Vegas Vows

Oct092009

Big ol’ Post about shoes & other important things

OK, so here’s the latest…

I found a ketubah that we both agree on.. until Steve said he thought he was drawing it. So, yay! It’ll be totally personalized and totally us. Now to find a calligrapher since, while my handwriting is nice, it’s not that nice. I’ve got a few calligrapher friends on Twitter, so I’m putting the word out over there.

I started calling/ emailing around to hotels on the Strip about food. Aside from the debacle with the cake bakeries, I think Albertson’s is the way we’re going to go. After getting prices for receptions and even restaurants, I’m thinking cake and champagne reception in our room after the ceremony and pictures are done. The cheapest meal so far is the buffet at the Flamingo, but it’s still $22++ per person and we just don’t have $400 extra floating around.

As far as our hotel room goes, I’d love to stay in a really snazzy hotel with gorgeous furniture in it, but those are way pricey. We’re talking like $200 a night pricey. Our whole trip/ wedding budget is $1500, most of which is being eating by hotel and airfare expenses. Just out of curiosity, I asked 2 of my friends with husband’s working at hotels about discounts. As it turns out, they get friends and family discounts for the MGM family of hotels! Oh so amazing. I think bookings should be open in about a month. Trust me, I check religiously!

Y’all saw the invite design I recently posted. I’ve made the suggested changes and sent it to a printer for a quote. I also quoted the announcement cards, RSVP cards and, sure why not, graduation announcements. I love our printer. It’s going to be under $100 for 20 invites, 10 RSVP, 100 announcements, and 200 grad announcements.

Shoes? Who doesn’t love shoes?? Oh, especially for wedding shoes. I love these shoes Gabriella Rocha: Ginger in turquoise leather:

and these Annie: Lola in blue satin. And no, not *just* for the name either!

And not wedding related, graduation is so on! My adviser emailed me last night – after midnight! Talk about dedication – about my missing MIS elective. It turns out there is a whole Master’s program for Information and Computer Technology. Dammit, if I’d only known before applying for the MBA. Oh well, it’s been a good 5 years and I’ve made some great friends.

I officially have a replacement class! I’ll be taking Networking Technology for Industry, which may sound horrible to you, but it sounds amazing to me. I am so excited about it!

See? I’m totally stoked!

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Oct032009

Invitations

..Clicky clicky for a larger version..

Check it out! Yeah, I was loving InDesign a bit this week =) Hopefully we’ll have a hotel location within the month. This is the Vegas invite. The announcements will be slightly tweaked. The Miami reception invite will be tweaked with that info on it.

Thoughts on the wording? I’m not crazy crazy about it, but it could grow on me. Ha!

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Oct032009

Cakery and my Family

I think I found a cake bakery. Well, potentially 2. Oddly enough, one of them is Albertson’s which is directly on the strip right in the middle of everything. As in, we could walk there and not pay delivery fees. The other one quoted me $75. I have to actually contact Albertson’s and see if they can remake the cake I like.

Ok, so a totally different subject: My family.

Some of you know the story about my family and our wedding. If we don’t have it in Miami, none of them can attend. If we have it in Miami, we can’t afford it. If we have it in Miami, we will not have less than 50 guests. I’m not even talking about friends; that’s my family only. They all live in south Florida.

It’s purely a financial reason that they can’t attend. But no way am I going into details here. For similar reasons, we cannot afford thousands of dollars for getting married there. Between the rabbi, the food, the tent, table, chairs, places settings, etc etc etc. I don’t care how cheap everything will be for an intimate family wedding; it’s still times a minimum of 50 people!

After much deliberation, a few date changes, and my suggestion, we chose Vegas. Jodie suggested SLVW as she and her husband used them for their wedding last year and said they did a great job. I contacted SLVW multiple times and finally worked things out. And my baby brother and his girlfriend (both of whom I adore!) will be in attendance. If I decided to walk down the proverbial aisle, he will be the one to escort me.

Our wedding will cost $399 plus $60 for the marriage license. (It’s package 2, but the price was recently increased.) When I say wedding, I mean photography, ceremony, video, flowers, limo transportation, and music. We have to pick the location for the 2 picture locations, one of which will be the ceremony location. At the moment I’m thinking our hotel room and the Welcome to Las Vegas sign. But that could easily change.

Other expenses for any location are the cake, the ketubah (which we can hopefully afford), and plane/ hotel expenses. Our total budget is $1500 for Vegas. $399 (everything) + $60 (license) + tips for photographer, limo driver and reverend are gone already. They’re fixed costs. The variable costs right now are our hotel and airfare. I’m estimating/ hoping to get us there and home, for 4 nights, for about $800. But we’ll see. Orbitz, Expedia, etc don’t even opening bookings for October 2010 until around November. Grrr.

By the way, we are exactly 1 year and 1 week away from being husband and wife!

Just thought I’d throw that out there. <3

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Oct012009

Wedding Cake Blues

I love this cake. I love the look and feel of it. It’s simple and elegant and just perfect. (Well, without the sprig on top of it, that is.) If i were to have this cake for our wedding, it would be a lighter blue color. and with our own cake topper on it.

I’ve been in contact with a few bakeries in Las Vegas for cake quotes. Namely Retro Bakery, Amatos Bakery, Freed’s Bakery, and a few others.

