anyone still read this thing?

Hi. I've moved to wordpress. Over here:
http://lajolielavie.wordpress.com/

Paper Goods

I did not want to title this "The Invitations," even though that is what i will be discussing. This is more about the frustrations of semi-diy invitations and the importance of doing things in a timely manner. (I am talking about myself. Remember my previous post about being a procrastinator?) I'm going to hit the rewind button for a bit, okay?

Way back in the early planning stages, I had an idea of what I wanted my invitations to be like. They say that the invitations are the first glimpse your guests will get to see of the type of wedding you will be having. Well, I knew I wanted to convey the city-chic, multi-cultural vibe we were going for. The problem was, I didn't exactly know how to get there. Oh, I Googled like a maniac and stalked designers' sites and invitation sites. Everything looked really pretty, but led to a lot of confusion. I can't help it, but I have very ecclectic tastes and can easily fall in love with a myriad of selections from one second to the next. Needless to say, I was overwhelmed and did what I do best...



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YUP! I procrastinated. The thought of them just kind of sat in the back of my mind, popping up here and there reminding me that time was tick.tick.ticking away. Ever the consummate optimist, I just reasoned with myself that things would go well (mind you, I didn't have any ACTUAL reasons HOW and WHY) and reassured my fiance (as he was constantly berating me about them) that they would be done on schedule.

Well then. Here I am, one week after the scheduled due date and I am still doing revisions for my designer. Whaaaaaa??? I am not going to panic. I am not going to panic. I am not going to panic. I swear! I'm sooooo behind. I know.



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The plus side is, I love how my invitations are turning out. They have truly been a labor of love...I just haven't decided if they have been worth it:) It's one thing to see them in a file, but it will be something else when I get them back from the actual printer and packaged up into pretty things. I am excited to see them all come together and cannot wait for everyone's reactions.

I will be talking more about how I came upon them and how the ideas came together. I have a ton of email correspondences between me and my collaborator. I don't really want to call her my designer (although she is a graphic design artist) because I provided the concepts to her and she just put my ideas onto paper.

They turned out differently than what i had originally imagined, but I love them so much more. I was able to implement all of "our colors" and things that we love about life. I used to wonder why people would write post after post about their invitations (it's just paper, right??:), but now I totally get it. I will discuss later on my original inspiration for the invitations and how the process came together. It was a lot of work, but I learned a lot along the way and so that itself made it worthwhile.

I am curious to see how many of you spent countless hours pouring over invitations on the internet and in stores. Did anyone else DIY or semi-DIY? How did you come to your decision on the final product and was it an easy /hard choice?

On finishing...

anything, that is! It's a well-known fact I am a procrastinator...so much so that I procrastinated on writing this post. I had every intention of being a good blogger and putting great content with awesome pictures...yada, yada, yada. Soooooo....what happened?? Life sure, but doesn't everyone have one and are still able to maintain a blog?



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Despite my procrastinating ways (and affinity for making up words/terms/nuances), I also consider myself a fiercely organized person. I guess you could call it organized chaos. However, a lot of the organization and planning usually goes on in my head and pen and paper. I have an iPhone with every app you could imagine to help me with my organization and I love Google docs, but I still can't let go of the paper and pen. I love to doodle in my notebooks, but can't seem to translate my thoughts on paper onto the interwebz. *Sigh*

What am I trying to say?? I just want to apologize to anyone who has visited my site only to find half-finished content and thank everyone who was considerate enough to leave a comment so far.

I really do love to write and want to share my wedding journey; just because I want to, but also because I hope it helps someone else along the way. I am so grateful for the content others have provided during their planning. I don't know how people survived wedding planning prior to the internet.

I am going to go through my archives and finish the posts I started and didn't finish and continue to blog with some (hopefully) helpful content. Thank you for sharing my journey! Your feedback and comments are much appreciated!!

11 Weeks aka 77 Days

So, we're eleven weeks or seventy seven days out. I can't decide right now if that's a good or bad thing. Here's a list of things I still need to get done:
1. send out STDs - "Seriously?" you must be thinking as you're rolling your eyes. Yup. Totally serious. Why am I even bothering? Because I paid for them and I need to buy ti since it looks like I won't be

#6 The Dress

I didn't do the whole bridal shopping experience and I don't really feel bad about it. You see, when my sister got married three years ago, I went through a horrible experience with the bridal salon where we purchased our bridesmaids' dresses. It left a bad taste in my mouth and I vowed to boycott bridal salons since then.

Lucky for me, there are so many alternatives to finding a wedding dress nowadays. First of all, my approach was pretty simple. I would just browse the interwebz and bridal magazines to get ideas. Unlucky for me, I seem to be attracted to the most.expensive.dresses. EVER! It's not like I even seek out designers, my taste just seems to gravitate toward higher priced items.

