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We decided to give out some homemade cookie favors as a way to cut back on costs and to have something eco-friendly. We’re trying to avoid using anything that might end up in a landfill or that creates a lot of pollution in its production (like anything made out of plastic). Anyway, Mr. Radish is quite the baker and he came up with a couple of delicious vegan cookie recipies that we are going to use. The ingredients for about 200 cookies shouldn’t come to more than $50 since we (note: we= Mr. Radish) are making them from scratch. I bought 200 glassine food bags from Paper Mart for about $30 including shipping, and we are going to staple the favor tags that our stationer made us onto the bags… like this:
Where would all of us wedding planning nuts be without Martha Stewart? She (or maybe more accurately her editorial staff) is just so full of cute ideas and creative projects. Who can resist? Her magazines and website have been one of the most useful resources through all of my planning… second only to Weddingbee, of course. 
Anyway, I came across this wonderful idea from an issue of Martha Stewart Weddings earlier this year and I fell in love with it immediately… tea tin centerpieces. Brilliant!
I ended up going to 9 bridal shops in search of the right dress. I already blogged about my shopping trip in Syracuse and about my first two experiences in Chicago. My next trip was to the Nicole Miller shop on Wells Street in Chicago. I thought that Nicole Miller dresses would be really expensive since she is a big name designer, but all of the dresses I tried on were under $2,000. The sales associate I worked with, Logan, was fantastic; she was really helpful without being pushy and she even took all these pictures for me. 
Oh and by the way, in case you’re reading this Mr. Radish, I did not get any of these dresses.
This first dress was only about $1,200. It is made from a very cool metallic taffeta and it’s really, really comfortable and light. I love how unique the train is and I think this dress was very flattering on me. It’s really modern looking, though and maybe a little too sexy for the type of wedding we’re having… so I didn’t get it.
Mr. Radish called his parents earlier this week and talked to them about my father, who is becoming a woman. Maybe the post I put up here last week helped light the fire under him?
Anyway, they took the news very well!! They said that they totally understand and that they will make sure that no one makes a big deal about it. I suspected that they would be cool about it, but I’m really glad to know for sure that it won’t be an issue. They said that they were glad he told them ahead of time, though, because they probably would’ve been a little surprised. Mr. Radish’s mom had some really specific questions for him about the details. Like “does he have breasts?” etc. Since his mom is 70 years old and rather old-fashioned, I’m sure that was a funny conversation to have with her.
Well, anyway I’m glad to have that all out of the way now. I’m much relieved. I still need to see that episode of Friends that everyone keeps telling me about though … does anyone know what season it’s from?
Featured on Weddingbee
Unique Wedding Favors
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Yet another thing I got accomplished in my trip home a few weeks ago was a makeup trial. I found a makeup artist through a knot board and contacted her to set up a trial appointment. The pics from the bride that used her looked great and she has a website with some examples of her work and it all seemed fine.
I went for my trial and showed her a few pictures for inspiration and she asked what my dress is like, what kind of wedding are we having, etc. I told her that it’s a morning wedding and an afternoon reception with a very romantic, antique kind of feeling. So she kept saying that she would do very “light” make up, and for some reason she kept saying … “yes, very Genevieve.” I really don’t know what she was talking about. Anyway, when she was done and handed me the mirror I almost screamed… out of horror, not delight. She made me look like a drag queen 
So here are some pictures of the results. I am almost embarrassed to post these on a public website because I think I look so ridiculous. I should probably point out that I’m not much of a “girly-girl” and I’m not in the habit of wearing a lot of makeup, so having this much crap on my face makes me incredibly uncomfortable.
Mr. Radish is a volunteer ESL tutor on Saturday mornings at a place here in Chicago that helps immigrants and refugees improve their English and get citizenship. Anyway, he has been tutoring the same Chinese woman for a few months now, and she has not been having an easy time in life lately. She immigrated to America from Fuzhou, China but had an abusive husband that she had to leave, then she got laid off from a job at a soap factory. After getting laid off she couldn’t afford her apartment. Since then, she has been living in a women’s shelter. She was working at a fast food restaurant, but she had to quit because the government has not sent her work papers back. It’s been really hard for her to get by living in Chicago. On top of her other problems, her English skills are not very good, which makes it hard for her to find a better job, etc. She told Mr. Radish that she can’t easily tell people how she feels in English, so he’s been working with her on teaching her more words and phrases to express emotion.
This Saturday, Mr. Radish came home from their tutoring session with this wedding gift from her.
