) paper and one hearty printer. But the invites are done and sent and hand canceled by the very nice woman at the Sonoma, CA post office so that we get the Sonoma postmark. And we didn't even have to refill the ink! :)

I can't wait to see how they're received... Let me know what you think when you get one!!

Biggest Loser + Tissue paper...

Every Tuesday, Mr. SB & I have a deal (ok, I told him this is how it works) that we'll do wedding crafts. Craft #1 is napkin ring tissue poms. (If you don't remember the result of the deliberation... We decided to go with green tablecloths, white china & napkins, and kelly & lime tissue pom napkin rings.)

We didn't anticipate howwwwww longgggg it would take to make them. Tissue paper is wiggly and hard to line up evenly and easily tear-able. Yes, kind of terrible too. Har har.

Our first night, we only got 12 done (in two hours)!! We need ~75!! The box above is 2 weeks of work, we're up to ~30. Yesterday was week three, but we ran out of the floral wire needed to do them, so we had to stop before the end of the show. :)

Overall, we've got a pretty good system: Mr. SB measures, cuts, & folds the paper while I separate them into the flower shape and form the wire part. But it still takes forevvver.

Anyway, we're happy with them, but I'm wondering if the lime is too far off from the linens, or if they'll fit in with the overall "multi green" vibe of the day. We've made FAR more kelly, so it's not too late to scrap with lime w/o being too bummed. Thoughts??

Red, white, & bubbly

Mr. SB & I went to our reception site yesterday to taste and select the wine. Not the worst task for a lazy Saturday afternoon...

The ceremony site. It's all green now ... and still so very beautiful.

After tasting eleven (!) samples, we picked our two favorites, came up with a tentative plan/quantity and headed down the road to a neighbor winery to pick out the bubbly! Normally Gloria Ferrer winery only does tastes by the glass, more like a wine bar, but we played the "we're getting married and here to pick out wine" card and got to try all the inexpensive ones free of charge.

I think we're pretty set with what we'd like to order (one Chardonnay, one Pinot Noir, and one bubbly Brut), and now I just need to check our choices against our budget. Unfortunately, the white we liked was really expensive, so we might do the "serve the good stuff first, then the cheap(er) stuff later." I feel a little guilty about that, but even the "cheap" stuff is still really good wine and I don't think we have too many wine connoisseurs in attendance.

Are the three choices sufficient? (They were trying to convince us to have 3, adding a Syrah.)

Pics as promised

I'm sure you were all waiting in breathless anticipation.. so here are the photos of the end of my dress saga.

No makeup, no appropriate "shape wear", but you get the idea.

Just what I was looking for... white, simple, satin, little train, and even the length is perfect, no need to get it hemmed, hooray!

Off to order a veil and find a necklace... I just keep adding to my to do list!!

Winner!!!!!

I'll post some pictures later today, but I wanted to share the AWEsome news that... dress #4 looks great! And white! And fits!!

I am so so so excited!

Shouldn't have even looked

So much about this wedding is just out-of-control expensive (despite my VERY best efforts), that I try not to worry too much about it at this point, aka after the decision has been made.

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Last night, however, I decided to update my budget spreadsheet and discovered that my invitations cost a lot more than I thought they had. Pretty much I could have paid someone to do them for me. Sure, it wouldn't have been maybe *exactly* as I had envisioned it, and I did enjoy some parts of the process... but it WAS a process! A long, tedious one!

I'm not sure you can really judge if it was "worth it". I'm afraid my invites will look amateur or tacky, and it drives me NUTS that the greens are off on that one part... but they ARE all me... And true, it was probably a little less expensive than if I had had them done. But I certainly fell in the trap of "Oh, DIY will totally save money!" That's what I get for reading all the blogs of all those inspiring brides online... they make it look so easy!!

Do you judge wedding invites?? Would you be offended if you received a DIY one?

Meeting Roger

No, not this Roger (although Mr. SB would be pretty stoked, he's a big fan). The Roger in Sonoma who will be officiating ceremony #2.

