Official Pictures

I am excited that the professional pictures are here and I love them all. My photographer did a great job and I am glad that they turned out very well. I hope you enjoy them. (Please note that the pictures are professional pictures and are copyrighted. The only people with rights to the pictures are the photographer and myself. You may not use them without permission.)

Black Satin Pumps from Betsey Johnson

Mom & my rockstar MOH helping tie my dress

A bit of a close up of my embellishment 

"I do!" something blue

Aisle 

Tons of smile that day

The recessional 

Enjoying some cool drinks on a warm summer day

Black and white portrait

A few traditional poses

Round monochromatic bouquet

Non-traditional wedding cake

Calla Lily centerpieces 

Father Daughter Dance

First dance

Bouquet

The cake was delicious and we wrecked it

Aisle

Ceremony View

Rings

Love :)

Let your guests have fun

This picture was taken by my husband

I've read some pretty interesting things online about whether or not it was appropriate to ask guests to refrain from taking pictures at the wedding. Your guests are here to share a special moment with you. Presumably you wanted them to take part of every aspect of the day, which is why they were invited. Why would there be any question about whether or not there allowed to take pictures?

There are certainly guests with not so good manners who think they know better than the professional photographer you paid a lot of money for. These guests may get up in front of your hired photographer to get the best shots or might even get in the aisle during the ceremony. This can create a disruption of a special moment. There are ways to mitigate that by using some strategically places decorations along the aisles. That makes it difficult for the amateur photographers to create distractions unless they want to be that guy. It also removes the awkwardness of having to say "sit down uncle Joe. You're annoying our real photographer."

But when your professional pictures take a while to come in, pictures from your guests will be the only thing holding you over for the next 6-8 weeks after the wedding. As of this post, I have not seen a single professional picture & I probably have 3 more weeks to go. The only pictures & videos I have so far have all been from guests who were free to roam and take several candid and staged shots. 

So unless you're Beyoncé and are having a top secret gala, let them have a little fun. Their pictures will be the only ones available for a while. 

My high school classmates "admiring" my ring. This picture was taken by my mom's friend. 

"She Said The 'W' Word!"

Ladies do have the reputation of dropping the word "wedding" in conversation, don't we? We want people to know we are getting married. After all we are spending lots of money to show our everlasting devotion to the one and only. We also get to wear a pretty white dress, act like a brat & be treated like a princess. What's not to love? Just remember that it can cost you. 

Everything becomes infinitely more expensive when people find out you're getting married. Make up which is normally $50-75 is now $150-200. Same goes for hair, alterations, shoes, etc. While there are some things you can't avoid, for example, your make up artist will catch on pretty quick that you're a bride, same for your seamstress, there are other areas where you can keep your upcoming nuptials a secret.

In my case, I wanted chocolate covered strawberries served with my cake. When I asked the venue how much it would cost, I was quoted a price of $3 per strawberry, plus a 19% taxable administrative fee, 7% sales tax and 15% non-taxable service charge. That's a lot of money for a single strawberry I thought. So I decided to contact a bakery and I told them I needed 100 chocolate coveted strawberries delivered to this place, at this time. I conveniently failed to mention anything about a wedding and whadda ya know? They were $1.75 each. 

If you can help it, remember to tell everyone you're trying to book that you're just having a really BIG party. You can save yourself some bucks by saying nothing about a wedding.

What I Wish I Would Have Done Differently

Looking back on the wedding day, everything came out just like I would have imagined, if not better. I wouldn't trade anything about it for the world. I managed to stay on schedule despite the best efforts of some perpetual tardy folks, the decorations were as I anticipated, the food was good and I loved my cake. 

However my planning process left a lot to be desired. With a big family comes a huge support system. That network is expanded even more when the bride attended an all-girl school for a huge portion of her academic career. While not everyone is reliable, it's a pretty favorable position to be in. In fact, one of my very good friend from grade school works part time as a wedding planner. One would think that I would delegate the more mundane tasks to my most trustworthy entourage. Except that I didn't.

The control freak in my insisted that I supervise, no, execute every detail of the planning. "But how am I supposed to know if it will be done right?!?" I didn't realize how much this undermined the competence of my friends and family until someone actually called me out on it. 

My very reliable friend from grade school who was chosen as my day-of coordinator said: "I took a week off to be at your disposal. Instead I spent 2 days sitting around doing nothing because you can't let go of certain things. I feel under utilized." By the time she said that, several things were on the verge of falling apart. 

I only took one day off before the wedding, my husband worked until 5pm the day before and I still had a long list of items left. We were pressed for time and all the things I wanted to control rather than delegate ended up slipping away from me, but in the worst way possible. Not by choice but out of necessity, because I wasn't going to get around to them. It would have been a more favorable situation if I retained some level of control by choosing what I let go of. Instead, it ended up being any "unaccomplished tasks", regardless of how important it may have been. In my quest to do it all, I stretched myself so thin that I barely did anything at all. 

In the end, it turned out fine because no matter how underutilized my friends and family were, they are still competent and trustworthy. And once I finally gave them the chance to step in, they proved it. So my regret is that I didn't step down sooner. I could have saved myself a great deal of stress by doing that. 

Wedding Cake!

Photo Credit Emms's blog

(NOTE: This is not my wedding cake. My wedding pictures are not yet available and I am unable to post my own pictures. Photo sources will continue to be credited until I get my own)

As long as I've been gone, I don't think it's hard to determine that I already got married. I put the blog on life support during the wedding planning because I underestimated how difficult it would be to jump start a blog, plan a wedding and finish an MBA. Now that I got 2 out of those 3 things done, I think I am ready to breathe life back into this thing. Back in March, I made this post about the cake selection process. But I was not able to finish it due to time constraints. Now that I have all this "free time" on my hands (don't tell my husband) I can tell you about all my woes and victories.

I booked an appointment with the GB and rushed there with the then-fiance on a cold raining afternoon. Many things were as expected: personalized attention, delicious cakes, wide selection of flavors and tons of fancy decorations. Other anticipated circumstances included the high prices and they certainly delivered. GB's price for what was essentially the same design, since we picked our own, was $600 more. Not a $600 cake. An additional $600 on top of what IB was quoting before the 10% discount.

Four words: I don't think so.

Wedding planning is not a race to the poor house. I couldn't get out of there fast enough to call IB and confirm my reservation. It was just that simple. As much as I was wishing I made this update earlier, I realize that maybe after the wedding is a better time after all. Now I know that the cake was delicious, it was beautifully decorated, they executed our vision perfectly and I still saved over $600. Maybe I would have boasted about all saving a good chunk of money and found out I was dissatisfied with the cake. Instead, I can now confirm that going with IB was very worth it.

My take away from this is that sometimes the most popular option is not the most ideal. Things can be popular for all the wrong reasons and we need to make our own choices. Even if it means taking the road less traveled.