Wedding Planning - Dispatch No. 4

Things to do while in EVV 8/20-8/26:

• Marriage Counseling with Pastor Joe (3 hours)
• Meet with cake decorator Carolyn (about 1 hour)
• taste, decide on flavors and design
  
• Meet with coordinator/florist Doug (about 1 hour)
• confirm colors, talk about specific flowers
  
• Dress fitting in Owensboro (about 3 hours, with driving time)
• Meet with chef Doug to set menu for Rehearsal Dinner (1 hour)
• Meet with chef Scott Schymik and Coordinator Andrea at Kirby's to set reception menu (1 hour)
• Meet with photographer Lvonne (probably upwards of 1 hour)
• she may want to do some photos of us, but mostly she'll want to get to know us and talk about our style

Impending arrival

Now just exactly one month til Dan's arrival... I've settled in our apartment and am just waiting for him to get here and help me decorate and buy furniture.

So, countdowns:

• four weeks from Tuesday: Dan gets here late at night
• sixish weeks: Uncle Sam wedding
• fourteenish weeks: my General Exams
• roughly October: Dan receives Advance Parole and 12 month Employment Authorization
• 189 days from now: the Wedding
• 171 days from now: our fourth anniversary

That's enough of that. Suffice it to say, I'm excited.

Oh, and we have a church, reception site & caterer, florist, photographer, cake baker, and venue & caterer for the rehearsal dinner all booked. And I bought a dress!

Wedding Planning - Dispatch No. 2

This is what we're thinking for the reception location. Kirby's. It's elegant, beautiful, has a great chef, and is miraculously reasonably priced. It's a pair of mansions (the one pictured is the one on the left) with a large ballroom built in between. the main reception dinner and dancing will be in the ballroom and the bar will be set up in one of the side rooms in the mansion on the right. There are a lot of lovely little corners where people could escape if they want and the whole place has pretty great ambiance.



This is the ballroom. You see the side walls are exposed brick with windows in - they're actually the external walls of the houses on either side. pretty cool. in the upper right of this photo is the dance floor. You see a big mirror at the top middle of the picture? That's where they usually set up the cake.
This is a big mirror in the side room where our bar would be, showing the main staircase of the house. This is a great spot for photos and will be a good deal quieter than the ballroom during the reception. On the website, you can see menus by clicking on the bottom left picture at the center of the page.

We also stopped at Le Merigot hotel this afternoon to look at their rooms and just see what it looks like. This is the lobby and Blush restaurant and bar ("ultralounge"). It's pretty cool. If people are staying at this hotel, it could be good to go here for the quasi bachelor party.

The next picture is in the bedroom of the presidential suite, looking into the living room. It's crazy. About 2,000 square feet. The master bathroom in this suite has a sauna in it.


The next photo is one of their "three-way" suites. This is the one where Obama stayed a couple weeks ago. This picture is also taken from the bedroom looking into the living room. This suite has one king sized bed (2 people), but they could bring in a couple cots so that the suite would sleep 4. If they did that, it would work out to less than a hundred dollars per person per night. There is also an adjoining standard room (sleeps 4), so that the two rooms could be connected and 8 people could split the $500 price tag. Not too shabby. Anyway, it was crazy beautiful and not badly priced.


For the rehearsal dinner (dinner party with family and wedding party), we're thinking of going to Just Rennie's. It's a beautiful, small private restaurant with a fabulous chef. He'll work with us to come up with an individual menu, but he also has menus on his website (.pdf). Really nice guy and lovely space.

The florist/coordinator we're looking at is Doug at the Olde Salt Box. He used to run a flower shop across the street from my high school. I used to go in and buy myself flowers from him all the time. He's fabulous.

The photographer we're probably going to go with is Lvonne Bennett. Her website is really cheesy and outdated and the sample photos aren't as good as what we saw when we met her. The good thing is she doesn't cost $8,200, unlike one other guy we met with. She's not the cheapest, but she's also not overly expensive and she's really good to work with.

I think those are all the major decisions so far. Let me know if you have any thoughts. I love you.