markandmaggie's Blog

Things my Mother has Worried About

markandmaggie — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:17:00 GMT

Now, to address a subject that I am sure many of the other brides have dealt with, and if not, I fear it may rear its ugly head in the future. As the title of the blog suggests, as you plan your wedding, your mother will, no doubt, call you and ask you the most bizarre question you have ever heard. Do not bother telling her it is bizarre, this will only result in hurt feelings (if she doesn't think about these things who will?), and possibly raised voices. The issues that she calls about will not be is the caterer going to provide a vegetarian alternative to the buffet or do you have a cake topper, these issues would seem legitimate, I believe, by anyone's standards. Here are the questions/reminders my mother has chosen to ask:

"Be sure to ask the hairdresser if she needs us to bring bobby pins." The story behind this is that her hairdresser is going to be doing my hair, even though she "retired" a month ago, so my mom wasn't sure she would have "access" to bobby pins (??) or wouldn't be able to bring all the different colors of bobby pins (again ??). I tried to tell my mom that if she couldn't bring bobby pins, we should find someone else, since the last thing we needed to worry about on the day of the wedding was remembering to bring bobby pins.
"Maybe you should do 'family place cards' instead of individual place cards." She made the point that we would "obviously" seat entire families together (I think not, since most of my cousins are of the age where they can sit with other people their own age). The reasoning behind this one is that she and my dad cannot remember the names of one of his friend's significant others, and doesn't want to call and find out.. I told her that we can easily call and just ask how it is spelled, but she's still not convinced.
"Don't you think we need to bring extension cords to the reception site." I actually laughed out loud when she said that one, but she was, in fact, serious. She thinks we need to bring them for the hairdressers (I know, she's really hung up on this), despite the fact that we went and looked at the bride's room at the reception site specifically to count the number of outlets in the room (there are 8 sets of outlets and only 4 bridesmaids).

More posts at http://catholicweddinggirl.blogspot.com

Organized, Finally

markandmaggie — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:27:00 GMT

This weekend, my fiance and I finally had a chance to unpack the presents I received at the shower the week before.

Thank goodness. I was so tired of walking into the living room and thinking that I was in a garage. One corner of the room had a pile of boxes, that had been somewhat consolidated before I came back to Houston, but most of the gifts were all packed by Crate and Barrel in boxes that were much too huge (I have no idea why 4 cheese spreaders need to be individually wrapped in a whole issue of the New York times and put into a shoe box).

Saturday we finally unpacked a lot of it, ran it through the dishwasher, and found places in the cabinet for it. Some of the items were replacing old3er things that one or the other of us had bought when we were in college, so we also packed up a couple of boxes to go to Goodwill with.

The living room was looking more or less like a living room again, when UPS, Fedex, and the postal service each delivered a wedding gift to the door. Time for another trip to the dumpster...

Note: I realize that the above post may sound ungrateful. I am not bemoaning the fact that we are receiving generous gifts from our guests, merely the fact that C&B and BBB insist on using giant boxes to ship gifts.

More posts at: http://catholicweddinggirl.blogspot.com

Frustrated with the Reception Site

markandmaggie — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:22:00 GMT

Here is the sequence of events that has made me greatly dislike my reception site (ladies don't say hate):

June 3: I email the reception site to set up the "big meeting" which is supposed to take place about a month before the wedding (August 9). I ask to have the meeting on June 13 (since I am planning on traveling to Houston that day).

June 4: I get a response saying that June 13 is much too early; I won't know a lot of the little details (no indication what those might be).

June 17: Having returned from previously mentioned trip, I try again to schedule the meeting, this time for June 27th. Now that I have found the perfect part-time job, I only have Fridays available to go to Houston, and I have two other appointments scheduled for that day.

June 17 (after arriving home from work): I am told that the month of June is extremely busy for them (duh) and they have many Friday weddings. I am given a list of days and times when we can meet. Of the 10 or so days, one is a Friday (July 11), which happens to be the day of the bachelorette party. The coordinator expresses that she understands that it can difficult to plan a wedding from out-of-town, and maybe I could send someone else. At the meeting we will go over the timeline, the table setting, and other details.

I, upon reading the email, become irate. 1) I could have had the timeline ready for the last meeting. 2) How can I entrust such a meeting to my mom, who was flustered at the florist when asked her opinion of the bouquet? 3) Yargh.

After 15 minutes of venting/fuming to my fiance, I decided to ask my sister and my mother to go and they can call me if they have questions.

More posts at http://catholicweddinggirl.blogspot.com

What I Hate About My Wedding

markandmaggie — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:34:00 GMT

OK - let me lie down on the couch, doctor. There is one thing about my wedding that I can't stand, and it is really starting to bother me. Really. What am I talking about, you ask? The fact that my mother won't stop worrying about whether or not we need to provide the hairdresser with bobby pins? While that is a rather pressing issue, I am not referring to hairdresser woes.
I am referring to "the gap." Not the store, though I have been disappointed with them for a while, but the fact that there is a gap between the ceremony and the reception.

