In honor of Mother’s Day this Sunday, this post is dedicated to my mom. I honestly have no idea how I could plan this wedding without her. She has done SO much already. She’s been there every step of the way. Here’s why I think she’s the best mother-of-the-bride in the entire world:

-She’s made countless phone calls to vendors and our wedding planner (initial inquiries, follow up phone calls, etc.)
-She met with various vendors, including photographers and my florist and cake baker (and she found our fantastic photographer at a bridal show!)
-She’s organized tons of information, notes and appointments. The woman has three wedding-planning binders—enough said!
-She’s created mock-ups of possible programs, memorial candles, favors and table cards, and will soon be working on escort cards.
-She’s met with my wedding planner on my behalf several times.
-She’s been there with me at ALL of my appointments—cake tasting, food tasting, hair trial, florist appointment and so on—and asked any questions that need to be asked.
-She’s found addresses for our invitations, and she’s heading up sending the invites out and tracking responses.
-She’s updated the budget, to-do list and guest list on theknot.com.
-She’s given me emotional support when I’ve gotten stressed and overwhelmed…

…and much, much more. (Here she is below with my nephew—her grandson—at his 3rd birthday party.)

I know that soon she will have to take a little bit of a break from wedding planning—she’s having her second knee replacement surgery at the end of May (she had her first knee done last June). She needs to do this to get healthy so she can enjoy life without pain—she’s lived with it for too many years (she has arthritis). I’m sad that I won’t be there for Mother’s Day this weekend or for her surgery, but she knows that my thoughts will be only with her both those days. Thanks, Mom, for always being there for me, helping me and supporting me. Thank you for everything you’ve done for the wedding—and always!

I also want to give a shout-out to all the other mothers in my life—my mother-in-law-to-be, my girlfriends with children, my sister-in-law. Your dedication and love for your children is inspiring, and I hope that one day I’ll be as good a mother as you all are!

A few weeks ago, I took the subway into Manhattan at some ungodly hour on a Saturday morning to meet my mother at Kleinfeld Bridal, where I purchased my wedding gown, for my first fitting. I was so nervous about putting my dress on again: Would I still like the style? Would it be as flattering as I remembered it? When my seamstress came out with my dress in her hand, I was beaming. I still loved it and I couldn’t wait to put it on.

I pulled on my spanx, added my corset that I last wore to my high school prom, slipped on my heels, and then stepped into my dress. It was way too big, but as my seamstress nipped and tucked, I felt good in it. It gave me that nice feminine shape I had when I first tried it on…except I had this unappealing bump in the tummy area. It wasn’t huge, but it looked like I was pregnant with half a baby.

“Is there anything that can be done to fix this?” I asked my seamstress as I pointed to my protruding belly.

“Diet and exercise,” she replied.

My two least favorite words in the world. My heart sunk. I felt the tears coming, but I choked them back. I did not want to look pregnant, even if it was only partially, on my wedding day. I had to give the illusion of thinness even if I’m one chocolate chip cookie away from popping through my dress.

While apartment hunting in Forest Hills, Queens, Paul and I found a place called Magic Corsets. That’s exactly what I needed: a corset and some magic. We went inside to find a bevy of sexy getups and bachelorette party-worthy accoutrements (penis pasta, anyone?). They also had a huge selection of waist-cinchers. I told the women that I was looking for a corset that sucked me in well below my belly button–where my current cincher was cutting off, rendering it useless–and my bra size, 36B.

The woman behind the counter said, “No, no, you’re a 34B,” and put her hand around my ribcage to verify. She asked me if I was shy. “No, not really,” I replied. Suddenly, I was topless in her presence in the dressing room. I stretched my arm across my chest to cover up. “I thought you weren’t shy!” the woman exclaimed. “I guess I am!”

I tried on the corset, and it did cover up my problem area, but I couldn’t tell if it was tight enough to make my stomach appear flat, or, at the very least, not with child.

I went to fitting number two on my lunch break on Tuesday. I changed into my spanx and corset at work. I could barely sit at my desk without being in immense pain, but it was all worth it. When I tried my dress on again, I looked, dare I say, damn good. So good, in fact, I elected not to have a third fitting. I take my dress home in two weeks!

