The other week, the lovely fiancee and I took a trip to Dobson, North Carolina, to visit her parents. This relates to the wedding planning in two ways.
For one thing, we learned that the area is part of a burgeoning wine industry. We accidentally discovered this when we stumbled across the Harvest Grill, a fine dining restaurant at a nearby vineyard. The wine they served at dinner was really nice, so the next day, we decided to take a driving tour of some of the other local vineyards.
One of the first vineyards we visited that day was Shadow Springs Vineyard, run by a relatively young couple. The lovely fiancee can probably speak with more authority about their wines if she chooses, but she felt that their regular wines were a little less complex than the ones we tried at the older, more established wineries. Where they did excel, we felt, was with their special, unique wines. We were particularly impressed with Dark Shadow, a red wine with chocolate added. It was fantastic on its own, and even better mixed with Shortcake, their strawberry wine. We bought a bottle of each, along with a bottle of Shadow Mist (which reminded Lura of Christmas.)
The more we talk about it, the more likely it is that we'll be serving Dark Shadow at the reception. We liked it that much. And we wouldn't have discovered it if we hadn't gone out to North Carolina.
The main reason for the visit, however, wasn't to drink wine (although that turned out to be a handy thing). It was to visit her family, and it was my first time meeting the future in-laws.
Since this is the first (and presumably last) time I've ever been engaged, this is the first time I've had to go through a meeting like this. I was a little anxious, in the same way that Seattle gets a little rain. Lura had told me stories about her family, but honestly, I wasn't really worried about whether or not I would like them. I was worried about how they'd react to me.
In particular, I was kind of concerned about meeting her dad. Here's the kind of guy he is: we landed in Raleigh after ten o'clock, and it was pouring down rain. And he still had to warn us to drive carefully, because (he told us) it was dark and wet out.
Now, as readers of my other blog will know, I'm having trouble dealing with pushy folks right now. I've never been a fan of the kind of ego that feels the need to offer up unasked-for (and usually obvious and unnecessary) advice, just to prove that they Know Things. My dad used to say that if you need to toot your own horn, it's because there's nobody else tooting it for you. And I really don't like having to play that game myself.
On the other hand, this being the first time I was meeting him, I wanted to make a good impression. And by "good," I mean I didn't want him to think I was a pushover. So I gave as good as I got, and I think it worked out okay. I tried not to push back so hard that I seemed obstinate or intractable, but just enough to make it clear that I had a mind and will of my own.
At the end of the day, I suppose it doesn't really matter what Lura's family thinks of me. In practical terms, there's nothing they could actually materially withhold from her. They aren't supporting her financially, and they aren't helping pay for the wedding or the honeymoon or anything. She's made her decision to be with me. I'd like to think that if they didn't approve of the marriage, and threatened to boycott the wedding or cut her off from the family, she'd still stick with me.
But family is a weird thing. And this is the first time I've found myself joining a new one. In practical terms, it doesn't matter what they think of me; I hadn't even talked to any of them before this trip. But I want them to accept and respect me for who I am, both because it will make my own life go more smoothly, and also because it reflects well on Lura.
I think I was successful. Both her parents told me that they thought Lura seemed very happy with me. They think I am good for her and am treating her well. I think I'm just treating her the way she deserves to be treated, but I'll take the approval wherever I can get it.
So that's another hurdle out of the way.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
Places
So, as planned, we called Red Rock Station, Aliante Station, and Santa Fe Station this week to enquire about reserving a block of rooms for our out of town guests.
Santa Fe Station was great. Their sales manager, Marilyn, was familiar with our venue, The Grove, and said she had worked with them a lot. I told her how many rooms we wanted (30) and when, and she said she could reserve them for us. She quoted us a pretty decent price ($65 for Friday and Saturday, I think, and $35 for Thursday and Sunday, plus tax and a "hotel fee," more about which later). She said we were getting such a good price because they work with the Grove on a regular basis.