What's a girl to do? I decided that I would not spend more than a certain amount for my dress. Now, this amount fluctuated depending on how I was feeling, but it was more or less in the five hundred to one thousand dollars range. In (my) wedding dress land, that's pretty modest. (I understand that term is relative, but seeing how all the dresses that caught my eye were five thousand dollars and upward, you can see how I thought my budget was modest. Or at least pretend you understand me. kthxmucho.)


Here were my top contenders:



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My top choice, above, was a Monique (do I really need to spell her last name?). I love it in all its frivolous glory. The price...not so much. I had considered having something similar made, but time escaped me and decided to just let it go...



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Ahhh....Vera. You never fail to disappoint me. Unfortunately, your prices (for a gown like this, anyway) do. At last, it wasn't meant to be.

There you have them...my top two choices. I had considered wearing something more sleek, but I found that I really deflected towards the more impractical and whimsical. Go figure.

Since these dresses were not in my budget, I considered other options. One was paying a (not so local) Chinese dress maker. The other was to choose something else. I went with the latter. I haven't decided if I want to "reveal" the dress yet or not, so I will leave you with this: My dress is every bit as impractical and whimsical as the Monique and Vera, but with a price tag to match my heart's desire. I found it online. The picture of the dress online wasn't even the color I wanted (white or ivory), but decided to order it anyway. I love it to pieces and cannot wait to wear it. The universe really worked it's magic on me.

Anyone else decide to live life on the edge and find their dress(es) or "wedding outfits" under not-so-traditional circumstances?

#5 The Reception Venue

During our search for the venue, I knew I wanted something unique (to us, anyway). I did not want to have it in a ballroom or a banquet hall. While I have been to many lovely and fun weddings in ballrooms and banquet halls, I wanted something different. J would have preferred a ballroom and banquet hall, but he already had his choice for the ceremony venue, so it was only fair for me to pick a reception venue. I was really looking for a blank space that we could personalize. With this in mind, I considered the following venues:
1. Lofts
2. Art Galleries
3. Warehouses

I also had some other considerations when choosing the venue. Such as,
1. price
2. availability
3. flexibilty (with time, outside vendors, decor, etc.)
4. location (it had to be in the city)
5. parking


With this information in mind, my internet search led me to these five contenders:
1. Ravenswood Event Center
2. Westgrand Loft
3. The Newberry Library
4. St. Ignatius College Prep
5. The Society for Arts

I'll share which one we chose in another post. How about you? What type of venue(s) did you consider? How did you make your final decision?

#4 The Church

Ahhhh....religion and politics...best topics ever, no? Ummm, no, definitely. Before I go on, please note that I do not mean to demoralize anyone's beliefs or non-beliefs and these words and opinions are strictly my own.

That said, I was raised a Catholic. Baptized, communionized, confirmationized.......the whole enchilada. Non of which was by choice. Dear friends, my parents come from different religious backgrounds (my Mom being a (non-practicing) Muslim and my dad a (devout) Roman Catholic). My parents wanted to raise my sisters and I with some form of a religious background, and being that my mom is non-practicing, Roman Catholicism was the default. Sometime in high school, I started questioning my faith (in Catholicism, not God) and stopped practicing. While I like to consider myself a child of all religions, J, who was also raised a Catholic, is very adamant about marrying in a Catholic church.

I am ok with this because it is more important for J to marry in a Catholic church than it is for me not to. Make sense? So, that being resolved, it was time for us to find a church to marry in. (Yes, even though J wants to get married in a church he no longer belongs to a particular one.)

Chicago is ripe with Catholic churches, but the decision came down to four.

1. St. Viator: This is the church my Dad has been a parishioner at for the last couple of decades.

2. Holy Name Cathedral: This is the church my younger sister, C, got married in three years ago.

3. St. Mary of the Angels: This is close to our reception venue. J has attended some masses there as a youngster.

4. Holy Trinity: This is also close to the reception venue and has also been attended by J as a youngster.

So what was our first choice? St. Mary of the Angels. When considering a church, we were looking for some particulars, such as:

- Aesthetics. I wanted to marry in a church that was beautiful and needed little decoration. (What? Don't judge me.)
- Availability. It needed to work with the date we had picked out.
- Distance in relation to the reception venue. We wanted it to be as close as possible.

So, while St. Mary of the Angels had us at aesthetics and distance, our date was not available. Moving forward, we had decided against St. Viator because of the distance and against Holy Name Cathedral because of recent events (fires and whatnot). So, we are getting married at Holy Trinity. I called and spoke with the priest who informed me that he would hold the date and time and we would just need to come in to speak with him and put down a deposit. Which we've already done.

What type of venue are you having your ceremony at and how did you come that decision?