wedding stuff, part 1 of 875

Here are the things I have to do today:

• Freelance story evaluation (yay, $120!).
• Grocery list/trip.
• Homework (quiz tomorrow, test Wednesday, totally not prepared, missed class last Wednesday, am feeling like class is slipping out of my control, kind of wish it was over with already and it’s not even March yet).
• This blog post.
• Laundry.
• Taxes, just to see lay of land and/or how fucked I am.
• Get started on reading Paul Grilley’s book. I don’t actually have to do this, as the workshop that requires it isn’t until June, but I’ve done a lot of other prep work for that workshop as I expect the rest of my spring to be hectic.
• Begin to formulate some kind of plan to talk to parents about wedding money.

This wedding thing is already overwhelming me, and I haven’t actually started the planning yet. Part of the reason for this is that I went to B&N and bought some wedding books – a book of lists, a planner, a Rough Guide (which is the best book, so far), and a book of 1001 questions asked on a popular wedding site. All the stuff in these books shows me that planning a wedding is absurdly complicated, which I admit I already knew, but the number of things to figure out and do and worry about is absolutely staggering.

After poking around on the internet for most of yesterday afternoon, I’ve decided that unless it’s blatantly out of our budget, I’m going to hire a wedding planner in Vegas. None of the ceremony or (particularly) reception packages that I found at various locations seemed right, unless they have a la carte options (and I don’t think they do), and there’s just no way that I can plan an entire wedding myself from half a continent away. There are too many things that I can’t be there to decide on and negotiate about, too many possible venues to evaluate, just…too much.

So I found a few planners on the internet that look okay. Since I’m looking at late March of 2011, it’s not really necessary to make calls for another couple of weeks (or, really, months), but that is me, trying to get to the planning as quickly as possible. I’m really curious about a planner will even agree to take on a wedding that will be as small and low-budget as ours will be – less than 50 guests, cocktail reception, no DJ, four-figure budget – but I hope the answer will be yes, because my other option is to accept a package deal that isn’t really what I want.

Aside from that big question, the other big question is how to deal with the money thing. My mother pointed out in our first conversation about this that I HAVE to get my DAD to PAY, which is something she’s been pointing out about all kinds of things in my life for, oh, about eleven years now. But she also said she would be paying some of it herself. My pride would like us to throw the wedding on our own, but it’s flat impossible. So my own proposal is for me and BF to pay for our clothes – my dress, shoes, etc. and BF’s tux rental – and for the invitations, and for a few other small things like my hair and makeup and the officiant’s gratuity and so on, and for Mom and Dad to pick up the ceremony, reception, food & drink, and planner costs. That’s the stuff we simply can’t afford. All the things I’m leaving to the planner, in other words.

In theory we’d like to pay for lodging for the guests traveling to our wedding, too, because we both think destination weddings are kind of shitty and want to mitigate that. But doing math that even I can do shows me that that will cost about as much as I want to spend on the reception. So I’m not sure it’ll be possible, unless his parents step in and offer to help with the wedding costs. Which they very well might.

As for my dress, which I’m sure all of you ladies are slavering to hear about, I have a good idea of what I want. I don’t want to spend more than $500, because spending more than that on a single garment is goddamn ridonkulous to me, even if it is a once-in-a-lifetime garment. (I will go a little higher for the perfect dress. But it better be fucking perfect.) I do not want a typical bridal dress, with brocade and a corset and a giant skirt and train and so on. Although I think those dresses are beautiful and love them as eye candy, they are not me.

In the past I had thought I’d go with an incredibly simple sleeveless satin sheath, floor-length, but that was when I wanted to have a beach wedding. Now I am thinking of either a tea-length full-skirted 50′s-style dress (I have a black dress in this style that is very, very flattering, so go with what you know works, right?), perhaps with an off-the-shoulder neckline, or something quite similar to Claire Pettibone’s gowns. (I cannot possibly buy one of her actual gowns, good Christ.) What I really want to do is find a tailor and have a dress custom-made. I think this’ll be a whole lot cheaper and I’ll get exactly what I want. The books all advise me to keep an open mind and look everywhere and try on dresses I think I won’t like, and I agree with all that in theory, but I don’t want a typical wedding dress. Don’t. They’re beautiful, but that’s not how I want to look (and not how I want to try and move around all day, incidentally). How I will find a tailor, and convince him/her of what I want, I do not know.

Gosh, that’s a lot of words about the wedding, when I wanted to talk about other stuff too. Mainly I feel overwhelmed and don’t know who to talk to, because I feel like there’s only so much I’ll be able to say to BF before he’ll say “HONEY! It’s more than a year away and in all likelihood someone else will be planning it. Enough already!” Because that, of course, is logical. But AAAAAGH I’M GETTING MARRIED AND I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO TO MAKE SURE EVERYONE WILL LOVE IT. Since there’s a lot about all of this that I’m fairly indifferent about: colors, officiant, BF’s clothes, even flowers (other than my bouquet). I really just care about what I look like, the music, and that everyone has a good time and no one is too offended. That’s all. So trying to figure out what to do about not only the stuff I care about, but about the stuff I don’t care about but which other people do care about, is hard.

Even though I’m STILL WRITING ABOUT THIS it’s terribly useful to be doing so because although BF and I have definitely talked at length about this in the last few days, there’s a lot of stuff I’m feeling that I haven’t really discussed.

Anyway. On another topic, I meant to mention that my partner yoga class didn’t go so well. In fact, no one showed up. Not one couple. J and I were all set and ready, dressed nicely, warmed up, and no one came. My feelings were terribly hurt, and I was embarrassed as hell in front of J, but I tried to just shake it off and move on. I haven’t been that successful. That and the fact that only one person has been coming to my 8:00 Sunday classes for weeks now has really lowered my morale about teaching yoga. I still feel great when I’m doing it, but I’d really love to be doing it for more than one person, you know? Especially when I’m being paid $7 for what adds up to about two and a half hours of work.

Yeah, I guess this is mostly about the wedding. I’m a little sorry. I’m not going to promise not to yammer about it here on the blog for the next year, because hello, I don’t have any girlfriends, so who else is going to listen but the internet?