Wedding Retrospective: What I'm Glad I Did and Wish I'd done Differently

This post beings my "Wedding Retrospective" series on the wedding. This post is the full list of "Things I’m glad I did", "Things I wish I’d done differently", and "Things I have mixed feeling about" now that I'm looking back on our Wedding. You have to tell me which one(s) from each category you want to hear more about and I will do another post about the top ones and explain them in detail...

Things I’m glad I did:

• Had a Day Of Coordinator (with a detailed agenda/checklist)
• Had a Videographer
• Saw each other before hand and did pictures
• Had a girlfriend stay at my parent’s house with me nights before the wedding
• Had live music and danced until the end of the reception
• Hired a photographer that let me own my digital negatives
• Did DIY stationary for all of the wedding ceremony/reception itesm
• Did not do chair covers/ chair upgrades (because the stock chairs were fine)
• Had a Smashed Potato Bar at Midnight (so fun!)
• Involved our faith and families in our wedding ceremony
• Had beautiful turquoise and tangerine uplighting in the ball room
• Had a day-after brunch (did not leave for our Honeymoon right away)
• Did charity favors for wedding favors
• Had simple elegant centerpieces
• Had bouquets without a lot of greenery
• Gave each other wedding gifts (besides rings)
• Made out-of-town gift bags/buckets for the guests
• Did dance lessons for our first dance
• Did our own vows
• Actually ate our food at the wedding
• Had a Sweetheart table (let attendants sit with their family/boyfriends/wives/etc.)
• Created a "Play" and "Do Not Play" list for the Band
• Changed into sandals for the reception
• Put out pictures of us and our families
• Gave the band an iPod to play at breaks
• Had my dad make me a big omelet the AM of the wedding
• Had beautiful bright bridesmaid dresses and flowers
• Did a Bridesmaid Brunch and Mani/Pedi the day before
• Did the Rehearsal Dinner at my parents house
• Did assinged seats/escort cards

Things I wish I’d done differently. I wish I’d:

• Got ready earlier
• Had them box the cake to take it to go
• Had more group pictures – USC people, HS people, me with each bridesmaid, etc. and more photos of guests
• Bought a professional makeup mirror to check my makeup in
• Not ordered cake for every guest
• Reapplied makeup before the reception after being out in the sun/wind for hours
• Paid more attention to the guys tuxes and not gotten the ugly cheap ones
• Not stressed out so much morning of the wedding
• Told my bridesmaids/groomsmen exactly how to enter the ballroom
• Instructed the cake servers of how to serve the 3 flavors of cake
• Gotten a few more “traditional” photography shots to add to all the creative ones we have

Things I have mixed feeling about:

• Getting married at a hotel
• Doing my own makeup
• Not doing a receiving line, instead doing table rounds
• Doing a big, expensive wedding
• Wedding blogging

Incorporating Photos into our Wedding

I LOVE photos. I always have. I've made bulletin boards, scrapbooks, and collages out of my photos for years. I knew I wanted to incorporate photos into the wedding without being over-the-top or cheesy.

I ended up making 3 poster boards of Photos to put on easels at the entrance to the reception. One featured Jonathan and me as babies, one featured pictures of Jonathan and I as a couple, and one featured our Parents' Wedding Photos. I love the way they turned out and I think the guests did too.

I'm not 100% sure what's going on here... but I think the bridesmaids liked the photos as well:

DIY Projects - Escort Cards and Favors

Two of the biggest DIY projects that I undertook in the weeks leading up to the wedding were my the Escort Cards and Favors.

The Sunday before the Wedding I held a "Wine & Wedding Crafts" Party and with help from my Mom, Laurel, Pat, Sarah, Michelle, and Nikki we got a ton of wedding DIY stuff done. It was a great time and the products turned out great.

Escort Cards



The Escort Cards were 3 inch White Pencil Starfish With business card sied tags indicating the person's name and table. The turquoise or tangerine ribbon indicated their meal selection (crepes or salmon). I made the cards in Word using Honey Script font and had them printed on ivory cardstock at Kinkos. I really like the way they turned out!

Favors



Instead of favors we did donations to Alzheimer's Association and gave people a Sand dollar to signify that donation at their place setting.


The text read:
"A dollar for them, a dollar for you
For each of our wedding guests we've donated a dollar to Alzheimer's Association. We chose Alzheimer's Association in memory of Kirsten's Grandpa Jack and in support of Jonathan's Fraternity Philanthropy.
Thank you for being a part of our lives and for sharing our special day with us."

We also had these printed up at Kinkos and they looked beautiful on the cyan card stock. I bought the Sand Dollars from qualityshells.com and we tied the tags to them with raffia ribbon.

ONE Month!

O.M.G. Our wedding is in one month! I'm so excited and trying not to panic.

All of our vendors are set and ready. Our Pastor is ready to marry us, the band is ready to play, Carlee is ready to coordinate, and Kim is ready to photograph.

What's making me panic are all of the minor decor items that I have left to do - table numbers, menus, programs, favors, escort cards, baskets, signage, and out-of-town gift bags. All of the things that allegedly "make it all come together".

I'm so glad that I decided to take two weeks off of work before the wedding.

Note to Friends in San Diego: I'm hostessing a "favor, program, placecard making party" on Saturday August 9th or Sunday August 10th, so save the date.

These are the thing that make me lose sleep:

LIGHTS, camera, action!

I'm always looking for new and creative ways to totally break my wedding budget... hence this week's obsession with wedding reception lighting.

(side bar: It's kind of funny how each wedding vendor will tell you that their wedding detail is THE thing will make THE impact on your wedding look and feel. The florist says it the flowers, the band says its the music, the chair people say it's the chairs (I hope its not), the statationary store says its the invitations, and the AV people say its the lighting.)

