El Boo-jet

Well folks, we are eight months away from the wedding and we finally got ourselves a budget. Thanks to old Uncle Sam and all that money he takes away from us from each pay check plus a nice 1st time homeowners tax credit that just went into effect, I think we might be able to pull off a decent party. Having a budget is both empowering and scary. It's empowering because now we can actually make things happen. "What, the caterer needs a 10% deposit??? Well let me just pull out my checkbook." hehehe... Yet this budget stuff is pretty scary. Why? Well..umm...the first thing I did when I got home after finalizing our budget was open our guest list spreadsheet and cut more people from the list.


(Photo Source)

Weah! I hate that. I hate not being able to invite everyone near and dear to me who I really really really would love to celebrate our special day with. A part of me dies every time I move a name from the "A list" to the "B list." I have come to realize that budgets and guests lists are enemies. It is a harsh reality. They will never get along.

Felipe and I agreed already that the guest list will probably be the most difficult aspect of our wedding. We both come from large Mexican families and we are pretty close to our aunts and uncles. Even if we try to keep it an intimate event (i.e., parents, siblings, aunts, uncles) we are still working with a very large group. Just to give you an idea, for our engagement party we told each other that we were going to keep it as a close family celebration and only invite a handful of close friends. The total guest count for our "intimate" event was just over 60! Even then, I still received some negative feedback from family members who were hurt because they weren't invited. Sigh... I hate hurting people's feelings! It isn't that I don't love and appreciate my large family. I do! Plus, family gatherings are always fun because there are so many of us. But when it comes to working with a tight budget, it just isn't feasible to invite everyone. We want to throw a nice, fun, and organized party for our guests. In order to do so, we have to keep our guest list on the smaller side.

On top of that, we are pretty social people. We are lucky and blessed to have a great group of friends. I love that there is always something going on - whether it be a birthday party, a night out to go bar hopping, weekend dinners, housewarmings, USC home football games, whatever. We love our friends and want to include them all. In some cases they even know us better as a couple than some of our family members do. Many of them have witness our relationship grow from two timid 18-year-olds to an engaged couple. How can we not include them on the day when we become Mr. and Mrs.?

In a perfect world Felipe and I would be surrounded with all 200+ of our closest friends and family members on our wedding day. We would wine, dine, and entertain them all on a day that they would forever remember with fond memories and love. For now, we are guided by our limited budget and our creativity to maximize whatever what we can get out of it.

Is anyone else having trouble with the ever dreaded guest list? How do you deal with it?

The Wedding Industry Strikes Again

I did it. I tried on wedding dresses for the first time in my life this weekend. It was my second time inside of a bridal boutique (the first was a couple months ago when I went to find a bridesmaid dress for my cousin's wedding.) And, well, a bridal boutique is not the most comfortable place in the world. To me, it is the embodiment of the wedding industry. And a lot of times the wedding industry can be very cruel.

I wish I could say that I had the best time of my life. But honestly it was more of a reminder of how many things associated with weddings will try to suck out everything green from your wallet. I can say that the trying-on-the-dresses part was fun. All those white, flowing, dreamy dresses made me feel pretty. My mom and my sister were there to give me their honest opinions and support. It felt really good to have that woman bonding time. It wasn't really emotional, though. That's probably because I'm not a super emotional person. It was like, well.....trying on dresses. I was (and still am) really really excited, though. Can't wait until I actually have a wedding dress of my own to marry my man in!

I wish I had some pictures to show you but the boutique didn't allow us to take any. Boo! Plus, I haven't decided if I want pictures of me in white dresses populating the internets. A nosy reader who might happen to be marrying me could come across these pictures and I wouldn't be very happy. He can't see me in a fancy white dress before the wedding! Isn't that bad luck or something? Sorry homie, but this is part of the wedding planning that I'm not sharing with you. :P

I'm not going to share the name of the boutique where I went this weekend because I don't want to give it a negative image to anyone who might be reading this. The customer service and attention at the boutique was great. I have no complaints about that. The sales lady that helped me was super nice and didn't seem to be bothered that I had absolutely no idea of the type of dress that I wanted. I don't think I was as prepared as other brides because I went in not having a list of dresses that I wanted to see. I wanted to just try on different styles to see what fit best on me and what I was most comfortable in. When I was asked if I knew what I wanted to try on, I said "No, not really. I kinda want to try on everything." HAH! They must have thought I was crazy. But they tried their best to give me recommendations. And if they were frustrated with me, it didn't show at all! The thing that really surprised me happened at the end of my visit.

