Wedding Wednesday: Hiring a Planner

March 13th will mark our two years engagement anniversary. Do you celebrate engagement anniversaries after you are married? I'm not sure, since this will be our first. I have casually mentioned it a couple times and in typical us fashion we have assigned already planned activities as our celebration for whatever date happens to fall around it. Our Napa trip will be an engagement anniversary celebration, a Sean is finally done with the business school application process celebration (and hopefully we will know where he is going!!!) and perhaps even a half birthday celebration thrown in there. The second we find out where Sean has been accepted to B school, we will likely forget about the engagement anniversary and I will kiss the ground and let out the exhale heard 'round the world. I do not function well with unknowns. As soon as we "know" and we can start the planning, I will be fine, regardless of the outcome. It's the not knowing, not being able to plan that drives me nuts. And this has been 6+ months of waiting for the end of March. And it is almost here at last, hallelujah.
All of this to say, it's been a while since we got engaged. And the more time passes the less I remember of the exact details and order events. This is clear in my recap posts, as we are already out of chronological order, but I guess that's ok.
Rewinding a bit, I believe the order went like this:
-engagement
-hire wedding coordinator
-Italy trip/ engagement photos
-ask bridal party
-select a venue
-Engagement Parties

Our wedding coordinator was Ryan Larson from Savoir Flair Weddings. If you are in the Southern California area and looking for a coordinator I cannot recommend her highly enough. A few weeks ago a woman emailed asking for a reference for Ryan. I stopped what I was doing and wrote an extremely long winded, verbose letter professing my undying love for all things Savoir Flair. I also demanded encouraged my best friend to hire Ryan. Thankfully she complied and her wedding could not have been more beautiful.
 Ryan was the first person we met with after getting engaged. I'll never forget the day. My Mom, Sean and I  went out to meet her and I was wearing terrible fitting white jeans and could not stop starring at my ring. I found Ryan on The Knot, where she was ranked one of the best planners for LA, and immediately emailed her. I just checked my gmail records, this was March 16 (exactly three days after getting engaged).
The three of us immediately liked her. She was confident, experienced, organized, creative and savvy. I wanted to be her best friend (actually that hasn't change, I still want to be Ryan's best friend). Sean decided she was perfect and that we should "just hire her" and not interview anyone else. My Mom and I proceeded to waste our time meeting with another four or five planners. We compared everyone to Ryan and no one measured up. After checking her references (all of whom wrote similar letters to the one I had the joy of writing a couple weeks ago), we were officially under contract with our first wedding vendor.
People will tell you the first decision on your list is selecting a venue (without a venue contract you don't have an official wedding date which is needed for every other contract). Hiring our coordinator first allowed her to help us in the venue search, selection and contract negotiation.  We knew when we hired Ryan (March 2011) we knew we were going to do a Saturday, summer 2012 wedding and at that point she let us know which days she was still available and we took that in to consideration in picking a date.
A few important elements to me:
-Ryan is the principal of Savoir Flair. It was written in to our contract that she (along with her assistants) would be there on our wedding day.I didn't want any of this "I'm sending my associate" business. It was extremely important throughout the vendor selection process that whoever I hired was the person I saw on my wedding day.
-Personality. Ryan and I meshed well. She let me run with my ideas, (micro)manage the entire process and stepped in when I needed a hand or when there were tasks I was happy to hand off. I did not want to show up the day of my wedding and be surprised  I wanted to meet with every vendor, hand select the linens, be at every floral mock up. I had dreamed of planning my wedding my entire life, you better believe I was going to be hands on. She was extremely good at calming me down. When I was freaking out or thought something was ruined, she put everything in to perspective and created a plan of action. If for no other reason, Ryan was worth her weight in gold right there. Having an objective entity who is able to talk sense in to you (not your mom or fiance) is crucial. Plus I trusted her opinion and experience (no offense to my well meaning mother).
-Every wedding is unique; none of Ryan's weddings loo alike. There are quite a few wedding planners out there who are very trend conscious and fixate on a certain look that they do over and over again. The wedding tells you more about the planner's aesthetic than the couple. While that could be good for their business, if you want a rustic hipster wedding in Malibu you know who to choose. I wanted my wedding to look like us, not necessarily Style Me Pretty.
-Cost. It all comes down to the bottom line, right? I've heard a lot of people ask if wedding coordinators are worth the money. I can not scream yes fast enough. Regardless of your budget, the size and intricacy of your wedding- you are going to need some outside help at some point- at least on your wedding day. Even if everything is perfectly planned, you need someone to orchestrate the day. Just because your well intentioned aunt offered to set up the escort table, does not mean she can or should manage everything (there are so many details that will not even occur to you). Plus your aunt will be stressed out her mind, let the poor woman enjoy the party. I can not stress enough how important it is to have (at the very least) a day of coordinator. I would recommend springing for a month of  + day of coordinator if you are able. There is so much going on before your wedding, the last thing you want to do the week before is making and sending out timelines, confirming 25 vendor and trying to figure out who you owe money to and how they are going to get in on the day of your wedding/ day before, etc.
There are wedding planners at all price points. Find someone who works in your budget. Before planning my wedding I was under the impression that wedding planners were cost prohibitive. Wrong. If you are going to spend all this money on everything else, you might as well enjoy your wedding day. The return on investment for a day of coordinator is extremely high. Knowing what I know now, I would have paid twice as much for Ryan. You can't put a price on sanity!

