Vous Devez Faire Connaissance

Translation: You Must Get Acquainted

Since the age of 18 I have been sort of a nomad. I left my family, friends and all that I knew in Colorado and ran far, far away to attend college in Washington, DC. During the years I was in DC, I moved yearly from dorm to dorm as the Office of Residence Life (aka Housing) dictated, my poorly forwarded mail trying to keep up. After a bit of a breakdown, I decided that I had had enough of college and returned to my beloved mountains for a summer that turned into 2 years. When I had had enough of my "break" (I like to refer to it as My Sabbatical in order to downplay the fact that I randomly dropped out for 2 years) I went back to DC to finish school. Once I received my degree I moved to New Jersey for a job. That job took me all over the country and eventually to Germany, where I met Mr. Fox (go, go frequent flyer miles!). And now I am with my Foxy man in Europe... continuing the nomadism together.

Of course in between all the packing and taping and storing of stuff I managed to make some friends. Lots of them. And in spite of my tendency to be a wandering star, some of them stuck.

But through this constant moving around I have realized that I am terrible at keeping in touch with people (which I wrote about here). e.g. I'll get an email or a card or (long ago) a letter and I'd read it and smile and feel all warm and loved inside. Then I'd make a mental note to respond in kind.

And then I'd forget.

But since I keep everything... I'd run across said item months or years later and feel guilty for not responding and then make another mental note to write the person-in-question and play catch up.

And of course I'd forget again.

However, some of these people still love me and so I invited them to the wedding.

I invited friends from all the different stages in my life. Plenty of them will not make it because it is expensive. Several of them will. And for those that will, it's obvious but...

They may not know anyone else besides me.

Nobody really wants to be the party loner at a wedding. Source.

So actually I have realized that for some this will also be a deterrent.


Enter Facebook.

Blah, blah, blah Facebook. Source.

I hate Facebook. It has not made me better at sharing, it has made me worse (damned lack of privacy). But now is not the time to rant about social media, it is the time to embrace and celebrate it. Because, guess what?

Lots of the friends that still love me are on the dreaded FB. So I created an event for them to be able to virtually meet each other and network for finding travel and party buddies. Sometimes I'm clever.

Social media to the rescue, right?

Ideas Must Have A Birthplace

Currently, I am in France with my in-laws, learning French and being away from Mr. Fox (I whined talked about this here, and here, and here). Recently, I was in Orléans completing my full day French civic training or la formation civique where I got the in-a-nutshell version of French history and was introduced to the French constitution and civil rights documents. It was heavy. I also am taking French lessons for 3 hours a day, 4 days per week in order to prepare for the DILF A1.1 exam in June. Aside from all that, I have no regular contact with anyone who speaks English with any fluency.

Needless to say, I am distracted.

But distraction cannot stop me for I have less than 6 months to get all this wedding stuff together. Yet, in spite of the need for speed, I am plumb out of ideas. Well, this is not true. Actually the problem is that my ideation process is interrupted by, well, French. So I decided that I should take this French thing by the horns and use it to my advantage.

Enter: French bridal magazines.

My collection of French Bridal magazines. Please ignore the rumpled comforter underneath. I've been busy.

Malheureusement, or unfortunately, my level of French isn't good enough to really understand the lovely articles inside. However, pictures speak a universal language. So I flipped through each one of these lovely periodicals and tore out the pages containing pictures that I found inspiring. Afterward, I took my handy dandy hole puncher and punched! some! holes! in said inspiring pics and put them in my wedding binder (which I fought against starting for so long).

So now I've got a bunch more ideas. Which is good. Yet...

I really need to focus on invitations now.

(insert the procrastinator's theme here... oh wait, they didn't make one yet)

Must Have: Creativity Envy

I am in France, learning French, supposedly 4 days a week for 3 hours a day, 9am to 12pm. Unfortunately, the teacher has interviews to conduct on 2 Tuesday mornings of every month, so that means I am left with an extra day off twice a month. Today is one of those extra days. And what do I do with my borrowed time, you may (or may not) ask?

I cruise the internet, aimlessly wandering from idea to idea.

But of course it's all wedding related, right?

Sure it is!

So this morning I stumbled upon yet *another* super adorable wedding. But though the wedding was cute and I liked it a lot, the real crush envy that I am feeling is for the following video Save-the-Date:

I especially love the story of this couple since I can sympathize. Mr. Fox and I also spent a dreadedly difficult period in a loooong distance relationship. (Though not as LD as Singapore to the US. Hats off to Steve and Sheralyn for making their long LDR work!)

This chick spent an awesome amount of time creating this fantastic piece of lovely. I so wish I had the fantastic creativity (and cotton ball stash) to do something so freaking cool!

You Must Have Lost Your Mind

I saw this today while checking my junk email account:

Do you see the tube coming out of her nose? It's a feeding tube. Source.

