Wedding Wednesdays

Ever since Jason and I got engaged, people have been asking us what our plans are and when we're getting married. I think my aunt won completely though when she asked me on Sunday afternoon, when we had barely been engaged 36 hours if we had registered yet.

Really?

Not everyone wants to hear about our wedding. Nor do I want to continually talk about it and feel like those around me are getting annoyed.

So in an effort not to turn Persnickety Penny into a wedding blog I am going to limit myself to one wedding planning related post per week. I'll roll everything that happened in our wedding journey throughout the week into one post so those of you who are uninterested in wedding banter can just skip it. Obviously this won't last the entire time we're engaged but for now, a weekly post will do. As we get closer to next July I'm sure the posts about our wedding will become more frequent.

This weekend Jason came to visit. Since my father is down in the MD helping the Beaner paint and drill things into the walls of her new condo it was just the two of us...and my mother. We had an extremely productive weekend.

Saturday we went over to Macy's to start our registry. The people in the Bridal Department at Macy's in Roosevelt Field are always super helpful. I've dealt with them a few times between Jaclyn's and Julianne's registries. They are low key and let you do your own thing and wander throughout the store as you wish scanning whatever your heart desires. They give you a check list of suggested items which helps but since I'm a Type A personality I already had a list in my head as to exactly what we'd register for at Macy's and what we'd leave to Bed Bath & Beyond.

Can I tell you that registering is exhausting? Really. There are so many decisions and it's so difficult even when you know what you want!

We came out of Macy's unscathed and had some supper at California Pizza Kitchen and then went home to discuss a few other things. (I'll get back to this later.)

Sunday (after the cutest farewell mass ever! Our pastor is retiring and all the KofC was out in their fluffy hats and at the end of mass someone gave Father Bill a Winnie the Pooh balloon. Adorable! I never realized how much he does remind me of Pooh until that exact moment...but anyway.) ...we went over to BB&B to register there.

Again, I've had a lot of contact with the BB&B Bridal Registry Department in the Oceanside store and they're pretty fabulous. Joe is pretty awesome and went to Albany so we reminisced about upstate while he got us started. The one thing that bothers me about BB&B is that we basically had to ditch the woman who was helping us with our registry. They get you started and then one of the Registry people takes you around helping you pick out things...

I already had a wish list printed out of things I wanted to either straight up register for or look at and decide with Jason exactly which items we wanted. It took us about 10 minutes to ditch the woman because she kept on bringing us to different departments and suggesting things when I already had other things picked out. But once she handed the scan gun over to Jason we were on our way.

We literally spent 3 hours going back and forth between a few things. And when all was said and done I realized something very important. Jason and I have NOTHING.

Seriously.

We had to register for SO MUCH stuff. Jason has very little in his apartment aka the "man cave" and what he does have is broken and/or old things left over from college or bought at GoodWill. I have even fewer things than I thought I had.

I already have 8 places settings of china and one or two serving items. But other than that, and a blender...I have 3 frying pans of varying sizes, some bar ware, muffin tins and that's about it.

So our registry has a good 300 items on it. Do I expect to get everything? Absolutely not. Would it be really nice to get everything, hell yes! We registered for casual china (Fiestaware of course!), casual flatware (since the flatware Jason currently has is from the $1 store), casual drink ware (I maybe have 8 cobalt blue glasses left from a set of 12, and 2 pilsner glasses from Margaritaville), bakeware, fine crystal, appliances, bedding, kitchen stuffs...everything.

Most expensive item: KitchenAid Stand up Mixer (You know, for all those delicious cakes I have to practice decorating! This is the type of thing I don't expect someone to buy us since it's a big ticket item, but I'm hoping gift cards can be used towards purchasing it.)
Fun item we love but don't necessarily need: SodaStream Soda Maker (I've always wanted one and there was a girl demo-ing it in Macy's so we thought it'd be a fun thing to add since we love soda. This is one of the top things I really hope we get!)
Hardest item to pick out: Garment Bag piece of Luggage (Jason and I already have luggage but we need a garment bag. We really wanted one that could pass as a carry on item...apparently this is next to impossible to find! I think we finally decided on a Tumi because although I'm unfamiliar with the brand, Tarek swears by it and he travels internationally a LOT so I'll trust him.)