Ryan & her brides

My Thoughts on Marriage and Ben Affleck's Speech

Forty million people and I tuned in to watch the Oscars on Sunday night. I love musicals, black tie and Christopher Plummer, so in my eyes the night was a win. What I didn’t expect to feel at the end of the awards ceremony, was sorry for Jennifer Garner. She looked beautiful (loved the color of her dress) and her husband won best picture. She should be on the top of the world. And maybe she was, but if I were her I would have felt a bit like a burden. Not simply because Ben Affleck decided to announce to the world that marriages take work (duh, didn’t we all know that?), the first thing that came to mind when he thought of his wife (besides the country of Iran, which thankfully he doesn't typically associate with the Mother of his children) was ten Christmases of work. He semi- saved the comment by saying there’s no one he would “rather work with.” I did not think his acceptance speech was the appropriate time to make that point and I found it disrespectful to his wife. 

I am not claiming to be a marriage expert by any means. Even with my very impressive seven months of experience. However I would like to ask Ben Affleck what doesn’t take work? Relationships take work. Dealing with family takes work. Going to the office every day and attempting to build a career takes work. Life takes hard work. Perhaps acting and producing come so naturally to Ben that it doesn’t feel like work, and monogamy does. I really don’t know.

What I do know, is that I’m tired of everyone complaining about marriage. Whining about the “ball and chain.” Talking about how difficult it is and everything they have had to give up. People have asked if we are “out of the honeymoon stage yet” or have warned that the “first year is the hardest.”

All I know is that marriage is a choice. We entered in to marriage freely and without reservation and chose to give our entire selves over to each other forever. I think of marriage as a never ending partnership and promise to spend the rest of your life with your best friend. In my eyes marriage is the best thing I have ever done and the best gift I ever received. I am so grateful Sean picked me to marry.

I remember being in previous relationships where everything was a struggle. I told myself “relationships take work” so I stayed, and we fought and cried and threw cell phones across dorm rooms. Slammed doors and secrets are not the kind of “work” you should be doing. When I met Sean everything felt so easy. There was an instant connection, we could not stop talking. We met at a friend’s birthday party in a crowded bar. There were hundreds of people there. I chatted with people and danced around before we were introduced. I was aware of my surroundings and enjoyed going up to different groups, saying hi to friends and coworkers. After we were introduced I don’t think I spoke to another individual the rest of the night.  I certainly don’t remember seeing anyone else. Five years later there are still nights when we have to force ourselves to stop talking so we can get some sleep. We “understand” each other in a way I’ve never felt before.  There are times he annoys the living daylights out of me. There are moments when he grosses me out. There are days where we are not on the same page, and I retreat in to the bedroom and want him to come running after me, and instead he becomes quiet and distant on the couch. It is not perfect, it’s life. The good outweighs the bad beyond measure.  It’s worth fighting for- however the majority of the time, to me, it’s a pleasure.

