H.B.I.C. – Head Bride In Charge

As you all know, D. and I are a silly couple. We love to laugh. Laughter releases tension built up over a stressful day. Because lightheartedness and humor are important to us, we want to incorporate those themes in our wedding. Not so lighthearted that it appears that we don’t respect the sanctity of marriage, but to showcase the joy D. brings into my life and the joy I bring into his. Our wedding is not the most important/best day of our lives. If it was, everything would be downhill from then. We strive to make every day the best day. You never know what will come tomorrow.

At the end of our lives, we will look back and say, “We had full and happy lives. There may have been peaks and valleys, but overall, our life remained in the first quadrant trending towards (, ).” (It may be a little early for math jokes.)

Most of our lighthearted silliness is going to be expressed in our reception music. We’re going to include tongue-in-cheek songs, lesser known love songs, covers, and a few smashups. Here is a short list of songs we are including.

“Moonshiner’s Daughter” – Hayseed Dixie

“It’s The Little Things That Count” – Dorothy Shay

“If You Wanna Be Happy” – Jimmy Soul

“Jackson” and “It Ain’t Me, Babe” by Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash (We’re planning on taking a few voice lessons, so we can sing “Jackson” in front of our guests.)

“Anyone Else But You” – The Moldy Peaches

“Friday I’m in Love” – The Cure (C’mon, we have to play this. The wedding is on a Friday.)

“Rock Lobster” – B52s (Remember The One With the Prom Video episode of Friends when Phoebe gave her theory about lobsters mating for life?)

“Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)” – Squeeze (Continuing on the shellfish theme. We’d like to find one more high energy song for our high energy seafood/underwater rock block.)

“How Six Songs Collide” – Norwegian Recycling brought to you by Mashuptown.com. This mashup features “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz, “Collide” by Howie Day, “Superman” by Five For Fighting, “Always Getting Over You” by Angela Ammons, “All That I Need” by Boyzone, and “Here Without You” by 3 Doors Down.

“Every Car You Chase” – Party Ben. This song is a mashup of Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars” and “Every Breath You Take” by the Police.

We’re going to make CDs as favors for our guests. One CD will be a finely tailored mix of love songs and the other will be a compliation of the more unusual songs from the wedding.

I have a secret. Promise you won’t tell. You promise? Ok.

There is a part of me that is warming to the idea of eloping. Between the contract delay with the ceremony/reception location,  the psychotic quotes from caterers, and the lukewarm response from family and friends, I’m starting to wonder if having a sentimental wedding is worth all the trouble and expense.

I don’t want to run off to Vegas. It’s a wedding factory out there. Plus, we’ve already been to Vegas and got our marriage license there last year. (It was Valentine’s Day, and we’d thought it would be a fun souvenir.) It’s not valid anymore though.

Getting married at some all-inclusive tropical destination could cost as much as our small sentimental wedding, plus no one would be able to attend besides ourselves.

Maybe it would be better just to rent a beach house for several days and have the wedding with just close family.  But throwing both of our immediate families in the same house for a week? “Two families picked to stay in a house and attend a wedding… The Real World: Eastern Shore.” Hmm, maybe not.

Perhaps, we’ll just surprise our immediate families by getting them together for the first time and have a surprise wedding.  (evil grin) I like that idea. (/evil grin)

Several weeks ago, D. and I visted Montpelier Mansion in Laurel, MD to talk with a rental representative. I’m still waiting on a contract from them, but they are holding the date for me.

Two of the pictures are mine. (The batteries died in the camera before I could take any other pictures. Stupid rechargeable batteries!) The other pictures are from Montpelier Mansion’s website.

This is a side garden and view of the mansion. The green tents were left over from an event the day before. We’re planning on setting up the tables for our reception where the two tents are located under the tree.

We plan on getting married in front of the mansion with our guests seated in chairs on the terraced lawn. I’ll walk down the brick path from the house and meet D. in front of the garden circle for the ceremony. (Photo courtesy of Montpelier Mansion).

If it rains on our wedding day, we will be getting married in the library. This would be our view facing our guests. We won’t keep the chairs in that circular configuration; we would set them up in rows.

