How do people manage with big weddings?

Ours is small and I'm tired of it already. I've comforted myself recently with the knowledge that, once the invitations are sent, we don't actually HAVE to do anything else for the day to go off alright. It's kind of like that point in a course where you realize, even if you don't do one single assignment for the rest of the semester, you'll still pass. Why yes, I did have a terrible case of senioritis my last year of university, why do you ask?

Tonight James and I are meeting with a friend of his to work on invitation design. We've mostly got it down, decided on the wording, figured out whose design we'd like to rip off (this one), and now all we need to do is tweak the layout and argue over fonts. I'm going for Jane Austen and Port Credit, and James is in the "less girly" camp.

James' best man has thrown a monkey wrench into the mix; his work schedule has been changed (he's a firefighter) and he's now scheduled to work at 6 pm on our wedding day. Apparently there is no way for him to get out of this. So, looks like the ceremony has to be at 4. I'm trying to figure out what to do with the in-between-ceremony-and-reception time - we'd been planning on avoiding it because it feels disjointed and leaves people wondering how to kill time for a couple hours.

We've also signed up for a marriage counseling workshop on June 7 at the request of our officiant. Looks like it should be beneficial, and cheaper than individual counseling! Can't go wrong with that.

Anyway, this weekend we are taking a break from planning and instead blowing some money on a trip to Saltspring Island. We're staying in a nice B&B and we're going to have a calm and relaxing weekend. We'll probably do some wine tours, maybe go to some yarn stores after (plenty of sheep on that island, and after the wine tour is the appropriate time if James is to come along). Maybe we'll look at some jewelers and fabric stores as well.

Weekend plans

Since I left JLo at Naomi's house last week, I'm doing my organizing here instead. (Have you met JLo? My wedding planner? Staples, $30.)

THINGS TO DO

• Friday night: James finish moving.
• Friday night: Elaine scope out Stanley Park again to make sure the directions are right, especially via public trans
  
• Saturday morning: set up joint bank account at PC Financial
• Saturday morning: James and Jordan go buy their suits
• Saturday morning: Meanwhile, I guess I'll amuse myself at the mall
• Saturday afternoon: ugh, trip to Ikea in Richmond... we need some shelves, like, yesterday
• sometime else on Saturday: Figure out what we'd like to do re: honeymoon
• also whenever we can fit this in: figure out a registry or wish list or something.
• if possible: visit fabric stores.
  
• unrelated: watch some racing at the velodrome
  

delegating

James had a talk with me yesterday and mentioned I should get more people working for me. So I'm trying to think of what all needs to be done, and which of that can be pawned off on other people. So far I've come up with:

• I need someone to go fabric shopping with me
• I'll need help sewing
• See invitation-making party idea below
• James needs to phone around for a photographer
• I'd like some help with invitation design
• We need to find a musician
• On the day of I'll need some help with setting up things

Anything else I'm forgetting? A lot of things that are a bunch of hassle I'm just not doing. Who needs an arch or aisle runner or flowers or anything like that?

Shifting deadlines

Figuring out a date has turned out to be a tricky one. Initially we just wanted to get things done this summer, so we planned to give ourselves as much time as possible and went for Aug. 30 - Labour Day weekend. But it seems that's just not soon enough for most people!

First we remembered that James' sister is starting university this fall, so she'll be leaving (for Halifax?) on that weekend. We considered the previous weekend - but no, James' cousin Shawna will be returning to Korea on the 19th. The weekend before that? No, the best man is attending another wedding that day. The week before that doesn't work either - turns out my mom (a teacher) has to return to work on the 7th.

So here we are, looking at Aug. 6th, (yes, a Wednesday) and wondering if we can get everything planned in time. On Tuesday at the Hey Fixie ride, I asked a friend how planning went for his wedding last year, since they had a nice smallish wedding. "Yeah, it works totally fine. Here's how it goes, you [Elaine] plan everything and you [James] agree with everything. Oh, and two words: Home brew."

So the "have you set a date?" status now is, we've checked with our "must attend" guests, found an available venue (our first choice, actually), conducted an informal poll as to whether a weekday wedding would be attendable for the majority of our guests, and we're just waiting to hear back from the person we'd like to officiate.