I feel grateful every day to be able to come home from a job (that really does take “work”) and get in to my cozies and curl up on the couch with my husband. I still get excited to see his name pop up on my phone and hear the sound of his voice. We’ve lived together for four years and yet the moment he or I walk through the door in to our little save haven of home and are reunited from the outside world, is the best part of my day. I look forward to the weekend knowing that I will have more time to spend with my best friend. I’m sure celebrities have more distractions, are faced with more temptation. Things aren’t always easy, and I accept that the majority of the struggles are situational. I am 100% certain that in our case, our  first year of marriage will not be the hardest. There will most likely be harder times ahead. I will look back on this post and think I was naïve and remember how simple things were. Undoubtedly, we have been blessed this year beyond measure.

I had a point when I started writing this, and it most likely got lost somewhere. I’m not trying to say that we are perfect or brag about how lucky I am or say that marriage is supposed to be easy all the time. However, I don’t think it’s supposed to be hard all the time. 

I do think there should be parts that come naturally, are easy and effortless.

On Sunday night, I didn’t expect to turn off my tv feeling sorry for Jennifer Garner. I don’t personally know Ms. Garner but she seems like she has a good head on her shoulders and deserves a happy marriage. 

I know there will be bumps down the road, but in the words of Ben Affleck “there is no one I would rather work with.”

Many people loved Ben Affleck's acceptance speech, found it refreshingly honest and sweet. What did you think?

The Holy Grail of Denim

Happy National Margarita Day, friends! Or for those who don't celebrate the latest made-up internet holiday, happy Friday! Both are valid.
And while I always thought Cinco de Mayo was national margarita day, apparently I was wrong.
This weekend is going to be rather low key since I have yet to unpack from last week's ski trip and we are taking off for the east coast on Thursday morning. Meaning I will be drinking a margarita while doing laundry. Also on the "re-gain control of my life" agenda? Cleaning out my closet. Maybe I'll get brave enough to take before and after shots. I certainly have the scary before scene mastered.
I know people who clean out their closets once a season or at least twice a year. I envy those people. I have  terrible luck with getting rid of clothes. I tend to keep all of the barely warn jeans that only fit for a brief 6 week period senior year of college and toss the slightly too large, nice to have after the holidays wear. Sadly the Field of Dreams, "if you build it,  they will come" mentality does not work with weight loss. At least not for me.
In my 6 months post wedding concession I decided to buy myself a new pair of jeans. Wow, does it feel good to breathe again!
These are the jeans I purchased. They are without a doubt the most comfortable jeans I have ever owned and I cannot recommend them highly enough. The dark wash makes them versatile. The fabric is softer than normal denim and they are stretchy yet thick. They are skinny enough to tuck easily in to boots while also looking cute with ballet flats or heals. I didn't even need them hemmed (and I'm 5'6 with extremely average length legs)!
In other words, the holy grail of denim. Now to order them in every color.

AG Prima by lauraacc featuring a stripe sweater

Wedding Wednesday: Engagement Photos

(We used this photo for our Save the Dates)

On my first wedding recap post I said I would share my engagement pictures next. Then I forgot the promise and the order of events and went straight to the engagement party. Two steps forward, one step back. Such is life.

Anyway, Sean and I love to travel. Italy was high on our list of places to experience together. We spent close to a year dreaming up and planning our Italy trip. The timing worked out (thanks Sean!) that we were newly engaged, excited and in love, yet still naive and blissful about the wedding planning process. I loved the idea of capturing this special time in our lives and having unique engagement photos to document the trip.

I started researching Italian photographers, spending time on Style Me Pretty's Little Black Book of International wedding vendors and before long I had narrowed down my search. Since we were traveling around quite a bit, the logistics needed to be perfect. Of the places we were traveling, we decided somewhere in Tuscany would be best. Florence was too crowded of a city, yet I didn't want vineyard pictures that could have been taken in California. I found a photographer whose work I liked and was based right outside of Siena. A few weeks of emailing later and the date was set.

