Weddingbee Blog

There was never a question that Mr. Spaniel and I would do a “first look” before the ceremony. We wanted to sign our ketubah together, and we wanted to get all of our formals done before the ceremony so that we could enjoy the cocktail hour with our guests!

But we also wanted to be able to focus on each other and have a special moment the first time we saw each other on our wedding day—I was really worried we wouldn’t have a chance to actually connect, so to speak—so we planned for it to be (mostly) private before heading into group and family pictures.

Mr. Spaniel, waiting and looking handsome…

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The wedding day sure looks different from the other side of things. While my bridesmaids and I spent hours “in” hair and makeup (leaving us no time for anything other than room service), my groom and his men were able to head to the hotel restaurant for a long, relaxing brunch buffet. Hmph. On the other hand, they had to arrange their own transportation to the venue (we got to take the hotel shuttle, because we delicate flowers can’t be bothered to drive), and get way fewer pictures of them getting ready.

We can draw the story out by starting when my brother-in-law (HA! I GET TO SAY THAT NOW!)’s girlfriend walked in with the guys’ boutonnieres.

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We arrived at the venue half an hour early (three hours before the scheduled ceremony time), but there were already guests milling about the property. GASP! Claudia, our ceremony site coordinator, quickly whisked us away into the bridal dressing room so I didn’t get waylaid by the early birds.

(Puh-leez. There will be no hugging the bride until my wedding dress is on, thank you!)

And speaking of my wedding dress, I’d like to show you my “something new…”
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I’m always interested in how people reveal their preferences and values by how they spend their money—that’s why I shared my budget early on. (I’m still planning to share the outcome with you, but I’ll probably save that for the end.) And since I just completed the dreaded name change, I thought I’d share with you the process and the cost.

The order and prices may be different in different jurisdictions, but here’s what I went through in Los Angeles County.

1. Get a certified marriage certificate from the County Registrar/Recorder. Cost: $14. This is the necessary first step pretty much everywhere, and one of the most annoying part of the process for me. I spent two hours in line at the Van Nuys office, so I’d recommend trying a different time of day (Tuesday at 12:30 appears to be a bad time to go in).

Before you get your copy, you’ll want to make sure that your marriage license has been recorded, otherwise they’ll take your $14 and you’ll have to come back later and pay (and wait in line!) again. I don’t know how long it takes after the wedding for the document to be recorded—our officiant mailed the license in on March 22, and the date of recording on our certificate is listed as March 26—so I’d probably wait a week or two weeks at least before attempting the first step.
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While MOH-S and BM-Noe did the dirty work and made phone calls when we found out that makeup artist was canceling on the day of my wedding, the hair stylist arrived. After chiding me for not calling her sooner so that she could bring her makeup and help me out (I have no idea why I didn’t think of that), she got to work making me look pretty.

I wasn’t sure exactly what I had wanted my hair to look like, so I brought this picture of Emmy Rossum during our earlier trial and told her, “like this, but lower on top and curlier on bottom.”

(source)

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I can be a bit of a worrier at times, and like Miss Cola, I allay some of my anxiety by making back-up plans. This came in handy when I had to find a new DJ with less than two weeks to go before the wedding, because I had a list of phone numbers ready, our ceremony music all burned to a disc, and most of our other songs already downloaded should an iPod reception become a necessity (though where I would get the speakers, I hadn’t figured out yet). Luckily, I didn’t have to, because we found another DJ within two days who only charged a little more than our original, and who we trusted to show up (at that point, we hoped for little else).

Thanks to the-until-recently-Miss Rainbow, I taught myself how to do somewhat decent wedding makeup—more than I would normally wear, but still not enough to totally save my face from disappearing due to camera flashes—and had most of the necessary tools in my big makeup bag. But for whatever reason, the worrier in me decided to relax—maybe I thought the DJ fiasco would be my only wedding crisis?—and I left the big bag at home—I only packed my everyday makeup, what I would need for the honeymoon (a “kit” that includes only tinted moisturizer, bronzer and mascara). After all, I’d confirmed the location and arrival time the night before with the artist I had found on Craigslist who did my makeup for my bridal shower, and even though I didn’t fall all over myself about the job she did, I felt at ease since she’d been so accessible and I could see my eyelashes in the pictures with the help of the fakies she applied.

What in the world was I thinking?
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So last time, I told you about my super busy month and a half after the wedding, but now that that’s all over (yeah right), it’s time to get into the wedding preparations!

