Wedding budget... and other things...

This wedding thing is overwhelming sometimes. Not because there's so much to do, but because of the pressure that surrounds it and the weird expectations. Not even for me, per se, although there are some on me, but in the world.

I peruse Pinterest's wedding section for ideas sometimes, and there are women in there who have their entire wedding planned out massively and you can kind of tell by their other boards that they're not even with man yet. They've got endless pins of dresses, flowers, arrangements, jewelry, future engagement rings and even undies to suck it all in under their future couture gown.

The most discouraging has to be when I look at these so-called budget bride websites. Holy crap is your "low budget" totally not congruent to mine.

So here you go, why not, the breakdown of our "low budget" wedding, so far:
(In Canadian dollars.)
Wedding rings (including customization of mine, molding materials, shipping (fedex) and taxes on this side of the border:
$1282
My dresses (2):
$400
Hair clip:
$115
Flowers (so far, for bouquets & boutonnieres):
$335
Cake topper:
$49
Décor (so far):
$48
Favors (not bought yet, but priced out):
$112
Venue:
0! YEY!

Other estimated costs (yet to be cemented):
Food:
$1000
Photographer:
$1500
Pants and a new tie for the groom:
$200
Wedding dress alterations (the waist is a little big):
(I have no idea how much that will cost, but it's booked, so we'll see.)
Stamps:
Let's go with $60 for this one and hopefully we'll group some together. :-/
Hair:
I figure I'll do the Natalie Portman haircut, so I can do that a couple days before and not worry on the day.)
Make up:
Gah. My one "I have no idea what to do about that," left...
Wedding party gifts:
No idea about this either, but I'm less stressed about it because prezzies are well within my comfort zone. :D

Things parents are paying for:
Rented plates & cutlery, etc - my dad.
Invite paper and printing - my dad (We kept costs way down here though. We're going with plain white thick paper. That's it. Let's say... $70 total? I don't know how much he's spending. He doesn't say. -.-)
Potential tent (bleh) - my guy's parents. We'll see how many RSVPs we get and decide whether or not we need a tent. With the tent come chairs and tables and stuff... and complications..... anyway.

Add that mess all up and add estimated notary fees (and don't include the rentals, potential tent, alterations, gifts and other things I'm forgetting) and you get:
$5911

EeeeeeEeeeEEeeEEeEEeeeee... Already $911 over budget- not even including the cutlery and stuff! Man!

A handy pie chart. It goes clockwise from smallest to largest (down the list).

It's really hard to blow a wad this huge on one day. And these so-called budget brides with their $20,000 budgets? How do you do that? I mean, even if we had the money, we wouldn't do it. The most frivolous and unnecessary thing we've bought for this wedding so far is my hair clip. Other than that, it was pretty standard and relatively cheap. Especially my dress. And I don't even have shoes on there either because I intend to be barefoot or wearing my vibrams under my dress.

Oh, and I think the cost of a barbecue is covered in there somewhere, but Mike's asleep so I can't ask him if it's in there for sure or not (he's the food section).

I still kind of want the earrings I posted a while back and I'm not getting a garter because I find that tradition creepy. What else? I'm still debating on whether or not to drop $100 on hydrangeas from Costco or not. We'll see. There will probably be added costs for decor, as I have to find a tiny hole punch and buy some wood and hooks to hang the origami butterflies.

We don't have a dj or anybody hired for music. There is no alcohol in the budget because I refuse to fund that stuff. There may be alcohol for a toast, but that's not coming out of my dog food money.

I guess that's it, really.

Man, it's so hard to stay cheap though. We've done our best, I guess. And we're happy with everything we've gotten so far, so that helps.

It is weird though, being among these women who have been planning these things for decades, long before they even knew what man they'd actually marry. I didn't have that kind of experience. Aside from joking about having a curling wedding with an ex who never loved me at all, weddings just were never on my radar. I'd to to weddings and know it wasn't for me, and yet, here I am, right in the middle of it. I mean, I'm even wearing my wedding ring still, as I write this.

The only other memory I have is from when I was tiny and would hide behind the sheer white living room curtains and walk outwards and let the curtain slide over me, pretending it was a veil. My most vivid memory of those moments was the intense smell of dust as the curtain slid over my face.

That's about it.