No, it's not a story about a terminally ill woman and her trials and tribulations. It's about women who need to lose weight in order to fit into their dream wedding dresses. 

Are they out of their (insert multiple expletives here) minds?!?! 

I can understand wanting to lose weight for you wedding but this goes overboard. And I thought Bridal Bootcamp was nuts! (which I ranted about here)

It's just sad. The wedding is ONE DAY. Of course there will be a bajillion photos of us in that ever-so-special dress and yes we want to remember it for the rest of our lives but HELL... this is just too extreme. 

Honestly, I too have trouble getting my butt out of the chair and onto the treadmill, but hey, I've still got control over what goes into my mouth. So yeah, if you can't lose those last 10 pounds before the wedding, uh, just stop and think. It might be what you're eating.

You Must Eat Your Head Off

Forty eight to fifty percent of your budget should be slated for the reception, says The Knot's nice little budget starting helper (I talked about it here). That's huge. But we have to remember that the reception is the biggest part of the wedding. It's the part where we get to enjoy our guests, we really get to celebrate our transition into our new life, and of course, everyone is fed. Now that last one is the part that really drives the cost. Of course we can have a huge cost for location rental, tables and chairs, and decorations and such, but in the end it's really the food and the booze that makes up that 48-50%.

And it will be especially true for the upcoming Fox wedding. Hell, maybe we'll end up spending more than that. Our reception is likely to be our budget buster. (Which I suppose is normally the case unless a bride must have a $10,000 dress or something like that.)

Why?

Well here's why: Mr. Fox is French. It's a bit of a challenge for me that he is French because I am half Guamanian.

Yup it is. Source.

So quick geography lesson: Guam is the southern-most and largest of the Marianas Islands in the South Pacific Ocean near the Philippines.

Where you can find the tiny island of Guam. Source.

It's shaped like this:

Similar to the shape of New Jersey, but I promise that the weather is better and the people are naturally tan. Source.

Some of my best memories from childhood center around the different fiestas we attended for Guam Liberation Day or Christmas. Without a doubt, the best part of the fiestas was the food. Guamanians favor the buffet style when it comes to serving large parties and we tend to cater our own, a la potluck. 

So one thing I always expected to have when I got married was a traditional Chamorro (Guamanian) potluck dinner. We'd have things like:

Tatiyas (y pronounced like j). Mmm.

Chicken Kelaguen. Yummy yum!

Lumpia. Extra fried yum.

Finadene. Lots of syllables. Dip here.

Red Rice. Regular rice made red.

Pancit: it's spaghetti for Guamanians.

And of course, Chamorro people sweating over a hot grill.

But unfortunately I am not acquainted with any Guamanian people within at least a thousand mile radius. So if someone were to provide all these dishes for the wedding it would be ME and I'm pretty sure I will not have the time to whip up all that goodness. Thus, I have (gladly) acquiesced to Mr. Fox's professional French desires for a super-fancy-sit-down-dinner and its associated cost. 

On the bright side, at least my wedding dress won't smell like barbecue!

I Must Freak Out Regularly

Yep that's right. I freaked out... again.

Yesterday was Friday the 13th.

Source.

But that's not important.

Actually, the thing that is important is that yesterday we cruised past the

"6 Months To Go"

marker. Just cruised by (insert whooshing sound), without a care in the world (whee!!!)... except for trying to fulfill the requirements that let me stay in Europe, learning French vite, vite, vite, and trying to avoid being down because I'm away from Mr. Fox (sad face here).

Needless to say, I'm distracted.

So it's not surprising that a little prompt from a buddy-turned-wedding-invitee by email completely turned my world upside down for a moment. Tick, tick, tick. Time is certainly flying by.

Yes, I know hourglasses do not tick. I just like them lots and lots and this one is purty. Source.

Must Have: A Wedding Crush

I am a habitual crusher. I have been my whole life. My high school (and even middle school) days were full of crushes. Those pointless kind where you obsessively like a boy for 3 days just because he said something funny and it was actually TO you (or maybe just in your general direction, but at 14 it's all the same). So it's no surprise that my tendency toward crushiness has continued on to this day. But instead of boys I'm crushing on (Mr. Fox is all the boy man I need), it's weddings. And this is the wedding I've got a crush on:

Of course I was not searching YouTube for wedding videos. I actually found this bride and her wedding through their blog when I was looking for customizable invitation ideas on Wedding Bee. I really liked the invitations she put together with the help of nothing more than a cheap Epson printer, great ideas and love. I loved the way Mrs. Apple Cider described her invitation making process, including her cost breakdown. I loved all the little personal details she put into them. I loved how she really let her personality shine and was able to make the post so warm and friendly. And I voraciously read every single post on her blog. 

And it made me want my wedding to be like hers.