The day before the Spaniel wedding, we gathered together in our home with a few of our closest friends for a non-traditional mehndi party. BM-Noe, an out-of-towner, had spent the night since our rehearsal dinner was the evening before (two days before the wedding), so we decided to start our morning with a greasy homemade breakfast (the best kind). While Mr. Spaniel cooked and I did some frantic last-minute vacuuming, Best Man Fan (our photographer for the day!) and his girlfriend arrived.

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Before we knew it, it was Sunday morning and time to go home.

On the road again

It was back to the grind of 5:00 AM alarms and commutes across the sprawl of Los Angeles; back to homework, studying, finals, and not drinking all the fabulous wine we came home with. I wouldn’t exactly say I suffered from “post-wedding depression”… but man did reality hit hard after the honeymoon! Folks, if you can take an extra day or two readjusting your sleep clock before returning to real life, I highly recommend it! I did have a few amazing things to look forward to when I got back, though. Not only did I graduate law school just five short weeks (okay, five intensely long weeks) after we came back home from the honeymoon…
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Hello, ’Hive! It’s time for another installment of…

On Thursday morning, we started to make our way down to our next stop, the Tickle Pink Inn in Carmel. This leg of our trip was a wedding gift from the Spaniel-in-laws, who stayed at the same hotel on their own honeymoon thirty-five years ago.
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Though I am a sucker for all things chronological (am I? I don’t know, but it seemed like the right thing to say), I’m going to start at the end—with our honeymoon! I can’t wait to tell you all of the exciting wedding stories (and show you the beautiful pictures! I have seen the online gallery, and lo, it was good!), but while we Spaniels wait for the full disc, I thought I would regale you with the harrowing and heroic tale of…

(modified from logo at source)

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Really! See, here it is, happening!

(guest photo)

The year and a half that we spent preparing for the day—and the four months I spent blogging here!—really paid off: once we got started, everything felt effortless. Which is not to say I don’t have some blips and bloopers to tell you about, but you’ll just have to wait until I get to those parts of the story.
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They say that the older you get, the faster time flies. It seems that’s true of engagements, as well! When Mr. Spaniel and I got engaged back in September 2008, March 2010 seemed impossibly far off. And when I became a bee blogger in November 2009, it still felt like I had all the time in the world to share all of the wedding details with the hive!

Then it was 2010, and I started to realize that time was running short. And now it’s the day before our wedding! It hardly feels real; it all happened so fast!

Thank you so much for allowing me the honor of sharing my planning journey with you all. It’s been such an adventure, and you have no idea how much I’m looking forward to sharing the results of all of these months of planning with you!

Until then, yours (for the last time!),

MISS Spaniel

Mr. Spaniel and I often joke about needing a counselor for our green disputes—I get really annoyed sometimes when he chides me for using plastic “Tupperware”-like containers for my lunch, while he fails to appreciate the genius that is my request for a more vegan lifestyle. I think his “greenness” is motivated by health concerns, whereas mine are more ethical/environmental (and sometimes financial). But we both agreed that commercially-available household cleaners are just bad, and, as I mentioned last week that I make my own household cleaners.

Even though I saw the need, giving up my Windex, Clorox and 409 was kind of rough. I’m kind of a neat freak, and I have a thing for Old English lemon-scented furniture polish and freshly-bleached toilet bowls (yes, really). I wasn’t totally on-board yet when he picked up a book of organic and homemade “recipes” from the library that he thought would work just as well. Happily, I was wrong! They work just as well, they’re safe to keep around the house (no fumes to hurt you, babies or pets!), and they’re really inexpensive to boot! I’ll share the recipe for a few of my go-tos, and you can try them for yourself.
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For some reason, I’ve been somewhat resistant to playing Hava Nagila at the wedding. Then I accidentally heard this version, and was sold.

Of course, after further consideration, I realized that people trying to run in circles on a dance floor at a pace to keep up with this tempo could be dangerous!

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I thought about writing this post as part of my recaps, but, truth? I don’t want to think about these “dark days” again after the wedding, so it’s now or never!

(source)

When I first started blogging for the ’Bee, I got a few comments from engaged and married ladies trying to balance wedding planning with law school (or who had already done it), asking me how I was juggling them. The truth is, I am a very bad juggler, and one ball or the other is just about always getting dropped (I’ll give you one guess as to which one!).
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