Behind the Lens: Lisa Boggs

After many emails, phone calls, and meetings with potential candidates, in January Andrew and I unanimously decided on a photographer for our wedding. The skilled shutterbug who will be documenting our big day from start to finish is a Tennessee transplant to DC, Lisa Boggs, who runs her own photography operation out of Great Falls, VA.

As I previously mentioned, I found Lisa through a local wedding blog that has gradually become less of an indulgence and more of an obsession, United With Love. Pretty much everything featured on that site is amazing, so I figured she would be nothing short of amazing herself. And I was right.

Before Andrew and I even met Lisa in person, she and I spent over an hour on the phone chatting about ourselves, our relationships (Lisa's already been married for a few years), our families, and growing up with food allergies -- it's nice to be able to commiserate once in a while. Lisa is energetic, super sweet, and quirky in the BEST of ways and is just so much fun to talk to. And not to brag, but she's won WeddingWire's Bride's Choice Awards two years in a row. She has a very creative eye and loves colorful exciting weddings, so I'm sure my pastel color explosion will keep her camera occupied.

We had originally scheduled our engagement shoot to take place on Saturday of last weekend, but it being April and it also being DC (where you have a better chance of predicting the weather correctly by flipping a coin than our local weathermen), our plans were foiled first by massive thunderstorms and then by gusting winds when we tried to push back to Sunday.

So we've rainchecked for Saturday, April 30, and I hope to finally have some photos of Andrew and me looking like a happy engaged couple to post on here within the next two weeks. In the meantime, check out Lisa's blog to get an idea of her artistic sense and what our shoot might turn out like!

Going fruity

A number of people have asked about my general ideas for my wedding color palette, so here are some images that might paint a clearer picture of what I'm going for. I'm looking at watermelon and canteloupe/peach as my primaries, with light lemon and lime accents.

Think: 1920s garden party, early summer florals, gentle breeze and cold pitchers of sweet cocktails and fruit drinks...

{all above via elizabeth anne designs}

The Martha Stewart debut

Had a great long weekend up in New York, and got to spend some quality time with a bunch of my close friends -- including my MOH and a couple of the bridesmaids.

I rendezvous-ed with Marisa at Penn Station an hour before the show and limped to the studio on my gimp foot (I forgot to mention in previous posts that I fell off a pair of 5 inch heels 45 minutes into the New Year, and seriously mangled my right ankle). After what seemed to be ages waiting in line in the blustery cold, we were ushered in to the studio to be prepped, to primp, and to submit our questions and release forms prior to taping.

The aforementioned gimp food proved fortuitous in the end, as it ushered me and Marisa to the front of the line and the front row of the studio audience.

The taping took almost two hours and it was a fun experience, but although we came back with some nice things (like an espresso machine, a swank pair of Hanky Panky's, and some Oscar de la Renta perfume) there weren't as many bridal takeaways as I had hoped. I think the most useful thing I went home with was the winter issue of Martha Stewart Weddings magazine.

Check out the preview for our TV audience debut here, where Marisa's bright orange shirt makes an appearance: http://www.marthastewart.com/show/the-martha-stewart-show/winter-weddings-show

The show airs today (Thursday) at 10am on the Hallmark Channel.

I DO: In love with United With Love

Hands down, United With Love is my favorite new wedding blog obsession.

Recently started by Nole Garey and Juli Smith, who were once DC brides themselves, United With Love features real Washington weddings and offers a plethora of creative DIY decorating ideas, playful themes, and unusual color palettes that so closely mirror my own taste. (Let's be honest, pretty much everything I'm going to do at my reception will probably have been stolen from a post I saw on UWL). It's hard not to find inspiration in a post, and I'm always clicking the refresh button to see if something new has been added.

And, without wasting an entire day at the office perusing the blog last month, I would never have found my photographer, Lisa, in the sea of DC vendors!

Washingtonian: Unveiled

Washingtonian Magazine is hosting its annual wedding showcase on January 23rd.

Aside from working the check-in desk at a bridal expo for extra cash in college, I've never attended one of these things and am yet to be sold on their merits. I tend to suffer from information overload (a la those annoying Bing commercials all over TV), and I feel like I would be over-inundated with different ideas and suggestions for vendors for every service I need to book all at once. I much prefer to do one thing at a time -- nail down a venue, find a priest, then get a photographer, a caterer, a florist, and so on and so forth down the line. Everything at once would just overwhelm me. Not to mention, $55 is a steep price to have advertisements thrown at you all day.