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
I was perusing the latest issue of Martha Stewart Weddings and imagine my surprise when I stumbled across this… a full-page feature with letter-pressed note cards from my very own invitation designers Pearl & Marmalade. AND they have bees on them! How cute and WeddingBee appropriate is that??
As I mentioned before, there are some challenges with the seating arrangement at our reception venue, the Wellington House and we are going to have to split our guests up into 3 different areas. We knew this going into it, but we just fell in love with this venue and we decided to just work with it as best we could.
We met with the reception coordinator and the head chef when we were in Syracuse earlier this month to work out the details of our menu and such. It just so happened that when we were there the main dining room was set up for a rehearsal dinner they were having the next day. I was happy about that because the last time we saw this place was when we booked it last summer, and there were no tables set up. It makes it a lot easier to visualize things now.
This is a shot of the main dining room, which will seat 70 people at round tables. I love the chairs! There is definitely no need to cover them. I also love the stained glass windows and woodwork in this room. We are going to set up a “sweet heart” table for ourselves right in front of this window.
About four years ago, I got a call from my father telling me that he had decided to become a woman. Naturally, it was a little shocking at first, but I accepted it and gave him my blessing. It makes it a little easier for me that my parents divorced before I was even 2 years old, so he didn’t really raise me anway. Maybe it would be harder to get used to if I was used to him being my “father figure.” But regardless, if it makes him happy and doesn’t hurt anyone, then it’s A-OK in my book.
Anyway, my dilemma is this: Mr. Radish’s family does not know this about my father. This is mostly because his family is kind of reserved and we just don’t talk about things like that with them. Also, how do you really bring that up in conversation? “Great weather lately, eh? Oh and by the way my father has boobs.” It doesn’t help any that Mr. Radish’s parents are in their 70s and they are devout Catholics. I don’t know this for sure, but since the church is officially against homosexuality I can only imagine what their position on transgendered people is. Most likely, they don’t support it.
My father is definitely coming to our wedding. He told me that he has no problem with me introducing him to everyone as my “Aunt —” and he doesn’t care if Mr. Radish’s family know the truth about him or not. Well, in my opinion, there are a couple of problems with that approach.
After my very productive dress shopping experience in Syracuse this winter, I returned to the good old windy city and got to work on finding the right dress. I didn’t end up picking any of those dresses but they gave me a better idea of what I liked/didn’t like. My first appointment in Chicago was at the House of Brides Couture. They did not allow photographs, however, and I didn’t really find anything there that I was in love with anyway. Not to mention, the sales associate was incredibly pushy and somewhat rude. I actually wrote a review of the experience on Yelp if anyone wants to hear more about it.
Anyway, my next appointment was at Dame Couture on Chicago’s Northwest side. This shop specializes in custom dresses with a vintage, 40s-ish flair. I met with one of the designers for a consultation and told her what kind of dress I was in the market for. Of course, at this point I still wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted, but I showed her a bunch of magazine clippings and she got the idea. Then I started trying on some of their sample pattern gowns. The way it works there is you start with one of their basic patterns and then they customize it for you by changing the way it is cut, the type of fabric, and they can add flourishes and details.
Here is me in their “Greta” dress (please pardon my black bra straps hanging out). This was a pretty basic A-line dress in a beaded silk dupioni.
Initially, I made a hair appointment at a very fancy/trendy (meaning expensive) Syracuse salon for my wedding-day coiffure. The earliest appointment that I could get was at 9am. I took it, but it made me a little nervous because the salon is a good 15 minute drive from my hotel, not accounting for any traffic and/or parking delays, and our ceremony is at 11:30 am. I would still need to get dressed and get my make up on after the hair appointment, so it was kind of cutting it close. Then I talked to my grandmother and she mentioned that her hairdresser, Jennifer, offered to come out to Syracuse the morning of the wedding to do my grandma’s hair. My grandma is totally one of those old ladies that goes to the beauty parlor every week to get her hair “set,” whatever that means, and she has been going to this particular hairdresser for the last 13 years.
I thought to myself “hmm… Jennifer did my hair for my high school prom and it was cute, maybe she could just do my hair at the hotel, too!” I had my gramms talk to her about and she said that would be no problem since she was already coming out to the hotel to do my grandma’s hair. Yay! So she agreed to come to my room around 8 - 8:30 am. This makes everything so much easier for me now. Not to mention, she is also much cheaper than the original salon I booked… by a long-shot!