Countdown to the wedding: 41 days

See this mess? This is what Aaron and I did to the living room in his apartment today. No, we weren’t having a fight. We decided to get a head start on the moving process by packing up a few boxes of things to ship back to California. So we both went through our personal possessions, made a pile of stuff to donate to charity, and threw away at least three bags of garbage.

Unfortunately, the stuff we did decide to keep never made it into boxes. So now it will sit on the floor of Aaron’s apartment until one of us gets the motivation to pack it up. As daunting as it is to see that huge pile of clothing, books, wedding gifts, and a carefully archived set of every copy of Blueprint magazine ever published (don’t ask), it feels good to know that we got rid of a bunch of things that we won’t be needing as we begin married life in California.

We’ve also applied this amped-up version of Spring Cleaning to the wedding planning process. With only 41 days to go, there’s no longer time to waffle about details: we’ve got to focus on the stuff that is imperative and not waste time with the stuff that’s not as important. I feel a little guilty that I care more about solidifying things at this point than I do about savoring the decision making process, but it’s what I need to do in order to keep from going insane.

I especially need to remember this when planning out the ceremony. I tend to be a little obsessive when it comes to ceremony details, simply because it’s the most solemn and religious part of the wedding and I really want it to be touching and meaningful. But I am finding it difficult to live up to my initial plans, like all of the ways I was going to incorporate symbols to honor our Hispanic, Scottish, and Italian heritages. Heritage-specific symbols? I’ll be happy if Aaron shows up to the altar on time (and I’m sure he will ☺).

Right now, our first priority needs to be the guest list and making sure we can get an accurate headcount well in advance of our vendors’ deadlines. My friend Sophie had a great idea that we still might try to implement: in order to predict how many people will likely attend you wedding, you assign a probability from 0 to 1 to each guest based on how likely you think it is that they will come. Then you add up the probabilities and arrive at a number that’s supposed to be pretty accurate.

The problem is that we’ve received many “yes” responses from people who we though might not be able to make it (although we’re so glad they’re coming!) and a few “no’s” from people who we though would definitely attend, so I’m not sure I could accurately assign a probability to a good portion of the guest list. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens, and pack a few of those boxes in the meantime.

When I first thought about the food for my wedding, I figured it’d be just OK—I would have been fine with a nice plate of chicken, steak, mashed potatoes and green beans. I’ve never been one of those brides who is obsessed with having fancy, gourmet food. It’s just not the most important thing for me. I’d rather spend that money on things like décor, flowers and, well, the bar. Plus, when we first got engaged, I got our wedding hall’s food menu and it didn’t have overly fancy things listed—just your regular marinated chicken, filet mignon and so on.

But as it turns out, our wedding hall hired a new chef, and he gussied up the menu a bit. I got the new menu in my hands just a few weeks before our trip to Indiana in mid-April. I looked through it and realized that there was some yummy-sounding stuff on there, like citrus ginger grilled chicken and chipotle-marinated chicken. So for our tasting (tastings are so fun, BTW!), we decided to try the ginger chicken, chicken in wine sauce, chipotle-marinated chicken and if I remember correctly, chicken in a brandy sauce. As for beef, we tried steak kabobs and Steak Diane. At first, I thought kabobs would be too casual—too outdoor barbecue-ish. But my parents and wedding planner convinced me that they would be fine and would lend some color (the kabobs have green and red peppers, onions, tomatoes and mushrooms on them) and uniqueness to the plate. Plus, the kabobs tasted delicious! They had some sort of sweet, honey-based marinade on them, and I loved it. I was sold. We also decided on the chicken in white wine sauce. It was pretty flavorful, too, and we thought it paired well with the kabob. It was covered with—you guessed it—a white wine sauce, which had some onions and tomatoes in it.

The chicken and beef dishes we chose will be served on the same plate—both in small portions. We decided to do two on one plate because it’d be easier on all of us if we didn’t have to keep track of which of our guests want chicken and which want beef. The entrées will be served with whipped potatoes, green beans, salad and rolls. Since this is a pretty heavy meal, we’ll probably go light on food during the cocktail hour. Most likely, we’ll just serve some trays of cheese and crackers, veggies or fruit, maybe crab dip with crackers.