So I've entered to win tickets for free, and if I happen to get picked then I'll probably go. Otherwise, I'll just keep to my system and get any vendor info I need online from peer reviews on sites like Wedding Wire, Martha Stewart Weddings and The Knot, and from an occasional purchase of Washingtonian's Bride & Groom magazine. 

Back from radio silence...

Once again, I've failed to update the blog regularly. For shame! Especially since December was such a busy month with a lot of goings-on that were definitely worth posting on here. So I'll try to get through a few updates as succinctly and as interestingly as I can.

Firstly, my friends' good juju with the Martha Stewart Show has rubbed off on me, and yours-truly will be in the all-bride audience next week for a very special weddings episode! At the encouragement of my Martha-in-training friend McLean, I submitted a very hastily-assembled pitch through the show's website as to why I deserved an invitation. Apparently, Martha's screeners bought it. So on Thursday, January 13th, I'll be heading up to New York City for an advance taping that will air at a later date (usually the show is live). And, I'm excited to say, I get to bring a fellow bride as a guest -- so that means my dear college friend Marisa (who ties the knot with fiance Aric this May) will be in tow. We've both been instructed to wear BRIGHT COLORS and be prepared to tell our engagement and wedding planning stories, so I'm hoping that means we'll get some one-on-one opportunities with Martha and possibly have the opportunity to win some prizes! At the very least, I expect to come home with some sweet audience swag. McLean and another friend, Kristina, told me they came back with amazing gifts from their audience experiences.

Secondly, we have booked an amazingly talented photographer, Lisa Boggs! :::The crowd roars!::: This development warrants its own post, so more on that later.







Thirdly, we have reserved a date at St. Mary Catholic Church in Old Town Alexandria for our ceremony, and will be importing our own Ukrainian Catholic priest! Both DC-area Ukrainian churches are far away from where we live, our venue site, and our preferred hotels for guests and are additionally not in areas that are easily accessible by metro or other public transportation, so exchanging vows at either location would've caused a lot of problems for everyone. It took some wheeling and dealing to convince parties on both ends, but it looks like we'll be able to pull this all off... and with only a little extra donation in our church coffer each Sunday.

Lastly, there are a ton of wedding showcases, expos, sales, and so-on ahead on the calendar to kick off the new year, and I will try my best to hit as many of them as I can!

Ali and Chris's wedding featured in Martha Stewart Real Weddings!

My super-sweet friend Ali married her college sweetheart Chris back in April, and I've been going to Ali for wedding ideas and vendor suggestions since then. She's really been an inspiration to me in my own planning, and I have to say that her style and attention to detail resulted in one of (if not the) cutest, most creatively designed weddings I've ever seen.

Apparently, Martha Stewart thinks so as well!

Ali and Chris's wedding has been highlighted in the Martha Stewart Weddings website's "Real Weddings" feature. Congrats to both of you for being so Martha Stewart-fabulous! :)

Check out the inspired color schemes, decorations, and photography -- courtesy of exceptional photographer Kate Headley -- right here!

If it's free, I'll take it

Part of the joy of planning a wedding for such a large family and circle of friends is that the cost of food and drink for guests really eats away at the budget. Each time I think I've got my guest list cemented, I'm reminded of another aunt and uncle that I forgot out in Anywhere, USA... and their 4 children. And then the budget shifts a little bit. I can't forget that close family friend that grew up with my mom but I haven't seen since I was in middle school. And it shifts a little more.

There have been a lot of bridal contests popping up on the web lately, and believe me -- I've entered them all. Some are for photography packages, others for honeymoons or bridal gowns. I've submitted my info for each and every one of them almost instantly after finding them.

Bella Pictures, one of the largest wedding photography services, is offering a $4800 package to the lucky winner in their prize drawing. Down side is you also receive a slew of unwanted phone calls and emails from Bella within 24 hours of registering that is bordering on harassment. I guess it's the economy stupid?

My favorite luxury clothing and travel one-stop-shopping emporium, Gilt Group, is running a contest for an all-inclusive equally-luxurious honeymoon worth $5000. Applicants must plead their case to Gilt as to why they need or deserve their honeymoon to be paid for, and Gilt's anonymous panel of judges will decide. Although I doubt I have a sob story good enough to stand out, there's really no down side to this one -- everything about Gilt is simply golden.

TheKnot is encouraging engaged couples to share their stories of betrothal to subscribers on their site for a chance to win a five-night stay at any all-inclusive Dreams resort in the world. Not too shabby. And while the winners for the previous two contests are selected largely at random, TheKnot entries will be based on votes and reader comments.

This mean's I'll be encouraging everyone I know to VOTE FOR ALEXIS AND ANDREW ASAP!!!