We also wanted to know if they could provide a shuttle for guests who didn't rent cars. (Because we're figuring that most of our guests are just going to come to Las Vegas for the wedding, and won't want to spend any time doing other stuff. Kidding.) Santa Fe Station doesn't have their own bus, but she recommended a company called Lucky Limousine. She said she likes to use them because they are reliable. She knows they'll be where they're supposed to be on time, and she doesn't need to keep checking up on them.
As it turns out, her thoughts about Lucky Limousine pretty much sums up the whole searching for rooms experience. I left a message at Red Rock Station, and they never called me back. So they're off the list. (Honestly, they were never really our first choice; they would have been the nicest, but also the most expensive. And the furthest away from the Grove.)
And Aliante Station took two days to return my call. Their sales manager said that we could only reserve a block of 20 rooms without being "reliable" for them. (We wanted 30, and also wanted to deal with someone who knows what words mean.) Their rooms were more expensive ($105 for the weekend days, plus a hotel fee and tax). They didn't have a shuttle available either, but offered to pass my contact information on to a transportation coordination company or something. She also said she would email me a proposal with all the pricing and other details.
I haven't received any email from her yet. Nothing from any transportation companies, either.
So we've decided to go with Santa Fe Station. They're older and maybe a little less fancy than the other two, but it'll give our guests a reasonably priced option for a place to sleep.
More importantly, they were able to answer my questions. They didn't ignore my messages, and they didn't promise to do things or send information that they just never got around to. Like Marilyn said about Lucky Limousine, you want people who are going to do what they say, without the need to follow up repeatedly. Not saying that things will run perfectly at Santa Fe Station, but I already have more confidence in them than I do in the other two places we tried. (And anything else is even more further afield.)
And really, if our guests don't want to stay at Santa Fe, they are welcome to make their own arrangements. Since we aren't "reliable" for any rooms that don't get booked.
And what's up with this whole "hotel fee" thing? It's just a scam for hotels to make their prices seem lower. If a room is $65 plus a $15 "hotel fee," then it's really $80. But then the hotels couldn't go around claiming that their rooms only cost $65. Whatever. I call bulls#!t.
(But still, even with the fees and tax, $87 a night for a room isn't too shabby.)
[Since writing the above, I did receive the email from Aliante Station. Still, they have the higher price, which is a consideration.]
Also last week, we booked our honeymoon stay at Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL. It's actually the first part of a two-part honeymoon; we originally planned on taking a honeymoon cruise around the Caribbean, and booked that some time ago, thanks to Norwegian Cruise Lines having a sale. But the ship doesn't set sail from Miami until October 17, a week after our wedding ceremony. And then my mom generously offered to pay for the cruise. So we decided, since we had a week to kill, needed to end up in Florida for the cruise, and love going to Disneyland, maybe we could spend that week at WDW. Since we also love animals, we wanted to stay at the Animal Kingdom Lodge, but that was pretty expensive, so we figured we'd stay at one of the cheaper resorts.
And then Lura got a new job which finally pays her the sort of money she deserves to be earning. So we booked a room at the Animal Kingdom Lodge (with a savanna view, no less). So no matter how crazy things get planning this thing, we've got a heck of a honeymoon to look forward to. Which is fine, because it's really the only honeymoon we're planning on taking.
Much to Lura's amusement, I've already been studying the menus for WDW restaurants. That's so my thing, which is ironic, her being the chef in the family. But I love all the different restaurants at the Disney parks, with all their different themes and everything. There's a restaurant with animatronic dinosaurs, and a restaurant that serves barbecue pulled pork egg rolls, and so many others that reading about them just gets me that much more excited.
More about that stuff as we progress.
Later this week, we're off to North Carolina, which will be my first opportunity to meet the future mother- and step-father-in-law. Woo hoo!
Santa Fe Station was great. Their sales manager, Marilyn, was familiar with our venue, The Grove, and said she had worked with them a lot. I told her how many rooms we wanted (30) and when, and she said she could reserve them for us. She quoted us a pretty decent price ($65 for Friday and Saturday, I think, and $35 for Thursday and Sunday, plus tax and a "hotel fee," more about which later). She said we were getting such a good price because they work with the Grove on a regular basis.
