party all the time

We asked for a lot of favors to make our wedding happen. One was of my groom's parents to host our engagement party at their home. They have a huge basement perfect for entertaining, and they're the kind of people that own their own folding chairs and big tubs to put beers in and stuff like that. They kindly agreed.

there are absolutely no good pictures of our party, most likely because of all the sangria...

We had the party early - we were engaged at the end of December, our wedding was going to be in July, and we had our party in February. In the interest of full disclosure, the main reason for this was that we were broke and hoping to get gifts at the party so we could book our honeymoon. And it totally worked!

Here's the secret - Traveler's Joy. David and I had lived alone for years before moving in to our house together, so we already had basically everything we needed. Toasters and towels and monogrammed plungers were completely unnecessary, and so on our invites we stated that gifts were not needed but if people did feel the need they could contribute to our honeymoon experience via our Traveler's Joy registry.

This website is perfect, because let's be real here, all anybody wants to get when they get married (or ever) is money, but it's totally tacky to put that on the invitation (in lieu of blenders, please give us checks). On Traveler's Joy you register for things like airfare and hotel accommodations and excursions like snorkeling and horseback riding, and your guests click on it and pay that amount so they feel like they are actually giving you a "thing" instead of just money. Well, the joke is on them because the website just gives you the money! You can do whatever you want with it! You could use it for the actual thing that they think you're going to use it for, you can pay for other stuff for your wedding, or you can buy a bunch of hookers and have a coke party. NOBODY WILL KNOW THE DIFFERENCE!!

We were able to book our honeymoon right after our party, thanks to the generosity of our guests. So the moral of this story is to have your engagement party and/or shower at someone's house if at all possible (this was especially important to us since we only had a best man and maid of honor and not the traditional dozen bridesmaids who split the cost of the shower), and maybe you will luck out like we did and not have to pay even a cent. And register on Traveler's Joy. And also at your party, it's probably not a good idea to get into a huge fight with your future in-laws that ends with you crying and storming out. No matter what happened, that's not very gracious of you, and you probably had too much sangria to think clearly anyway. Definitely don't do that. Uh, I've been told. From other people who that happened to. Not me.

rsvp... or not.

We decided on an unconventional idea - to have our ceremony on the boardwalk in Atlantic City on a Thursday with only our immediate family and 4 friends, and then have the "reception" in our backyard the Saturday after that. I will go into more detail on this later.

One thing we didn't want were 182 different parties where people had to make a big trek and give us a bunch of presents. I didn't want a shower with favors and games, and I didn't want a fancy invitation where we had to spend two times as much on stamps so we could include a card people had to send back to RSVP. We imagined our food would be some kind of super casual buffet, so there was no need to ask people if they preferred chicken or fish four months ahead of time.

We did want to have one pre-wedding party, kind of an engagement party and shower rolled in to one. I will talk about this party later on as well (I am clearly a master of suspense). But what I want to talk about now are the invitations. We wanted people to have all the information on the engagement party and the reception in one document, so instead of the traditional invitation with bows and glitter (and all those stamps), I made a flyer on Vistaprint.

It had all the info on the party, asking people to RSVP to a hotmail address I had created just for this occasion. We also created a wedding website on the knot, where people could go and RSVP to the reception. This was all explained in the flyer/invitation. There was just one problem... NOBODY F&@%ING READS ANYTHING. A week or so before the engagement party I emailed everyone who hadn't replied and reminded them what they needed to do. The same thing for the reception, and I think I know why there was some confusion there - with our flyer, we had also included a "save the date" magnet.

Adorable? Yes. But also confusing, because I think when someone gets a "save the date" they expect a more formal invitation to follow. So I can see why they might have thought something else was on its way, and needed to be reminded to go to our website and let us know if they were coming or not. Also, I think a lot of family members told us they were coming, verbally, and didn't think they had to respond online. I guess that makes sense, but it was super helpful to have everything on the knot, because it would let you look at a quick snapshot of how many guests to expect, how many had replied, and so on.

So, I highly recommend making a website on the knot. You can put all your information on it for your guests to see, and manage a lot of aspects of your wedding on there. I also suggest Vistaprint (if you're not married to the idea of the traditional invitation). We got WAY too many flyers and magnets (because we are geniuses and thought, "oh we are inviting 125 people so we need 125 flyers," not thinking that most of those were couples, and then it was 14 cents cheaper if you ordered double of everything, so we couldn't afford NOT to!!), and we also got adorable return address labels, all for under $125. Just make sure you're clear with your guests about when/how to RSVP, and expect to have a few who don't get it and need a gentle reminder. It's the price you pay for simplicity (and you save SO much on stamps).

he liked it, so he put a ring on it...

It's 1am, and I returned today from my five day long honeymoon in Jamaica. I'm tired, but all I can think about is posting pictures and writing thank you cards. My boyfriend fiance husband is in bed, like a normal person.

Oh also, it's my birthday. Or at least it was, up until one hour ago (although since I was born at 2:30am, I always kind of thought my birth"day" should last from 2:30am on the 26th until 2:30am on the 27th).

We were engaged on December 26th, which was our makeshift anniversary. It was the day we met, which was the only date we could remember anything of significance happening (it's so different when you're an adult, and there's not a date when someone asks you "out" but instead several months full of complicated and subtle milestones leading to the eventual and inevitably awkward conversation about where this is going or what you should be called when introducing each other to someone... and you probably break up at least once in there too). Anyway it was four years since we had met, and we were having dinner at our favorite restaurant, when the server came out with a cake with sparklers on top and a ring in the middle. I turned to see David on one knee, and he asked me to marry him. My immediate response was "Dave, stop it!" (poor guy) but I quickly followed it with quite a few yeses and, just like that, I was engaged.

We had already talked about keeping it small, inexpensive, and simple. We had no idea what we were in for.