DIY Life

In last week's edition of Wedstravaganza, I covered tuxedo rentals for the guys, cake topper and table favor ordering, wedding colors, and flower picks. As we move into week four, I'll be talking about the wedding program I created, along with creating our wedding registries, wedding website (more on that later), and finding a place to hold the rehearsal dinner. Yes, the work continues, as we're only about halfway through the five-week journey it took to go from proposal to marriage. Strap in for the ride, 'cause here we go again.

After settling on many small but important details like colors and invitations, Marci and I began working on creating a wedding registry at some of our favorite retailers, Dillard's and Target. You see, our wedding invitations, which I mailed out the day prior to us creating our registries, included a small card I had created that allowed recipients to RSVP online quickly and efficiently.

Although some felt that an online RSVP took away from the experience, we felt that allowing invitees to go to a website and submit their information effortlessly was appropriate for the times -- as well as the impending time crunch we were under. We needed a firm RSVP count to give to our wedding place as soon as possible so things wouldn't fall apart with the guest planning.

So, I created our official wedding website over at the Wedding Channel for free, and began setting up all the details like area hotels, pictures, our story, engagement ring information, and other little tidbits. One thing that I had to do was create website links to our online wedding registries.

But gasp -- we hadn't created our registries yet! Off we both went for an afternoon of UPC scanning at a local Dillards and Target location, as we spent nearly four hours picking out the things we thought we'd be able to use. Now, the name of the game is to go crazy with your wedding registry -- don't hold back. Finding items for our future master bedroom and kitchen was the top priority, so we scanned quite a bit form those two departments at both retailers.

Once we were done creating our wedding registries in person, I waited a day and located our registries at the websites of both Dillards and Target. Once those two had been completed, I added links to both online registries to our wedding website to make it easy for RSVP'ers, and anyone else, to select items from our registries and immediately buy them online (or print a wish list for real-world shopping). Unfortunately, the time before the wedding did not allow Marci to have a wedding shower (it was summer vacation in her teaching profession, after all), so we had to get our registries up lickety-split regardless, as we were now just under four weeks from our wedding day -- August 3, 2007.

While the invitations were still in transit (and now being received by some invitees), and with the wedding website pretty much complete (whew!), I charged off into the land of selecting a wedding program design so that I could start designing it well in advance. Microsoft Publisher 2007 already had some great program templates that seemed very elegant, so I chose one, modified it a little, and began the process of creating our program from scratch based on the Publisher template:


Marci and I chose a very elegant 8.5"x11" thick bond paper to use for our programs, so we were covered there. I just had to finalize the program with all the names and the layouts of events for that evening, and then print the things and have them folded carefully. Since this was lower on the priority list, I left the program in "hold" mode and moved on to other projects.

First off: locating a minister to handle the official duties on our special night. The Dominion House (our chosen wedding location) was kind enough to supply the name of a local minister, whom we contacted. We set up a meeting, and after a few scheduling mishaps, met with him a week later. He was very professional and impressive, and we were both delighted to have him aboard. Another mission accomplished (thanks again, Keith -- we couldn't have done it without you).

So, with the minister squared away, I returned to the wedding program design and completed it based on our meeting. The final touches were incorporated into the design, and the "W" from our wedding cake toppers was inserted onto the front page of the wedding program for a touch of organized professionalism. Next up was locating a place to host a 25 to 30 person rehearsal dinner. Ahh -- one of the big kahunas!

Marci and I considered several area restaurants in the Guthrie area, which was the town where we would be married. But alas, due to the travel time (45 minutes or so) from where most of the wedding party lived, we chose to find someplace closer to home. And then, my dad suggested my stepbrother's new house. It had plenty of room and was located in the perfect spot: about a mile off a major turnpike that most of us would be using to get from the Oklahoma City area to the Guthrie area the night before the wedding for the rehearsal. With little trepidation, I contacted my always generous stepbro' to see if he would be willing to open his home to dozens of people that night. No arm twisting required -- he agreed with an open heart. Dane, I'll forever be in your debt. Thanks a million buddy!

So far, so good -- no mishaps or forest fires needed dousing throughout the planning process. We're now at July 12, 2007 -- a little over three weeks from our wedding day. All the planning has gone off splendidly, arrangements were falling into place in perfect fashion, and a few initial RSVP cards had started to arrive back in our mailbox along with activity at the website.

This was so cool -- our wedding was so close, and everything had fallen into place with our collective attention to detail, following up, and hard work on literally dozens of variables and mini-projects. All this, and I was still working full-time every day. Let's just say this -- I was used to taking several deep breaths every hour, as was Marci. The expense tracking and project completion spreadsheets were seeing many 'tick-off' markets fall into place, and although we were both a little stressed, we were sleeping well at night.

Flower selections and a place at which to buy them, a pictorial slideshow to showcase our collective "growing up" pictures that I had to meticulously scan from old photographs, finding something to throw as we drove off after the wedding other than rice or bird seed, and selecting our cake designs, flavors, and sizes so that everyone would be able to have a slice on that special night. Oh, and the beverages for that evening needed a decision as well. And you just thought we were getting close to the end, right? Not!

Stay tuned next week for the next edition of Wedstravaganza. Until then, have a great week!