Thursday, January 21, 2010

Roadblocks...and How We're Dealing with Them

I may have been laying low on the posts lately, but that doesn't mean the wedding workload has eased up much. Unfortunately, most of it has felt pretty overwhelming and our external hard drive crashed and looks to be a very costly replacement, so I've been throwing myself into finding a job and working extra hours at the bar and brainstorming wedding stuff on the bus rides to and from work.

Officially, the wedding is less than 261 days away (I have the Facebook countdown widget, I swear I'm not that crazy) and my little wedding tracker/planning thing at theknot.com is telling me I have 361 more items to work on and 54 overdue. I'd happily whittle that list down, but there's a few HUGE roadblocks in my way right now, so I figured I blog it out and consider ways to get past 'em.

Problemo #1: Shower Setbacks
To make it easier on family and friends, we figured we would have one wedding shower in Indiana and one in Ohio. We mapped all the dates out months ago, but due to another wedding in JCakes family we might have to change our shower date in IN and since everyone in the wedding party and our families were clued in on the important dates, it's another headache to map out.
Possible Solution We're Tossing Around:
Just have one shower in Ohio. With all the other details to worry about, I'd just as soon have one shower and maybe do the honeymoon registry thing for people who can't make it.


Problemo #2: Ceremony Crisis
We've been checking in since May '09, but still need to make things official so we can figure out the planning in it's entirety.
Possible Solution We're Tossing Around:
Contacting our Alderman. I don't know what else to do, this is getting pretty crazy.


Problemo #3: Catering Conundrums
We have a pretty limited budget and a pretty big guest list and have been very upfront with caterers about everything, but quotes so far for food, service and rentals have been almost as much as our total budget for the entire wedding.
Possible Solution We're Tossing Around:
With over 200 guests invited, JCakes and I have been re-assessing the list over and over. Self-catering isn't really an option with that many people invited, but there has to be some kind of way to get around estimates being $15K+ just for catering. I've been looking at tons of DIY books and blogs for info on this, but if you have any local, Chicago ideas on who to work with or how to make this happen, please let me know.


Problemo #4: Officiant Issues.
In a perfect world, we would love to have our friend who introduced us lead the ceremony as our officiant, and as a nod to our family, have a Catholic priest (friend of JCakes famil) say a small blessing. I've read about this being a possibility (depending on the priest's views), but our request has been denied.
Possible Solution We're Tossing Around:
Still not sure. Like I mentioned, ideal was to have our friend do the ceremony with a blessing so we can honor both our families and our own views and backgrounds. As a second option, we really wanted to find someone who could be a premarital counselor and our officiant. We found a great guy (contact me if you want his info) but he's much too pricey for us. We want to have someone meaningful and not piss off our parents. I have no idea what to do.


Problemo #5: Musical Obstacles
A few friends offered a long time ago to assist with the ceremony music and having met at a friend's concert, JCakes and I thought there would be no better way to honor that than to have our friends play at the reception. We've been keeping in touch, mentioning how important it is to have things locked into place, but nothing concrete has cemented so far. To have a working knowledge of the run of show for our big day with details to pass along on invitations, to the caterers, DJ, photographer, etc., we really if this is gonna happen.
Possible Solution We're Tossing Around:
JCakes has been doing his best to stay in touch about this, but I guess if it comes down to it, we'll have to say screw it, and just roll with the punches. Sucks, but not much we can do here. Maybe we'll just use an iPod for the ceremony music.


Problemo #6: Decoration Dilemma
In the greater picture, this is definitely amongst the least of our worries, but it's still something we need to consider. Having a cohesive theme for everything not only makes everything look nicer, it's much easier to budget for and plan ahead with DIY projects and hit up sales if you know what you're looking for. Most of the ideas JCakes and I have collaborated on and discussed actually fit better with a spring/summer wedding so taking our "backyard wedding" ideas and changing most of the details (including the backyard part) is kind of hard. Achieving the same feel in a different season may be more difficult than we originally thought. I keep looking for examples of fall weddings on Brooklyn Bride and other sites, but none of them so far have evoked the same feel the summer ones seem to.
Possible Solution We're Tossing Around:
Being way too late to change the date and location, I've been brainstorming ideas with my Aunt Glo (as a former windows display visionary, she has a total knack for this kind of thing). Still not sure how it's all gonna form together, but I'm hoping some of my favorite bloggers post more real weddings from the fall to help us gain some inspiration.


I guess it doesn't all seem so bad when I write it all out, but I've been dying to work on the detail stuff. The fun stuff, like drafting our first screenprint for the invitations, but all of the business stuff needs to be taken care of first.

Oh man. 261 days feels so close.

2 comments:

  1. You might be interested in a caterer called Artfully Delicious, the chef there seems to be pretty helpful with adapting to small budgets, and specializes in vegetarian dishes which is a lot cheaper than meat (though a sacrifice for a carnivore like myself).
    Artfullydelicious.com, chef's name is Kriss.

    ReplyDelete