Pro Pics, Part 8: Introductions & First Dance

So, are you guys thinking the pro pic series must be coming to an end?

Well, if you are... you're wrong. I figured it out last night, and I still have seven more "installments" to do. That means a whole 'nother week of pro pics. Hopefully you're not sick of seeing them.

Our reception started at 5:30 p.m., beginning with our cocktail hour. Thanks to our amazing photographers and their efficiency, we remained on schedule throughout the break between the ceremony and reception, and we actually made it to the cocktail hour on time! We may have actually been a few minutes early. We told them from the very beginning that we wanted to be at our entire reception. We figured we're throwing this expensive party--we want to enjoy every minute of it with our guests!

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we did sneak out for a few minutes during dinner, which was a nice compromise with our photographers. We certainly weren't missing much since our guests were busy eating. Since we had done the receiving line at the church, there wasn't any pressure to go around and do table visits.

Anyway, at around 6:30 p.m., the DJ lined up the bridal party for introductions.

It's funny, I have no recollection of what song our parents entered to. The DJ had a suggestion for it, and I let him run with it. I guess I'll find out once we get our video, huh?

This was a mistake on the part of the DJ. As previously explained, my parents are divorced, but friendly. I wanted them to be introduced together. I explained to the DJ that they should be introduced with separate names.

My mom still has my dad's last name (she never changed it back). I wanted them introduced as "Charles Lastname & Cynthia Lastname" instead of "Charles & Cynthia Lastname" (which implies they're still married). I guess the DJ didn't understand what I was saying, because he called them completely separately, and made them walk out by themselves. I hated that, but there was obviously nothing I could do to fix it. In the grand scheme of things, not a big deal.

Then the song changed for our bridal party. Prior to our final meeting with the DJ, we had problems coming up with a song for bridal party introductions. But then we got the same request from 3-4 different bridal party members. These guys wanted to come out to "Sexyback!" So that was that. The decision was made for us.

Carrie and Jay were very into it. As you can probably imagine, they were two of the people who had specifically requested "Sexyback." :)

Then it was our turn. We were introduced to "Signed, Sealed, Delivered." We liked that it had a nice beat to it. And obviously the words make sense. Adding to all of that, we're big Barack Obama fans and his campaign played the song pretty regularly throughout the primary season. So it was our subtle nod to Barack, too. ;)

We went right into our first dance to "I'll Always Be Right There" by Bryan Adams.

Ring shots.

Loved my dress so much!

A twirl! Every girl loves twirling in a big dress. :)

Our bridal party was apparently amused by the twirl, judging by this photo. Love the look on Carrie's face.

More to come!

Help a girl out

We are so screwed.

We met with our DJ almost two weeks ago now. At that meeting, we were supposed to be solidifying details. Only problem was that Michael and I? We had nothing solidified. Sure, we were able to give a pretty good idea about what type of music we wanted played at the wedding. And during cocktail and dinner hour. We told him about our first dance, and we gave him the order of introductions for our parents and bridal party. Spelled out names. Gave him phonetic pronunciations.

All of that? Fantastic.

But then there's the other stuff. You know, all of those things you need to pick music for. He gave us suggestions, but most of them were songs that EVERYBODY uses, and we're not really into things that EVERYBODY does.

And here we are, 18 days away from the wedding, and we still have not figured out this crap. So I turn to you, my wonderful readers... we need help.

Here is what we still need:

- Bridal party introduction song
- Our introduction song
- Anniversary dance songs (two of them)
- Bouquet toss song (something for the girls)
- Garter removal song (something sexy and fun)
- Garter toss song (something for the guys)
- Garter replacement song (we're only doing the "garter replacement" if it just so happens that the girl who catches the bouquet knows/is dating the guy who catches the garter)
- Bouquet/garter dance song (we will dance, as will the couple who caught the bouquet/garter--again, only if they happen to be a couple)
- Cake cutting song
- Father/daughter song
- Mother/son song

Thankfully, I think that's it. Wait... THAT'S IT?? Who am I kidding. That is a lot of stuff right there. And since we are horrendously bad at making decisions, this is torture.

A couple of comments on the above:

Intros: We have some ideas for these, but aren't totally sold. Michael likes the song from "The Departed" as a possibility for the bridal party. It's called "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" and is mostly instrumental. An upbeat Irish-sounding song. Even though we're not really Irish (I have a little in me, but not much). For our intro, I had thought of possibly using "All You Need is Love" by The Beatles, but when we met with the DJ, he seemed to be encouraging something with a faster beat. I also thought of "Now That We've Found Love" (think the end of the movie Hitch), but that doesn't seem quite right, either. I love "Jump on it" (used on Fresh Prince), but it might be something that's more fun to play during the dance music than for the intros (Michael can do a mean "Carlton dance," haha). HELP!