In my humble opinion, we could not have picked a better location. Siena is easily one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The architecture is incredible, the streets are charming and while the city is very much alive and active it was never crowded. Our photographer, Andrea Corsi, was apparently very excited to shoot an “American couple.” He recruited two other photographers who wanted to build their portfolios to photograph us (at no additional cost). When three Italians arrived at our hotel, we were a little overwhelmed. We quickly chugged a beer and the  five of us set off to explore Siena on foot and “follow the light.”  I would never attempt to recreate the situation because we could simply never top it. Their English was mediocre (at best) but they led us to different locations and told us to kiss (over and over again) and before we knew it the sun was setting and we had three new friends. It was great learning experience as Sean and I were not used to being in front of the camera for hours on end. It helped me realize what I value in a photographer and see the facial expressions I make in photos that I didn't want to replicate on my wedding.

The Italian photographers were “photojournalistic” in style. They told us to not look at the camera and were very against any posed photographs. I get it. Poses can be cheesy and fake. However, on my wedding day you better believe I wanted some posed photos. I wanted a photographer assertive enough to tell Sean to button his jacket and how to angle my head. The Italians were not that way, but the experience allowed me to the pick the perfect (for us) wedding photographer upon our return. 

A downside to taking “destination” engagement pictures is that we were never photographed by our wedding photographer until our wedding day. Nowadays many photographers recommend (or include) an engagement session so that you get to know each other before hand. I love this idea, however the photographer I selected did not include an e-session in our package, and it fell in to the nice in theory but not necessary camp which those of you have planned a wedding knows typically doesn't get done. And realistically, how many photos can you really display of yourself?

A few points that are coming back to me while looking at these pictures:

-Photographers take a LOT of pictures. You are most likely going to dislike the way you look in 90% of them. The goal is to have enough to choose from so that you end up with a few you do like. From our engagement session (over 1,000 pictures) I needed one great photo to use for our Save the Date. It can be traumatizing  discouraging looking through 900 bad photos of yourself. Try not to let it bother you. You only need a couple "frame worthy" shots.

-My American sensibilities were challenged by these passionate Europeans. Sean and I are decently affectionate but tend to shy away from PDA. Kissing in public is just flat out awkward. Also, the number of "up the dress" shots they took is borderline crazy. All I can do is pray I'm not on some weird Italian p*rn site.

-Be sure to get the high resolution images AND a contract where the photographer gives you the right to re-print. I had to show the contract while having images printed at Costco.

All of this to say, here are our engagement pictures. 

Siena, Italy. May 2011.  

BDay/ VDay

Happy 29th Birthday to my handsome husband! I am so glad you were born.

I can't wait to spend the next four days skiing/ snowboarding with you

and drinking margaritas at Roberto's!

And to all the rest of you....

Hope you are spoiled with pretty flowers, chocolates and lots of chardonnay!

Wedding Wednesday: Engagement Party

After the initial engagement excitement wore off it was time to get down to business. It’s funny how the moment people find out your engaged you are greeted with a multitude of questions. Maybe a congrats here and there, but usually it’s just a bombardment of questions. Number one being “have you set a date?” “When are you getting married?” “Where?” Or more annoying still “What’s the date? I need to block off my calendar and I booked a cruise for all of next June? So definitely don’t pick next June.” At some point I will do a separate post on everything not to do/ say to the bride and groom. Actually that could be a novel.

Sean and I are both blessed with quite the “American family.” In that we have parents, step-parents, half relatives, twice removed, you get the gist. So a large portion of our families had never met. We decided it would be nice for our relatives to not meet for the first time at the wedding, if at all possible. We also didn't want to invite all of our extended relatives (cousins, aunts, uncles) to our engagement party. Maybe that’s weird or improper- but we wanted the engagement party to be just that. A party, with our friends and immediate family to celebrate and enjoy. Where we didn't have to worry about Sean’s cousin explaining her different tattoos to my straight laced, attorney uncle. We got that out of the way at the family party.

My Mother in Law was overjoyed to host the family party at her house (it kept her occupied in the very important first few months of planning), and Sean’s Dad and Step Mom (who are party people) offered to host our engagement party. I focused on the actual wedding planning and left the engagement parties up to our host.

Ok, that’s a lie. I am terrible at handing over control. I micromanaged bits of the engagement parties, but managed to let go of the rest. 

I only have a couple pictures from the family get together. I remember it felt very surreal to drink out of the "bride" glass.