We got his name word-of-mouth, which is the only way you can get him to do your wedding. Nice guy, chatty, totally looks the part of a non-denominational wedding officiant. He sent us his list of a basic wedding ceremony, we added to it and met up today for the first time. And it went well. (On our two month pre-anniversary!) He was open to our ideas and seemed pretty relaxed about the whole thing. I think it'll turn out well.

Now if I just call the make up artist, I'll have crossed all my "To book" items off my to-do list. Hooray!!

D'oh!

Ok... faux pas admission incoming.

We got our invitations ready some time ago, cutting and assembling them before we were ready to send them... but of course when we fully put them together, there were a few missing or incomplete, etc.

So we had a helter skelter assembly line of reprinting and stuffing, etc. and at the end of the day.......

We didn't include a stamp on one of the response cards.

Lame. Lame. Lame.

But we didn't have enough envelopes to open them and then reprint them all looking for the culprit. HOPEfully there it went to some one who won't notice/care... and to be honest it's 28 cents. But still! I feel like a fail-bride.

How mad would you be to get an RSVP card with no stamp on it???

Need suggestions. And to borrow something.

So I've got a to-do item that I've been thinking about...

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Something old: My earrings.
Something new: Er, everything else? Dress, shoes, hair clip...
Something blue: The little blue bow inside the garter.
Something borrowed: ....? No clue.

What can I borrow? I think the idea is that there should be something from a woman whose relationship you want to aspire to. So a successfully married lady gives you something as a token of good luck.

Mom? (Molly, Susan, Natalie? I think you are the only married folks that *might* read the blog! :) Got anything I can borrow??

Going fairly nuts

I bought a fourth dress.

Who says that...?

I have spent so much time and energy and can't believe that all dresses on the planet are ivory. Big sigh.... Anyway, this one looks a lot like the third, same designer, same color (eggshell). And I haven't received a "we're out of your size" email yet, so let's keep our collective fingers crossed.

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Now this little number, I haven't ordered, and it looks different. And I was really drawn too it, though it's more than I wanted to spend. Mr. SB says to just order it, but the BCBG return policy isn't as friendly as the jcrew/Nordstrom ones. So I think I'm going to wait for the top one to come in, swing by good ol' David's Bridal and see what they've got, and order this one as a last resort.

I truly can't believe how much effort I've put into this... but Mr. SB very sweetly answered that the image of me walking down the aisle at the winery is the moment he is most looking forwrd to on the big day. So I'm mustering the last little bit of dress shopping energy and am determined to find a simple dress for phase I of the day.

Did you have any tasks that were totally and utterly never ending?

Will anyone use it??

I mentioned to Mr. SB that we needed to swing by the store and that he would need to just humor me on what I was buying. And what we were buying was stuff for the bathroom at the wedding. When I finally told him that, I got a verrry incredulous look, followed by "Seriously? Will anyone actually USE it??"

Ok, well, maybe not. But I think it's a nice gesture! And Miss Cola over at Weddingbee had a pretty fool proof guide for what should go in one. :) Her list was a lee-tle bit over the top (would anyone actually use Claritin?? and 5 types of mints??), so here's a list of what I'm planning on including in mine. (The boys' basket won't have the girly-hair stuff at the bottom.)

• Mini travel lint roller
• Stain remover pen
• Breathsavers mints
• Box of Kleenex
  
• Travel size Tums
• Box of Band Aids
• Tylenol
• Travel Lotion
• Travel Purel
• 2 nail files
• Hairspray
• Bobby pins
• Hair ties
• Brush and comb
• Clear nail polish
• Travel packs of pads and tampons

Yeah, gonna have to arrange it better than this! Cute little basket I had lying around though.

The goods. Only things left to add: hair ties, bobby pins, safety pins, and boy lotion. I didn't have any non-scented ones on hand. One thing I love about this project... I can get it all set up and store it for the next 9 weeks and not think about it again!

Did I miss anything?? And what do you think... Will anyone actually use it?

Thank you, nice lady

I wanted to swing by the post office this Saturday a.m. to weigh my envelopes and make sure my RSVP cards were acceptable (size/paper weight) for mailing. As I quickly discovered, all the post offices in this area are closed on Saturdays. When did that happen??

