We are Travis and Tina. We're planning our low-key urban wedding. These are our tales as we coordinate our celebration.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Celebration Time

We've been quiet over here due to crazy work schedules and dual birthdays.

Birthday Wishes

But we've still been getting some wedding stuff done. More to come on that later.

This past week was especially special because Travis and I both turned 30! We are only six days apart in age so the past week or so has been quite celebratory.

Cookbooks, bike rides, pizza dates, guitar playing, sewing machines and a whole lotta birthday wishes.

Birthday Cards

Here's to celebrating a lifetime of birthdays together!

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Say Yes to the Dress

Two friends from work, Jen and Abby, and my best friend, Leila and I went dress shopping a couple weeks ago. I didn’t really have a plan for getting my dress. I just knew I wanted something white, above the knee and at little cost.

I actually went to a bridesmaid boutique on my own, but left feeling frustrated by the cold and frankly, bitchy, saleswoman. So, when my carpool-mates from work insisted on taking me out dress shopping, I figured they just may know what they’re doing.

They made an appointment at a local bridal and bridesmaid boutique, Bella Bridesmaid, in San Francisco and also made a reservation for lunch afterwards at a local gourmet vegetarian restaurant, Greens. It was great – I just had to show up!

We arrived just after 11 and we were given free reign over the available dresses. They’re a small boutique, but they had a good selection of simple dresses. The bridesmaid dresses come in a variety of colors so I tried some of those on, too.

I tried on a variety of dresses, but nothing quite worked. This one was cute, but I felt more like I was going to prom than a wedding:
Too Prom


And I gave long dresses a shot. I confirmed that long just isn't my thing.
Confirmed: No long dresses


And this one would be good for a cocktail party, but not the wedding.
Too Cocktail Party


Near the end of the session, I finally found The Dress. Here is a tease of the upper hem line:
Dress Tease: the top hem

I won’t debut it until the Big Day, but it met my vision of romantic, vintage-y, cute and with a hint of one of our wedding colors. Plus, it was under $400! The girls and I agreed – this was it. I said yes to the dress!

I ordered and paid for the dress on the spot. It’ll arrive sometime in May and then I’ll need to get some alterations to bring it above the knee.
Making it Happen Leila Helps Me Decide


We then headed off to lunch to celebrate. What a successful and fun morning. Many thanks to my gals Jen and Abby for organizing!

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Time to Register


Travis and I weren't sure what to make of the whole registry thing. First of all, we really just want to celebrate with friends and family so we have no expectations for loads of gifts. On the other hand, we don't want to end up with 3 rice cookers (No joke! This actually happened to a friend of a friend).

We abstractly thought we knew what we'd like to round out our new home, but when we actually sat down to create a list for our registry, we were all over the place. It's actually a lot of work!

I decided to sign us up for one of Crate and Barrel's wedding registry parties. Sure, it's a great marketing tactic -- open the doors to your store early for brides- and grooms-to-be and arm them with the tools to ask everyone they know to buy presents for their registry from your store! But, frankly, we don't want our wedding to consume us too much and this seemed like an easy way to add some staples to our wish list and check this item off our to-do list.

We arrived just after 9 a.m. on Sunday a couple weeks ago. We were greeted by cheerful and helpful Crate and Barrel salespeople. The store didn't open to the public until 11 a.m. so we had two hours to browse the store with other registering couples. We checked in, received our hand held registry scanners (Travis suggested an iPhone app replace the registry scanner) and headed straight for the coffee.

That's the thing. They also had coffee, mimosas, juice and breakfast treats scattered throughout the store -- which is 3 stories! We had to amble upstairs to track down the coffee, but this allowed us to get the lay of the land. We headed back downstairs and got scanning!

The morning was actually pretty fun and helpful for us to understand what the scope of things we wanted (entertaining party trays -- no; Kitchen Aid mixer -- heck yeah). We were also able to scan things on site and then change quantities, colors or even the item itself later online.

The salespeople were also super helpful. We had a lot of questions and they helped us navigate the store and the different specs for everything.

When we were done, we uploaded our registry right there in the store. We got about half of the items on our wish list scanned at Crate and Barrel. That's pretty good for one morning!

We've set up the rest of our wish list items through a universal registry online. It feels good to have this step wrapped up (well, for the most part -- Travis has some more items he hopes to add in upcoming weeks).