I just crunched the numbers (although it feels like the numbers are crunching me) and we've got everything we need for the wedding and it's under budget! Hooray! Well, everything except our wedding bands which we aren't including in the budget because our rings are a gift to one another. But all the vendors and rentals all that are taken care of. Just a few more deposits to come up with, and all that's left to do is mail the invitations and wait to get married!

I made caramel apples today and they were amazing and I ate 2 and now I feel positively ill. Blergh.

I have a big, fat quiz on Monday. It would behoove me to study.

Yesterday I drove to Berkeley and met up with some wedding vendors that I'm thrilled to be working with. One was a wedding cake maker, La Farine in Oakland---FINALLY found someone with amazing-tasting cake, competitive prices, and is available. It's going to be a combination of coffee/kahlua cake and a dark-chocolate ganache cake. I'm so excited! I brought home some cake from the tasting yesterday and I'm waiting for the right moment to devour it.

Yesterday Neko and I were leaving the Lincoln Center and there was this huge column of smoke coming from a building behind the old honey-baked hams, and there were like a million firetrucks and traffic was all backed up like crazy. And there's not one mention of it in the paper. So I have no idea what caught on fire. Neko thinks it was the Cameo cards (old naughty nick's) place. Oh well.

Don't really have any plans for Halloween. Maybe I'll make caramel apples.

Today we drove to Stripmallmore to meet the officiant for the wedding. He seems like a really cool guy. He's a retired Catholic priest who specializes in the "interfaith" world. I think he's a great match for what we're looking for.
Annnnddddd....I went and tried on a wedding dress at Maxine's bridal that I had tried on a few weeks ago and really liked. I still really like it. I know I spoke a month ago about a JCrew dress that I said I was going to keep but I actually already returned it. Long story. Anyway, the lady at Maxine's said she'd include a free hem for the dress if I bought it by Monday. So! The high-pressure sale is on!

This is the eastern side of the marriage-happening place.

A deposit has been put down and the date and location is officially official! June 12, 2010 at the San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo.
My stepmom and my niece Shea were visiting San Francisco this past week and yesterday we went for a tasting with the caterer for the wedding. It went swimmingly. The food was delicious and the caterer is very familiar with the workings of weddings at the seminary and knew about everything we could possibly think of. After that I remembered that I'd spoken to a florist over the phone a month ago that was located in San Anselmo and wanted to check her out. That also went really well. The florist was full of really great ideas and only uses seasonal and local plants. She gave me a complementary bouquet of white lilies, japanese maple branches, and some little green flowers I can't recall the name of. It's beautiful but I think I may be allergic to the lilies. Oh well.

So things are falling into place and I'm happy about that.

I had my first day of CNA training. Six hours of class is very long! Luckily after this week we only have lecture one day a week. And speaking of which, I have homework to do. Adios!

This could just be a coincidence, but at the first wedding venue I checked out, I told them that I wasn't really planning on looking anywhere else (because at the time I thought that was the truth) and their quote was firm with no incentives, and at the second place I talked to over the phone, I told them I was just looking and I got told "I know the economy is bad and I don't know what other places are offering but we're knocking 10% off our usual rates".

Moral of the story: Always mention you're looking. Can't hurt in any case.

Update to the no delicious food for the next six months ordeal: Dr. scsi says eating the forbidden foods in moderation should be fine. Basically aged foods (cheese, wine, fermented soy) and over ripe fruit and past their prime meats have increasing levels of an amino acid which MAOI's (the drug I'm taking) prevent the metabolism of and can apparently cause hypertension in large quantities. My own pharmacist didn't even bother mentioning it, the bottle just had the "cover our asses" warning sticker on it and I looked it up on the internet (always a bad idea because the internet loves worse case scenarios).

Going to look at another possible wedding venue this Sunday in San Rafael that may offer us something very similar but at 1/3 of the price.

Yesterday we went to the San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo to check it out as a possible wedding venue. We both loved it. I talked to my dad about it over the phone who was grumpy and absolutely no help, but I got to speak to my stepmom in person as she was in San Francisco helping my sister move into a new apartment. She was more helpful. She said as long as I think it will fit in the budget, then it's okay.
I had picked June 5th as the Date, but said that date wasn't particularly important. But June 5th was the only day they had already booked. And then I realized I was disappointed I couldn't have June 5th. But it's not a huge deal. The exact date isn't important. It's between June 12th and the 26th now. I think I'm going to go with the 26th. Just sounds better than the 12th I guess.

Then some crap happened at the doctor's office today when I was getting my physical for the nurses' assistant training. More on that later.

So no official date has been set for the wedding, the general consensus is just that it will be summer (most likely June) of next year. So I was looking at a 2010 calendar and noticed that my birthday will be on a Saturday in 2010 (the 19th) So...would it be fun to have a birthday wedding? I kinda think it would.
I googled "getting married on birthday" and got various message boards. The first result had nothing but negative replies, with pretty much everyone saying, "when you get divorced, your birthday will be ruined". Well.
And generally other stupid reasons like, "but then you'll get a birthday and anniversary present and the other person will get only one" and "your wedding should be about the two of you and having your wedding on your birthday will make it only about you".

Any thoughts, brutally honest opinions? Would it be weird? Wonderful? Wonderfully weird?

Oh, and I guess it's worth mentioning that Father's Day 2010 is the next day, the 20th. Would it be selfish to ask people to attend my wedding on a family-oriented weekend? Do you think there's a chance a lot of people would be unable to attend because of other father's day-related obligations?

Well, internet, shower me with advice.

So while wedding planning is seriously the furthest thing in the world on our minds right now, I had a moment of inspiration so I'm just going to go with it. I've only had lukewarm feelings toward any color schemes, but something popped in my head and I got really excited. So I'm thinking a sort of smoky, steely blue with light green accents.
For example, bridesmaids dresses in a color like this...

paired with solid green bouquets...


Also, I'm thinking about somehow incorporating the use of mason jars as center pieces.

Okay, girl moment over, back to the real world.