(or so I hope)

Last week, we did the whole picking-a-definite-menu thing with our caterer. In our last meeting which was, ah, like forever ago, we gave him about eleventy-billion ideas and options. I was afraid that all of the ideas we had thrown out would just end up in some giant ramshackle mush of a menu. Thankfully, he made sense of our madness and after a few tweaks, we have ended up with a pretty amazing spread. (I’ll go over logistics and layout later– this is just a noms-time post).

*ahem* Here goes nothin’…

Cocktail Hour Yums

For the cocktail hour, we’ll be having two passed appetizers along with, well, cocktails. (Or cocktail, rather, since we’re doing one cocktail, beer, and wine).

1. Caprese-Kabobs: This is just what I call ‘em, but they’re something I’ve made about 100,000 times for guests, dinner parties, bringing-stuff-along-to-a-party, etc., and they’ve always been a hit. I love Caprese, because c’mon, what beats cheese, tomatoes, and basil? Nothing. These kabob guys are so handy because you hold them! (Ar har har… I’m so punny). They consist of alternating basil, little buffalo mozzarella balls, and grape tomatoes skewered, then drizzled with balsamic, olive oil, and kosher salt for good measure. Delicious, colorful, and portable.
2. Shrimp Things: Ok, I don’t know what this is going to be called, but they’ll take big ol’ flat-bottomed Asian soup spoons, put a bit cocktail sauce in the bottom, and top it with a ginormous shrimp. I’ll have to be restrained in order to stop me from shoving 5 of those in my mouth at once.

Dinner Noms

As we had planned, the dinner will be sort-of an It’s-a-Small-World-meets-tapas-style-meets-bar-food-meets-the-dang-mini-food-trend-meets-awesome. Whew, that’s a whole lot of things meeting. This food-orgy will consist of four categories– German, American, Italian, and Chinese-ish. (I say “Chinese-ish” because I doubt it’s very authentic. Let’s think of it more as Chinese take-out, shall we?)

For the German part…

{ This is the later-mentioned currywurst // source }

1. Brats mit Brötchen: Contrary to how Johnsonville commercials show brats, they are not traditionally served in white-bread hot dog buns, but instead with little hard rolls. Brats are much more delicious this way, trust me. Also, I hope to have some curry powder in a salt shaker so that I might be able to hit up some currywurst. (Curry powder+ ketchup+ brat= !!!! in your mouf. Try it).
2. White Asparagus: Spargel. Delicious. Pretty big deal in Deutschland.
3. Big Smushy Pretzels: I don’t know how many times JP asked for these guys, but it has paid off, because we’re getting ‘em. I’m in it for the yummy carb-factor.

For the US foods…

1. Cheese Sliders: If I have time to eat, I hope I’ll be able to shove a few of these down. I am a sucker for a tiny burger, and especially one with CHEESE. (True story: This also makes me sing the “Cheesy Blasters” jingle over and over in my head, hence the video).
2. A More Dressed-Up Potato Salad: I call this “more-dressed up” because I requested we nixed the mayo-smushed-egg-based potato salad. I’m not really a fan of mayonnaise-based salads, especially in the summer. This will be a vinaigrette-based salad with red skin potatoes. Yummsky.
3. Fruit: I really wanted this because 1- I’m boring and 2- I wanted it, and it got lumped into this category. At present, it looks like we’ll be having strawberries, honeydew, grapes, watermelon, and pineapple segregated from the rest of the colony, as JP detests it. (I adore fresh pineapple, so pfft).
4. I think I’m forgetting one more thing here. We’ll just leave this as a mystery for now.

For the Italian section…

{ source }

1. Bruschetta: This was a natural because we adore it, and I make the best bruschetta on the planet. True story. We always anxiously await good-tomato-season so that we can bathe in this stuff. (Ok, not bathe, but eat a whole heckuvalot of it). I believe we’re using my recipe? That was supposed to end in a question mark? Because I’m not 100% sure?
2. Arista: This is Tuscan-style pork tenderloin. It’s stuffed with rosemary, garlic, and deliciousness. We make make it with a beef tenderloin every Christmas, and it’s always the first to go.
3. Penne in Individual Ramekins: Hola, cheese. Please get in my belly. Individual servings of cheesy pasta goodness? Yes, please.

