With our engagement pictures coming up on Sunday, I have of course been stalking the weather forecast like a madwoman since last Sunday. I know this probably just causes more stress than it’s worth, but it feeds my control freak side by constantly feeling like I know what the weather will be and can mentally prepare for it.

From Sunday through Tuesday, the forecast looked like this:

Sunny and perfectly chilly, chance of rain 0%. Awesome! Instantly I breathed a sigh of relief; I have notoriously bad luck with weather, and I felt that this was a good omen for my luck changing — and maybe for the wedding weather (because, oh yeah, we’re getting married outside).

Yesterday I checked again, and it had changed to this:

Still sunny, quite a bit cooler, and a 10% chance of rain. Okay, I could deal with that, we would just have to pile on the layers to stay warm.

Well, apparently I was lulled into a false sense of security because this morning I checked again, and:

Seriously?! High of 50 and a 40% chance of rain?! Come on, weather gods, that’s just not fair! I know we can still take pictures in the rain and couples do it all the time, but that’s not what we wanted. We wanted it to be a bright, sunny fall day with puffy clouds and blue sky and bright leaves — the kind of weather we’ve been having, up until the past couple of days, and that we will have again starting next Monday. We didn’t want to wear jackets or use umbrellas. Rainy engagement photos come dangerously close to the prop-filled, theme-heavy pictures that we both so loathe. But I suppose it is what it is, and we’ll just have to live with it. We could reschedule, but that’s already happened once, and I don’t want to do have to do it again — at that rate, we’d never get these darn pictures taken, and never get our save-the-dates sent out.

Also, I think this is a horrible omen for the wedding. I mean, seriously, look what happened — I was lulled into a false sense of security by the forecast, and then, BAM, two days before everything changes. Weather gods, hear me now: DO NOT even think about doing this the week of our wedding.

How do you deal when the weather ruins your plans?

Miss Doily wrote about it first. Then, not long after, Miss Ticket wrote about going through the same thing. And I think the image she used is absolutely perfect:

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Blog, I am in The In-Between. The budget is set, the guest list is made, the vendors are booked and deposits paid, the dress is bought, the rings are on layaway. The colors are picked, the engagement photos are booked, the “friendors” (friend-vendors) have agreed to be friendors. The ceremony has been thought about, ideas for the music of the day have been jotted down.

But it’s too early for details yet. Too early to make the Mr. and Mrs. signs for the head table. Too early to print invitations (though we did buy ours already — I never told you about that, did I?). Too early to make my bouquet. Too early to worry about place cards, or centerpiece details, or linen colors, or exact ceremony readings, or ring engravings, or day-of timelines, or dress alterations, or cupcake flavors, or any of that.

That, and the fact that right now, I feel totally exhausted by wedding stuff. I feel like I’ve gotten all the important stuff out of the way, and from here on out it’s just gravy. Sure, we still need to write the ceremony and that’s kind of important, y’know, but other than that, what else is there to do? I feel like everything has been decided on already, the wedding has been created, and now all that’s left to do are details and logistics — which would be silly to start thinking about nine months in advance. So what’s a bride to do for nine months while she waits for her wedding? (I know what that sounds like it’s leading up to, but I promise, this belly is baby-free!)

Every night I come home from work and want to sit down and write. Writing is my therapy, it keeps me sane, it lets me ramble and feel like I’m talking to someone, even if no one really reads it. I love blogging because I love getting feedback on my posts and interacting with people that way. I love to share things in my life in the hopes that it might help someone or even just be slightly interesting to them. I so badly want to be a Bee Blogger over on Weddingbee, just to have a bigger community to reach out to and interact with and be a part of. But, being in The In-Between, I feel like I have nothing to blog about. I have a file in Notepad with a running list of all the things I think of to blog about — but they’re all things like “makeup trial” or “making my bouquet” or “day-of logistics” or “dress alterations”; things I won’t be thinking about for months yet. So what do I talk about in the meantime?

