thalassan really helped me with getting things started. We'd been meeting up once a week to hike, and our hikes turned into wedding planning sessions, wedding site checks, and IKEA runs ;)

Originally Andy was going to be invited to be one of the groomsmen, but he was also the favorite candidate I'd thought of for wedding officiant. Patri made me a deal that if I could think of a third groomsman that he approved of, I could steal Andy away. As it turned out, I'm not the only one who feels this way about Andy: when telling Rob about my secret plan, he mentioned that Andy was already set to do Mark and Sarah's wedding!! Great minds think alike ;)

I like to take nice long showers, and they're always good thinking time for me, so after wracking my brain for a while and not thinking I was going to find anyone more appropriate, it dawned on me: , his friend whom he'd known all his life and considered one of his best friends!! Patri agreed it was perfect, and Dan was more than happy to accept.

As I was telling thalassan this story, she mentioned that it would be cute to have both Andy and Stacey up there. As soon as she said this I decided it also had to happen. As she said, they're so well suited to each together, and it seemed to fit even better than a traditional set up. Not only were they both agreeable, but Stacey ended up taking on perhaps an even more active role than Andy, and was the one who did the paperwork and officially married us :)

The caterer was the first person Patri and I hired. and I found her info on a brochure from the Saratoga chamber of commerce once I decided on the Sanborn-Skyline park for location. Patri checked her out on the net and found some positive reviews and she seemed competent in person. She helped us with the "what we needed to do" details, recommending cake and flower places and other things of that nature. I chose this location because I'd been there for the Shady Shakespeare production that Rob and Anna had participated in, and the grounds were indeed as lovely as I'd remembered them :)

One thing the caterer brought up was seating. She was okay with arranging the bringing of chairs for us, but noted that it would cost over $200 just to have someone do a delivery on a weekend, because the places weren't normally open, and that wasn't even including the cost of the actual furniture. So I came up with the idea of having some sort of crash space in the middle with pillows, and Patri thought this was a great idea :)

As it turned out, he and I had rather different visions. I just about lost it when he mentioned the 20+ pillows (mostly old with all different pillow cases ;) lying around the house that we could use as part of the collection ;) I decided chairs would be better than *that,* I wanted the wedding to be pretty; while I like college dorms, that was not the theme I had in mind!! ;) Thankfully Patri was happy to let me do what I wanted so long as it didn't cost to much. Anna suggested IKEA, and thalassan volunteered to go with me. D and I scoured the store for appropriate pillows, and finally found some nice white ones for really cheap!! :) Then there was the issue of what to put them on. It didn't seem like a good idea to put the pillows directly on the dirt ;) Rugs are expensive and small!! We did a lot of looking and didn't find otherwise, and were thinking about heading over to Home Depot to see what they had, but on the way out thalassan saw the beach mats, which were also dirt cheap, and quickly demonstrated how ideal they were. So we were able to find about thirty or so white lined ones by treasure hunting through the bins of multi-colored mats. Passers by must have thought us very odd ;) All said and done, I'm not sure that the pillow solution cost less than chairs would have, but the pillows were way cooler ;)

During the two or three months before I got a fair bit done. Made an appointment with the caterer that Patri attended with me, set up arrangements with the cake lady, found a store that does custom rings (that didn't end up working out but we're going to get fancier rings at some point after having our first baby: my fingers have swelled with pregnancy and I can't get properly sized until then ;), took care of all the details with my dress, the bridesmaid dresses, jewelry, shoes, etc.

I procrastinated invitations for quite a while. I don't have an address book and was dreading trying to figure out addresses for the 150 people we were planning on inviting, let alone filling out that many cards, etc. So when Patri expressed being agreeable about electronic invitations, I was all for it ;) Patri did a fast efficient job with the text, RSVP form, and basic html, and then I spent a full weekend being anal retentive about the pictures and design. It was a good experience, as I would like to get into web design some day and was quite pleased with how it came out. My favorite discovery during this process was Celtic font typeface ;) Its great, you can use it just like other types in photoshop: stretch it, squish it, bend it, put drop shadows on it, etc. I found a shareware version that included the simple two strand design that we intend on having on our rings (among many others cool designs!), and it came out lovely :)

After getting a pretty good start, I froze up as the date got closer. Thankfully Patri deals with pressure much better than I do ;) He was great both for helping me keep perspective and not freak out, and for actually getting things done ;) He took care of paying all the people we had to pay, getting and sending in forms, researching vows and wedding procedures, and other things of that nature. I can also be super productive at the last minute, but I tend to pay for it: it was a regular occurrence to make myself so sick that I would throw up after finals from stress during college. But Patri just calmly and productively handled things. So cool!! :)

We went to Sarah and Mark's wedding a few weeks before ours. Its only the third wedding I'd ever been to, so of course I got a few ideas from it. Their wedding was beautiful and went really well :) One idea was to have friends speak. Tigresa and seemed obvious picks, and they both delivered great speeches as hoped :)

A lot of people helped out with wedding prep. Anna hemmed my dress and sewed a petticoat for it, which was just fabulous :) She also put braids in my hair so that the veil comb wouldn't fall out. Radiantsun flew out a few days early to help with prep, helped out some with party prep, and curled the ends of my hair. She did a test hair run on Friday night, and we discovered that the one little curling iron that we had around the house didn't do so well, so I racked my brain for friends who might have curling irons. A surprising number of my friends don't, but thankfully had a great one which she was happy to bring :) She also helped out by making a last minute run to Costco for roses for the bridesmaids and desert on Sunday morning :) And was kind enough to get up early to pick up my bouquet :) Patri's mom and brother went to Costco with and I on Friday to pick up three carts worth of drinks plus the roses for the scattered petals. Diana and James did a great job of lifting lots of things, much appreciated by a pregnant girl and a girl with a bad back ;) (I did a fair bit but tried not to feel too guilty about sitting in the shade while they packed the van when I felt like I was overheating ;) And they also kept the drinks in their van for us and delivered them to the site nice and early on Sunday. Radiantsun arranged the roses for decoration around the house for the party, and thalassan (and perhaps others?) gathered the pedals and packed them Sunday morning.

My hiking buddy who is also a Mary Kay consultant, Cyndi, came over and did make-up for the bridesmaids Sunday morning. She didn't have time to do mine or Radiantsun's, but I'd only wanted help on my eyes anyway, and she'd done a trial run with me a few weeks back, so I used a couple of things I learned from her and came up with a nice look that wasn't quite as dramatic as I usually do my make-up when I do it ;)

The bridesmaids were all very helpful with last minute details, setting up, and whatnot, and I think the groomsmen were also put to work with setting up ;) A lot of people helped with setting up the mats and pillows, Loyale and Jhogan made a last minute run to the store for us, and also, much thanks to the people who helped with clean up!! :) Those I know of were , arcanepackrat, , and Rob although I know a lot of others were helping too! Thanks everyone!!! :)