The Chinese-take-out part-ola…

{ source }

1. Take-Out Boxes with Fried Rice: Hokay, so, this is a part that I am crazy excited about just on cuteness-factor alone. We’re having Chinese take-out boxes filled up halfway with fried rice, and then peeps will be able to add in the next two things. I did so many excited dances for this.
2. Veggie Stir-Fry: Broccoli, onions, red peppers, snow peaz, garlic, and magic. For best results, lots should be consumed in the adorable take-out boxes.
3. Chicken Stir-Fry: Chicken stir-fry, for adding to the other delicious stuff or eating alone.
4. Fortune Cookies: I’m going to have a whole post devoted to fortune cookies, because they’re one of my thangs. I don’t want to go into to much detail now, but yeah, they are my thang.

Dessert-y Goodness

The only thing in this category is CAKE, because tbh, that’s the only reason I go to weddings. Probably not the only reason, but CAKE is a huge factor. Notice how I have to write it in all-caps– that’s because it’s so exciting. I’m yelling it every time.

1. Wedding CAKE: White, buttercream, no wet fillings, RAINBOW DOTTED ZOMG INSIDE, crazy sparkles outside. Almondy-vanilla-y goodness. We ordered on the too-much-CAKE side just because I want leftovers. I plan to subsist on sunblock, the horizontal mambo, and copious amounts of CAKE during our honeymoon. (Coincidentally, “cake” was/is our code-word for hay-rolls. So it’s only appropriate that I want lots of CAKE… and cake… during our honeymooning).
2. Groom’s CAKE: We originally were going to have this in the shape of one of JP’s robots, but then I realized that it would end up looking like a big gray blob. We’re sticking to chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream. Decorationing TBD.

Whew, so there you have our actual food for this wedding that is coming up in, oh, almost 100 days. This thing is happening, people, and it seems like it’s going to be pretty dang delicious.

Who else went with a “To hell with convention!” sort of menu and just did, well, EVERYTHING? Did you go above, beyond, or just plain overboard? What do you think about our spread? Also, please let there be someone who knows the deliciousness of currywurst so I don’t feel like a weirdo out here.

The one part of the invitation design process that I have loathed is the whole response card mess. It has been the beast that has spurned 1,000 arguments, sleepless hours, and just general angry thoughts in the past week.

Well over a week ago, I thought I was 100% finished with the meat of the invitation design– all I had left to do was decide on ink color and all that jazz. I sent the proofs to my mother and JP for a thorough run-down.

Honestly, I expected four thumbs up, a green light, and much rejoicing. From JP, I got much praise, excitedness, and much pumping-up. It was awesome. From my mother, I got this in response to the fact that there was no specific “number showing up” area:

My response is, how many people know this? I mean, let’s take [names removed to protect the not-so-innocent]. We’ll invite five, but if past history is any indicator, we’ll have at most two.

Now, insert much whining, complaining, moaning, and general not-happiness on my side. I didn’t want to have to re-space the whole dang thing, figure out wording, try not to make it super annoying, and, well, yeah. I wasn’t happy. At all. I told her it was not possible based on the amount of space with which I had to work [not true], that I’d have to re-design the entire suite [not true], and this would be a giant hassle for me [true].What can I say, I was acting a little like a brat.

I let it sit for a few days, determined not to change it. Finally, I got off of my stubborn horse and made one with a “number attending” part, so now we have two options.

Option 1, of course, is the original design. Still my favorite. Option 2, is the [insert grumbling here] number-attending design.

This decision is still up in the air, and I really don’t know what is the best option. So, which way should we go? Option 1, and call the always-failing-members for guest-count confirmation, or option 2? (Though I know people will screw this up somehow. It’s apparently a proven wedding fact. I vote for a book of butchered RSVP cards). How did you all handle this bidness?

After solving the printer mystery, our envelopes came out like stars. I designed them in InDesign, which has proven to be invaluable in wedding-paper-goods-land. Because I like to make things more difficult, and don’t know what the hell mail merge is, I typed each one by hand. Whatever, I am a total fan of how they came out.

Le front:

Le back:

(In case you were wondering– No, the addresses aren’t strangely aligned. I just cloned out our addresses for whatever reason).

I used my beloved Gotham for the font, and the ever-popular but ever-wonderful king and queen stamps on our yummy recycled kraft paper envelopes. Initially we planned to to use my parents’ embosser for the backs, but at the last minute I decided to attempt printing it, which was quite easy. It was a little risky to try, as we had already printed all of the fronts, but thankfully it worked without butchering any of the envelopes.

