I got this email from Mr. Butterfly just now.  He did all of the research and came up with the ideas all on his own!!!  *tear* 

Italicized notes are mine, and I took off all the personal info, but everything else was done by Mr. Butterfly. 

I was thinking about groomsmen gifts and I thought maybe we try something a little more creative? First, each groomsmen would get one of those silver plated business card case holders with their full name on it, like below:

This is $20.95 which includes the cost of engraving.

Then, when they open up the case, they each find a set of personalized business cards with their role in the wedding. The design of each business card would reflect what they do or their personality. So for example,

 
Matt is in accounting.

 
John likes cars.

We could even play with the title…like Chief Executive Groomsman, or Senior Vice President of Ushering

100 cards costs $5.95 to print. So total groomsman gift would be under $30.

What do you think?

Please comment on weddingbee!!

One thing I’ve learned from my wedding planning so far:  things are never as easy as they seem.

For someone who is having a lot of out-of-town guests, I can’t seem to fill the 10 rooms required for group rates.  Luckily, most hotels will give you some time to cancel the un-booked rooms prior to the wedding so that you don’t have to pay for empty rooms.  Since most of my OOT guests will be Korean, or at least comfortable in a Korean setting, I wanted to set them up at a hotel on 32nd street.  Their rates are very reasonable and it is right next door to the rehearsal dinner venue.  How convenient!  All I had to do was call them and book 10 rooms.

What a nightmare it turned out to be!  First, I told J to call them because this was a task I had assigned to him.  He called me back to say that the lady who was in charge of group sales wanted us to call in everyone’s reservations.  That didn’t make sense at all, so I called her.

Now, I understand that contracts need to be set and signed prior to people calling in their reservations, and I even understand that they may not be as flexible as I want them to be.  I was willing to put up with all of the inconveniences of pre-booking a block of rooms, but what I was not going to do was put up with this lady’s attitude.  Talk about bitchy!!!

So, even though the contract sounded reasonable, I basically told her that she will not be getting my business and hung up on her.  I’m sorry – I dont expect anyone to kiss my butt or anything, but I do expect a little bit of courtesy!

I ended up going with the Avalon Hotel, which is also on 32nd street.  They got pretty good reviews, and the sales lady was very helpful and prompt.  We ended up getting 5 junior suites and 5 regular rooms, for the price of $259 and $229 respectively.  Not too bad considering its Manhattan close to the holiday season.

Anyway, my point was this:  all the things that I thought would be easy during the wedding planning process has tried my patience, whereas all the of things that I thought would be difficult have been smooth sailing.  I guess things never turn out the way you’d think, huh?

I have been searching high and low for the perfect wedding band.  I will be wearing my engagement ring and my wedding band on different hands.  I think a lot of people do this now because their e-rings are a unique shape.

Anyway, as always, I went to Tiffany’s for fun.  I found this ring, called the Jazz, and it was actually very pretty.

I dont know if you can see it, but the diamonds are graduated in size – meaning they are larger in the center.

We found Mr. Butterfly’s wedding band months ago.  Since it will be a plain platinum band, we decided to buy it at Tiffany’s.  Platinum is pretty much the same price anywhere, so why not?  Mr. Butterfly really liked the Lucida plain band 4.5mm – which seems to be a popular contender these days.  However, this last time around, I made him try on the 6mm and I like it better.  And since I like it better, that’s what he’ll get.  Hahahaha.    Seriously, it looked much better on his hand.

Since Mr. Butterfly’s ring would be a Lucida, he thought that the Lucida wedding band for me would be nice, since they will “match”.

Personally, I am not a big fan of channel setting so I passed on this option.  It is beautiful, but I’m looking for something a little more unique. 

Then we went to Fortunoff to look at some more, and I found 2 rings there that I liked.  Unfortunately, I cannot find pictures of them anywhere online.  Do you think if I go back, they’ll let me take pictures of it on my hand?  I think they may be a bit protective about that.  Hmmmmm…..

