Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

As anyone who's been reading Musings knows, The Gryphon and I are now engaged, so we've begun making wedding plans.

One of the first things that I knew we'd have to do was to find a place. We've actually been scouting around since midsummer, about the same time we started designing my engagement ring together.

We came up with an approximate guest list so we'd know what sort of space we'd need.

Then we talked about what level of formality we wanted and what our priorities were. We decided we wanted to make it colorful and fun, with good food and with music.

We thought about finding a place where we could rent a space and then hire a caterer, so that most of our money would be going towards the food. It's been difficult, though, to find a space that fits that bill, and the ones we've checked out so far have not been appealing.

For example, the Saturday Club in Wayne, which we checked out on Monday, is a little limited in terms of space, since it's basically one large hall with a stage. We wanted to do our ceremony and reception at the same site, and it would be really awkward to work that there, even if we held the ceremony on the stage.

However, it would probably be a great site for another sort of event, such as a birthday party, or for a really simple wedding where you served wine and cheese buffet style instead of a full sit-down dinner. Again, that's not what we want, so we'll keep looking.

Now our search is focusing more on all-inclusive sites that provide catering and other services. We checked out a catering hall a couple weekends ago, and we're still keeping it in consideration, since it has pluses and minuses.

On the plus side, there is a wedding coordinator who works with you to plan the event, who can assist with things like decoration ideas and execution. When I told her about our theme, she immediately began making suggestions of how we could play that out.

On the minus side, it seems like their default package is much more formal than we'd wanted, and they have a number of strict rules, especially considering outside contractors. We also thought they might be a little pricier than we wanted.

So now we're looking at a couple hotels in the area, which we think would be a good idea if we like the space and the packages. We can also get a room block through them, which would be convenient for out-of-town guests.

We have a lot ahead of us, but according to a timeline I got from a bridal magazine, we're on track or even ahead. In fact, we've been talking about things that we don't need to decide on for several months, such as attire for the wedding party and invitations.

Another primary task was to determine what our preliminary budget would be. It helped to know what my sister had spent the year before. We came up with a number slightly above what she'd spent, which we figured we could handle on our own, since Dad paid for my first wedding 10 years ago. I was pleasantly surprised when he offered to help with this one, too.

Although we're just starting, I've been having fun finding out information. I'm organizing it in a plastic accordion folder. When I showed it to my sister, she laughed and made me show it to her husband, who had thought that she went overboard with her wedding preparations. I make no apologies: it's better to keep things organized than to be flipping through piles of paper, trying desperately to find some article or some photo I wanted to reference.

Instead of sending out Save the Date cards, we've signed up for a free wedding page through a wedding planning site. The page can include the basic information and can be e-mailed to our friends as soon as we have a date and location set. Then the official invitations can be mailed six months before the event.

We also talked about the general theme of the reception, and we settled on retrofuturistic. The concept is the Wedding of Tomorrow, or as I explained to many people, picture a set from a 1960s science fiction movie. Of course, as soon as I told this to my brother he said, "Like Star Trek?"

"Kind of. No Klingons, though," I said.

Actually, it's more influenced by the futuristic architectural and interior designs of the 1960s. Of course, the Space Race was underway, and there was a lot of interest in space. A great place to visit to get a feel for these styles is the City of Tomorrow or RetroLounge or Pussycat Magazine's page on retro interior design.

I've been doing a lot of research for decorations, which has been fun. The nice thing about the retrofuturistic style is that it's clean and sleek with lots of rounded shapes and patches of bold color. We could do a very understated form of decorating and get the effect we want.

As we've been explaining to people, while this is our theme, it's not a costume event. It's similar in concept to when people have a Victorian romantic wedding, where they might wear a lacy dress but not, for example, a ridiculously tight corseted dress and granny boots.

So I want to make one thing clear. Even though we have a retrofuturistic theme, I will not be dressing like Barbarella. I have not necessarily ruled out the idea of wearing boots with a shorter dress, but I'm certainly not wearing white spandex.

More on Alyce's wedding planning:

Musings on Alyce's Wedding

Copyright 2006 by Alyce Wilson

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