Naebody in Particular

Something to add to the 1001 reasons I love my bride to be: she can negotiate anything out of anyone, and this time she has out done herself.

The Lady Sparkler has negotiated quite a deal with the hotel (Doubletree) that houses the restaurant (15 RIA) that is hosting our reception.

With only a little arm twisting, the Doubletree agreed to give us as many rooms as we need for just $129 a night. It’s hard to find a hotel in Washington, DC for under $200, so this is a pretty spectacular feat. And remember, the hotel is just two blocks from the church.

Couple of things to know: (1) our wedding is apparently on Columbus Day weekend and they expect the hotel to fill-up, so you may want to book early; (2) there is no deposit required and you can cancel up to 24 hours before the event, so there is no reason not to book early even if you aren’t sure you can make it yet.

(Notice a book early theme? They say you have to repeat a message three times in order for it to stick with even the most sophisticated consumer.)

If you would like to make a reservation, just call 1-866-984-6835 and ask for the Spindler – Parker Wedding Block. We have already reserved rooms for the bridal party (let us know if you have questions).

Two more quick notes: (1) the $129 is only for Friday, Saturday and / or Sunday nights; it’s more a little more on Thursday — $159; (2) they have a conference in the hotel starting on Monday so, if you are turning this into a longer vacation, just make sure that you book early. (That’s the last one, I promise.)

Finally, while this is the only hotel where we have arranged a discount, there are other hotels nearby so feel free to check them out if you have points you are trying to use. Be warned: nobody else we talked to was willing to give us a rate anywhere near as good.

That’s it! If you have any questions about any of this, please post us a comment or email us at . More details coming. Promise.

One of the things we are most proud about in our wedding is how close everything is to each other. The church is two blocks away from the reception, which is on the first floor of the hotel, which is across the circle from the rehearsal dinner, which is three blocks away from the metro … etc.

Click around our google map of the wedding weekend event locations and you will see what I mean. Hopefully, once you get here, you’ll be able to park the car (or taxi, or airplane, or train) and walk to just about everything.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

We have good news if you are one of the poor saps who has to sit through the rehearsal on the night before the wedding … if you make it through, you will eat well afterwards.

Beacon Bar & Grill, Washington, DC Photo © Esther Dyson (via Flickr™)

My parents came in town last weekend for my birthday and — as a happy side effect — we met with the people from Beacon Bar and Grill to talk about the rehearsal dinner.

We showed up for our scheduled appointment on Saturday, but it turns out that the person we were talking too was in the hospital the day before with second degree burns on her foot. (‘Twas a kitchen accident with boiling water … youch!)

With no one to entertain us, a very nice, and equally nervous, front of house manager showed us the private rooms — forgot to bring the camera, sorry — but we had to come back the following day to talk actually turkey. (ha … a pun! i kill me!)

When we came back on Sunday, the lady — Linda Davis — was very intelligent, gracious and “with-it” … and turned out she wasn’t even faking the injury (she had bandaged feet stuffed inside her as-comfy-as-i-can-be-right-now slippers). We loved her, loved the space, and even loved the menu possibilities.

Right now we are looking at four menu items: Seared Rockfish with lentil salad, Oven Roasted Chicken with grilled vegetables, Cajun Penne Pasta with chicken and sausage, and finally a Grilled New York Strip steak. Molton Chocolate Cake or Yankee Apple Crisp for desert.

Now, as someone who was a vegetarian for neigh-on eight years, I am a little nervous about doing a dinner without a veggie option. While the wedding reception will be veggie friendly, I can’t come up with a single person coming to the rehearsal (family and bridal party) who has even mildly vegetarian tendencies. That being said, the said the could handle dietary restrictions so long as they had advanced notice.

ps. Anybody know Esther Dyson? I had already scammed one of her pics from flickr before I realized she was famous. All that techie genius, and she still takes good pictures of our rehearsal dinner locale.

Boy, was I silly … and thankfully I have bridesmaids to straighten me out when I get off track.

Instead of trying to match the blog’s look and feel to the save-the-date stuff, I should have been trying to make the blog work with to the bridesmaids dresses — which are a glorious color of Peacock. Rule number one of marriage: the world revolves around women’s clothing.

