Double Happiness

Disaster!

Dennis and I return from a cheerful day of running errands (the Post Office has wedding stamps!  Kickass!) and purchasing his motorcycle to find a dreadful, alarming voice mail message waiting for us.  Someone named “Bruce” with the confusing title of “the new catering manager” was responding to my e-mail from Thursday (2 days ago!  I KNEW something was wrong.) to provide us with the recommended vendor list for our reception venue.  While listening to the message I had the phone on speaker and Dennis was in the hallway playing with the dog.  Then we heard the fateful words:

“Unfortunately, David has left . . . “ 

In a silent version of Darth Vader’s Episode 3 “Nnnnnnoooooooooooo!” revelation, both of our jaws hit the floor at once.  I don’t know about Dennis but it took me about 2 hours to pick mine up again and have a coherent thought.  All night I would come out of a 1000 mile stare  saying “Daaavviiiiiid!!!!”  We hypothesized about all the reasons (good or bad) why he might’ve left, but only half of them amounted to getting the same level of attentive, professional service.  I quickly abandoned the notion of hunting him down and bribing him to come back and manage at least my wedding, but it crossed my mind nonetheless.  This guy was just about PERFECT.  He was the #1 selling point (the price being #2) for why we chose that venue!  My entire “Oh, everything’ll be just fine,” attitude could be attributed to him!  Mr. Just As Anal Retentive As Stefanie.  Mr. I Used To Organize Hippy Benefits To Educate CIA Students About World Hunger.  Mr. I’ll Be Here On Your Wedding Day Taking Care Of Everything.  Mr. It’s All About The Food.

Left!

I feel like a tandem jumper who has the chute on and is crouching by the open door of the plane, only to find at the last minute, “Oh by the way, here’s a token guy to jump with.  See ya!”  Alright, this isn’t “last minute” per se, but it’s too late to rush out and find another venue – our date was already booking up at most places we called back in Fall of ’05.

Heaven help Mr. “We’re Gonna Take Good Care of Youz” Bruce.  I will leave him a voice mail message on Monday – on Wednesday when he’s back onsite I will interview him and Set Expectations.  I just hate having to do this all again – David was perfect!  Yes, yes, I know, no wedding is perfect and as with any project something WILL go wrong, just deal with it.

Daaaavviiiiiiiiid!!!!

Throughout my adulthood anytime I have heard a couple say “Wow, sorry, we’ve just been SO BUSY with ya know, the wedding stuff,” I don’t think I ever truly appreciated what that means.  A former colleague shared some wedding planning advice with me last year, including a gem about the pros and cons of Do It Yourself ideas.  Yep, they sure save a lot of money, but holy time-suck, Batman!  They had made their own wine and personalized wine bottles as favors (yes, I just typed that correctly – they bought the materials, crushed their own grapes, fermented and barrel aged the wine, and bottled it, then did the labels) that was a huge hit, but he realized afterwards that the guests probably would have been happy with matchbooks or jelly beans.  We don’t intend to go quite that crazy with the DIY thing but we are very budget-sensitive.  Which brings us to my adventures in Save the Date Cards.

“Why bother with Save the Date cards?” you might ask.  I totally wouldn’t, but we’re getting married on a holiday weekend and need to give adequate heads up to the 2/3 of our guests who are out-of-towners.  I would also have gone with e-mail but again, this is a formal wedding, not a picnic.  But I see no reason to get something with organza ribbons and pressed flowers for something that essentially serves to say “Yo!  Don’t make plans for 5/27 next year!  Details later!”  After picking up and setting back down about a dozen packages of such frilly notions that averaged $13.50 for 8 cards, the super nice saleswoman offered to help.  In the entire store the cheapest we could find for very plain generic (read = blank) cards was $11 for 10.  She made a couple arts-n-craftsy suggestions and I thanked her and ducked out of the store.

On to Staples.  Jackpot!  There were a variety of simple but tasteful handy computer-friendly (ain’t no way I’m hand writing all these) kits that were more like $18 for 50 cards (if you wanted a little white border instead of a little silvery [cough, I mean “platinum”] border it was $15).  And stickers for the envelopes!  Cheap!  I grabbed an armful of supplies and checked out – total bill was half of what I was about to spend at Blue Tulip.

However.

Buying them is the easy part.

Back at home I opened the packages and read the instructions.  Cake – basically you’re just supposed to adjust your page setup for paper size and margins.  In an ideal world, this will translate to your little cards and envelopes quite nicely.

Before digging into the actual cards task I wanted to make sure our little web page on the knot.com site was up to date so I could include that URL on the cards – hotel group rate info, etc.  At last, it’s ready.  Our URL could not possibly be any longer:  http://www.theknot.com/ourwedding/StefanieHackenberg&DennisTseng .  Well, maybe it could be a little longer if Dennis were Indian or Polish or something.  I can just imagine the cost per character on the wedding invites:  “. . . Stefanie Hackenberg, daughter of Lynn Hackenberg and Steven Hackenberg, to Dennis Wojciechowski, son of Krzysztof Wojciechowski and Anastazja Wojciechowski . . . “  Yeesh.