Other than the registry we discussed bridal party people and possible attire. I'm pretty set on my girls. I mean it's pretty obvious to me who I would have as my bridesmaids and although I haven't "officially" asked them, I'm positive they know who they are. If all goes as planned I'll have 5 bridesmaids. There is a small chance one of them will be out of the country at the time of my wedding so then I'll be down to 4 but she will totally be involved in my wedding planning even if she can't be there on the day.

Jason's list isn't as solid. We're including all of our siblings so our two brothers are definite. He has a very good friend from childhood who he is still close with, a very good friend from NH/college, and then he also has two other friends from growing up he's considering including. We're not sure how big we want our bridal party to be, but if I'm down to 4 girls and Jason is up to 6 guys then that's a little too uneven for us. There's a possibility the two additional men will be given the usher job/title so they are involved...but we're still deciding on this one.

Either way, I knew what kind of a look I wanted and was curious to find out what Jason thought of it. He thought my chromatic scale of blue across the board for the bridesmaids was pretty cool. But he definitely was not interested in having the groomsmen wear grey.

Yes, I made this over at David's Bridal.
And yes, I plan on wearing a tea-length dress.
(Not necessarily that one.)

I explained that I liked the grey tuxedos because they are slightly less formal and with the sort of wedding we're having it would be odd to have formal black tuxes with all the whistles and bells. Jason was still not excited about grey anything, even a charcoal grey suit.

Originally I really wanted to see Jason in a three piece navy blue suit. I thought it would look amazing on him but I was having a lot of trouble finding a store that carried any.

We went over to the Men's Wearhouse website and low and behold there was one! Let's forget for a moment how strange the face this model is making in the photo, and focus on the important things.

The suit is vested! I know that if we rent tuxes a vest is optional anyway, but it'd be very difficult to match a vest for the guys to each of the ladies (despite the fact Men's Wearhouse has many colors that match David's Bridal they don't have all my shades of blue). Also, I hate the look of cummerbunds or the backless vests when the man takes off his jacket. Obviously it's July and the guys will be taking their jackets off at the reception. I want them looking stylish even sans jacket.

Flat front pants! Pleats make for weird tent-like unattractive while seated issues. I want our men to look as fine as they are!

Also comes in a really nice black! If Jason still isn't thrilled with the "color" choice we can do a black with a subtle stripe. Me, I'd prefer the blue because everything for our wedding is different shades of blue. But if Jason really is against it, we have other choices.

They get to keep it! I've heard that when you add on all the accessories to the tux rental they can reach over $100. According to Andy, the tux rentals for his and Jaclyn's wedding were between $150 and $160 since they got nicer tuxes. In my eyes if the guys are going to spend that much anyway wouldn't they rather be able to keep the suit after the wedding? Am I wrong in assuming this? At least they'll come out of our wedding with a nice new suit! And we're all at the age that within the next few years a bunch of our friends will be getting married so even if they don't wear the suit with the vest, they still have a nice new suit to wear to everyone's wedding!

I finally tracked down the website that we bought the Partial Credit ties off of. Their silk ties are very good quality (I know because the PC ties go through a lot of travel and partying), and they have 50+ colors. Plus, their prices are AMAZING. So I'm thinking we'll buy the groomsmen accessories like ties and matching pocket squares, maybe nice/quirky cuff links. I'm not sure if they'll all get boutonnieres. If they have pocket squares they don't need bouts but we'll see what Jason prefers. Whether he admits it or not I think he has more preferences as to what the men wear than he's letting on.

I also spy with my little eye some polka dotted silk ties! Maybe for the ushers or father's? I think we could work those in somehow :) Because they make me happy and they are totally on theme with the polka dots!