I never had a boyfriend in high school. I had some crushes, but they tended to end in me being humiliated, which was fine because I somehow adapted to being embarrassed to the point where it didn't even bother me anymore. A boy I could have dated, one of my best friends, told the world we were dating in high school, but never bothered to tell me. And then I got held hostage by the first guy I tried to get closer to in spite of my discomfort, but I escaped. I pursued snowboarding intensively and with that came its share of boys, but none of them were marriage-worthy. Not even close enough to get an idea in my head about it. I was on my own and I liked it that way so much that it never occurred to me to be any other way.

And yet, somehow, I found myself stuck in an six year abusive relationship and I followed that with a year and a half long abusive relationship. That one put it in my head that marriage was potentially a good thing, but his ending morality shattered any sort of optimism I had on the subject at that point. I think I was pretty well done. Terrible guy after terrible guy- how are you supposed to get any sort of inkling that one day, you will find a guy with whom exactly what they say happens- you just know? How are you supposed to know that that actually happens? And really, how are you supposed to plan for that?

My aunt once said she'd never date a man she couldn't see herself married to, but who are you supposed to date when you don't see yourself married at all, ever?

And then one fateful day in September, you finally meet the guy you agreed to meet in May and you follow through with your half-joking plan to lay out all your junk on the table and ask him if he's still in anyway, and somehow, he says yes. And he's been saying yes ever since, regardless of the giant mass of junk that has accumulated on that tiny wobbly table in the now defunct coffee shop where we once drank warm beverages together for the first time.

How do you plan for this?
How do you pinterest this?
And how do you do either years before you even know it exists?

I don't know, but the only thing I envy of them is how they got a bit of a head start with the planning and the coping... But even then, they don't even know what they're planning for. They don't know this.

Anyway.

All that matters in the end is that we have what we have, however we got here and whatever the future holds for us.

Ahhh! Rings!

I posted last night about how the wedding rings were in the mail (see this post) and how I was worried my ring wouldn't look nice because really, how are you supposed to make a ring look nice when it's fitted to such a wonky engagement ring?

Well, a hundred something dollars in taxes later, I was holding the package with the rings. I let the doggies out and sat on the top stair of the back porch in the sun and opened up the fedex package. And then the USPS package inside that fedex package. :D And inside that, there was a ring box and a card. I read the card first because that's the polite thing to do, and slowly opened the box, remembering right before the lid opened that there was a tiny bee inside too. I was told to be careful because the tiny legs are fragile.

And when I opened up that box and carefully moved the bee, inside were our matching wedding rings, and for the first time, I understood why Mike was so adamant about us getting the same ring. It was pretty fricken magical, I must say. To see them side by side, unique but the same, ah! So sweet.

So of course, I had to go on a photo spree. No photograph will ever adequately show how I feel about them. They are so, so pretty. (They were slightly prettier before I got them all grubby with my fingers...)

Look! We fit! YEY! :D

Even without my engagement ring, my ring is pretty. It's fricken mountains. Like, for serious. MOUNTAINS.

They fit together really nicely. The metals don't match (the new ring is much whiter than my engagement ring), but I kind of love it that way because it makes them entirely separate entities. And I like the white better than the less white. :D

AH! His ring is so pretty too. I'm kinda jealous of how the bigger flat parts on his reflect the light. :D

On my fingie.

Cropped so you can see them closer up.

And a video of me spinning his ring so you can see how the waterfall effect shimmers. It's so fricken beautiful.

I'll repost the paragraph from the below post, just to give Ravens' Refuge adequate credit, in case anybody finds this post and wants to use them for their wedding bands:

Ravens' Refuge have their etsy shop, a facebook page, a flickr and a blog (there's a good description of the types of hammering on there too and a few pictures of the bees).

Ok, have to go get Mike at the train. EEEEEE.

Eeeeeee.... Wedding rings!

If that clicks bigger, it's our tracking page for the wedding rings. Eee.

I thought I would have a few days to get ready once she shipped them, but no... tomorrow. Eee.

So I guess I should go through the ring story...

