Weddingbee

As I mentioned in a previous post, I definitely had a tough time choosing photographers. I had a gazillion photography blogs on my Google Reader, and I’d scroll through them, making half-legible notations on a piece of scrap paper about the ones I “liked.” And heaven forbid if I had to actually express why I liked what I liked! I would have been as inarticulate as a 4-year-old (”pweeety pictures”) or Rachel Zoe (”I die.”).

I think a lot of the difficulty I was having came from seeing each photographer’s photos in isolation. It’s hard to articulate what you like and don’t like when brides, weddings, locations, etc. are so different; there’s just no baseline for comparison. Recently, though, I discovered that a lot of the photographers I was blog-stalking attend the same photography workshops and — here’s the useful part — since all the photographers at a particular workshop work with the same model/environment, if you get a hold of those pictures, you can actually compare the styles and techniques of the photographers. No more comparing apples with oranges.

For example, the Southern California photographer Jose Villa leads a number of workshops each year. Here are three photographers’ work from one of the workshops:

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“Yo, que me figuraba el Paraíso bajo la especie de una biblioteca . . . .”

- Jorge Luis Borges

[A picture of one of my bookshelves (and probably the inside of my brain): wedding books and mags on the top shelf,

critical theory texts on the bottom shelves.]

When I first emigrated from Hong Kong at the age of 8, I was a shy kid with limited English skills and a bowl cut. So when normal kids were out on the playground, I was hanging out in the Bookmobile or the library, getting acquainted with my fictional friends like The Babysitters Club or Nancy Drew. To this day, I’m still a bookworm — um, I mean bookbee. In fact, I’ve managed to make my awkward phase into a profession; now that I’m a doctoral student in English, I get to read books for a living.
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A little joke for you from Anita Diamant’s The New Jewish Wedding: “The tongue-in-cheek Yiddish-English ’translation’ for R.S.V.P. is Remember to Send Vedding Presents.”Hahaha. Call me a dork (or a 95-year-old Jewish man), but it’s a knee slapper! Snort. Snort.

As you might remember, I’m in the process of converting to Judaism, and Mr. Hot Cocoa and I are looking forward to setting up a Chinese-Jewish household once we’re married. But one can’t possibly be expected to be a balabusta (that’s yiddish for quality female homemaker) or balabusto (that’s cocoa-yiddish — coquidish — for quality male homemaker) without the proper accoutrements, right? So even though we haven’t given any thought to where we’d register for our everyday items, I have already come up with a list of judaica stores with online registry services. And since my Judaism homework this week involves studying the rituals associated with celebrating the sabbath — in particular the tradition of shabbat dinner — I thought I’d also list a few of the shabbat-related items that might go in a vedding registry.
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This Sunday I subjected Mr. HC to yet another “Bridezillas” marathon. (That show is like a bad car accident that I just can’t turn away from.) In the middle of an episode with a particularly awful behaving bride in a particularly awful looking periwinkle dress, Mr. HC turned to me and said, with some trepidation in his voice: “I hear your dress isn’t strapless.” “Um, who told you that?” I asked him. “My mom—but she didn’t mean to tell me; she just told me that it was beautiful.” “Hmm,” I replied. “Yep, not strapless.” “Oh,” said Mr. HC, with a trace of concern.

It occurred to me then that we’ve gone to something like ten weddings in the last two years, and that every bride, except for one, wore a strapless dress. After I assured Mr. HC that I wasn’t going to be rockin’ some 80s pouf sleeves or some wackadoodle, high-necked homage to the nuns in the Sound of Music, he seemed a little bit less worried.

But, of course, now I’m worried.

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A few days ago, I posted on the save the date bookmarks that we were too lazy to produce. Lesson learned: it’s not enough for a wedding-related DIY project to be snazzy, it’s got to be manageable as well. In fact, my new motto is “short and sweet.” It describes me (5’3″ on a good day, but super delicious). It also describes any task I’ll take on in the near future.

Well, what could be shorter and sweeter than a postcard? As a favorite writer once suggested: “To choose a post card is for me a flight which at least will spare you the too abundant literature to which you would have been subjected…” A postcard is pithy, affordable, and cheap to send. What’s not to love?

Here are some unique and creative options I came across:

[Mini-cooper card from Etsy seller unlesssomebodylikeyou.]

It’s quirky, understated, and just adorable. It’s kind of an aspirational card, though—perfect for the lover-of-flea-markets-and-tandem-bikes kind of girl I wish I were, but not so much for the way more boring lawyer/academic that I am. Sigh.
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My favorite board game? Scrabble. Most lamented Facebook loss? Scrabulous. Book I’d take to a desert island? The Oxford English Dictionary. Favorite historical novelette? The Professor and the Madman. Favorite freebie website? Dafont.com.

In case it’s not obvious, I am a word nerd. N-E-R-D. Nerd. So you can imagine my excitement when one of my favorite websites, Lifehacker, introduced me to a fun little application called Spell with Flickr. This app does exactly what it’s called: it spells out the word(s) of your choosing using Flickr images. Like this:

Or this:

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Like all graduate students I know, I am a terrible procrastinator and find it all but impossible to get things accomplished unless there’s an impending deadline (and usually some threat of a cut-off of funding). Well, it turns out, according to my Martha Stewart online wedding checklist, that we are supposed to send out our save-the-dates in less than two weeks. Naturally, we are woefully unprepared for this. We haven’t finalized a guest list. We have no addresses yet. And, of course, we have no save-the-dates printed. Martha is tsk tsking at us right now.

Just to get my imaginary Martha to take a chill pill, I spent this weekend putting together some mock-ups of possible save-the-dates. Here’s one of them. Behold: our almost save-the-date bookmark:

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For some people, it’s chocolate. For others, it’s bad boys, or tequila. My vice? Paper. I love it. I love it so much that I live above a Paper Source. Seriously. In the same building.

[Image source]

Anyway, this is all just a set up to telling you about the fun little freebie I picked up at the Paper Source the other day:

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As I mentioned in Friday’s post, I’m still on the hunt for affordable, stylish dresses for the six ladies in my bridal party. Thus far in my search, it seems like in the bona fide “bridesmaid dress” world, there are two types of dresses: 1) decent (or even cute) but way overpriced or 2) cheap but . . . well, cheap. Designed by Blayne cheap. Cheaplicious.

I’ve thus been branching out in my search, looking for off-the-rack options. Let me show you what I found at the Nordstrom sale!

For those of you with ladies sized 10, 12, and 14, here’s an elegant dress for a formal wedding, on sale for $87:

[Image Source]

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There’s an interesting post on the U.S. News and World Report Alpha Consumer Blog about the escalating costs of being a wedding guest and—especially—a bridesmaid. Here’s the money quote:

But the heftiest burden of all falls on bridesmaids. They play a role that, for all the honor of its implied intimacy to the bride, comes with a price to match. Bridesmaids are often expected to buy a dress, matching shoes, and jewelry, not to mention professionally applied makeup and nail polish on the day itself. And well in advance of the “I do’s,” they usually serve as host for a bridal shower, bachelorette party, or both. TheKnot.com estimates that, excluding travel, the average cost for each bridesmaid adds up to around $700.

Oy gevalt. I kind of hurt for my bridal party just reading this. I wanted to recognize their friendship and support for me through the years by asking them to play a special role in my wedding, but I by no means wanted to bankrupt them in the process!

I’m doing my best to help defray the costs for my bridesmaids.
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