43 Days to Go: Invitations - Now With Secret Spy Action!

Unless you happened to open our invitation near a Wood's lamp, in a skating rink, on Disney's Haunted Mansion ride, or some other place featuring black light, there was one part of it that was kept hidden to you.

It turns out that I'm spying on all of our guests. Or, tracking them, really. Because I learned from other brides, that one day, this would happen:
The guest who forgets to include their name, or whose writing is... difficult to decipher. I am inviting several doctors, so the latter is expected, right?

These RSVP's both came today. I was so excited! Time for my Spy Skillz!! Granted, I easily figured out who the top one was from, based on the cancellation location, and the fact that I recognize the handwriting from years of birthday and Christmas greetings. And I did eventually figure out the chicken scratch on the bottom card, too, it just took a few seconds.

Nevertheless, I was happy to get the chance to use my spy tools. During the invitation-making process, I got a pen that has invisible ink on one end, and a black light on the other end. I am trying to remember where I got the pen, but I'm having a brain freeze at the moment. It was a $2 pen that I bought from an online Chinese store. Hmm. I wonder if it has lead in it?

Any how, check out the pen at work:
Oh, yeah! Numbers 41 and 55 - you can't hide from me!!!

And for anyone keeping track: We've received about 25% of our RSVPs (our guests rock!) and we are at 83% acceptance rate. This is shaping up to be a big wedding, people. Bring your dancing shoes!

45 Days to Go: Excuses for Extraordinariness, and the Most Extra-Ordinary Experience of All Time

As the wedding draws ever nearer, I find myself taking a step back to get a look at the big picture of this whole planning process. This is mostly out of necessity - I have had a lot of discrete projects I've been working on, and now I need to figure out how everything actually fits together!

One thing that I have come to realize is that I am using the wedding as an excuse. Much as brides use the "you only get married once" excuse to buy crazy expensive dresses. That is something I swore I would not do. But, I guess I was referring only to the dress part. Because it turns out, the wedding has been an excuse for a LOT of things.

But, well, I think that they are all good things. Things like:

- Inviting (almost) all of the coolest people I know to a giant party
- Having said giant party in one of the most beautiful places on earth
- Spending hours learning a new craft (working with paper and Gocco!)
- Using the honeymoon to explore an entirely new part of the world, as well as testing the limits of my physical endurance.
- Going to the dentist
- Working out more and going to Boot Camp (starting next month!)
- Getting microdermabrasion
- Learning the names of Marc's relatives
- Finally getting fitted for a bra

See? All good things! And though many things require money, I don't feel guilty about that. At least not as guilty as I would about blowing several thousand on a dress.

And, just this past Monday, Marc and I had the chance to do one of the MOST amazing things I have ever done. And, people? I have been sky diving.

After many hours debating it (mostly in my head), we decided to sign up for the Wedding Ring Workshop. This was started by a British jeweler. A friend challenged him to help a couple make their own wedding rings. And it worked. And now the experience has reached the US! There are a handful of places across the country, and luckily one of those places was in Oakland.

So, Monday morning, Marc and I met up with Alba Urbina in her workshop to MAKE OUR WEDDING RINGS. With our own four hands. Well. Six hands, because we really couldn't do the whole thing alone.

Wanna see some pictures? You know you do. I posted a ton on our wedding page, but here are some highlights!!

Getting started. We wore leather aprons because we were about to play with fire.

The gold! I guess this is what happens to all that gold that people send in to those "Send us your gold" places... We were able to include a small shaving of one of Marc's grandfather's rings in each bowl of gold.

That's me with a blow torch! And precious metal!

Pouring the ingot. For some reason, this part made me think of Lord of the Rings.

Both of our ingots. I made Marc's ring, and he made mine.

Milling the ingots - stretching them out, basically, by rolling them through metal plates.

After a little milling, we'd anneal the metal so it didn't get too brittle during the stretching process. The gold would get red hot. It looked like a Hot Tamale.



After several rounds of milling and annealing, we put the stretched out ingot into a "half round" mold slot on the milling machine and ran that through a few times, until we ended up with the basic design of Marc's ring! Mine stayed squared, and had an impression made in the center with a brass plate.

We cut off one end, to make one flat surface. Here's Marc cutting mine. That's GOLD he's cutting. With gold saw dust!

Then we used a rawhide hammer to bang that bar into a ring shape! It took a lot of concentration, apparently, if you believe the look on my face. After it was in a ring shape, we cut the other end to get the ring to the right size.

Then we soldered the two ends together! There was a lot of flame involved in this whole process.

Next came a lot of sanding and polishing.

And, voila! We're done! A mere 8 hours later... Phew. Alba told us this process takes her about an hour, and that's when she's making several rings at a time!

Close up of the finished product! Marc's on the left, mine on the right.

Here's the wonderful Alba, right before one tricky part on Marc's ring. We ran into a few snags, but she has been doing this for 20 years, and didn't break a sweat (at least not that we saw!) and did some quick thinking. In the end, we ended up with two amazing and totally unique rings. I love them!!

This was not an inexpensive experience, but, as I've already established, I'm willing to use the wedding as an excuse! No regrets for this one, either!

49 Days to Go: 100 day, 100 hours check in

Well... Time for some accountability.