Anyway, as I called a branch to check on hours, a nice woman answered the phone and said while the branch was officially closed, she would be there for 30 more minutes sorting mail and we could stop by if we'd like. So we came by, she weighed the envelope and since we could pay cash even sold the stamps to us! Now we WILL be able to finish them this weekend. Thank you, nice lady!

The postcard RSVP stamps are weird polar bears, but the 61 cent main ones are perrrrfect.

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It even kind of looks like our cake! Not that I would have made a big deal about it either way, but it was a fun little "Hey, that looks nice!" bonus detail. :)

Have you run across any unexpectedly kind people who just make your day lately?

Oh printing....

I haven't had a wedding related meltdown in quite some time, so I'm not too surprised that I had one this afternoon courtesy of MS Vista (which I normally don't hate). And my handy dandy Canon printer.


My main project of the weekend is printing/mailing my invitations. (Exciting! Lots of work!) I designed them in MS Publisher with custom page sizes, especially for the inserts. Well, apparently it takes an act of congress to print on custom paper sizes in Vista. I honestly couldn't even understand the suggestions on the online forums, any official guide from Microsoft just explained how to change paper size if your operating system is XP, and when I *did* try to follow a guide, none of it worked out right. Big. Fat. UGH! And seriously two hours of my life spent on this. (Mr. SB is at work, missing out on the fun. He called in the middle of it, got vented at, and hung up quickly. Even my poor sweet cat got yelled at and is hiding from me. It was that frustrating!)

To be fair, all but one piece printed acceptably, but I really didn't want to have one look ugly. And it did, it was totally off in the alignment/spacing. I didn't spend hours designing these things for them to print off kilter!!

Fortunately, I had a little stroke of genius (if I do say so myself) and with a little adjusting, managed to make it work. And now I'm quite proud. So during the NFL playoff weekend, Mr. SB and I will be cutting paper, printing, and stuffing our little hearts out. :)

What little projects ended up so much harder than they needed to be??

Day flow

After quite a bit of back and forth with (of all people) our photographer, I finally have a schedule of the day.

2:00p: Church ceremony
2:45p: Leave for winery
3:15p: Pictures of bride getting ready (Make up will be done in the morning.)
3:45p: First look + photos
4:15p: Pictures with families
4:50p: Back upstairs while guests arrive
5:15p: Ceremony begins
5:45p: Ceremony ends -- Photos & cocktail hour
6:15p: Sunset
7:00p: Cocktail hour ends/reception begins - dinner & dancing, etc

Why schedule the day with the photographer? Well, pictures are important. And since we're so excited about the outside part of our wedding venue, we want to take advantage of the natural lighting. And since Daylight Savings is that night (bah!), the sun sets really early.

Getting the schedule ready actually got me really excited to think about all the aspects of the day. I'm getting married!! *Big smile!*

Does anything seem too rushed or too long?

Bad news bears

Nordstrom has informed me that my dress is sold out in all sizes around mine.

Bummer!

On to find dress #4!!!

Things I now actually have for the wedding.

I've been making lots of plans, but very few things are actually done done and in my hand. But Christmas/shower was the perfect time to come get a few things.

Number one: Shoes!!! Santa came through and ordered these (relatively darn comfortable beauties from Zappos.com. And they fit. Woohoo! :)


Number two: Hair clip!! MOH sis, in addition to throwing me an aMAzing surprise shower, got me the hair clip I want to wear at the second ceremony and reception. And it's beautiful in person. :)

Cute box it came in....

Can you see it? I was trying to get better lighting. Inside the flash kept washing it out. Anyway, it's beautiful.

The actually hair clip part is a little weird. I didn't expect the alligator clip type. Oh well, there are worse things to worry about!!

Number three: Wine charms!! I had been talking/thinking/looking for 65 different wine charms for our guests to use on their wine glasses and then take home as a trinket. They basically come in two different forms online: cheap (and cheap looking) or expensive. BUT, super MOH handmade (!?) little charms for the shower for people to take, but nearly no one did. So I scooped them up and will "recycle" them for the wedding. Best part, they're perfect! Green, leaves, beads. So pretty and all unique!

