Weddingbee

A few weeks ago, I convinced Mr. Canary that we needed a dance lesson because we picked an up-tempo first dance song and I wasn’t comfortable doing the sixth grade mixer rock and sway for all 2.5 minutes of it. Let me preface this by saying that I love to dance, but it’s usually to top 40s pop or old school hip hop in the confines of my bedroom! I have never had formal ballroom dance instruction, while Mr. Canary participated in 8th grade social dancing.

Since time is not on our side, I researched private dance lessons at various studios in New York. The lessons ranged from about $80-95 for 45-60 minutes. Most of the lessons took place at a dance studio in Manhattan and although they were “private” we would not be guaranteed a private room. Then I remembered bookmarking a dance Web site where instructors would come to your home to teach. The site was for Start Dancing and after browsing the site some more, I decided to make an appointment for an Emergency Dance Lesson. I got to talk to the owner, Erin Bomboy, who was very sweet and informative. The cost of the lesson would be $95 for 75 minutes. We let her know our song selection and she asked us to have it queued up and ready when she arrived. She also asked me to wear the actual shoes I would wear to dance with on the wedding day.

Our private dance “studio” aka the living room!

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Well, the actual title of this post should be “How Not to be a Sweaty Beast on Your Wedding Day.” But that might have been too frightening! Here is where I divulge my big embarrassing confession: My name is Miss Canary and I am a sweat-er.

I think it runs in the family. Papa Canary starts eating a bowl of noodles… and pow… he starts to drip like he’s been hanging out in the Amazon! Come summer and NYC humidity, I start sweating big time. And of course, smarty Miss Canary decides to get married in sweltering July… one of the hottest and most humid months in the city.

{Image from here}

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Mr. Canary and I had another productive weekend and finished our parents’ gifts. Although originally I had wanted to be super creative and make a keepsake album, it would be too time-consuming to complete before the wedding for both sets of parents, so we opted to get them each something to wear on the wedding day.Our first stop was Bloomingdale’s in midtown Manhattan. I’ve always loved Bloomie’s men’s department because they carry a wide range of styles (from super trendy to very classic) so there were a lot of options.

Papa Canary did not want to rent a tux and instead had one custom-made in Hong Kong. We decided to get him a very nice tie to match his tux vest. I was looking for something classic and formal and made of high quality silk. This is what we opted for:

Giorgio Armani silk tie
The color was the perfect complement to his vest and the diagonal stripes in different shades of blue added a pop of color.

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Since planning the wedding, Mr. Canary have put our social lives on hold due to the lack of two things a) time and b) money. And since I am the first of my friends to get married, I still have that lingering fear that all of them will think that we’ve become that married couple who spends their weekend visiting Home Depot and nesting. Truth be told, we have visited Home Depot fairly often since we’ve moved and need to fix up our new home.

Prior to the wedding planning and Mr. Canary making the big move to New York so that we were finally living in the same city together, I was free to do whatever on my weeknights. Although I was in a serious relationship, Mr. Canary lived three hours away so we talked every day via the requisite phone calls and emails, but aside from that I had a pretty open social life. I often missed Mr. Canary terribly and the only way to ward it off was either to work more and when not working, see my friends as often as possible. Sometimes, we’d make big elaborate plans and other times, we had no plans at all other than hanging out at each other’s apartments gabbing.
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I have to admit… since I started wedding planning I’ve become an online shopping junkie. All thanks to Etsy… and all the other great vendors with fabulous shipping and return polices. I can’t remember the last time I stepped into a brick and mortar store (aside from grocery shopping and the local drugstore) to purchase something, particularly for the wedding.

But with summer rolling around and the onslaught of craft fairs and flea markets, I should get my butt outside and get my serotonin going in the sunshine!

I find flea markets and craft fairs are a great place to discover folks with great talent, but not yet ready to open a physical shop. Here are a few New York City places to check out if you’re shopping for wedding things like stationery, bridesmaid’s gifts or just looking for indie or alternative vendors.
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After sending out our fabulous save-the-dates, we immediately began work on our invitations with our designers, Bird and Banner. If I haven’t gushed about them enough in the past, I’m definitely making up for it now.

