Mistress of my Domain

So I've finally got shoes for the wedding and we picked a honeymoon destination. Part of me is happy that decisions were made in that area, but I wasn't exactly happy because neither choice was what I had exactly envisioned and not without problems.

( Shoes & Honeymoon )

Stacey

I remember awhile back I asked if anyone knew if $45 per dance lesson was a reasonable price, and most weren't sure. Well, I've found out it's a very reasonable price - at least out here.

There aren't many dance places out here, most of the dance places are for teaching kids to dance or doing recitals and stuff. But I did find a handful or so of places. The first place I called was the studio offering the lessons for $45. I called sort of late, but not too late, but the lady who answered kind of sounded out of it and almost answered every question I asked as if she wasn't sure herself what she was saying. I try not to judge people too harshly over the phone since I suck on it. Still her responses didn't fill me with a lot of confidence. I told her I would think about it and decided to call the other places before we made a decision.

( The Time of Our Lives )

Stacey

I'm not really big on shopping. I might enjoy it more if I ever had money to freely shop, but even if I did I don't think I'd enjoy the act of shopping very much. I can do it for a little while, but if I'm out there for more than an hour or so I start to get annoyed - especially if I'm there against my will - and just want to go home. That's with clothes shopping, which I actually have some interest in. When it comes to shoes, I really have no interest. But I had to go shoe shopping almost all day.

( These boots were made for walking... )
Stacey

Long rant-y post ahead.

Four months until the wedding! OMG. I have a feeling I might start hyperventilating more and more. Mike told me as we get closer to the wedding, if I hear him playing Bob Marley that's when I know he's feeling really stressed. Still so much to decide.

( Stress! )

Sorry for not updating for so long. It's weird because a lot of times I don't update because there's nothing much going on to talk about. But lately there has been stuff I've wanted to talk about but I've been so busy with wedding planning, going out of town, computer issues, and working on a thousand different fest submissions, I haven't had time to update.

Still working on picking wedding music with Mike. We picked a DJ. I didn't want to pick the first DJ we met with, but there was one DJ who was located close by who I liked right away when I visited their website. When Mike and I met with him we really liked him and I wasn't really interested, or knew what to really ask anyone else, so we decided to go with him.

We're still trying to cull the list of songs down to a manageable level. It was more fun at the start. I can't remember if I mentioned it in my last post, but we basically have to widdle the list down to about 65 songs for the four hours, and our listed consisted of about 400 songs, from both Spotify and iTunes. We've done about four or five sessions of trying to cut the songs down. We got to, what I called a quarterfinals, where we had about 300, and then a semi-finals of 200 songs. So, at this point, it's a little more frustrating because there are so many songs we want to include, so getting it down to a manageable number is hard.

I am still enjoying Mike's rationale for what songs he wants to include and what songs he doesn't. Like I mentioned before Mike is a big reggae fan, so I thought he would enjoy some No Doubt songs. And he does like the song "Underneath it All", but when I played him "Hey Baby" he immediately said no because he said the rapper Bounty Killer's voice sounded too scary.

We also discovered he has a nemesis, and her name is Janet Jackson. At first, he was fine with the songs of hers I'd picked out, but by the time we got to the quarterfinals he was vetoing them left and right. So, when we got to another of her songs he joked that here comes my nemesis Janet Jackson, and we've been calling her that ever since. He finally explained that he doesn't like her voice and thinks her songs don't have good rhythm. And it's funny because he has the exact opposite view of Michael Jackson. Any and all Michael Jackson songs he wants included. We debated over "Smooth Criminal" because I didn't think the subject matter was very wedding-y, but he agreed but then said "Eh, it's Michael Jackson. I don't care." There were only a couple of his songs he didn't want, which of course included "Scream" the duet with Janet Jackson.

He's basically left most of the final decisions up to me, so unless he absolutely detests a song, I might include it anyway, including a couple Janet songs. Tonight, I was really frustrated. I got the list down to about 100, but at this point Mike's no help. Every time I ask if a song is a must for the wedding, he says yeah. Though for him I basically know that his essential songs are anything by Cake, Michael Jackson, Sugar Ray, Madonna, and anything reggae.