Here are a couple examples.

Number four: Our guest book came in. (I ordered a DIY book with our E photos, if you'd forgotten. :) I was the tiniest bit disappointed in two things. It's smaller than I imagined (but exactly what I ordered) and I put no words on purpose... but now I wish I had. At least our names or the date... or that it's for our wedding! Of course I can write that in, that's the POINT, to write it in, but still.. Anyway, the quality is good and the pictures are clear, so I'm sure it'll turn out fine. But for NEXT time when I need a guest book.... :)

Overall, I do love when things you find online work out!

Surprise par-tay, the games

Well, like I said, we don't have great pictures to showcase everything yet... but I'll improvise!

Game One: MOH sent a list of 19 questions to Mr. SB, like "What is your most embarrassing moment? What is your favorite color?" And he recorded himself and sent the answers to her. They asked me the questions and for each one I got wrong, I had to chew on a big nasty piece of Dubble Bubble bubble gum. Ewww.. Especially ew for a dentist like me!!

There wasn't a great projection system, so we all listened to her laptop for the answers.

Do you see all that gum?? The questions were hard!! I got 7 or 8 right, which means I was chewing alot of gross gum by the end!! I'm only smiling because I'm done!

Game two: To give out the favors, everyone got a wrapped gift, and as MOH read the following story, you passed the present right or left when the word was said. Whatever you ended with, you unwrapped and kept. It was really really cute. :)


Game three: The purse game. MOH came up with a cute list of stuff that applied to Mr. SB and I that you might have in your purse and you got points for each item. The most points wins!

This picture is light, but it was very cute. :) The winner had over 60 points!! That's a lot of stuff in your purse!!

Game four: MOH set up a super cute game that didn't get taken advantage of... but I loved it! Since Mr. SB and I live in wine country (and love it), she set up a blind tasting. Three red and three white wines were available with the labels covered. The choices were listed and you could flip the card next to the bottle to read more about the wines.

There were also notes about different aspects of wine and little glasses for tasting. It was so cute! But people were too busy/eager to leave, so not many people took advantage of it. Which meant.........

That Mr. SB, my mom and I got to play the game later that night!! MOH had to leave, so she couldn't play with us, but it was alot of fun. And our family had plenty of wine for the rest of the holidays!!

The games were a super fun part of the afternoon. I can't believe how fast it all went!!

Surprise par-tay, the players

So my biggest surprise over break was my bridal shower!! My super cute MOH sis organized a party for ~30 friends and family... while living 1500 miles away!

I'll break the recap down into a few pieces. Here are some pics of the awesome people who made it possible/attended.

My MOH. Isn't she adorable?? Cute shirt too. Mr. Lopez got quite a kick out of it. :)

My mom and I at the head table. The dubble bubble in front of me still makes me gag a little to look at. I'll explain it in the "games" part of the recap.

My 94 year old Grandma and I, love this picture. She never learned to drive and isn't too mobile these days. AND it was snowy AND a Packers game day (they had to cross all the way through Green Bay). And she still came. I was really glad to see her. :)

The set up crew. The R & L are sisters (who are getting just TOO big!!) and the middle is their good friend whose mom co-hosted the shower. They were there for hours setting (and cleaning) up and did a great job. Thanks girls!!

This is the only picture I have of any guests during the party!! I feel like there were a million cameras going off at all times, so I need to hunt those folks down for scrapbooking/blogging purposes! :)

The boys. My dad and his twin brother (and another uncle and cousin) who made the trek to our hometown watched the Packers game at our house. Mr. SB and MOH's boyfriend actually went to the game, which was a really cool experience for him.

The fam, I like this picture too. Dad and bro came for clean up after the Packers game. Mom & sis in blue were responsible for taking me out shopping, aka away from anyone else, for a few hours before the party. I was so tired and hungry!!

What a fun afternoon! I was so tuckered out after... but well worth it!
Now let's talk about what we did...