I don't know what to do - I know that many people have posted their dissatisfaction on Knot message boards, but it just can't be helped. Even though my fiance and I talked to our deacon about the date 14 months before the wedding the time we wanted (4:30) wasn't available. We had our choice between 2:00 and 7:00. I blame the Catholicism. If there weren't so many of us getting married at churches, there wouldn't be this cafeteria-style ceremony line up at the church. Yargh.

We realized that a reception starting at 8:00 pm wouldn't be super friendly to our older guests, so we decided to have the wedding at 2:00 pm. We also realized that a reception that started at 3:00 or 3:30 would not be any fun - who wants to dance and drink (or for that matter, eat dinner) and leave in the daylight? So, we have "a gap," from whenever the 2:00 ceremony ends (it's a Catholic non-mass, so it's vague - somewhere between 40 minutes to an hour) until the 6:00 reception.

My sister also had a gap at her wedding. My parents reserved a meeting room at the hotel and had sodas, beers, and snacks there after the ceremony and until the reception. I don't know if that's in the plans for this wedding, but it's very distressing. Everyone keeps asking me what they're supposed to do between the wedding and the reception. I need to think up a good answer. Maybe there's a 3:30 movie across the street from the hotel. A quirky comedy would be perfect, people would be out by 5:15.

More posts at: http://catholicweddinggirl.blogspot.com

Bridal Shower Fears

markandmaggie — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 14:27:00 GMT

My two sisters, one the MOH and one a BM, have been lovely enough to plan a bridal shower for me next weekend. Many of the guests are family or friends of my mom's, but the few people still left in Houston are invited as well (although I must say that none of them have RSVP'ed to sissy - harumph).

One of my other bridesmaids "K" recently reminded me that one my greatest fears will soon come to fruition. Since we were sophomores in college, K has had a plot to embarrass me at my bridal shower, which really goes back to the first time we watched Pulp Fiction. For whatever reason, K thinks it would be hilarious to have me open her gift at the bridal shower, in front of my grandma (which is an integral part of her comedy scenario). Inside the pretty white paper and ribbons would be a ball gag.

"She can't really want to do that," is what you're thinking. No, she can, and I am now terrified that she will. Although she is in California and can't come to the shower, my sister has received a package in the mail for the shower. She thinks I am being difficult because I have refused to open it. I just can't.

Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum.

More posts at: http://catholicweddinggirl.blogspot.com

Ring Shopping - Round 1

markandmaggie — Sat, 24 May 2008 16:05:00 GMT

I do not envy my fiance or any other person that has to look for engagement or wedding jewelry. It truly is an ordeal. When we decided that it was time to start looking for rings, my fiance decided that we should shop around, which makes sense, especially since we live near a mall, we have two jewelers right near us, and then we wanted to go back to K's where my fiance had found my engagement ring.

We first went to BBB, where we were greeted with a very lukewarm handshake by L. She sat me down in front of one of their collections and asked which style I liked. I told her and she had me try on a few rings, of those there was one I liked, but the ring I looked at was over $1800, which is at least twice as much as we were looking to spend. I really didn't like the store, and I was getting frustrated because the only rings she showed me were from the collection in front of me, which were all platinum. I didn't want a platinum ring, my engagement ring is palladium, so we were looking for that or white gold.

It was the kind of store encounter where the salesperson is intent on showing you a certain set of things and you feel like you can't even ask to see something else. L never asked us how much we wanted to spend, we had to sneak looks at the price tags when she wasn't looking. Oh well, on to the next store.

More posts at: http://catholicweddinggirl.blogspot.com

Honeymoon Flight

markandmaggie — Thu, 22 May 2008 19:37:00 GMT

The saga of the honeymoon flights began the day the flights opened up for reserve on Continental. We moved our frequent flier miles around and decided that we would use them to try to upgrade our seats to BusinessFirst. Since we're flying to Greece, we thought that being able to walking up to the gate and trying to get an update with "honeymoon points" might not work.

Since the end of September, I have nearly been obsessed with checking the seat assignments to see how many other people have been booked in the BusinessFirst cabin. One, then two, then three, then nothing - aaah, when would we get upgraded.

Last Friday, my fiance called the airline to see if there was anyway to figure out when we might be upgraded. He talked to the customer service representative, let it slip that it was our honeymoon and then asked if he could let us know when we would find out about the upgrade. The representative was seemingly less than helpful and told my fiance that it could be as soon anywhere between then and 24 hours before the flight. Great.

THEN - that afternoon - we got the emails that our flights between New York and Greece were upgraded, during my graduation, no less. Yippeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!! My fiance thinks it was coincidence, but I am confident that the service representative is a kind soul who upgraded us that afternoon.

more posts at: http://catholicweddinggirl.blogspot.com

The First Wedding Present

markandmaggie — Sun, 18 May 2008 17:46:00 GMT

Whoo hoo! We got our first official wedding present today. Not from an engagement party, just a real wedding present. How exciting. I felt bad because I opened it without my fiance, thinking that it was a graduation present from his parents.

When I opened it, there was a smorgasbord of presents in the box and one of our friend's names on the tag. Such a good present - right off the registry. I went through the packing list, and I discovered that one of the items was missing. I called up Crate & Barrel right away. The woman on the other end of the line was super helpful and said that they would immediately ship the missing item. Very cool.

More posts at: http://catholicweddinggirl.blogspot.com