I have visions of spotlights, uplighting, dance floor washes, and monograms/logos projected on the wall.:

Well all of that went out the window when I came down to earth EXCEPT uplights. Uplights are about $25 a light so for just a couple hundred dollars you can totally transform the mood of the room with lighting. I'm thinking of doing turquoise uplighting. It will complement the orange glow of the chandeliers, wall lights, and chandeliers AND will make the room awash in my favorite couple. Do you think this would look or should I stick with a warmer color?

Wedding Coordinator- La Bella Weddings and Events

I met with my Wedding Coordinator, Carlee Jimenez for La Bella Weddings and Events, this weekend. She's new to the industry, so I got her for a steal! I'm so excited to have her as my "Day Of" Coordinator.

Carlee's "Day of Services" Include"-

Pre Wedding -Reviewing vendor contracts and conformation of requested services, organizing vent delivery/arrival times, collecting floor plans, creating wedding day timeline and distributing timeline to vendors.

Ceremony - Coordinating with all vendors, organizing wedding party for their entrance, directing guests, and collecting personal items.

Reception –Coordinating with all vendors, setting up of guest book table, gift table, decor, place cards, etc., maintaining the night's timeline, distributing final payments to vendor, and gathering personal items.


You can reach Carlee at cj@eventsbylabella.com

The Menu!

We tasted and choose our Wedding Menu this weekend...

Cocktail hour will include various cheeses, sausages, and meats as well as bruschetta.

For the dinner:
- The appetizer course will be Tomato Caprece
- The salad course will be Tropical Salad with mango and coconut
- The main course will be a choice of Salmon or Vegetarian Crepes
- The dessert will be Wedding Cake

Yummy!














Our ballroom, the Terazza, decorated for a wedding dinner.

150 days to go

As of today we have 150 days until the BIG DAY! I can't wait for the wedding to get here but I still have a lot to do. This weekend I'm going to San Diego to work on several wedding activities. As of next week I will know:
- The Menu
- The Tuxes
- The Coordinator
- The Videographer
- The Bridesmaid dress
- The MOB Dress
- The Inviations

Stay tuned for posts on those!

You Can't Always Get What you Want

I have a wedding budget of just over average for a California wedding, so you'd think that would pretty much cover all of my wedding dreams and fantasies... WRONG.

In reading wedding blogs I've also decided that I want (but cannot have due to budgetary constraints):
- Chiavari Chairs - Those gorgeous suckas rent for like $8 a chair. I'll just have to use the hotel chairs, whatever, they're nice.
- Professional Lighting - Initials on the dancefloor and lighting to make it look like a Vegas club, sigh... I think the regular ballroom lighting and candles will be fine
- A ridiculous amount of flowers - Those giant tree-like centerpieces are so pretty, but $150+ for something that dies the next day.
- Matching professional stationary for menus, place cards, etc. - I think this makes a great DIY project (I'm actually excited to do this one)
- Colored linens - You know you can buy napkins and tablecloths for just a bit more than you can rent them for? Lame. Oh well, the white comes with the venue are elegant and crisp.

Terazza Ballroom

Here is a video I took of our Ballroom at the Hilton, the Terazza Ballroom.



I think it's too small and we're going to upgrade to one of the windowless but bigger ballrooms. Those other ballrooms have higher ceilings and look more dramatic. Too bad Hilton doesn't have a 2nd floor ballroom that looks out onto the water like the Catamaran.

Reception Space

I am really excited about my Wedding venue, the Hilton San Diego Resort on Mission Bay. I love the ceremony site right on the bay, the cocktail hour site on the water, and the ballroom with the beautiful French doors that open up to pool and bay. However, lately I’ve been worried about the size of the room. The room is 2,560 square feet and they say it can seat up to 160 (but 160 is apparently tight). And I need to fit the band and dance floor (which is ideal with 130 according to my wedding guy at the Hilton). I think that about 150 people will attend the wedding. This space issue was making me SO nervous that I down loaded the Hilton’s meeting planning software and mapped out the room (below, to seat 160 at 17 tables). It looks tight but I think a packed room can add a lot of energy. What do you think … tight? OK?

Charity as a Wedding Favor

One of the current Wedding Trends is to have a charitable donation as a favor instead of the traditional box of chocolates or a matchbook, which I really like.

As some of you know, on November 23rd my Grandfather, Jack Frageman passed away after a long battle with Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's Association is also the National Philanthropy of Tau Kappa Epsilon (Jonathan's Fraternity). So we thought it would be special to do a donation to Alzheimer's Association in lieu of a elaborate favor to honor Grandpa Jack and TKE.

Since Starfish and Sanddollars are a big part of our wedding theme, I was thinking of giving everyone a Sanddollar that says something like "A dollar for you, a dollar for them. A dollar has been donated to Alzheimer's Association in your name" and then have a small explaination of what Alzheimer's Association means to Jonathan and me.

Our Parents Wedding Pics

I managed to get some pictures for Jonathan's Parent's Wedding and my Parent's Wedding as well. I want to use them somehow at the wedding -- maybe on the guestbook table or the cake table. Personally I like the pictures of our Parents with their Wedding Cakes the most. Check out how similar they are ...

My Wedding Inspiration Board

Abby at the Blog, "Style Me Pretty" (http://www.stylemepretty.com/) loves to create Wedding Inspiration Boards. And they are quite inspirational... in fact, inspirational enough to inspire me to create my Wedding Inspiration Board. Here it is (Click on it to see the full-size version).
BTW- Do you think I could use the word "Inspire" more in one post? I don't. Anyway take a look...