RSVP Special Edition: Our Firsts Have Arrived!

Well I don't think I need to tell you that our family was placing bets on which of our guests would respond first. If you want you can see our spread:

My guess: My aunt P or my Uncle R

My mom: my grandparents

My dad: FSIL K or our neighbors Mr. & Mrs. K

MOH G: Grandparents or Aunt and Uncle J

Most of us were wrong, but it turned out my dad was right on the money! My neighbors down the street must have checked yes and put it right back in the mailbox because it arrived at our house not 5 days after we sent out our invitations (must only be 2-3 days after they received it).

But as an extra surprise, we got a second RSVP on the same day! And it was from someone none of us expected! Mishka's groomsman A also decided to get his RSVP business done early. He even wrote in a special note about how excited he was to be attending. Receiving response cards is definitely one of my favorite wedding tasks so far :).

Our Invites are In... and Out!

We sent our invites out last Monday, so I couldn't let such a momentous occasion go by without a detailed post. I have to say that as pretty as I thought our invites were going to be after ordering them, I was not prepared for how gorgeous they were when all put together. I loved what I saw when we got our proof, but the colors were off and the proof did not show the ribbon. So the entire package was a bit of a surprise. And my what a pleasant surprise it turned out to be:

That's a picture of our invites and all the little pieces that comprise our invitation: the invitation, the response card, the response envelope, the direction card, the accommodations card, and the reception card. I know, it sounds like a lot of pieces but our guests need a lot of information!

I should probably mention that aside from the font, most of the design choices were Mishka's. He loved the idea of having everything be gold and a snowflake motif was the perfect way to nod to our wedding season. I will admit I had my doubts about gold everything, but the moment I opened the box of invites, and even more when I saw the completed look (with ribbon), my breath was taken away I was so happy.

Also, you know that ribbon I mentioned? Well our invitations came with some assembly required. In fact for 3 days our family evenings looked something like this...

You had to be extremely careful threading the ribbons through as it was very easy to rip the invitation. Luckily, I managed to avoid that, but some of my helpers weren't so fortunate... (oh and that's double sided tape in the corner there to attach the two ends of the ribbon together in back of the invitation).

Ahh my puppies, sleeping soundly in the background, totally unaware of the hard work going on around them. What a life, eh?

Even my parents got in on the fun! I believe we are watching Dexter when that picture was taken. Which explains why my mom is having a difficult time taking her eyes off the television :).

But I also mentioned that our invitations are out! And it's true, after a week and a half of assembly, guest list discussions, address chasing, and label printing, our invitations were ready to be mailed. And we did! (Side note: my dad happened to be with Mishka when he took the invitations to the mailbox and he said that Mishka was absolutely GLOWING with excitement as he mailed our wedding invitations. Goodness I love that boy <3).

As I mentioned, in the eternal "caligraphy vs. labels" debate we went with clear labels. And I have to say, I'm so glad we did. I'm sure caligraphy would have been gorgeous, but it would have taken extra time and extra money. Time which I definitely was not willing to sacrifice. I wanted these invites OUT!!! More to the point though, the labels did not take away from the look of the invitation at ALL. They really are not very noticeable and we printed in gold ink and Baskerville Old Face font to match the inside of our invitations. All in all it is a very nice affect. One we would not have been able to recreate with calligraphy.

TL;DR We love our invites. They are amazing. I'm glad we ordered extras so that Mishka and I have mementos. Mishka is a great designer!

P.S. I am now waiting patiently for our first response in the mail. I hope it's a yes!

Wedding Almanac

So, like every bride I've been wondering what the weather is going to be like on the day of our wedding. We're still too far out for me to find any answers on weather.com (my usual go to site), but I did make an attempt to find out what I could from the Farmer's Almanac. The online farmer's almanac that is.

Even the farmer's almanac couldn't give me specifics about what they expect for New Year's Eve 2011, but they did give me the news that there's a more than fair chance there will snow on the ground:

"Winter will be drier than normal, with near-normal temperatures but above-normal snowfall. The coldest periods will be in mid-December and early and mid-February. The snowiest periods will be in mid-December to mid- and late January, and late February."

Source

So if the Farmer's Almanac gets it right, we're going to have some snow this December. How much will fall? How much will accumulate? How long will it last? I don't have the answers to any of these questions... I guess I'll have to wait until the middle of December to find out the snow situation.

As always, will keep you posted...