After about an hour of playing dress up, I had a couple of favorites. Best of all, the prices for both of them were less than I had imagined. They were def under my budget, and these were just the boutique prices. Being the relatively frugal person that I am, I thought "Hey! I should like go compare prices for the same dress(es) at different boutiques or see if I can find the same ones/same styles online for cheaper. Then I will really be under-budget!" So as I am saying bye to the nice sales lady, I ask her really casually if she can write down the names/styles of those dresses that I liked. She answered me in a way that kind of avoided my question and left me a bit confused. She said something like "Oh well they don't have names. They just have store numbers." She had previously told me who the designers were, so I asked her "well don't they have specific names for the designers?" And she said yes, but they don't keep track of that. Again, they just "went by the store numbers." By this point, I was still confused but I was starting to get the impression that she was not going to give me the designers' names for the dresses. I asked again (very politely) if they can refer to their store numbers to get the original designer names. Certainly they keep that information, no? The lady apologized and said that she could not give me that information. I asked her if that was part of the store policy and she said yes. By now I was thinking to myself "This is a perfect example of the wedding industry gone wrong." I was still nice to the lady. I mean, it's not her fault she isn't allowed to give out dress names so that I can go and find better prices elsewhere. But who knows? Maybe her boutique really did have the best prices for those dresses. It could have been the one! But I most definitely will not go back to that boutique because I do not support that type of competitiveness.

That boutique sent me one very clear message: that they do not have their customers best interest in mind. It proved to me once again that a large chunk of the wedding industry is all about profit and taking advantage of people trying to have their dream wedding by making them believe that they need to pay exorbitant prices in order to do so. Well, wedding industry, I'm here to tell you that I'm not going to play by your rules. If it takes me several extra hours to research the lowest price in my area for a piece of ribbon to tie around my pomanders, so be it! And guess what? If I need to go home and sit in front of my computer for 2 hours on a designer's website clicking one-by-one through every dress picture to find the one that I tried on and liked, then I'm gonna do it! And if we are going to spend lots of our hard-earned money on something in particular, it is something that we know will be worth it.

So there it is. My first dress shopping experience. Fun, yet eye-opening. I can't wait to find my dress for cheaper (and yes - I found the dress names online. Go me!)

Is it just me, or does anyone else think it is very uncool for bridal boutiques to do this? Better yet, has this happened to anyone else?

Nervous Time!

This week has got me nervous. A couple of important events are happening within the next four days. The first one is a visit to the "tax man." It's making me a little uneasy because this visit is going to determine our ultimate wedding budget. That's right- we are using our tax refund to fund our wedding day. It makes me a little bit nervous because that money could easily be applied to paying off so many other things. And what if we don't get as much from the refund as we are expecting? What if we have no budget? ay ay ay... I'm really looking forward to throwing a memorable party for our families and closest friends, but it is such a commitment in terms of money. I've learned to be a lot more realistic in the whole planning process. I've learned that what it really boils down to is that you can pay as much as you want or as less as you want. Want a photographer to follow you around all day? Well it's just as easy to find someone who will follow you around for $10,000 as it is to find someone who will follow you around with a camera for $1,000 or less. I know the results will all be different, but it's up to you to decide what you're willing to pay for: a photographer with 10 years of experience and hundreds of weddings under his belt, or an up and coming photographer with less experience but just as much enthusiasm. I'm leaning towards the latter. I've found myself thinking this way more and more lately.

The other notable event for the week is my first dress searching/trying-on experience. I am more excited about this one, but again I'm nervous about the money issue. I'm already going in with the mindset that I'm not going to buy anything yet. My dress search will be purely to "test the waters." I want to get a feel for the style of dress that looks best on me. Then maybe in a couple weeks I'll go to another boutique and compare dresses & prices. After that I will probably have to do some major internet research and price comparisons. I'm prepared for my dress search to take a while. I am also determined to get the best price out there.

All this thinking and worrying is getting me all riled up. What worries you most about wedding planning?

A Challenge I Do Not Like

Centerpieces. Another one of those overpriced wedding items that I just cannot justify spending so much money on. They are lovely, true that. And tables just don't seem complete without some decorative piece gracing the middle. In fact, right now I have my little potted green plant sitting in the middle of my glass coffee table. No reason for it to be there. No reason at all, other than my table looks naked without it. So now, the important question is what to use as centerpieces for our wedding. Luckily, I kinda knew soon after our engagement what I wanted. Let's rewind back to May 2008.

Felipe had just asked me to be his wife a couple weeks before a trip to Mexico. We were heading to the state of Guanajuato and our itinerary included a visit to the historic town of Dolores Hidalgo. Being the crazy vacation planning freak that I am, I had read several travel guides and books to get an idea of what to expect in every town we were visiting. I kept reading how Dolores Hidalgo was famous for its hand made pottery - "talavera". It became one of the things I was really looking forward to for that trip. I was super excited for all of the handmade goods and was making sure to keep space in my luggage for all the goodies I planned on bringing back. Sure enough, Dolores Hidalgo lived up to its reputation of a "pottery town." Blocks were lined with so many different pottery shops, and the pieces were all so beautiful.

Imagine walking down the streets that looked like this:


And when you walk inside, you see all these beauties:


And just because you're curious you walk down the hall into the back room and find this:




I was in love. I wanted all of it (I still do!) We thought it would be really cool to incorporate some of these goods into our wedding. We weren't really sure what, though, since we had literally only been engaged for like two weeks and had not even talked about decorations or any of those silly wedding details. So we put that thought in the back of our mind as something to consider later in the planning process.

