The deets.

As promised, details!

I haven't mentioned this before, and I don't know why I haven't - it's not like I'm going to magically develop stalkers or anything - but EC and I are getting married in the Kansas City, Missouri area. And this is where it gets interesting.

My immediate family lives in Ohio, and my extended family (what little there is) lives in Ontario, Canada. EC's family (all of it, I think, not that there's much of his family either) lives in Texas. We currently live in Washington state, and the chances of us moving prior to the wedding are pretty good, depending on his job. So we figured, since we met in Kansas City, and both have a pretty good number of friends there, and our families were going to have to travel anyhow... why not just get married there? Having lived in KC for a good 9 years or so, I was pretty familiar with the available wedding venues, and the rest I could learn on the fly. So that's what happened.

We've got a trip back to KC planned for October, where we're going to take care of some wedding things (take our engagement photos, meet with our officiant, hopefully find a DJ, participate in a tasting at the caterer's) and some non-wedding things (an appointment with my doctor, hanging with friends), and then we head down to Texas to see EC's family for a bit. It's going to take a a whole week, and I can't wait!

So here's what we've arranged so far:

We are getting married at Powell Gardens, Kansas City's botanical gardens that are 20-30 minutes east of KC proper. The actual ceremony will be in their Marjorie Powell Allen Chapel, and the reception will be in their newly-constructed Missouri Star Barn. Which isn't really a barn, per se... it's more of a lean-to area that looks like a barn (the enclosed area of the barn is a gift shop and the kitchens). I can't really find any pictures of the barn just yet, but boy does Powell Gardens have a nice blog! OK, well, here's one, kind of. You'll be able to get a nice aerial view of the surrounding gardens from the silo, but the structure to the left of it is our barn. Yay!

[Stepping aside for a moment, the chapel was designed by architect Fay Jones, who was one of Frank Lloyd Wright's apprentices and was a Taliesin Fellow - and since we both like FLW, his gorgeous art glass is going to be what our invitation suite will be designed around.]

[Stepping aside again, I would have loved for our reception to be in a barn barn but couldn't really find one around town where they took care of everything - we would have had to find a caterer, which isn't so bad, but we also would have had to bring in tables, chairs, serviceware, everything, and we didn't want to mess with that.]

The other part of the wedding that I'm really excited about is our photographer. Now, way before EC proposed, I'd figured he was the one and was hoping he'd pop the question, so I'd been doing wedding research for a while by then. As a matter of fact, a friend of mine was getting married in October '08, so the year prior (a mere 6 or so months after we'd started dating), "in the interest of helping her out", I attended a workshop with her on How To Plan A Wedding Without Becoming A Bridezilla. The girl who presented the workshop was a recent bride, and she gave a number of resources on wedding vendors in the KC area. And I fell in love with her photographers. Unfortunately, she had booked them when they had just started out, and their prices had risen. A lot. Way beyond my budget. So I had to get creative, and poke around websites like the Knot and weddingwire.com and such looking for alternates.

You should have SEEN my initial list of potential photographers! And this was with me being picky! I wanted the look of the photographers I loved at a fraction of their cost. And still, my initial list was a huge spreadsheet that I think kind of scared EC when I first sent it to him. Of course, I started whittling it down, being ruthless in my standards and budget constraints, and came down to about 3 photographers. I met one, and liked her, but she was from out of town and was brand-new to the industry, and I didn't want to chance my forever memories of our wedding to still-developing photography. The second photographer I met, I adored. Loved her. She had a great eye, and a great look, and her price was within our budget, although just sliiiightly higher. I didn't care. I wanted her. So when Ted came to town, I scheduled another meeting so he could meet her, and that was it! We booked her as our photographer, and I couldn't be happier. Her name is Claire Ryser, and she is the owner of Visionaire Studios. Just look at her photos! I hope ours turn out even half as nice as the ones she's been taking lately. This will be interesting, because EC isn't a romantic kind of guy - he's more of a joker - so those photos where we're gazing lovingly into each other's eyes probably aren't happening. Haha.

These are the two biggies. Well, three, since with Powell Gardens we automatically get their caterer, Cafe Thyme. And you know I already have my dress. -es. Dresses, plural. Still have to sell the first one!

I think I'm going to cut things off here and continue later with the rest of our vendors, who actually are kind of friendors, really, since they're people we know who do these things either professionally or somewhat so. I still need to set up our wedding website, and we definitely have to start working on our guest list! But otherwise, I think we're pretty well set up, for being just under 9 months to go. Famous last words, eh?