The library hyphen… I would be entering the library from this hall passage. (Photo courtesy of Montpelier Mansion).

I hope to take some more pictures of the mansion soon. I’m really looking forward to finalizing the location. I’m tired of wedding vendor limbo. I want to lock something down.

My official stance on wedding colors and themes is that I’m against them. This isn’t prom or homecoming; it’s a wedding. However, I do like things to be coordinated.

For example, most women buy matching bra and panty sets. I don’t. I buy underwear to match my pants and bras to match my shirts. Why? Because inevitably, the underwear band peeks out above my pants and I’d rather have a black pants against a black band than black pants against a lime green band. Or even worse, hot pink underwear under white pants. Yowch! (I don’t own white pants, but if I did, I know that you’re supposed to wear flesh tone drawers, not white, and especially not hot pink.)

So, D. and I are trying to put together this casual, upscale, summer BBQ reception. We want our friends and family to feel comfortable and have fun, and we still want it to feel like a special occasion. Right now, the plan is to serve food grilled outdoors by the caterer, put up lanterns all around the reception area on shepherd hooks, and hopefully, if money allows, be entertained by a cajun or zydeco band. It’s a really rough outline. However, when I’ve been contacting caterers, they’ve been asking “Around what color is your wedding based?”
ManicBride: Ummm. I don’t know yet.
Caterer: What about your flowers?
ManicBride: Ummm. I don’t know. Maybe pale blue and green hydrangeas, but maybe a bright wild flowers with dahlias thing. I’ll know it when I see it. I do know that I’m not having a cascading bouquet, does that help? (It doesn’t, by the way.)

I’ve thought about it a bit.. maybe sage green tablecloths… definitely not red gingham (but I do like the light blue small gingham, but I fear that’s too casual). Maybe fireflies could be a thematic component.. since most of the reception will take place at dusk and go into the evening. I’ve considered buying or making jars of fireflies for table centerpieces.

I know I’ll get it all figured out. I just need to spend some time reviewing Martha Stewart’s website.

Brides.com sends me a crap-ton of email every day. Most of the time, I hit delete and purge before I even read the email. (Delete and purge because I IMAP instead of POP my mail; minor technical detail.) I have a special place in my heart for all things free. If I can get something for nothing or close to nothing, I’ll probably go for it. So, Brides.com sent me an email from their sponsor Bloomingdales advertising their registry. I wasn’t planning on registering at Bloomie’s, but hey, I can register anywhere, and as long as I don’t tell anyone about it, they won’t get me anything from there. However, just to be on the safe side, I’m not adding anything to the registry that I don’t really want. If someone wants to spend $599 for a complete set of Shun knives, I’m not turning my nose up at that gift.
The email says, if I register at Bloomingdales, I get a free pair of Christofle crystal flutes. I’m not familiar with Christofle, but I am a big fan of free stemware.
I already have a pair of champagne flutes from one of Crate and Barrel’s “Sunday Morning Engagements” events.
I wonder how much free stemware I can acquire before the wedding. It would be funny if the bridal party was served drinks at the wedding from my mismatched flutes.

Jana Brevick designs these amazing and unusual wedding rings.

She doesn’t appear to have a website, but she is represented by Facèré Jewelry Art Gallery.

It’s that time again… time for CheapChicWeddings.com’s annual Toilet Paper Wedding Dress contest!

Winner from 2006

Winner from 2005

It’s amazing what these girls can do with toilet paper. If I had some free time, I’d enter. The contest rules are available here.

Even though D. and I are now leaning away from having our wedding in the Leesburg / Loudoun County, there are tons of small, local vendors in that area who are extremely helpful.

I Do Wedding Essentials: Located on King Street, in the heart of downtown Leesburg, I Do is a small shop specializing in all kinds of bridal accessories: favors, invitations, garters, candles, etc. Kristin, the owner, also has really nice cake stands and candy buffet glass containers available for rent. (The website only displays a sample of the rental items she has available.) She is very nice and willing to help any way she can; she has lots of information regarding vendors as well.