Wedding Week?

As a bride I always assumed that you get ONE day, your wedding day, to be a bride. But, as I read recap after recap, they always begin with the "wedding week" activities. And I realized... I don't really have any "wedding week" activities planned.

Of course there's the rehearsal dinner, which we will be having, but that's not what I meant. I've read recaps about spa days, going for mani/pedis with the bridesmaids and family, I even read one recap of a wedding party "hike up a mountain"! I hadn't planned on doing anything like this with my bridal party. Most of our groomsmen won't even be in the state until the Thursday or Friday before.

I recently found out that my bachelorette party will be the Thursday before the wedding so we could count that on the list of "Wedding Week" activities. But I had no plans for bridal party mani/pedis or hikes. And, perhaps most practically, I had no plans for any bridal party fun on Friday morning or afternoon. All my bridesmaids (and most of the groomsmen too I think) will be here already for my bachelorette party. So, assuming we don't have any last minute work to do, we could theoretically have some bride and b-maid chill time.

I'll probably start pondering some ideas of things we could do once it gets closer to December. After all, our friday activity could be a bridal party snow shovel of our driveway if we have a freak snowstorm like last winter..

As always, will keep updated :).

Certified to Wed!

In the Catholic Church that is!

That's right, we just completed our Pre Cana marriage prep. It was definitely an interesting experience. Mishka and I were the youngest couple there, as well as the next to be married so we had a bit of distinction ;).

I don't know how much of a recap you want/need, so I'll just give you a bit of a "coverall" rundown:

There were three couples there who spoke on a variety of topics from intimacy to finances to spirituality in a marriage. Some were more interesting than others. We even found some of the couples more relatable than others. There was one couple in particular who we particularly liked.

We also got a chance to chat with some of the other couples at our precana and experienced a lot of different types of love and a lot of different relationship dynamics. There's not one universal type of love, I can tell you that.

We ended with a mass where all the tables wrote an intention to be read during the mass. I read the one for our table :). You know, 'cause I don't mind public speaking like that :). I was also excited that one of our wedding readings made it into the precana mass. I'm sure Mishka's father will read it even better, but it was nice to have that as part

Finally, we wrote love letters, which was one of the things I was most looking forward to. We did not share our letters during the actual precana, but instead chose to wait until we were by ourselves, sitting in the car alone in the parking lot. We swapped papers and read silently the words our counterparts had put down for us. I have to say, I almost cried reading Mishka's. I wanted to have it framed so that the world could see it at the same time I wanted to put it in some secret place so that only I could appreciate the depths of love my Mishka is capable of. I'd like to say my letter was as wonderful (Mishka seemed to think so), but I believe Mishka is the one who hit it out of the park.

If nothing else than for that moment in the car in the parking lot, I would call Pre Cana a smashing success :).

But as a more objective look, I don't know how much Mishka and I really learned about each other had we come to Pre Cana unprepared for marriage. They had a lot of cool activities and a lot of ground to cover in very little time. We only had opportunity to talk for 5 minutes after each activity. Their suggestion was to mark down things you discover you need to talk about and have the necessary conversations over dinner that night. It's a good idea, but I don't know how realistic it would be to assume that people who were unprepared would universally take the time to address their unpleasant issues once they no longer have to. Luckily for us, Mishka and I didn't discover any areas we hadn't already worked through.

I'll be interested to compare notes with my FSIL who did engaged encounter to prepare for their Catholic Convalidation ceremony. We'll see what the similarities and differences are.

The Question on Everybody's Mind

Since I am a reasonably young bride I have been anticipating the day when people would start questioning whether or not I'm nervous about making this important life decision. I managed to avoid the question for most of my engagement, but as the big day draws nearer I find myself running into "the question" more and more often.

So... are you nervous?

Granted it's no uncomfortable prying about how unlikely it is that you can find "the one" at a young age (something I wholeheartedly disagree with obviously). But it is getting rather annoying. Because my answer is always: "No, not really." Am I nervous about something big going wrong on the day of the wedding? You betcha. Am I worried about a New Years blizzard? You better believe it. Am I keeping my fingers crossed that all my guests have a f***ing awesome time at our New Year's Wedding? Hell yeah!

But the whole marriage part? Not really nervous about it. It's impossible to know what Mishka and my future holds, but I know Mishka well enough to know that we will face any future problems together. The question will not be "is this the dealbreaker?" but "how do we fix this?" This has always been our attitude, from our first date to just a few minutes ago when Mishka watched one of my favorite shows (that he hates) over his new favorite series which he is dying to work through.