We've had an easier time with the first dance songs. We got that down to about 20 songs. At that point, we decided it was best to dance to the songs to see which songs we felt comfortable dancing with, and cutting them down accordingly. Both of us are terrible dancers, so it was definitely very awkward at first but, miraculously, we never stepped on each other's toes. I didn't expect to get so tired though, because I didn't think we'd be doing any real dancing for long, but we danced to all of the songs full out.

We got it down to about four songs that we really liked. For a while now, I've pretty much known in the back of my mind what my two favorites were, but there were still so many good options that we went through the process. But Mike did ultimately agree with me on the two I liked the best. The two are Big Mountain's "Baby, I Love Your Way" and Taylor Swift's "Crazier." The songs are polar opposites so it's still a little hard to pick which one we want.

Dancing to the songs turned out to be a good idea because Mike finally decided that dance lessons might be a good idea. I had mentioned a couple of times about the idea of dance lessons, but he didn't really seem gung ho about the idea. But once he saw how, mostly uncoordinated we were, he decided it would be best not to embarrass ourselves. Unfortunately, I went to long on this website, Thumbtack, where I'd found some wedding photographers, but I was unsuccessful in finding any dance teachers. I went through Google, and I found only one person who was taught dance for anyone just looking to learn basic moves for a wedding, and not teaching ballet or something for kids. There price was $45 a lesson. I've never done this before so I don't know, is that a reasonable price for dance lessons?

Stacey

Been a long time since I did a proper update. It kind of fits in with all the other things I feel like I'm woefully behind on in life.

( Jobless Again )
( These are not the flowers you're looking for )

( Speeding )

Stacey

I definitely didn't plan on picking a third wedding date. When we changed it the first time, we discussed it and even though I was the one that picked out the date, Mike gave the okay and I really liked the idea of having our honeymoon on Valentine's Day. But Jean came to us the other day and she said that she thought we should change the date because of the poor weather. She said that on February 7 this year the weather was really bad in Maryland and people were advised not to travel. She said that if we left our wedding date the same, next year the same thing could happen and many on Michael's side might not be able to make it. Even though the explanation sounded reasonable, I was still pretty resistant to changing the date. Mike then said something about how at his job you're not allowed to take vacation on holidays. I'm pretty sure Valentine's Day isn't a traditional holiday but still it was another reason to consider making the change. I then thought about the fact that it's not just Mike's family on the East Coast, but that I have a lot of family in NY and around there that might be affected as well. So I decided to consider other dates. Mike was a little reticent about picking a date at all since he was worried about picking a date and then the date not being available at the venues we look at. But I said we had to set a date and we'd just have to find a place available on that date.

( Wedding Talk, No trans fats, Frisky doctor's appointments, etc... )

Stacey

Now it's almost a year until my wedding. Now we're going to have to start really making plans. For the last month or so I've pretty much put wedding stuff on the backburner. I still think about it most days. I've gotten accounts on both Loverly and Pinterest now to get wedding ideas. And singed up on this website The Knot. I think because of that we've started to get a lot of postcards in the mail from hotels and different venues for weddings.

( More wedding dress pics and some freak outs )

I swear, I'm going to talk about something other than wedding planning here soon, especially now that we've picked a date. It's just been wedding-a-palooza here lately. It's been a little annoying because I've had a lot of writing to do, but haven't gotten any of it done. Last Saturday at the bridal shop we bought this wedding organizer, which is supposed to be really helpful, but it's made me slightly more nervous and confused. I was really startled when I was flipping through it and it said the average wedding cost $21,000. That doesn't feel that can be right, on the other hand it is possible. But there's no way our wedding budget will be anywhere close to that.

( Decisions, decisions )

Stacey

Ever since Mike and I got engaged we haven't really done much wedding planning, primarily because we haven't set a date yet. Mike wants to wait until we've saved enough money, or have some idea of what kind of money we'll have, before setting a date. I haven't complained about it, since I understand the rationale, but I have been really itching to start making plans of some sort. Now it's turned into a kind of "be careful what you wish for situation." I went wedding dress shopping this weekend and I'm more confused than ever.

So cue Ciara's "Click Flash" as I do my own self-indulgent wedding dress montage (Sex and the City: The Movie reference.) Long post is long and full of pictures.

( Dresses and More Dresses )

Stacey