After dinner, we’ll serve cake, of course. While we were in Indiana, Justin, my mom and I did a tasting with our baker. She brought four flavors for us to try—chocolate with caramel, vanilla with raspberry swirls, cherry (cherry flavored cake with bits of cherry) and vanilla with strawberry swirls. (See our plates filled up below.) We absolutely loved the chocolate with caramel so we’re going with that for the bottom (and biggest) layer. We also loved the vanilla with raspberry swirls—the raspberries were sooo fresh and delicious (and I don’t even really like raspberries)! So we’re using that for the middle layer. And we’re actually going with a flavor we didn’t try for our top layer. Justin and I both like hazelnut, and we felt that the cakes we sampled were yummy enough, so we’re trusting that the hazelnut will be good. Did I mention tastings are great?

Before I left for college each year at the crack of dawn (when my dad insisted on leaving only to hit horrendous morning rush hour traffic in Hartford, Connecticut), Paul would come over and figure out how best to position my belongings in my parents’ SUV so that everything I needed to take with me would fit–and so my dad could kind of see out the back window as he drove. And somehow, Paul would always manage to get my refrigerator, desktop computer, mountains of clothes, and little school supplies into the trunk. I knew he was a Tetris champ, but I didn’t realize he could apply that talent in the real world.

Making the seating chart for the wedding requires a similar skill set. Now that we have all of our RSVPs, except for two, but they had a baby days ago so we’re cutting them a little slack, it’s time for me to put the puzzle together: There are refrigerators (families of five that need to stay together), mountains of clothes (two full tables’ worth of people that should be seated near each other), and little school supplies (couples who won’t know anyone else there). Finding a way they all fit together has been trying, especially with requests like, “I just ran into Joe on the street! Hadn’t seen him in a while. Can I sit with him at your wedding?”

Despite that, I think I’ve managed to work it out. Some tables just came together on their own, like Paul’s 11 work friends, my mom’s nine work friends, and Paul’s dad’s family of 12. Others were not as logical.

One table is going to mix the five people from my dad’s family that are coming with the five people from my maternal grandfather’s family that are coming. Not ideal since those sets of families probably haven’t seen each other since my parents’ wedding 26 years ago, but they’ll have their respective families with them, so it’ll be fine.

I had heard that there should be a singles table where everyone sitting there is dateless so they don’t have to go far to mingle. I’m all for hooking up friends, but I know I’d feel like a misfit if I discovered I had been seated only with those who are also unattached. So I split ‘em up and mixed in some couples, but still considered potential matches and placed ‘em at the same tables.

For other tables, I’ve conjured up tenuous links in my head to justify placing them together. For instance, one of my college a cappella friend’s fiance’s is best friends with another one of my college friends, who went to the same high school as one of my junior high school friends, whose dad is the same profession as my elementary school friend’s fiance. That works, right?

And if not, it’ll just be more encouragement for them to get up and dance.

Countdown to the wedding: 47 days

I’m pretty good at putting together an outfit, and when it comes to makeup, I’m almost a pro. But if I try to do anything with my hair beyond putting it in a ponytail, I get a terrible mental block. I don’t know if it’s my problem or my hair’s problem. I am fairly uncoordinated when it comes to juggling brushes, blow driers, and various styling products. On the other hand, my hair is a special kind of difficult: thin strands but lots of it, so it falls flat at the first sign of humidity. It’s to the point where if I could choose one type of professional to have near me at all times, I’d take the hairdresser faster than you can say “cowlick.”

Luckily, I will not be styling my own hair for the wedding. Instead, I will be in the competent hands of Amber Lopez of DiModa Salon in San Jose, who has been expertly coiffing the women in my family since they moved to Los Gatos. She and a few of the other stylists in the salon will be working on my entire bridal party the day of the wedding.

I have a trial run with Amber a few days after Aaron and I move back (gulp), during which Amber will give me a last-minute cut and color and help me figure out what on earth to do with the stuff on top of my head. My veil is extremely long and will likely be placed pretty far forward, so that’s something to keep in mind. I also think we will need to choose a style that creates a fair amount of volume near the top of my hairline, the area which most often tends to fall flat and make my face look rounder that it actually is. My mom bought a bunch of little do-dads that we can play around with, so we’ll also need to decide if we are going to use those.

