Whew. This is a lot of work! It's been a bit of a stressful week - I'm not gonna lie. I've been getting price quotes and site proposals and finding about hidden fees and negotiating bar costs and looking at new places and looking for bridesmaid dresses that normal people can afford... It's all very complicated and it's not as easy as it seems! Every time I think I've calculated it all out, I've missed something that puts us over-budget. Every time I find a gorgeous bridesmaid dress that I love, it's $280 or something ridiculous like that. Thank God for Em, who has probably tried on 30 dresses by now and just keeps telling me "It's your wedding, we'll wear what you want us to wear. Stop worrying about what it costs." I just can't. I have too many grad school, fresh out of college, living on their own for the first time bridesmaids who don't need to spend that kind of money. It's a tough job, not only taking budgets into account, but also trying to consider different body types and decide which dresses will cling in which places on different people and which colors will wash out which skin tones... I'm trying hard to find something universally flattering and pretty, but like I said, everytime I find one it's outrageously priced. Ugh. I'll just keep looking!
As for venues and dates and such, I think we're pretty settled on May 29th, with June 5th as an acceptable back-up if the venue we want is booked on the 29th. We're finding that doing it on a Friday is giving us lots more options, including dates. We've looked at The Brookeville Inn, Linganore Winecellars, Wakefield Valley Golf Club, Silver Swan Bayside, Kent Manor Inn, and Turf Valley Resort, and we still have Stone Manor Country Club and Musket Ridge Golf Club to go. So far, the front-runners seem to be Silver Swan and Turf Valley. Turf Valley is incredibly fancy and incredibly inexpensive, which is great, and it has a lovely outdoor gazebo in a grove of willow trees for the ceremony, within view of a big lake with a huge fountain (which lights up pretty colors at night) and can offer us a ballroom about 3x the size of the reception area at Silver Swan. It's the obvious choice, but I'm having a hard time reconciling my vision of the wedding with the feel of the place. We're going back on Saturday to check out the ballroom all set up for a wedding, since it was set for a conference when I saw it yesterday, and Ben wasn't able to make it so he hasn't seen it at all. Hopefully seeing it all done up will make me feel differently. It really would save us tons of money, and we'd actually get a much nicer reception than we can afford anywhere else (tons of yummy hors d'oeuvres, seated dinner, full open bar, dessert plus wedding cake, a free night's stay for us after the reception... the list goes on!). I just feel like it may be a little TOO fancy for the laid back, casual-elegant feel I'm going for. We'll see. Here's a pic of the ceremony site...
The gazebo at Turf Valley
The lake and fountain through the willow trees from the ceremony area
So, back to the title of my post... I've had NO time to sit down and watch TV lately, so I'm totally out of the loop on my new favorite show (Hopkins, a reality show about Hopkins doctors). Speaking of Hopkins, thank God I finished that application before all this started. I got my Duke secondary app last week and I haven't TOUCHED any of the 5 essays I need to write for that. I'm contemplating not doing it, only because I REALLY don't want to go to North Carolina. Particularly with the reality of getting married setting in... I don't want to leave our families. Nowadays, I often find myself forgetting that I'm even applying to medical school! It was all that was on my mind before, and now I seriously forget all about it from time to time. It's amazing.
One more piece of news and then I'll stop. I started South Beach. AAAAAAAAAAH!!! Em and Josh started it last Friday and inspired me, and I currently weigh more than I ever have (and more than I care to discuss), and I'm getting married, and I'm going to the beach in a month, so it seemed like a good idea. It sucks, BAD, but I'll make it. If I can survive the first two carb-less weeks (I'm on day three), I'll be fine. Now if I could just muster up the energy to go to the gym... not only am I paying for it monthly, but I really should be exercising if I expect to lose any weight and get anything out of all this dieting misery. If I want to make the carb-suffering worth it, I need to get my ass to the treadmill.
So that's all for now. Sorry for the length - it's been a few days since my last post! And as for that burning question that keeps you checking my blog... Nope. Not yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment