How Much Would This Set Me Back?

Not only monetarily, but in the eyes of my guests.

I joke. I would love to hire me some strolling Drag Queen serving tables from Screaming Queens Entertainment for the wedding, but I'm sure they are pricey.

I didn't even bother to ask, I don't need to add on any more expenses to the party at this point.

Exciting news however, honeymoon plans are soon to be finalized! As soon as they are I will post about our two part honeymoon.

Should I Be Having Some Sort of Freakout?

When we first got engaged I was obsessed with that little ticker image above. I was counting down every single day, and obsessing over the wedding in general at every possible moment.

Imagine my surprise when I look at the little ticker today of all days and realize I am exactly six months away from the wedding.

I'm feeling pretty good about where things are at. We still have a lot of things to do, but I figured we would start dealing with all those things in January.

Now I could freak out and make a list of those things and overthink every one of those details, but I am taking a much more relaxed approach to this weeding than I originally intended to. I have come to the conclusion that not every last detail of this wedding has to be a manifestation of our love and symbol of some greater thing. Some things are just things.

Case in point: I remember a conversation I had with a friend shortly after we got engaged. We were talking about centerpieces, and the fact that we were considering incorporating Disney snowglobes and using less floral, and he went into this tirade about how "we should design centerpieces that reflect our unique personalities and each one should have a theme representing a different time in our relationship so that our wedding would be truly unique." Seriously? That's a lot of pressure to put on a bunch of flowers.

That's a lot of pressure I don't need and don't want right now. Work life is about to kick into crazy mode for the month of December, so maybe I will make some time to freak out in the middle of January.

Still the Debate about the Flowers and the Video

In my mind at least it's a debate. These are the last two big things that we have to decide. At first I was sure I didn't want video, and then I saw videos from Paper Tape Films and fell in love with those. The only problem is that since we are getting married on a holiday weekend they have a six hour minimum and that would set us back about $4.5k.

Then I ran across Layer Cake Films and they also do gorgeous 8 mm wedding video. Unfortunately their holiday weekend minimum is $3.5k. Why does everything in LA have to cost so much?

Then there's the flower front. For a while I was seriously considering doing these ourselves, but started thinking about the logistics. Orange County isn't way far from home, but it is a 40 minute drive. If we had flowers delivered they would need to arrive on Friday for a Sunday wedding, or we could pick them up at the Downtown LA flower mart. Either way that means transporting those to the OC, and I have already had a few experiences with flowers not travelling so well, so I'm a little worried about how that may turn out.

So It's back to the drawing board. In the next few weeks we will probably meet with the lovely people at Asiel's Designs, and the work on their website is gorgeous. I feel like they really have a great eye for whimsical, which is totally what we want.

I've also spoken to Bobbe over at Bobbe Vagell Floaral Designs and he seems like a really nice guy. His work is amazing as well.

So only time will tell what may happen. I feel like so much of the wedding is set and these are the two areas where we can fiddle with the budget. If we ended up not having video I would be ok with that too, since we already have a great photographer, and I don't really want to spend money on a "bargain" videographer. I mean if I don't like the final product and never watch it, it's not really a bargain.

Balloons at a Wedding?

I know balloons are not the first things that come to mind when people say wedding. I think most people think flowers and chiffon draped over everything. Not that I have anything against flowers and chiffon (except for the price of all those flowers).

Now I'm not thinking bunches of balloons like you would see at a kid's birthday party, the idea I really like are really large balloons like in the pictures above.

The ceiling in our venue is very high, and I'm thinking it would look really cool to walk in and see these large orbs floating about at different levels. Now I just have to find someone that does these in LA.

Do We Really Need This?

The answer to that question when asked in relation to any wedding related purchase of course is "no." I know all we really need to get married is each other and an officiant.

But then once in a while you come across something, and you think to yourself, oh it's only $_.00.

Like toasting flutes. I saw really nice toasting flutes with Mickey Mouse in a tuxedo, and I thought it would be nice to get a pair of those and have them engraved.

The thing is the other day when we were filling out our questionnaire one question asked, will you be providing a cake cutter or would you like to borrow the venue's, and I thought to myself it was silly to spend money on a knife that we would use to slice one piece of cake and then stick in a drawer, so I said definitely borrow. Then it asked the same question about toasting flutes and I thought it would be nice to have our own.

For all the times we sit around drinking sparkling wine?

Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in all the wedding madness and be reasonable. Reasonably no one will remember what we drank out of, and I do suppose every little bit adds up. Still, I could just start drinking a lot more sparkling wine . . .

Wedding Flowers From Costco?

This is a little tidbit I read about in that Bridal Bargains book, but also something I noticed on one of my weekly Costco trips. Costco.com does wedding flowers. You can buy all sorts of kooky things at Costco.com, like caskets and urns. Fortunately we are not in need in need of either at this point and our focus is wedding flowers.

Another option I am considering for wedding flowers is a direct seller like Grower's Box. I really like their selections. You can buy flowers in bulk and arrange them yourself, or have a friend do them for you. I already had a friend that has taken a few flower arranging classes volunteer to do it.

I am going to risk angering the wedding gods here and go out on a limb and say maybe the flowers aren't that important. I still really like the idea of our tall centerpieces with the lanterns.


But if not having these saves us 1k to 2k, then isn't that worth considering? People would think they are really cool, but in the end aren't they really there to be there, and take advantage of the open bar?

The controversy continues, but either way we will make a decision, hopefully soon.

Some More Tea Party Pictures

I am a bad blogger. It's been a few days but it has been a crazy weekend. A good friend of mine is leaving for school at the end of the week and she will be sorely missed so we had to give her a proper send-off this weekend. Throw in the mix a birthday celebration for another friend and it turned into quite a full weekend.

I came across these really cool pictures for a tea party at Dinsey's Grand Californian Hotel. It's a tea party luncheon that you can actually have Disney plan and cater it for you. The cost I'm sure is a bit high, as character rental alone for weddings is about $700 for a half hour.

What I really like is the look of the event. The mismatched napkins, the whimsical centerpieces, and the lanterns. I think it's all really great. If the reception looked like this I would be completely happy with it.

Some Great Mad Tea Party Ideas

In my endless trek through the internet in search of wedding related material I came across these pictures. I really love some of the ideas and might incorporate some of the ideas into our wedding. We were thinking of having Mickey and Minnie stop by the wedding, but maybe some of the Wonderland characters would be more in keeping with the theme?

Why Have a Theme Wedding?

The idea to have a theme wedding came when we chose our cake. From the start we knew our wedding would not be a traditional affair (we are after all two men getting married, it doesn't get too much more non-traditional than that). A white wedding cake with pastel roses was not for us. When I saw this cake I knew it was what I wanted.




The final colors will be different, but there will be a whole conversation dedicated to that in the future. Having a cake like this sets a different tone for the entire celebration, and in some way your celebration has to reflect that. By setting a theme to work around you give yourself a starting point to work with. It actually made the entire process much easier, since there was now an entire segment of invitations, flowers, decorations, and just general wedding things we knew we would not even have to look at because they did not fit in with the theme.

The most important thing when dealing with a theme is finding the balance between tying elements of a celebration together, and taking the entire thing too far. Someone suggested we could dress up like the Mad Hatter for the wedding, that's too far.

We are incorporating our theme into everything from the invitations to the floral, but still keeping it all in the realm of good taste (I hope). Here is the invitation we are having printed, we will be building our own pocket invitations, more on that in a future post as well.


And these are some of the ideas we are thinking of using for floral and decoration. The only difference will be all our floral and decorations will have more color.


Having a theme will allow us to provide the whimsical and entertaining experience we want for our guests and ourselves. We are after all getting married at the happiest place on earth, and can take some liberties because of it.