The image I’ve included with this post is pretty close to what I imagine the style will ultimately look like. That being said, I trust Amber completely, and if she told me that the best thing to do would be to shave my head and start from scratch, I’d do it in a second. Let’s hope that it doesn’t come to that.

Image courtesy of www.theknot.com

So there’s still so much to tell about Justin and I’s recent wedding-planning trip to Indiana! This week, I’m going to focus on the flowers and décor.

The first day of the visit, my mom, maid of honor and I visited my florist, Jerry Schooley at The Station Floral Design Studio (stationfloral.com). My wedding planner came, too, to help explain my vision and give suggestions (side note: one good thing about having a wedding in a semi-small town is that she has a relationship with all of the vendors you use. Very helpful!). I love my florist…I totally trust his style and am confident he’ll do a great job and help bring my vision of a modern candlelit ballroom to life. Anyway, about the flowers I chose: I’m obsessed with hydrangeas (they are so lush and beautiful) so of course I had to have them in my wedding. They cost $13-$15 a stem, which sounds like a lot, but we are going to use them in the ceremony and then reuse them at the reception. Plus, hydrangea stems have big blooms, so a little goes a long way. At the ceremony site, we’ll put green- and cream-colored hydrangea bouquets on pedestals on each side of the beginning of the aisle. We’ll also have simple aisle decorations—a plum-colored dahlia attached to a ribbon on every few rows of chairs. I didn’t want to go overboard with decorations at the ceremony because it’s going to (hopefully) be outside so I don’t want to overshadow the natural beauty of the site (plus, I want to save money!).

Next, we headed to my wedding planner’s office to talk about reception décor. We took stock of the decisions we’d made at the florist’s and talked about other decorations we need. We decided that we’ll have three different kinds of centerpieces—six of the tables will have one kind, six tables will have another type and six tables will have yet another type (for a total of 18 tables). Here’s a short description of each:

1) Dahlias and the hydrangeas from the ceremony will be in square-shaped vases of three different heights (similar to the vase below). The vases will be placed on top of mirrors and surrounded by lots of votives. My wedding planner raved about this set-up—she’s used something similar in a wedding before, and she says the candlelight reflects off of the water in the vases and the whole thing just looks gorgeous.

2) I really wanted some tall centerpieces, so I’m going to use tall tube-shaped vases that my wedding planner has (see picture of a similar vase below). I think they’ll look great with the stalk of dahlias we’re going to put inside them.

3) Lastly, we’ll use a very short, large, square glass vase (more like a square bowl, actually) with flower blooms and candles floating in water.

Also, a smattering of flower petals will be sprinkled on all of the tables. I’m really happy about our choices…I think they are simple but elegant. I can’t wait to see them all together and the room set up on our wedding day.

Photos courtesy of www.awsd.co.uk and www.chaircoversido.com.

When I was asked to be a flower girl, the thing I most looked forward to about my first wedding wasn’t getting to wear a pretty pink dress, walking down the aisle, or posing for photos (even though I was such a ham. Okay, still am): I was most excited about trying to catch the bouquet when the bride threw it.

So when bouquet tossing time came, I was prepared. I made sure I was front and center, and I wished as hard as I could that my cousin would throw it to me. She turned around. The band leader counted down, and suddenly the bouquet was in the air. I watched it carefully and, amazingly, it fell into my arms! I remember feeling the tulle that the stems were wrapped in touching my arms…and then scratching my arms. The bridesmaid standing next to me was pulling the bouquet away from me. I tried to hold on, but it was too late. She had full possession and people were cheering for her.

I was devastated. I tried to tell my parents that I had really caught it, but they assured me I hadn’t (the wedding video showed otherwise!).

Then came the garter toss, followed by some 20-something guy who had caught the garter sliding it up that evil bridesmaid’s leg. My mom said it was a good thing she caught the bouquet, and not me, because it wouldn’t have been okay for him to slide that on my leg.

Ever since then, I’ve had a strange relationship with bouquet tosses.

