Musical Chairs

With the final tally of butts to seats in it was time to finish up some loose ends. I started with the easy one. I wrote all the names on the place cards. It was actually during this process that I made my final call to my last unresponded family. I was amazed, he called right back. They couldn't make it, which I had guessed at this point. He was sweet though. He said, "But I love you and I'm happy for you! I hope you guys stay married forever!" It made me feel a lot better. They didn't hate me and they weren't repulsed by the idea of someone marrying me. Honestly, between you and me, I really started to take things personally by the end of the RSVP process. I don't know about bridezilla-ness, but there's certainly an extreme girlly-ness that starts to emerge. It never bothered me too much when we got a "No" because traveling during the week is tricky. What started to make me a little nuts was the unresponded people. I started to imagine all sorts of insults they'd suffered at my hands and how much they hated me.

It sounds silly, but it's no surprise because the guest list from start to finish was emotional for me. Once that was settled and my "yet to responds" were a more than acceptable zero I finished up place cards. I love those kinds of tasks. You should see our Christmas card envelopes by the time we mail them out (pictures, glitter, swoopy letters, etc). I kept it simple with the place cards. Just my best swoopy letters.

Next was the dreaded seating chart. Actually, I had a head start because we did a "rough seating chart" right after invitations went out to see what it would look like if everyone came. It was through weddingwire.com where I have my guest list so as people RSVPed no they were automatically un-seated. We got rid of 3 whole tables off the bat. We have two kids tables by age so those were super easy.

The wedding party and their significant others are all sitting with us at a feasting style table. King and Queen (aka Bride and Groom) at the head. So, that one was fairly simple it just took some seat shuffling. The rest of the adult guests were a true puzzle. 10ft round tables seat 8people. While everyone knows Mike and I not everyone knows each other. It took about 10 tries to make it make sense. I needed parents near the kids tables, divorced parents at different ends of the room, out of town friends with other people they could talk to and so on.

At this point every guest has a seat and every table has a name. Mike took the chalkboard easel to his mom with a list of who's sitting where so she can make our seating chart. Yay! Check.

Crossing the T's and Crossing the I's

Today we got home from my birthday lunch with Mike's dad to discover mail from our venue. We're already paid in full with them and I sent them my list of vendors information early too. I assumed it was some kind of confirmation letter. Maybe an award for being organized and on top of things? It was a letter asking me to get more organized. They were asking for our final floor plan for the reception, our final head count and arrival time for all the vendors.

Now I'm sure a lot of brides would go pale (or simply pass on) such an unappealing request, but I was prepared. Well, I was willing to prepare I guess it more like it. We have a rough floor plan, but it's rough because we don't have a final headcount. You can't arrange the tables until you know how many you need and that requires an accurate rear end count. So, I checked our RSVP stats and a stunning 60 guests responses were still outstanding. That's over half of them.

First (because it was the simplest step) I emailed all the vendors to ask their arrival times. It was a bit awkward like writing to a friend from summer camp long after camp's ended.

Hi!
Remeber me? We met over the summer. You're doing my wedding (gulp) next month. What time will you be arriving to set up?
Thanks.
The Bride

The next task was another surprisingly less awkward email to scare up some of those missing RSVPs.

Please swing by the (wedding)site: (url)
And click RSVP in the links to your left
Type in your name
Select accept or decline for each member of your party for ceremony and reception
You'll get an email confirming your RSVP
You can request songs and read all the useful information on the site while you're there!
The Bride

That I hope will at least cut down on the one's who haven't responded because of inability to figure out a shortened link, misplaced invitations or general distractedness. They can just click the link and off they go. I've gotten a couple verbal and written RSVPs, but I can't assume anything. If I haven't been given express permission to mark someone one way or another they sit waiting... I'm not the most patient person for sure, but the real problem is my venues deadline for headcount is slightly earlier that the deadline I gave. I'm hopeful my emails will help though.

Now, if I could just force myself to get the photographer's paperwork finished and returned we'd be all set...At least final paperwork-wise. Unless you count the license.

Places, Eveyone!

After making a rough seating chart based on 100% attendence to get some idea of what we need and how the room will look I started thinking about the pretty stuff. I love the centerpieces so much and I don't want anything to detract from them. My orginal idea for place cards was painted rocks.

At this stage of the game it felt short on time for rock collecting and I wasn't about to buy rocks. I also didn't want a bunch of stuff on the table. So I found this idea (thank you, Pinterest friends):

Love it. It's simple, budget friendly and will not clutter up my tables. I perfer to put them on the forks to glasses though. We decided to do one shape for men and one for women.

Girls Get:
Boys Get:

We decided to do a seating chart rather than escort cards. I'm hoping to find a chalkboard and to enlist my mother-in-law's artisitic abilities once again. Our tables are all named after trees. The little kids table is the seedlings and the big kids table is the saplings for example. I just don't want table names sticking out of my centerpieces so I decided to do something like this:

Obviously, instead of suspending lanterns I want to do table names. It would be cool if they were lit somehow though. I suspect Mike may have left over lights from the centerpiece project we may use. Either way it'll be pretty.