15 January 2011

mother f*cking rock star.



GUYS. 
GUESS WHAT.
I am A Practical Wedding blog today. 
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


A couple of months ago, whilst in the throes of deciding on a caterer, I send a frantic email to Alyssa at 'Ask Team Practical,' and - while she emailed me back a very sane, very calming email - I left it at that. I never thought it would really make it onto the blog. In my head, everyone else had picking a vendor down. They didn't spend sleepless nights wondering about choosing the extremely nice caterer with the only okay chicken or the inflexible caterer with the to-die-for risotto (we ended up going with the extremely nice caterer and we switched the order from chicken to salmon and are keeping our little fingers crossed). It's calmed down a bit now, as we've moved closer to the wedding and made more and more decisions, but I am loving the wise, wise, WISE advice them ladies are giving me over there.

Oh, and did I mention how much of a rock-star I feel like to be on MY FAVORITE BLOG EVER? Seriously, I read it every morning with my first cup of coffee. Every. Damn. Day. Before I look at anything wedding-related, anything work-realted, anything even-breakfast related. I've never even written so much of a guest post on any other blog and here I am, hitting the Broadway play quality of blogs. Hells to the Yes (ug. okay, now i promise never to say that phrase again).

I am trying to stop myself from judging my blog to harshly. Makes me realize that I'm not crazy about my writing the last couple months, the post seem short, I seem a bit whiney, I swear to God that my life in not as shallow as it sometimes is portrayed... so to any new folks from A Practical Wedding - Hello. This is my blog. Some days it is good. Somedays it is less than good. But it keeps me writing, even if that writing is crappy. So please, um, don't judge too hard.

Okay, now that's over. Back to squeeling with joy. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, here's the entire email exchange between Alyssa and meself. I think my second email is better than the first. You be the judge-ola.

On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 3:28 PM, Sarah wrote:
Hi there!

I'm not sure exactly what my question is, but I need some serious advice and a healthy dose of sane. Turns out this wedding planning bit can be stressful, no?

Okay, first the good & important stuff: I am marrying a guy named Amos, I like him, he likes me, and we're totally stoked on this who get-married business. The planning-to-get-married is a little more stressful than we originally anticipted. As of last night, we have a pretty-solid potential venue, and it's even within our budget (by budget, I mean we had to SWAG* a budget, so we're kind of flying blind & making it up as we go along).

So we have a cool venue, and I do like the people who run it (local church group who rehabed it, use it as their space, and rent it out during other days. Imagine a big warehouse with a beautiful wood ceiling). But they haven't done many weddings before (3 with ceremonies), so we're forging a new trail. Which you think is exciting, until you get in the damn thing and can't see the forest for the trees.

We're going to have to rely on our caterer a lot here, and that's why I'm writing you all. How do I know what's a reasonable fee? How do I know what questions to ask? How do I know what I need and don't need (until a week ago, I never even thought or renting linens. Oooh, that's how the tables have those pretty white things draped over them!) And, perhaps most importantly, how do I know when one is good? I wish the good guys - the ones who use local and sustainable ingredients, who pay their servers and staffs fair wages, who reinvest money into the community, who don't want to rip us off, upon whom we can trust to do a great job and think of things we didn't - had halos. Because I'm on website after website and so terrified we are going to get into a situation where we will end up with a bigger bill than we thought, or we won't have things we need (wait, who was supposed to rent the microphone for the ceremony?) and be tots stressed... and broke... and I know, we should start talking to people, but how do you even find the ones to speak with?

Wait, wait, I got my question:
How do I pick a good vendor?

There, after 3 paragraphs of writing, I found what I was trying to ask. Hope you stuck around long enough to read it.

Best,
Sarah

*SWAG = seriously wild ass guess. I think that what it's called when you Google 'how much does a DJ cost?' 'how much does a live band cost?'

PS - thanks for building & supporting such a wonderful community. it makes the world a more friendly place.

On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 8:48 AM, Ask Team Practical <askteampractical@apracticalwedding.com> wrote:

Hey you!

It's Alyssa, I just wanted to let you know we got this and we'll add it to our queue and get to it as soon as we can!  Meg and APW get a lot of emails, so I can't guarantee that we'll get to it before your wedding, but we'll try as best we can.

Some questions though:

One - When is your wedding?
Two - Can we use parts of your email when we answer it, including your name and/or your partner's name?
Three - Do you have a blog we can link to?

I feel ya on this, it's a really tough thing to deal with.  You don't want to get ripped off, but you also don't want to pay way more than you have to or go with an inferior vendor...  A couple things to help in the meantime; check out your local boards on Offbeat Bride and ALWAYS check on a place's Better Business Bureau status.  Lack of a status doesn't always mean something bad, but a bad or low grade usually should throw up all kinds of red flags.

Take care, and hope to hear from you soon!
--Alyssa



On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 1:11 PM, Sarah wrote:

Thanks Thanks! It just felt good to send this out to the (practical) universe... this is much more difficult than I originally expected! For instance, we're interviewing photographers this week, and I really like this one. But on the website, he and his wife mention Jesus a lot. And that's cool - nothing against loving Jesus, by any means! - but I also want to support vendors who believe in the basic equality of every individual person, including marriage equality. Bringing that up can be super tricky - what do I say? "So, Benj, you friendly to the gays? Does your Jesus love focus on the inclusion aspect of Christianity or the separation/judgment aspect of Christianity?" You jive? Tricky business...

Okay, onto your questions:

#1 - I think it's going to be August 13th. Could be August 20th. Or September 10th. All 2011. Should know by tomorrow.
#2 - Sure thing! My name is Sarah, and can you use fiance's last name - Amos - as that's how I call him in my blog.
#3 - yes, I do! I haven't been writing as much as i would like, but I do try to update is once to three times a week. My blog's name is Jackson Riley and the address is http://thisisjacksonriley.blogspot.com

5 comments:

  1. Hee. You wrote the funniest question I've ever read. Of course reading ALL the questions in Alyssa's job. She just sends me the funny/ batshit crazy ones. Not that anyone ever emails us stressed out of their mind sounding like they have a screw loose. Ever. But you? Hilarious.

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  2. AGREED. You are adorable. You got a question answered AND a new follower. YAY!

    Mother-effin' rock star.

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  3. Hi, I'm Kinzie, also from APW. I just wanted to say that that is EXACTLY how I read my APW posts -- with my first cup of coffee before my eyes are even quite open. Congrats on your new fame status! :)

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  4. ok: I've clicked over far too late, but your jesus photographer reminded me of one of the funniest t-shirts I ever saw:

    "I like Jesus, but he loves me. It makes things kind of awkward..."

    ReplyDelete
  5. oh: flip. I left the comment about the t-shirt. (I got distracted about the gobbly text box.)

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Feel free to leave a comment, unless you're a troll or a bully, in which case I will delete you so fast...

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