Affordable Arrangements: Carly Johnson, the designer at Affordable Arrangements, personally grows most of the flowers she uses in her arrangements. She specializes in seasonal flower arrangements, but roses, exotic, and out of season flowers are also available through her connections with local wholesalers. Affordable Arrangements is a home-based floral business, but I have heard wonderful things about their arrangements and pricing.

Holly Heider Chapple Flowers, LTD: When D. and I were at the Leesburg Flower Show, we ran across Holly’s booth where she was tying up little nosegay bouquets on the fly to sell. She also grows some of her own flowers and reports that she is a preferred vendor for many of the area’s finest estates and restaurants.

Loudoun Convention & Visitors Association: The LCVA offers free wedding planning services. Susan Kitchen of the LCVA has been very helpful in providing potential ceremony and reception locations and has a lot of experience with event coordination. LCVA also offers assistance with reserving blocks of hotel rooms, and they provide welcome packets for your guests which include maps and brochures, so guests can explore the area.

In March, I posted about the new Secret Clinical Strength deodorant, and two weeks ago, my sample came in.

You apply the deodorant the night before, let the deo work its magic, and the next day you can reapply it after your shower if you don’t trust it to work. I applied it the night before and then worked out the next day. The antiperspirant does not prevent you from sweating altogether. I broke a sweat on the exercise bike, but every time my pits felt moist, the deodorant would reactivate, and I would smell the gentle scent of Secret. Not once did I smell like B.O., sweat, or natural ManicBride scent. I was pretty impressed by that. However, the only drawback I could think of is that you may be overscented if you plan on wearing perfume on your wedding day as well. My solution: wear a light, complementary scent on your wedding day. You don’t need tons of perfume anyway.
Yes, my pits were moist. I don’t consider that to be a failure of the antiperspirant though. It’s not natural to be truly sweat-free. This antiperspirant is designed to prevent sweat stains from excessive sweating. Applying more product on your armpits the day of is not going to eliminate sweat. You’re only going to have deodorant/antiperspirant build up in the creases of your armpit, and every one will figure out that you were paranoid about your B.O. when you’re dancing to YMCA. Also, if you plan on preserving your wedding dress, do your dress and the cleaner a favor by not reapplying. The caked on deodorant/antiperspirant is difficult to totally remove and can discolor and even damage some materials.

So, is Secret Clinical Strength worth it? I think so.

I’ve been AFK for most of this week due to having my wisdom teeth extracted. It was surprisingly more painful than I expected, and I didn’t have the greatest reaction to the pain medication. (Vicodin caused me to throw up, even when taken on a full stomach and at half dosage. Darvocet made me moody and gave me a throbbing headache.) I had all four wisdom teeth extracted on Wednesday, the pain and swelling increased and peaked on Friday, and today, I woke up with far less pain and a more normal looking face. …which is a good thing because D., his mother, his son, and I are going to meet with the rental folks at Montpelier Mansion in Laurel, MD today.
I originally had my heart set on having the wedding at the Norris House Inn, but after my recent conversation with one of the innkeepers, I’ve been reconsidering my decision. She said you don’t want to “try to make a location work” because it’s too much trouble to manage on your wedding day. She said this in reference to holding both the wedding and the reception at the Norris House. I really wanted to have a casual, summery, reception feel. I wanted people to be outside (if the weather permitted) and having a good time. I didn’t want to have a stuffy reception or a standard dinner in a restaurant. Leesburg, unfortunately, doesn’t have a restaurant that really fits our needs. I am not expecting the wedding to be perfect. Quite the contrary, I expect something to go wrong; I’d prefer it to be something minor though. What I do want is for our wedding, ceremony and reception, to fit us. I don’t want to be pressured into someone else’s idea of how a wedding should be. (I’m willing to accept advice and heed warnings though.) I don’t want to be sitting at a table in a restaurant during our reception and feeling disappointed because it doesn’t feel like a wedding. If a vendor cannot sign on to our wedding “vision”, and at least be willing to try to make it happen, then maybe we shouldn’t go with that vendor. It’s all about being flexible and open minded, on both sides.
That being said: Montpelier Mansion has a beautiful front lawn with enough space for an outdoor wedding ceremony and reception. It also has enough space inside for both the ceremony and reception in case of rain. I plan on taking pictures today and posting a full report.