As some of you long time readers may know, my mom bought J’s tux for the wedding.  It was part of the engagement gift from my family to him.  Well, we got the 2 button Calvin Klein tux and it took us about 2 months to actually get it shipped from Houston to NY.  Don’t ask – all I know is I am not using Men’s Wearhouse for my wedding.

Anyway, we had the tux, but we didn’t have the vest and the tie to go with it.  So this past weekend, we went shopping.  Now, I didn’t know this, but apparently, it is very hard to find a store that sells tuxedo vests unless you go to a formal wear store.  However, since this is J’s own tux that he will wear for a long time, we decided to try the high end stores first. 

We must have gone to about 4 different stores only to be told that no one sells vests and ties for tuxedos.  Finally, we went to Bergdorf Goodman.  They did have vests but only in black, white and gray.  I was looking for champagne or at least beige.  At this point, I had pretty much given up.  Then we went to Barneys.  BINGO!  We found the champagne vest and several matching ties and bowties.  If you are looking for different colored vests for your groom, I highly suggest Barneys.  They have about 7 or 8 different colors and patterns for your vests and a ton of matching ties. 

After we got home, J couldn’t wait to try on the whole thing.  He didn’t want me to post his face, so here is J sans face.

See my dog admiring him?  How cute. 

a close up

Now all we have to do is find some way to make J stand out from his groomsmen.  I was thinking solid champagne tie and black vests.  What do you think?

On my wedding day, I will be taking pictures with the bridal party in the West Village area.  Since my venue is on 5th Avenue, near Washington Square Park, I wanted to capture the park as well as some of the nicer and quaint streets of the West Village.  My only problem?  Transportation.

Since it is my wedding day, I wanted to rent a nice limo.  But how do I fit in the bride, groom, 3 groomsmen, 2 ushers, 3 bridesmaids, 1 attendee, 2 photographers and 2 videographers into one car? 

Well, I’ve come up with 2 options.  Option 1 is to have a nice sedan or a very small limo for me and J, and then stick everyone else in a van. 

Option 2 is to get one of these….

Hummer


Cadillac Escalade

I’m seriously leaning towards Option 2. 

Ever since I started planning my wedding, my friend and I have been discussing what to give out for favors.  Actually, we started discussing this before I was engaged.  Yeah – I was one of those who started planning my wedding before the ring. 

Anyway, just like invitations, there are so many choices when it comes to favors.  Should I get something edible?  Something people will actually use?  How about a donation to a charity in their name?  Or, combine the favor and place cards into one, and put the place cards in a small frame.  I liked all of these ideas, but none of them really stood out to me. 

Then I started reading about personalized match boxes, and how popular they are with the guests on some of the knot bios.  Every time I go to a restaurant, if they have a match box (not a match book), I will take a handful.  I love match boxes.  I ran the idea by J, and he thought it was a great idea except for one thing.  He thought that match boxes alone were not enough.  So we decided to give away the match boxes with a personalized candle tin – that way, they “go” together.

So, onto researching prices.  I think Ms. Spider is rubbing off on me, because I created a simple comparison chart too!!  I need at least 200 match boxes – 2 per guest plus some extras for me to keep.  Then I need at least 100 candles – 1 per guest plus some extras again. 

Party Innovations
200 match boxes for $113.50 = $0.57 per box

Weddingthings
200 match boxes for $150 = $0.75 per box

Party Block
200 match boxes for $99.80 = $0.50 per box

4imprint
150 candle tins (minimum order) for $347.50 = $2.32 per tin

Favor Online
100 candle tins for $149.00 (includes 10 cent charge per candle for personalized image) = $1.49 per tin

So, my final decision?  100 candles from Favor Online plus 200 match boxes from Party Block for a total price of $2.49 per guest (1 candle and 2 boxes).  With shipping charges the price goes up to $2.68 per guest, but all in all, I think its a fantastic price!!