I guess my point is — I’m in a slump and I don’t know when it will end. I have tried to write this post for days but it hasn’t come out quite right. It probably still didn’t, but that’s okay, because I just need to post something. I’m hoping that pushing myself to write this and actually post it will break me out of this writer’s-block-In-Between-slump I’m in. I do have plenty of things I want to share, posts I have planned out in my head — but mustering the brain power to write them seems like a huge effort lately. Boo on that.

Have you experienced The In-Between in wedding planning? What did you do about it?

I’ve done this twice in my life before.

Once from 2005 (or was it 2004?) to 2006. Once from 2007 to 2009. And now, I’m doing it again.

I’m growing out my pixie cut.

Shock! Horror! I swore when I got my most recent mega-chop in 2009 that I would never go back to long hair again. I got rid of all my styling products. I stopped using conditioner, because when your hair is an inch long you don’t really need it. I lost track of all my pony tails and headbands and clips because I figured I’d never need them again. I don’t even own a hairbrush anymore.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love my pixie cut. But lately I’ve been feeling the itch for longer hair again. I miss being able to pull it back when it annoys me. I miss being able to do something fun with it for special occasions. I miss being able to decide in the morning, curly or straight? Ponytail or down? Half up-half down? Bangs to the front or to the side? I miss straightening it. I miss being able to easily trim it myself (pixie cuts are ridiculously high maintenance when it comes to regular trims!). And above all, as weird as this is, I miss brushing it.

I’ve been considering my options carefully for the past month and today, looking through pictures of myself from the last time I had long hair, I came to the decision that I miss that and want to grow it out again. My goal is the shoulder-to-armpit-length I had three years ago, as seen here, modeled by 19-year-old me:

{Personal photo…yep, I used to have my lip pierced.}

{Personal photo…and my ears stretched. Also, what the heck, I had really clear skin when I was 19, no fair!!}

Sigh…even just seeing these photos makes me wistful!

This decision is unrelated to the wedding. I never was, and still am not, afraid to be a pixie cut bride. I love my pixie cut, truly I do, and I think pixie cut brides are lovely. My mom was a pixie cut bride and she looked beautiful. I’ve seen plenty of other pixie cut brides out there on the internet and they’ve all looked amazing. But I know that the right decision for me, in “real life”, regardless of the wedding, is to grow my hair back out.

But what about the wedding? What will my hair look like 9.5 (!) months from now, in the middle of the grow-out period? This was a major concern for me. Those pictures above are after about 1.5-2 years of growout, and I clearly don’t have that much time. I considered keeping the pixie until after the wedding and then starting to grow it out, but the thought of keeping my hair short for another year makes my stomach hurt. It’s just not what I want right now, and I know that the sooner I start the growout, the sooner my hair will be long again.

And so I went back to consult my old Photo Booth folder (lucky for me that my teenage self loved to take a billion pictures of herself almost weekly for two years!) and did some math.

The last time I trimmed my hair was in mid-July. So, essentially, I will have been growing my hair for 11.5 months by the time of the wedding. And so I rewound to the last time I got a pixie cut, which was in early April 2007. I don’t have pictures that go back that far, but I do have pictures that start in January of 2008, which would have been 8-ish months of growout. So what does 8-ish months look like? (Brace yourselves for angsty hippie teenager me in 3…2…1….):

{Personal photo…I can’t believe I just posted this. Yes, I used to have glasses…I probably still need them, I just don’t wear them anymore.}

What’s that?! A chin length bob?! After only eight months of growout, my hair had gone from pixie cut to chin-length bob. Now that’s something I could work with for the wedding! I remember, too, that it was the Christmas break that had immediately preceded this picture that I actually trimmed my hair a bit on the bottom to be this length, so in reality it probably had grown even more by then. From January to May of 2008 I kept my hair in this style, eventually adding straight-across bangs to the mix, and then in May I stopped cutting it again, and by fall of 2008 it looked like it did in the first photo above.

So knowing that my hair would be at least a chin-length bob by the time of the wedding gave me hope. However, in that photo, my hair doesn’t really have a “style”, per se. It’s just…hair. I knew I wanted something a bit more interesting for the wedding…but at that length, what can you really do?