So we went to Birks, mainly because I figured they would be a good place to get Mike sized (I already know my size- 4 3/8) and to get him to try rings on to see what he liked best in terms of widths, metals, styles and whatnot. We went to the downtown location on Ste. Catherine Street because we figured they'd have the most selection. Man, the service was bad. Nobody had any interest in serving us at all. The salespeople were actively avoiding us when we were clearly standing by the wedding rings, waiting. When I asked about a wedding ring to fit my engagement ring, the salesguy we grabbed, who was riddled with the most gaudy of mismatched jewelry imaginable and who seemed so annoyed with having to serve us, looked at my ring from afar and said, "That's not from Birks? No, we can't accommodate that ring." So, being that I was already so annoyed, I probably looked at him like he was dumb (I have a really bad poker face) and probably said something sarcastic to which he replied, "Well, you could get one made, but that's with the designer, not my department." I asked where I find out about this designer and he gestured to customer service at the other end of the store and repeated that it wasn't his department. 

Oh, and to size Mike, he felt his finger, squeezing the sides of it and was all, "Yeah, I'd say a ten." Seriously, dude? That's your professionalism? We asked him about types of metal, and he clearly stereotyped Mike as a construction worker (wtf, he's a chef), and started giving us bad advice based on construction work because "clearly," he worked in construction. I honestly can't even remember what the advice was because at that point, between his sickening pavé diamond carpeted mixed metal over-jewelry and his bad attitude, there was nothing worth learning from this guy.

Anyway, so we went to the service counter, where the girl didn't speak a word of English but refused to admit it and told us the designer's last appointment slot was at 4:30PM. "Can you see if the designer is available now? We live pretty far away," I said. "No, it's after four thirty," she said. I looked at my watch. It was something like 4:20 and the designer's schedule in front of us was clearly empty. She begrudgingly called and nobody answered. She asked if I wanted to book an appointment and at that point, we just wanted to leave and never go back in there ever again, so I fakely took her card and said I'd call.

We left there angry and ranted about how cruddy the service was for at least the four blocks to the car and probably another twenty minutes once we were in the car. Holy crap, you know? Sure, we don't look like money, but we were ready to spend whatever we had to to get really good quality wedding rings. Everybody, regardless of demographic, buys wedding rings. Everybody intends for them to last. So really, when you see somebody shopping for a wedding ring, especially if there is already an engagement ring on the girl's finger, smarten up and serve them because more than anybody else in your store at any given moment, soon-to-be-marrieds are definitely making a ring purchase in the next few months. Two even!

Just pathetic.

When we got home, I ranted on twitter and facebook and the two of us vowed never to buy anything at Birks again. Instead, I searched ebay for vintage rings and found a few I liked and searched etsy too, and finally, after literally spending hours, if not fractions of several days, looking, I found a shop on etsy that seemed to make custom rings that were really, really pretty. The ad I found originally was this one. I researched a bit more and found that Ravens' Refuge uses recycled metals (bonus!) and their feedback (you should read it) is so, so awesome, and when I showed Mike, we were both in agreement that these were the people we wanted to make our rings. 

I sent them a few pictures of my ring, one of which had measurements all over it to give them an idea of the sizes we were working with and I waited and hoped they'd respond and say they could do it. A couple of days went by and I got the best email ever from Laura, the wifey of the guy (Dan) who makes the rings. 

After a million exchanges (almost not an exaggeration), we hammered out the details, she advised me on what metal to choose (so much easier than Birks and her explanations made sense- to the point where we got the rings in a completely different metal than we intended) and she put an ad up just for us so we could finalize the transaction. But the thing is, there were some things we never discussed but that she just somehow knew, which was so awesome. The finish in the ad I had asked about is closer to their pebbled hammering or cobblestone hammering (I can't tell which right now because I'm too sleepy), but in our final ad, she specified waterfall hammering, which is sort of strips of hammering instead of the tinier flat bits, and creates a waterfall illusion when it moves through the light. She totally nailed it somehow, even though I hadn't specified the finish and the waterfall one was actually exactly what we wanted. Here's an example of the waterfall finish if you want to see the difference. 

Get it though? He proposed by a waterfall and we're getting waterfall rings? And they're banged up, just like us, and they're perfect, just like us?

Teehee.

Anyway, after another billion exchanges about how exactly to do my ring, we decided maybe it'd be best if I sent them a mold of my ring. So they sent me the materials to do two molds and so I did those the night I received them after meticulously watching their online video tutorials and rushed them back to the mail the next day. They used those to make a cast or whatever to make a bronze ring to fit my wedding ring onto. We decided that instead of having my ring cut out of my engagement ring (so that it'd sit flat on top of it), the ring was going to be nubbly and wobbly and stay the same width all the way around, but follow the bizarre and overly complicated curves of my engagement ring. 