Anniversary Dance: Our DJ said he likes to use songs that talk about years passing, etc. He suggested "Through the Years" by Kenny Rogers and some other song I've never heard of. To be honest, this isn't a high priority... I'm ready to tell the DJ to use whatever he wants. But if anyone out there has any ideas that might be more unique... let me know. I do like Vanessa Williams' "Oh How the Years Go By" so we might use that as one of them.

Bouquet/Garter Songs: All of these will be pretty short... really they'll just be snippets of songs. We want fun songs.

Cake Cutting: We're just indecisive. There are a lot of cute ones. "The Sweetest Thing" by U2 was my favorite to begin with, but then I was remembering the lyrics and I think he says "I'm losing you" over and over... that doesn't seem appropriate. "Sugar, Sugar" is fun and is a possibility... but may be a little too popular for us. Sarah McLachlan, "Your Love is Better than Ice Cream" is a cute possibility, too. WHY IS THIS SO HARD??

Father/Daughter: I asked my dad and he jokingly suggested, "Highway to Hell." So yeah, no help from him. I've thought of using the classic "My Girl" or Rascal Flatts "My Wish." Any suggestions out there?

Mother/Son: Michael will be dancing with his stepmom, so his situation is kind of the same as mine... nothing too mushy. Anyone have any ideas?

OK, people, I'm counting on you. Come through for me. Please.

Big Weekend

Lots of stuff going on this weekend. Well, for the first half of it, anyway.

Since we're on summer hours at work now, I got out at noon and ran a few errands. I came home and started baking--I made a couple loaves of banana bread to bring to Michael's sister's tomorrow.

Tomorrow morning, we're getting up early and driving 2.5 hours to visit with Michael's sister, our brother-in-law, and nephew. They are having a barbecue, so a lot of Michael's other family will be there as well (mom, dad, younger sister, possibly aunt, etc.). We'll hang out for several hours, then head back the 2.5 hours home. It's a long haul just to spend a few hours, but it's convenient since we don't have to worry about what to do with Tessa, and we get to be home in our own bed at night.

Once we get back, we are heading to my cousin Lindsay's house for ANOTHER barbecue, for her birthday. She is my matron of honor. I'm making her an awesome birthday cake... I will post pictures sometime this weekend. It's currently in the oven (I'm doing MORE baking!). I hope it turns out as well as I think it will. So we'll go and hang out over there, have more food, a few drinks, and celebrate her birthday. We're going to bring Tess with us since they just fenced in their backyard recently. She'll love running around back there. But we're a little concerned because they have a black lab... hopefully they'll get along. We'll see; we're going to give them a test run.

Tonight, we drove out for a meeting with our DJ to try to finalize a lot of the details for the reception. Unfortunately, we were largely unprepared because we can't make decisions. We have no idea what we're doing for the parent dances, intros, garter/bouquet tosses, or cake cutting... any of that. Really, the only one we had an answer for was the first dance. Oops. However, he gave us several suggestions, so now we kind of have something to go on. We're going to try to narrow some stuff down and make some choices this weekend.

I was happy to finally have a timeline worked out for the reception--to know when we do intros, first dance, toasts, etc. It's exciting to work out all of those little details.

Anyway, so the weekend has been busy so far, and will be crazy busy tomorrow. Sunday and Monday? We really have nothing going on. Yay! I'm excited to have some time to relax and catch up on some wedding-related things. I really need to get cracking on the rehearsal dinner invitations, as well as the morning-after brunch invites. Considering this crap is four weeks away, I don't think I can procrastinate any longer.

Enjoy your holiday weekend!

Prepping and Pampering

Tonight, I had another dress fitting. She wanted to check the hem again before she made any permanent changes to the dress (i.e. cutting!) and she also wanted to figure out the bustle. The first time I went, she said the dress really needed to be pressed to see the true length of it. So today, she made a few adjustments for the hem, and then showed me a couple of potential bustles. We're going with a three-point underbustle; I think it'll look nice. I go back on June 7 for my final fitting. Whoa!

Also tonight, Michael and I sat down and went over a little bit of music for the reception. We got a start, I guess, but it feels like we didn't really make any progress. Our DJ has an online planning system, so we were able to electronically go through his music and select songs for "priority," "additional," and "do not play." We also decided that we don't want to play boring jazz or classical music during cocktail hour and dinner, but instead just want to play songs that we like that just might not be ideal for dancing. So we wrote down a few ideas for that, too. We have a meeting with the DJ on Friday and the big things we need to figure out are all of the "special selections"--bridal party intro, our intro, first dance, father/daughter, mother/son, cake cutting, bouquet toss, and garter toss. The only one we have figured out for all of that? The first dance.