With this lesson in mind, I have come up with a special, limited-edition “Peacock” design for our marital blog. All you need to do to experience this beauty is to click on this special peacock link and viola! Peacocks galore … (you might have to click the link twice)

If for some reason you would prefer to *not* match with our bridesmaid dresses — you renegage — click here be awash in flowers once again.

Photo Courtesy of Voisin Photography

Well, we have signed a contract with Sarah Voisin of Voisin Photography. We just loved her work (The Lady Sparkler literally the first time she saw them) and the only “remorse” we had heard from any of our friends was “we wish we had spent more for our photographer.” So we kinda splurged and got the one we really wanted.

We also got full rights to all the images, as soon as they are available … so we will be able to share them with everyone almost immediately after the wedding.

Photo Courtesy of Voisin Photography

Photo Courtesy of Sandi Foraci Photography

This week we met with our two finalists for wedding photographer, and I am not sure they could be more different. Fortunately, both are uniquely exceptional, but making a decision between the two is going to be difficult.

On Sunday, we met with Sarah Voisin of Voisin Photography. In the last decade, the term “photojournalist” has been hijacked by people who like taking pictures of other people’s feet, which has caused the word’s origin (a journalist who uses photography) to be kind of lost. Voisin is the consummate photojouralist under the proper, original definition.

Voisin works full time for the Washington Post, and it shows. Her attention to “the moment” is very strong, and the quality of her photography is just better than anyone else I have seen in the business. My one hesitation is that her personality is more reserved, and she might have problems corralling our family and friends into some of the more “required” pictures that don’t just occur naturally.

On the other hand, tonight we met with Marylinn Spindler of Sandi Foraci Photography and she was clearly the consummate professional. She was well prepared, thorough, with an absolute knowledge of weddings and what can, might, and should happen on the big day.

Her photography was great, but I believe her strength was in the bridal and wedding management areas. She was very helpful in mapping out our thinking, extremely accommodating to our desires (and sincerely, it didn’t seem forced) and seemed like she would be in complete control of any situation. The Lady Sparkler immediately took to her, and the two of them seemed to really click.

So, in the end I think we would be extremely happy with either of our two finalists. We are just not sure what is most important … Do we want A++ in photo quality and a B+ in wedding management, or an A- in photo quality and an A+ in wedding management. It really is going to be a tough call.

Photo Courtesy of American Music Caravan

We have got a LOT moving forward now.

After (literally) months of searching, we are getting ready to settle on a band. At various times, we thought about jazz, big band, swing, dixieland, bluegrass … really, pretty much anything that didn’t have a vocalist. Finally, we seem to have settled on the idea of a “little” big band, one can do a mix of just about all of the above.

Fortunately, there appears to be a band that is willing/able to do that … the Sultans of Swing (they also trade up instruments to become the Sheiks of Dixie, but my family is from New England … and nothing with the word Dixie is particularly well received).

We are still in the contract phase, but are pretty optimistic. If you want to listen a little, there are sound clips of the both bands, as well as play lists for each (Sultans, Sheiks).

The headline tells pretty much the whole story. Except we have pictures. And I have permission (dare i say encouragement?) from the missus to post said pictures.

So, as you can probably tell, The Lady Sparkler has kind of turned the full time blogging-reins over to me. She loves blogs, loves to read about blogs, and loves to tell her clients why they need to have blogs … just not so much into the blogging-thing herself.

So, the dress …

The one you see pictured to the right is kind of exactly like the dress, but not exactly. The Lady Sparkler has decided to do off-white instead of white, and the embroidery / beading will be in the same off-white (here the embellishments are shown in silver).

She has also special ordered some straps for the dress in case she doesn’t want to fight with dress-slippage on the happiest day of her life.

The Lady Sparkler’s mom came up from Houston to help, and between the two of them (with a special guest appearance by Melissa for one of the boutique days) plowed through their list of stores and dresses, and had the whole thing wrapped in less than a week.

Amazing.

Needless to say, the dress has amped up the wedding expectations around the Parker-Spindler household a little … almost like the wedding — in the words of one bride who shall remain anonymous — is “really happening” now.

