Programs

I thought I had saved a wedding program template/design from early in my planning, but alas, it's no where to be found. When I think back on it, the design actually doesn't make any sense, so let's start again, shall we?

What I want to include:
Wedding party
Ceremony details
Information about the winery/wine making since we will be walking through all those functional areas

I don't want anything too elaborate or work intensive (as this will be another DIY project) so here's what I worked through.

Types of programs (info and images from source):Booklet. Not sure I have enough info to really fill a booklet. Or that people would actually care.

Z-fold. Not bad. Something about the look of it isn't great for me though.

Gatefold. Now we're talking. I plan on having the main program be in cream cardstock, with the same patterned belly band from the invitations. (Tying it all together, get it?? :) But now I'll need a little "closer" sticker for them. Monogram anyone??

The layout will be:
Right inner fold - Wedding party
Center - Our names/ceremony information
Left inner fold - Information regarding Nicholson Ranch
Back - Dedication (possibly)

I did a mock up of the layout and am really happy with it (as far as having the appropriate amount of space for the information). I don't have a ton of extra paper, so I'm waiting until I have all the info before doing a real mock-up. Which I'll post here of course. :)

Did you have a program? Is it necessary? What all did it include??

An "easy" topic

Our site director told us that if you get married on the winery lawn, you can stick two wine barrels with flowers on them at the "altar" site (if we're not having a Chuppah or anything, which we're not. See the previous post on Catholicism).

Our meeting with our florist was really quite good; I feel like she totally "got me" as far as bouquets, boutonnieres, aisle flowers, and centerpieces (more on all that later). But with regards to ceremony/wine barrel flowers, I didn't have a good example, nor did she have one to show us. So I tried to explain "Not too big, not too flashy, compliments the natural site but isn't lost in the size." She emailed me some not great examples, so I set out to find some on my own.

It's hard! Way harder than I expected!! All attempts at googling some combination of "Wine barrel flowers arrangement ceremony winery" are a big fat fail. I also tried looking at all wineries I could think of, any wine country photographers blogs, project wedding/theknot/etc and got about three examples to send back to the florist. Am I really that difficult/unique? Or are ceremony flowers so unimportant and so exciting that no one takes pictures of them??

Not bad, a little... voluminous? and too green? Not quite right, but not terrible either.

Small pic, but a good over all feel.
Source

Totally wrong color, but good look. Some height and some down draping green tendrils.

I like the texture, the coloring, the shape. Maybe too small for a barrel (you can adjust for that of course)? And we probably can't have a vase (for safety in the wind).

I'll be honest, I got so frustrated looking for arrangements, Mr. SB took over and found these photos. I don't have credits for them. So don't steal them, and I apologize for not crediting them properly.

Ack. I'm tired of looking at barrel arrangements! I want to find the perfect one and just say "Hey, do this!" :) But for now, I'll send Sally the florist our ideas and see what she can do.

What aspects of wedding planning were unexpectedly difficult?

The real stuff

Who's gonna say the wedding? A big question I've been avoiding.

Mr. SB is not religious. My family is very Catholic. We don't really want to get married in a church, and logistically for our guests, it would be easier to have ceremony/reception in one place. But Catholics don't get married outside. And you've gotta plan for 6 months ahead of time. Today was our 4 month pre-anniversary. Cool.

About a month ago, I called our local Catholic church (where I've been going on Sundays) and the pastor was on vacation for a month. The mean lady on the phone told me that you can't get married when I had requested because it was Lent (the season before Easter, a time of reflection, not celebration) and that I needed to "rethink my date." Well, I finally got the courage to call the priest today and he was really quite kind and told me that our timeline was ok and we can get everything done by March. Although he wasn't having anything but a wedding in the church. On a Saturday afternoon. With no flowers, because it's Lent. Fine, whatever.

So what's a girl to do? We are pretty set on the idea of an outdoor wedding at the winery and a reception immediately following. We could certainly have a smaller ceremony in the afternoon prior to the "big wedding" for those who would care about the Catholic aspect. I wouldn't want to wear my dress... but I think it could work and we'd be able to incorporate some of my family members in a nice way.

This sensitive subject is still very much a work in progress. We're meeting with the priest next week. I'll let ya know how it goes.

How big/small of an adventure was finding the person to officiate your ceremony? Would you consider two ceremonies to keep everyone happy?

The Catering Un-Saga

Since catering takes up such a huge portion of any bridal budget, I was prepared for finding a vendor to be a difficult process. Mr. SB & I are not picky foodies; we like pretty basic flavors and simple meals and I was hoping to use local, seasonal items as much as possible. (Mr. SB said "Red meat" as his input on the catering topic.)

Our site director gave us a list of her three favorite caterers and one had an extra gold star as her personal fave. I asked the three of them for quotes and the gold star company was very pleasant to communicate with and far and away the most affordable. Full speed ahead.