For the engagement party, Sean's Dad and Step Mom went with a Mexican Fiesta theme. Margaritas, Mexican food and music. Sean's Dad toasted to our future with a tequila shot and the guests happily obliged. 

Our hosts with the lovely spread & one of many musical performances for the evening:

Party people:

Tequila shot toast:

More shots!

Bridezilla & bridesmaid picture:

As evidenced in the photos, we had a blast. It was a great jump start to our "wedding year." (I know how annoying and absurdly self indulgent that sounds. I own it.) We had a 16+ month engagement, so it was nice to have smaller festivities to look forward to throughout the process. Despite the ups and downs of wedding planning, the stress and differences of opinion, I can say without a doubt in my mind that we experienced an outpouring of love and support.

Patience

My thoughts exactly.

Sadly patience is not one of the virtues with which I was blessed. I value security, stability and the ability to plan. I'm not sure if it's a control freak thing, or just a "planner" trait, but not knowing what lies ahead drives me batty. And yes, I've heard people say "we plan and God laughs." I understand the sentiment but I don't buy the passive approach. I've built my life around careful planning and attention to detail, and I would say I tend to fall on the happier, more satisfied end of the spectrum.
I understand that you can't plan everything. Things happen. I believe in some element of luck, chance, fate and faith in a higher power. However, planning helps me stay sane and feel like I have a bit of control in this crazy world.
This weekend Sean picked a new theme song for me. I have listened to it about 30 times since and every time I star to feel antsy I sing to myself "just a little patience, just a little patience, yeah, yeah." The song is by Guns N Roses and it is appropriately titled Patience. The rest of the lyrics don't fit my current angst, but sometimes you just need a mantra to hold on a bit longer.
In the mean time, I'm trying to be grateful for what I have; good health, a great guy (who puts up with my impatient nature), a place to live in a city where we are surrounded by friends and family we love, and a job that keeps me on my toes. Even if some of the elements around us change, the truly important parts remain the same. And hopefully the other answers will come soon.

Wedding Wednesday: Engagement

A Trip Down the Aisle... Part 1
It will come as no surprise that I love weddings.  I'm a newlywed, of "the age" where the majority of my weekends revolve around wedding activities, many of my friends are planning their weddings and  quite a few of my online  friends are engaged. Needless to say, I have marriage on the mind. My only blog wish is that I would have started a couple years sooner so I could have documented the wedding planning process here. C'est la vie! When I saw fellow new blogger, Staci at Leather and Leops, doing a weekly recap of her wedding titled "A Trip Down the Aisle," I knew I wanted to play along! 

Sean proposed on March 13 of 2011. We were planning a two week trip to Italy for May and I (along with many friends) had a sneaking suspicion that he might pop the question on our trip. Sean decided to surprise everyone (except my parents who would have been incapable of keeping a secret for two months) by proposing early. This ended up working out for the best. Sean didn't have to worry about sneaking an engagement ring through security and we decided to take engagement pictures in one of  the most beautiful places in the world, Siena!

Sean "popped the question" while picnicking before a hike at Will Rogers State Park in the Pacific Palisades with our trusty pup in tow. We waited until after the hike to share the news, and I greatly cherished those miles where we were the only people in the world who "knew." I just remember being overjoyed with happiness, holding hands and feeling on top of the world. Luckily we ran in to some people at the top of the mountain and asked them to take our first picture as an engaged couple. 

We eventually finished our hike and were ready to re-join reality. As soon as we were at the car we called family and friends at a rapid pace (deciding who to call first is quite challenging, so we just tried to make our way through the A list as fast as possible). We returned home, quickly showered and before we knew it our friends were at our door with bottles of champagne.



We drank a lot of champagne that (Sunday) night. Come Monday morning, I was incredibly hungover. Why I decided to go in to work that day shall forever remain a mystery. (Going to work super hungover is never worth it in my opinion. I've learned this the hard way, many times.) My coworkers kindly treated me to a celebratory lunch at Hillstone aka Houston's (where I promptly ordered a burger & fries) and (almost) gagged when they ordered champagne. 

Looking at these pictures, it's hard to believe it was almost two years ago. Although when I think back on these past two years, I'm not complaining one bit. It has been an amazing ride and I am so excited to finally document it here!

Up next, Italian Engagement Session!