During our initial meeting, we showed Nicole things that inspired us. One of the few things I whipped out were paper cuts I had purchased in China. She thought that we could definitely find a way to incorporate paper cuts into the design.

Some of the other criteria included:
- needed an insert that included a translated version of the main invitation so that we could have traditional Chinese wording as well.
- allow for easy versioning (i.e. some guests would be invited to both the rehearsal dinner and wedding reception, whereas others just the wedding reception
- include a map with directions
- some kind of creative binding like a booklet, but not a folder

Well, we were blown away at the first round of designs. Bird and Banner provided us with three options and couldn’t decide between two, so we combined them!
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From now until July, Mr. Canary and I have more than our fair share of little errands and tasks to complete before the wedding. This past weekend was a super productive one!

We finally finished assembling, stamping, and sealing our invitations (which I will definitely post about later this week after most of our guests receive them!). With our massive guest list, we had finished one batch last week and finally got the rest done on Saturday. I think it took us a total of about 8 hours, which includes versioning out who gets which invitation and Gocco-ing our tea ceremony insert.

We also got to do a fun little project– spray painting our card holders. I had ordered two birdcages from Save on Crafts but wasn’t too pleased with the ivory rustic finishing, so I ordered a can of metallic gold spray paint from Joann’s and voila… the difference was extraordinary. It’s amazing what a little coat of paint can do. And now we have two beautiful card holders.

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I realized after all this time, I had forgotten to post on one of the most important aspects of my wedding… my day-of-coordinator. Early on in the process, I was freaking out about all that I would probably have to do on the day of the wedding– namely feeling overwhelmed with the obligation to entertain our guests, particularly family we haven’t seen in a long time or people attending from overseas and my desire to cut loose and have a blast. I suggested to Mr. Canary that we hire a day-of-coordinator to help alleviate these fears, but he thought it was a frivolous expense. Just ask one of the bridesmaids to do it. No way! I wanted my bridesmaids to enjoy the wedding as much as I would and not have the stress and pressure of coordinating and navigating the guests.

I suggested we meet with a few coordinators and get quotes before we made a decision on whether or not to hire one. Mr. Canary reluctantly agreed and I started my search. As usual, the main constraint was budget. Since we had not originally considered hiring a coordinator, it was last on our list and thus, we had a very small budget.

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Mr. Canary finds some sick sadistic pleasure in reminding me how many months, weeks, and days we have left until the wedding because he likes to watch my face drop and contort with horror when I think I have so much more to do, and I’ve only got X number of days to do it. Here’s where it gets all better… Mr. Canary was a Gmail convert eons ago. I only started using it when we began making wedding plans… and now the benefits are totally evident.

First, I’m sure everyone who reads blogs or blogs themselves is already a big fan of Google Reader. I am! Unfortunately, with all that’s been going on, my reader is backlogged with 1,000+ items. Scary, huh? It’ll make for good reading after the wedding. If you don’t use Google Reader and read lots of blogs, you should check it out. Before Google Reader, I used to bookmark all my favorite blogs and then go back and check every day for updates. This is by far much more efficient, especially if you get all geeked out like me and meticulously add tags to each blog you subscribe to.
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After finding the perfect underwear, I had an excuse to try on my gown again. Not that there’s ever not a good excuse… but my gown had just been hanging out for the past 10 months hidden away in my closet. I had not tried it since I first got it. Mr. Canary was also out for an all-night concert so there would be no chance that he’d happen upon me in the gown.

I was nervous because I was worried about having buyer’s remorse, but when I finally got it on (it is not easy pulling on a corseted gown by yourself!) I felt like a bride and fell in love with it all over again. I marveled at the perfect shade of ivory and the sash color (which I was also subconsciously worried that I would hate). With just a little over two months to go until the wedding, I felt the excitement start to really bubble while I was in the gown.
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