Well, no, not exactly like hers. She had a rustic, outdoor wedding at a vineyard. Mine won't be any of that. She had a custom made dress. I bought mine at the largest bridal retail chain in the US. She DIY'd everything. And that's actually where our two weddings will be similar (I hope… especially since I tend to be optimistic).

Your Memories Must Be Captured... Professionally

Mr. Fox must have been a Japanese tourist in his former life. He has this camera:

Mr. Fox's Memory Box. Source.

...and he takes it everywhere. It doesn't matter if we've been there four times before ...in the same week, he wants to document the experience and keep track of our "memories". But what this really means is that pictures of him, if they exist, look like this:

Mr. Fox: Self Portrait, hard at work.

Fox derrieres in Times Square. Mr. Fox is taking photos, of course.

...and pictures of me, of which there are copious amounts, tend to turn into this:

I wasn't mad, I was simply letting my inner artist free.

Of course I want to look nice in the pictures and smile for the camera, but that really only works the first 8 times or so. After that you tend to get a bit, uh... creative.

But I'm not complaining (Though I suppose I'm ranting just a bit).

Yet in spite of Mr. Fox's obsession (yes, obsession) with capturing "the moment" on film, in actuality, he had to be convinced about hiring a wedding photographer.

You heard me right: Convinced.

And it was a hard sell. A really, really difficult one. (Yet still easier than the whole golf cart thing.) He didn't understand why we needed to pay someone to take photos when we had so many friends with cool cameras. His reasoning was that there would be like 400 shots per minute taken during the event due to the plethora of cameras our guests would have. How could we possibly need anything more? Especially if the service is going to cost more than €700. In his mind €700 was more than enough to pay for a photographer. He didn't get why any of them were priced higher. Honestly, I would have loved it if we could spend this (relatively) small amount of money and get great photos. But it just wasn't going to happen, as our search concluded.

Between the two of us, we received 8 offers from various photographers from the Loiret Region marriage guide and various internet searches. They were all in French. They were all vastly different. We sat down together and attempted to make a comparison. (What this really means is that Mr. Fox sat down to read the offers and I went to the various websites to view their digital goods.) These were our conclusions:

• It was impossible to do an apples-to-apples comparison of these things
• French wedding photographers favor the risque
• French wedding photographers are overwhelmingly male
• Price means absolutely nothing compared to quality

It felt like we were making very little forward progress. What now? Let it marinate and move on to other things.

In the meantime, I grazed wedding blogs, like you tend to do when you're planning a wedding, and I struck gold!!! One of my faves, Parisian Party, put up this little tidbit of lovely: Barbie and Ken's REAL French Wedding. When I saw this I simply fell in love. The quality of the photos was fantastic. The details were just too good. And it was freaking Barbie and Ken. What little girl who played with these dolls didn't try to do the wedding thing?!?!

I immediately hunted down the photographer on the net and combed her website to see if this one photo shoot was too good to be true. But it wasn't. (insert dance of joy)

So I sent a request for an offer and crossed my fingers, toes, eyes, and anything else that I could, waiting for her reply. And guess what?

She's within our budget!!!

Source.

You Must Have A Teaser

Today I am going to bed a very, very pleased bride-to-be. I'll give you a short update since I'm completely bushed.

Mr. Fox and I started our day super early (5am... we're ambitious I told you) so that we could meet with our photographer candidate. We took a 4-hour, morning commuter traffic-filled drive around Paris to meet our PC in Rouen at 11am. Afterwards, we turned around and took an almost equally long drive back to Montargis to pick up Papa and Maman Fox for a trek to the outskirts of Gien to pick up the items for our degustation.

It has been a long day. More updates soon, but in the meantime, I'll leave you with this teaser:

The lovely boxes (and platter) that housed the wonderfulness that is now in my belly and will soon be turned into fat cells that I will have to work off before the wedding.

Bonne nuit!

We've Gotta Pack It All In!

I'm in France, all properly moved in to my new-ish digs with the inlaws. Mr. Fox will be here with me to ease the transition until early next week when I start my French lessons. In the meanwhile, we are going to be super productive for wedding stuff. This week we are going to:

• meet the photographer whose work I'm in love with
• complete a tasting with the caterer who best fits our criteria
• sample wines to complement our menu
• price wedding bands
• contact possible musicians and DJs for the reception
• visit the reception venue again to map out details for decor
• get preliminary pricing for floral arrangements
• arrange and meet with the priest who will officiate the ceremony
• check out the gigantic party store for decoration ideas
• do a wedding hairstyle trial run

Basically, we're going to try to get in a bit of everything since we've been pretty lax with the planning thus far. But mostly we want to get a real handle on the big money items because I need to know how much I can spend on the fun stuff like DIY decorations! Wish us luck. We're ambitious.