Aagh!

Wedding flipping overload!

So we went to the Stanley Hotel Sunday & mom & I fell in love with its views, cool historicalness, and yes, the mystic of its numerous and widely reported hauntings. We thought, "Oooh, what if the wedding were here?"

But that train of thought is only going to open a great big can of Trouble.

Because then we found out that it's ridiculously expensive (like, I sat on the floor and cried a little bit expensive). And then there was the conundrum of not knowing a photographer, florist or baker. And then my dad, in Ohio, had a little fit via phone (while I was in a dressing room trying on wedding gowns, no less) about how "none of his relatives would be able to come."

But then I found The Dress.

I found it.

I FOUND THE DRESS.

And it's so beautiful, and so worthy of a gorgeous historical haunted hotel with majestic views of the Rockies, so much more fitting for that, and swank, and jazz, and black tuxedos than a backyard wedding.

So then the proverbial can was completely open and spilled all over the place and I bought the dress and-damn-the-consequences and then right when we seemed to have formulated a plan to have the wedding at the Stanley, everyone had a mad breakdown.

So we were back to square one. Wedding at home. Ok, effing fine. It's pretty, things are lined up, FINE. For real. Fine.

But then what do my parents keep saying to me? "Everyone will think it's casual, you know. At-home weddings are casual."

And my father says, "Oh, so & so went to a wedding last week, and it rained, it rained so hard that even though they spent thousands of dollars putting down a floor in the tent, the water and mud crept over it and got all over everyone's dresses and shoes."

"Your cousin Sammy has a tattoo on his head. He's very excited about coming to the wedding."

But I don't want a casual, BBQ, cousins-wearing-Harley T-shirts wedding!
And what if it RAINS?
And seriously, what if it RAINS?

And then everyone says to me, "Well, what do YOU want? It's your day. What would you like?"
But they don't really mean it. It's really not. Everyone says it's about the bride, but that's not how it is. No wonder brides are totally batsh*t crazy: they're trying to please everyone and still not sacrifice too much of the day they've dreamed about for so long.

Deep breath and note to self:

both via ffffound

This is my favorite part

Louis Armstrong

Warm May breeze 

Puppy dog

We now have the wedding photographer, caterer (who can do vegetarian), tents, cake maker, my matron of honor, our officiant & the flower girl. Last week at this time, we had none of these things secured and no idea what we were doing for the rest. 

So I feel accomplished.

Plus, my favorite things so far are that my future sister-in-law is my matron of honor, our very good friend J is our officiant, my college friend C is our photographer, and my niece is the flower girl. With all this in place, it's going to be great.

I've got DJ iPod on, practicing for the big day. Wreckless Eric, a cappella Jeff Buckley, Louis Armstrong, Sinatra, Weezer. 

Plans this weekend: design our wedding invites. I originally wanted to silk screen them, but am running shy of time, so I think we'll just design them on the computer, maybe do some free hand sketching, and print them out via laser jet. 

image via snippet&ink

Thought for the day

Foils + Dies

Meanwhile, I love this:

      

(fictional) New York City urban etiquette posters. 

Brilliant.

Arrived in the Mile High and before the internet could get hooked up, my computer suffered some sort of stroke. Crimeny. Right as I'm sitting here with no Web, no car, no job, nothing but loads of time to devote to novel-writing. I suppose I should have impulse-purchased that old typewriter I saw in Chicago. That'll teach me to be frugal.


So the computer is in the shop and it's going to cost me about $300 to fix, and hopefully nothing I've saved there will get erased, like my research, and photos, and wedding info, and the images I've saved for this blog, and my entire iTunes library. I tried to perform an emergency back up of my stuff, but the computer froze mid-burn and went black. Clearly, my computer is an anarchist.

This, apparently, is the typewriter Hemingway owned, and actual descendants of some of his cats. I love how the descendants of Hemingway's cats have been traced, but my family still isn't entirely sure if great grandpa came from Russia or Germany.