After their impromptu mini-photo-shoot, they were off to meet their maker, aka the US Postal Service. I hadn’t expected to experience any separation anxiety, since I wasn’t 100% pleased with the whole deal. Strangely enough, I actually was sad to see them go. Perhaps it was nerves, perhaps it was empty-nest… who knows. I am glad to have this project over and done with, and appropriately nervous and excited to finish our wedding invitations! Onwards and upwards!

How did you address your save-the-dates? Did you stick it to Emily Post and go the non-handwritten way? Were you sad to see them go?

*Envies is my pet name for envelopes. Deal with it, dears.

Now that I admitted my STD-printing flub, I can move along to a part that I’m actually fairly pleased with– the envelopes. Not to be outdone, the envelopes had to fail a little first.

While printing these bad boys on our super hawt printer, we kept having the problem of ink smears. It wasn’t coming from the text itself, but just random inkjet blotches. We were good little children, and kept re-using the same two test envelopes, which is why you see highlighted and circled blotches. We had to know what was new and what was old fail.

We figured that it had to be one of two things– thickness, or uneven transfer because of the wonky bits on the back of an envie. After running a piece of chipboard through the printer and seeing it print flawlessly, we realized it was the latter. Oh, fail of fails. Were we going to have to ghetto-rig the printer? It seemed so. JP and I devised a plan that would surely end in tears– rubber-cementing the envelopes down to stock, running them through, then detaching them from said stock. Had disaster written all over it.

In order to hopefully save our sanity, I decided to flip through the printer’s manual. Woops, we forgot to check “envelope” in the print settings. We wasted almost two hours trying to go around our elbows to get to our asses, when a simple manual-read would have saved us. We were then able to then print all of our envelopes in about 20 minutes. Such silly children.

Moral of the story?

I know a billion other people had trouble printing their invitation envelopes. What happened with yours? Printer flub, human flub, paper flub, or just bad luck?

…save-the-dates I was obsessing over?

Well, the day after my neurotic post went up, I ordered our favorites. I just couldn’t not do it, especially after all of the delightful prodding and peer pressure. You may wonder what has taken me so long to write about them, eh? They came in awhile ago, and as much as I hate saying it, well, I’m a little disappointed.

When the package arrived, I excitedly opened the USPS box [read: hacked at it with some scissors], pulled off the packing slip, saw the lovely recycled envelopes, and finally got down to the goods– the save-the-dates, all tucked safely in their little Moo packages.

I should have stopped there. Ok, not really, but this is where the story takes a turn for the worse. I pulled the cards out, and let out a little “WTF does that say?!” in my head. The text is so tiny, that even with my twenty-five-year-old eyes it’s hard to read. It was all I could do not to burst into tears right at that moment.

I didn’t, nor have I fully, let on to my parents or JP how disappointed in myself I am over this project. I put on a happy face, because gosh-darned-it I WANTED to be excited, and I am excited. But I just kept, and keep, getting bowled over by an overwhelming sense of fail. Why? Why am I so bent out of shape over all of this tiny little detail? (No pun intended). Well let me tell you…

1. I feel silly for letting such a stupid mistake happen. I was too excited, and didn’t pay enough attention to image-size to card-size ratio.  I had the proofs I made on our home printer, and thought they were fantastic, so went along with those dimensions exactly… for a totally different-sized card.
2. I know better. I should have known that having an exported jpeg printed would not produce the same results as my illustrator copy. Using the printing method we chose, there was no way around said jpeg-ing, but I should not be this surprised.
3. I let myself get carried away without allowing my OCD self to monitor and obsess over every tiny detail. This backfired.
4. Last, but not least, one of the main reasons I am so bent out of shape is because, well, I’m so bent out of shape! I hate feeling like a failure over something SO TINY and insignificant. In the big picture, THIS DOES NOT MATTER. So what if people have to hold the damned thing two inches closer to their face? This does not make me a terrible person. I need to repeat that over and over until I get it through my skull.

I guess it’s about time to show you pictures of the little devils– I’ve been putting it off for over a week… oh, and this entire post.

Looking at them, I do really think they’re pretty lovely, and I guess I’m pleased with everything, save for the TINY DAMNED TEXT. Anyway, I must not dwell on that forever; I must get over myself.

Stay tuned for how we handled the envelopes. They turned out hella sexy, if I do say so myself, even if we did have a few bumps in the road.

Did you experience any minor flubs that threw you for a loop? How did you, for lack of a better phrase, try not to “sweat the small stuff?” How did you kick your inner perfectionist to the curb?

(I couldn’t resist).