I brought up my address book to start gathering snail mail addresses.  We only had about a fourth of them.  Ugh.  So I proceeded to dig through old Evites, Christmas cards, and “We’ve moved!” e-mails to get as many as possible.  Dennis only had a handful on his Treo, but promised to go down the list of his family members and get addresses next week.  (Next week!)

Then I caught myself wasting waaay too much time in a task I never thought I’d be doing:  fooling around with fonts for crying out loud.  I confess, I am a long time font junky.  I collect them like some people collect stamps or bottle caps.  I have the Farscape one.  I have a Nightmare Before Christmas one.  I even have one for The Cure called “Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me.”  So I wanted to find something that conveyed the elegance and formality we were looking for with the tone of the wedding style, was readable, and at the same time fit in the card margins.

Are you bored with this yet?  ‘Cause I am.

Once I got everything juuuuust right I went to the laser printer behind me to start cranking them out.

There are never enough test sheets in life.  I think this could really be said, metaphorically, of anything.

Not to mention the printer didn’t like the card stock, so I had to load them one at a time, manually, and I had to give each one a nudge with my fingertip to get the rollers to grab it properly.

During this time Dennis was across the hall playing World of Warcraft, slaying dragons and happily oblivious of the miniature Hogarth Press I was starting in my study.  I asked him as gently as I could to help out by breaking apart the individual cards on the perforation while I did the rest of the printing.  He was done in 30 seconds.

Envelopes.  How bad could it be, right?  I did mail merges for a living once upon a time.  I looked at my Master Guest List spreadsheet and tried to figure out how to get the Address column into a data source document for a quick Merge & Print.  “Quick” was not going to be a word to describe anything during this activity.  Ok, scrap that idea, too much of a hassle.

I go downstairs to get a glass of wine.

Microsoft Word.  Tools:  Letters and Mailings:  Envelopes and Labels:  Options.  Microsoft apparently does not believe in envelopes in the size I have in front of me.  No really, Bill, I swear, they’re 5.5 by 4.25.  They are!  Ok fine, so I had to space the lettering a little to accommodate the 6.25 inch standard I’m being forced to comply with.  Next, address – Monotype Corsiva, size 16.  Return address, Monotype Corsiva, size 11, save as default.  Print!  Woohoo!  One done.

MS Word is not my friend.  I have to readjust the font every time.  After 15 minutes of troubleshooting there is no apparent way to get it to stick.  Now at this point I could very well have said, “Screw this, default will have to suffice,” but I am a stubborn person, as many of you already know, and I was beyond that point of no return with fixing something.  Now it’s a matter of principle!

MS Excel.  Copy address.  MS Word.  Tools:  Letters and Mailings:  Envelopes and Labels.  Paste address.  Adjust spacing.  Options.  Address Font:  Edit.  “M”.  Scroll.  Monotype Corsiva.  16.  OK.  Return Address Font.  Edit.  “M”.  Scroll.  Monotype Corsiva.  11.  OK.  Close.  Print.

Repeat.  Attempt to stifle the scream.

The sound of swords clashing floats from across the hall.

For the next batch of mailings I am just editing my normal.dot to make the default for EVERYTHING Monotype Corsiva size 16.  Frankly even without the font nonsense it’d still have taken me a few minutes per envelope, with the standing up and going to the other desk and manually feeding envelopes, then stuffing the envelopes with the cards, blah blah yadda yadda.  I think I’ve had temp jobs like this.  Except I got paid.  And it wasn’t 2:00 in the morning.  That’s it!  I should have hired a temp and paid them with beer.

But all in all the first 26 are done and they look fantastic, like we had them professionally done (maybe I’m a little biased from my labors).  And now we’ll have all the addresses for the real invites next year. 

And I didn’t even stab a sharp stick in my eye.

Overwhelmed.  Omigod, overwhelmed.  And it’s way too @#$%^&* early to be!  All I can think of is that we have 4 days to get the guest list finalized, the hotel group rate secured, the save-the date cards mailed, and we have 1 month to get the DJ, Officiant, and Photographer/ Videographer booked.  And I have to get that infernal dress.  And I’m pretty much on my own.  Wow.

Ok, so maybe I need to just break it down.  DJs first.

My first find is so far PERFECT, which makes me a bit suspicious.  Unbelievably vast and diverse range of music selections, from Middle Eastern music to Big Band to “Groove is in the Heart” by Dee Lite.  They’re flexible, will honor any “must play” and “don’t you dare play” list you give them, and won’t hand out cheesy favors like you’re at an office party.  I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, like we’re not in their coverage area or they are too expensive.  But they definitely had me at “80’s New Wave” – that’s EXACTLY what I want.  My wedding will not be complete without “Space Age Love Song”!  LOL ok no I’m not that militant.  Except about some things:  there will be no Electric Slide, no Achey Breaky, no Chicken Dance, no Hokey Pokey, no Macarena, nothing corny and pre-choreographed.  Unless we do one of those spontaneous disco ensembles or the intro scene to Austin Powers with that jaunty grinful street dancing.  But no Chicken Dance.