We also wanted to know if they could provide a shuttle for guests who didn't rent cars. (Because we're figuring that most of our guests are just going to come to Las Vegas for the wedding, and won't want to spend any time doing other stuff. Kidding.) Santa Fe Station doesn't have their own bus, but she recommended a company called Lucky Limousine. She said she likes to use them because they are reliable. She knows they'll be where they're supposed to be on time, and she doesn't need to keep checking up on them.
As it turns out, her thoughts about Lucky Limousine pretty much sums up the whole searching for rooms experience. I left a message at Red Rock Station, and they never called me back. So they're off the list. (Honestly, they were never really our first choice; they would have been the nicest, but also the most expensive. And the furthest away from the Grove.)
And Aliante Station took two days to return my call. Their sales manager said that we could only reserve a block of 20 rooms without being "reliable" for them. (We wanted 30, and also wanted to deal with someone who knows what words mean.) Their rooms were more expensive ($105 for the weekend days, plus a hotel fee and tax). They didn't have a shuttle available either, but offered to pass my contact information on to a transportation coordination company or something. She also said she would email me a proposal with all the pricing and other details.
I haven't received any email from her yet. Nothing from any transportation companies, either.
So we've decided to go with Santa Fe Station. They're older and maybe a little less fancy than the other two, but it'll give our guests a reasonably priced option for a place to sleep.
More importantly, they were able to answer my questions. They didn't ignore my messages, and they didn't promise to do things or send information that they just never got around to. Like Marilyn said about Lucky Limousine, you want people who are going to do what they say, without the need to follow up repeatedly. Not saying that things will run perfectly at Santa Fe Station, but I already have more confidence in them than I do in the other two places we tried. (And anything else is even more further afield.)
And really, if our guests don't want to stay at Santa Fe, they are welcome to make their own arrangements. Since we aren't "reliable" for any rooms that don't get booked.
And what's up with this whole "hotel fee" thing? It's just a scam for hotels to make their prices seem lower. If a room is $65 plus a $15 "hotel fee," then it's really $80. But then the hotels couldn't go around claiming that their rooms only cost $65. Whatever. I call bulls#!t.
(But still, even with the fees and tax, $87 a night for a room isn't too shabby.)
[Since writing the above, I did receive the email from Aliante Station. Still, they have the higher price, which is a consideration.]
Also last week, we booked our honeymoon stay at Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL. It's actually the first part of a two-part honeymoon; we originally planned on taking a honeymoon cruise around the Caribbean, and booked that some time ago, thanks to Norwegian Cruise Lines having a sale. But the ship doesn't set sail from Miami until October 17, a week after our wedding ceremony. And then my mom generously offered to pay for the cruise. So we decided, since we had a week to kill, needed to end up in Florida for the cruise, and love going to Disneyland, maybe we could spend that week at WDW. Since we also love animals, we wanted to stay at the Animal Kingdom Lodge, but that was pretty expensive, so we figured we'd stay at one of the cheaper resorts.
And then Lura got a new job which finally pays her the sort of money she deserves to be earning. So we booked a room at the Animal Kingdom Lodge (with a savanna view, no less). So no matter how crazy things get planning this thing, we've got a heck of a honeymoon to look forward to. Which is fine, because it's really the only honeymoon we're planning on taking.
Much to Lura's amusement, I've already been studying the menus for WDW restaurants. That's so my thing, which is ironic, her being the chef in the family. But I love all the different restaurants at the Disney parks, with all their different themes and everything. There's a restaurant with animatronic dinosaurs, and a restaurant that serves barbecue pulled pork egg rolls, and so many others that reading about them just gets me that much more excited.
More about that stuff as we progress.
Later this week, we're off to North Carolina, which will be my first opportunity to meet the future mother- and step-father-in-law. Woo hoo!
Monday, November 2, 2009
The Process
Hi!