I originally wanted to invite all the kids at my wedding to the dance floor to try and catch it. That way, it wouldn’t be about singling out the single girls; it’d be about kids winning a prize! While I thought the idea was adorable, people I told it to did not, mainly because there will be just six kids at the wedding, which, apparently, is not much of a contest.

So now I don’t know whether to have one at all. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to do the garter toss. I’ll have my spanx on, and having Paul reveal my thigh-hugging undergarments to a room full of people is not my idea of a good time. Plus, I probably won’t wear a garter in the first place.

But I think it’d be fun to throw the bouquet. I’m sure a lot of my friends are morally opposed to the idea of fighting over flowers for the “honor” of being the next woman to get married, but I wouldn’t want to deny that fun should any of them want to partake. I know I would have jumped at the chance to try my luck again if I attended another wedding with a bouquet toss.

But is it strange to toss the bouquet and not the garter?

Countdown to the wedding: 55 days

The day before the wedding is going to be extremely busy: the last bridesmaid will arrive in town, we have our rehearsal at 5 PM at the church, followed by the rehearsal dinner, followed by a dessert reception for guests who want to touch base before the wedding. Aaron’s family is graciously hosting the rehearsal dinner and dessert reception, during which we will also have the slideshow. Our videographer, Andy, showed us the final version, and it looks awesome!

Luckily for us, the rehearsal dinner and the dessert reception will be in the same spot: The Toll House Hotel. This means that we don’t have to rush around between locations in order to get to everything on time. The Toll House’s restaurant, Three Degrees, is a gorgeously appointed venue with a menu of traditional American steakhouse fare. When we finish, we just walk a few feet to the patio courtyard, and we will have arrived at the dessert reception.

I, of course, am inexplicably fixating on a random detail: what to wear to these events. My outfit needs to be demure enough to wear to the church rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, but I also want to wear something fun when I see my friends and family at the dessert reception. By “fun,” I mean something that will let me stand out from the crowd, i.e., not a black dress, which is basically the only kind of dress I own.

Ideally, I’d like to find a tailored dress in a really pretty, deep jewel tone. I keep thinking back to Janay’s wedding, where one of her bridesmaids wore a strapless knee-length dress in this to-die-for purple to one of the wedding events; I wish I had asked her where she bought it!

Oh, and that’s another thing: I have to be really careful about buying anything new over the next six weeks because it will just have to be shipped out to California if it doesn’t fit in my suitcase. I plan to go through my wardrobe in a couple of weeks and donate a lot of the old stuff to charity, but if I don’t keep the basics I won’t have anything to wear in the weeks before the wedding.

Maybe I can wear this theoretical purple dress every day for two weeks before the rehearsal? And I’m sure no one will mind if I wear my wedding dress to the grocery store in the weeks after the wedding.

Image courtesy of the Toll House.

There’s so much to talk about concerning my wedding-planning trip to Indiana, so I’ll start with one of the things I’m the most excited about—our engagement photos! We think they turned out great, and we loved our photographer, LaRysa Marietta. Neither of us had met her before, but now that we’ve worked with her and seen the e-photos, we’re really happy that she’s going to be our wedding photographer. (Indiana brides: look her up at larysamariettaphotography.com).

At first, we weren’t completely comfortable in front of the camera (especially with the kissing photos) but she got some great photos out of us. She talked to us and made us laugh when we felt awkward. And I love that I didn’t have to tell her that I wanted the shoot to be photojournalistic and casual and fun and natural and not posed. She was already thinking that and just did it. It was everything I could have hoped for! She of course scouted locations and told us the best way to sit or stand for a good shot a few times, but I never felt that we were too stiff and posed. (Having said that, a few shots were posed/taken face-on because we needed photos to run with the engagement announcement in my hometown newspaper).

We were really lucky with the weather—our photo shoot day was beautiful (the day before it had been cold and rainy, so I had been worried.) It was about 65 degrees and sunny. But the wind was strong, so of course, I was worried that my hair would get whipped around and look stringy in five seconds flat. Luckily, the wind worked to my advantage—I think the pics look kind of cool with my hair blowing. It did start to bother me flying in my face, though, so when we changed outfits halfway through the shoot, I put my hair back in a ponytail.

Anyway, enough talk—here are a few of our favorite shots!