Berlinovo Wedding Blog

Things I learned: starting the box

One bit of advice given to me by a friend, who got to her wedding location (many miles away from her home) without the toasting flutes, was to start the ceremony/reception box a week before the wedding. Start gathering the items that will be needed for the wedding. I have found this very helpful, because it has given me a few days to remember what I need to bring and let me tell you, it is amazing how much crap you need (especially for a do-it-yourself decorating wedding). I have a ton of candle holders (that will most likely go up for sale on Craig’s list the Sunday after the wedding), flutes, cake cutting utensils, favors, place cards, table numbers, family pictures, guest book and pen, and lists for the event planner. Fortunately, we have a meeting with the event planner the Tuesday before the wedding where we get to drop off all of the stuff. If we have forgotten anything, she will let us know.

Final payments and a lot of faith

Most vendors require their final payment two weeks before the wedding. The florist, the musicians, the DJ, the babysitters, and even the coffee cart guy. I am sure if I had hired an actual “wedding photographer” he would have done the same thing. Two weeks before. Fully paid. And most of them don’t take credit cards. This makes me a tad nervous. While I understand that in the eyes of the vendor it is a great way to make sure that you don’t have any unpaid invoices, in the eyes of the bride, it creates a small voice in your head asking “what incentive does a fully paid vendor have to actually show up?” Yes, yes, I know, word of mouth, small claims court, honesty, but still.

In defense of the vendors, trying to get money on the day of the wedding is pretty much out of the question, or very difficult to say the least. I’d imagine that trying to get money after the fact puts the vendors in the same position as the bride is in as it currently stands. What incentive does a newly wedded couple have to pay a vendor after the job has been done? That money could be much better spent on the honeymoon. This assumes that said newlywed couple is dishonest and as my father would say “suck as human beings”. I am sure that all of the vendors could tell stories of “those” people.

In the end, I just have to have faith (and the knowledge that I will have a TON of free time to research small claims court in a week….)

floods are in right?

My fiance and I went to go check out his tux on Tuesday. The tux rental shop we are using allows the groom to come in a few weeks early to try on his tux (rather than the Thursday before the wedding like everyone else) to make sure everything is correct. Good thing! The pants were more than a little short and the jacket was a little big. Not sure what happened with the original measurements, but they were a little off. Good thing we checked!

wedding fatigue = potential $$

Many wedding books and articles warn that as the wedding gets closer the bride/couple will start to hit a wall. This is the time when all of the hard work, all of the budgeting and cost savings could go RIGHT OUT THE WINDOW. It is also the time that unscrupulous vendors could take advantage of the unsuspecting couple. So be careful.

I can attest to the fact that once you hit the wedding wall, you do not pay as close attention to things. First of all, I don’t really have time to find a better deal and second, I have been finding a better deal for 7 months now. It is tiring. I have found myself willing to just pay a little extra to have the box checked. Most of my financial decisions have been made, so there is nothing too big, but there are little things. And as we all know, little things add up.

I hit the wall on Thursday. Now, I am sure the straw that broke the camel’s back was the Jordan almond debacle that had happened earlier that day, but the ramifications were far reaching. Thursday, I had a meeting with my event coordinator and the florist (the meeting had been set the day before in a rather harried manner).  My florist wanted to show me the chair covers and sashes and we had to decide on the vases that I wanted for the ceremony flowers (I decided to outsource the ceremony flowers because it was too overwhelming to figure out how to balance a larger arrangement - I attribute the outsourcing to fatigue, my fiance attributes it to wisdom). My florist had also kindly let me chose a fabric from a fabric store for the chair sashes because she did not have a color that I REALLY liked. She had new sashes made- all for the same price as if I had picked one that she already had. So she wanted me to see the sashes to make sure they were okay. As we sat there and discussed the chair covers, the florist asked if I wanted table runners. They were a nice addition of color; they had tassels; they had a modern flair; they were only a small addition to the bill. This was the decision that I made that was not based on any past rationale I had applied to planning the wedding. I agreed to the runners. But even as I made the decision, I knew that it had been made through a cloud of fatigue. I couldn’t picture how the tables would look with the runners, but I said yes anyway. Now, I should have known that if I couldn’t visualize it, I didn’t want it. But I was tired of making decisions, so I just went with it. To be clear, I don’t believe that my florist was trying to sneak something in. She was giving me an option that was completely normal. As a matter of fact, before I changed the chair covers business over to her, the event coordinator had asked me the same question.

The next day I IMed my best friend to ask her opinion. I described the runners and the way they would be on the table. She was not for it. She thought it would be too much. We have colorful enough flowers. She was right. Anyway - who is going to miss them? They were an added expense that was not necessary. I canceled the runners. I needed the sanity check and my best friend provided it. I just hope nothing else comes my way, because I am not making totally logical decisions anymore. From now on, I will just refer people to my best friend. She is the decision maker for the next week.

Where the *&#^(*#&#@@! are my almonds?

I ordered my Jordan almonds (the super fine if you all remember) from jordanalmonds.com and scheduled them to show up on Tuesday. I wanted them to be fresh. Tuesday came and went. Not one to waste time, I emailed the company to ask them to track my order. No response. I called them. There was a very sweet sounding lady on the answering machine instructing me to leave a message. I left a message. No return call. This did not make me happy. I went home on Wednesday. No shipment. The next morning I decided to try a new search “jordanalmonds.com review”. Top three hits:

1.  ForaBetterWedding.com where the site was rated a 2.0 and people all had the experience where there candy was never delivered and there was no response to their emails or phone calls.

