Photos & compromise

After looking at a lot of wedding crap online I've come to a pretty serious conclusion: most wedding photos suck. It's just not serious photojournalism, so it's not all that spectacular. (No offense to anyone's wedding pictures - those are great.)

B and I certainly want our day documented, but we're also pretty chilled out about what photos we need and what we're willing to pay in exchange for what we want. There are amazing wedding sites - photos that are creative, funny, interesting and smart - but most of the people who take those photos also take a lot of money and your rights to your photos too.

We contacted our amazing friends at Illini Media Company, the parent company of The Daily Illini where B and I met. (Romance!) Our friend Kit connected us with a talented, interested, entreprenuering photographer who is willing to shoot our wedding.

I met him a few weekends ago - he's smart, full of ideas and not at all hungover (even at 11 a.m. breakfast on a Saturday and he's in college!). He's coming to our wedding, taking as many photos as possible, leading another photog through the event, capturing the day and sharing a dvd of photos with us soon after.

He might not get the perfectly centered shot of my shoes, or take 342 pictures of my hands or get the light perfect for every photo. But that's fine. I'm quite sure there will be quite a few photos of me with all the important people I know - what more can I ask for?

Checking things off.

We've accomplished a few things, that's for sure. Many of these things beg more questions, which require answering, but that's OK. We're checking things off the list and that's a good feeling. Here's some details (maybe spoilers even) about the tasks we've completed.

• Save the Dates - These are on the way, or nearly on the way. We bought and procured some random postcards, which we're writing to all our friends and family to remind them of wedding details. We bought a cool stamp of our wedding date to make the postcards look like more than just plain postcards. The stamps are actually in our wedding font! Huzzah!
• Bridesmaid Dresses - Cindy, Julie and I headed to JCrew last week and actually found dresses that everyone agreed upon. And they're not black (I was pretty sure we could all agree on black, at the very least). They're silk chiffon and in a beautiful color called dusty shale, which is a gray-ish, turquoise-ish, neutral-ish color. The dresses are beautiful and look smashing on both Cindy and Julie. Next step is finding the flowers to go alongside as well as the clothes for the gentlemen which should match the dusty shale/flower combo in some way.
• Hotel - This is highly tricky. My dad is on top of finding hotels, but there truly aren't a lot of good deals at Chicago hotels in the summer on a weekend. So we've found a decent deal, but there's a whole silly contract about guaranteeing that the rooms will be booked or paying the difference. I don't know if most hotels do this when you reserve a block, but it's a lot of money to promise, especially if people make different plans (you know, booking hotels with miles/points, staying at a friend's place). So we're figuring this all out.
• Parties - Showers and parties are planned, or at least the dates are reserved. So we just need to register and pick out fancy outfits to wear!
• Pre-Nuptial Dinner - Planning in the works!
• Invitations - Our amazing friend is working on this - once we have an icon or logo, to go with our font, we'll just need to pick colors, exact wording and print 'em up!

103 days to go.

Dance, dance revolution

We're making our own playlist for the wedding - everything on an iPod, we can set up a few different playlists for different parts of the night, the upstairs where things will be quieter and the downstairs where there'll be dancing.

And, we're taking requests. If there's a song you'd like to hear or think we should play - tell us! Use the comments section. I'm trying to find a gadget to put on the blog frontpage too. In the meantime, suggest away!

A dress decision

I finally decided on the wedding dress for me.

It's a beautiful ivory bridesmaid dress made of taffeta silk with what I hope is a good mix of modern and sweet. I spent $311 (including tax, rush charge and other silly fees) - which is pretty amazing for the dress. (Definitely less than what B will spend on his suit, which has several magnitudes more wearing power, but will be somewhat less admired come July 24.)

I'm happy I've learned so much, become pretty confident about my ability to look hot at the Academy Awards (seriously, I rock quite a few different styles... invite me!) and felt incredibly appreciative of my patient, honest friends/family. Here are the major lessons learned from this fiasco-that-landed-me-a-dress:

• Love your consultant. Alex, at House of Brides, gave us the idea to look at bridesmaid dresses that come in ivory. It's brilliant for anyone who wants less dress and less expense. Consultants really help a lot - they help you actually get into a dress, respond to what you like and help you put really heavy strapless dresses on hangers.
• Take sample size into account - I didn't fit properly into 90 percent of the dresses I tried. But I tried on a lot and figured out how to imagine the dress fitting by asking a lot of questions about what'd be bigger and what stayed true. Hopefully this translates into a perfect fitting dress.
• Try everything. I never, ever would have predicted that the contenders or the dress I picked would look good on me. But I'm glad I tried on every silly dress I did. I even ordered a dress that was mailed to my home, where I modeled (to everyone except B).
• Keep calm. In the time I spent trying on dresses I felt fat, yucky, chubby-armed, chubby-backed, sexy, daring, silly, matronly, weird-shaped, freakish, embarrassed, awesome, radiant, bride-y, happy, beautiful and awesome.
• Bring along amazing people. It's pretty ridiculous, but I brought along friends and family who found the humor in the bad, the positive in everything ("Well, that doesn't flatter you" or "You don't look happy in that.") and enjoyed the process. My amazing friends hardly rolled their eyes a bit. They're the truest, most wonderful, patient and thoughtful people ever. I've seen the yuckies that people on bring along for dress decisions on Say Yes to the Dress bring along. Gross.
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