Here it comes!

Wow! It's been more than a month since I've posted. All of a sudden we hit the ground running not long after my last post.

We booked a photographer, who is fabulous.

We built a website. We used Wedding Window and it was super easy and nice. You can even get a custom URL from them, but we had already spent a mere $1.99 on one from GoDaddy with the ".info" ending, which seems like a great way to go since people will be looking for info on our wedding when they visit!

We booked our honeymoon! We'll be in fabulous Tulum, Mexico for 6 nights. Aaah...

We've had some run-around with our rehearsal dinner. Keene, NH does not offer many choices for hosting one other than one large restaurant (which we can't use because of some problems they caused at another family rehearsal dinner), and several hotels. One fabulous restaurant has a room, but it's not big enough. We'd ideally like to use a restaurant or a hall and have it catered by some one over our choosing, instead of a ballroom at a hotel or the country club with the standard fare. Then, we found the Cheshire County Historical Society. Good space, reasonable rental rate, and the restaurant we wanted to cater had just catered there the week prior. Great news! Then we call to book and they need to find some one to work that night. Okay, that's reasonable, but it's 3 months away. Then, oh, they need to make sure they can rent the space while they have the new exhibit in there. We got the okay on that one and it was back to just needing someone to work it. Days later we get the call--it's a no-go because of the exhibit that will be in there. What kind of run around is that? And, why didn't they say from the beginning that it's available for rental pending the exhibit that will be in there at the time.

Sad.

Things not to do if you get business by word-of-mouth

We had our #1 choice for photographer all set to go. This was based on good photos, the right prices, and a recommendation from a friend. Great. Except the guy had all these problems about getting together to meet people. I don't think it's crazy to want to meet the guy who might shoot your wedding ... make sure he's friendly and not awkward and we feel comfortable with him. Well, we definitely didn't feel comfortable with the fact that we offered to meet him somewhere pretty out of our way, thinking it would be convenient for him, and then he said he now charges $50 to meet people. Are you kidding me? We are potentially giving you over $1,000 and you want us to pay you $50 for 20 minutes of your time, and somewhere totally inconvenient for us? Jerky, no thanks. Luckily this happened and so we hadn't met with him and hadn't given him our deposit or anything when he sent a jerky reply to a simple email request from a friend looking for a copy of a photo from a party.

Look at all the business he just lost ... next year when the event he shot at work comes around, he won't be hired. He lost the opportunity to shoot my wedding, and therefore lost the chance for me to recommend him to friends. Etc. etc.

Luckily the person we loved before he was recommended to us is still free. Hopefully we can meet her briefly next week and hopefully we love her as much as we love her photos and that will be another big checkmark on the list!

Learning to Prioritize, Not Procrastinate

We can both loose ourselves in looking at countless invitations online, but haven't gotten around to narrowing down our photog selections .... everytime I think I've narrowed it down, a few more come out of the woodwork. It's easy to knock out the ones that are way out of our price range, but then there are the rest ... okay & affordable, better but much pricier, and those whose websites have a nice design but their pictures don't seem to load. I'm going to have to cut myself off and make a pro/con spreadsheet ... or something.

Then there's the DJ problem ... how do you even go about selecting one? I guess it's a matter of meeting with people and seeing if you like them, which will have to wait until after vacation. Tim's research came up with a guy a good $200 under our budget, which would be excellent. More $ for other stuff!