2. The Complaints Board - this is self explanatory

3. The Candy Blog - where there were 160 comments from people who had all been ripped off by this company (now there are 161 comments). Listed in the comments was some fascinating information like all of the affiliated sites (there are more than just jordanalmonds.com, there is also hometowncandy.com and EBulkCandy.com, to name a few), there were places to write complaints (NJ Attorney General and the Federal Trade Commision), someone even figured out the registrant of the web site and posted his phone number. There was talk of a class action lawsuit and even a guy who lived in NJ (near the registrant’s address) who expressed the desire to take his Louisville Slugger to some knee caps.

ARG! So I called my credit card company and disputed the charge. The lady was appropriately empathetic especially once I told her that the product that I did not receive was jordan almonds for my wedding in 2 weeks. She credited back my account. According to the many comments on The Candy Blog, many folks did this and got their money back.

I called another online site to see if I could get almonds shipped asap. Sure, they could do that, but shipping cost more than the almonds themselves. I looked up the Cakeworks, figuring they would have almonds. I called them and they had them for a good price. Then I called Mom and delegated the purchase of the almonds to her. She got there, and the good price was not exactly accurate. As a matter of fact, it was about about 30% more than the price I was quoted. Irritating, but not an emergency. So Mom got the almonds and we made a deal. I would come over so that we could start the favors and she would provide dinner. I must give mom credit here - she has already prepared all 115 of the flowers centers, so we were ahead of the game on the favors. We got 45 done. 70 more to go!

Are you NUTS?

This question is the first one to come out of anyone’s mouth when I start talking about my wedding flowers.

Let me assure you, I am not, indeed, nuts, although there have been days in the last seven months, that I have wondered.

After reading many bridal books and looking at a friend of mine’s initial wedding flower proposal (gasp!), I decided to “create” (there is that word Mom loves!) my own wedding arrangements. Now, I am not foolish enough to think that I can create bouquets and boutonnieres, but I have done flower arrangements for weddings before. Okay, make that one wedding, 10 plus years ago, but still! I have done it. Actually, my best friend and I have done it, so I enlisted her and her mom’s help.

This, by far, has been the biggest challenge. For months now, we have poured over books, websites, magazines, anything we could get our hands on, really, to try to figure out a design.

We have been to the Flower Mart to look at flowers and vases. We have done trial runs. We have bought flowers and put them in water to see how long they last and what they look like after a few days. We have done our homework. Cross your fingers! I have 6 volunteers that are willing to help the Friday before the wedding, so I am hoping to make fast work of it (or at least be done before the rehearsal!

Delivery from China

“We got a delivery from China today.”

This came as an instant message from my fiance to me at work. I was impressed. The dress was right on time!

“I am not sure if it is your dress.”

Um…. what else could it be? I asked the obvious question. “why?”

“Well, it is small. Not what I expected.” I couldn’t wait to see what he was talking about.

When I got home I saw a yellow DHL plastic bag about 10″ by 12″. You’ve got to be kidding me. There was NO way that there was a wedding dress in there. The package wasn’t even poofy. It was quite flat, actually.

But when I opened it, it WAS a wedding dress. I took it out of its packaging and laid it out on the bed. I kept the plastic bag to show Mom when she came over. She couldn’t believe that the dress had come out of the small bag. She helped me try it on and it fit perfectly! It needed to be hemmed and bustled, but that was it! The dress was done!

Now to find comfortable shoes!

What the Hell happened to week 2?

Okay, if the week before the wedding happens as fast as week 2 before the wedding, then I will be expecting to see Christmas decorations up any day now [on a total side note: I went into a Hallmark store a few weeks ago and was assaulted by the song “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”, which was followed by “White Christmas”. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am all Christmas music all the time in December, but in JULY?! It was like nails on a chalkboard. I literally could not beat a path out of there fast enough. Frankly, I don’t know if I will go back into that Hallmark store. I was THAT offended.]

Back to the topic at hand:

 Last week as a total blur. We got back from Boston and headed straight into Week 2

Monday I looked at our shared Google wedding calendar to see what was going on. My fiance and I set up a Google calendar that we could both see and we piled all of our wedding scheduling into it. We then shared it with a few folks. It is a cool tool and would be even better if I remembered to put ALL of the appointments in there. As you can guess - there was a scheduling conflict. My fiance bought me a dance lesson package for Christmas last year. Well, months that we could have been taking dance classes flew by and by the time we got to July, we realized we couldn’t put it off any longer and we got serious about taking lessons. So we took our group lessons and now we are taking our private lessons. We are cramming 3 lessons into a week and a half. Unfortunately, when I scheduled with the dance instructor, I was no where near my wedding calendar so I booked the first dance lesson a little too close to my hair appointment. I had to work with my hairdresser to get an earlier appointment so that I could make my dance lesson. No worries, my hairdresser could do it, but it was not a great beginning to the week. Little did I know, it was only to get better.

Ring update

My fiance’s ring is in! No need to worry about it coming in last minute! Now let’s hope that he and I didn’t eat enough this weekend to push his finger to a different size!

Week 3 and Wedding Free

We took week 3 before the wedding OFF.

I had a business trip to go on and my fiance joined me. We had decided a while ago, that we would extend this trip into the weekend, because neither one of us had been to Boston as a tourist. We always went on business. We decided it would be a wedding free week, and for the most part we stuck to that.

Mom, on the other hand, took the list of things to do and marched down it. I just got the report:

Wedding favors - done as far as they can be without the almonds (they arrive in 2 days)

Table cameras - purchased

Non-fragrant tealight candles - purchased and trimmed

Late RSVPs - opened

Cats - Fed & watered (while not wedding related - equally important)

The only thing my fiance and I did wedding related was try Italian cookies in the North End. Rough job. We did find some nice Pignioli cookies, so we brought some of those home. Besides that? We took in the sights, walked all over the place and ate way too much food. Back on the wedding diet when we get back, although I am not sure how much can be done in 2 weeks. Two weeks?!