Going back through my photo archives again, I remembered that between my long hair and my most recent pixie cut, I had an in-between layered bob that I loved. It was the perfect compromise between long and short, the best of both worlds: I could still do my favored half-up-half-down style, still brush and style it, still rock my natural waves if I wanted to, and yet it was still sassy and fun and a little bit different, and it framed my face nicely. Observe:

{Personal photo}

{Personal photo}

{Personal photo…yes, I wore scarves A LOT. Still do.}

I think this would be perfect for the wedding. Since I won’t be able to have my end goal of armpit-length hair on the wedding day, this choppy bob is definitely a good halfway point. It is especially perfect because if my pixie layers don’t all happen to grow out evenly by the time of the wedding, it won’t be a problem. I can just have my stylist blend them in when she trims it, and it will look like it’s that way on purpose. Then, after the wedding, I can continue growing until I get to my all-one-length goal.

So, it’s officially hair growout time. These are my official “before” photos (and of course I had to keep with the Photo Boot theme here):

{Personal photo}

{Personal photo}

{Personal photo}

Bring it on, awkward in-between stages. I’m ready for you.

Have you ever grown out a pixie cut before? What was your goal length and how long did it take to get there? How did you beat the awkward in-betweens?

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Caterer uses Professionalism! It’s super effective!

(And that’s about as far as my Pokemon references go…I never played it when I was little. I even had to ask Jason what the line after “_____ used _____!” was. He thought I was nuts for not knowing.)

You may remember my frustrations in finding a caterer, and our subsequent decision to self-cater this shindig with the help of some family friends. It seemed like a good plan, and we were still comfortable with it, but the more I thought about it the more the logistics seemed nightmarish, and I wondered if we’d ever be able to pull it off. Plus, we want our guests to be able to enjoy the event — yes, we will have a few “friendors”, but there’s a difference between getting up and switching playlists a couple of times, versus overseeing the food for most of the night.

Still, because of price issues, we were sort of backed into a corner. Most caterers around here charge $16-$20/head. We had under $1000 to spend on food for 100 people — yeah, for some reason, food was just not that important to us, so it got the biggest budget cut. We figured, as long as there was something there for people to eat, and it was plentiful, they would be satisfied. That’s how we feel at other peoples’ weddings we’ve been to. I couldn’t tell you what I had to eat at any of the weddings I’ve been to in my adult life — only that there was food, and I wasn’t hungry.

I mentioned in my previous post that we did find one caterer who would be in our paltry budget, but when I contacted them they said they “were not a catering company” and didn’t make reservations that far in advance (we were 11 months out…that is really not that early to be booking vendors!). So we wrote them off and went on our merry way with making plans to self-cater.

Until a few weeks ago, when my phone rang in the middle of the morning from a number I felt was familiar but didn’t recognize right off the bat. I let it go to voicemail, and when I listened to it later, there was a message from a very sweet-sounding woman, Pam, at the caterer we had spoken to a few months ago. She said she had a note that we are having a wedding next summer and she would be happy to help with the catering. My first reaction was…really? What happened to the we-aren’t-a-caterer-we-don’t-book-in-advance attitude you gave me last time? But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this could be our opportunity to get the caterer we wanted for a price that was right — and relieve ourselves of the stress of catering the wedding ourselves.

Now, I know in an ideal world we would have not bothered to call back, because they treated us so rudely the first time, and we should speak with our dollars and go elsewhere. But beggars can’t be choosers — after hours and hours of research, this was the only caterer I found that we could even remotely afford. So, with mild trepidation, I called Pam back a few days later. She wasn’t available to meet with us on any of the days we were available to go up to Somerset, where the restaurant is located, but she said to please stop by and have dinner there and see if we like it, and we could go from there. She also penciled in our wedding date on her calendar.

So a couple weekends ago when we went up to visit the venue (more on that in a future post!), Jason, Emily, and I stopped at the restaurant on the way home for dinner. We were all pretty happy with the food — nothing bland, nothing watery, homemade pasta sauce, interesting dishes, good service. Jason and I made the decision to take a leap and move forward with the caterer.