It's me, the feminine half of our duo. And I'm not panicking. At all. Really. As Andrew noted, we're starting to look at hotels to book for our guests and trying to figure out transportation for everyone...
It seems like the time between "We don't need to do anything right now" and "Oh my god we need to get everything done!" passed way too quickly. Intellectually, I know we have plenty of time, but viscerally, I just don't want us to get caught unprepared. Unfortunately, there is still a lot we can't get done til later, which is frustrating to me.
Every now and then it helps to just take a deep breath and remind myself that we can't do everything at once.
And I'm still not panicking. Really.
It's me, the feminine half of our duo. And I'm not panicking. At all. Really. As Andrew noted, we're starting to look at hotels to book for our guests and trying to figure out transportation for everyone...
It seems like the time between "We don't need to do anything right now" and "Oh my god we need to get everything done!" passed way too quickly. Intellectually, I know we have plenty of time, but viscerally, I just don't want us to get caught unprepared. Unfortunately, there is still a lot we can't get done til later, which is frustrating to me.
Every now and then it helps to just take a deep breath and remind myself that we can't do everything at once.
And I'm still not panicking. Really.
The Proposal
As this blog progresses, I should explain that it's pretty much going to be from my perspective. My lovely fiancee knows about and approves of this journal of our wedding preparations, but I still feel like writing personal stuff about her is kind of like talking about her behind her back, to the whole world. She may, from time to time, contribute her own thoughts here. In the meantime, my own posts will be fairly me-centric, but not because I'm discounting her part in our relationship.
We had kind of an eye-opening moment this morning, when she received a text from her dad asking for hotel recommendations for next October. We realized that we really need to start talking to hotels about reserving a block of rooms (which means really figuring out how many people we're planning on inviting). We're pretty much limited to 50 guests by the size of the Grove, the venue we've already reserved, so that helps.
Right now, we are considering three places to talk to about rooms: Red Rock Station, Santa Fe Station, and Aliante Station. Between Red Rock and Santa Fe, Red Rock is a little nicer and more upscale, but it's farther from the venue. We've never actually been to Aliante, but it's also closer to the venue.
Our plan is to get in touch with all three this week and see what they can offer, in terms of prices for the rooms, and also transportation to the Grove. We're hoping one of them will be able to offer some sort of shuttle bus as part of the package. The alternative is to try to arrange for all our local friends to ferry all our out of town friends and relatives in their cars. Not the preferred choice, since, quite honestly, planning a wedding should be more than enough without trying to coordinate an invasion of Northwest Las Vegas along with it.
So that's where we're currently at. Since we've been planning this wedding longer than I've been blogging about it, posts here will probably be a mixture of what's currently happening along with catching up on what's been done already.
Last week, I talked about how the lovely fiancee and I met. This week, we'll skip ahead a bit to the proposal.
We had only been together for a few months, but already were talking about marriage. Or, more accurately, talking around it. We talked about where we would want the ceremony to take place, what the ceremony would be like, who would we invite, whether it would it be a large or small wedding, where would we go on the honeymoon. We knew what kind of food we would serve (barbecue) and what kind of cake we would have (cupcakes). Of course, we had only been together a few months, so it was all speculation, because it was too soon to be talking about marriage.
Only it wasn't. Not really.
Don't get me wrong; we weren't going to just rush into marriage. But being together, living together, we figured we could look at things in one of three ways: either things were always going to stay just as they were (which just seemed dull); we were going to eventually break up (which seemed pessimistic); or we were eventually going to get married. So that's how we started looking at our future: if we didn't break up, we would get married. It wasn't something we planned on doing right away, but it would happen after enough time had passed.
Then, one night, she sent me a text that she had come up with the perfect date: 10/10/10. At that point, we would have been together for about two years. At that point, I think we could probably feel fairly secure that things were going to last.
