Our apartment is officially taken over by wedding stuff. Check out these pics…

I should really clear everything out before this weekend since we’re having some friends stay with us. But, all this craziness means there’s lots of wedding updates this week!

• Ceremony: We’ve done the paperwork for the wedding license and we’ve also thought a lot about the ceremony. I think I already mentioned that civil ceremonies are only legal at City Hall or at the Justice of Peace. Some small towns overlook that and the town mayor brings the registry paperwork to where you want to get married (i.e. your reception venue) and marries you there. We initially thought they’d come to us but they backed out of that, as well. We’re still trying to fix it but it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to, so we’ve got two options: tell everyone to go to City Hall first, get married there and then go to the reception (a 3 minute drive); or go to City Hall early in the AM just the two of us plus the two witnesses, sign the legal paperwork and then do a symbolic ceremony at our reception venue with all of our wedding guests (we’d ask someone from the family to speak/officiate). Right now we’re leaning towards option two but we’re a bit hesitant. It’s becoming more and more common to do that here, but it is still considered a “fake” wedding by many and I’m not sure we want that. Plus having to write the ceremony ourselves will mean extra work. We think it would be more meaningful that way though since City Hall weddings are very quick and impersonal.
• Banners: I’ve made three banners with the help of a friend; one for drinks (Bebidas), another one for the dessert table (Postres) and the third one says coffee & tea (Café y Té). We freehanded everything so it was pretty easy. I think they’ll look cute hanging out at each table. Plus we used fabric scraps and sharpies so we didn’t spend any money on them.

• Other decor: We also cut the crepe paper into strips (seen above) to hang as garlands on the tents’ ceiling. We’ll probably need to buy more though.  My mom is also working on some paper pompoms for us so we can hang them around.
• Signs for the photo booth: Seeing Christine’s photo booth props made me jealous so I decided to go ahead and do one of our own. I was hesitant at first because we’ve already got so much on our plate (not because I didn’t want one! we usually set up a photo booth at most of our parties out in the patio), but I’ve enlisted the help of friends for this one. So far they’ve made these two signs and another friend who’s great at drawing will be making some masks, etc. for props. The two signs were pretty easy to make: my friend Natalia cut out four pieces of cardboard (she used the box from the vanity) and glued them two by two, so two for each sign, then she stapled the burlap as if she were upholstering them. Then she stenciled the numbers I used for the burlap runners. We also printed the ampersand and the A for the other sign and stenciled those, too.

• Invitations: we finished and gave/sent those, as well! Check out the pictures of the trial one (the envelope is addressed to ourselves…)

• Dress: I had a dress fitting on Sunday and I’m having another one tomorrow. The one on Sunday was with the friend who’s designed the dress and made the trial dress. Tomorrow we’ll be going to a seamstress she’s worked with, since she prefers to have the seamstress sew the actual dress. So the dress with the real fabric will be done in a couple of weeks.

• Pictures: We had our engagement shoot yesterday. We were both pretty nervous about it – we’re very camera shy – but it went well, I think. Can’t wait to see the end result. Update: Check out a preview here, they look great!
• Centerpieces: We also bought all the flower pots for the centerpieces (using a gift card). We checked out the flower section at Ikea and we were pretty happy with the selection, but we also decided to check out a local gardening center, since we might use edible plants like thyme, rosemary, etc. as plants in the centerpieces. With that idea in mind, I raided my parents’ kitchen cabinets in search of ice cream sticks – we’ll be painting them, writing the name of the plants and sticking them into the pot so that people can take them home if they wish.
• Favors: Remember how I told you we had thought about giving out cutting boards as favors? Well, our initial idea was another one: we wanted to give out USB drives with the recipes from the wedding, but were afraid that they were too expensive. In the end, though, I was able to find 4GB drives for pretty cheap (2.49$ each with a custom logo printed on them plus $40 shipping) so we decided to pull the trigger since we really liked the idea. We hope our guests will, too! We chose USB drives that resemble Lego pieces in an assortment of three colors – green, yellow and purple – but they have tons of options. It was a close call between Lego pieces and keys, but since we both already have a USB drive shaped like a key we picked the Lego.  Update: they e-mailed me thirty minutes ago saying they can’t print the logo onto the Lego  ones so now it looks we’ll go with the key shaped ones, but I’ll let you know whatever we decide.
• Guest book: We printed the “guest book” but I still have to prepare it i.e. I still have to cut the cardboard circles. We’ll we adding a sign that asks them to leave their fingerprint, a note, or simply sign one of the circles/balloons.
• More paper goods: I designed the signs for the guestbook table, the favor table, and the photo booth table; plus the escort cards for the seating plan. I had designed one for our initial venue but because of the new venue I’ll be going with something else. The design will be something simple, like this one shown below; it will read the name and table number; and I’ll tape every card to a big piece of wood we already have. Doing the cards was actually really easy using a function called Mail Merge. The basic idea is that you create a spreadsheet with three columns in my case: first name, last name, table number. Then in a word document (Pages in my case) I design the card adjusting the size of the card and using the fonts/colors that I want. When the design and spreadsheet are done, I click on Mail Merge and it automatically creates every card! It’s a huge time-saver. After the cards are done I’ll pick a different color for each table number, since it shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes and it’ll make the seating plan look better.

• Other purchases: We 1) Bought the cake server. It’s a simple design from Ikea but I’m thinking of ordering a metal stamping kit from Amazon and stamping our wedding date or something. We’ll see. We also 2) Bought the water glasses, and 3) Ordered half a wine barrel to hold the drinks (kind of like this one but cut lengthwise) for 50€.
• Registry: Registries aren’t really a thing here, but people have asked us plenty of times what we’d enjoy as a wedding gift. So after thinking long and hard about it we thought how “Giving Experiences” as a gift are a huge thing right now, and we decided to create our own honeymoon registry. So people can give us hotel nights/dinners/other activities as a gift if they want to. It’s still in trial mode right now in my blog in Spanish if you want to check it out, I should finish it in a couple of weeks, hopefully.
• Honeymoon: I’ve booked almost everything. We’ve decided against visiting Yosemite since it was a bit out our way. Right now the itinerary is: 2 nights in Dallas, fly to Seattle, rent a car there, 3 nights in Seattle, 2 in Portland, 1 in the Sonoma area, arrive to San Francisco and drop off the first rental car. Stay 4 nights there, pick up the second rental car, 1 night in Big Sur, 3 in Santa Barbara and 4 in LA before coming back home. We’re very excited about it!

So it’s a lot of updates this week, I know! I’d really like your input on the ceremony conundrum, though. What would you do? I’d also appreciate some feedback on all the little details, too, of course. It’s always good to hear what other people think!

What do you think? Share your opinion in the comments.