Early on, I fell in love with photos of brides in fabulous shoes next to grooms in ridiculous socks. It has made me a supreme lover of shoe shots. If you remember, I even managed to get some shoe-shot-love out of our engagement shoot.

{ Photo, of course, by Matt Miller }

Since we already have my awesome shoes on lock-down, it’s about time to start looking for some rockin’ socks for JP. An hour-or-so piddling around the internet proved to be quite fruitful, as I found some pretty neat-looking stuff.

First, from Happy Socks…

Perhaps some of these Happy Socks socks might border on being a little effeminate, or so says JP, but I think there are some pretty awesome and possible ones in the bunch. For anyone that’s curious, all of these range from $10-$15.

On Fred Flare, I found this interesting pair for $12…

Ok, so I will be the first to admit that I totally and 100% mocked the mustaches-at-weddings trend, but I have softened. There’s a possibility that I might like it a little bit now. To be perfectly honest, I still don’t understand it, but damned if I don’t like these socks. Wedding world, you’ve taken another victim! Count JP in with that as well, because he likes them and thinks that they’re “funny.”

Sock It To Me had a few cool socks, albeit with annoying-as-hell watermarks over the top of the images.

The first ones have robots on them, which are totally appropriate for JP given that that’s what he do, y’alls. The second pair are supposed to be an homage to Tetris, and the third pair just have some awesome PEW PEW lightning bolts on them. All of these are $7.50.

These socks by Ashidashi were an accidental find while looking for Nintendo socks, and I must say, they are pretty dang cool.

While all of these are ridiculously cool, I think that the last row contain the two most JP-fitting socks. The bottom left pair are of Super Mario tubes, and the other ones have half of a heart on each foot. When you put the two feet together, there is a whole heart! SORT OF HOW MY SHOES SPELL OUT LOVE!

*Ahem* So those might not show up in the shoe shots, but it’s a pretty cool concept, given MY AWESOME SHOES. (I really need to pull myself together).

Well, there you have my way-overboard-and-excessively-comprehensive run-down of possible choices for JP’s (sure to be) awesome-sauce wedding socks. I hope I haven’t broken your internets with the sheer number of socks and huge attack of cheesy-cool.

Any favorites or standouts? Who else is going to go the crazy-sock-route for or with their groom? Stand up, fellow sock-and-shoe-shot lovers!

Because I enjoy procrastinating with respect to making actual important wedding decisions, and I’ve made quite a few of those lately, I’m rewarding myself by researching something frivolous– britches, panties, lady-covers, drawers, underwear, undies, underclothes, delicates, skivvies, undergarments, knickers, what-have-you. All the same jazz– stuff to cover your goonie.

Even though I wore the super-hot Spanx and strapless bra combo for dress-shopping, I do not have to, nay, was told NOT to, wear holdy-in undies or a bra on the big day. I can wear whatever minimal non-granny underwears I want. Holler. (We’ll discuss boob issues later, for now we’re starting with the downstairs).

Floofly options abound when one starts searching for bridal knickers. For instance, I could go super-bridal…

The pony-tail pair on the right, aka the NEW! Bridal bikini from Victoria’s Secret, are cute, but I don’t think they’re made to be worn IRL. And, again, there’s that whole pony-look that I’m not really feeling. The underwear on the right, aka the The Lacie™ bridal thong just looks a little… itchy to me.

Since I’m a sucker for anything in the red-with-hearts genre, these next two pair scream at me a little bit.

The one on the left’s strange heart padding makes me a little nervous, and I’m sure the undies on the right would slowly slidddeee off my non-existant rear. I don’t have birthin’ hips, so boyshorts don’t tend to agree with my figure. Sad day.

After being generally “meh” over regular bridal or lovey underpants, I started thinking about what I really wanted to wear under that dress. I am a creature of habit, and so I kept coming back to my regular, everyday favorite, the VS Pink cotton v-string.

As strange as it sounds, I think I’ll end up wearing my everyday cotton undies under my glorious dress. Why? For one, they’re cotton. It’s going to be June. I’ll be wearing a whole lot of dress. Let’s just say that I would rather not have hot and slippery undies to deal with. They’re comfortable, and I like them. So there. None of the current colors really “wow” me, so I’ll probably just wait until a more interesting pattern comes out, and buy a brand new “wedding” pair.

Am I totally boring? Is anybody else wearing more everyday underwear under their dress? Does the thought of anything not-cotton under a hot dress make your skin crawl? What underpants are you wearing under your dress?