Liz fortunately found employment fairly quickly and the position has been a knockout success. She is working for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation providing canoe trips to schools in the area. Each canoe trip is different with new people and varied locations in the Harrisburg area. This keeps her on her toes and not only occupies her mind, and keeps her active but it also inspires her spirit and feeds her love of nature, wildlife and the search for aquatic bug-a-boo's. The pay isn't perfect to start but she hard-balled for a higher starting salary and got it; additionally she was recently promoted in the ranks which produced a nice bump in salary. All within a few weeks of work. She has been trained on Wilderness First Aid and White Water Canoe Rescues. You Go Girl!
Myself on the other hand is still in a state of flux as per the date of this article. I am still seeking employment to get back into the geology/environmental field here in central PA but the rules are different and thus there has been a hard curve from my actual skill sets to what employers are looking for. I have a couple things in the line including a promising opportunity with a large environmental and engineering company on the East Coast and should hopefully find out next week if that's going to be a happening thing. Until then, I surf the job boards, watch some tele and work on the plans for the WEDDING!
Since I am the one with a large majority of unused time on my hands, I have tried to be as big a help on the wedding planning as possible, ya know, since Liz is working 50 hour weeks sometimes. It has been a real interesting jump into a culture of planning, primping and making yours look better than everyone else's. My prior experience with weddings has been VERY limited and without a wedding planner, all the groundwork has to be formed and built up. I cant just point at a catalog and go 'this, this and this' for the planner to go ahead and make the arrangements and see them to completion without worry. We have had a lot of helpful suggestions from friends and family and god bless the internet and its investigation and communication abilities.
LOCATION:
This is the biggie and probably numero-uno for most wedding planning. Where the event will be dictates just about everything of the planning process. Fortunately, the Fulton family has an amazing lake front cabin in Belvidere NJ which will be just enough space for the ceremony and reception all at one location. This ideal and beautiful location will give us the freedoms of planning our wedding how we want it to be. The lake house is a very special location with lots of memories continuing to be made to this day. (Remember the camper renovation where most weekends were spent pulling hairs and going to the hardware store?) This will also help financially since a huge portion of a wedding budget goes towards the ideal venue at the local elite country club or the banquet hall with chandeliers worth more than my car. The stars will be our chandelier and the grass, our dance floor. Its going to be a squeeze to fit everyone in the space but it will totally be worth it.
FOOD:
We wanted something different for our main course. Most of the time you get the option of steak or chicken; maybe even fish and of course there's always the hidden special option for veggie or GF. Thinking outside the box, we decided we wanted a hog roast for our guests and some BBQ birds on the side for those non-porkers. Well, the idea wasnt exactly original and numerous pork roasters popped up in the North NJ area. All this meant was we had options and choices to be made. Fancy roast, sloppy roast, funny roast, all these different vendors had a hook. We finally landed on the Pork Wizard, a roasting veteran who has been behind the grill for decades. His company, Have Pork Will Travel will be the feast to remember. In addition to a whole hog roast, they will provide 4 amazing sides for our guests to indulge.
There's also the planning of the appetizers and deserts which are to be crafted with the assistance of friends and family prior to the big day.
DRESS:
One of the focal points of any wedding is attire, specifically the bride(s) dress. Our first experience of dress shopping was in Saskatoon SK where Liz and her good friend Nancy (also engaged for September) went dress shopping with Nancy's soon-to-be mother-in-law. It was a great introduction to the whole process and provided Liz with positive feedback from the fitting room gals. Unfortunately none of the styles stuck with Liz. The second time was with sisters in San Diego. Only one shop was given a shot but once again, nothing really stuck. Then in March, she went out with Becca and Amy and found the one. Of course I have no knowledge of what it looks like but I can only imagine its beautiful and she will look great in it. It's such a shame that these dresses are one-time-use garments. Liz also found a head piece that's a family heirloom so that will be on top.
PHOTOGRAPHER:
For finding a photographer, I basically just Google'd for photographer within X radius of the venue location. The listings I found and inquired about were high professional jobs with print shops and galleries and the costs STARTING AT $3,000, was just a bit too high. With more searching and poking around Craigslist, I found some more affordable folks who looked like they could get the job done. After Liz and I narrowed down our favorites, we both decided a Mr Marshall Scott would be the right guy. Before we signed anything, we made sure to give him a call and discuss the events, what we were looking for and our wants and needs from his service. We seemed to match up on all the questions and found the package we wanted him to provide. Our package is to include 8 hours of coverage with two photographers on site. A USB with all files collected in JPEG and RAW and an online gallery. Additionally our package comes with an engagement session to take some preliminary professional shots for the memories. All for half the cost of what the mega-pros were asking for.
DJ:
The DJ can be the heart of the reception. The music they play and the order and transition between the songs can make or break a mood. Once again, god bless the internet and with google on my side, we were able to rack up numerous potentials in the North NJ area. We landed on one Mr. Eduardo Arroyo and gave him the 5th degree on a phone call to express our plans and what WE WANT. But in all honesty, Eduardo seems like a fun young DJ who is going to be just right for the event. We are working up our suggested songs list in addition to the ever important DO NOT PLAY LIST and plan to submit that soon enough. Some of the songs though, you just need to find what will sound right for the garter removal ceremony! JK I think that's one tradition we plan to pass up. We anticipate doing the classic wedding numbers at the beginning of the evening and then for our last hour or so will be more youthful jams to get down to.
TENT & TABLES:
Another big matter of business was finding a local vendor who could supply our event with everything we needed. After running prices from numerous company's and seeing what some could offer and others lacked, we came to land on Grand Station Rental of Hackettstown right up the road. From their vast catalog, we were able to choose just the right tent size and the tables we needed. They are also proving a bar, dance floor, seating, and of course the porta-potties. Their prices were just right and the helpful staff helped us pick the items we needed.
Since our location is fairly laid back and our Pig Roast is borderline picnic, we decided to pick our flatware somewhere in the middle. With classic stone dishware and flatware rentals estimated to upwards of $200, I grabbed the appropriate amount of reusable plastic dishes and silver(plastic)ware from Costco for about $90. SAVINGS! This should be just fine with our setting and style and one less thing to worry about returning to the vendor on time and clean.
BLOCKING HOTELS:
Once again, being the inexperienced noob that I am, I had no clue what hotel blocking was. For those of you who are confused about it too, its basically a way of asking local hotels to reserve X amount of rooms for your guests to stay at. In a return for the high volume of potential patronage, the hotel will give you a discount depending on your needs and requirements. Well, if I was a wedding planner and had all these contacts and information in my portfolio, it would be a piece of cake. Unfortunately, I dont have this expertise but I had Skipper on my side. Skipper is a webbased application to help you compare local hotels close of your location and will give a side-by-side comparison of up to 4 locations. The operation will then send out the request to each hotel as a middle-man and respond back as the offers come in. It made life a bit easier and I am currently working on getting a block of 15 rooms for our out of town guests to follow through and book should they choose to stay around a while.
I think that's the bulk of it for now. We have yet to send out the formal invitations which are being hand crafted and should be ready for ship out soon enough. We also have yet to pin down the attire for the groom, groomsmen and the bridesmaids; basically everyone else. We will also scramble to do a Bach Party in the summer. This little shin dig will be in lieu of your classic bachelor/bachelorette event at a strip club or w.e. We just want anyone who can come out to have a good time and celebrate with us.
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