That's a little more long winded than my answer of "No, not really." But since it's mostly complete strangers who pose the question I figure the answer is appropriate.

This is all not to say that it's not ok to be nervous about getting married. It is a huge step to be taking and there are a whole range of emotions that people can and do feel while they're planning a wedding. Many people have second thoughts which help them work out their doubts and truly reinforce their love for their partner so that they can enter into a truly successful and happy marriage. That just hasn't been my particular experience.

If I had followers on this blog I would ask if you were questioned on being anxious about your wedding. If so, how did you answer?

Our Programs

We are having a Catholic ceremony with Ukrainian traditions woven in which means that our ceremony will be a lovely mix of traditional elements from our respective cultures. However, there are few guests which will be familiar enough to participate in all aspects of our ceremony without guidance. And we want everyone to be able to participate as much as they can in our ceremony. After all, the reason we've invited these people is so that they can celebrate with us in the beginning of our lives together and what better way for them to do it than to be an active and knowledgeable participant in our ceremony.

But how do we convey what is admittedly a large amount of information to every single one of our guests (we are expecting our guest turn out to be quite large)? For the answer to this question we took a cue from my parents.

My parents also had a traditional Catholic Wedding Mass, very similar to ours though you would replace the Ukrainian elements with a Unity Candle ceremony. However, they were inviting many guests who were either not practicing Catholic, or not Catholic at all. How best to make these types of guests feel comfortable in a religious setting where there are specific traditions and rituals woven into every aspect of the mass? My parents answer was a DIY project that is all the evidence you could need of how much my parents cared about each and every one of their guests.

Their program.

My officiant, who was also their officiant, saved some of my parent's wedding programs as the example of a "perfect has everything you could need" program. It is essentially a mass script so that each person knows exactly what to expect, what to respond, and when to respond. It's more than most people put in their programs, but for them it allowed all their guests to feel they were a part of the wedding proceedings. And that's exactly what Mishka and I want for our guests as well.

So, as we've been pulling together our ceremony, I've also been pulling together a mass script. A script we will at some point transform into our super long wedding program. And even better? We're going to translate it into Ukrainian for our guests who are not extremely comfortable with English. It's going to take a lot of time and a lot of love, but hopefully it will be worthwhile to our guests.

Also it will be great to look back on what is essentially a full script of our story and remember every word that was spoken :). I think that will make Mishka and I very happy in our years together.

Someone Got Married...

But it wasn't me!

Remember how I told you I had an engaged buddy? Well her wedding was the last weekend in September so... she's married! As I said in my previous post, I've known her since I was very little, but I only got the opportunity to meet her fiance quite recently. We met when the two of them (along with a host of others) were helping remove downed trees from my aunt's front yard. They were one of the most down to earth couples I have ever met. They were 100% partners. In love, but in quiet, "known each other for years" love, even though they only met a year or two ago.

So congratulations Kim and Chris! May you have many more years of quiet in love happiness. And I'll see you both soon I'm sure :-D.

Our Music Minister is Awesome

I know I've done many many introduction posts. You probably figured I couldn't have any more people to introduce right? Well you'd be wrong! (Very wrong actually since there's still a bunch of people I haven't introduced yet, but those are posts for another time)

Last weekend we met with our music minister to discuss the music for our ceremony. She's the music minister for our parish so it was the kind of thing where "you get what you get and you don't get upset" (to quote my teacher self). She just started at the parish in September so we had never met before while going to mass there. We were both curious as to how we would get along with her.

We needn't have worried. She's awesome!

I came prepared with our little "ceremony script" and our music minister was very impressed. She actually told me I was the most prepared bride she had ever worked with. A title I feel I deserved since we've been working on our ceremony, perfecting everything we could, for almost a year.

However, there were a few sections where we were looking for some advice- specifically in the recessional. I knew we wanted something upbeat, and something that would make Mishka and I feel like running from the church because we're so excited we're MARRIED!!!! But we had no idea what we wanted that to be.

Good thing we had Music Minister M to help us out. She played us a few songs and then we had it. "Ode to Joy". It was perfect. Even the title describes exactly what our wedding recessional will be: "joyful".

As prepared as I was, M helped us make our ceremony just a little more awesome.