Weddingbee

I just found out about Weather.com’s cool wedding weather tracking feature!

Just go here - and enter in your wedding date, and it tells you the average temperatures/weather for that date in history, as well as very specific details for the past 3 years! Plus the exact time the sun will set, cloud coverage estimates, and all sorts of other fun statistics.

My date’s looking good so far…keeping my fingers crossed!

I am so confused.

I could have sworn that I had only invited at most 95 people, but when I just updated my guest list on The Knot, it says that I invited 108 people. Woah.

I know for a fact that several of those who are invited will not come. I thought it was better to send out invitations out of courtesy than not to send one at all, especially since they are friends of our parents. I also allowed most people to bring dates even though some have already told me that they will not be bringing anyone. However, even with the given “not attending” guests, I’m still over by a handful.

Great. This will take another hour out of my life to reconcile the two lists. And I just can’t wait to take a stab at the seating chart.

A hint to all those starting a guest list: make a complete Excel spreadsheet with several columns. Or you can just download mine here - Book1.xls. This will help keep track of everything in one sheet.

I had always planned on changing my last name after getting married. With my passport expiring in a couple of months, I thought that now is the perfect opportunity to finally do it. It’s been a year and a half since Mr. Bee and I wed and I’d been putting it off because well, I’m lazy and honestly I like my last name.

I recently came upon this great Slate article, and it really describes exactly how I feel about the whole name change thing:

In the end, many mothers I’ve encountered since becoming one myself have decided to change their names in line at the passport office, or in the post office, or in a doctor’s waiting room. They are not inspired to do it out of a nostalgic affection for tradition, or some cozy idea of family, or anything so charged or esoteric; they do it because giving in to bureaucratic pressures is easier than clinging to their old identity. In a mundane way, having the same name as your children is easier.

And then, of course, the beauty of the contemporary name change is that you don’t have to formally decide. You can keep your name professionally and socially, change your name for the purposes of school lists, or airline tickets, or your husband’s presidential run-in short, you can maintain an extremely confusing relation to your own name (or names). There is, at least for me, an element of play to the whole thing. There’s something romantic and pleasantly old-fashioned about giving up your name, a kind of frisson in seeing yourself represented as Mrs. John Doe in the calligraphy of a wedding invitation on occasion. At the same time it’s reassuring to see your own name in a byline or a contract. Like much of today’s shallow, satisfying, lipstick feminism: One can, in the end, have it both ways.

I too will have it both ways - I will change my last name but keep my original name professionally. I’m quite excited because I’ve finally, really accepted it.

There was an interesting piece in the Lansing State Journal by columnist Matt Katz, who confesses he is addicted to the Sunday New York Times wedding announcements, because it is “the most elitist and pretentious section of any newspaper in America.” Making it of course the most interesting.

The New York Times wedding section is like the richest kid in class. School bus drivers, dishwasher repairmen and union carpenters need not apply. This is for high-powered lawyers and hot models, cancer researchers and dentists who have small, white dogs and live in shiny apartment buildings.

Not only are the people getting married of a certain pedigree, but The Times actually explains just how rich, educated and fancy these people are. But only briefly.

The announcements typically offer few details about the couple themselves - and no information about the future they are planning together - but plenty of stuff about their parents’ work history.

Often, the parents’ resumes are longer than descriptions of the couple actually getting married.

Why is it so fascinating to read the wedding announcements of people we don’t even know? There are blogs like Veiled Conceit which are devoted to dissecting the New York Times wedding announcements in devilishly snarky detail. I’ve even come across blog posts where the looks, education, occupation, wealth, and family backgrounds of the couple are compared to determine who married up and who married down.

I suppose it’s simply fascinating to see which couples are worthy enough to merit a mention in the pages of the Times.

Do you read the New York Times wedding announcements? Would you want your wedding featured in the Times?

~~~

The Times also released a When Harry Met Sally-esque video vow feature awhile back that I’ve found quite interesting.

What Happens Now is a free site that offers information about life’s changes and challenges, including marriage. Other topics include:

• Life Stages: Birth, child care, college, doctor visit, funeral, hospice, hospital, marriage, senior living
• Personal Events: Car and bicycle accidents; car and home fires; bicycle, car, car break-in, home, identity and wallet or purse theft
• Natural Events: Blizzard, earthquake, flood, hurricane, storm, tornado

In their marriage section, they have a great checklist for a printable wedding day emergency kit for both the bride and groom and articles on marriage related topics like prenuptial agreements, name changes and wedding insurance.

It’s an interesting site to explore and definitely one to bookmark for future reference.

(via lifehacker)

I have a question.

If you’re planning on changing your last name, do you go by the laws of the state that you got married in or the state that you reside in? Since I got married in Philly but live in Jersey I’m not sure which one to go by. Somebody help me?

It is officially crunch time! There are about three weeks left until our wedding and we have a lot to do still. Mr. Grasshopper and I have been using Backpackit.com to help us keep track of our shared wedding to do list. Mr. Grasshopper is an obsessive organizer (we refer to him as Captain Schedule) and hates the idea of having multiple to-do lists emailed or floating around, so we are relying on the free version of Backpackit to help us out.

Backpackit lets you create a document and invite others to edit the same file. Instead of 6 Word documents named todo_v1.doc, todo_v2.doc, etc., we have one shared document that can be easily accessed and updated from any computer. There are many software applications that allow multi-user editing, but so far this one has been rather easy to use and shows a great example on the site of how one could use it to help plan a wedding.

Our wedding to-do lists has the following categories:

Miss Grasshopper to-do (strangely the longest list…)
Mr. Grasshopper to-do
Shared to-do
Think about
Done! (my favorite list)

Melissa Paul

While I was doing research for my Philadelphia Wedding there was one Wedding Planner that caught my eye. She also does NY!

I’ve always been a proponent of wedding planners because of my personal experience with them - they really were there to save the day!

While you may not be able to afford full wedding coordination (which starts at $5000 in New York City), day of coordinators are a great alternative available for a fraction of the cost.

Day-of packages and other partial services are becoming the norm as wedding consultants try to draw in couples of all budget points. And it’s working. This year, 21 percent of those marrying will use a wedding planner, with nearly half of them requesting the day-of service, according to Shane McMurray, author of the Wedding Report, a market research website. (source)

There are so many components of a wedding - from the ceremony, to the cocktail hour, to all the activities that take place during the reception. A professional coordinator makes sure that you keep on schedule, maintain a great flow, handle any crises that may arise and make sure the day is worry and stress free for you.

This is something that’s been on the back of my mind. I’ve got less than 5 months left before the big day, and I’ve been going back and forth on who should be on the guest list.

I’ve got my close friends and family, and a small handful of my sister’s and brother’s friends. The big question mark is my co-workers. When I’m not at home, the bulk of my time is spent at work - the M.A.C makeup counter - and I get along with all of them. In a short amount of time, we’ve almost become a little family. And as hard as I tried to keep the wedding planning talk to a minimum, I couldn’t with everyone asking and others giving valuable input for my special day.

Originally, I was going to invite just 3~4, but I know word will eventually get out and I’ll be left feeling slightly guilty. I feel obligated to have them all there. There are about 16 girls - half are married or are in serious relationships - and I can’t have them all bring their significant others… that would be too many people.

So my question is: What do I do?