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Guest List

So, as of yesterday, we had 15 months to go before our wedding. We went through our preliminary head count and cut the list down from 171 (and missing a few people) to 147. We're trying to keep our guest list at absolutely no more than 155, preferably 150. We ended up cutting a few people I/we would like to have there, but if they couldn't come, we wouldn't be terribly upset.

We're looking at another location for the wedding hopefully this week-end, if they call back. For anyone interested, the place we're looking at is Independant Harbours. My cousin David got married there and it was actually really nice. Obviously, we wouldn't be having an outdoor wedding, like he did, though. Anyhow, when I did out the numbers, it looks like it would be about $6200 to do everything there. That would include our ceremony and reception with a champagne toast, free soda for the bridal party, and a sit down, catered meal of up to $30 a head. That number also figures in 18% gratuity and 5% state tax.

I think we've almost completely ruled out UMB for our wedding. It would cost us $4200 just to rent the facility and the catering estimate we got started at $50 a head for Sodexho food. We'd be looking at $12k for a wedding right there, before a DJ and anything else. There would be a $6 per car parking fee. The open bar also wanted us to guarantee $400 for drinks in the first hour and $150 for each hour afterwards. Any discrepancy, we'd have to pay for. It also wasn't as nice at night. You can't see nearly as much of the city or the habour as we had hoped. So, yea... We're very seriously looking at other places now.

We also hit our first major snag/irritation last week-end. We went to get Steven's parents' must invite list and his mom asked what the date was again. We told her: December 29th. That's where the trouble starts. See, that's a Friday. Even though Steven is Jewish, we don't really keep Shabbat. The date means a lot to us and he had no problems with it being a Friday. We knew there was one couple that we normally would have invited who won't come because they're othrodox. That's fine. Hell, we're not going to their wedding because it's on Christmas Day in Maryland. No one else in Steven's family, to our knowledge, really goes to services on Fridays. Steven's mother has gone to the casinos on Fridays before, which I would imagine is a lot worse than attending a wedding.

But no, she has a problem with the date. She hinted around we should find another date because he's being rude to his family. She groused that no one Jewish gets married on Shabbos. Mind you, the other wedding was a Saturday morning affair, which was also still technically Shabbos. She didn't have a problem with that. I guess the reasoning behind this is that she's worried about the family gossiping about her: "That's Sandi Shuman. Her son married a shicksa on Shabbos. Tsk, tsk." His parents aren't kicking in a dime towards our wedding and they're still expecting everything to be done how they want it. Already, his parents were mentioning kosher meals (very expensive, if the place even can do kosher), how we need to have three choices for everyone ("You'll have beef, chicken, and fish so they can choose."), the whole Friday thing, open bar ("You can't make your guests pay for anything."), and so on. I mean, if they want to pay for the open bar, fine, we'll have it, but otherwise, we just can't afford it. At least their guest list was pretty small.

Steven's calling the DJ back tonight, so we may have him booked by the end of October. We're looking through invitations catalogues tonight, so I can order samples. I think we're going to order the actual invitations and print everything else ourselves. I just haven't seen any DIY invites that I a) like and b) that would cost less than ordering from a professional company.

Next DIY project: our Save the Date magnets. I need to get the magnet business cards, some more ink, and a design done by Christmas so they can go out in our cards.

We went out to dinner at Friday's last night, since we had a gift certificate. With the exception of needing Steven to cut my steak, dinner was really good. We haven't had the money to go out since we came back from Conneticut in August. After that, we walked around the Plaza for a while, chatted with a couple of Steven's friends that he hadn't see in a while, and generally relaxed. We dropped in on Beth and Rich after and helped them move the last of their things into their new place before coming home. Today is my last day of being stuck at home, unable to drive. My shoulder is mostly feeling better.

Oh, and Steven's bringing me home a sub. Yay!