Whitney from Brown Sugar Design came by Microsoft today to drop off the box of envelopes for me so I could begin addressing them—yay!  In the process, she gave me a sample of one of the final printed invites too!  I’m so excited!

Meanwhile, I’ve been practicing my handwriting and pseudo-calligraphy with a calligraphy pen.  Ha!  We’ll see how they turn out.  Invites should be assembled next week…and then I just have to put the frog buttons on.  Local bridesmaids—get ready for a frog button glueing party! Heh Heh….

Categories: Misc Planning
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I got a 3rd hair trial last night from Salon Maison, whom I had booked way back in September.  They’re super popular amongst Seattle girls on The Knot—for some reason, I was a bit hesitant….but I was really happy after meeting with one of the women last night.  She really captured the look I was going for and I feel more confident with my hair now.  (excuse my makeup in the picture below…it was obviously not a makeup trial)  Check!

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I’ve had 2 Hair Trials so far and haven’t been very thrilled with them.  The first one was a lady who was more interested in doing my makeup than my hair.  The second was a girl who’d never worked weddings before (which I didn’t know until the trial!).  Both times my hair looked flat and boring.  I’m finally having a trial with a company this week that I actually had booked last September that tons of girls on the Knot boards absolutely love.  I originally booked them as backup so I’d have time to meet with other hair stylists but I’ve learned that not a lot of people do on-site hair services, which is what I’d really like.  I’d love the bridesmaids to come over in the morning, share some breakfast and get our hair done together.  Anyhow, I hope this week’s trial works out!  Here are some photos of inspiration….any favorites?

Categories: Vendors
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We did our registration last month and ever since, I’ve gone into our list here and there to tweak it and update it in the case of out-of-stock items.  Last week, I saw the strangest thing—on our china place settings, instead of “Needs 12″, it said “Needs 8″.  Huh?  At first I thought I mistakenly changed the numbers since I’m tweaking the items all the time….until today when I came home to see a UPS delivery sticker on the door for an attempted delivery from…..Macy’s!  Wow—people are looking at our registry!  Even today, the numbers changed again.  I haven’t even sent invitations out yet!  We’ve barely mentioned where we’ve registered to folks.  This website is starting to get an audience, I guess… I don’t know who the secret package is from or what’s really in it…but BIG THANKS!

Categories: Registry
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I’ve had a personal website blog since 2000–as a result, naturally, I just had to have a wedding blog (of course).  And, of course, I must aid my wedding planning in reading up on various wedding blogs.  Fortunately, to keep my mind sane, I’ve pretty much just focused on one in particular, but I thought I’d point out to all my interested readers how many blogs exist out there that had to do with weddings other than one’s own.  It’s crazy!

Categories: Misc Planning
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The average American engagement is 16 months.
June is the most popular month for weddings, then August, followed by September October and May
Every year an average of 2.4 million weddings are performed in the U.S.
The Wedding Industry is a 50 billion dollar a year industry
Average age for first-time brides is 25 years, for grooms it’s 27.5
175 guests are invited to an average wedding
One third of engaged couples retain a Wedding Consultant
An average honeymoon vacation is one week
The average household income of a newly married couple is $60,000/year
Average size of wedding party: 12
Most brides (30%) plan their weddings for 7 to 12 months
35% of weddings occur in the summer; 29% in the spring; 23% in the fall; 13% in the winter.
11% of winter weddings are Christmas weddings
$22,000 is the average amount spent on a traditional American wedding
A total of $72 billion is spent on weddings annually in the U.S.
$19 billion is spent buying presents at wedding gift registries
The average amount spent on a bridal gown is $800
David’s Bridal accounts for 20% of all bridal-gown sales, and that percentage is increasing
The average ring costs $2,000
Four out of five brides are employed.
There is a 43% chance of a marriage ending in divorce.
Percentage of couples living together before marriage: 64%
Percentage of engaged couples who’ve known each other longer than 3 years: 69%
Percentage of brides who say they’ll be changing their surnames: 60%
53% of weddings occur in the afternoon; 31% in the evening; 16% in the morning.
30% of receptions are held in churches; 20% in hotels; 20% in country clubs; and 10% each in fraternal halls, private homes and other locations.
38% of weddings have a buffet; 34% have a sit-down dinner; 28% serve only cake and punch.
62% of weddings have a flower girl.
56% have a ring bearer.
More than 4.2 million unmarried couples live together.

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That’s what we learned today when we went downtown to begin shopping for and narrowing down my wedding band (Matt has already decided on his—just the simple, classic platinum band).  We only found 2 stores open and have some good candidates from those but we’ll have to go shopping one more time next weekend on a Saturday when all the stores open.  For now, these are the 2 designs we’ve narrowed it down to—yes, they’re very similar.  I’m going for a half channel-set diamond look.  We just need to do a bit more comparison shopping.

In other news, I’ve done a lot of re-vamping of the website this weekend.  There’s a new design and I’ve filled in a lot of the content, such as wedding party bios, more info around timeline, recommended hotels and where we are registered.

The invitation content has been signed off for and they’ll hopefully be done in about 3-4 weeks.  From there, it’s a matter of writing out addresses, buying stamps and sticking those frog buttons on the pocketfolds!

Categories: Misc Planning, Vendors
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Over the next couple weeks, I’ll be updating the website a bit to make it less of a blog and more of an actual wedding website.  The first thing I did was upgrade my version of Wordpress to 2.1.2 (and avoiding the “cracker hack” from 2.1.1).  If you go to the site now, you’ll see one of the first major changes—I moved the blog into a “page” in itself and made the homepage a standard welcome with a photo from our engagement photo session.  No worries–those of you who subscribe to the RSS feed don’t need to change paths.  It’s the same URL. (in fact, you’ll probably catch drift of my accidental publication of the “welcome” as a post instead of a page)  Yeah Yeah….enough geek talk.  I’ll also probably change the actual design template and start filling in more content…so be on the lookout!

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Here’s a funny article in the New York Times today about how 7/7/07 is one of the most popular wedding days ever.  People ask us every once in awhile if we picked that date on purpose, so I’ll clear that answer—no.  To be honest, we had wanted a date in late July or early August when the weather was more likely to be stable and sunny in Seattle.  Once we finally picked the venue we wanted (Newcastle), we were told that the only remaining Saturday in July and August was July 7th—so that’s what we went with.  We didn’t realize til afterwards that it was “7/7/07″–makes it easy to remember for sure!  Fortunately, since we got engaged last May and we’ve been planning ever since, it hasn’t been too problematic in finding vendors.  There were a few vendors last summer (i.e. a makeup person, a band) that were already booked by the time I contacted them–and keep in mind this was for more than a year in advance.  We were super lucky to even get our photographer—we met with him in August and he had already gotten 30+ inquiries for that date already at the time.  I can’t imagine how difficult it might be to, say, get engaged now and plan a 7/7/07 wedding since most vendors have been snatched for that day already.

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