I can't remember the chronology exactly, but at some point, I had decided how I was going to propose to her. We had been to Zion National Park in Springdale, UT, and really enjoyed it. I decided that on her birthday in January 2010, I would surprise her with a hot-air balloon ride over Zion, and that's when I would pop the question. I began investigating hot-air balloons in Springdale almost a year in advance, because I wanted to be sure to reserve the exact date I wanted.
And then, late one night last spring, we were eating dinner after she got home from work. We were eating cheeseburgers from Jack in the Box (sadly, a common meal for us back then; we're eating better now). And I just looked across the table at her, and I didn't want to wait nine months or whatever. So I asked her if she wanted to get married, either in October 2010, or on some yet-to-be-determined date in the future. (I said I couldn't remember the chronology, right?) And she said yes, without any hesitation. And it just felt right.
And, after that, the rest should have been easy, right? I mean, we had already figured out all the details and everything. Only that's when everything started changing.
We had kind of an eye-opening moment this morning, when she received a text from her dad asking for hotel recommendations for next October. We realized that we really need to start talking to hotels about reserving a block of rooms (which means really figuring out how many people we're planning on inviting). We're pretty much limited to 50 guests by the size of the Grove, the venue we've already reserved, so that helps.
Right now, we are considering three places to talk to about rooms: Red Rock Station, Santa Fe Station, and Aliante Station. Between Red Rock and Santa Fe, Red Rock is a little nicer and more upscale, but it's farther from the venue. We've never actually been to Aliante, but it's also closer to the venue.
Our plan is to get in touch with all three this week and see what they can offer, in terms of prices for the rooms, and also transportation to the Grove. We're hoping one of them will be able to offer some sort of shuttle bus as part of the package. The alternative is to try to arrange for all our local friends to ferry all our out of town friends and relatives in their cars. Not the preferred choice, since, quite honestly, planning a wedding should be more than enough without trying to coordinate an invasion of Northwest Las Vegas along with it.
So that's where we're currently at. Since we've been planning this wedding longer than I've been blogging about it, posts here will probably be a mixture of what's currently happening along with catching up on what's been done already.
Last week, I talked about how the lovely fiancee and I met. This week, we'll skip ahead a bit to the proposal.
We had only been together for a few months, but already were talking about marriage. Or, more accurately, talking around it. We talked about where we would want the ceremony to take place, what the ceremony would be like, who would we invite, whether it would it be a large or small wedding, where would we go on the honeymoon. We knew what kind of food we would serve (barbecue) and what kind of cake we would have (cupcakes). Of course, we had only been together a few months, so it was all speculation, because it was too soon to be talking about marriage.
Only it wasn't. Not really.
Don't get me wrong; we weren't going to just rush into marriage. But being together, living together, we figured we could look at things in one of three ways: either things were always going to stay just as they were (which just seemed dull); we were going to eventually break up (which seemed pessimistic); or we were eventually going to get married. So that's how we started looking at our future: if we didn't break up, we would get married. It wasn't something we planned on doing right away, but it would happen after enough time had passed.
Then, one night, she sent me a text that she had come up with the perfect date: 10/10/10. At that point, we would have been together for about two years. At that point, I think we could probably feel fairly secure that things were going to last.
I can't remember the chronology exactly, but at some point, I had decided how I was going to propose to her. We had been to Zion National Park in Springdale, UT, and really enjoyed it. I decided that on her birthday in January 2010, I would surprise her with a hot-air balloon ride over Zion, and that's when I would pop the question. I began investigating hot-air balloons in Springdale almost a year in advance, because I wanted to be sure to reserve the exact date I wanted.
And then, late one night last spring, we were eating dinner after she got home from work. We were eating cheeseburgers from Jack in the Box (sadly, a common meal for us back then; we're eating better now). And I just looked across the table at her, and I didn't want to wait nine months or whatever. So I asked her if she wanted to get married, either in October 2010, or on some yet-to-be-determined date in the future. (I said I couldn't remember the chronology, right?) And she said yes, without any hesitation. And it just felt right.
And, after that, the rest should have been easy, right? I mean, we had already figured out all the details and everything. Only that's when everything started changing.
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