I honestly have no idea what it'll look like. I got a sketch a couple of months ago before we decided to do the molds, so I don't know if he stuck to the sketch or used some artistic freedom or license or whatever you call it, so we'll see. I'm kinda nervous about it because somehow, I think it would be hard to make a ring that fits my engagement ring and looks good. 

Regardless though, I know for sure that Mike's ring is beautiful (a ring similar to his is in pictures, basically this but in 14K X1 white gold) and they were really awesome to work with (I don't know how she didn't get impatient with me) and (!!) they're sending Mike a tiny copper bee too because they did a cast of a real bee (who died of natural causes) and created a whole bunch of bees for an artist's sculpture and I asked if we could get one too and they obliged (because they're awesome?!), so really, however my ring ended up, this experience was so, so much better than we could have hoped for. So yey.

I mean, hopefully I'll adore it too, but at this point, on the eve of getting it (hopefully), I'm trying not to worry about it. I have to trust people at some point, right? And they've been so awesome all along and they produce beautiful stuff, so seriously, Princess, shhh.

:D

So yeah. If you need a wedding ring, even if it's just a regular one, or even other rings because they do crazy stuff for engagement rings and whatnot too, I highly recommend them. The service, the price, the humble and patient communication, the ethics, the fact that they use recycled metals and the fact that never once did they sell me a thing even when it was so clear I had no idea what I was doing or what I really wanted, yeah, I so recommend them.

They have their etsy shop, a facebook page, a flickr and a blog (there's a better description of the types of hammering on there too and a few pictures of the bees).

So yeah. Hopefully, after all this, I do like my ring. Hehe. :D Obviously, I'll post pictures if we get them tomorrow. (Guaranteed! haha..)

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...

eta: Oh! I almost forgot. An added bonus for us, well, me in particular, is that Ravens' Refuge's logo is so pretty (native arty) and from what I've seen, they stamp the inside of the rings with it. So that's super awesome too.

UPDATE! New post here with pictures. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...

Hair clip and invites...

So with the help of Mike, Maxine and Annie, we collectively decided to get this hair clip:

Source: saragabriel.com via Prin on Pinterest

Originally, I wanted to get one of the Sara Gabriel veils, like this one or this one, but after having a look at similar ones (not sure which ones, but they seemed to be very close to the ones I was looking at online), and trying to envision them clipped into my hair (these had combs and there's just no way combs will stay in my short, fine hair), they just weren't me. This one is slightly sparkly, slightly textured and the feathers match the bouquets and boutonnieres. And the hair clip isn't as brutal as the one that is attached to the butterfly the bouquet lady sent as a bonus with the bouquets. I figure one of the bridesmaids can wear the butterfly (if they don't think it's too brutal of a hair clip).

Ok, and for the invites, we finally finished them... Don't scroll past here if you don't want to see them or want to be surprised or whatever (I hope nobody who isn't invited is reading this...)...

We just have to print them and get them out... asap.

But yeah, they look like this...

A few spaces in case you really don't want to see it yet...






Ready?

Haha.

Ok.

Here (edited for anonymity, of course; also, not sure if it clicks bigger or not... it should?):

So yeah. It's half a page big, and on the back will be lame, pointless maps and the RSVP info.

The drawing is a Barbara Tolloczko rendition of a drawing I found on the internet, the source of which I could not locate no matter how hard I tried. :-/ But she changed the teeth (she gave them more variety of expression rather than all scary), added the doggies and some tiny buttcheeks.

So that's it for updates.

Oh! And the wedding rings are shipping any minute now. Scaryscaryscaryscary. So I should get on that story before they come.... Eee.

Ok, that's it.

Registry...

It makes me feel dirty and whatnot, but here it is, my pinterest registry board thingy. Pinning things on there has been really hard actually. Maybe I'll get the hang of it in a while and figure out a way to have fun with it...

Maybe.

In the meantime, if anybody remembers anything I've ever said I wanted, can you maybe remind me? Because when I look at that thing, I can barely remember what charities I like.

Rambly update...

So things have been a little stagnant, probably because of my endo appointment, my guy being away and now my guy being sick (and me secluding myself from the universe in consequence).