A few posts ago, I talked about my decision to attempt to do 100 hours of exercise in the 100 days leading up to the wedding. Now that more than (!!!) half that time has passed, how have I been doing?

Things started out okay. Then, I decided that I couldn't reasonably be expected to work out an hour a day on the days I work a 24 hour shift. That made things easier!

So far, I have logged 37 hours of exercise over the past 51 days. And, I worked 15 days. 37 + 15 = 52.

Woo-hoo! That means I'm an hour ahead of schedule!!!

I'm totally taking tomorrow off. Or going for a hike. Whichever seems more appealing when the morning arrives. And, next month? Boot Camp. For real. :)

51 Days to Go: And They're Off!

I wanted to post these pictures on Monday when I actually mailed out the invitations, but time got away from me!

Anyway, if you haven't already realized it by now: the invitations are out! Huzzah! I spent many, many, manymanymany hours assembling these things. Some parts were just so horrifically tedious that I didn't even bother taking pictures of the process.

But! I love the end result. Love. I love them so much that I contemplated buying cheap invitations to actually send out to people so that I could keep the ones I'd made. In the end, however, I did not experience too much separation anxiety once the time actually came to send them out into the world.

Of course, I did have to do a photo shoot first.
Here, Natty Gann gives the invitations her final inspection.

Close up of the wrap around labels - my work around in lieu of hand writing nigh on 100 addresses. It isn't "traditional" to put labels on the envelope , but the wrap around label is Martha Stewart sanctioned, and I do believe that in this day and age M. Stew trumps Emily Post. (I don't know why I just called her M. Stew, other than as a reference to shortening names like J. Lo. And cause Martha's all hip like that*)

The trek begins!

...

Anyone going to ask why he has a back pack on?

Anyone?

Because we had to hike to a post office box in the middle of a jungle!!!

Just kidding, it was actually in the middle of a parking lot.

We have the packs, because we were taking a training hike for our honeymoon. Ooh lala! Doesn't everyone want to have to take training hikes for their honeymoons?? I had a 15 pound weight in my backpack. Man is that heavy! Thus the training.

Empty box, no separation anxiety.

And, I know at least some invitations have found a new home because: A) a few people have told me they got them, and B)

RSVPs!!!!! Four of them! That, right there, made this whole thing seem real.

Once more people have received their invites, I'll go into a little detail about how they were made. And how I managed to create them for less than $2.00 a piece. Not counting postage, obviously, which cost $1.08 per invite. The USPS loves them some wedding invites!

If any of you care, the 4 RSVPs give us a 44% accept rate so far.

* While I admire and appreciate Martha Stewart's craft and decorating skills, I did have a minor hissy fit every time Marc suggested we register for something "Martha Stewart" brand at Macy's. I have a thing about using things with people's names all over them. I'm talking to you Emeril, Rachel Ray, Martha Stewart, etc.

57 Days to Go: The Weather

Sooo. Lake Tahoe. Totally beautiful? Yes. Great place to go relax/swim/boat in the summer? Yes. Fantastic place to go ski/snowboard/sled in the winter? Absolutely. Great place for an outdoor wedding in the fall? Eh... maybe?

Fall is my favorite season. I love the leaves changing color, the fall smells, the memory of going back to school (what can I say, I'm a nerd!)... Not to mention the fact that "fall" colors make for wonderful backdrops, as well as inspiration for flowers, dresses and other decorations.

Oooh, pretty! (Timber Wolf Creek would like you to know they own the rights to this picture.)

I love these bouquets.

Fall is the best! I especially love the weather -- the cool crisp air... which is such a relief after a long, hot summer.

So when it came time to choose a wedding date, my first thought was, roughly, "Fall!" We initially picked a "sometime in September through November" time frame. This was narrowed down to our actual wedding date by the fact that it was the only date available at my chosen venue. And, October is totally fall, right? So, fall weather. Awesome!

But. Somehow my brain seemed to glaze over the fact that Lake Tahoe is at 6225 feet elevation. It is an "alpine" lake. I'm not sure of the exact definition of "alpine", but I believe the it involves the word "cold" somehow.

See the snow in the mountains? Cold!

If you ask people who live in Tahoe what the weather is typically like in October, they tend to say something along the lines of: "I don't know!" Apparently October weather in Tahoe is unpredictable. Hot, mild, cold, snowing - it could be any of those!

A few weeks ago, I started to get a bit worried about this, so I scoured the web to find information about "typical" October weather. Weather Underground told me that the average high temperature in South Lake Tahoe in October is in the 60s. Phew. I breathed a sigh of relief with that one.

Then, today, I stumbled across another weather related website - Weather.com actually has a Wedding Planner that reviews 30 years worth of data for your wedding month. And, as I had seen before, the average high temperature for our wedding day is 65 degrees! Yay! And, in the past 30 years, 16-17 of the days have been sunny. Yay! It has only rained on 4-5 of the days. Yay!

But. The one thing I had neglected to look at previously was the average low temperature on our wedding day. The average low temperature for our wedding day is 26 degrees. Twenty. Six. That means that if I inadvertantly leave a cocktail outside at some point, I won't have to worry about ice melting. Because that is BELOW FREEZING.

Okay, so maybe not this cold.

But I am a little scared that people will have to dress like this:


During the ceremony time, it should be a balmy mid-60s, so I think it will be okay. But, if you are coming to the wedding: bring some warm clothes!!