I will buy the match books and the candles, along with organza bags and some ribbon – and its a DIY project that even I can do!  Favor Online also has an option to include organza bags for 35 cents each to hold the candles.  I just have to call and find out if its big enough for me to stick two match books in it as well.

One more thing checked off from my list!  Yay!

I really really wanted to include a hand-drawn map into our invitation inserts, but I didnt want to pay extra for the design of it because I’m cheap!  Haha.  No, I’m not cheap, but I had already paid extra to print my invitations in thermography and I didn’t want to add on other charges. 

So, I searched weddingbee because I vaguely remember a blog or two about maps.  And what do you know…..Mrs. Firefly had posted this and it totally worked!!

My final product.  I’m so proud.  *tear*

Invitations – check
Florist – check
Pae Baek (korean tea ceremony) – check
Rehearsal Dinner – check
Honeymoon – check
Hair Trial – check

BM dresses – almost check
Hotel block for OOT guests – almost check

Phew!  Those are all things I’ve done in the last month!  I now have a little over 4 months left (eeeek!!) and every piece is starting to fall into place.

Remarkably, when I checked my To-Do list from The Knot, I am right on schedule!!  Woohoo!!!!

This weekend, J and I are going shopping for my wedding band!!  Wedding planning has been fun lately!  I love it when things fall into place! 

I finally booked our rehearsal dinner venue this weekend.  I kinda had to, since the information is going out with our invitations.  When I first started planning this wedding, I thought planning a rehearsal dinner would be probably the easiest part of the entire process.  Oh, how wrong I was.

Here are some of the issues that I had to deal with.

1.  Who pays?  I won’t get into the details here, but it ended with my future MIL graciously offering to pay for this dinner.

2.  What kind of food?  Well, if my FMIL is paying, then we should do a Chinese banquet because that’s what she wanted, right?  But most of the people coming are Korean.  So we settled on American.  Until we couldn’t find a suitable restaurant – especially since we don’t know how many people will be attending.  So we were back at square one.  Finally, J made the executive decision and went with Korean.

3.  Who is invited?  I know my parents are going to want to invite everyone on their guest list who is coming to the wedding.  I think that’s like half of the guest list.  Great.  How do I cut this list down?  Maybe I should invite just the family and the bridal party?  My parents would never go for that.  Then the FMIL wanted to invite all of her friend who were NOT invited to the wedding because she wanted them to be a part of the wedding in some form.  Well, that didn’t go over very well with me.  We are still working out the details, but right now it looks like all family, bridal party and OOT guests will be invited.  How sad – it will be as big as the wedding itself. 

4.  Which restaurant?  I wanted a private room at a Korean restaurant, but apparently private rooms don’t exist in Manhattan.  So we are just going with Kum Gang San on 32nd street.  Its big enough to hold the number of people I expect to have, they are flexible and I dont need a strict reservation, and they have decent food and service.  The only downside?  They asked that we come at 5:30 and leave by 7:30.  Booo.  But at least this way, it will be casual. 

You know, this all seems like a lot of work for one little dinner.  

Everyone who knows me knows that I love Disney.  As fate would have it, I am marrying a man who works for Disney.  Go figure. 

Over the 4th of July, J and I went to Disney World.  While I was there, I decided to ask about weddings.  I mean, c’mon!  What better way to feel like a princess on your wedding day than to actually be a princess? 

Believe it or not, weddings at Disney World are not that far fetched from normal weddings.  You still have your ceremony, your reception, the dancing, etc.  The only difference is that you can choose to have your reception inside Disney World.  Or you can hold the reception in one of the Disney resorts.  And there is still dancing, like any other wedding.  Except that you can choose to dance with Mickey Mouse.  And instead of a limo, you can choose to have a Cinderella-style pumpkin shaped, horse drawn coach.  Its practically normal!

I love this picture with the Magic Kingdom in the background.  *sigh*

Isn’t he handsome?

Check out their site if you have the time.  They have pictures from real weddings too!  Just keep in mind that wedding at Disney are VERY pricey.