Fast forward to 8 months later and Felipe and I are getting ready to take another trip to Mexico. As I've mentioned before, our latest vacation included a trip to the town of Tlaquepaque. We went there on a mission to find us some talavera at cheap prices. We decided that we want to use talavera vases for our centerpieces and stuff them with fresh flowers. Well, Tlaquepaque did not fail in providing the talavera vases. The only catch was that they did not come cheap. The goods were way more expensive than what we had remembered in the humble family-run shops in the little town of Dolores Hidalgo (where there were practically no foreign tourists.) There was a way cool variety of talavera, though. Check out this gorg piece:

At over $20 per vase, this was way out of our league. But isn't it lovely?

I kid you not that the vases in Dolores Hidalgo did not exceed $10 a piece, so we were not willing to drop double the price of what we knew they really sold at. We gave up searching in Tlaquepaque and decided to hit the road to Tonala, another artisan town near Guadalajara. We had heard that Tonala was a little more low-key & less touristy. Indeed it was. It was like a huge street market. We were able to find some talavera here, but the quality wasn't quite as nice. We found one shop that had a large selection of talavera items, but only a limited quantity of the type of vases we were looking for. We grabbed 4 large vases and a couple smaller ones. At about $7 each, I wasn't complaining. I figured we should just start our collection now. We need at least 20 total. The challenge now is figuring how to get more vases to LA before November. Our current options are: 1) call up shops directly and find out if we can place an order to get shipped to the U.S. (the trouble with this is getting a hold of a good, reputable shop since most of them don't have email or websites); or 2)recruit some family members in Mexico to take a road trip to Guanajuato, buy them for us, and send them. Sigh... Right now our talavera collection is so tiny. Need. More. Vases.


We'll have to make a decision quick since it might take a while to ship if we decide to go that route. For now, I'll show you how lovely these look as a centerpiece. I randomly found this picture on one of my wedding magazines and though "hey that's exactly the type of look we are going for!" Cool, huh?

(Photo source: my Ceremony magazine)

I know this is just one of those many challenges that happen while planning a big party. It is expected though, no? What kind of challenges have you come across?

Today I did an experiment

I'll admit that I never paid much attention to pomanders prior to being introduced to the world of wedding planning. I don't think I even knew exactly what they were. I would have probably defined them as balls of some sorts. When I started considering all of those pretty details that I'd like to include for our day, fresh flower pomanders were definitely in the picture.

As seen on my inspiration board, I found a picture of a pomander that inspired me. I thought it might be nice to have a few of them hanging around maybe as pew decorations in the church or maybe hanging from trees during the reception. Either way, I want them! To be honest, I have no idea how much they cost. But, I do think it is safe to assume that they are one of those unreasonably overpriced items (as per the usual trend in the wedding industry). Ahh...what is one to do when you want something but can't afford it? You MAKE IT.

I found some very basic instructions here. This is how my experiment turned out:

I rounded up my materials: some floral foam I had hanging around from a previous project, chicken wire/poultry netting ($6 for 20 square feet at Home Depot), wire clippers, and ribbon.


Part 2 of the materials: the flowers! I chose Gerber Daisies for this trial ($9 for 20 daisies from the LA Flower Mart).


Step 1 - Cover the flower foam with chicken wire. I think this was the most difficult part. Who knew chicken wire was so hard to work with? And it's sharp when you cut it...ouch! Here the naked floral foam with a freshly cut square of chicken wire.


It took a while to get the chicken wire around the foam. There was a lot of clipping of excessive wire and pokes to the fingers - but it is possible. To secure the wire around the foam, I tied ends of the wire to each other.


Step 2 - Tie your ribbon on. I got 10 yards of white ribbon for $5 from Moskatels in the flower district (btw, best craft store FOR REALS. It deserves its own post..). I call this the baldmander.


Step 3 - Dip in H2O. Your flowers need water to make it through the day, so feed them! I dipped the foam in the water until it was completely submerged then took it out.


Step 4 - Start adding your flowers. I cut the daisy stems so that they were about 1 to 2 inches long. I started at the top and then realized that you need to hang the pom from somewhere to add the bottom flowers. Just add and move the flowers around until it resembles a ball. This part is pretty tricky. I couldn't seem to get a perfect circle..hmmm. I think these pomanders take a bit more practice than I thought.


Step 5 - Admire your finished product. Here it is. My first pomander! Okay okay I know it's nothing great. I'm really not 100% happy with the results. It's a bit lopsided and bald in some areas.



It's not exactly a perfect circle. I think next time I'll try a different type of flower to compare.

A few other things to remember:

-Thread the ribbon through the chicken wire more. I only looped the ribbon around once. Big mistake. The pomander kept tipping to one side.

-Make the floral foam smaller. These balls are heavy!! The foam I used was about one cubic foot. A smaller size would work just fine and there would be less area to cover.

-Wrap floral tape around the stems, or choose a flower with a thicker stem. The daisy stems alone were not cutting it when it came to holding their place or rearranging. Their stems were way too weak.

The pomander took a little over an hour to make, and at about $15 each I ain't gonna complain about the price (considering I still have plenty of chicken wire & ribbon for next time). All I gotta do now is practice making more of these suckers.

Has anyone else made fresh flower pomanders before? Got any tips?