Yesterday I called Pam back again, and said we liked the food and wanted to move forward with booking her for our wedding. She penned our date into the calendar and asked me some more details — how many people, what time of day (i.e. what meal were we looking at), that kind of thing, and then said that was all we’d need to do for now and to call her back after the first of the year to talk more about menu options and things like that.

I was a little taken aback — don’t we need to put money down? Meet with her, at least? She said no, we’re marked on her calendar so she definitely has us in and won’t double-book us or lose our date or anything. I said okay, and that was that. I was (and still am) nervous and a bit wary of how reliable her method of “booking” is, but she seemed confident, so maybe that’s just the way they do things there. I suppose we will find out early next year when I call her back to talk about the menu!

Now, we wanted to go with this caterer so badly is two reasons. One, their menu is extensive, delicious-sounding, and extremely customizable — they have a section for hot appetizers, a section for cold appetizers, a section for main dishes, fish, pasta, sides, and salads. You can pick any combination of any of the things you want, as long as you meet the minimum number of orders per item (usually 10-15 servings). We like the customization because most caterers we found offered set menu structures and you got to pick from two or three dishes to fill the slots — i.e. you had to pick one salad, two appetizers, two meat dishes, one pasta dish, and two sides, and if you didn’t like that combination of items, tough on you!

Two is price. Plain and simple, this caterer is cheap. We are lucky their menu is so extensive — even if we weren’t so limited by budget, we would probably still go with them, because their food is some of the best and most interesting we’ve seen. But I digress. Way back in the beginning, we made a mock-up menu spreadsheet to track prices of all the caterers we were looking at, to see who was in our budget and who wasn’t. The menu for this caterer, for 100 people, with two entrees, three sides, and salad with two dressings, and tax and 18% gratuity for servers included, is — wait for it — $792. $792! For 100 people! And if we do a self-serve buffet instead, and don’t have to pay the 18% gratuity? It’s $672. No, really. So that’s essentially between $6-$8/head — now that’s more like it!

The bargain hunter in me loved this from the beginning. My all-time favorite thing in life is to find something that looks/feels/tastes/seems really expensive, for dirt cheap. The food we ate at the restaurant (which, presumably, is prepared by the same line of cooks as the catered food) tasted like it could have cost twice as much as it did. This seems-expensive-cost-nothing idea seems to be a pervasive theme of our wedding (not surprising, as this is how we live our everyday life). From our wedding bands, to our venue, to our photographer, to our centerpieces, we have had really great luck in finding the best things for us that just happen to fit into our budget as well. I keep saying that we happened to go with the cheapest things we find, but even if we weren’t on a tight budget, we’d still probably go with the exact same things we’re picking — and that’s entirely true. The things we’ve found are wonderful so far, and the prices just can’t be beat. And I’m so glad our catering fits into this theme now too.

So, here’s hoping that this whole wrote-you-in-on-the-calendar-call-me-back-next-year thing works out. Otherwise we could find ourselves without food a mere six months before the wedding — yikes!

Did you have any unexpected vendor luck when planning your wedding?

Last weekend Jason’s cousin got married, and we were lucky enough to attend! We had lots of fun, I drank a little too much wine, and we awkwardly slow-danced our little hearts out (we need to work on toning down the awkward before our big day, methinks). Being guests at a wedding while you yourself are engaged adds an extra level of excitement to the event. Excitement, and perhaps understanding — because, for the first time, you really realize how much work went into every last detail that you are seeing.

You don’t just see pew decorations. You see, Oh, they picked white satin bows, and they only have them on every third pew, that’s a good way to save money! and you file it away in your Giant Mental Repository of Wedding Ideas. You don’t just hear the vows, you think, Hmm, they chose the “traditional” vows, but it wasn’t boring! I wonder if they chose them because they wanted them, or because their religion/officiant wouldn’t allow them to write their own.

At the reception, you don’t just see themed table “numbers”, you see, Aw, we’re at the Market Square table, I bet the bride reads wedding blogs, this “tables-named-after-places-you’ve-been” thing is really popular on all the blogs right now. You don’t just see a cake, you see, They did cake instead of cupcakes. Did they go with buttercream or fondant? How many tiers? What flavor(s)? What kind of decorations on it?