My biggest problem is the word “wedding” – as soon as i mention it, prices double or even triple. Yes, the wedding industry is lucrative, but i am on a ridiculously tiny budget! With my MBA graduation in May, Steve’s beginning grad school in August (hopefully) and a move somewhere in there, we just don’t have extra money to spare. It’s getting frustrating.

I asked for grocery stores and yummy cake bakeries on Twitter and got a few names. The question will be… do I really trust ordering a cake from across the country without tasting it? And do we really need a cake? Can’t we just have dessert at a restaurant after the ceremony?

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Sep082009

Vegas Hotels

I feel like, even though it’s over a year away, I am at an impasse with our wedding plans. I’ve been price checking hotels with random hypothetical dates since booking for October 2010 hasn’t been opened yet on any website. I asked Steve yesterday if he cared where we stayed. Of course not; I expected nothing less from him. =)

I had looked into the Sahara, the Stratosphere, and a handful of others. Lately, I have been scouring the Treasure Island website and Googling pictures, etc. For not much more than the cheaper hotels, we can stay in a really nice room at Treasure Island.

Granted, I can’t price check airfare yet, but figure it’ll be roughly the same next year. The current plan is to fly out/ check-in on Saturday, October 9th – and head to the court house depending on the time we arrived – and to fly out/ check-out on either Tuesday or Wednesday (12th or 13th), hopefully late in the day to give us more touristy time.

My requirements, in no real order:

  • On the strip
  • Within a few blocks of transportation (bus, monorail, tram)
  • Won’t break the bank (preferably around $600)
  • Pretty room!

The pretty room thing is weird, I know, but I’m thinking we might have the wedding ceremony IN the room then travel somewhere for the rest of the pictures in our wedding package.

Where would/do you stay when heading to Vegas?

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Sep022009

This Thing Feels Real Now

Our impending marriage feels really real now. It wasn’t the reservation with SLVW. Or the confirmation email stating our wedding date. Or the flowers and Etsy stash stockpiled in the family room. Or even all the design work I’ve been playing with for invitations. Nope, not even having the wedding dress in my closet, or attending Kim and Matt’s wedding this weekend. What made it really real and gave me head to toe goose bumps was when my mother-in-law told the waitress at lunch on Sunday, “This is my son and future daughter-in-law.” I can’t even write that without tearing up.

What made it real for you?


Also, this picture will adorn our wedding announcements. One day. Are those sent out after the wedding or before? Since we’re going to Vegas with about a dozen people and having the reception after the fact, can I include these with the reception invitations? Or send announcements and invitations later? We honestly haven’t got a clue when the reception will be so I don’t want to delay announcing things. Whatcha think?

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Aug232009

the last 24 hours: the amazing and the horrendous

the amazing
last night after checking times and temperatures, i reserved our wedding date. yep, it’s official, we are getting married on 10-10-10 at 2pm in Las Vegas. next, we need to pick locations. well, here, this is the wedding deets copied from SLVW‘s site…

Las Vegas Strip, package 2 – $399

  • Get married in any hotel suite, room, or condo. Ceremony and some photos will be done at one location.
  • Minister – traditional or civil ceremony
  • Professional Photographer – minimum of 30 high resolution pictures on a photo CD
  • DVD of the Ceremony (High definition widescreen 1080i video quality and Slideshow of all photos added to DVD with ceremony)
  • Witness, if needed
  • Option to get married at the world famous Las Vegas sign, hotel suite, room, condo, or select public locations on the strip
  • 1 additional public location on the Strip for 25 of your 50 photos (a minimum of 50 photos)
  • A small hand tied 6-rose bouquet for the bride
  • Groom’s boutonniere
  • Courtesy Limousine transportation to and from the ceremony for the bride and groom and up to 6 guests

We are also getting 20 extra pictures for not using their flowers, and 30 extra pictures for entering a contest they have. so, a total of 100 photos minimum.

this morning, we slept late and then, as usual, he raced to work. i putzed around the house, showered, walked Lola, and prepped the steak and potatoes for dinner tonight. then at like 2:40 i headed to the Y for belly dancing class.

…and the horrendous…
we were walking out of class and my friend Carrie said something along the lines of “what are you doing here?” and i looked, and my heart sank. i knew immediately something was wrong. it was Steve. Steve who raced to get to work by 1pm. Steve who doesn’t get any breaks at his crappy job, and certainly not enough time to come all the way back to Chapel Hill to sit outside my class and read the New Yorker. yeah, *sigh*

we went out to the parking lot and he told me what happened. after a few near misses with boxes flying out of his GM’s hands and getting up close and personal in his face yelled at, he just handed in his keys and walked out. that’s the very concise version of it. hopefully he’ll have something new soon!

so now instead of the steak and mashed potatoes with lemon cupcakes just as a meal, it’s a celebration of sorts. he’s not going to be beat down at work anymore and can actually come with me to Pittsburgh in 3 days. yes, even 3 days away, his GM was still dragging his feet even though Steve’s been constantly asking for the time off for the last few months.

and no, we can’t afford our life on my salary. we can’t even afford my half of our life on my salary.

i, for reals, hope that all y’all are doing better!

Both image sources

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Aug222009

Booked!

It is official…. 10-10-10 @ 2pm.

No other reason for the posting. <3

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