The other DJs I’m looking at frankly scare me, especially the one whose major endorsement is “your choice for the Z-100 theme party!”  [Running away.]  But I’m really intrigued by this one, whose first line of their description tells me they “specialize in tasteful, cheese-free DJ entertainment reflecting the uniqueness of your personalities.”  Did you say “cheese-free”?  :\  We’ll see . . . hmm, they sound very professional and accommodating, and one of them can even play acoustic guitar during the ceremony (he has a song sample on the site – very talented), but they also serve as wedding coordinators.  I don’t need one.  How is that going to affect the price, and is that even negotiable?  I also notice one of the pair’s names is “Stephanie.”  I’m cringing at the thought of all the potential wisecracks.  Alright, bookmarked for later consideration.

Oooo!!!   Found another one with a New Wave section!!  I have fantasized about a reception with “Friday I’m in Love” or “Just Like Heaven” – I’m so pleased to see it’s actually doable.  Dude!  Paul Oakenfold??  And they have a guitar guy too!  Bookmarked.

As you can see this is gonna be an interesting search.  I had no idea there was so much choice involved – I thought they’d ALL just say “Look lady, just let us spin what we have.  We have a preset playlist.”  If I do run into those they’ll be automatic dings.  I just have a feeling getting what you want = $$$$$$$$.  Like everything else!

Back to the bridal magazines, ugh.  I guess on one hand buying that stack last year was a waste of time for dress shopping, but then again I learned quite a bit.  And found our venue!

These magazines are 90% useless drivel and 10% helpful.  I’m still looking for “inspiring”.  You wouldn’t believe how traditional they are!  Apparently the mother of the brides is supposed to be the busiest parent of all because she’ll be “helping coordinate the entire event.”  Oh really.  I don’t think so, pal.  Also, this little gem from fantasyland:  “As host of the festivities, [the father of the bride] is traditionally responsible for most of the costs.”  Let me check the date on this issue – 1955?  Oh wait, no, 2006.  Hmm.  Ah!  Here we go.  “Today, however, many couples (and sometimes even the groom’s family) [gasp!] pitch in for some, if not all, of the expenses.”  I’m trying to think of a couple in our generation where the bride’s dad said, “Sure, I’ll pay for it!”  I’ll let you know if I come up with one.

I’ve also learned that my both-parents-giving-me-away thing is traditional Jewish custom.  Hey, my name’s Hackenberg right?  Maybe I’m Jewish somewhere after all.

Oooh!  Worksheets!!  And they tear out!  Nifty!  The photography one looked helpful at first but I guess I hadn’t realized how many “most important moments” (bolding is magazine’s) there are to capture.  Eeeek!  There are the portraits – duh.  Then folks getting ready, mkay.  Groom dancing with his mother, yep.  Bride and groom departing, alright.  Whoa, signs directing guests to the wedding?  Seating card display?  Man that’s thorough.  (Translate:  $$$$)  And flowers!  I’m not even looking at that worksheet.  I’ll faint and miss my stop on this train.

Now this is the inane “advice” I’m talking about.  In the article about how to register for bath linens (which I’m still trying to figure out the value of – do people out there not know what a washcloth is?) I came across this important piece of life information about towels:

“Store, folded, in a closet to await your next shower.”

Profound.

I admit that these infernal bridal magazines still get me verklempt every now and then.  Don’t ask me why.  It might be an image of a couple kissing by a huge tree, maybe a testimonial from a bride who surprised her dad with a song from her childhood for their dance, it could be the look on a groom’s face in one of those “real weddings’ features.  I can’t help it!  Michelle told me this past weekend that, surprisingly, you don’t get too misty on your own wedding day.  Everything is rush!  Rush!  Rush!  The pragmatic mindset of making sure everything goes according to schedule overrides any sentimentality until later.  Makes sense.  When the pressure is on I typically go into Project Manager Mode –

Omigod.

This magazine, I just realized, is Martha Stewart Weddings!  Eeeewwww!  I’ve been duped!  I’m looking around for something to wipe my pastel sage green contaminated hands with.  Curses!  It’s not my fault!  The biggest word on the cover is WEDDINGS and the “Martha Stewart” is this teeny tiny eeny little . . . exponent at the top right.  It looked like the date line or something.  Ew.  Well, it explains a lot.  But it occurs to me that the shrinking of her name on her own product is a huge diss to the woman.  Guess this is one of those “distancing” moves to ensure sales in light of past jail terms.  Damn shady if you ask me.

Anyway, on to the 45 lb The Knot issue with “900 gowns!”  If it kills me, I have got to do this dress thing.  Maybe I’ll dig around for the rental option.  Who am I fooling – I want something unusual and renting will not provide that.  I think I’m going for something with red ON it – a sash, a border, embroidery, I dunno.  “That Dress” I saw last year is like an elusive unicorn, time to move on.  Clock is ticking . . .