You also find yourself leaning over to your fiancé(e) and saying, “At our wedding, we totally should do __________”, or, “At our wedding, we are so not going to _____________”. A lot. Like, that’s pretty much the only thing you’ll talk about to each other most of the night. But that’s okay! You have to remember these things you’re thinking of, right?

Attending a wedding while you’re engaged is certainly a learning experience. So what did we learn?

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1. Have a ceremony that’s longer than 10 minutes.
Maybe this is personal preference, having grown up Catholic and attended quite a few 70-minute full Catholic mass weddings in my life, but the ceremony is the most important part of the day (right?) and I want it to feel substantial. The ceremony of the wedding we attended last weekend was maybe 15 minutes including the processional and recessional, and it felt a little bit…well, glossed over. I’m sure that wasn’t actually the case, but now I know that for our wedding I definitely want quite a few readings and such to make it feel as significant as it actually is.

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2. You don’t need food servers at the buffet.
The meal at this wedding was a self-serve buffet, and it went just fine. No one served themselves more than they should have, and if something ran completely out before someone got some, well, they lived. It wasn’t the end of the world.

The caterer we originally were thinking of using finally actually got back to us (more on that in another post) and we are thinking of doing a self-serve buffet to save some money. Jason’s mom had some reservations about this because she was worried that people would take more than their allotted serving and we’d run out of food, or that someone might drop a serving spoon and we’d have no one to get a clean one — but thankfully, this recent wedding proved that wrong. People served themselves appropriate portions, and no one dropped anything.

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3. Even professional DJs don’t do much more than make playlists and switch them when necessary.
In the whole ten minutes that Jason and I spent on the dance floor, the DJ was there for maybe two of them. People say that self-DJing your wedding is insane and it won’t work out at all, but here’s the thing — that professional DJ that you’re springing for? All he or she really does is make the same playlists you could have made, put a crossfade on them (which you can do in iTunes), and hit “play”. The DJ at this wedding hit “play” on what must have been the “slow songs” playlist, then got up to go to the bathroom, stretch his legs, grab a drink, whatever, until the playlist ended. So now not only are we confident that we can make some awesome dance-able playlists ourselves, but we know we can handle the occasional play/pause when necessary. We’ve asked a friend to be “Playlist Switcher” for the night, and we will have a few backups too in case someone wants to leave early, gets sick, forgets, etc. We also have a few people in mind to be emcee, because we need someone to make all the typical announcements.

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4. SMILE! Show emotion! Have fun!
This is probably the biggest one, and I didn’t realize just how important it was until this wedding. Whether consciously or not, the guests all watch the bride, groom, and bridal party to see if they’re having fun. If they aren’t, the guests will feel like they shouldn’t be either, because clearly something is wrong to keep the stars of the show from enjoying themselves.

Now, I know it’s pretty much not humanly possible to be genuinely smiling 100% of the time, but at least look like you’re having fun. Smile when you walk down the aisle — and tell your bridesmaids to smile too (none of the bridesmaids at this wedding smiled at all when walking down the aisle, and it literally made me think, “Wow, did they fight beforehand? Is the day going really badly behind the scenes? Do they not like the bride or groom, or not support the marriage? Do they think weddings are stupid?”). Talk and laugh during dinner. Enjoy the toasts. Cry (happy tears!) if you feel like it. Relish your first dance. Oh, and about dancing — if you want your guests to dance, you better get your ass on that dance floor, at least at the beginning of the night. At this wedding, the bride and groom didn’t dance until maybe 3 or 4 songs in, and there were only a small handful of people on the dance floor before them. Again, it’s that subconscious we-can’t-do-it-if-the-bride-and-groom-haven’t-yet mentality

Basically, don’t make the wedding seem like a chore — your guests will pick up on it, and wonder why you aren’t having fun.

With these four lessons learned I feel better prepared for our own wedding. When you’re planning a wedding, you get caught up in the details that you will notice, but it’s helpful to see a wedding that’s not yours from an outside view, so you can gain some perspective on what guests will actually notice and remember (hint: it’s not anything that you think they will).

What is the best thing you’ve learned from attending someone else’s wedding?