We're screwed.

Tomorrow we meet with the priest performing the ceremony to go over the nitty gritty details with him. Fortunately, the ceremony is one thing that I think we actually do have figured out already. Readings and songs have been selected, thank god. Well, there is one thing outstanding... we still need to ask our readers. Whoops. We should probably get on that, given that the wedding is 4.5 weeks away.

The other thing I have accomplished this week is to set up pre-wedding pampering! I made an appointment to have all of my bridesmaids, my mom, Michael's mom, and two out-of-town close friends (one of my mom's, one of Michael's mom's) to meet at a nail salon and all have manicure/pedicures. We found a salon that could accommodate all of us at once, their prices are reasonable ($35 total for both mani and pedi!), and they said they would pretty much shut the place down for us. They're still obligated to take any walk-ins that may come, but they're not going to schedule any other appointments during the time period we'll be there. Since this is all starting at 11:00 a.m. the day before the wedding, and we'll likely be there until around 2:00 p.m., I'm going to have lunch brought in for everybody (my treat). I guess this is sort of my version of "bridesmaids luncheon." It should be really fun, I'm excited for it.

32 days! That's all for now.

To party all night long!

We booked our DJ this week. We ended up going with Fingerlakes Entertainment. Nate, the owner, was the DJ at our friends' wedding last year--Dave and Lynsay's. We liked him well enough, and the price was very reasonable--$695 for 6 hours. Unfortunately, Nate is unavailable on the day of our wedding, but he was able to hook us up with another DJ, Shaun, who works with him. Shaun apparently normally works for WBER radio in Rochester. So we're all set there.

I had also checked into Showcase Sound, but knew I didn't want them the minute they called me. It was SO obvious the girl was reading from a script, which absolutely disgusted me. It's a freaking DJ service and they feel like their employees have to read from a SCRIPT? No thanks. Plus, they were more expensive than Fingerlakes.

So there you have it. Now we just have to start putting together "Play" and "Do Not Play" lists on the website.

We're booked for June 21, 2008!

Alright, it's official now... we're getting married on June 21, 2008.

I went today to sign the contract and drop off the deposit at Blue Heron Hills, our reception venue. I feel so much better now that it's done. I was nervous all weekend that something was going to happen and we were going to lose our date. At this point, it was just signing a contract for the date... we have to work out all of the details (food, drinks, etc.) at a later date.

I also mailed the deposit and the signed contract to our photographers this morning, so that should be all set, too.

During my lunch break, I called the church to see how we move forward to officially book our date (they have already penciled us in). Turns out we have to meet with the priest there (even though he won't be the one to marry us), but he is out the rest of the week. I have to e-mail him to see when he can meet with us and probably put some kind of deposit down to make sure the date will be ours. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it all works out... I don't like hurdles!

We are also ready to book our DJ, but I just have to wait until we actually catch each other to talk (we've played a little bit of phone tag).

I'll feel 100x better once these four things are all taken care of. These are the things that I think are most important. Then I can move on to less important things, like flowers, cake, and limos.

Michael and I bought a new HP laptop computer last week. We ordered it on Thursday night, and it's due to arrive at our house tomorrow... I can't wait! We have a desktop at home now, but it's hard because Michael and I both kind of wrestle over it each night. And our dog, Tess, hates to hang out in the den for some reason, so it's hard with her running all over the house causing lord knows what havoc while I'm on the computer. Now, with so much wedding planning research and do-it-yourself projects, I've been spending a lot more time on the computer, and will probably continue to. So the laptop will be convenient to have. We've been wanting one for a while and decided to just take the plunge and buy one.

Yesterday, we took a trip to Circuit City to purchase a laptop bag and a wireless mouse for the new computer. We figured we want/need these particular accessories right away. We thought we would be using gift cards we received, plus a little extra money, but... four rebates later, the two items will end up being completely free! Gotta love that! It made the selection during shopping that much easier. You can't argue with a price tag on the shelf that says "$-0.01"!! The bag was regularly $59.99, but there are two rebates, each for $30. So we'll get $60 back. The mouse was regularly $29.99, but there are two rebates for that, too, each for $15. So $30 back for that. Of course we have to wait for the rebates to process and the money to arrive (rebates really are so annoying), but hey. It'll work out for us in the long run.

I'm off to figure out what the hell to make for dinner.