Personally, I will match The Lady Sparkler in that state of euphoria once we get the band and the photographer nailed down. Florists and cake makers can “do” a dozen weddings in one weekend if they have to. It’s pretty tough for a band or a photographer to be in two places at once.

So, on to the next big project … either finding us music and pictures, or finding us a physicist who can bend the space time continuum. Frankly, two weeks ago, in the order of “completion difficulty,” I would have placed music and pictures first, space time continuum bending second, wedding dress purchasing third.

I guess that’s a good sign, huh?

If you thought it was uncomfortable reading my posts about bridesmaids dresses, it gets worse: Flowers.

I was practically a theatrical design major in undergrad, so I have a background in dresses and clothing (even if it is suppressed in the deep, dark, nether-regions of my brain that’s been reserved for NASCAR and Debbie Gibson appreciation up ’til now).

When The Lady Sparkler was looking through Aria for bridesmaids dresses, she tripped on a series of flowers that she liked the look of. Fall colors (appropriate for that whole “October” thing) and very natural looking. No soccer-ball shaped bouquets that look like all the flowers have had the life squeezed out of them.

The Lady Sparkler and I are both (for the most part) minimalists and traditionalist. Especially with nature, less is more, and simple is better that a veritable cacophony of color and organic matter.

The battle of the bridesmaids color swatches is over, and “peacock” won … likely with a pipe wrench in the conservatory. Truth be told, it was the consensus pick. Everyone seemed to like it, which is great for them, but it’s hard to blog without conflict.

It’s still pretty early in the game (T-minus 523 days) but we decided it was about time to pick a random date to pursue with the church, reception and rehearsal-dinner people.

So, we went to Weather Underground’s History page and did some research. Three minutes (and one excel spreadsheet later) we had something that looked like this:

	22-Sep	29-Sep	6-Oct	13-Oct
Mean Temp.	65 °F	62 °F	59 °F	56 °F
Average High	77 °F	74 °F	71 °F	69 °F
Average Low	53 °F	50 °F	46 °F	43 °F
Record High	94 °F (1980)	85 °F (1986)	85 °F (1997)	84 °F (1998)
Record Low	38 °F (1997)	34 °F (1978)	28 °F (1968)	30 °F (1985)
Avg. Rainfall	0.13 in	0.12 in	0.11 in	0.11 in
Record Rainfall	1.57 in (1982)	2.23 in (1963)	0.68 in (1972)	0.85 in (1983)

After much deliberation (three, maybe four minutes) we decided to target October 6, 2007. Not too cold, not too hot … and it didn’t hijack one of our attendants (Melissa Merens) 30th birthday (missed it by a week). It’s a shame, she would have gotten one heck of a party …

We’ve been engaged one week and I have started to discover the vast quantities of wedding material that exists. First, thanks to Marja we have 435 pages of New and Improved Bridal Bargains — as seen on Oprah, of course! It’s filled with tons of obscure facts. For example you can look up the least popular months for weddings by state. Surprisingly, all of this information makes for some really good reading.

Then this weekend, a huge package arrived from m.o.h. Christy with the latest wedding magazines. I am now the proud owner of about 15 pounds of wedding advice that I can haul around on the metro this week. The selection includes In Style Weddings, Martha Stewart Weddings, and Modern Bride.

So that he isn’t left out, Evan and I picked up The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Being a Groom. He’s dutifully read it cover to cover already. It’s the third edition of the book so the advice has to be pretty good — right?

Other friends have offered to give me their supply of wedding planning materials and books in the coming weeks. I think we will be the best-read couple in DC by the time we get married.

After much debate about the tact of posting pictures of hypothetical engagement rings, the Spindler-Parker family has hereby (and forthwith) decided to post the “money shot” of the ring as provided through the ring’s proprietor’s web site.

The Lady Sparkler would like (at my earliest convenience) to replace this picture with one of the ring on her actual hand. I, on the other hand, am advocating for this picture’s to remain indefinitely. Without a finger for perspective, the ring looks much bigger than its actual size (which is a little smaller than the head of a pin).

P.S. Two words: BlueNile.com. It’s heaven for geeks-in-love who want to avoid being hard-sold by gemologists/used-car salesmen. The “build your own engagement ring” has cool little sliders that makes the whole thing vaguely less terrifying than it otherwise would be…