Daily Candy hearts weddings

I'm pretty happy to see a plethora of wedding information coming out of Daily Candy lately -- two emails in the past week alone! Their wedding section has been awfully quiet since August, so it's nice to see more posts from them, especially since Daily Candy usually has a more indie vibe to its features that other wedding sites don't often suggest.

Please keep 'em coming, Candy!

The ledger has landed

Fresh off a relaxing weekend in Miami with some of my favorite ladies, I am happy to report that Oxon Hill Manor has FINALLY received their 2012 ledger and we are now penciled in for Friday, May 18, 2012 (we'll be "penned" in once they cash our security deposit and file our completed rental form).

There were a few hems and haws from doubters out there who teased us for picking a date so far in advance. You still don't believe me that things book up unbelievably fast around here? Well, another bride came in to Oxon Hill Manor's events office early this morning and booked May 19, 2012 -- the day after the date we were holding out for. Another Saturday in that month is also already off the table for a wedding. And the crazy thing is that the 2012 ledger arrived just this morning. 

I believe I've made my point. Moving along.

I'm relieved and happy to get started with the nitty and the gritty of planning. Now that I have an actual date to tell vendors, I can actually start meeting with them to discuss products and services and sign some contracts. The wedding ball is officially rolling!

Where the heart is

When we first announced our engagement, almost everyone asked where my wedding would be: DC or Philly? One, the place I now lived; the other, the place I had always called home. 

Although I knew I wanted to have the ceremony here in the epicenter of the political world I've grown to love, the choice had already been made for me. Weeks before the proposal, my father told me he was selling his house -- our house, where he had married my mother, where I had been born, where we had loved and lost and overcome all life had to throw at us, and where I had always imagined the roots of our family would stay firmly grounded. 

Throughout my life, I've considered my parents' house a center of gravity. No matter where I spun out -- be it off to school in Boston, summer adventures somewhere far and away, or forging my career path in a new city -- I'd always find myself drawn back home.

Early on, my parents instilled in me the notion that our house was a place of gathering, of comfort, and of love. It was constantly filled with people, both friends and family, who would come for my dad's corny puns and my mom's gentle sarcasm and stay for the good food, the stories, and the sense of warmth and inclusion that emanated from our happy home. When my mother passed away in 2002, we tried our best to keep things the same and leave our door open to everyone at any time the way she would've wanted it to be. For the past eight years, we maintained the house and its gardens as a monument to all that she was and all who she loved, and it is difficult to this day to find a single object there that did not feel the touch of her hand.

But to my father, that same house is no longer just a monument. Instead, he says, it has become a tomb. Standing quiet and empty while he is in Florida running his business most of the year, it stores mementos of the wife he lost and the daughter that grew up and moved away. His side of the family left town long ago, heading northwest to Chicago; south to Virginia and North Carolina; east across the Atlantic to the United Kingdom. Some of my mother's side is still in the area, but many of them have also scattered to the wind across land and sea.

Planning a wedding and a whole new life as a married couple is tough enough as it is. Doing so without the comfort of 'home' to run back to when I'll need it is unimaginably tougher. 

It's coming sooner than expected, but the reality of it is that I'm going to have to create my own home; my own safe place; my own new center of gravity. And I hope it will be just as warm and as comforting as what my parents built... and more.

Money, Cash, Clothes

Earlier this week, my fiancé Andrew and I sat down to talk turkey about our wedding budget: how much were we willing to spend, and how much were we willing to save? We decided to skim a few extra dollars off of each paycheck and start pooling together our funds for the type of big, bad-ass wedding we wanted. Not to mean we'd be eating cans of beans and ramen noodles for the next year and a half, or siphoning gas from strangers' cars at the pumping station when they weren't looking just to save a buck. But we'd definitely have to be more aware of where our money was going week to week, and err on the side of saving when it came down to potentially frivolous purchases.

I consider myself a pretty sensible spender to begin with. I'm not big on splurging, but I'm not a penny pincher either. I'll buy several rounds of shots when I go out, but then I'll spend the next few nights staying in and watching movies. I don't go to Ted Gibson to get my hair cut -- whoever's free at my local salon is just fine. And although I tend to pick up a lot of items in a store, I edit down my final purchases in line and by the time I get to the checkout counter, I've usually whittled the total to mostly "need-its" and maybe a "want-it" or two in the mix.

But then Nordstrom happened. And not just any Nordstrom, but Nordstrom Rack, where one is lured into the false sense of frugality through "discount designer" syndrome. A $400 pair of Cole Haan boots, even at an alluring 50% off, is still going to cost you $200. Like a gastric bypass patient who walks into McDonald's and swears they're just going to order a salad, I fell off our new budget wagon. Hard.