Things I still have to do in the near (very near) future:
1. Invites.
- I have the final artwork and the basic layout of the invite, but I didn't join the two yet. I think that sort of thing will take all of three minutes, but I'm a lazy ass and I just haven't done it.
- We still have to get the addresses from his side and a few scragglers on my side.
- We.. um.. still have to decide who we're inviting but I think I'm pretty well settled, even if the number might give me a panic attack.
- Then we have to print them and mail them. And figure out an alternative for those who still have no access to the internet (I think there are two).

2. Veil.
- I have to get my ass to Crescent street to the one authorized retailer for Sara Gabriel in Quebec to see if I like the veils (in the headpieces section) as much in person as I do on their website, and to see if I can tolerate them without panicking. We'll see. Hopefully they'll have a good selection of them... If I get fed up and feel hopeless, I can always wear a teeny tiny top hat or an asymmetrical fedora, which, for some reason outside of my comfort zone, intrigues me greatly.

3. Radiation.
- We'll see. Hopefully it won't end up too close to the wedding and hopefully I won't gain a pajillion pounds after it when my thyroid dies. Too stressful to think about.

4. Paint.
- I figure I should paint the house a lot before people come here, namely the livingroom downstairs, my bedroom and the second bedroom downstairs. And maybe finish the deck.
- I hate painting.

5. More butterflies.
- I haven't made an origami butterfly in months. I have to get a move on!

6. Inquire about a campfire permit. And if we need a permit of some kind to host a wedding at our house.

7. Write a script maybe?

8. Registry.
- Mike doesn't want to register anywhere, and registering at one store seems... not us. So what I thought instead was I could set up a Pinterest board with stuff we want and people can buy the things on our Pinterest if they need to be told what to buy. Or it could serve as ideas, you know?
- (The first thing that comes to mind when I think about it is I am totally putting bags of dog food on there. Omg, and latex grunting piggies. Yes.)

9. Dress alterations.
- Probably in June, I guess. I'm thinking I'll have to get her to remove the flowers from under the belty part of it so I look thinner because right now, especially since the waist is too big, I look particularly puffed up in it. It's not terrible, but it could be better.

10. Officiant forms.
- Have to fill those out one of these days, just to make sure we have everything we need.

11. North Carolina.
- We're going in June and I figure it'll give us an opportunity to finalize things with our photographer. She does seem a little hesitant (if she is, it's probably because I'm difficult and she's an eighteen hour drive away), so maybe if we do a few test shots, she can see what we're like to work with (i.e. miserable photographically) and decide if we're outside her comfort zone. That's not to say she's not an amazing photographer (and a great person), but we both are really difficult, both to take nice pictures of us and to get us to not hate the whole thing.

Honestly, the photography portion of the day fills me with dread. I know how I am, and I know from being a bridesmaid that it doesn't take me long to feel (and appear!) completely irritable. And posing? Just naw. I think we want our wedding to be as genuine as possible and in keeping with that, we just can't have contrived pictures. I mean, if they're fun and goofy, maybe, but if they're stereotypical and fake, no. What I mean is I can totally picture me running around with my arms flailing and taking ridiculous pictures like that, but the one where we all jump, I'm totally staying planted on the ground. Totally. And I'm not doing things twice either. At a few weddings I've been to, they made the bride and groom cut the cake like six times. Do you really not remember when you look at those photographs that that's probably not the first cut? What's the point of having a picture of you posing for the sixth slice?

We're not slicing anyway. I think we'll just jab the pyramid of cake balls with a fork. Jointly. And most likely, we'll pierce the chocolatey outside and smoosh the shit out of it such that we can't possibly collect the cake ball we've forked.

But you know, that'll probably make a good picture. :D

I think that's it for now. I'm getting a little anxious about the rings; the last email in February after they'd gotten the molds of my engagement ring said it'd be a "few weeks" till they got to my ring. Waiting is brutal. I really want to know what it looks like. I kind of wish I was getting just a straight band, but I can't switch my engagement ring to my right hand (too fragile to be on my dominant hand), so I have no choice. Maybe one day, I'll get a straight band too, just to save for later if I ever decide not to wear my engagement ring for whatever reason (i.e. it's too fragile for whatever life I lead in the future). I still have to blog about the ring experience from start to finish... One of these days. It is a kind of long story, but I am really happy with the people we found to do them, so I have to tell it.

Oh, and the spare butterflies came a couple days ago, so I have those to fix my bouquet with later (too afraid to go near my bouquet till much closer to the wedding).

I think that's it.