I just don’t want a million of them coming to our wedding. But yesterday, Mr. Radish’s mother called and informed us that one of his cousins (and he has over 40 first cousins) asked her if he could bring his three kids to the reception. She told him yes… before she even checked with us! Most of Mr. Radish’s cousins are older than him and they are already married with kids, so if they all started bringing kids we’d be in real trouble.
We’ve also had two other guests that went ahead and wrote in the names of their kids on the reply card, even though I was very careful not to include the names of children on the inner envelopes. I thought that would be enough to give people the hint. Apparently not.
Now we are trying to decide what to do about this. We could call these people and tell them that their children are not invited, but is it worth possibly hurting anyone’s feelings or offending them over it? I looked over our guest list and it’s only about 10 kids that might end up tagging along. It only costs us $7 per kid, but we are kind of worried about space issues more than anything else. Also, our reception venue is an old historic mansion that has a lot of antiques in it. I don’t want any wild bands of kids running around and breaking anything.
After we switched to having a daytime reception, I kept feeling like I was going to be disappointed with the day being over so soon. One of the things about this wedding that both Mr. Radish and I are really looking forward to is that we are going to be able to spend some time with a lot of our friends/family who we don’t get to see very often. It would be a big bummer if everyone left at 5:00. Plus, I have always been a night owl and I don’t want to just go back to the hotel that early. I wanna party!
At first, we thought maybe we would just invite some of our close friends and family back to our hotel suite for a little party or find some kind of bar or restaurant to go to. That seemed like an okay idea, but I still felt like it would be a little anti-climactic. I know it’s kind of dumb, but I couldn’t help it. I just really wanted to have the wedding go into the night.
Then I had an idea – why don’t we just have a big backyard bash at our best man’s house after the formal reception? He already offered the use of his house and property for our reception, so he probably wouldn’t mind if we took him up on it for this party instead. I started thinking about it more and more and I loved the idea. It seemed like the perfect solution to the concerns I had about a daytime wedding. I talked it over with Mr. Radish and he really liked the idea, too. He called our best man and he said it was totally fine to do it there. Yay!!! So then we got down to planning this shindig.
While we were in Syracuse, NY (where our wedding is going to be) doing a bunch of wedding-related things last week, we scheduled an engagement photo session with our fabulous photographer, Tim Forbes. He is based in Ontario, but he was shooting a wedding in Rochester, NY that Saturday and he was able to squeeze us in the night before.
So now I will share with you some of the fruits of our rather interesting photo session (see the end of this entry for elaboration). Overall, I’m very happy with the results and now I’m even more excited about the wedding pictures! I must point out that I’m a terrible subject to photograph. I always clam up in front of the camera and make a stupid face or have my eyes half closed. The only things about these pics that I’m less than thrilled about are my own fault. Like my hair is total freaking mess. You would think that I could’ve invested in some hairspray… ugh! And I couldn’t remember which side of my grill was my “good side,” and my bad side is AWFUL - especially in high resolution. 
I also had some major bags under my eyes (which I took the liberty of photoshopping out) and my big Irish ears are sticking out all over the place. Mr. Radish, on the other hand, is looking pretty dapper in most of these shots. If we ever have kids, let’s hope they inherit his photogenes.
The Radishes just returned this week from a busy, busy week in Upstate New York. We got a TON of stuff accomplished. Such as…
All in all it was a very productive trip and I dare say that we even had a little bit of fun. Unfortunately, I did get a speeding ticket in Ohio on the way there (damn air radar) and the 15-hour drive home was brutal… I think I’m still recovering from it. Nothing some hardcore napping and shouldn’t fix, though. I should be just like new in no time.
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Mrs. Radish, Chicago/Syracuse Age and Occupation: 27, Executive Assistant/Journalism Student/Musician Fiance's Age and Occupation: 28, Anthropologist/Musician Engagement Date: December 20, 2005 Wedding Date: August 18, 2007 Blogging Since: June 26, 2007 Venue: The Wellington House in Fayetteville, NY About Me: Mr. Radish and I are both from upstate New York, so we are planning a wedding in Syracuse from about 700 miles away. When I’m not obsessing about our wedding I play the cello in my band (which Mr. Radish is in too), read as much as I can, sleep even more, travel whenever possible, and try to find time to have fun with my friends. I’m also working on finishing up my journalism degree with a concentration in environmental reporting and I’m the VP of my campus Amnesty International chapter… so I’m a pretty busy bee.
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