But it was my money, right? So no harm no foul. Or so I thought.

Perhaps 3 weeks ago that argument would stand. But what I realized when I got home and dropped my bags filled with $600-worth of fall fashion just inside the door was that, when budgeting in coordination with someone else, my big splurge was actually also Andrew's big splurge. For the money I hadn't planned to take out of my own account, I'd have to budget elsewhere. With a debit purchase, that means less cash-on-hand for other more necessary monthly expenditures. With credit, that means the money that I'd planned on putting towards our wedding will now go towards paying off my bill or, if not paid in full, rack up even more debt next month from interest.

We try our best to alternate who pays when we go out, but Andrew will likely foot the bill a bit more often this month. When it's my turn to buy our groceries, I'm sure my list will look slightly shorter than usual. Fewer date nights, less driving of my car and more driving of his, less slush money for an unscheduled weekend excursion to the Renaissance Fair or for tolls up to see his friends and family in New Jersey. Andrew's budget is going to take a hit to make up for a dollar here and a dollar there that I just can't pay.

Every wedding magazine I've bought has a section on managing your wedding budget, including charts and spread sheets, suggested percentages for expenditures on food and decor, and what to do if you overspend on one expense to avoid throwing the budget for others off-kilter. But I've yet to see anything about managing your own finances in order to keep to said wedding budget. Where is the Smart Girl's Guide to Saying No to the Peep-toes So You Can Say Yes to the Dress?

The toughest part of saving up for something so far in advance is remembering that your budgeting decisions, even with your own money, will affect your better half and his ability to budget as well -- a very expensive lesson learned only 15 minutes after the swipe of my card. Does that mean I'll run back to Nordstrom and return some, if not all, of the things I bought? I'll sleep on it, but it might be more dangerous sending me back into the field. But with 19 more months of budgeting ahead of me, it's the kind of indiscretion I can't afford to keep making.

First comes love, then comes marriage...

Andrew and Alexis, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g...

We all know the nursery rhyme. We learned it in kindergarden or early on in elementary school, and used it to mercilessly taunt our classmates to tears as it was a well-known fact that any association with the opposite sex would undoubtedly lead to a full-blown case of the cooties.

In middle school, when we started realizing that -- hey -- Kevin Miller's silver braces kinda matched that silver sparkle in his brooding eyes that I hadn't ever noticed before, our friends teased us with the same old singsong to get us to blush as we passed that certain someone in the hall.

When we convinced our parents to lower their shotguns long enough for us to go on an actual date in high school, we realized that two teens sitting alone in a tree would, in fact, lead to the k-i-s-s-i-n-g. As would sitting in a movie theater, on a bench at the mall, on a cardboard box in your school's art supply closet, or any other surface that could sustain your combined weight.

As adults, a once silly rhyme has become a sort of blueprint for many of us. Like most of my friends, I stumbled upon the elusive "love" for the first time in college. Then I was lucky enough to actually hold onto it.

And after that love, we girls all know what's supposed to come then. But getting there once you've said "yes" isn't as easy as the rhyme.

Some of my girlfriends have been dreaming up every last detail of the day they'll say "I DO" since they were tall enough to reach Martha Stewart Weddings on the magazine rack in the check-out line at the supermarket. Others, like myself, are downright clueless brides-to-be.

After the shock of the rock (ohmygod it's big! it's shiny! it's mine!), I was hit by the magnitude of my new project: organizing a weekend of wedding events for over 200 family members and friends (we know a lot of people) without any major disasters, all the while staying within our modest budget. At first, it seemed the check list would be pretty straightforward -- find a priest, find a venue, find a chef and hit the liquor store. Bam, I'm done. But then I quickly realized that planning a party of that scale in a city defined by social and political gatherings 365 days out of the year was no easy task. In every step I take, I'm competing with the Fund for Orphaned 3-Legged Korean Puppies for space, services, prices, and even the most basic necessity for an event: an open date on the calendar. I am diving headfirst into churning, murky wedding waters and hoping I float.

I'm happy to say that I'm not going-it totally alone. I have some great friends who've already blazed the trail ahead of me and have offered up their advice and wedding books (wedding books? what are those?), others who have great connections to vendors and venues all over Washington DC, and a great fiance who is willing to go above and beyond the traditional groom duties of booking the limo and buying his tux. With the right luck, the right advice, and the right help, I may just pull this thing off... and through my musings, may even help another bride that is just as clueless as me.

First comes love, then comes marriage. As for the rest of the rhyme? We won't be singing that part anytime soon.