The catering business is a husband/wife team with years of experience in the area and a great reputation; the husband acts as head chef at the event and the wife acts as a DOC. We met with them in person (their store is literally across the street from my office) and really liked the examples of their work. They are very familiar with the winery and the local rental company and had some great suggestions on how to work with the space.

They were very on board with the "seasonal" idea. So our tasting wasn't any thing that we'll actually be eating on our wedding day, but more representative of their work (and "fall" type foods) instead of the "spring" foods we'll be eating. The food was delicious and the presentation was exactly right, not too fussy but still beautiful. (Yeah, no camera. Gonna have to trust me on this one.)

So pretty much, that's that. We love working with Tom & Linda. The menu is ~95% settled, but they are flexible if we come up with other ideas and will work with what is seasonally available.

Did you get to try your wedding meal at the tasting? Or did you just "trust" your caterer?

Name calling

I've always liked how the outer envelope of wedding invitations has the guests' formal names while the inner envelope is more familiar. With our pocketfold invites, obviously we won't be having an inner envelope, but I wanted to find a way to include their "real" names.

Alot of people put their monogram or a stamp of some sort on the connector on the belly band. I used that space as a place to write the informal names. I printed the names on cream cardstock and is mounted on clover cardstock and the custom designed paper used in the rest of the invitation suite.

The color is a little funny because the label isn't tacked down yet, so it's partially open with a shadow on the flap.

I'm really happy with how it turned out and am glad I got to insert the guests' "real" names on the cards.

Did you "double label" the guests names in an unusual way?

Getting there.....

Last night we put together the envelopes.. both addressing them & lining them.

I thought that once I decided to type (not hand write) the envelopes and typed all the addresses into an Excel sheet, that printing them would be a piece of cake. Yeah, it's not that easy. All the prep work in the world will still leave you with an annoying and time consuming project.

First of all, our envelopes were just *slightly* an unusual size, so I cut several en-faux-lopes out of regular paper to get the orientation/spacing/centering right with practice runs on our printer. (*Side note, our low toner light was blinking all night... thankfully it lasted through the project!)

Step one: Return addresses. Printed on the back. After figuring out the orientation, it was pretty easy, but we hand fed them one at a time, just to be safe.


Step two: The fronts. Unfortunately, my Excel spreadsheet did me no good and I hand typed in the addresses. I found it easiest to format them by going into MSWord "Mailings" then "Envelopes" then "Add to Document." You get a little text box and can center, space, preview, and print. One at a time. Thank heavens for small guest lists!


Another aside: Oh. Em. Gee. How hard is the etiquette on addressing envelopes! I called both my mom AND dad for advice on honorifics. Then I found this great website. I know there are lots of books, etc. but I thought the website covered most of my bases.

Mr. SB was a trooper until about 50% through step two. Then he got bored and turned on a video game "while I was formatting." Alright fine, it was a boring process. Especially with me freaking out about Ms./Miss/Mrs. every third invite.

Step three: Lining the envelopes (with the liners we pre-cut and folded a few weeks ago). I didn't like how the glue had turned out in my trial run, so I used a two sided tape runner and only put tape on the upper flap. I used about 5 pieces, you can see them in the pic below. We then lined up the inserts and pressed firmly.

Our work station.

I grabbed a pocketfold to make sure you could get the invitation in and out without hurting the liner (in case I needed to add more sticky tape to the bottom half). And low & behold, one of the furry babies had nibbled on the corner!! I have my suspicions, but they're both in trouble! I think they only got this one, but lesson learned... don't leave precious paper projects laying around!

Final product (for this stage).
All envelopes are addressed and lined.

I think taking this project in several steps over a few weeks (and months ahead of time) is making it go alot more smoothly. Neither Mr. SB or I get burned out and we're making progress. Both are good things.

Did you prefer to tackle DIY in large clumps? Or were smaller, drawn out projects your style?

Furry babies

Mr. SB and I have two furry babies. I love them lots. But, they're not so much "trainable" (Though we've tried! We had big plans of teaching them to walk on leashes, we even brought them to the beach once and Mr. SB makes them "Sit! Sit! Speak!" before getting their wet food, which they accomplish with varying degrees of success on a given day) or appropriate for wedding attendance.

Aren't they so precious??
Olivia & Elliot as tiny babies.

Helping Mommy blog.

While I am a self proclaimed "crazy cat lady", I'm not actually crazy enough to try and incorporate them into my wedding day in a big way. But a little way would be fun. People have suggested pictures in lockets on your bouquet, cake toppers, naming your signature cocktails after them (cute! The Elliot & The Olivia, though? Kinda lame...) but my faaaaave are these pictures from Miss Stiletto on weddingbee.

All the pictures she took for her table numbers were aDORable, but the cat ones really got me. It doesn't seem too crazy cat lady, right?

She's re-purposing her little wooden fellas (which are pretty darn cutely amazing) as cake toppers. I'm not sold on the idea of cake toppers, but they are cute "just to have." Maybe they could sit NEXT to the cake? Or just on our mantel at home. Whatev.

One last picture for cute-ness.

How have you seen pets incorporating into weddings, that weren't over the top?